Guardians of Virtue (Cumberland saga)

“Tomorrow is the Sabbath” Sig said. “We do not work on the Sabbath.”

His tones were tinged with iron and quartz. There was no “bend” in his announcement.

“What would you have me do?” Blain asked. He was new here. He would go-with-the-flow until he had better options.

“You are invited to our worship. It is optional. You do not need to attend” Sig said, stiffly. As if Blain (or perhaps Sig) was unfamiliar with the concept of ‘optional’.

“What time does worship start, and where will it be?” Blain asked.

“It starts at 10:30 and if you want to attend, Sarah will show you where it is. There will be food afterward.”

Blain understood that there were no street names or addresses in Copperhead Cove. Of course Sarah would know where the worship was.

Blain presented himself to Sarah at 10:10am on Sunday, dressed in his meager “best” suit, brushed clean and as presentable as he could make himself. He was a firm believer that you only have one chance to make a good first-impression.

She scrutinized him with all of the care of a drill-instructor about to parade his troops in front of a four-star general. She dusted one-or-two imaginary flecks of dust off of his shoulders and suggested that he was almost presentable.

They arrived at one of the outlying dwellings in the compound. It was a bit larger than most. Sarah parked Blain just inside the door and a bit to the right of it. Then Sarah and her two children Lliam and Mary moved to the front-center of the room. Clearly, she did not expect him to participate to any significant degree.

Blain looked around with interest. This was not what he had expected.

The room, undoubtedly a parlor, had been cleared of its furniture. There was no place to sit. Everybody was standing. He hoped that the service was not too long.

A small podium was positioned at the far end of the room. People coming into the room filed past him.

Sig entered the room, noticed Blain and nodded to him. Then Sig proceeded to the front of the room and stood behind the pulpit. He opened the book that had been placed there and started to read.

It took Blain about five seconds to realize that Sig was reading in something that sounded like German to his untrained ears.

Looking around the congregation...maybe twenty people...Blain saw that they fully comprehended what Sig was reading.

It was an “a-ha!” moment for Blain. He had subconsciously thought of his hosts as backward hicks. And all this time they were fully multi-lingual. Even Mary, Sarah’s six-year-old daughter seemed to be fully engaged by the text Sig was reading.

To Sarah’s family’s left was another family with what appeared to be twin daughters about Llaim’s age. That is to say, in their mid-teens. They seemed to be VERY interested in him. They kept sneaking glances back toward him and whispering comments to each other.

Blain’s sense of self-preservation kicked in. “JAIL-BAIT!!!”

In his mind, it did not matter what the norms were in this community. The young ladies were well below the age-of-majority and he could not afford to piss-off any of the adults in the community. He shifted from foot-to-foot, obviously ill-at-ease in this strange environment.

And then he saw Sarah look over at the two very-young ladies. Her glance rested on them for just a fraction of a second longer than might have been a random scan of the congregation. Her brows may have contracted a millimeter or two.

The young ladies reacted as if they had touched an electric fence.
 

Blain was relieved. Sarah had solved his problem of overly-amorous, under-aged suitors.

Unable to follow the flow of the worship service at an intellectual level due to not knowing German, he was reduced to studying the body-language of the participants. It was clear from the previous interaction that Sarah was an Alpha female.

The body-language was disconcerting. It did not add up…the shifts in posture, the glances, the whispering...and then it struck Blain, Sarah was publicly announcing that Blain was her personal property and to trifle with him was to trifle with her.

Blain. Was. Shocked.

Sarah had a forteen year-old son. In Allendale or Kalamazoo or Ann Arbor, women with 14 year-old children were 45 years-old or older. And Blain was not even thirty. But then he started thinking...how young could a woman be and still have a 14 year-old child. And the answer startled him.

Oh!

Oooohhhh!

Sarah appeared to be a single parent. He never asked. It was awkward.

She didn’t wear any make-up and didn’t dress to flatter her assets. He had no clue as to her age.

She fed him. She had even offered to repair a shirt he had torn.

Thinking back, Sarah had been the one to suggest that Lliam go with him to town.

Oh my!

It would have been a simple matter of taking two steps to walk out the door. He could have walked to his bicycle in a matter of five minutes and been riding toward Dayton in ten.

He COULD have done that.

But Blain was a man in his twenties with all of the needs and desires of a very healthy, very physical twenty-eight-year-old man. Those need were both physical and emotional. It had been a long time since those needs had been met. It had been a long time since his needs had been met and an eternity since he had been needed.

There had been other women in his life. But they had been fungible, just as he had been a warm-body-of-convenience to them. He could not remember a time when a woman had picked him out of a crowd because he was the-one.

Being needed for who he was as a man was an itch that had not been scratched in such a long time that it was a need he had forgotten he had.

He was not sure if that was flattering or creepy. He would have to ponder on that.

The food after the Sabbath service included real coffee and cinnamon-hickory nut crumble made with white-flour and served with infinite amounts of butter. Next to  the crumble was a plum-cake

Blain stood at the back of the line with the children so he could see what the typical portion size was and whether anybody took a slice of each or just chose one.

Sarah stood to the side and kept an eagle-eye on each child as they cut their portions. Waste was not tolerated.

Blain cut a meager sliver of the crumble and reached to pour his coffee when Sarah interjected, "Working men get more" as she stepped in front of him and cut a healthy slice of the plum-cake and added it to his plate.

The crumble was OK but dry. The plum-cake was exceptional. The batter was dense and slightly sweet. The plum-halves were small and not overly-juicy...with more than a hint of having been soaked in some kind of liquor to preserve them.

He was finishing the plum-cake when the mother of the twin girls approached him.

"Did you go to college?" the woman asked.

Blain nodded that he had.

"Do you understand algebra?" she continued.

Blain responded "I was in pre-Pharmacy and we did reviews of algebra every semester. Yes, I am very familiar with algebra."

He was glad she had not asked if he had graduated college. He would have had to say "No."

"We home-school our children at Copperhead Cove. We need somebody to teach our teens about algebra, somebody who knows what they are doing and will not make them more confused" the woman said.

Oh crap! The last thing he wanted to have happen was to get trapped in a closed room with the twins!

"I work for Mr Sig and for Mizz Sarah. It is up to them whether I can help teach algebra" Blain dodged the question.

Hearing her name, Sarah came over. "What is going on?" Sarah asked.

The woman turned to Sarah and said "I think we found somebody to teach the teenagers math if it is OK with you."

One thing Blain could say about Sarah was that she was decisive.

Sarah made a curt nod in agreement.

"You will work a short-day on Thursday and teach the teenagers math for two hours in the evening. It will be in my house. The boys, including Lliam will sit on one side of the parlor and the girls will sit on the other side. All of the doors to the parlor will be left open at all times" Sarah commanded.

Blain smiled a smile of relief. He knew that the girls wouldn't get any of the wrong ideas as long as Sarah was there as a guardian of everybody's virtue.

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