Imperfections by Lynda Durrant

Author:Lynda Durrant
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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Eldress Mary has volunteered Sister Agnetha to take a season’s worth of butter and cheese into Lexington. The Shakers collect cash money from the world’s people to buy the goods they can’t make or grow: coffee and pekoe tea, needles and thimbles, silk thread, salt and pepper, lemons, nutmeg, cinnamon and chocolate, paper, postage stamps, and raw cotton.

It must be a sister who goes to Lexington. Two of the brethren went last year. They were conscripted into the Union army on the spot, right on the Harrodsburg Pike. Luckily for the Shakers, Obadiah made his way home, still harnessed to the empty buckboard.

I want so much to join her. I haven’t been out among the world’s people since Ma left us here. It would be a rare treat, even in Sister Agnetha’s company, to see the sights of Lexington again.

I stand in front of Sister Agnetha’s desk and beg, “I can talk to the world’s men, and a final-stage Shakeress can’t, Sister Agnetha. Please may I go along?”

“I’m to speak to the wife of Mr. Kettleman. He’s a wholesaler. The Believers at Pleasant Hill sell all our butter and cheese to him.” Sister Agnetha stacks a row of books with the bound edges perfectly aligned. “The last thing the Believers need is for you to talk to the world’s men.”

“What?”

“Sister Priscilla saw you laughing with the soldiers. An imperfection.”

“But you ordered us to charm them into their best behavior! Kentucky women are known for their warm hospitality. Elder Benjamin has made Pleasant Hill a haven for soldiers. And what about that Shaker song?”

I sing the first lines:

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