She had never heard him admit to lying or any other failing in himself, and without thinking, she squeezed his hand in return.
Looking up, he noticed the deep lines etched above her lip and on her brow and said, “I’ve turned you into a wrinkled crone, haven’t I? When did your pretty brown hair get so gray?”
Mary pulled her hands back, grabbed the bucket, and walked out.
Stanwood rushed after her. “I saw an angel, Mary,” he said. “So help me, and may God send me straight to hell this minute if I’m not telling you true.” He couldn’t get the words out fast enough. “The angel, I tell you, the angel was floating up in the air, high up above me. Twenty feet up.
“First I heard the voice calling out to me. Like a heavenly choir, it was. And there was organ music, too. So sweet, Mary. You never heard anything like it.”
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Mary tried to ignore him as she walked to the creek, but Stanwood insisted, flitting around her like a no-see-um, taking no notice of how she winced at the heaviness of the pail. Nor did he take the burden from her hands, even though she had to stop and catch her breath more than once while carrying it back up the slope.
“She was on a ladder, Mary, a golden ladder. Hey, ain’t there a Bible story like that, Mary? The angel with the ladder?”
Mary knew the story of Jacob’s ladder, but she’d be damned if she’d give her husband that satisfaction. She set about making dinner, putting a sliver of salt pork in the pot to sizzle, and scraping a knife over a turnip while Stanwood hovered at her elbow, talking away. “Mary, it’s a wonder, ain’t it? You know the Scripture well as any. Doesn’t it say that Jesus loved the sinner? Doesn’t it say that?”
Mary pressed her lips together as she stirred and wondered if her husband would complain if she didn’t make biscuits, too. Stanwood, annoyed at the lack of wonderment or praise from his wife, fell silent. The heat from the fire reminded him of the stiffness in his neck and knees after a long day of looking heavenward.
“I want a hot bath,” he said, and instantly repented of his sharp tone and added a chastened, “Please.”
The courtesy startled Mary, but the prospect of an evening of Stanwood wheedling for attention and praise had become completely unbearable: it was time for one of her little holidays with her daughter in Gloucester.
“Get your angel to heat the water,” she said, and took off her apron. She got her second dress down from its peg, put it in a basket, and left without another word.
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“I’ll see you over at Rachel’s, then,” he called. “We can all go to church together on Sunday.”
Exhausted from his encounter with the divine and parched after long hours without so much as a glass of ale, he turned back into the empty house, stepped out of his filthy trousers, and was snoring before his head touched the bed.
Stanwood’s next recitation of his heavenly vision was entrusted to Easter Carter. He delivered it in a rushed whisper as though he was imparting a great secret, but she said only, “Well, dearie, that’s a new one on me.”
Feeling misunderstood and greatly unappreciated, Stanwood decided that he needed a more devout audience and went to see the Reverend Reuben Hartshorn, pastor of First Parish. The cleric motioned him to a chair on the far side of his study, arranging himself as sternly as possible for a man with apples for cheeks, who would not be thirty for another six months. “The purpose of your visit, sir?” he demanded.
Hat in hand, Stanwood said, “I have seen an angel.”
A furrow appeared between the young minister’s eyes.
“An angel,” he repeated sourly.
“It was in Dogtown Woods,” Stanwood said. “An angel appeared to me from up above, sitting high up on a golden ladder. First I hear an organ, or something like it, and it was playing a hymn. It might have been ‘How Long Wilt Thou Forget Me, Lord?’
“And then she warned me of the error of my ways, but she said if I quit sinning I’d go straight to heaven and I figured I should come to you, so you can spread the word.”
Reverend Hartshorn’s face had puckered into a scowl.
“This, er, passionate experience of the divine to which you
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