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The Believer

By Ann H. Gabhart

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August 1818
Chapter 1
Ethan Boyd didn't like loud voices. Bad things happened when there were loud voices. Now Preacher Joe and the man with whiskers were yelling at one another. Ethan wanted to run outside and crawl up under the porch to hide with one of Preacher Joe's hunting hounds. The one Preacher Joe said was afraid of firearms. The one Preacher Joe said wasn't worth the powder it would take to shoot him, but that liked to lay his head in Mama Joe's lap when she sat on the porch. She said Birdie was her dog and it didn't matter whether he could hunt or not.

Mama Joe took in strays. That's why Ethan was sleeping on the cornhusk mattress on the little bed in the room off the kitchen. Orphans and strays.

But then this man with his gray streaked black whiskers was saying Ethan wasn't an orphan or a stray. That he belonged to him. Ethan scrunched as far back in the chair at the table as he could and held so tight to the bottom that the cane cut into his fingers. He darted his eyes to the man and then away to stare down at the table.

The table was made out of two broad planks, worn smooth by years of use and Mama Joe's polishing. Mama Joe liked to polish things. Even Ethan. Ethan's eyes found the circle that was part of what Preacher Joe said was the grain of the wood. It looked like a little head with arms reaching away from it. Mama Joe had let Ethan poke two little holes for eyes in the circle even though normally she'd wear him out for making holes in any of her furniture.

When Ethan told her the circle was his face, she smiled and ran her hand over it softly the way she sometimes stroked his hair. Then she traced the little bit of lighter wood that surrounded the circle like a halo. "See that," she said. "That's the good Lord's love wrapping around you. Remember that, Ethan, no matter what else might happen, his love is always there. You can count on that."

"But will you always love me too, Mama Joe?" Ethan kept his eyes on her finger tracing the circle in the wood. He was afraid to look in her face. Afraid her answer might not be yes.

She reached over and put her hand under his chin and raised his face up to look at her. "Yes, my little child." She smiled and the deep wrinkles around her faded blue eyes softened. She dropped her work-roughened hand down to lay it flat against his chest over his beating heart. "My love will always be right there in your heart." She took his hand with her other hand and placed it over her heart. "And your love will always be right here in my heart. That's the way love is. It stays."

Then she picked up the knife she'd been using to peel potatoes for their supper and carved a small heart inside a bigger heart right in the middle of her table below the circle. After she dusted away the wood shavings from the hearts, Ethan put his hand over them. He felt warm all over. And safe.

Now as the two men's voices got even louder, Ethan's stared at the circle with the two points for eyes and the hearts below it. Mama Joe wasn't there. She'd gone to help one of the churchwomen who was sick. She was always doing that. Ethan didn't mind. Preacher Joe told him funny bedtime stories, and Mama Joe was most always back in time to cook them breakfast.

All of a sudden the whiskered man slammed his fist down on the table right on top of the hearts. Ethan was sure the wood would splinter and break under the force of his anger, but it stayed strong. Still Ethan felt the blow on the hearts.

Preacher Joe's face was a funny purple color as he pointed toward the door. The other man's eyes narrowed until they weren't much more than two slits in his wind-reddened face. He stared straight at Ethan as he said, "I'll be back."

Preacher Joe stepped between the man and Ethan. Preacher Joe was usually a little stooped over, but now his back was stretched up straight as he faced down the man. "Our door will not be open to you."

"He's my boy."

Ethan gripped the bottom of his chair even tighter as the man's words slid around Preacher Joe to grab at him.

"The Lord says different." Preacher Joe's voice was quiet now. Quiet, but firm and calm and sure.

The man laughed and Ethan was glad Preacher Joe was blocking his eyes from him. "Your God has no say in this."

"The good Lord has say in everything. Your life and mine. And the boy's. He stays with us."

"We'll see about that." The words were more growled than spoken.

The man slammed the door behind him so hard that Mama Joe's Sunday dishes on the shelf over her worktable rattled. Ethan squeezed his eyes tight shut, afraid the plates were going to fall off and shatter all over the floor. She'd brought them all the way from Virginia when she first came to Kentucky. Sometimes she stroked the roses on them the way she'd stroked the hearts on the table. She said they made her think of her dear mother who had moved up to heaven to live with Jesus.

Preacher Joe turned away from the door and lifted Ethan out of the chair and sat down with him on his lap even though he'd told him many times that a boy of six was way too old to be sitting on anybody's lap. Trembles were shaking through Ethan and Preacher Joe held him tight against his chest as he stroked his head. "There, there, child," he murmured in his ear. "The Lord is thy keeper; the Lord is thy shade upon thy right hand. The Lord shall preserve thee from all evil; he shall preserve thy soul."

Ethan knew that was from the Bible. Half of what Preacher Joe said was from the Bible. The words were like a soft blanket over Ethan and the trembles left him. Preacher Joe said he could depend on the Lord's words.

"Will he be back?" Ethan whispered against Preacher Joe's bony chest. He was afraid the trembles would start up again, but he held his breath and they didn't catch hold of him.

"I can't say for sure," Preacher Joe said after a long moment. "But don't you worry your head about it. We'll go see the sheriff in the morning and he'll send the man on his way. You can trust the truth of that. You're our boy now."

Ethan was silent for a moment, not wanting to say the words, but he had to. They were pushing against his mouth so hard they were almost breaking his teeth. "Is he my father? My born father."

"So he says." Preacher Joe's hold on Ethan tightened. "But even if there is truth in his words, he forfeited his right to you when he deserted you and your mother when you were a mere babe in arms."

******
October 1833
CHAPTER 3

The day her father died was the worst day of Elizabeth Duncan's life. There'd been other bad days. The day they'd moved from the town to this old cabin in the middle of a wilderness of trees. The day four years past when her mother had died of a lung ailment. The day her brother had come home from a trip to town to relay the message from Ralph Melbourne's father that Ralph had married a girl up in Indiana instead of coming back to Kentucky to keep his promise to Elizabeth. Ralph's father wanted her to know she was free to marry another, Payton said. As if she could just turn to the next man in line.

But watching her father pull in one ragged breath after another and then no more was the worst when the morning before he'd been laughing and talking with no hint of ill health. Elizabeth lifted the oil lamp to cast more light on the bed where he lay and stared at his chest, willing it to rise again. She was alone with her father in the deepest dark of the night. She'd sent Payton off to bed at midnight with no thought that their father might not make the morning light. She'd been unable to imagine that even though she'd been in sickrooms with her mother and seen death come.

Her mother had learned of herbs and root medicines from her mother back in Virginia, and she'd passed that knowledge down to Elizabeth. "I don't have the healing gift she had," her mother had told Elizabeth as they walked through the woods in search of the proper roots. "She had an uncanny way of knowing which doses would work best for which symptoms and was much sought in our village back in the old settlement when someone took to their bed with this or that complaint. We had no doctor in the village."

Her mother pointed out a plant of ginseng, and Elizabeth dug its root while her mother leaned against a tree and wheezed as she tried to pull in enough breath to continue on toward their cabin. Elizabeth put the root in the sack tied to her waist and stood up. "Back in Springfield before we moved here into the woods, people came to you for your potions."

Elizabeth's mother smiled a little sadly. "But now I cannot even heal myself."

"Perhaps the medicine in these roots will be stronger." Elizabeth lifted the sack of roots with dirt still clinging to them.

"Perhaps it will," her mother said as she touched Elizabeth's hair. A deep cough racked her body and she spit into her handkerchief folding it quickly to hide the tinge of red, but Elizabeth saw it.

The medicine in the roots had not been better. Her mother had died before she saw another spring. And now Elizabeth's father lay on the bed in front of her under the last quilt her mother had pieced, and his chest did not rise.

"Father. Don't leave us, Father." Elizabeth spoke softly. She knew he had already gone beyond the sound of her voice, but she wasn't ready to accept it. She set down the lamp and made herself stand to go to him. She dreaded touching his body and feeling the heat of life leaving him. At the same time she wanted to grab hold of him and push her own body heat into him to keep him there with them.

She turned back the quilt to lay her ear on his chest as she sent up a wordless prayer. The Lord had brought the widow's son back to life and Lazarus after three days. She'd read those truths in the Bible many times. Perhaps he would yet breathe life back into her father. But of course, he did not. Death was not so easily cheated in this day and time.

"Oh my father, what will we do without you?" Tears flooded her eyes and she did not try to stop them. Here in the darkest hour of the night, the darkest moment of her twenty years was the time for tears. Come the sunrise, then she would of necessity push aside the tears.

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