From the day’s commencement, Sarah Baxter had been sorely tried. Abner had slept but poorly, rose early. He had kept to himself, bellowing alone in the closed front room in preparation for the early-morning service, could not even help her with the children. Now that the five were grown so, they all trod over her, especially the three boys, she couldn’t help it, and when Abner withheld his hand they blew their disobedience into open malice. Their oldest girl, Frances, usually some help, had had to pass the last three nights on the canvas cot in the shed, and so had waked sore and sniffly, poor child. It was too cold and damp out there and the mice made a fright of sleep — Sarah dreaded the week to come. Abner’s austere insistence on the practice vexed her, but the Good Book guided him and he was not to be moved. And as the girls grew, the problems mounted. Already, she and Franny had crossed dates a few times, and it would not be long before little Amanda, already ten, would be complicating the sorry matter even further.
But, although breakfast had been a persecution for her, curiosity to see their father preach for the first time had finally chased the five into their Sunday clothes and had cowed them to unwonted silence in the church. The Nazarenes had grown accustomed over the recent years to Brother Ely Collins’ tall eloquence in the Sunday pulpit, and Sarah had feared this morning that her husband’s blunt red wrath would whip them with too alien a chill. Brother Ely had saved their church, had built a roaring fire here and tended it with devotion. Although his message, no less than Abner’s, had been of the Lord’s awesome plans for sinners, his voice had been comfortingly paternal, and he had offered wonderful salvation in Christ Jesus. He had baptized all the Baxters, though they had been baptized before, and Abner himself had always agreed: Brother Ely was a saint.
Abner had stood, round and glowering, behind the rostrum this morning — it had surprised Sarah how stocky and aged he had seemed there, blunt hands gripping the rostrum, red-shocked face with its wide down-drawn mouth just visible above his knuckles — and after they had sung the fearsomely appropriate “Ninety and Nine,” which Abner had selected just for its relevance, he had raged forth astonishingly: “Belovèd! Think it not strange concerning the fiery trial among you, which cometh upon you to prove you, as though a strange thing happened unto you!” The congregation, almost as a body, had started. Some had snickered in embarrassment afterward, and Sarah had seen with horror that her two oldest boys, Junior and Nat, were giggling furtively into their songbooks. How she had hated them then! She herself had felt near to tears: poor Abner! But, suddenly, the cry had become a prophecy! A boy had burst into the auditorium with the announcement that Brother Ely Collins might still be alive! Sister Clara and Elaine had rushed out and the congregation had bolted up to chase after. There had been a scattering, a rude disorder. “Hold!” Abner had thundered. “Have you forgotten that this is the House of the Lord?” They had hesitated, lashed to a respectful hush. “Let us all pause before departing,” her husband had commanded them, “for one minute of silent prayer that our beloved brother Ely Collins might soon be among us again!” The minute, abided by, had passed like an eternal judgment upon them, Abner’s final “Grace be with all of you! Amen,” releasing them somehow miraculously blessed.
Sarah had taken four of the children home, while Abner, a terrible and inexplicable tension crowding his red brows, had with Junior followed the others out to the mine. She had telephoned the Collins place, and Sister Mary Harlowe, poor woman, answering, had confirmed that Sister Clara was waiting at home. She had left Franny with the three younger children and had gone to sit a spell with Sister Clara. Many had come: poor Tessie Lawson, Mabel Hall, Betty Wilson, whose Eddie had died in the hospital, almost all the women from Sister Clara’s Evening Circle. She had learned then that Sister Wanda Cravens’ husband might also have survived. They had cried together a great deal there. Worried finally that Abner might return out of temper and find the children untended, Sarah had left before any word had come.
Arriving home, she had overheard from the front porch the two youngest, Amanda and Paul, taunting Frances in the kitchen with the hateful chant Junior and Nat had started last summer:
“Fran — ny! Fran — ny!
She’s got red hairs on her fan — ny!
Sarah had slammed in and upbraided them unmercifully, shouting at them that they would hear from their father on that score that very night. Franny had insisted shyly that she didn’t mind the teasing, and had begged her not to tell their father, but Sarah had replied she was anyway mad at both of them still for the way they had carried on at breakfast. Then Franny had told her that Nat had run off, presumably to the mine. Franny was less charitable toward Nathan. They all were. Sarah had heard before Nathan even came about the curse of the third child, and certainly that boy was the devil’s own. Well. She was wearied of whipping the child, and now he was so grown, husky for an eleven-year-old, it usually took both her and Franny holding for Abner to manage it. And Lord, it did no good. Abner would not admit it, but that was the plain truth of it. Nathan could not be saved.
Franny had dragged about all faint and teary, so Sarah had told her to go lie down until her father came home, she would finish the kitchen and get Sunday dinner. The girl hadn’t argued; behind her glasses, her eyes had been red-rimmed, her round cheeks flushed and feverish. Poor Franny! Such a good girl, and to suffer so! And then the other children humiliating to make it worse. Franny was fifteen, she shouldn’t have had to endure that trial, but what more could Sarah have done to stop it? It had been Abner that hot summer night who had judged the girl’s refusal to tattle on the little ones an act of disobedience, and all Sarah’s wailing had not constrained him. Abner had not thrashed Franny for a long time, so he had laid the razor strop to her. Tears had spilled and Abner had sweated, but the girl had not complained. And the others, witnessing the scourging, had discovered what now they sang about. How could they be so dreadful, those children? It grieved Sarah. Junior, who had started it, no longer mocked, of course: Sarah had noticed, giving him his baths recently, that he must sooner or later fall prey to his own malevolence. Her poor white goose, he was such a soft one. They were all redheads, all but Amanda, and that was probably why she was her father’s favorite.
Abner and Junior had come home shortly after noon, Abner somber and uncommonly gentle. Ely Collins was dead, he had told her softly: horribly dead. She had wished to weep then, but had been unable. Now, he had said, much work lay ahead. Had he meant for her, too? The vague foreboding of ordeal had dismayed her. They had eaten Sunday dinner in virtual silence, all but Nat who had not returned home and who had not been seen by Junior at the mine. When Abner had retired to the front room, Junior’s plump white face had turned to her and he said, “He was frightening out there! Everybody cried! He made them!”
More omens of disruption had touched her during family worship. Abner had passed the afternoon studying the Holy Bible, and by evening he had fallen strangely meditative. He had listened with curious patience as the children had recounted their evil doings, and instead of administering the usual castigations, had spoken solemnly with each of them about duty and led them, individually, in prayer. “The fear of Jehovah is the beginning of knowledge,” he had told Franny, “but the foolish despise wisdom and instruction.” To Junior, he had explained proverbially: “He hath made a pit, and digged it, and is fallen into the ditch which he made; his mischief shall return upon his own head, and his violence shall come down upon his own pate.” And he had instructed Junior how the ruthless avarice of the mine owners would bring disaster upon their pates, just as vice and waywardness had brought retributive death to many miners. Nathan, typically, had refused to say where he had been all day, or what it was he had brought home in a paper sack, would not even answer his father. Abner’s face had contracted darkly. “The eye that mocketh at his father, and despiseth to obey his mother,” he had rumbled ominously, and for a moment the familiar thunderheads had seemed to be forming and Sarah had breathed easier, “the ravens of the valley shall pick it out, and the young vultures shall eat it!” But he had pursued the matter no further, had turned to little Amanda to receive her admission of mocking her sister Franny that day and disobeying her mother, and had, with alarming tenderness, lectured the confused child on love, admonishing her to make love her aim, and to “desire earnestly spiritual gifts, but rather that ye may prophesy!” What had he meant by that? Unnerving portents everywhere! Praying with Amanda, Abner had cried upwards to the Lord: “Oh deliver not the soul of thy turtle-dove unto the wild beast! forget not the life of thy poor forever!”