by Jan Karon
‘You recommend fries in editorials?’
J.C. grunted. ‘It keeps me offa politics.’
He recalled that last year J.C. said he would retire when pigs fly. Maybe pigs should hop to it.
• • •
Dooley had dispensed vet advice for Truman’s paw and invited them to come out Sunday morning around ten-thirty.
He would celebrate Morning Prayer and Holy Communion, and Dooley would make his famous deep-dish pizza, which they would enjoy on the porch. Then home to Mitford to finish his sermon for Monday’s funeral, after which he and Cynthia would be present at the Sunday-evening viewing.
He liked having a plan.
He thought it would be good to sing a hymn after Morning Prayer at Meadowgate. A cappella, of course. He noodled his noggin, as Uncle Billy used to say. Ha! Yes. Hymn 686. Three glorious verses! He would stash the hymnals in his yellow backpack, including a hymnal for Jack Tyler’s very own.
He sang as he changed shoes for their walk.
‘O to grace how great a debtor / Daily I’m constrained to be! / Let Thy goodness, like a fetter / Bind my wandering heart to Thee.’
His spirit lifted.
Twelve years out from a weekly pulpit, he was beginning to like retirement. He no longer needed the drama of full-time priesting, the mile-a-minute mishaps and consternations of the human horde. His end of the horde was all he could meaningfully hold up.
• • •
Okay,’ he said, offering his arm. ‘We’re off.’
‘Three walks per week divided into a hundred and fifty minutes. How much is that?’
Artists! They could never do arithmetic.
‘Fifty minutes per walk. Piece of cake. You’ve been sitting at a drawing board for four decades, you can afford to sacrifice fifty minutes for your heart.’
‘I have a good heart.’
‘You do. Everybody knows that.’ He patted his bulging jacket pocket. ‘I’ve got our mesh bag, we should stop by the Local before the Peppers, um, the Peepers arrive.’
‘How about what I’m wearing?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘What do people wear to walk for their health? Is this a power walk? Will these jeans work?’
They could stand here chatting all day. ‘You look great, not to worry.’ He reproffered the arm. ‘Here we go.’
Up the sidewalk they trotted to the corner of Wisteria and Main, hooked a right, did a promenade past the Collar Button, Sweet Stuff, the glum office building, Village Shoes, and Happy Endings, then hooked a left on Lilac Road.
Left on Ivy Lane, left on Wisteria, stepping lively, and right into the alley behind Feel Good, where his wife slowed to a crawl. Looking at birds, coming to a complete standstill to view cloud formations . . .
‘Cardio!’ he said. ‘They want cardio!’
Trooping past the unkempt rear garden of Edie Adams’s old house and Mitford Blossoms’s trash cans and the back lot of Melvin’s Bike Repair, where Melvin was working on a ten-speed and tipped his cap to Cynthia.
He almost never got to parade his good-looking, much-younger wife through town; he was having a wonderful time.
‘How’s your heart?’ he said.
‘Beating,’ she said, breathless.
‘Great! Wonderful!’
Warmer this afternoon than expected. He had broken a sweat.
A lot of cars in the Lord’s Chapel parking lot. Getting ready for the reception on Monday, of course, and setting up for tomorrow’s service and the fancy supply guy from Morganton with his Cambridge lauds. In days of yore, yours truly would have been up to his elbows, if needed, in arranging altar flowers, sweeping the vestry . . .
‘So,’ he said, ‘while we’re here, let’s run in and check things out.’
Her cheeks were flushed, her blue eyes bright, her hair in that sort of askew way he was crazy about.
‘Five minutes,’ he said.
• • •
There appeared to be a small meeting going on in the parish hall, so they stood in the doorway, respectful.
‘When you die,’ Lois Burton was informing Lilah, ‘your body is usually hauled over to Wesley, where the funeral director if you see him on the street in off-hours is wearing a T-shirt. I just saw him rigged out in one that said Make Cornbread, Not War. Some people find this sort of behavior refreshing, but I find it tacky.’
‘If your standards are higher,’ said a committee member he didn’t recognize, ‘they ship you down to Holding. Holding has a funeral director in a suit and tie who even carries a handkerchief.’
‘That,’ said Lois, ‘is where they should have sent Esther, bless her heart, she had high standards.’
‘Ladies,’ he said, ‘I know we’re interrupting. Forgive us, please.’ He introduced his wife to those whom they hadn’t previously known. Lois was a former parishioner, sprung from the Methodists some years ago.
‘Have you heard the talk about a funeral home coming to Main Street?’ said Lois.
They hadn’t, actually.
‘To th’ bike repair. I don’t think a funeral parlor would be good marketing for our picturesque village. People do not want that kind of place in their face. On a back street, maybe, but not on Main. Besides, what we really need in this town is a dry cleaner.’
‘The Wesley funeral home called me this morning,’ said Lilah. ‘Wanting to know what she would be buried in.’
Lilah, he thought, appeared to be a caring and thoughtful woman.
‘A dress, not a suit,’ said Lois. ‘Something floral. She liked mauve. Doris Pugh would know all that, she’s at th’ Hardware today, we could ask her.’
‘That would be good,’ he said.
His wife had claimed a chair and was fanning herself with a pew bulletin.
‘What to do about her hair is the question,’ said Lilah. ‘She doesn’t have family to think of these things. The funeral home is asking.’
‘I don’t know why they bothered to ask,’ said Lois. ‘In Wesley, they automatically do up your hair like the queen if you’re over fifty-five. Even if you’re a day over fifty-five, you get the part down the middle and a curl on either side. It’s company policy.’
‘That settles it,’ said Cynthia. ‘I’m being cremated.’
• • •
Up Main, passing Oxford Antiques and Dora Pugh’s Hardware and the Irish Woolen Shop and the drugstore and the bank. Crossing Wisteria and whizzing past the Collar Button and Sweet Stuff and the glum offices and Village Shoes and hooking a right into Happy Endings and their O for October sale.
‘Fifty minutes of shoe leather!’ he said, tapping the face of his watch. ‘On the dot! Plus we’ll add a few bonus minutes to stop by Avis and cut through the alley to home. Today’s route will be our plan.’
‘Your plan.’
‘Somebody has to have a plan,’ he said.
• • •
Coot was vacuuming the floors at Happy Endings to the rhythm of something he memorized this morning.
He threw up his hand to th’ preacher an’ Miz Kavanagh without missing a beat.
‘The corkboards are so full,’ Hope said over the roar of the machine, ‘we’re writing quotes on the wall. You really started something, Father.’
Grace took his hand and Cynthia’s. ‘I’ll show you mine,’ she said.
They were led to the poetry section, where there was a great scribble on the wall. Dozens of scribbles.
‘Here’s mine,’ said Grace. ‘Under a quote by Dr. Seuss.’
He stooped and read her quote aloud. ‘Next to Sarah and Leslie, a book is my best friend. Grace Elizabeth Murphy.’
‘Well done!’ said Cynthia. ‘Succinct and charmingly stated.’
‘Thank you,’ said Grace. ‘And that one is my favorite.’
It was a sketch of a dog quoting
J. M. Barrie. It is all very well to be able to write books, but can you wiggle your ears?
‘Okay, let me at it,’ said Cynthia. ‘Is there a special pen?’
‘A Sharpie.’ Graced handed it over.
‘Either . . . write . . . something . . . worth . . . reading,’ Cynthia quoted aloud as she inscribed the wall, ‘or . . . do something . . . worth . . . writing. Ben . . . Franklin.’
‘Amen!’ he said. He had once tried writing a book of essays and scrapped the worthless project.
Grace looked at him through her bifocals. ‘Now you.’
‘I don’t know if I can recall a good quote this very minute.’
‘You can just think about it if you want to.’
‘Give me a minute. Maybe I can come up with something.’ He was a big quote collector, had two books full of the stuff. He scratched his head.
‘Yes! Got it! Here’s one.’
‘Write big,’ said Grace.
‘A . . . classic . . . is . . . a . . . book . . . that . . . has . . . never . . . finished . . . saying . . . what . . . it . . . has . . . to . . . say. Italo Calvino.’
‘I love that,’ said his wife. ‘Perfect.’
‘That makes thirty-four quotes on the wall,’ said Grace. ‘I’m counting. When we run out of space that people can reach, Mom or Aunt Louise will get on a ladder and write the person’s quote up there. Coot can’t do it because he can’t write as good as he can read.’
‘Aha.’
‘And customers can’t go on the ladder. Do you know why?’
‘I don’t.’
‘Because of insurance.’
‘Good thinking,’ he said. ‘Now, moving along to business. What O titles are sailing out of here?’
‘Oliver Twist,’ said Grace.
‘We have it.’
‘Our Town!’ said Grace. ‘But I think that is a play.’
‘We have that, too,’ said Cynthia. ‘So let’s buy an O title for Coot. How about Old Man and the Sea?’
Grace nodded, approving. ‘He’s making a library and doesn’t have it. I’m writing a book myself. I have four pages totally in cursive.’
‘Wonderful!’ said Cynthia. ‘I’m always thrilled to have four pages.’
‘I don’t have a title yet. When I have a title, I think I should put my name on the front as big as the title. Because if I had not written the book, there would not be a title, and so these two things are equal.’
‘Agreed. Absolutely.’
‘Would you like to hear a joke?’
‘Always.’
‘How do chickens bake a cake?’
‘How?’
‘From scratch.’
Cynthia had a laugh.
‘Aha,’ he said. ‘Very good.’
‘You didn’t laugh.’
‘True,’ he said. ‘I forgot to laugh. But it’s a good joke. Really.’
‘I could tell you one more.’
‘Tell away,’ he said.
‘Where do cows go on their first date?’
‘I give up,’ said Cynthia.
‘The mooovies.’
They had an extra laugh on their way to the Local. Grace Murphy in her bifocals. Her curly hair. Her ardent solemnity. And to think the world might have lost this perfectly unique human being.
‘A nerdy little kid,’ he said with affection.
• • •
Coot Hendrick liked being what they called a town fixture.
His people had settled Mitford and he knew its early history as good as the back of his hand. He liked how his great-great-great-great-great-granddaddy had rode up th’ mountain with his English wife settin’ behind him on his horse. He had once known the name of the horse but forgot it, an’ since his mama died, there was nobody to ask. Maybe it was Trigger, but he didn’t think so.
He liked the way his place above th’ bookstore creaked when th’ wind was blowin’. It had scared him on his first night three winters back; it sounded like th’ old buildin’ had the shivers. He’d been tryin’ to read Where the Wild Things Are to put his head to sleep. But he’d laid awake, froze as a Popsicle, hearin’ sounds an’ scared to breathe. Nossir, he would not read any more scary stories, there was enough of scary in this world.
Except for the whisper of tires on the nighttime street below, things up here was quiet as a settin’ hen. He didn’t have a TV; he’d set the bloomin’ thing on th’ street when he sold his mama’s place. Besides, Doc Wilson said he was losin’ his hearin’.
‘Do you hunt?’ asked the doc.
‘Nossir,’ he said. ‘I don’t kill nothin’.’
‘Listen to loud music, play drums?’
‘Nossir.’
‘Then it’s very likely genetic.’
‘Very likely what?’
‘Comes down your family line.’
‘Say I’m gon’ have a good time?’
• • •
He and Cynthia had made a darned good dinner, cooking and cleaning up as a team.
And now, what could be better than a handwritten honest-to-Pete letter in a hand-addressed envelope, with transit recompensed by an Elvis stamp?
He inserted a kitchen knife under the flap and sliced open the envelope and removed three crisp pages. A feast. He was happy.
Dear Brother,
Allow me to abide by an old rule for letter writing, which commands that I leave unmentioned what you already know and instead tell you something new.
I have found Eva’s grave.
The joy of this discovery is beyond my powers of description.
For nearly forty years, I dared hope that by some miracle she may still be living, though every trace of her had vanished. Greater, however, than my hope to find her alive was the unrelenting need to find her at all.
To discover her grave has been to discover a somehow deeper love. She is now in a mysterious sense more than alive, more than real to me. You will understand how impossible it is to make such feelings comprehensible to another.
Dunbar wrote in ‘Love’s Apotheosis’:
I care not what the circling years
To me may do.
If, but in spite of time and tears,
You prove but true.
In the visit to her grave in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, I find that she has somehow proved true.
I sat on a bench by her headstone and talked, spilling every grief and happiness, then drove home to Holly Springs in a daze from which I may never recover. Indeed, I find myself keen on clinging to it! God has redeemed sorrow and given unbounded gladness for loss.
I believe I have succeeded in telling you something completely new! Further, the way in which I discovered her grave deserves a letter all its own. I will write again in a few days as soon as we get the garden cleaned out.
Tuscaloosa is but two hours and fifty-three minutes from my door. In the months prior to spring, I shall spend the days figuring which rose variety may work best at her grave site. The churchyard is of fertile river-bottom soil with good drainage. I hope you will give me your horticultural wisdom on suitable varieties.
I also hope you notice that in this letter I haven’t once mentioned my health—now that is new indeed! I confess it is extremely good.
You and Cynthia and Dooley and Lace and young Jack are ever in my prayers. Mama and Sister send love, as do I, your faithful brother in Christ,
Henry
P. S. Please write and tell me the many miracles on your end.
6
MEADOWGATE
SUNDAY, OCTOBER 4
The Feast Day of St. Francis of Assisi, the congregants kneeling on porch cushions by a wooden bench . . .
‘The gifts of God for the people of God. Take them in remembrance that Christ died for you, and feed on him in your hearts by faith, with
thanksgiving.’
He pressed the wafer into cupped palms. All those years of a parish family, and now this small, private family—his truest brethren, his cup overflowing.
‘The Body of our Lord Jesus Christ keep you in everlasting life, Cynthia.’
‘Amen.’
The wafer dissolving into the chamber of the heart.
‘ . . . in everlasting life, Lace.’
‘Amen.’
‘ . . . in everlasting life, Dooley.’
‘Amen.’
Joy upon joy.
The smallest palms lifted, baptized to receive. ‘ . . . in everlasting life, Jack.’
• • •
Granpa Tim! My new pig bank. For keepin’ money in.’
He dug deep—no change. Peeled off a five.
Jack shook his head. ‘It only takes th’ other money.’
‘I’ll give this to your mom. She’ll get it changed into quarters for you. How’s that?’
‘How many quarters will it be?’ Jack asked his mom.
‘Um, let’s see. In quarters . . .’
‘Twenty,’ said Dooley. ‘Big money.’
‘What can I buy when th’ bank gets full?’
‘Let’s talk about that when it gets full,’ said Dooley.
His mom smiled big. ‘Or you can just take it to the bank and start filling up your pig all over again.’
Jack tugged at the sleeve of his granpa. ‘Will you come swing with me?’
‘I will!’
‘You can push me an’ I can push you. We can go to th’ moon an’ back.’
‘Good plan,’ he said.
‘We need somebody to watch,’ said Jack.
‘That would be me,’ said Granny C.
• • •
After lunch, he and Dooley walked together past the corncrib and chicken lot, through the barn shed where the Beemer sat on blocks, and down to the cattle gate.
‘Great pizza, Doc.’
‘Thanks.’
‘You once said that music is in your head all the time. Still true? You sounded strong on 686.’
‘There’s a lot of other stuff in my head now. But yes, I miss singing.’
‘We’re looking for a soloist tomorrow. Esther liked 410, you used to sing it.’