The Innocent Read Online Free Page B

natural order of life and God’s instructions to go forth and be fruitful. Not only that, the Shakers danced in church.
    The thought of that amazed Carlyn. What kind of church would encourage, even compel dancing? No church she’d ever sat in to hear a sermon. At those churches, dancing was roundly condemned as leading one down a sinful path to certain destruction. Akin to drunkenness, card playing, and other riotous living. And yet, the Shakers danced in their worship. Or so it was said.
    When her father ranted about the Shakers’ odd religious ways, Carlyn had tried to imagine the people in their church dancing. Wouldn’t the pews be in the way? Did they dance on them? The very idea of that seemed too weird to consider. But the aisle would allow only a few jigging feet and surely no one would be so blasphemous as to dance around the pulpit. Yet, her father claimed even the Shaker preachers stomped and spun and shook.
    Her father had been known to stomp his foot from time to time or pound on the pulpit to keep his listeners awake, but he declared in no uncertain terms that he’d never give his feet over to the devil for dancing. Feet were for walking the somber path of service and staying on the road of “thou shalt nots.”
    Once, while reading the Bible, Carlyn had come across the verses in Second Samuel that said King David danced as the Ark of the Covenant was carried into the City of David. He whirled and leaped, but nowhere did Carlyn see where the Lord condemned that. So could it be the Lord didn’t mind holy dancing? Maybe that was the kind of dancing the Shakers did.
    Carlyn mulled over that for weeks before she found the courage to ask her father about King David’s dance. As soon as the words were out in the air between them, her father’sface tightened into a thunderous frown. Carlyn’s mouth went dry and her legs trembled. She could do nothing but stand and wait for judgment to fall down on her.
    “It is sinful to search the Scripture to pull verses out of context in a vain attempt to excuse sin.” Her father’s voice was that of condemnation from the pulpit. “Is that what you have done, daughter?”
    She inched back from him, but he reached out, gripped her shoulder with his bony fingers, and pulled her closer to him. His angry breath wrapped around her. His eyes demanded an answer.
    “N-no,” she stammered.
    Across the room, her mother looked up from her sewing and surprised Carlyn by coming to her defense. “The child simply asked a question about something she read in the Bible, Joshua.”
    Her father’s left eyelid twitched then, a signal that normally would send Carlyn running for a hiding place, but his hand still gripped her shoulder. He lifted his head to stare at his wife. Out of the corner of her eyes, Carlyn could see her mother looking back at him. Not with anger, but a resigned weariness.
    “Wife, do not encourage wrong thinking in our offspring. There is much the female brain cannot comprehend. It is best to leave interpretation of the Scripture to those chosen by the Lord for understanding.” He glared at Carlyn’s mother until she looked back down at her sewing, her sigh audible across the room.
    At the sound, her father’s fingers tightened on Carlyn’s shoulder and his eyes bored into her. “You have asked your question for wrong motives, but I will explain.” His voicewas stern. “King David was a sinful man, who gave into lustful desires and was punished for his sins.”
    A new question tickled through Carlyn’s brain. How, if that was so, could King David be a man after God’s own heart? She’d heard her father say that, and other preachers too. But didn’t her father also say how much God hated sin? And what about all those psalms David wrote? Could that kind of praise be written by a man lusting after sin?
    But she bit her lip and stayed silent. Her father’s eyelid continued to twitch even as he narrowed his eyes on her and went on in a voice too calm.