by Jan Karon
He felt strangely at peace, following the man’s footprints along the snowy path to the street.
As Christmas drew nearer, sleep became more elusive. For hours, he’d lie awake while Barnabas snored at his feet. He had tried without success to put the jewels completely out of his mind.
Catching himself pondering the imponderable, he’d toss this way and that, until the bed was a scramble of sheets and blankets and Barnabas had gone to the kitchen for a snack, which he crunched loudly enough to wake the neighbors.
He wondered briefly how his neighbor was doing, anyway. He thought he’d seen Andrew Gregory’s gray Mercedes parked in front of her house recently, but he couldn’t be sure, as he’d never been good at identifying cars.
Was she going out with Andrew Gregory? Was he coming over for dinners of blackened roasts and burned rolls? He remembered Cynthia’s silvery laugh behind the restroom wall and his odd sense of feeling fat, short, and boring, compared to Andrew. He had not liked that feeling.
He sat up on the side of the bed.
It had just occurred to him that there were no ashes in Parrish Guthrie’s urn. No ashes had spilled onto the white tea towel, and, clearly, no ashes had marred the sparkle of the jewels, which had been only loosely contained in the porous cloth. Well, then, where were the ashes of the departed?
Ashes. Ashes. Something dimly tried to get through to him, but he couldn’t summon it. Also, he seemed to remember reading about stolen jewels.
He got up and walked to the window and looked down on Cynthia Coppersmith’s house. He wondered how she was getting on, she and Violet, and if she was happy in Mitford. There were lights on, though it must easily be midnight. And he saw the tiny white lights she’d strung for Christmas, winking on the bushes by her front steps. A comfort to have someone in that house!
He sat down in his wing chair and picked up the Observer, but couldn’t read it. Stolen jewels. He’d read something somewhere. . . .
The newspaper article, sticking out from under the ink blotter on Andrew Gregory’s desk! Jewels! Stolen from under the guard’s nose. Something about the queen being upset.
No, he thought, those were necklaces that royalty had worn, not loose stones. Ah, well.
Ashes, he thought, again. But almost immediately, he dozed off in his chair.
Olivia Davenport opened the office door and said brightly, “Knock, knock!”
She was wearing an emerald-colored suit with black trim, and carrying a Bible under her arm. All in all, he thought, a lovely sight.
“Sit down, Olivia, and bring me up-to-date.”
“I’m excited, Father! We’re organizing a reading at the hospital. Isaiah. Ruth. Psalms. Portions of the Gospel of John. I’m hoping you’ll join us, be a reader. Will you? You have such a beautiful voice. Oh, and then we’re taking it to Wesley, to the hospital there.”
Olivia’s cheeks were flushed, and her violet eyes sparkled. Whatever her illness may be, her new mission was obviously good medicine.
“Count me in!” he said. “Just give me the schedule and I’ll try and work it out.”
“Wonderful,” she said, getting up to go. “I was just dashing to The Local . . .”
“Olivia . . . ?”
“Yes?”
“Would you mind staying a moment?”
She smiled and sat down again.
He didn’t want to do it, but it had to be done. “Olivia, what exactly . . . is going on?”
Her violet eyes were perplexed. “What . . . exactly do you mean?”
“Something tells me, and it isn’t Hoppy, I assure you, that he’s growing . . . shall I say . . . fond of you.”
She stared at him, unspeaking.
“This troubles me,” he said, simply.
“It troubles me as well.”
“Does he know?”
“He does not.”
“I’d be grateful if you would tell me everything. It goes without saying that it will be held in the strictest confidence.
“You say you’re dying. But why are you dying? Why do you appear so very healthy? What course will this . . . illness . . . take? Are you suffering?” He paused. “These are serious issues. But perhaps, for me, the issue is this: If you’re dying, I can’t bear to watch a friend who was lately grief-stricken by his wife’s death form an attachment that—”
Olivia stood up. “Please! I understand.” She looked suddenly drawn and pale. “I’m going to tell you everything. You really should know, and I apologize. It’s just that, when I moved here, I wanted to try and forget it. I wanted to . . . live without thinking of dying.”
She was silent for a moment. “Before I say more, I’d like to ask you to do something for me.”
“Consider it done,” he said impulsively.
“When I’ve explained it all to you, I’d like you to tell him everything.”
He was silent.
“I tried once,” she said, “but, after all, he has said nothing to me of his feelings. It may seem shameful, but I’m too proud to say, ‘Look, you appear to be falling in love with me, and you mustn’t.’ What if he isn’t falling in love with me, what if I’ve guessed wrong, and we’re both humiliated?”
“You haven’t guessed wrong.”
“You’ll tell him, then?”
“I will. But I’d like you to do something for me, as well.”
“Anything,” she said with sincerity.
“This will be his second Christmas alone, and I feel he still has some sorrow to work through. To tell him now would . . . complicate things unduly. You’ll probably see him at church, of course, and even at the hospital. But I’d like you to avoid him as graciously as you can. Then, after the holidays, I’ll tell him.”
“I can do that,” she said slowly. “I care for him very much. He’s a wonderful man.”
“He is, indeed.”
“Well, then,” she said, sitting down, again. “I suppose I can’t put this off any longer.”
After Olivia Davenport left, he sat in silence, staring at the door. Then, he cleaned off his desk and typed an overdue letter to Walter, in which he quoted Romans 8:28: “ ‘We know that all things (all things, Walter!) work together for good to them that love God, to them who are called according to His purpose.’ Please bear with Katherine on this.”
He was typing with more than usual dexterity when Russell Jacks pushed open the door.
“Russell! Come in and sit. Have some coffee.” He got up and poured a cup for the old man who, he thought, looked gaunt and tired. “How are you pushing along, Russell?”
The sexton launched into a racking cough. “No rest for th’ wicked,” he said, grinning.
“How’s Dooley doing? We missed our trip to Meadowgate because of the snow, and with Christmas on us, it’ll be January before we get out there.”
“Well, Father,” said Russell, rolling his hat between his palms, “mournful is the word for that boy.”
“Mournful? Dooley?”
“Yes, sir. That’s th’ word.”
“What’s the trouble?”
Russell hesitated, looking at the floor. “Well, Father, it’s ’is mama. He’s bad homesick.”
“Can’t he go home to visit? I’ve been meaning to ask that.”
“I reckon he could . . .”
Father Tim waited.
“But t’ tell th’ truth, I reckon he cain’t . . .”
Another silence.
“What is it, Russell? You need to share the truth with me, if you will. What exactly is wrong with your daughter?”
“Nerves,” Russell mumbled.
“Nerves?”
The old man looked up. His face was sad. "Liquor, t’ tell th’ truth. His mama lays drunk.”
"I’m sorry.”
“She let all ’er young ’uns go, all five. Jus’ give ’em out like candy. I’d ’ve took two, if I could, but . . .” He shrugged, then coughed again. “Th’ boy was th’ oldest, been takin’ care of them little ’uns all ’is life, near
ly. They were snatched up like a bunch of kittens in a box, one give here, another give yonder, it’s an awful bad thing for th’ boy.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t know.” He felt immeasurably sad for Dooley.
Russell held his hat over his mouth as another fit of coughing overcame him. When it was over, his face was ashen.
“What are you doing for that cough, Russell?”
“A little of this an’ a little of that, you might say.”
“How’s your Christmas looking?”
“Oh, we’ll get by, me ’n th’ boy.”
“I’d like to see you do more than get by.” He pulled out his upper right-hand desk drawer and felt for the packet of bills. He had banked a thousand dollars of Pearly’s “happiness” money and kept some cash for times like these.
He handed Russell a crisp hundred-dollar bill.
“In the name of the Lord, Russell, get the boy a tree, and string some lights, if you can.”
“I thank you, Father,” Russell said, looking embarrassed and relieved. “Do you reckon th’ Lord would mind if we had a nice ham out of th’ change?”
“Mind? Why, I think He’d mind if you didn’t! And here, this is for that cough.” He took a twenty-dollar bill out of his pocket.
The sexton folded the bills respectfully and tucked them into his overalls pocket. “I thank you, Father. We finished mulchin’ them rhododendrons before it snowed, I thought you orght t’ know.”
Rhododendrons. Mulch. Ashes!
He remembered the fall day he’d gone around to the side door where Russell was mulching. He’d found ashes that looked like somebody had cleaned out their barbecue grill. He remembered asking Russell where the ashes came from, and then he’d borrowed Russell’s gloves and worked the ashes into the soil.
Suddenly, he knew it just as sure as he was sitting there. He’d buried the remains of the double-dealing Parrish Guthrie in the church rhododendron bed.
In the fall, somebody had emptied the ashes out the side door. Then, he reasoned, they’d put the jewels in the clean urn, where they thought they’d be safe. In most churches, columbariums were not often moved about, and their own had not been touched in fully three years.
He was horrified to think it was a parishioner. Yet, who else but a parishioner would know about the closet, and know that the door was scarcely ever opened? He found he was going over and over the list of members, questioning each name. It was a process that left him angrily depressed. The discovery of those stones had been a wicked intrusion that had robbed him of peace and tranquillity during a season in which both were greatly longed for.
The concert reading and musicale drew a packed house, and the choir had, in his opinion, reached a new pinnacle of praise. After the event at church, the choir proceeded out the church doors and along Main Street, caroling in the chill evening air, carrying lanterns. They made a glowing procession along the old street, stopping here and there in an open shop for hot cider and cookies.
A tenor and a baritone broke away from the choir and went along the dark, cold creek bank, to the little house of Homeless Hobbes, where they warmed themselves by the wood stove and lustily sang, together with their host, as many carols as they had strength left to deliver.
The rector had the caroling choir finish up at the rectory, where he laid a fire in the study and spread out a feast that Puny had spent days preparing. Curried shrimp, honey-glazed ham, hot biscuits, cranberry salad, fried chicken, roasted potatoes with rosemary, and brandied fruit were set out in generous quantities.
The little group gathered around the roaring fire and, as the last carol of the evening, sang something they knew to be their rector’s great favorite.
“In the bleak midwinter,” ran the first lines of Christina Rossetti’s hymn, “frosty wind made moan, earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone . . .”
Then, the poignant last verse: “What can I give him, poor as I am? If I were a shepherd, I would bring a lamb; if I were a wise man, I would do my part; yet what I can I give him . . . give my heart.”
That’s the key! he thought, as they pulled on heavy coats and gloves, mufflers and boots. Then, with much laughter and warm hugs, they trooped out the door and into the biting wind.
“The Lord be with you!” he called, his breath forming gray puffs on the stinging air.
“And also with you!”
For a long time afterward, he sat by the fire, feeling the joy of Christmas, and knowing with unsearchable happiness that Christ did, indeed, live in his heart. Not because he was a “preacher.” Not because he was, after a fashion, “good.” But because, long ago, he had asked Him to.
He was working on his homily, which he intended to deliver on Christmas morning, glad to be by the study fire instead of out in the howling wind. He was glad, too, for the soup Puny had left simmering on the back burner, for it gave the house not only a mouthwatering fragrance, but a certain cheer.
When his mind wandered from the homily, he admired the tall spruce, garlanded with strings of colored lights like he remembered from his childhood in Holly Springs, and hung with ornaments that, somehow, had made it through dozens of Christmases past.
There was such a quantity of gifts stacked under the tree that he was mildly embarrassed.
Walter and Katherine had sent what he foolishly believed to be an electric train. Miss Sadie had given him a very large package tied with a red bow. Dooley had made him a present in school. Winnie Ivey wrote on hers: I didn’t bake this, but I hope you enjoy it, anyway.
Emma, who always liked to reveal the identity of her presents, had given him a gift certificate from the Collar Button, with which he planned to buy the first new pajamas he’d owned in years.
On and on, the presents went. And who was there to open them with him? There was the rub for a bachelor.
Occasionally, he would go to the garage and stand looking at the red bicycle. None of the presents under his tree inspired the excitement he felt in helping give Dooley Barlowe the desire of his heart.
He had tied a huge bow on the handlebars and made a card that read: To Dooley from Dooley, and also from his friend, the preacher. When you see this, please don’t go to hollerin’.
When he heard the knock, he thought it was Barnabas scratching.
Then, he heard it again.
Dooley Barlowe stood at the back door, out of breath and shivering in a thin jacket.
“Granpaw’s bad off sick,” he said, looking desperate. “You got t’ come.”
He gave the boy a down jacket, gloves, and a wool hat, and, with the icy wind scorching their faces, the two sped off on the motor scooter toward Russell Jacks’s house.
This time next year, he thought, I’ll be driving my car again. It is eight long years since I gave it up for Lent, and that’s long enough.
“Pneumonia,” said Hoppy.
The rector wasn’t surprised.
When he and Dooley arrived at Russell’s house, they had found the old man in bed, scarcely able to breathe and with a frightening rattle in his chest. He had stoked up the embers in the stove, covered the sexton with blankets from Dooley’s cot, and, because there was no telephone, rode to the hospital where he ordered the ambulance to fetch his friend, along with the frightened boy.
Hoppy had come on the run from his house three blocks away. “We’ve got our work cut out for us,” he said. “He’s in bad shape. Has the boy got a place to go?”
Father Tim looked at Dooley, whose face was ashen. “He’ll come home with me.”
"Are you two on that bloody motor scooter?”
"We are.”
“Park it in the hospital garage, for God’s sake. I’ll send you home with Nurse Herman.”
“You really don’t . . .”
“Oh, but I really do! It’s twenty degrees and dropping, and if I’m going to be a church regular, I’d like to have a live preacher in the pulpit.”
When they came home from the hospital, Barnabas bounded to the back door, put his
front paws on Dooley’s shoulders, and licked his face with happy abandon.
" ’is ol’ dog’s got bad breath.”
“He spoke well of you,” replied Father Tim, helping Dooley out of the down jacket.
“Is granpaw goin’ t’ die?”
“I don’t think so.”
Dooley took off his hat and gloves, dropped them on the floor, and walked away.
“Dooley . . .”
He looked up at the rector.
The rector looked down at the hat and gloves. A long moment passed before the boy sighed heavily and picked them up. “Stayin’ around here ain’t goin’ t’ be any fun,” he muttered.
“If I were you, I wouldn’t make that decision just yet. Put your hat and gloves right here in the bin. Hang your coat on this peg. Then I’ve got something to show you.”
When they stepped into the study, which was still warm from the fire on the hearth, Dooley saw the fragrant spruce that reached all the way to the beamed ceiling. It twinkled with hundreds of colored lights, and underneath were presents, dozen upon dozen. “Maybe stayin’ around here ain’t goin’ t’ be ’at bad,” he said.
Dooley stepped into Father Tim’s pajama pants, pulled the drawstring tight, and rolled the legs above his ankles. Then he buttoned the top over his undershirt and pulled on a pair of green socks. Over this, he put a burgundy terry cloth robe, which just touched the floor, and tied it with a sash.
“Well, what do you think?” asked the rector, who had also changed into a robe and pajamas, and was filling soup bowls at the counter.
“It’s good you’re short,” said Dooley, pointing to the hem of the robe. “’is ol’ thing’s jis’ right on me.”
The phone rang.
“Looks like viral pneumonia,” said Hoppy. “That’s a tough one, because it doesn’t respond to treatment with antibiotics. We’re giving him oxygen, and we’ve removed a piece of lung tissue, so we’ll know more tomorrow. I’ll call you.”
“You’re in my prayers.”
“That’s a good place to be,” said Hoppy, hanging up.
“Is granpaw goin’ t’ die?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Let’s eat, then,” said Dooley.
Sometime in the early morning, he woke up. While Barnabas snored, he stared at the ceiling, praying for Russell Jacks and Hoppy Harper, for Cynthia Coppersmith and Homeless Hobbes, and anyone else the Holy Spirit called to mind.