by Jan Karon
‘Bull.’
She thought that one of the hardest parts of marriage was being loving when both partners were exhausted or wounded at the same time. When you had the least strength, that’s when you had to dig beyond your limits and grab whatever could be found and give it away.
She put the brush in the drawer and lay down beside him and with her finger outlined a heart on his back and he turned to her and smiled. Her husband laughed, grinned, whatever, but didn’t often smile. He had dug beyond to give her this.
‘Love you deep,’ he said.
The owl hooting in the tree by the kitchen porch . . .
17
MITFORD
TUESDAY, DECEMBER 1
On the day after Thanksgiving, promptly at dusk, the Christmas lights had switched on.
In a blink, the sullen winter street became a gleaming boulevard. Simultaneously, Christmas music coursed from the speakers at town hall—joyful stories everyone had somehow forgotten during the year, stories they craved to hear once again.
Until midnight each night through Christmas, trumpets would play, choirs rejoice, lights glitter beneath cold stars, and those who lived near Main Street would hear the voices of angels in their dreams.
Though lights and music were on time, the Christmas parade had been rescheduled.
The Mitford Muse had earlier announced in a front-page headline that the parade, traditionally held the Saturday after Thanksgiving at eleven o’clock, would be held Saturday, December 5, at two o’clock. There was a problem with the water main; details would follow from the town manager.
Such news was ill received. Phones rang at the Muse, the town office, the mayor’s office, and two or three inquiries ended up in the lap of the priest at Lord’s Chapel. People had plans for the traditional date; families were coming from out of town; food already bought for the Saturday after Thanksgiving would not last until the fifth of December. Some were still hacked over a Christmas parade in years past that had happened before Thanksgiving. What was the matter with people?
In a carefully prepared statement, the town manager released a flurry of broadsides to be installed on lampposts, taped on store windows, and available at checkout counters.
The street would be jackhammered at Wisteria and Main and repairs made to ‘a water pipe which had busted.’ The southbound lane would be closed. They would excavate the hole, requiring an excavator, an operator, two flaggers, two dump trucks, and the equipment truck from the fire department to keep the work site lit for men doing night work. ‘And that,’ wrote the manager, ‘is just the tip of the iceburg.’ Bottom line, they would be ‘dern lucky to get the job done by midnight of the fourth. Please detour to the highway or practice courtesy in the single lane. Thank you for your patience.’ End of discussion.
• • •
He sat at the kitchen island and ate a bowl of oatmeal with dried cranberries and honey. Drank a cup of strong tea, pined for caffeine.
Bong . . .
The chiming of the church bells. Seven A.M. Fifty degrees. A cold rain predicted for evening.
Bong . . .
It was one of those mornings when he craved the breakfast of his boyhood—country ham, two fried eggs, a buttered biscuit, grits salted by redeye gravy, chicory coffee perked on the stove and served straight up, thick as mud.
Though being a grocery guy was not up there with climbing Everest, it was rigorous in its own way. The run-up to Thanksgiving had half killed him, but he hadn’t mentioned it to anyone. He was seventy-seven and being half killed was interpreted as a sign of declining years.
In any case, he was beat at the end of the day, and a dash mindless. He had forgotten, for example, to open yesterday’s mail, something he rarely neglected to do. His wife was indifferent to mail, but he liked mail; he had high expectations of mail. Something wonderful would be revealed, a truth of some sort, or maybe a check for a large amount.
He grabbed the stack from his desk and took it to the sofa with a letter opener.
Is it earwax? Or is it hearing loss?
The usual from the Scooter Store.
Water bill, power bill.
Henry! His elegant, old-school handwriting and the Holly Springs postmark.
His wife floated in, hair every whichaway, gave him a kiss on the cheek. Having the uncommon ability to sleep like a teenager, she had lately been dead to the world when he came up to bed.
‘I haven’t seen much of you,’ she said.
‘You’re painting, I’m selling cabbages.’
‘Starting now, I’m taking a complete break. Irene and I have more than half our work done. Besides, Christmas is coming, you know.’
‘Tell me about it,’ he said. Yesterday they had rigged the store windows with lights, fake wreaths, and a plastic tree that shot open like an umbrella and spewed last year’s tinsel into the produce bins. They had also changed the music from elevator to Mormon Tabernacle. Though Advent was upon them, there was no trace of it to be found in the marketplace. Advent was a waiting period and no one liked to wait. Period.
‘I’ll get the Advent wreath today,’ she said. ‘We have candles.’
‘A letter from Henry!’ He held it aloft, like a trophy.
‘Read it to me while I get the coffee going. Did you have your banana?’
‘I forgot.’
She brought him a banana from the fruit bowl. ‘Your potassium,’ she said, but he was already reading the letter. He regretted that it was briefer than usual; they had spoiled each other with lengthy letters.
‘Dear Brother . . .
‘Holy smoke, listen to this. Henry and Lucille are herewith announcing their engagement!’
‘Hooray!’
‘He knows this is all happening quickly, but he says he loves her very much . . . and realizes he has no time to waste.’
‘Amen to that,’ she said. ‘When is the wedding?’
‘Next June.’
‘I thought he had no time to waste.’
‘Ah, let’s see. Lucille is having hip surgery in January and wishes to walk down the aisle, so June it is. Only six months, Kav’na, not much waste there. He asks us to save the date. June fourteenth.’
‘Dooley’s and Lace’s anniversary,’ she said. ‘Lovely!’
He could smell the coffee. ‘The timing, he says, works well for another reason. Lucille wants to carry a bouquet of Eva’s roses, which should be in full bloom for the wedding.’
‘I’m going to love Lucille.’
He let the whole notion sink in, feeling the astonishing happiness of it. Henry in love. Henry walking down the aisle. Henry, like himself, a late bloomer in the marriage department. ‘I’m thinking that he did his half by coming to the kids’ wedding; we can do our half and go to his. What do you say?’
‘Two halves make a whole! Yes! Absolutely.’
To think that he’d been a bachelor nodding over his books with but one known blood kinsman to his name—Walter. Now here he was with a wife, a son, a daughter-in-law, a grandson, a brother, and soon, a sister-in-law. He was excited.
She sat on the sofa with her mug of Arabica.
‘So, what are we doing for Christmas?’ he said. ‘Have you thought about it?’ In priestly days of yore, he was thinking about Christmas by mid-August.
‘The kids are asking us out for an early supper Christmas afternoon. I think they don’t want us to be lonely.’
‘We’re never lonely,’ he said. ‘Are we?’
They had a laugh.
‘They’ve just been here for Thanksgiving and we’ll have been there on the twelfth,’ he said, ‘and they’re coming in for the parade and going with us to Lucera. It would be good if they could get a break from us on Christmas Day . . .’ He was grinning big. ‘. . . but no way.’
‘You’re wonderful.’ She gave him a smooch. ‘I have goo
se bumps just thinking about it.’
When it came to the seventy-some Christmases of his life, this would be the Big One. All his ducks were in a row. He sat back, happy.
‘Other than that,’ she said, ‘being quiet would suit me this year.’
‘Quiet like how?’
‘On Christmas Eve, our little fir with colored lights, a fire, oyster pie, and midnight mass. On Christmas Day, up to see Louella, out to see the kids, and pull off our caper—I’ll tell Lace we won’t stay for supper. Then straight home. Just us and Truman.’
He was starved for everything she mentioned.
‘You’ll get no argument from me. Tomorrow I’ve got to get cracking and set up the crèche.’ A few years ago, he had fully restored the twenty-some pieces, hand-painting each figure, including camels, wise men, angels, sheep, and shepherd, several being two feet tall. All that to lug from the attic and down the hall stairs, then lug back again in January.
‘I’ve been meaning to tell you,’ she said. ‘The kids would love to borrow the nativity figures this year. Lace promises not to ask again. She would like to use them for illustrating the Christmas story for Jack. She wondered if she and Harley could come for them today. They’ll do all the hauling down from the attic and into the truck. Would that be okay?’
‘Done!’ He would miss the colorful troupe crowding into the study, but he could see Jack’s face and the wonderment in his brown eyes.
‘Moving right along,’ she said, ‘I have a great idea. How about no gifts this year, you and I? Let’s just empty our pockets into the Children’s Hospital. What do you think?’
‘Not a completely great idea. How about just one gift? I mean, something to open, Kav’na. Something to open.’
‘Okay, okay. And I’ll show you my paintings then.’
His adrenaline was up again. They had a plan. The grocer could go to his cabbages a new man. Well, almost.
‘A blessed Advent!’ he said, and kissed her cheek.
He whistled a little on his way to the Local.
In the family photos taken last June at Meadowgate, Henry had stood out. One dark skin among the pale. In Holly Springs, it would be the reverse. Two pale skins among the dark. He wondered how that would feel. But there was only one way to know. And that was to be there.
• • •
At the fire station, Hamp Floyd, formerly retired Mitford fire chief and interim since the departure of his successor, worried about the news from Clovis Baillie, their go-to Santa for the Christmas parade.
Clovis had missed his family’s Thanksgiving blowout, an annual reunion of forty-six Baillies—to which at least one wore a kilt—because of a shingles outbreak. The burning rash had occurred with especial ferocity around his waist and he still could not bear the touch of clothing, especially a heavy fake velvet coat with fake fur and pants that were a size too tight last year. Plus he was getting a sore throat and a cough.
‘If you get out there in th’ cold, you’ll be dead,’ said his wife who appeared to enjoy the idea.
The antibiotics for th’ shingles were working okay, but slow as molasses, and there was no way he could be cured in time for the parade. He would just have to sit this one out, with a Bud Light and a sandwich of leftover turkey and cranberry relish on white.
For Hamp Floyd, choosing a Santy was no laughing matter; it was serious business. You wanted a Santy who looked the part, fit in the suit, and seemed to everybody, especially kids, like the real thing—not just some guy playacting on a fire engine.
He would do it himself, but was only five-two in his sock feet and 128 pounds soaking wet. ‘No Mickey Rooneys,’ said a town council know-it-all from up north. He’d never understood how people from other places got elected to this town’s governing body—proof right there that Mitford could not take care of its own; they had to have the help of New Jersey, Michigan, and Florida.
He didn’t ask who Mickey Rooney was.
• • •
Hope Murphy put the finishing touches on the D for December window display.
At the foot of the fresh-cut Fraser fir, she placed books tied with ribbon. Death Comes for the Archbishop, a personal favorite, Dictionary of Modern Quotations, Don Quixote, Dear Tooth Fairy, The Dot, which was Grace’s pick, and Don’t Forget I Love You, which was Louise’s pick.
On the floor by the leather wing chair, she placed a pair of slippers belonging to Scott. At the slipcovered chair, she placed a pair of her own. Was the scene too corny? Window display was not her forte. Actually, she would give anything to sit in a comfy chair and read a book.
Margaret Anne the Bookstore Cat wandered in, looked around, jumped into the leather chair, and curled up.
‘Perfect!’ she said. ‘Thank you!’
At ten A.M. sharp, Louise turned the OPEN sign around. ‘Okay!’ Louise shouted. Hope plugged in the tree.
The star at the top of the fir flickered on; the train began its eager circle around the miniature Alpine village. Hope felt a tremor of some sort, perhaps of excitement, then realized the old bookstore was literally shuddering from the excavation of a vast hole at Main and Wisteria.
• • •
Why was his cell phone doing that electric-buzzer-shock thing? What had happened to his ringtone?
‘So, three hostile teenage girls,’ said Father Brad, ‘and snow coming the night of the eleventh! God be with us. Our youth counselor can’t leave ’til one. That puts us in camp at two-thirty and gives us two and a half hours to set up—a challenge right there, as these kids have never seen a tent. Wish you’d come along.’
He laughed. All the years he had said yes, yes, and more yes to nearly everything—and now, the consolation of no. Even if he could manage the ascent to camp, he wasn’t keen to freeze his digits off in a tent or a ramshackle cabin where the worst and best came out in people.
‘And thanks again for taking Mary Ellen in at Thanksgiving. She loved being with you and Cynthia.’
‘She’s great company. Any time. We mean it.’
‘She’ll be bunking in Irene McGraw’s guesthouse this trip, then going back to Boston after camp.’
Back to Boston after camp? When was Father Brad going to make his move?
‘How’s Jessie feeling about this?’
‘Bullying the other two. Doing what many of us do when feeling inferior—acting the know-it-all. She’d never say it, but she’s keen on the idea of a challenge. I love these crazy kids—this is a true Advent for me, the expectation that something wonderful will happen.’
‘And it always does!’ Father Brad hadn’t been called the ‘youth whisperer’ for nothing.
‘God may speak, hearts may open, heads may roll, including mine! Who knows? It’s Divine Dice!’
He was mildly envious of the younger priest’s enthusiasm. Where had his own fled? Something to look forward to, that’s what he needed. But wait. Of course. Albeit a few months out, he had something—the spring fling with Cynthia. The problem was getting enthusiastic about the general format of it.
• • •
Otis’s dad, the butcher, had come up yesterday to help out. As far as he knew, Lynwood had spoken all of four words. When taking off his cap, he said, ‘Good mornin’.’ When asked how he was doing, he said, ‘Can’t complain.’
Lynwood had brought with him a nephew who heaved boxes around, straightened up the loading dock, and moved the sidewalk bins to storage.
At noon, Hank came by to give a hand and make his informal reservation for a spot on the roof for the parade. He would climb up with a picnic lunch, his wife, three kids, and two grans, an annual arrangement he’d enjoyed with Avis for some years.
Ham orders were flooding in. Due for next week’s delivery from Otis’s dad were nineteen large boneless and five bone-in, with their big inventory rolling in midmonth. And sweet potatoes! He’d never seen so many sweet potatoes
fly out of a place. What was going on with the sweet potato? And why were Brussels sprouts predicted to take a hit this year?
‘You hadn’t took your break,’ said Otis, who was a firm believer in breaks, fifteen minutes on the dot.
‘Consider it done.’
He went to the break room and called Emma.
‘What did you learn?’
‘Her name is Nancy Drew.’
‘Come, now.’
‘Can you believe it? And guess what? She’s a mystery!’
‘In what way?’
‘Her old boss wouldn’t tell me anything but her name. I immediately called all th’ golf-related places an’ country clubs in Bryson City. I ran th’ full gambit.’
‘And?’
‘They never heard of her. And no phone listed. But get this. You said she was a dresser.’
‘I said that?’
‘You said she was dressed up. So you know that ladies’ shop in Wesley?’
‘I don’t.’
‘It’s th’ best. When you head into town, you turn right after th’ drugstore, then left at th’ movie theater—they’re playin’ Th’ Green Mile for a dollar. Did you ever see it? Tom Hanks. I love Tom Hanks. Then you turn left at th’ pizza place and go about two blocks or maybe three, an’ it’s out there somewhere around—you know where th’ old Tastee Freez used to be?’
‘Emma,’ he said in his pulpit voice.
‘Okay, so I went in an’ took Snickers because dogs soften people up. And I said I was lookin’ for somethin’ smart like Nancy Drew wears. I dropped that name like I’d known Nancy Drew for a hundred years.’
She employed the theatrical effect of the pause.
‘And?’ he said. ‘So?’
‘So they said they knew it was a book, but they hadn’t read it. They never heard of Nancy Drew as a real person. So I guess she shops online. What do you want me to do now?’