The Afflicted

Chapter 9.

For the next week, I revel in my evening walks. They provide me with further opportunity to seek out John Quill, though he seems intent on avoiding me. It is grossly unfair that now I am blessed with the time to indulge my interest in him, he has lost his interest in me.

 Still, the walks clear my head and provide me with a sense of peace and isolation, and individuality that has been threatened by the Shaker way of life.

Yet, I am still overcome with fear. The unknown danger that prowls in the night makes the walls of the dwelling house seem insubstantial against terrors. My nights are tormented with frequent wakings. Once, I am jostled from my dreams, disoriented, to find a figure at the end of my bed. 

"Iris?" I whisper into the darkness.

"Go back to sleep, Evie," she says, sounding impatient with me for the first time in our acquaintance. "I'm only visiting the privy."

Iris is not a good liar. Or perhaps, I, a champion in the field, am simply adept at seeing the lies of others. I let her believe that I have fallen for her ruse, but when I hear the board by the door squeak, I silently rise. I take my shawl from its hook and wrap it around the shoulders of my nightdress. I wait until I hear the soft padding of her feet as she descends the first flight of stairs, then follow at a distance.

My bare feet are silent, so long as I move when she does, letting her shoes cover the faint brush of my feet against the gleaming wood floors. She steals down the stairs with a lightness I can't match, and my heart is like to stop when the familiar cough of Sister Anne rings out in the darkness.

In the light of the full moon through a window, I see for the first time that her story about visiting the privy will not hold up if she should be caught. Completely dressed, carrying a small bundle in her hands, she looks furtively about her.

She is running to her hired man. She is running away from the commune. Away from me.

I don't care if she, or anyone else, hears me. I race after her. Through the slats of the railing I see her silently pass through the door and slip outside. She leaves it open just a crack; this is mischief of a sort that even I would not attempt.

The air holds a surprising chill after the warm day, as though winter sends a warning to us that the summer days will not last. I wrap my shawl tighter and follow the ethereal light of Iris’s hair as she walks quickly through the garden, past the barn, down the rutted road toward the white clapboard house where the hired men sleep.

Not all the hired men live among us. Over half of them leave before supper. I wonder about the ones who stay. Do they have no families? No other home? And if they are going to live in the commune, why not adopt the Shaker life, themselves? The rules that govern their existence are almost as strict as the ones the Shakers apply to themselves. They are not allowed contact with the women; they are to have no liquor inside their dwelling. Knowing what I do of men, it seems unlikely that commitment to such a life of deprivation would come without divine inspiration.

I reach the house twenty paces after Iris, and come upon a conversation that slows my steps. Iris and her hired man stand with two other figures, one I immediately identify as Quill, though I can't see his face. Am I so far gone, then, that I know even his posture and the shape of his back?

I creep as close to the group as I dare, kneeling behind a cluster of holly bushes at the corner of the house.

"And where do you think you're going to go, Ross?" Quill demands of Iris and her beau. "Do you have shelter? Protection out there? Where are you gonna take her?"

"I've got my gun," Ross says, jostling the weapon at his side. "I can keep us safe."

The third man, the one Quill had called Pete, says "You know as well as we do what's out there. I'm begging you, at least wait until morning, when they don't move."

"We can't wait until morning!" Iris's voice trembles with her tears. Through the gap between Quill and Pete, I see her ghostly white hand clasping the young hired man's arm. "Benjamin won't let me leave."

"He can't keep you here." Quill's fist tightens in anger. "They can't keep you prisoner if you want to leave. You can walk out of here and down the road if you want. But do it during daylight, for Christ's sake."

I hear Iris's ragged, shocked breath. That blasphemy has been hard for her to hear. I wonder how she would survive the outside world and all its harshness.

"You know what he's like," Iris's hired man argues. "He's not going to let anyone leave. He already told her that he can't let her go unless a male relative comes to pick her up, and she ain't got any of them."

"So, you go and you find yourselves a preacher and you make yourself her male relative." Pete speaks like someone who can't stomach conflict. It is clear to me that he wants calm and reason in this unreasonable situation. The flask comes out of his pocket, winking in the low light from the open door of the house, and I am reminded of my father. He, too, drowned himself in spirits at the first sight of unpleasantness.

"This is a mistake," Quill warns them both. "If you go out there tonight, you won't see morning."

I notice the hired man's arm slip from Iris's grasp.

"Go on," Pete says, relief evident in his tone. "You go on inside and we'll talk on how to fix this. Don't do anything rash tonight."

Iris and the young man do as they are told, and Pete follows them to the door, pausing at the threshold to sip from his flask again.

"I'll be along," Quill tells the man, who nods in reply. The door shuts, and Quill picks up a shotgun leaning against the house, where I hadn’t noticed it. He tucks it against his arm in the same military fashion as I'd seen before. He takes a few steps before I realize that he's heading straight toward me. It is too late to move.

"Get up," he orders tersely, and I rise, unwilling to meet his eyes. It is humiliation enough to be caught spying, but in my nightdress, with my hair tangled, that seems a cruel insult. He grabs my wrist and pulls me from my hiding place, the spiny holly leaves clinging to my nightdress and pricking my bare body beneath. I'm too aware of my state of undress, so aware that I'm certain my own unease is making him aware, too. I resist his hold and wrench away.

"What's the matter with you?" he growls through the darkness. "Why would you come out here?"

"I don't know," I begin. But I do know. All I can see of him is his white shirt and the gleam off the barrel of the gun. Something like a premonition comes over me; I see the gun in my own hands and feel sick creeping up my throat.

I shake it away. "Iris is leaving. I don't want her to go."

"If you had any sense, you'd want her as far from here as possible," he snaps. "And you'd leave, too."

"I can't!" I shout, and ignore his admonishing shush. I'm crying, from the shock of Iris's leaving, at the easy way she planned to abandon me without so much as a farewell. I straightened my back, set my shoulders, and look John Quill in the eye. "You cannot keep a secret, then call me a fool for not knowing it! If you have any tender feeling toward me, and I know that you do, then you will tell me what it is you want me to run from!"

The night air between us is heavy, and I wait for Quill to speak.