The Seeker (39 page)

If he’d been there when Jake first began to burn with fever, he could have loaded him on a train and taken him to their mother and Phoebe. Even now he wanted to pick him up in his arms and carry him home. There Jake might fight off the pneumonia, but the doctor claimed moving him would surely kill him. That his only chance was to ride out the fever. To fight off the pneumonia. He was a young man. He had a chance.

The second morning, Jake seemed improved. The sheen of fever still sat on his face and the coughing continued to bring up blood, but at least there was recognition in his eyes when he looked at Adam.

“What are you doing here?” Jake’s voice was little more than a hoarse whisper.

“What do you think?” Adam helped Jake sit up a little as he put a glass of water to Jake’s lips. The nurse had promised to bring broth when she saw Jake was awake.

Jake turned his head and looked around. The water had moistened his mouth and made his voice stronger. “I don’t know. For sure, there’s nothing to draw here that any of the people back home will want to see.”

“You’ve got that right,” Adam agreed in a voice that he knew at once was too hearty.

Jake eyed him for a moment before he said, “I must be fearful sick.” He made a sound that might have been an attempt at a laugh, but it triggered his coughing.

Adam held Jake’s shoulders while the coughs tore at his lungs. In the last few weeks, Jake had lost so much weight while he battled dysentery and now the pneumonia that his bones almost protruded from his skin.

When at last the coughs eased, Jake wiped his mouth and looked at the blood on the rag. He stared at it a long time before he whispered, “I am fearful sick.” He looked up at Adam as if hoping he might deny it.

Adam didn’t. Jake needed the truth. “You are. Pneumonia, the doctor says.”

“Giles Whited died of pneumonia in May. Homer Martin went down to it in June. Or was it typhoid that got Homer?” He frowned a minute before he shook his head a little. “Doesn’t matter. Either way it seemed a wrong way to die in a war.” He stared across the room. “Funny, you think about somebody shooting you or maybe getting torn apart by a shell, but you don’t think about your body letting you down by getting sick. Not my body anyway. I never got sick back home.”

“When you feel a little better, I’ll take you home. Once there, Phoebe will see to it that you get well.”

Jake smiled. “She would, wouldn’t she? This wouldn’t be in her plan for me.”

“Did she have a plan for you?”

“Oh yeah. Marry well and have handsome children and become a gentleman with the means to do good. Said it would make Mother happy.”

“Not a bad plan,” Adam said as he pushed another drink on Jake. “Till the war got in the way.”

“That did disrupt her plans. Or at least me joining up did. How about you? Did she have a plan for you too?”

“Probably, but if she did, she gave up on it some time back. For one, she had to accept that I’d never settle for hearth and home over art.”

“Couldn’t you do both?” Jake asked.

“I never thought so. Maybe because I never met the woman that made me want to try.” At least until now, Adam added silently as he felt Charlotte’s letter touching his skin inside his shirt.

Again Jake looked away from Adam to stare across the room. He turned the rag and spat in it before he muffled a few coughs and wiped his mouth again. His face was very pale as he closed his eyes and sank back on the pillow Adam had propped behind him.

Adam pulled the chair a nurse had found for him up closer to the bed so that he could steady Jake if his head fell to the side in his sleep. But Jake wasn’t through talking. He kept his eyes closed as he said, “I was in love once.”

“Were you?” Adam said.

“Oona was beautiful. And fun. Her father sold fruits and vegetables to us. He and her mother came over from Ireland. She claimed they had a big farm there. Were richer than we ever thought of being before the potato blight. Her mother hated America, wished for Ireland from the time she got up in the morning until she went to bed at night, but her father refused to speak of Ireland at all. He said there was no purpose to looking back. He had such an accent I could barely understand him when he brought the produce for Mother’s kitchen.”

“What happened?” Adam asked. Of course, he knew the story. Jake’s youth, barely seventeen at the time. The inappropriate girl. Phoebe taking charge and nipping the romance in the bud.

Jake looked at Adam. “You know what happened.” A touch of anger sparked in his eyes.

“Phoebe.”

“And you helped her.” Jake was hit by another spasm of coughing.

Adam waited until the coughing subsided and Jake was once more lying back on the pillow before he said, “I didn’t help her, Jake, but neither did I try to dissuade her. You were too young to think of marriage.”

“That didn’t mean I couldn’t be in love.” Jake shut his eyes as if he didn’t have the energy to hold his eyelids open. It was a long time before he went on, but Adam knew he wasn’t sleeping. At last he said, “Phoebe told me it couldn’t be real love, as if she could know. Not married to that old stick she latched on to for his money. If it wasn’t your money she used to pay Oona’s father to send Oona away, then it must have been his.”

“I don’t know,” Adam answered honestly.

“I should have gone after her, hunted until I found her. I should have, but instead I listened to Phoebe saying what was best for the family. As if that was best for me.” Jake blew out a breath that made him cough again. “And now look at me. About to die with nothing to leave behind to ever show I walked this green earth. At least it used to be green before we started blowing up the pastures.”

“You’re not going to die.”

“We all die,” Jake said. “Every last one of us.” Jake opened his eyes and stared straight at Adam. “Have you ever been in love?”

“I think so,” Adam said, shifting in his chair. Why couldn’t he just admit to his brother that he loved Charlotte? Perhaps because he hadn’t fully admitted it to his own heart yet.

“If you ever are, you won’t have to think so. You’ll know. I’m glad I at least felt the feeling. You think people will fall in love in heaven?”

“If it makes them happy.” But again he was thinking of the Shaker community that was turning Charlotte into one of them. They claimed to be making a paradise on earth, but there was no love between man and woman there.

“Love takes you past mere happiness. At least until you lose it.” Jake coughed again and shut his eyes before he went on. “But you never have to wonder with love. If you love somebody, you know. Just like with Jesus. You know.”

“What do you know?” Adam leaned forward in his chair to be sure he didn’t miss what Jake might say next.

But Jake didn’t answer. He had finally fallen to sleep or slipped off into unconsciousness again. Adam stared at his brother’s pale face and wished he did know whatever it was Jake knew about the Lord so that he could pray for him. Instead he pulled out Charlotte’s letter and read her words again. He wondered if she prayed. It sounded like she might. If only he could rush a letter to her and ask her to pray for Jake. But a letter would take weeks. Jake might not have weeks.

Adam laid his hand gently on his brother’s arm. His fingers were trembling and his heart began to pound as he whispered the words, “Please, Lord.”

31

September 18, 1862
Dear Charlotte,

Please forgive me for not writing sooner to convey my sympathy for the loss of your father, but it has been a time of sadness here as well. My brother, Jake, the one in the sketch I sent you some months back, succumbed to pneumonia on September 10 after the Union army’s retreat from Bull Run once again. You would have liked Jake. He embraced life and ran after adventure. He was only twenty and had escaped death on the battlefield several times, but what the enemy couldn’t do, sickness did. Snuffed out his young life in less than a fortnight.

Phoebe, my sister, holds me directly responsible for Jake’s death. I don’t disagree with her. He was not much more than a boy and not ready for the army. But he showed staunch courage and acquitted himself well in battle. In spite of what Phoebe believes, I don’t think I could have convinced him to quit his company. That said, I could have been with him when he fell so ill. Then I might have been able to see he got better treatment. The army doctors try, but there are so many succumbing to illness in the camps. Pneumonia isn’t even the biggest killer. Dysentery is rampant and typhoid and measles have felled many more than bullets thus far. Although too many have died on the battlefield as well.

We are receiving news of the battle at Antietam and are told it is one of the most tragic yet with reports of thousands dead or wounded on both sides. Some other artist did the illustrations you will see in
Harper’s
. I had to take Jake’s body back to Boston and have continued here with my mother for a few days. In truth, I am glad I wasn’t there to draw the scenes. I am weary of death.

How many men can we keep losing? Why don’t sensible heads find a way to peace? Bud Keeling, the reporter I may have told you about, says things have gone too far to achieve any peace now except that wrested from the enemy on the battlefield. He claims that with the Union finally claiming a victory here in the east at Antietam, there are reliable reports Mr. Lincoln will issue some sort of emancipation proclamation. Few here harbor the least doubt any longer that the President plans to put an end to slavery. The South will not accept that and so the fight will continue until the Union finally overcomes. I cannot imagine our nation divided into two countries if the Union falls. The President must find the generals to win the war.

Forgive me for continuing on and on about the war. I would like to retreat from the conflict. Perhaps go to California far from the sound of cannons. But that is not to be. It is my job to draw the scenes even if they are scenes no one, including myself, wants to see. The people deserve to know what is happening, and at times a picture can tell more than a page of words.

I hear Lexington has been occupied by the Confederates. I hope that has not caused the Shakers at Harmony Hill undue trouble. I don’t know where Sam will send me next, but wherever it is, I will take the memory of your mother’s roses with me and think upon the beauty in her garden when I am most filled with despair. Keep in mind, as I think I told you once before, that gardens lay dormant every winter and grow afresh each spring.

If you have a moment or your Sister Martha has a moment, your prayers for my mother who mourns her son would be most appreciated.

Faithfully yours,
Adam

“Such sorrow in the world,” Sister Martha said when Charlotte looked up from Adam’s letter with tears in her eyes. “If only all could see the truth of the Believers’ way. The truth Mother Ann taught us.”

Charlotte wiped away her tears with the corner of her apron as Sister Martha continued her little sermon. “Our testimony is for peace, now and always. Mother Ann taught us to oppose wars of households, and wars of nations, and if we follow her teachings, we will know the peace that is promised the obedient follower.”

“But how can we keep wars away? How can we not mourn our loved ones?”

Sister Martha kept her voice gentle even though there was a hint of reproof in her words. “We can love as we should love. As brothers and sisters love. With the proper peace in our hearts, we don’t have to worry about wars or the hereafter. We only have to live our lives and do our work as though this could be the last day of our life or as if we might live a thousand years. We seek perfection in all.”

“But this mother grieves the loss of her son.” Charlotte looked down at the letter she still held. She ran her fingers across Adam’s writing. “This brother grieves the loss of his brother.”

“Yea, it is so. They know not the peace we have here. They are of the world. I can see that as yet your own mind continues to stray toward worldly thinking. Even after more than a year among us.” Sister Martha mashed her lips together and studied Charlotte’s face a moment before she heaved a sigh. “It could be I let my desire for news of the war front cloud my judgment and I was wrong to persuade the Ministry to allow you to receive these letters. I fear his words have encouraged you to keep one foot in the world.”

“It is true that I have not been able to put my feet solidly on the Shaker pathway,” Charlotte admitted. “My spirit seems to seek something more.”

“As does our artist friend.” Sister Martha pointed to the letter and then looked straight at Charlotte. “He seeks affection from you and not that of the brotherly sort.”

Charlotte looked down quickly to hide the color burning her cheeks as her heart leaped with joy at the thought. If only it could be true. But such a response could not be condoned by the Shakers, even one as kind as Sister Martha.

Again Sister Martha sighed. She leaned nearer Charlotte and laid her dry, wrinkled hand on her arm. “I do not condemn you for allowing the temptations of the world to follow you here. You came into our village unsure of your direction, and since that time, you have stepped forward in your spiritual quest. I see that. But you carry with you the threads of your worldly life. Not only your feelings for this man, but also the attachment to your land and home that you now mourn as this man mourns his brother. You cannot cling forever to both sides. You must decide for the world or for the truth of a Believer.”