Fitcher's Brides by Gregory Frost

“those who would trample upon the Doctrine of God,” clearly unaware of anything out of the ordinary. When she looked again, the pole was in position, motionless.
    They walked across the yard, and she gave the turnpike a final, probative glance before entering the house.
    Once inside, Kate knew immediately that something was wrong.
    Vern caught her eye the moment no one else was watching and there was fear in her look. Kate assumed initially that Lavinia must have invoked a cruel punishment for some misbehavior during their shopping excursion, but when the stepmother entered the room, Vern hid her unease and helped with the tea that had been brewed for Papa’s return. Lavinia did not seem conscious of any disturbance, and she would have been all too willing to recite Vern’s transgression had there been anything to report.
    Yet each glance Vern gave her was a silent tocsin, and the time they sat in the parlor seemed interminable, Amy prattling with Lavinia about the need to plant vegetables—shouldn’t they do it soon, and what should they be planting this early, and could they find someone to plow up the ground for them. Amy couldn’t sit still while she talked, which drew a sharp “Don’t fidget so, child!” from Lavinia, but that was the equivalent of a familiar ritual, a litany between her and Amy. Amy’s behavior was so typical in fact that Kate knew she was unaware of whatever troubled Vern.
    Mr. Charter picked up the topic of redemption, embellishing upon what he’d said on the trek home, now that he’d had time to reflect. “Cotton Mather is right,” he told Lavinia, “when he says that children are all fountains of evil. I was lax in my…my life before with my—our—girls.” He was forever stumbling over his pronouns, and part of the reason his preaching failed to convince Kate was that he never quite seemed to know what he was about to say.
    â€œThey don’t recognize their own innate sinfulness,” to which Lavinia nodded, casting them all distrustful glances. “Katherine, you provoke people with your questioning and doubting.” The rebuke stung her and she looked back at her father with hurtful eyes, but he didn’t meet her gaze, speaking again to Lavinia. “She attempted to engage in religious discourse with a nonbeliever. I fear that for all its nearness to Harbinger, Jekyll’s Glen may not be persuaded of Reverend Fitcher’s rightness.”
    â€œMany will not be swayed before the day of reckoning, husband,” Lavinia said. “And still others will not resign from their sinful ways even then . That’s what He has told us, and so it’s to be. Some’ll wait until the sky opens to swallow them. But it’ll be too late then. The door will have closed and no entreaties will persuade.”
    â€œ I’m persuaded, ma’am,” Amy said. “ I want to be saved.” She cast a trembling sidelong glance at her sisters.
    Lavinia nodded solemnly. “The easiest room in hell awaits children,” she said.
    Amy quivered with guilt, but the other two sat stiffly, a defiant wall against these familiar words. Children could all expect to occupy that room. Children had been visited by the devil early, before their parents could intercept and protect them. The devil came into their rooms, into their cribs, to breathe his foul breath upon them before they’d grown enough to have any will or knowledge with which to combat his evil. He breathed sin into them. Being the devil, he hid his intervention even from their memories.
    They knew this speech by heart, and may have believed in their wickedness after a fashion, each with her own interpretation, her own response: Vern choosing to examine her sinfulness; Amy accepting it all; Kate awaiting better proof. The catalogue of sins might well drag on for hours.
    Vern and Kate finished their tea and offered to clean up. Their father