Death of a Winter Shaker (18 page)

“One young man, what can he do?” Agatha sounded old and tired, worn out by her failing influence with Wilhelm. And by everything else, thought Rose, the Society's struggle to survive, her own declining health.

“The world is an evil place, Rose, and it is down there now. I can feel it.”

Rose squeezed the thin arm. She never knew what to say when Agatha spoke of feeling evil. She never had feelings like that and very much feared that it was a requirement for being a good eldress.

Rose turned back to the observation window and anxiously scanned the room. The monitors had tried their best, but the room was filled to capacity and beyond. She located Gennie, sitting alone on the sisters' benches.

“I told her she could come,” Rose mumbled. “Perhaps I shouldn't have. If anything happens to her, I'll never forgive myself.”

Agatha said nothing.

“Oh dear, there's Molly,” Rose continued. “And without her bonnet! I've protected that girl more than she deserves. Now it is time to be firm with her.”

The eldress was silent. Rose turned to look at her friend. Agatha sat still, her eyes closed. In panic, Rose leaned close to listen for her breathing, but she could hear nothing over the music. Agatha's parchment face showed no flicker of movement. Rose eased the rug aside and lifted a frail, limp hand. She found a pulse so faint that she had to hold her own breath to feel it. For precious seconds, she was unable to speak or think
what to do, willing her friend to be asleep only, not slipping away.

Gennie could not move. None of the stories had prepared her for the wildness, or for the fear and fascination that she felt watching it. She didn't wish to be part of it, not ever, yet its power held her.

A row of Believers dropped to the floor, and for just a moment Gennie stared over their heads into the faces of the world's men. A wall of loathing and revulsion stretched across the room, a vision more frightening even than Elsa's contortions. Instinctively, Gennie sought an escape route. The west doorway was invisible behind another wall of hate, this one female but no softer.

She hugged herself, trying to be as small as possible, while the mob of women swept past her, toward the dancers. Their Sunday finery kept all but a few younger ones from straddling the benches. Most of the women crowded around the edges of the benches, shoving into each other and rolling forward like molten lava.

Gennie caught the back of Molly's black head as she slipped through the crush and squeezed toward the door. If Molly could get out, maybe she could, too. She scrambled onto her bench and scanned the room. The men, too, were pressing toward the dancers, but faster than the women. They vaulted over the benches, clumsily toppling them on their sides.

“Witches! They're all witches, didn't I tell you?” Gennie heard behind her.

“I heard they run stark naked through the woods at midnight and worship the devil.”

“They killed that boy, ya know. Reckon he was a sacrifice like, that's what my Joe said.”

A few men yanked some ladder-back chairs and brooms from their wall pegs and held them above their heads.

Yet the dancers twirled and shook, unaware. Only
Elsa had stopped dancing, but not because she sensed danger. She stood rigid, surrounded by sisters and brethren, her hands stretched upward and her eyes squeezed shut.

“Gennie, run, get out now!”

Gennie strained her eyes in the direction of the command and saw Grady in front of the wall of men. He stood with his back to them, frantically waving at her. He was unaware that just behind him a man held a chair aloft by its legs.

“Grady, turn around,” she shouted. “Turn around!” She stabbed her finger in the air toward the man, but Grady was too intent on getting her to leave. She watched, horrified, as the stranger ran toward the dancers. He swung the chair high above his head and smashed it down over the body of a brother kneeling in a quivering trance. The brother shuddered and crumpled to the floor.

The dancers around the fallen Shaker spun to a halt. A Believer leaned over to help his comrade, and another chair swung over both their heads. This time Grady saw it in time and threw his body against the assailant. The chair crashed harmlessly to the floor. But Grady's action triggered a burst of movement. Men jumped the last of the benches and piled into the center of the room, while the frightened dancers twirled now not in ecstasy, but in terror.

At the sounds of cracking wood, Rose slid the eldress's hand back under her rug and spun toward the observation window. The scene of violent chaos sent her reeling backward. She knelt quickly beside Agatha.

“I don't know if you can hear me,” she said to the still figure. “But, please, my dear friend, please stay with us. I am going to get help.”

She ran from the room, closing the door behind her in case some rioters should find the staircase. She rushed toward a small office on the same floor, which
held the building's only telephone. Deeply as she loved the eldress, Rose's first call went to the Languor Sheriff's Office. It seemed forever before the operator connected her.

“This is Rose Callahan at North Homage,” she said, gulping for air. “We need police help right away.”

“Well, now, Miss Callahan, we ain't got much to work with just now.”

Rose recognized the voice of the officer who had been less than sympathetic when the town boys had thrown rocks at their Plymouth.

“Send whatever you've got. Come yourself. And call Sheriff Brock immediately, tell him that a mob is attacking us. People are being hurt.”

“Sheriff Brock's out at the Pike farm, and Grady's got the day off. I'm the only officer on duty, and I can't leave. I'll send someone as soon as—”

“This is an emergency!”

Rose clutched the receiver so tightly that her knuckles turned white. She forced herself to breathe slowly. “A friend is dying and I must call the doctor immediately,” she said, fury lending her voice a clipped authority. “I don't have time to argue with you. Grady is here and could be hurt, too. Call Sheriff Brock and get over here. Now!”

Rose didn't wait for the officer to disconnect. She clicked the telephone cradle and dialed the Languor doctor's home phone number.

“Keep her warm,” Doc Irwin said, “but don't move her. And, Miss Callahan . . . be prepared for the end. She's mighty weak.”

Rose felt the tears fill her eyes as she replaced the receiver.
Not now,
she thought,
not now. Dear God, give me strength.
She longed to sit with Agatha, talk to her, hold her hand, be with her. But the Society needed her. Gennie needed her. She rushed past the closed door to the observation room, where Agatha sat still and alone.

*
      
*
      
*

The inner door leading from the smaller offices into the central meeting room was blocked by a mass of people. Rose exited through a small back door, then circled around to the front entrance. Some women fled the Meetinghouse, clutching screaming children. Molly's long, black hair swished across her back as she hurried in the direction of the Children's Dwelling House. A few other Believers had escaped, too, especially those who had remained seated in the back row during the dancing. An elderly sister supported another by the elbow. And the thin figure of Albert Preston headed in the direction of the Carpenters' Shop.
He might at least have stayed to help,
Rose thought. She squinted in the bright, warm sunshine and hunted for Gennie, but with no success. She must still be inside.

Rose straightened her back and elbowed through the crowd gathered at the west doorway.

“Step aside,” she said with authority, “I've come to bring the children out. Let me through.”

To her relief the group, most of whom were women, parted to allow her to pass. The next step, though, was harder. She had no idea what she could do once she was inside. Find Gennie and get her out, but then what? Could she get anyone else out? How long would it take for the police to arrive?

The room pulsed with quick-moving bodies creating much more chaos than the Believers' dancing could ever have done. Rose pushed into the room, slithering between people, grateful for her thinness. And for her height, which allowed her to see above the heads of most of the women and even many of the men.

She reached the center ring of spectators surrounding the dancers. Unlike the throng around them, these stood still, their attention on the dancing area. Their heads strained forward over each other's shoulders as if viewing a parade. Rose edged through them until she could see what they were watching.

It was not what she expected. She saw no trembling,
trancelike dancing. She could find neither Elsa nor Wilhelm in the scene before her. Both must have escaped. Instead, a tightly linked ring of sisters, their arms around each other's waists, knelt in a circle, facing inward. Their lips moved in prayer. This circle of bent figures surrounded and protected two hubs of activity. Inflamed as they were, these world's people hesitated to attack a wall of kneeling, praying women.

At one end of the enclosed circle, a cluster of the brethren tried to help their unconscious and wounded brother, the dancer who had been felled with a chair. Splintered chair legs and a slack woven seat lay near his limp body. Josie leaned over them, giving instructions. One of the men had taken off his own shirt and ripped it into strips. He wrapped one of these makeshift bandages around the victim's bleeding head.

At the other end of the sisters' protective circle, Gennie sat on the floor, her face streaked with tears. Using the white, triangular shawl from the bodice of her Sabbathday dress, she tried to wipe the blood from the face of Grady O'Neal as she cradled his head in her arm. No one stopped Gennie from touching him. Grady's eyes were closed and his body still.

A
S IF IN RESPONSE TO THE EVENTS OF THE DAY
, gloomy clouds blanketed the late-afternoon sky. Rose wandered the grounds in back of the Meetinghouse, leaning now and then to scoop up a bit of trash left by the world. She could do nothing about the trampled and gouged grass. They would have to reseed.

Grady's head wound had bled badly, but it wasn't serious. Josie had bandaged him up and sent him home to rest.

Agatha, though, was in a coma. Rose had sat beside her in the Infirmary for two hours, until Josie ordered her out. She had promised to fetch Rose immediately if anything changed, but Rose feared that Agatha would open her eyes or even die, and she wouldn't be there. She fished a cigar butt out of the grass and tossed it into her nearly full basket.

“Rose.”

She spun around to see Seth Pike, hat in hand, standing by the corner of the building. She dropped her basket and crossed her arms.

“Have you come to gloat?” All the anger that she had smothered throughout the attack on her people welled up inside her. “Or perhaps you'd care to throw something, or rip up a patch of garden. There's a bit over there that hasn't been destroyed.”

Seth stared at the ground. He turned his hat slowly
by the rim and said nothing for a moment or two. He raised his eyes to Rose.

“I've come to say I'm sorry,” he said in a halting voice. “I guess I wanted folks to get mad at you Shakers, but I never wanted nothin' like this to happen. You could've been hurt, and no matter what, I don't want that.” He gnawed on his lower lip.

Rose wasn't finished being angry. “‘No matter what?' Seth, we've done nothing to deserve this, nothing. Your mother made her own decision to join us, she came to us. We didn't entice her or force her. You're a grown man,” she said harshly. “It's time you let your mother live as she wishes.”

His face a livid red, Seth slammed his hat against the corner of the Meetinghouse. “Dammit, Rose, God dammit, I didn't mean my ma. She can go hop a freight for all I care, the old slut.”

Rose took a deep breath to deliver a tongue-lashing.

“I meant
you.”
The anger drained from Seth's face, leaving it crumpled. “I meant you,” he repeated softly.

A cloud darkened his face with shadow, concealing the lines etched by bitterness. For a moment, she saw the man he had been, young and determined and in love.

“That was so long ago,” she said. “Seventeen years. Seth, we've lived another lifetime since then.”

“Yeah, well, it ain't been much of a lifetime for me. The farm went to pieces, couldn't find a job, my ma's crazy, and my pa's not even my pa.” He stared at the ground. “Never found another woman to love, neither. Not like you. Is it so wrong to love somebody?”

Rose had no answer to give him. She had spent many years trying not to think about him, even after he reappeared. Their time together had been so brief, less than a year, and they were both only eighteen. He had been her first and only human love. Now the Society was her only love. She had made the right choice, she knew that. But there were moments . . .

“I never meant to cause you pain. It wasn't easy to leave you, I want you to know that. But the call was so strong. Can you understand that? I belong here.”

“Yeah.” Seth flopped his damaged hat on his head and pulled at it to straighten it out. “Anyways, what happened today,” he said, shoving his hands into the pockets of his Sunday-best pants, “I'm sorry. I won't bother you no more.” He turned and walked toward the front lawn of the Meetinghouse.

“Seth, wait,” Rose called. He turned to face her. “What do you mean, your pa's not your pa?”

Seth snorted. “I figured everybody knew by now. My ma ran around with our neighbor, Peleg Webster, the one Pa's been feuding with. Peleg's my real pa.” He almost smiled. “One good thing, though. Peleg's leaving me his farm. That's why I'm back here. Maybe he's doing it to spite Pa, but that's OK by me. I get a second chance this way.”

Gennie paced the herb fields, fidgeting and stewing. Rose hadn't said a word to her about tending to Grady after he'd been hit by a chair, which was almost worse than if she'd scolded. And where had Molly gotten to—again? Everybody else was busy cleaning up after the disastrous public worship service, so Gennie decided to search for her roommate. She'd start with their retiring room.