Death of a Winter Shaker (11 page)

“No, I most certainly was not!” Rose bristled. “When you know us better, you'll understand how insulting these questions are. I am a Believer. Do you understand what that means to me? It means that I worship God in my every act, my thoughts, in all that I am. When I do business with a merchant from the world, I am always honest because my work is worship. That chair you're sitting in, feel the tight weave of the seat, the slight angle of the back, how comfortable and practical it is. Each chair is made with such care. And why? Because it is an act of worship. Nay, Sheriff, I do
not lie. If I say that I never spoke with Johann Fredericks, then I did not.”

Without pausing, Rose sprang from her chair and unhooked her cloak from one of the wooden pegs lining the wall.

“We'll speak with Elder Wilhelm,” she said as she tied the cloak across her shoulders and covered her light gauze cap with a stiffly woven bonnet. “He is harvesting apples this morning, but we can ask him to leave his work briefly.” She stood straight and tall, her chin squared in what Fiona used to call her no-nonsense pose.

The men rose slowly to their feet, Grady watching Sheriff Brock, and Brock watching Rose. There was a look in his eyes that Rose hoped was respect. But she did not delude herself. She needed to work fast.

“All right, you win, Miss Callahan,” Brock said, reaching for the hat he had thrown on her desk rather than hang it on a peg. “I reckon you're truthful. Leastways, Grady seems to think you can be trusted.” He shot a glance at Grady, who stared at the floor. “But we'll see about the others.”

Located across the village from the Trustees' Office, the declining orchard delighted both children and adults. Once a lush ten acres, now the shrinking community could maintain only five acres with straight rows of apple trees. The less predictable peaches and plums had succumbed to disease and drought. Dead or feeble trees lined the outermost end, but these were hidden from anyone approaching the orchard from the village, the direction Rose, Brock, and Grady followed.

Elder Wilhelm balanced on a low ladder under an apple tree, his muscular arm yanking the ripe fruits and tossing them into a basket crooked over his free arm. When Rose called his name, he peered down through the branches, his face puckered with irritation.

“What is it? I don't have time to waste.”

“If you would be so good as to give us a few moments . . .” Rose said with a slight movement of her head to indicate visitors behind her.

Wilhelm frowned at Brock and Grady. With a loud sigh, he descended the ladder in two long steps. Swinging his basket to the ground, he folded his arms across his broad chest. He stared down at the smaller Brock with a look that Rose had seen many times and which usually sent its recipient a step or two backwards. Brock stood his ground and returned the stare.

“Well?”

“We have a few questions for you,” Brock said in a conversational tone. “Likely you'll want to come a ways out of here to talk,” he suggested, sweeping his arm toward the open field beyond the orchard.

Wilhelm hesitated. But the voices of nearby Believers seemed to convince him, and he silently led the way through the trees to a freshly harvested field dark with loose, muddy soil. Outside the protection of the orchard, a biting wind whipped their clothing.

“Is thy work done for the day, Sister?” Wilhelm said.

Rose willed her feet to stay where they were. She was not immune to Wilhelm's stern power, but she wouldn't be cowed. Anyway, she was irritated with him for calling her Sister only and not Rose. Shakers usually called each other by their first names, no matter what their positions in the Society. By refusing to do so, Wilhelm flaunted his superior rank.

“This is my work just now, Wilhelm,” she said evenly.

“Am I a suspect in this murder, then?”

“Now, no one's callin' you a suspect,” Brock said almost jovially. “Leastways, not yet.”

“All right, but be quick about it. We haven't enough able-bodied workers to get the apple crop in as it is. Ask thy questions, Sheriff.”

Brock had a satisfied-cat look, his bright eyes half-
lidded and a faint smile curving his lips. Rose was beginning to understand that beneath his drawl was a shrewd mind intent on getting what he wanted from each person he questioned, no matter how formidable.

The sheriff shoved his hands into his jacket pockets. “Well, now, Mr. Lundel, seeing as how you knew the deceased—I'm not sayin' you knew him more'n to speak to, mind you—but I'm thinkin' you could tell us about him.”

“Tell what?” Wilhelm's own hands must be stinging with the cold, but he kept them stiff at his side.

“Would you say Fredericks was, well, a respectful guest in your community?” Brock's face showed only curiosity.

Wilhelm hesitated, the muscles in his jaw working visibly.

“Nay,” he answered briskly, “Johann Fredericks was not respectful of our beliefs. He pretended to be, even talked about joining us. He asked many questions about our beliefs and about us ourselves. Who we were, where we came from, where our other communities are located. But he was only collecting information for his own purposes. I soon saw what he was.”

“And what was that, Mr. Lundel?”

Wilhelm stared at the empty field, his back straight and proud, his shoulders squared. Rose had often been struck by his military bearing, so unexpected in a pacifist Shaker. He had come to the Society as an adult and had confessed to the elder, rather than to the whole community during worship. Was he a former military man? Had those muscular arms carried a weapon at one time, even injured or killed another human being? Whatever his past, knowledge of it had died with the late elder.

Wilhelm's voice, when he finally spoke, was slow and precise, as though he weighed and measured every word before uttering it.

“Johann Fredericks was . . . a disappointment. He
wanted to use us. As do many others.” Wilhelm paused for a long moment. Sheriff Brock, head tilted to the side, watched him steadily. Grady held his stubby pencil poised over his small notebook.

“Look at this field,” Wilhelm said with sudden force. He flung his arms wide as though embracing the land. “The winter wheat ought to be planted by now, and we've barely prepared the soil. Once this field and hundreds of acres more besides were filled with long, straight rows. There were no complaints about too much work. We brethren sang as we finished the harvest. The sisters brought us food as we worked the long days and evenings, and sometimes they joined us to work in the fields. We raced to see who could do the quickest and best work and then shared in the pleasure of each other's success.”

Wilhelm raised his arms skyward, exhorting a field full of spellbound Believers only he could see. Rose scanned the empty landscape and knew that the vision Wilhelm described was one he himself could never have experienced.

North Homage, facing rapid declines in membership and the devastation of the Civil War, had sold much of its acreage nearly sixty-five years ago. Five years before Wilhelm's birth. And the scenes of intense productivity he described went back in time even farther—to the first half of the nineteenth century, when new Believers signed the covenant almost daily, often entire families at a time.
He wants to duplicate the days of glory that he sees in his mind,
Rose thought.
He has even convinced himself that he was part of that history.

Wilhelm dropped his arms suddenly. “Johann was a disappointment because he could not really understand us, though he said he wanted to join us. He could never live as a Believer.”

“Couldn't live without the ladies, you mean?”

Wilhelm's lip curled with disgust. “He was a
fornicator, a damned fornicator.” He closed his eyes and filled his lungs with air.

“He had no real call to be one of us,” he continued, more quietly. “A Believer must be willing to work hard, and Johann—nay, he could not be bothered to work. It might interfere with his . . . other activities.”

Frowning, Brock kicked at a clod of dirt.

“Is it thy belief,” Wilhelm asked, “that I would kill a man, break my own sacred vows, just because Johann would have made a bad Believer?”

The dirt broke apart against his toe, and Brock squinted up at Wilhelm.

“I don't know much about your ways,” he said slowly. “Tell me, what do you all do when a Shaker dies?”

Wilhelm's forehead furrowed in puzzlement, and Rose held her breath.

“When a Believer dies, we bury him, Sheriff,” Wilhelm said. “What do thy people do?”

A broad smile spread across Brock's face. “Same thing, Mr. Lundel, same thing. But, well, we'd have a little ceremony. You know, a service. Maybe we'd say some special prayers. Over to St. Mary's, they might sprinkle a little Holy Water, something like that.”

“Ah. We have a simple service, of course.”

Brock opened his mouth again, but Wilhelm continued, “And the answer to thy next question is ‘nay,' we do not cover the body with herbs. We do not use flowers or herbs for ornament, only for practical purposes, for food or medicine. Johann no longer had need of either.”

“Now some religions,” Brock continued, “they do even more if the circumstances are what you might call unusual. Some folks even have a ceremony they do for getting rid of evil spirits and such like. Ever heard of such a thing, Mr. Lundel?”

“I believe it is called an exorcism,” Wilhelm said. “But I do not think that it is performed at a funeral.”

Rose had to force herself to breathe. There was so much in Shaker history that could seem sinister to someone from the world. How truly ignorant was Brock about their past? Was he using his knowledge to trap Wilhelm—any of them, for that matter—by twisting their words and their beliefs? One hundred years earlier, in the 1830s, it was common for Believers to have visions and messages from the dead. It was common in the outside world, too, but no one would remember that. The Shakers have strange ceremonies surrounding the dead, that's all anyone would remember.

“Ever done an exorcism yourself, Mr. Lundel?”

“Nay, Sheriff, never. We do not conduct such ceremonies. I have books that would help thee to understand us better. But I can assure thee that Johann Fredericks was not subjected to any type of ritual by me or any other Believer.”

Brock nodded slowly.

“And now, Sheriff, if our interview is finished, I have work to do, and I am losing precious daylight.”

“Just one more thing, Mr. Lundel, and then we're done for now. Were y'all planning to open up your Sunday meeting to the public, like you been doing?”

“Yea, as always,” Wilhelm said with a tight-lipped smile. “Is it thy wish to join us?”

The sheriff did not smile in return. If anything, he looked more serious than he had throughout the entire interview.

“I'm hopin' you'll change your mind,” he said. “None of my business, maybe, but—”

“Correct, Sheriff Brock, it is not thy concern.”

“What I'm sayin' is, it'd be better for everyone if you'd keep to yourselves tomorrow. From what I hear, them services of yours is gettin' to be real popular entertainment, and right now y'all ain't so popular yourselves. If something was to happen tomorrow, there ain't much I could do about it. All I got is Grady
here and one other officer, and we're mostly tied up with something else. We can't help you keep everything peaceful. Not right now.”

“We do not need thy help.”

The sharpness in Wilhelm's tone surprised Rose. He had seemed to be in calm control when the sheriff hinted at mysterious Shaker rituals for the dead, but now he reacted with quick anger to a simple request to close the worship service to the public. There was certainly a precedent for closing the service, as Rose well knew. During dangerous, unsettled times in the past, the Society had closed its Meetinghouse doors and worshiped away from the hostile eyes of the world's people. Often, they canceled Sunday services altogether if the harvest was at a critical point, as Wilhelm claimed it was.
So why,
Rose wondered,
is Wilhelm so determined to hold a public worship service, now of all times?

“M
OLLY IS DOING HER ROTATION ON LAUNDRY
, S
HERIFF
. She'll be upstairs.” Rose had to raise her voice to be heard over the pounding of the agitators in the huge washing machines lining the wall of the dimly lit ground-floor laundry room. Two sisters piled clean, wet clothing into a large basket set on a wooden platform attached to a hoist. When the basket was full, the sisters pulled it upward through a hole in the ceiling. Grady and Brock watched, mesmerized, as the basket traveled to the floor above. The sisters flashed amused smiles at Rose and curious glances at the men without slowing the pace of their work.

“Pretty fancy,” Brock said. “I thought you folks were supposed to be such hard workers. What's wrong with carrying your clothes upstairs the normal way?”

“Our faith requires that we work hard,” Rose responded, “not that we break our backs. We've always invented labor-saving devices to make our work quicker and better. It leaves more time for worship.”

“Yeah?”

They reached the plain, wooden staircase in the center of the room. Rose climbed a few steps before pausing to point to the row of washing machines.

“Those agitators, for example,” she said. “They make laundering far more efficient. A Believer invented that.”

“I never heard that,” Brock said, his eyebrows shooting upward. “Y'all take out a patent?”

“Life is hard enough,” Rose said. “We prefer to share our discoveries with the world. We usually don't bother with patents.”

“So you can't prove anything, can you?”

Rose let the question hang. She decided not to push the matter further by listing Believers' other inventions, such as the clothespin and the circular saw. It would only make him combative and probably tougher on Molly.