Alma Katsu - The Taker

“Lanore! I was looking for you. I’m ready. Let’s go!” he bellowed.

“Good night,” I said, breaking away from the preacher, whom I hoped to never see again. His fiery stare bored into my back as Nevin and I left.

“Satisfied with your little outing?” Nevin grunted at me as we headed down the road.

“It wasn’t what I expected.”

“I would say so. The man’s daft, probably made so by the diseases he undoubtedly carries,” Nevin said, meaning syphilis. “Still, I hear he’s had followers down in Saco. Wonder what he’s doing this far north?” It didn’t occur to Nevin that the man might have been driven out by the authorities, that he might be on the run. That in his madness he could be given to visions and grandiose predictions, putting ideas into the heads of gullible young girls and threatening those less than willing to do as he wished.

I hugged my shawl tightly around my shoulders. “I would appreciate it if you’d not tell Father what the preacher said…”

Nevin laughed blackly. “I should think not. I can barely bring myself to recall his blasphemous talk, let alone repeat it to Father! Multiple wives! ‘Spiritual wifery’! I don’t know what Father would do-take to me with a whipping rod and lock you in the barn until you were twenty-one for even listening to the heathen’s words.” He shook his head as we walked on. “I tell you what, though-that preacher’s teachings sure would suit your boy Jonathan. He’s made spiritual wives out of half the girls in town already.”

“Enough about Jonathan,” I said, keeping the preacher’s strange interest in Jonathan to myself so as not to confirm Nevin’s poor opinion of him. “Let us talk no more about it.”

We fell quiet for the rest of the long walk home. Despite the cool night air, I still tingled from the dark look on the preacher’s face and the glimpse into his true nature. I didn’t know what to make of his interest in Jonathan nor what he meant by my “special sensibility.” Was my longing to experience what went on between a man and a woman so obvious? Surely that mystery was at the heart of the human experience; could it truly be unnatural, or especially evil, for a young woman to be curious about it? My parents and Pastor Gilbert would probably think so.

I walked down the lonesome road agitated inside and titillated by all of this open talk of desire. The thought of knowing Jonathan-of knowing other men in the village the way Magda knew them-left me hot and liquid inside. This evening I had awakened to my true nature, though I was too inexperienced to know it, too innocent to realize I should be alarmed by the ease with which desire could be sparked within me. I should have fought against it more staunchly, but perhaps there was no use, as one’s true nature always wins out.

Years passed in the way they do, with each year seeming no different than its predecessor. But little differences were evident: I was less willing to follow my parents’ rules and longed for a measure of independence, and I’d grown weary of my judgmental neighbors. The charismatic preacher was arrested down in Saco, tried, and imprisoned, then escaped and disappeared mysteriously. But his absence from the scene did little to quell the unrest gurgling just beneath the surface. There was an undercurrent of sedition in the air, even in a town as isolated as St. Andrew; talk of independence from Massachusetts and statehood. If landowners such as Charles St. Andrew were worried that their fortunes would be adversely affected, they made no show of it and kept their concerns to themselves.

I grew more interested in such important matters, though I still had few opportunities to exercise my curiosity. The only fit topics of interest for a young woman, it seemed, were her domestic domain: how to make a tender loaf of molasses bread or coax milk from an aging cow, how well you could sew or the best way to cure a child’s fever. Tests to prove our suitability as wives, but I had little interest in competition of this sort. There was only one man I wanted for my husband and he cared little for the tenderness of a bread crumb.

One of the household tasks I cared for the least was laundry. Lightweight clothing could be taken down to the creek for rinsing and wringing. But several times a year, we’d have to do a thorough washing, which meant setting a large cauldron over a fire in the yard for a full day of boiling, scrubbing, and drying. It was a miserable job-arms plunged in boiling water and lye, wringing out voluminous wool garments, spreading them to dry on bushes or over tree limbs. Laundry day had to be chosen carefully, for it required a stretch of good weather when no other laborious household task needed doing.

I remember one such day in the early autumn of my twentieth year. Oddly, my mother had sent Maeve and Glynnis to help my father with the haying, insistent that she and I could handle the washing by ourselves. She was strangely quiet that morning, too. As we waited for the water to boil, she fussed with the washing things-the bag of lye, the dried lavender, the sticks we used to push the clothing around in the pot.

“The time has come for us to have an important conversation,” my mother said at last, as we stood beside the cauldron, watching bubbles rise to the surface of the water. “It’s time to think about getting you started on a life of your own, Lanore. You’re not a child any longer. You are well into a marrying age…”

Truth be told, I was nearly past a good age for marriage and had been wondering what my parents intended to do about the situation. They’d arranged betrothals for none of their children.

“… and so we must address what to do about Master St. Andrew.” She held her breath and blinked at me.

My heart fluttered at her words. What other reason would she have to bring up Jonathan’s name in the context of marriage if she and my father didn’t intend to seek an arrangement for me? I was speechless from joy and surprise-the latter for knowing Father didn’t approve of the St. Andrew family, not anymore. Many things had changed since the families followed Charles St. Andrew north. His relationship with the rest of the town-with the men who’d trusted him-was strained.

Mother looked at me squarely. “I tell you this as a mother who loves you, Lanore: you must cease your friendship with Master Jonathan. The two of you are children no longer. To continue in this way will do you no good.”

I didn’t feel the flecks of boiling water alighting on my skin or the heat from the cauldron dampening my face. I stared back at her.

She rushed to cover my horror-struck silence. “You must understand, Lanore-what other boy will want you when you are so obviously in love with Jonathan?”

“I’m not in love with Jonathan. We’re only friends,” I croaked.

She laughed gently, but it stabbed at my heart all the same. “You cannot deny your love for Jonathan. It’s quite evident, my dear, as it is just as evident that he does not feel the same way toward you.”

“There’s nothing for him to show,” I protested. “We are just friends, I assure you.”

“His flirtations are the talk of the village…”

I brushed a hand over my sweaty brow. “I know of these. He tells me everything.”

“Listen to me, Lanore,” she implored, turning to me even as I turned away. “It is easy to fall in love with a man as handsome as Jonathan, or as wealthy, but you must resist. Jonathan is not to be your destiny.”

“How can you say that?” The protest broke from my lips though I hadn’t meant to say anything of the kind. “You cannot know what lies ahead for me, or Jonathan.”