The Blessed (5 page)

“An inferno on water.” The man shook his head at the thought. “I’ve seen it but once, but care not to see it again. Providence had me ashore at the time. Providence perhaps kept you on deck in the same way. It is a good thing to embrace Providence at times and to thank the Lord for such. Instead of feeling guilt for what you cannot change.”

“Many told me the same.”

“And you gave no credence to their words?” Brother Asa lifted his thick dark eyebrows. “Or do you have other reasons for despair?”

“There are always reasons for despair,” Isaac said.

“You speak truth especially for those of the world,” the man said with that echo of cheerful acceptance in his voice as he stood and placed his hat on his head. “And hunger is one of them. Come. I’ve kept you talking too long when it is your stomach I hear talking back to me.”

Isaac echoed his words. “Those of the world.” He’d heard that said before, and suddenly he knew where he’d seen men dressed like the man in front of him. “You’re a Shaker.”

The man smiled. “That is what those of the world call us, and while we are comfortable with the moniker, our true name is the Society of Believers in the Second Coming of Christ.”

“I know.”

Isaac’s knowledge seemed to surprise the man. “Do you?” The man studied Isaac. “Were you perhaps raised by the Shakers then and are one of those lured away from our villages by the temptations of worldly living?”

“No. My sister went to the Shakers when our father died. She’s still there. In a village not far from here called Harmony Hill.”

“The very village I call home. And what might your sister’s name be?”

“Marian. Marian Kingston.”

“Then you must be Isaac.” The man’s smile got wider as he put his hand on Isaac’s shoulder.

Isaac frowned and wanted to shrug the man’s hand off his shoulder. It seemed too odd, the man knowing his name.

The man laughed. “Have no fear, my brother. I didn’t divine your name.” Brother Asa’s smile disappeared. “Sister Marian mentioned her concerns for you during one of our union meetings. She said you were suffering much sorrow as do many who depend on the relationships of the world for happiness. But be assured, peace can still be possible for you.”

“I don’t see how. My wife died.” Isaac hesitated and then went on. “Because of me.” The words tore a new wound through the middle of his heart to match many others until he thought it must surely be near collapse.

“Yea, I see your sorrow. But Providence has put us on the same path this day. Come, my brother. Let us go fill your hungry body with proper sustenance. Only then can the sorrows of the soul be tended to.” He reached a thick, blocky hand down toward Isaac.

Isaac stared at the man for a long moment before he reached to take the man’s hand. He remembered Marian once telling Isaac that the Shakers were dead to the world. And wasn’t that what he wanted? To be dead.

Isaac stood up and followed the little man. Perhaps Providence had played a part in their meeting this day, and he would find a way to die without surrendering the very necessary need to breathe.

5

It was good to have a full stomach again. But even better to have the cheerful Brother Asa walking along beside him with no worry dragging down his step. Nothing seemed to bother the little man. Not the chance of trouble coming his way because of his kindness to Isaac. Not the ridicule that some they passed on the street shot his way because of his short stature.

“Look there. That Shaker feller’s done danced his legs off to his knees,” one of the men they passed said right before he stuck a foot out to trip Brother Asa.

Isaac grabbed the little man to keep him from falling. Then he doubled up his fists ready to show the other man bent over with laughter something not so funny.

Brother Asa caught Isaac’s arm and pulled him on down the street. “The man has a noble idea. Of a truth it would be a fine thing if I had worn off my legs laboring our worship songs. That would surely make my lack of height a gift, rather than a burden.” Brother Asa smiled over his shoulder at the man with no animosity at all, but his smile faded when he turned back to Isaac. “It is not our way to resort to fisticuffs, my brother. The Believer’s path is peaceful.”

“I’m not a Believer,” Isaac said, his hands still clenched in fists. The man’s laughter trailed after them.

“True enough. And I fear just as true that you have no peace.”

“Peace.” Isaac’s shoulders drooped as the anger drained out of him. “It’s a fine-sounding word, but nothing I think to ever know again.”

“Peace of the spirit can be difficult to obtain in the world, but at Harmony Hill doors to peace will open up to you that you cannot begin to imagine now.” Brother Asa threw out his hands as if pushing open those doors. “A gift from Mother Ann to those who seek the truth of right living and live the Shaker way.”

Doors to peace. Isaac had no right to go through those doors. Nor did he have the right to make Brother Asa think he could be converted to a Shaker. The man had been kind to him. The least Isaac could do was be honest in return.

Isaac glanced over at Brother Asa and then stared down at the walkway as he said, “If I went with you to your village, it would be only for the food. Not as one with any idea of converting to your beliefs.”

Isaac expected his admission to upset Brother Asa, but it seemed nothing could do that. He didn’t look a bit put off. “Many before you have done the same. Winter Shakers some. Those who come for a season and leave. Others stay and become true and faithful to the Shaker way. But I daresay none were ever disappointed with the fruits of our table. Our food is plentiful and our sisters very fine cooks.” Brother Asa’s smile spread across his face again. “Plus all who come must work for their place at our table.”

“I want to work. No one will hire me here.”

“Yet you stay.” Brother Asa’s words weren’t a question, but his voice carried a query.

“I had no way to go,” Isaac said, but knew as he uttered the words they weren’t true. In the five months since Ella had died, he could have walked away from Louisville or maybe even finagled a passage on one of the steamboats. It was Ella who kept him there. Ella in that cold grave on the hill outside the town. He couldn’t simply desert her there and go on about his life as if nothing was different.

Brother Asa was eyeing him. “Do you have children from your union with this wife you lost?”

“No. We were only wed a short time before she took the fever.”

“You are a mystery, my brother. But Mother Ann warns us that worldly love can cause much upheaval in a man’s life.” Brother Asa turned his eyes away from Isaac and began walking again. His good humor returned as he kept talking. “The sort of upheaval I have never experienced. I doubt any woman ever looked on me with a lascivious eye. Praises be! Mother Ann has surely guarded me from such temptations.”

“What about before you went to the Shakers?”

“I was but a young lad when my natural mother brought me to the Shaker village. She may have known the worldly motherly love for me. I cannot say of a certainty. I have only the vaguest recollection of a gentle face under a black cap telling me goodbye. I don’t remember tears on her face or mine.”

“She left you there?”

“Children are well cared for among the Shakers. A fine place to grow up. I can vouch for that.” Brother Asa smiled over at him. “Of course except for that dancing one’s legs off to the knee.” The man laughed out loud. “I will have to share that one with Brother Henry. While joviality is not a common thing as it is our duty to tend with serious minds to our appointed tasks, Brother Henry and I enjoy a laugh now and again.”

“You seem to be always smiling,” Isaac said.

“In the world, a smile can oft turn away trouble. Especially for one such as myself. One who wishes to live in peace with all.”

“Trouble is not always so easily shed,” Isaac said.

“Perhaps not in the world, but if you can leave your grief behind and return to Harmony Hill with me, your troubles will become less burdensome. And there are our bountiful tables to consider.” Brother Asa raised his eyebrows at Isaac.

“How long would I have to stay?”

“There is no requirement for a period of time. All who come among us are free to stay or leave at any time. We hold none in bondage as some of the world do. The desire for true salvation is all that binds us.”

Isaac looked at the man in front of him and bit back his words of unbelief. There was no salvation. No God who cared what happened to Isaac. That was more than evident, else he and Ella would be happily building a new life out in the western territories.

Brother Asa must have read his mind. “Worry not, young brother. You are only required to listen. Your heart will be free to make its own decisions of the path you choose to follow, but I pray for a decision of joy for you and not one of worldly sorrow.”

“She’s only been gone a few months. Don’t you think I’m supposed to be sorrowful?”

“Indeed. In the world that may be so. But at Harmony Hill you will become a different person. The worldly Isaac will fade away and Brother Isaac who embraces peace will come forth. The sorrows of the world will be dead to you.”

“There are many ways to die.”

“And it seems you have pondered some of them. But the death of which I speak, the death to the world a Believer embraces, delivers one into a new life of abounding love from our Mother Ann and the Eternal Father as we give our hands to work and our hearts to God. That is the Believer’s way.” Brother Asa slowed his step and peered up at Isaac.

“Marian has told me it is a good way. At least for her.”

“Then it is settled. You will go with me when my business is concluded at the waterfront later today.”

Isaac hadn’t actually said he’d go with Brother Asa, but neither did he contradict the little man now and say he wouldn’t.

Brother Asa stopped in front of a shop and pulled money out of his pocket to buy a new set of clothes for Isaac. When the shopkeeper narrowed his eyes and stared long at Isaac’s face before turning them away, Brother Asa stuffed his money back in his pocket as he cheerfully claimed that Mother Ann must be guarding the Shaker coin.

“The clothes made by our sisters at Harmony Hill will serve you better than anything we might buy here.” He glanced back over his shoulder toward where the shopkeeper stood in the door staring after them. “He looks to be regretting turning away good coin.”

“Or only waiting until a policeman comes by to send a message to the judge.”

Isaac moderated his step to match the little man’s shorter stride even as he kept his eyes on the street ahead. The last few weeks he’d slipped back into the shadows whenever he spotted any of the watch. It just seemed the better part of wisdom to stay away from the law. A man with no place to lay his head was a vagrant, and other bums on the street warned him that vagrancy was oft considered a crime. A one-way ticket to the inside of a prison cell, especially in the judge’s courtroom.

He glanced over at the man beside him. The food so recently in his stomach sat uneasily as he thought about how it was surely only a matter of time before the judge found out about Brother Asa showing him kindness. When he did, he’d find some reason to have the strange little Shaker brought before his bench.

“Who is this judge? The one so determined to keep you hungry.” Asa peered up at him with a good bit of curiosity.

“My father-in-law,” Isaac said. “Although I don’t suppose he would admit to that relationship now.”

“Ah, the father of the young wife whose death has spread a mantle of guilt over you.”

“She would still be alive if I hadn’t talked her into going west with me. She didn’t want to leave her mother.”

“So you forced her to go with you?”

“I didn’t bind her to me with ropes or chains, if that’s what you mean. She was only bound by our wedding vows.”

“It is a truth that the vows of matrimony oft cause much stress and sorrow for those of the world. In our village we shut such personal worries from us.”

“But what about love?” Isaac asked. “Don’t you shut out the chance for it as well?”

“Those of the world think that, but we at Harmony Hill are abundantly gifted with love. Of that you can be certain. There is much more peace from loving all as brother or sister as the good Lord revealed was the proper way to Mother Ann. The intended way.”

Brother Asa must have seen the doubt on Isaac’s face. He smiled as he went on. “I must beg your forbearance, my brother. I shouldn’t try to load you down with too much preaching. That is one of my faults that I often have need to confess. Filling the air with an excess of words and giving the one listening no time to understand. A person should not hurry his tasks nor should he load down a young brother’s ears beyond what he can hear.”

“That’s all right. Listening is the least I can do after you bought me food.”

“No payment was exacted for that. A Believer is bound by the charity of his heart to help those in need. You were hungry. I had the means to change that, and now you have the means to help me by coming along to the waterfront to be an aid in loading my wagon with the building supplies I have been sent to carry back to the village.”

At the waterfront the steamboat had come in with the building material for the Shaker village. Not lumber, since Brother Asa said the Shakers used timber off their land for planks and beams but ordered some iron supports shaped to suit their needs to save building time. The boat had also brought sheets of glass they loaded in the wagon with great care.

They were stuffing padding around the glass for the journey back to the Shaker village when Isaac spotted Officer Neal some distance down the dock. “Trouble’s coming,” Isaac told Brother Asa as he slipped out of sight behind the wagon.

He grabbed the little man’s arm to pull him back behind the wagon with him, but the Shaker man shook off Isaac’s hand. “What need do we have to hide? We are doing no wrong.”

Isaac hesitated. He didn’t want to desert his new friend, but wrong was open to interpretation. That same spark that had kept his feet from sliding off the dock and plunging into the river that morning now sent him scurrying for a place in the shadows behind some barrels before the police officer came any closer. He wanted to run farther away, to disappear down some alleyway, but instead he made himself as small as possible as he peeked out of a crack between the barrels. Brother Asa kept packing padding against the glass without even glancing down the dock toward Officer Neal, who was coming toward the Shaker man with purpose in his steps.

Purpose that Isaac feared. Not only for himself now, but for Brother Asa too. What would he do if Officer Neal tried to haul the little Shaker away? Isaac pulled in a deep breath to quell the panic rising in him and then was afraid to let it out for fear the noise would give him away. At least it was Officer Neal and not Cox. Cox kept his bludgeon at the ready and didn’t care how many innocent heads he might break. Once he hit a poor bloke, the man was always found guilty of something.

But Neal would give a man a chance to talk before he hauled him away. Mostly to line his own pockets. He had the tendency to look the other way if a man dropped a few coins and forgot to lean down to pick them up. For sure Isaac had no coins to drop, but Brother Asa had coin jingling in his pocket. If he would pull it out and offer it to the officer.

Isaac thought about leaning out of his shadows to give Brother Asa that advice, but he feared attracting the officer’s eye. So instead he sat silent and wondered when he’d become such a mouse of a man. Too fearful to do harm to himself. Too fearful to attempt to prevent harm to another.

“Good day, Officer,” Brother Asa said with that same note of cheer in his voice that had been with him all the time Isaac had walked beside him. “It’s good to see the sun out so bright. Time enough in the year for a man to work up a bit of sweat in his labor, wouldn’t you say?”

“I would, I would. Winter has lingered long past its welcome this year, but the sun’s got the promise of summer in it today.” Officer Neal pulled out a dingy handkerchief and wiped off his brow. After he stuffed it back away, he peered at the little man and said, “It’s been awhile since I’ve seen you here in these parts, Brother Asa.”