3

Saturday dawned with enough chill in the air to warn of summer’s end. Carlyn stirred the fire awake in the stove to fry eggs for her and Asher. Asher didn’t care if his egg was cooked, but the skillet was hot. She did set his dish on the floor. She hadn’t gone quite so crazy that she expected the dog to sit at the table. Not quite.

“But if you could, it would be company,” she told Asher as she dumped half the eggs in his bowl. She put the other half on her plate on the table. She wasn’t sure why she bothered with a plate for herself instead of eating out of the skillet, but it seemed she should.

She looked longingly at the teakettle beginning to sing, but it sang for naught. She had no tea and had never cared for the sassafras root her mother used to steep when her tea ran out. She scooted the teakettle to the back of the stove to keep it from taunting her and sat down at the table to bow her head over the egg on her plate. No bread or meat accompanied it. She had hoped to trade apples from her tree for some flour from her neighbor today. Now it hardly seemed worth the trek over to Mrs. Smith’s house.

It was best to be grateful for what she had instead of wishing for what she didn’t have. “Thank you, Lord, for the food you have supplied. Let it be used for the nourishment of my body and forgive me my sins. Amen.”

From the time Carlyn could remember, her mother had spoken a prayer like that over their meals, no matter how scant those meals were. Always asking forgiveness when Carlyn saw no need for that request. Her mother was ever working, ever shouldering her load without complaint, ever thanking the Lord for whatever came her way.

Carlyn didn’t feel thankful this morning. She looked out the back door left open to the morning air and resented the warmth the sun spread across the yard to offer a perfect workday. Carlyn had thought to drag fallen limbs in from the woods behind the house to add to her woodpile before the freezing winds began to blow. The late beans in the garden were ready to pick, and she needed to beat the varmints to the windfall under the apple tree. She wasn’t afraid of work. Since Ambrose went off to war, she had diligently used every gift of the land to keep the wolf from the door.

But now the sunshine mocked her just as the teakettle had. The wolf had knocked down her door and claimed her house. She took a couple bites of her egg and then dumped the rest in Asher’s dish. The dog looked at her for permission.

“Go ahead. I’m not hungry.”

He tilted his head, but didn’t put his nose to the bowl until she turned away. The bowl scooted on the floor as the dog emptied it with his tongue.

Carlyn wandered from the kitchen to the front room, sliding her fingers across the wooden tables and chairs while memories assaulted her. Tears blurred her eyes as she touched the front door facing and heard the echo of Ambrose’s laugh on that first day here when he carried her across the threshold. She’d felt almost as if she were floating on his love as they shut the door to the world outside and began their life together. A life interrupted by war.

A life ended by the war. Ambrose Kearney is never coming home. He’s dead. Curt Whitlow’s words slammed through her mind. Dead.

Curt had been telling her that for months, and while nobody else said it to her face, they thought it. The people at church. Mrs. Smith on the farm over the hill who was continually mentioning this or that unattached man. As if Carlyn could just declare Ambrose dead and pick a new man. Carlyn didn’t want a new man. She wanted Ambrose striding up the lane, home. She had clung to that hope through two long winters.

When she was a girl, her mother often cautioned her about being too ready to wish and dream. “You can’t dream up a fire in the cookstove or wish a pot on that stove full of beans. Men like your father can dream of paradise, but the women behind those men have to think more on the practical matters of empty stomachs to fill.”

Carlyn raised her head and looked out the door. The grass was still green, the trees full with leaves, and yet summer was dying. The cardinal singing in the tree sounded almost frantic, as if it knew the hard times were coming when seeds wouldn’t be plentiful. Carlyn stared out at the road. The empty road.

Never coming home.

When Ambrose strode away from her across their yard that long ago January day, she’d grabbed the porch post to keep from running after him. He had already told her goodbye. His lips on hers were soft.

“’Twill only be for a little while, my Carly.” He cupped her face in his broad hands and stared down into her eyes. “We’ll beat those Rebels back and make our country whole again. Then I’ll be running home to you.”

He had kissed her one last time. “Nothing short of death can keep me from coming home. You can depend on that. You’ll see me coming back across this yard, and when I see you in the door, I’ll be shouting hallelujahs to the Lord for giving me the likes of you for a wife.”

Nothing short of death.

Carlyn blinked her eyes to clear them of tears and imagined Ambrose coming across the yard toward her. He’d be smiling. Maybe slimmer than when he left due to the privations of army life. She smiled, seeing him in her imagination, but then her smile disappeared as the image shimmered and faded. Instead, in six days, it would be the sheriff striding across her yard to put her out of the house. Tall and strong like Ambrose but with a very different purpose. Not that he wanted to put her out. She’d seen his compassion when he asked if she had family. And seen his pity.

Why did that poke her so sorely? Did not her father forever preach that pride would bring a person down low?

She shook her head to rid it of the thought of the sheriff’s pity and of her father’s preaching. Her father could hardly accuse her of pride. The whole last year, she’d practically lived on the charity of her neighbors. Nothing prideful about that.

But her father’s words wound through her mind from some long-ago sermon. Whether preached from a pulpit or from the head of the supper table, she did not remember. “Not accepting the lot the Lord assigns to you is sinful pride. You cannot think you know more than God of what your life should hold. A man does well to bend his head and accept the yoke the Lord has for him.”

When her father was preaching, Carlyn always got shivers. Not holy ones that transported her into a glorious feeling the way her father said it should, but dreadful shivers that she would never be able to measure up to what a Christian should be. In her mind then, God was too much like her father. He took no excuses for failure and would be quick to dole out punishment.

The Lord chastises those he loves. Another of her father’s oft-repeated verses. Her father was quick with punishment in the face of the smallest infraction. Carlyn had learned early to stay beyond his reach. To hide away from his sight. At times she wanted to do the same with God, even though she knew such was not possible.

But Ambrose had introduced her to a gentler faith. One where God was love. An ever-present help in trouble. She could embrace that vision of God when she was with Ambrose, but it leaked away without his strong presence beside her. If the Lord was a help in trouble, then why wasn’t he helping her now? Why hadn’t he let Ambrose come home?

Carlyn looked up at the sky, blue as Ambrose’s eyes when he told her goodbye. Blue as the dresses of those odd Shaker women in the village a few miles down the road. Those women who never married. Her father had railed against them as heathens who rebelled against the natural order of life and God’s instructions to go forth and be fruitful. Not only that, the Shakers danced in church.

The thought of that amazed Carlyn. What kind of church would encourage, even compel dancing? No church she’d ever sat in to hear a sermon. At those churches, dancing was roundly condemned as leading one down a sinful path to certain destruction. Akin to drunkenness, card playing, and other riotous living. And yet, the Shakers danced in their worship. Or so it was said.

When her father ranted about the Shakers’ odd religious ways, Carlyn had tried to imagine the people in their church dancing. Wouldn’t the pews be in the way? Did they dance on them? The very idea of that seemed too weird to consider. But the aisle would allow only a few jigging feet and surely no one would be so blasphemous as to dance around the pulpit. Yet, her father claimed even the Shaker preachers stomped and spun and shook.

Her father had been known to stomp his foot from time to time or pound on the pulpit to keep his listeners awake, but he declared in no uncertain terms that he’d never give his feet over to the devil for dancing. Feet were for walking the somber path of service and staying on the road of “thou shalt nots.”

Once, while reading the Bible, Carlyn had come across the verses in Second Samuel that said King David danced as the Ark of the Covenant was carried into the City of David. He whirled and leaped, but nowhere did Carlyn see where the Lord condemned that. So could it be the Lord didn’t mind holy dancing? Maybe that was the kind of dancing the Shakers did.

Carlyn mulled over that for weeks before she found the courage to ask her father about King David’s dance. As soon as the words were out in the air between them, her father’s face tightened into a thunderous frown. Carlyn’s mouth went dry and her legs trembled. She could do nothing but stand and wait for judgment to fall down on her.

“It is sinful to search the Scripture to pull verses out of context in a vain attempt to excuse sin.” Her father’s voice was that of condemnation from the pulpit. “Is that what you have done, daughter?”

She inched back from him, but he reached out, gripped her shoulder with his bony fingers, and pulled her closer to him. His angry breath wrapped around her. His eyes demanded an answer.

“N-no,” she stammered.

Across the room, her mother looked up from her sewing and surprised Carlyn by coming to her defense. “The child simply asked a question about something she read in the Bible, Joshua.”

Her father’s left eyelid twitched then, a signal that normally would send Carlyn running for a hiding place, but his hand still gripped her shoulder. He lifted his head to stare at his wife. Out of the corner of her eyes, Carlyn could see her mother looking back at him. Not with anger, but a resigned weariness.

“Wife, do not encourage wrong thinking in our offspring. There is much the female brain cannot comprehend. It is best to leave interpretation of the Scripture to those chosen by the Lord for understanding.” He glared at Carlyn’s mother until she looked back down at her sewing, her sigh audible across the room.

At the sound, her father’s fingers tightened on Carlyn’s shoulder and his eyes bored into her. “You have asked your question for wrong motives, but I will explain.” His voice was stern. “King David was a sinful man, who gave into lustful desires and was punished for his sins.”

A new question tickled through Carlyn’s brain. How, if that was so, could King David be a man after God’s own heart? She’d heard her father say that, and other preachers too. But didn’t her father also say how much God hated sin? And what about all those psalms David wrote? Could that kind of praise be written by a man lusting after sin?

But she bit her lip and stayed silent. Her father’s eyelid continued to twitch even as he narrowed his eyes on her and went on in a voice too calm. “You’d best copy out the Ten Commandments fifty times so that you can remember the way to act. Think hard on that one about honoring your father and mother.”

Carlyn breathed a little easier then in hopes he would forget his anger at her mother speaking up. “Yes sir,” she managed.

He shook her so hard she lost her balance and fell against the table next to him when he let go. The candle spilled over, the flame catching in her hair. She beat at her head while her father watched without moving to help. With a shriek, her mother dropped her sewing and raced across the room to smother the flames with her hands.

Her mother pulled Carlyn close then against her bosom and held her as she hadn’t for years. “Would you sit there and let our child burn?” She seemed to almost strangle on the words.

“She lost naught but a bit of hair. It is well to remember that the fires of hell will be a thousand times hotter than any fire here on earth. Our daughter needs to learn not to reach beyond herself.” He turned his eyes back to his Bible. “Now leave me to my studies. I must be prepared to save souls.”

The next day after he rode away to yet another circuit of preaching, her mother sat Carlyn down in a chair on the porch to trim the burnt ends from her hair. After she trimmed a little here and there, she sighed. “Best just cut it short.” She grabbed the hair that had escaped the flame and snipped it off to match that burnt away. “If it doesn’t grow out before your father comes back from his journeys, you’d best stay out of his sight or wear a bonnet to hide your head. He won’t be pleased. The Bible says a woman’s hair is her glory.”

“Yes, ma’am.” Carlyn blinked back tears as she felt her mother cut off another hank of hair. The kids at church would be sure to make fun of her with hair cut like a boy’s. Maybe it would be best to stay out of sight of everybody.

Her mother gently combed back her hair and then let her hand linger on Carlyn’s head. She was not a woman given to affectionate gestures. Life was hard and had to be faced with steely determination. But now her voice gentled. “It would be best if you didn’t question the Scripture to your father.”

“Is it wrong to have questions?” Carlyn asked timidly.

“No. I think not. “

“Then who can I go to for answers?” Carlyn turned her head a bit to look at her mother. “You?”

“I have few answers.” Her mother began combing Carlyn’s hair again. “But there is one you can always ask.”

“Who?”

“The Lord. He will supply every answer you need.”

Whining softly, Asher bumped his cold nose against her hand to bring Carlyn away from her memory and back to the problem at hand. She would not willingly go back to live under her father’s roof, even if his house were still just down the road instead of in Texas.

Carlyn stared out at the empty road and spoke aloud. “I’m asking, Lord. What am I to do?”

She stood very still as though she expected to hear a voice falling down from heaven, but all was silent. All but the thump of Asher’s tail against the chair behind them. The chair the sheriff had pushed under her when she felt faint.

Carlyn let out a sigh and went out the door and around the house to the garden spot. Whether she would eat the beans or not, they needed picking. It was not good to let food go to waste. She could carry them to church in the morning. Perhaps someone there needed a servant. She almost smiled at the thought. No one in their church had that kind of money. Then again, they might give her a cot in the corner of the kitchen in exchange for her labor.

The Lord will supply every answer you need.