by Jan Karon
He was seldom away from her. Once, with the grannies in Mitford, he had begged to come home and she had driven in to get him and he’d not gone again. But it would be good for him to spend time with his dad and his dog. She had to start letting go even though she had just started holding on.
‘Yes. All right.’ She stooped and gave him a hug. ‘But I’ll miss you to pieces.’
‘An’ Charley can go, too?’
‘That’s a lot of passengers—two busy dogs and a boy.’
‘Charley can ride in th’ crew cab an’ I can hold Teddy.’
‘Ask Dad,’ she said.
On his way downstairs, he thought that doing neat stuff took a lot of running back and forth.
11
MITFORD
MONDAY, OCTOBER 19
He missed his morning coffee—the heft of a favored mug, the aroma of fresh-ground beans, the livelier conversation with his wife. Drinking water in the morning didn’t get it.
He downed his glassful and eyed hers.
‘Drink your water, Kav’na.’
She Who Was Already Dressed drank her water, gave him a look. ‘I’ve tried to avoid the subject, since you dislike it.’
‘What now?’
‘You need a haircut.’
‘I just had a haircut.’
‘You had a haircut before Dooley’s graduation. That was May, this is October.’
A sermon was brewing, and not from him.
‘Hair is made up of protein, Timothy. It grows. Compare, if you will, the necessity of the regular haircut to the bed that must be made a thousand times over, the dishes that must be washed into eternity.’
Oh, boy. And where would he go to have the deed done with any semblance of skill? Considering the few hairs he had left, how much damage could anybody do?
“It’s turning into curls at your neckline. Curls are darling, but these are way out of hand.’
‘Curls are back,’ he said.
‘Back from where?’
‘I saw it on the evening news.’
‘All the evening news has to talk about in this broken world is curls coming back?’
‘It was local news.’
Up and packing her painting gear, grabbing a bottle of water from the fridge . . .
‘I could ride out to Meadowgate and ask Lily,’ he said.
‘Lily has been up to here with canning pumpkin and getting ready for Beth tomorrow and now I think she’s working on a yard sale.’
His mother and Peggy had canned pumpkin. He didn’t realize that people still canned pumpkin.
There was Shirlene, of course, who had taken over A Cut Above; she did what she called Mars/Venus cuts. Not a promising thought. Besides, she was still trying to sell him a go in her spray-tan machine. That would be a hassle.
‘I think your Wesley barber is the one for the job. You can have the car tomorrow.’ She gave him a peck on the cheek. ‘Love you,’ she said, collecting her car key.
‘Love you back.’
‘What are you doing today?’
‘Umm. Lunch with the Turkey Club.’
‘Great. The shower rod needs to be put back, the thingamajig fell off the wall. See you this afternoon, I’m painting with Irene.’
Always painting with Irene! Would it never end?
‘The hospital auction will be here before you know it,’ she said. ‘And I forgot to tell you that Irene is going to Florida tomorrow and I’ll be working at home.’
‘Will I ever get to see what you’ve been painting?’
‘Soon, sweetheart, soon.’
He followed her to the door. ‘Are you happy with what you’re doing?’
‘Some days, yes. Some days, no.’
Right there was a profile of life in general.
He waved to his wife as she backed her Mini Cooper from the garage. He did not want to drive to Wesley tomorrow, and he especially did not want to drive to Wesley to get his hair cut. He did not enjoy the barber in Wesley, who was sour as a pickle.
He did what he usually did about seemingly insignificant matters:
He prayed.
• • •
Granpa!’ Tommy dumping his books in the chair at the side door.
‘Hey, Granpa!’ Timmy shrugging out of his backpack and hoodie.
‘Our best chicken won a ribbon at school!’ Sissy running in and giving forth a squeezing hug. ‘We brought you an egg from her; her name is Loretta, remember?’
‘I do.’
‘It’s in my coat pocket!’
And here was Sassy, wrinkling her nose and living up to her name. ‘Granpa, your hair is all long and funny lookin’!’
Four faux grans who felt utterly real, all streaming into the kitchen at once. And Puny bringing up the rear and looking exactly like herself, freckles and all.
‘Oh, hey, Father, ’scuse all this, I forgot it’s a teachers’ workday, it never entered my mind to check th’ calendar this mornin’. They’ll be good as gold, cross my heart an’ hope to die. Sit down this minute, ever’ one of you, an’ start readin’.
‘Have you had your breakfast, Father? Looks like there’s your cereal bowl sittin’ out. You should have more than cereal, it’s good fiber but not nourishin’, I can tell you that. How about we poach that egg for you? With a little whole wheat toast and sugar-free jam? Where’s Miss Cynthy?’
‘Off to paint. Missing all the fun.’
‘Oh,’ said Sissy, extending a hand dipped in yolk. ‘Loretta’s egg! It smushed in my coat pocket!’
‘Yuck!’ chimed a chorus of three twins.
‘Go wash,’ said Puny. ‘An’ do not use th’ nice towels, those are for comp’ny. Here, use paper towels to dry your hands an’ stick a wad in your pocket to absorb some of that mess. Then turn your pocket out an’ I’ll try to wash it.’
‘Egg smusher, egg smusher!’ cried Tommy.
Sissy burst into tears.
‘Oh, for Pete’s sake, Sissy! She’ll listen to you, Father, please tell her not to cry.’
‘Don’t cry,’ he said, dry as a crumb. Missing all the fun, that wife of his.
‘And you, Tommy Guthrie—another word from you an’ no more robot cars in this lifetime. Lord have mercy, let me git my head straight if I can. I’ve been gone so long I don’t know where to start! Uh-oh, I see dust bunnies all around th’ kitchen island.’
She swiped her hand over the top of the refrigerator. ‘An’ look at this. Nobody’s dusted up there since . . . ’
‘Since the Boer War,’ he said, unfazed by any reproof. ‘Why don’t I start by taking the troops to Sweet Stuff?’
‘Yayyy!’
‘Then for a good, long read at Happy Endings?’
Applause, backed by a whistle from Tommy.
‘And last, to the Local to pick up a fryer to roast for supper, and say hello to Chucky, of course.’
‘Chucky-y-y!’ said Sassy, who was crazy about dogs, but had to be satisfied with chickens.
‘Oh, thank you! Lord bless you!’ said Puny. ‘An’ potato salad, would y’all like a nice bowl of potato salad to go with your roast chicken?’
‘If there’s time and potatoes, absolutely. And oh yes, the ironing. That would be a very good place to start.’
‘Has th’ ironin’ basket toppled over yet from bein’ stacked to th’ ceilin’?’
‘It’s at the tipping point,’ he said. ‘At the tipping point.’
Things were back to normal in the Kavanagh household. Puny Guthrie’s sabbatical was over, never to occur again if he could possibly help it.
• • •
Avis had walked home to get a bill he needed to pay.
Maybe this was a good time to go through what he’d been thinkin’ to do.
Chucky sat on the side of the bed next to Avis,
who was speaking directly into the mirror on the door.
‘I sure hate to ask you this . . . ’
Not a good opener. Besides, he looked too worried when he said it. Best to look upbeat.
‘I don’t exactly know how to put it, but . . .’
He cleared his throat.
‘This is the craziest thing I ever asked anybody to do . . .’
He stared at the doorknob for a minute, then went back to talking to the mirror.
‘Just get to it, Avis. Don’t beat around th’ bush, okay? Here goes.’ He hacked out a cough. ‘I know it’s a lot to ask, an’ I know you’re a busy man . . . ’
No. He could not say what he had to say. He put his head in his hands.
Chucky looked at himself in the mirror. Tilted his head to the left, to the right, perked up his ears.
‘Yo! Okay! Got it!
‘A ham a month! We know how you like a good ham. Acorn-fed, fork-tender, sweet as sugar, low in sodium. Twelve Valley hams! Top of th’ line! That’ll get you through Easter, Thanksgivin’, Christmas, birthdays, you name it. Here’s th’ deal . . .’
Wait a minute. A ham a month would kill both him an’ his wife, so that was a bad idea. Pasta! All th’ fresh-made, hand-cut pasta they could eat—for what? Two months? No, make it three!
But wait. Way too many carbs. On the other hand, wadn’t it pasta that made Sophia Loren look so good? He still had her picture he’d saved off the front of a calendar.
‘How about if we just wing it?’ he said to Chucky. ‘That’s what we’ll do. We won’t try to figure out how to say it, we’ll just cross our fingers an’ go for it . . . ’
He could hear it all th’ way from Charlotte. Th’ clock was tickin’ at the Hometown Grocers Association.
• • •
Her mom and Aunt Louise were shelving books and she was sitting with Coot at the tiny table in the children’s section. She loved teachers’ workdays.
‘Do you think Samantha should give out recipes or not?’ said Grace. ‘If not, I will have to erase a lot of the fourth page and come up with something new or maybe start over. I would hate to start over.’
‘What’s wrong with recipes?’ said Coot.
‘They are really hard to write and I only have two recipes that I know by heart. Plus they fill up a lot of room in a story.’
‘People like to eat.’ He held out his open bag of Cheetos, but she didn’t take one.
‘I could let the story do other things, but I can’t think of any other things for it to do.’ She had read an article in Stone Soup, written by someone eleven years old. ‘Writer’s Block: It Could Happen to You.’
‘Maybe you’re in too big of a hurry,’ he said.
‘I can’t wait to finish and see it be a real book. I will draw the cover with a Sharpie.’
He thought twice before he said it. Shifted hisself on the little chair that was like sittin’ on your fist an’ leanin’ back on your thumb. ‘Maybe it needs more action.’
She did not like to hear this, but he pressed on.
‘Dr. Seuss books is always full of action. Action was his big thing.’
‘I am not an action person. Louisa May Alcott was not an action person except the fight scene but nobody got hurt.’
‘Who is Louisa May what-you-said?’
‘Somebody famous and dead.’ She sighed. Why was she trying to figure this out when she had a pile of assigned reading? And a spelling test on Wednesday? Spelling was not exactly her forte, a word she just happened to know how to spell.
He felt a shiver that he recognized as an idea. He was respectful of an idea and whispered it. ‘You could let th’ cow git loose!’
She looked at him and blinked.
‘You could let Morris th’ pup chase th’ cow into a fancy store if they have a fancy store in that tiny town.’ He was excited and forgot to whisper. ‘An’ Miz Oglevy . . . ’
‘Ogleby,’ she said.
‘She could chase th’ cow an’ be afraid it would knock things over in th’ store, but th’ cow don’t knock nothin’ over, so guess who knocks things over?’
‘Morris!’ she said.
‘Nossir! Not Morris.’
‘Who, then?’
He thought her eyes looked big as walnuts behind her glasses.
‘I ain’t tellin’. You have to guess.’
Grace Murphy was a sober-minded young’un. He was happy to see her bust out in a big grin, all for his one little bitty idea.
• • •
Precisely like herding cats, he thought, as they poured into the sugared serenity of Sweet Stuff.
‘I’ll have, ummm, a napoleon!’ said Sissy.
‘Yum-o!’ said Timmy.
‘Yuck-o!’ said Tommy.
‘Napoleon was the leader of France,’ said Sassy. ‘But he didn’t have anything to do with naming the napoleon with a lowercase n. It was an Italian dessert with a name that kind of sounded like Napoleon. I’ll have, ummmm . . . ’
‘Cream horn for me!’ said Timmy.
‘Fig Newton for me!’ said Tommy.
‘Are you crazy?’ chorused the girls. ‘A Fig Newton?’
Everybody but Tommy was cracking up. This was the most hilarious moment of their lives now or in the foreseeable future.
‘Get somethin’ with cream!’ said Sassy.
‘Get somethin’ with chocolate!’ said Sissy.
‘Shut up,’ said Tommy. ‘I’ll get what I want.’
‘Granpa,’ said Sissy, ‘he said shut up, he is not supposed to say shut up, especially as he is only seven.’
‘I’ll have a lemon square,’ said Sassy, standing on tiptoe and pressing her nose to the bakery case.
‘Ugh-o,’ said Tommy. ‘Sour ball.’
‘Settle down!’ he said in his pulpit voice. They turned and looked at him with something like wonder. ‘And please demonstrate to me that you know how to say please and thank you to Mrs. Kendall.’
‘Thank you, Miz Kendall!’
‘Please, please!’
‘Thank you and please!’
‘Thank you very much, Miz Kendall!’
It was amazing what a good dose of pulpit voice could do.
‘Granpa,’ said Sassy, ‘I want to eat my lemon square under the umbrella across the street.’
‘We don’t buy food from someone and enjoy it under the umbrella of someone else. We’ll eat here, wash our hands, and move along to the bookstore.’
This decree, apparently, was the end of the world. Everybody was being raptured but Sassy Guthrie.
She pulled out a chair and splat! went the lemon square, upside down on the bakery floor.
Sassy burst into tears.
‘Why all the crying today?’ he asked, picking up the blasted thing with a napkin.
‘I’ll get that,’ said Winnie, coming with a mop. ‘We’ll get you another. Not to cry, okay?’
‘Thank you, Winnie, bless your heart. We’re a handful.
‘Now,’ he said to those assembled, ‘what’s with the crying?’
‘We don’t cry,’ said Timmy.
‘Never,’ said Tommy.
‘Why not?’ He broke his sugar-free donut in half. Coffee would be good, but c’est la vie.
‘It’s dumb to cry. Girls cry,’ said Tommy.
‘What do boys do?’
Timmy and Tommy looked at each other.
‘We holler . . . an’ stuff,’ said Tommy, unsure of how to answer this.
‘I cry,’ he said.
‘Granpa!’ said Sissy.
‘You cry?’ said Sassy.
‘I do.’
‘What about?’ said Timmy.
‘Oh, the state of the world. The grace of God in my life. Miss Cynthy’s oyster pie, when she makes it. Getting old. Feelin
g grateful. Crying is good.’
Timmy and Tommy looked at each other, rolled their eyes, shrugged.
And he had signed up for this!
• • •
At Happy Endings, his book-loving brood scattered to the four corners.
Grace watched him climb onto the second rung of the step stool and inscribe the Thomas Mann quote he had discovered last night.
A writer is someone . . .
‘You mustn’t fall off the step stool,’ she said, sober as a judge, ‘or the insurance people will go insane.’
‘I’m not going to fall off, I promise.’
‘Hello, hello,’ said their police captain. ‘Anybody home?’
‘Mama and Aunt Louise are in back. I can help you!’ said Grace.
‘Hey, Father.’
‘Hey, yourself,’ he said . . . for whom writing is more difficult . . . ‘How’s the police business?’
‘Steady,’ said Adele. She would not ask how’s the retirement business; she knew he could be touchy about that.
‘I need a cookbook,’ said the captain.
‘What kind?’ said Grace.
‘I don’t know. Somethin’ . . . how about somethin’ spicy?’
Grace blinked behind her bifocals. ‘Spicy.’ She was in over her head. ‘I’ll go ask Mama.’
‘What are you up to these days, Father?’
. . . than for other people. Thomas Mann.
‘Nothing much. Just need to get a haircut.’ That was all he had going in his life, getting a haircut. He stepped down from the stool and folded it and leaned it against the wall. He had been happy being up to something, if only a foot or two off the floor on the second rung.
‘Where do you get it cut?’
‘Ah,’ he said, ‘it’s a long story.’ He’d had haircuts by a fellow in a bait and tackle shop in Whitecap, by a former schoolteacher of a remote Episcopal mission school, by a woman wearing pink capris, by Harley Welch, Lily Flower, you name it.
‘You name it,’ he said.
She adjusted her holster belt. ‘I cut J.C.’s hair.’
‘Good, good,’
‘Saves fifteen bucks,’ she said. ‘I’d be glad to give you a cleanup.’
‘Oh, well . . . ’
‘Just need scissors and a little paper towel. Ten minutes.’