The Believer (45 page)

Ethan didn't know what to say. There were times when he felt that condemnation in his soul.

Brother Martin must have seen the struggle in his face because his voice softened as he laid a hand on Ethan's shoulder. "My brother, you don't have to stay here. You can come home to your family. You are a Believer"

"Nay, I am no longer one with the Believers. I have fallen away.

"It is true you have fallen, but you can get back up" Brother Martin leaned toward him and spoke directly into his face. "You don't have to wallow in your sin. With confession, you can be forgiven and brought back into the fellowship of our society."

"I would that I could do as you say, for my spirit is in turmoil. I know not what to believe" But even as he spoke, Ethan saw Elizabeth in his mind. While he knew not how he could live here in the world, he knew he didn't want to live in a world where she was not. Her words whispered through his mind. We may not be Shakers. But we are Believers. The man in front of him would tell him that could not be true. And in his heart Ethan wasn't sure it could be true.

As if Brother Martin could see into his mind, he gave a little snort and jerked his hand away from Ethan's shoulder. "It's that woman. She is what has led you astray."

Ethan stared down at the bits of straw and muck that had fallen from his shoes to the floor. He had no Shaker broom to sweep away the dirt. He stared at the straws and said nothing.

"You showed much promise, Brother Ethan, and now you are throwing away your life here and your life everlasting on a few temporal moments of lust"

Ethan looked up and met Brother Martin's eyes. "I have not been with her."

"Perhaps not in your body, but the sin is in your heart"

"Brother Issachar's last words to me were to follow my heart," Ethan said softly.

"Brother Issachar must have been affected by the fever that took him. His words were wrong. If he stood before you this day, he would tell you so. He would tell you that you have planted your feet on the wrong path. He would tell you to confess your sin and turn from this evil world just as he did when he came to Harmony Hill" Brother Martin's voice got louder with each word until he was almost shouting. Out in the stable, a horse whinnied.

"I will not forget your words, Brother Martin," Ethan said. "Or your kindness to me these many years, but now I must find my own way."

The anger on Brother Martin's face drained away. He looked at Ethan for a long moment as if wondering if there were yet words he might say to convince him, but then he only said, "I knew the first time I laid eyes on that woman she was bringing trouble to Harmony Hill. I sorrow that you fell into her trap:'

"She laid no trap for me. She set me free to do what I will. Can you not do the same?"

"Nay, my former brother. I cannot sanction sin. The next thing I know, you will be committing matrimony. There can be no peace in such unions. Mother Ann said it herself. Those who marry will know strife. Is that what you want?"

Ethan had no answer for Brother Martin, who left him in his small, unclean room. He had no answer for himself. He only knew that when he got up in the morning and when he went to bed at night, Elizabeth was in his thoughts. He had willingly risked life and soul to free her from Linley.

The judge had sentenced Linley to death by hanging for poisoning Elizabeth's father. The storekeeper had heard him admit to the crime. Linley had denied the truth of it in front of the judge. He claimed to bean upstanding, property-owning citizen of a neighboring county, but the judge was the storekeeper's cousin. Linley hadn't lived long enough to face the gallows. On the way out of the courthouse, he tried to overpower the sheriff, and in the struggle over the sheriff's gun, Linley had been shot. The storekeeper, Felix Wiley, said it was a fitting end for the man.

Felix Wiley was a man of the world. He believed in justice. He believed a man should pay for his crimes. He didn't believe a man could shut away the world to escape evil. He said a man had to look it in the eye and overcome it. He believed in love between a man and a woman and talked about his Hilda a dozen times a day, sometimes wiping away a tear as he did so.

He harbored no ill will toward the Shakers even as he said, "I don't believe a man can dance his way into heaven or shake off his sinful nature. Every man since Adam is prone to sin:" He shook his head as he watched Ethan unloading a wagon of new stock for his store. He'd hired Ethan to work for him until his broken arm healed. "Me. You. All of us. It's in our nature, and shutting yourself away out there in that Shaker town and denying all that's natural between a man and a woman isn't going to change that"

"But we have peace there;" Ethan said.

"The only ones that have peace are those that don't do no thinking for themselves. That's why Elizabeth and little Hannah couldn't abide the life. Too smart:" Felix narrowed his eyes on Ethan. "You're too smart too. You'll see once you shake loose from them:"

I am loose from them already."

"It don't seem that way to me. Looks to me as how you're like a man in a wagon behind a team of runaway horses. You don't know whether to drop the reins and jump or hang on and try to ride it out. You can't be reaching back and forward at the same time. You need to decide in your heart which way you want to go. Them or Elizabeth:'

Felix stood up and came over to make sure Ethan heard his next words clearly. "I'm not really that girl's uncle, but somehow she feels like family. And I don't want to see her hurt. If you love her, tell her. If you don't, be gone with you"

Ethan didn't know what to say as Felix threw out his good hand in a gesture of dismissal and stomped ahead of him into the store. That was the trouble. He didn't know what to say. To Felix. To Elizabeth. How did one go about committing matrimony?

And what if he did find words and then she said no? She had said once she loved him, but that had been weeks ago. Since the wild day when he had kept Linley from carrying her off, she kept her eyes away from his. She spoke to him politely. She put food before him when he was at the store at a mealtime, but she never let her hand touch his. She was more Shaker sister to him now than she had ever been at Harmony Hill.

Ethan put the sack of flour on the shelf next to the counter. When he turned back, there was the Shaker box of seeds Brother Gerard had brought in the week before. He had looked at Ethan as though he didn't know him. And in truth, once Ethan left the Believers, he was the same as dead to them.

Ethan picked up a bean seed packet and stared down at the planting directions written in careful script by one of the sisters. At the village he would not be torn over what to do. He would be told what to do. He would be one of many giving his hands to work for the good of all. Giving his heart to God. Shaking free the sins of the world. Mourning Elizabeth.

From the kitchen in behind the store, he heard her singing. She often sang while she cooked. No Shaker songs, but songs about the Lord that echoed in his mind and made him think of Mama Joe. She sounded happy. She did not need him. He could leave and she would go on singing, go on living. But would he?

Ethan went back out to finish unloading the wagon. When he carried in the last sack of sugar, Felix passed him on his way up the street to the bank. Ethan sat down the sugar and listened for Elizabeth's singing, but it was silent in the kitchen. He walked to the door behind the counter and looked through. She was sitting at the table staring at something in her hand, her cheeks glistening with tears.

His heart constricted inside his chest, and he spoke without thinking whether he should or should not. "Are you all right, Elizabeth?"

She quickly slipped what she had been holding into her pocket and wiped away her tears with an edge of her apron as though the moisture on her face was nothing more than sweat from the heat of the woodstove. "Oh, Ethan, I didn't see you there" She didn't answer his question as she stood up. "Do you want something to eat? I just took an apple pie from the oven"

He hesitated and then went on into the kitchen. He didn't sit down at the table even after she put the plate of pie out for him. "You were crying;' he said.

She glanced up at him and quickly away back toward the pie. "My father always said a person couldn't be perfectly happy all the time. Else he wouldn't realize how good happiness felt:"

"Have you ever been perfectly happy?"

"I do remember such times when I was younger. Before my father died. And I know there will be such times again." She looked straight at him then without shyness. "How about you? Do you know what perfect happiness feels like?"

"Perfect happiness," he repeated softly as he sat down at the table and ran his hand over the nicks in the wooden boards. He remembered the heart Mama Joe had carved in her table for him. That had been a moment of perfect happiness. He traced a heart on the table with his finger as he told Elizabeth about Mama Joe.

"Is that the last time you felt truly loved?" she asked.

"Nay." He shut his eyes a moment wishing away the Shaker word, but he didn't change it. "Brother Issachar loved me from the first day he found me"

"Like a brother?" she asked.

"No. Like a son" Ethan looked from the table to Elizabeth. "A son of his heart:"

She pulled something out of her pocket and laid it on the table for Ethan to see. It was a heart carved out of wood. "You were right. I was crying. I was missing Payton. He gave me this when we left the Shaker village:"

He touched the wood warm from her hand. He shut his eyes as feeling flooded through him. It was time to follow his heart.

She spoke first. "I can see you have been troubled, Ethan. I will be forever grateful to you for stopping Colton on that day, but if you want me to stay your sister, that is what I will be. I'll understand if you return to the Shakers'

He squeezed the wooden heart so hard he thought the wood might burst into splinters in his fist. He opened his eyes and stared straight at her. "I don't want you to be my sister:"

His voice was so loud she looked startled for a moment. Then she reached over to put her hand over his. "Nor do I want to be your sister."

"I have no money. I have nothing but my hands to work' He opened his hand and laid the heart back in front of her. He felt as if he had pulled his own heart out of his chest to lie beside it. Exposed, beating madly. "It is surely wrong for me to ask you to commit matrimony with me:"

She smiled slightly. "You have the most important thing" She reached across the table to put her hand over his heart. "If there is love for me here, then that is all I need. Do you have love for me? Not sisterly love, but the love of a man for a woman?"

He stared into her beautiful green eyes with flecks of golden sunshine. "I love you so much that sometimes I don't think I'll be able to breathe when I look at you:' He took her hand in his and pulled it to his mouth to kiss her palm. Her fingers caressed his cheek and sent tingles of joy through him.

'And I love you, Ethan Boyd. Enough to let you go if you think it a sin to marry me. Is that what you think?"

"That is what the elders and eldresses have always told us" Ethan held onto her hand tightly. He couldn't lose her now.

"But what does your heart tell you?"

Ethan took a deep breath. It was time to look inside himself and decide who he was. Not Hawk Boyd's son. There were seeds of Hawk Boyd in him, but he would not let them flourish. Not a Shaker. They had trained him up in the way they thought he should go, but his feet had not stayed on their path.

He was Ethan Boyd. No more. No less. And when he reached upward with prayer, the Lord was still with him. The Lord had led Elizabeth to Harmony Hill. The Lord had put her hand in his. The feeling inside him was not a sin. "My heart wants me to cleave unto you and have you beside me for everlasting. My heart wants to commit matrimony with you" He looked at her. "What does your heart say in return?"

"My heart says yes" Her smile was so bright it was as if the sun had found a new window into the kitchen.

With one accord, they stood and came together. The kiss they had shared on the cliff before Elizabeth left the Shaker village had set his soul on fire, but this kiss was so much better. This kiss was a beginning and not an ending. Together they could face anything. Together they could keep believing.

He raised his head up and looked down into her eyes a moment. "Do you know how a man and woman marry?"

"Usually they stand in front of a preacher and say vows to love and honor one another till death do them part"

"Do you know a preacher?"

She smiled again. "No, but I think Uncle Felix has a cousin who's a preacher."

He laughed as he spun her around, almost knocking over one of the chairs. "I love you, Elizabeth Duncan:" He said the words right out loud and somehow, somewhere he knew Brother Issachar was smiling at him.

The End

Ann H. Gabhart and her husband live on a farm just over the hill from where she grew up in central Kentucky. She's active in her country church, and her husband sings bass in a southern gospel quartet. Ann is the author of over a dozen novels for adults and young adults. Her first inspirational novel, The Scent ofLilacs, was one of Booklist's top ten inspirational novels of 2006. Her novel, The Outsider, was a finalist for the 2009 Christian Book Awards in the fiction category. Visit Ann's website at www.annhgabhart.com.