Fitcher's Brides by Gregory Frost

and waxed, his great mustaches sweeping like steer horns to either side of his mouth. He sat upon one of the chairs stored here. He was looking toward his wife. She stood beside him, in a half profile as if her attention had been distracted by something off to the side. Her hair was coiled about her head with little sausage curls in the front. Her dress had puffed sleeves with frilled epaulettes. The only flaw in the picture was a blur at the bottom of the woman’s skirt, as if she had shifted her feet, although fortunately the rest of her body hadn’t moved. Amy wondered, was that even possible? Could she move her feet and hold her body still? She wasn’t too sure. “Were they the Pulaskis, do you s’pose?” she asked.
    â€œNo way to tell, there’s nothing written on the back. Unless maybe that stevedore would know ’em. But when do you think this was taken? I can’t believe they can have these a way out here.”
    â€œVern, you cap the climax,” Kate observed of her sister’s snobbery, and getting up from the sofa, she walked around the furniture. “We’ll have plenty of things to sit on, least ways.”
    â€œAre we going to entertain?”
    â€œWe won’t find any husbands if we don’t,” Kate replied, but idly, as if it really didn’t concern her—which was probably true, Amy thought, seeing as how Kate was third in line for marriage, and only sixteen. What could the notion of marriage mean to her? Amy had no clear sense of it herself, except that she was supposed to want it, it was what everything came to, what duty to her father and family was supposed to require. Still, she couldn’t imagine the three of them ever being separated. They never had been. They were a family and this was to be their family home. Besides, there likely wouldn’t be time for them to marry now. Not before the world came to its appointed end. Even if they met someone tomorrow, there wouldn’t be enough time for them to have a baby or make a new home before they were judged.
    â€œWe’ll be going to Harbinger House,” announced Vern, “as soon as everything is arrived and uncrated. Papa says we’re not an hour from it on foot.”
    â€œHe’s going to be in charge of the pike, isn’t he?” said Amy. “That’s why we’re in this house. I wonder what’s in that letter.”
    â€œI expect the letter’s from the Reverend Fitcher, probably our invitation to Harbinger, to meet them,” Vern answered.
    But Amy had fixed upon the notion of Judgment Day and could not be directed to another topic. “When the seals are broken and the skies roll back,” she recited, “the Lord God will come to judge us all.”
    Vern nodded. “And it’ll be those who stand with the Reverend Fitcher who are preserved and made glorious in Heaven.”
    Kate looked on in silence. Something in her attitude led Amy to the conclusion that she secretly discredited these words. She said, “You don’t want to be cast into the pit, do you, Kate?”
    Amy’s obsession included the more infernal images of Judgment: seven-eyed beasts with seven heads, plagues, locusts, the demons of Abaddon. Despite repeated assurances from her father and sisters, she doubted her worthiness to enter Heaven, suspecting that some corruption lurked in the depths of her soul. Even if she couldn’t identify it, certainly God would.
    â€œNo, I don’t,” Kate replied, as though it wasn’t a possibility and thus of no concern.
    Amy turned to her older sister. “But how will I be any different at Harbinger than I am here, Vern? When the day comes—in the eyes of God I’m me wherever I am.”
    Vern sighed. It was an old conversation. “The Reverend Fitcher will advocate for you, for all of us, dear sister. You’ll be of his flock, so you’ll be saved and your sins forgiven, so it