by Jan Karon
‘Let’s drop it.’ He breathed out. ‘Let me know your hours, I’ll take care of it.’
‘No problem. But I hope you need somethin’ else, it gets me out of th’ house.’
A dead end. And Avis was looking like death warmed over. In addition to his medical circumstances, something was pestering Avis’s spirit.
He, Timothy, hoped to supply an anodyne, but no way could he supply the cure.
• • •
The Feel Good was slammed. Coats overloaded the coatrack; a third coffeemaker was fired up. It was cold out there.
According to J.C., all was bliss in the Hogan marital realm, with credit duly given to his newfound culinary passion.
‘Troubles at home?’ said J.C. ‘Take my advice. Th’ solution is not what you think. It’s cornbread with a crispy crust served with fried green tomatoes, aioli, and grilled mahimahi.’
‘Grilled what?’ said Mule.
‘Fish. Wake up, buddy. It’s the twentieth century.’
‘Twenty-first,’ said Father Tim.
‘I’m no good in th’ kitchen,’ said Mule.
‘You can grill!’ said J.C.
‘I don’t do th’ grill.’
‘Why not?’
‘I’m scared of gas. It can blow up.’
‘Listen to me. Th’ grill is what a man does. A man cooks on th’ grill. Wives don’t like to cook anymore, but guys love it because they can ride a grill like a buckin’ horse—steak, chicken, fish, shrimp, onions, potatoes, you name it. All done in th’ open air under th’ big blue sky. Boom, supper’s ready, everybody’s happy. And believe me, th’ wife is thrilled to do th’ cleanup, which is minimal. Th’ grill is th’ best thing since cornstarch.’
‘Cornstarch?’ said Mule. ‘Are you drinkin’?’
‘You got a knot you can’t untangle, sprinkle on a little cornstarch. Want to polish your silver? Mix a little cornstarch with water, rub it on, there you go. Smelly shoes? Sprinkle in a little . . . ’
‘What are we talkin’ about?’ said Mule.
‘Something tells me it’s his Hint for the week,’ said Father Tim.
‘I don’t know.’ Mule shook his head. ‘I can’t cook, I can’t grill, an’ no way am I writin’ a mushy note. So what should I do?’
J.C. mopped his face with a paper napkin. ‘Say la vee, buddyroe. You’ll have to take care of business the old-fashioned way.’
• • •
Father Brad had called for an appointment ‘in whatever confession booth you may have on hand.’
‘Look for me in the rutabagas.’
He latched the break-room door and poured coffee straight up for his visitor.
‘I’ve been wanting to do this; should have arranged it when we met. I hope it isn’t interfering . . . ’
‘Not at all. Take your time.’
Father Brad sat back, drew a breath, exhaled. ‘Easter was going to be full-on that year at St. Peter’s. Trumpets. Thuribles. New choir robes. Three hundred lilies given by a parishioner.’
He had been there, done that, but never with three hundred lilies.
‘Katie died March tenth. Easter Sunday fell on March thirtieth that year.
‘The whole horror came out of the blue. Fine on Tuesday. Shaky and confused on Wednesday. Thursday morning, couldn’t complete sentences; brain tumor diagnosed in the afternoon and pronounced inoperable. Deceased on Monday.
‘A blur. It was all a blur.’
‘We couldn’t find anybody to supply the Easter service. My girls didn’t go for it, but I insisted I would carry on with the celebration. There was no way I could walk away from a service everyone had worked on for months.
‘I took a few days off to prepare, I was a fish washed up on the beach, gasping. Katie was the sunshine, the rain, absolutely everything.
‘I don’t remember much of what happened Easter Sunday, except for the choir. The music was genuinely celestial. The Holy Spirit was moving at St. Pete’s. As we were celebrating Christ, I felt he was celebrating Katie, that this was for her, too. After it was over, I crashed.
‘They gave me a month’s sabbatical, more if I needed it.
‘Told the girls where I was going. Rented a one-room cabin in the backcountry, above the tree line. Eleven thousand feet plus change—a lung-crusher. And a pretty challenging ski-in even for an old powder hound.
‘It was what I needed. Three hundred and fifty miles of trail with killer hikes. A geyser basin, a lake, a summit with a three-sixty view of Mount Sherman. Wilderness is good, it gives me perspective. I get small again, the ego deflates.’
He sipped his coffee.
‘I realized there would be no getting over losing her. What I had to do was learn a healthy way to live with it. Did God remove Paul’s thorn? Not that we know. But even with the physical exertion and the altitude, I didn’t sleep well. Every day, every night was a struggle. I was in pretty constant prayer, trying to figure it out, trying to reconcile something that maybe couldn’t be reconciled.
‘Three weeks in, I met a man on the trail.
‘He didn’t look like any hiker I’d ever seen. Let’s say haggard, underweight. Forty, maybe fifty. I noticed he was wearing the wrong shoes for hiking. He seemed to come out of nowhere.
‘He asked if I had a match. He was holding a cigarette; I noticed his hand was shaking. It was like running into somebody on a dicey urban back street. I didn’t have a match and didn’t want to be bothered; I was in a cocoon of questioning and dialogue. I told him I didn’t have a match and walked on.
‘He came after me. Here’s what he said: What can I do to know God?
‘Do you have a match, what can I do to know God?—at eleven thousand feet in the Rockies?
‘I wasn’t wearing a collar, so why did he ask me that? Was he standing there asking this of anyone who came along? I didn’t want this conversation. I felt like, this is my time, I just lost the love of my life, please.
‘I walked on and he followed me.
‘Hey,’ he said. ‘You need to tell me.’
‘I picked up speed, almost a jog, and when I looked around, he was standing there, looking after me. Something didn’t feel right about running out on him. But it didn’t feel right to join his conversation, either. The whole incident bothered me for miles; I brought it back to the cabin with me. How would I have answered him? Maybe I’d see him again.
‘The next morning at the same place, I ran into a mountain rescue team and a few hikers. They were carrying him up on a litter. The ledge he fell to was easily a hundred-foot drop from the trail. One of the hikers said it looked like a suicide.’
Father Brad put his elbows on his knees, stared at the floor for a long moment, then sat up.
‘The bitterest irony. A man walks up to a priest and asks how to know God and the priest runs away. It haunts me. I long ago made my peace with losing Katie, but not with this, Father. Not with this.’
‘How would you have answered him?’
‘Maybe we could have sat down in the grass together. Snow was melting then, the green was coming on. We could have looked at Mount Sherman and maybe shared something of its vast serenity, and then talked.
‘I would have told him that God was in love with him, that he made us for himself. As hard as that is to imagine, the power of it speaks to people, gives a certain comfort. I would have said that God isn’t just up there, he’s down here with us, knowing the beating of our hearts. I would have told him that governing truth, the bottom line—that what we must do is empty ourselves, surrender everything, asking his guidance in our lives.
‘As far as I could tell, Mount Sherman had no ego, no desire to create its own destiny. It was surrendered, as all of nature is surrendered. The wilderness gives us that example continually.
‘I believe there’s somebody like him in every pew—asking a si
mple question, needing a simple answer. I’ve preached to him for years now. Though I can’t remember his face, I imagine him sitting out there, waiting to hear. I’ve tried; I’ve really tried to make up for what I failed to do.’
He handed a box of tissues to the younger cleric.
‘The guilt and shame you feel—do you allow it to serve as your punishment? Maybe you think you don’t deserve to let it go. Judgment is God’s job, though we try all the time to make that job our own.
‘He may not remove the thorn, but we know he wants you to find a healthy way to live with this. And though we can’t know what he wrought from it, I’m confident that he has wrought good. Much good. That’s his nature.
‘I’ll say what you might have said to the man on the trail. God is in love with you, brother. He made you for himself. Trust that he has used and is using that episode in your life for good.’
He could hear voices outside the door. Mamie Houser talking to Otis about a pound of bacon gone wrong. Life. It was all about eleven thousand feet of altitude in the Rockies and bacon gone wrong. Who can know the winsome ways of God?
• • •
He glanced up from restocking sardines and saw Otis cleaning the glass of the butcher case. Otis rarely had to be asked to do something; he was on the lookout for a need before it actually became one. Small of stature, balding, rimless specs, always a shy but pleasant attitude. They still make them like Otis, he thought, but few and far between.
And Lisa. Over by the bread rack, chatting up Lance Poovey, who was hard-pressed to find anyone willing to chat him up. She took care of people, was genuinely interested in them.
He had praised her for this. ‘Oh, gosh, I can’t take no credit, it’s how all ten of us was raised.’
If push came to shove, and he hated to even think about it, Otis, Lisa, and Marcie could run the place with part-time help. Otis had a head for economy, was good with the distributors and at tying up loose ends—he could be the manager. Managers didn’t have to be drill sergeants; they could be nice guys with rimless specs.
• • •
At Avis Packard’s house, Johnsie Pope lifted the December calendar page and hooked it on the nail.
The secret of success in life is to eat what you like and let the food fight it out inside.
—MARK TWAIN
She had tried to get Avis to lie down after lunch an’ take a nap, which was doctor’s orders. But no, he dragged hisself out of th’ chair an’ dressed and out the door he went.
‘I cain’t lay up sick th’ rest of my days,’ he said, ‘I have a store to run.’
She sighed. He was weak as pond water an’ still wobbly on his legs, but what could she do? She was not the boss of Avis Packard, just what you call th’ caregiver who rode up th’ mountain of a mornin’ with Hank who had a paint job in Wesley, then went home of an evenin’ feelin’ like she’d done somethin’ that made a difference.
She went to the kitchen and warshed th’ lunch dishes and checked his meds box and set Lois Burton’s casserole out to thaw—mac an’ cheese with bacon—which would go in th’ oven right before she left.
As cheese was bindin’, he would need somethin’ green, so she tossed together a little romaine with a sliced carrot an’ diced up some sweet pepper an’ covered th’ bowl an’ set it in th’ fridge. All he’d have to do is add dressin’.
Wouldn’t she be happy to set home tonight an’ think of Avis up here havin’ hisself a good dinner and growin’ strong? He had tried to pay her for settin’ with him, but she wouldn’t take it, nossir. An’ he’d tried to run her off, too, but she wadn’t goin’.
Hank had done a mighty job with this place. Took down two trees—‘Root rot,’ he said. ‘They was comin’ down theirself before long’—cleaned th’ gutters an’ painted th’ outside of th’ house. And Pedro an’ María, they’d cleaned an’ scrubbed an’ warshed curtains an’ changed bedsheets an’ she didn’t know what all, an’ her own husband, bless ’is heart, had mowed an’ raked an’ pruned th’ bushes.
Everybody’s job was done but hers, as th’ doc said somebody needed to watch Avis like a hawk. She was good at doin’ that an’ knew for a fact he wadn’t smokin’. Nossir, not one butt did she find an’ not one whiff of smoke did she smell. Whether he was right in th’ head she couldn’t say, but he had called out somethin’ durin’ his naptime once or twice. Sounded like chunky, so she went over to th’ store an’ got him some peanut butter, which was good protein, an’ put it on crackers.
Write down what you can, said the doc, and remind him to check his sputum for blood.
Terrified of cursive since childhood, she recorded daily all pertinent information in block letters. DEC. 1 HE ET SUPPER LAST NITE BUT PICKED AT HIS LUNCH TODAY. COFFIN NOT AS BAD. HANDS SHAKEY.
JOHNSIE
At three o’clock, she heard a commotion at the front door and went out to the hall.
Otis was on one side of Avis an’ Father Tim on th’ other, keepin’ Avis on his feet. They got him to ’is bedroom and set him on the bed an’ she squatted down an’ unlaced his shoes an’ took ’em off.
‘His ankles is swelled,’ she said. An’ he groaned an’ laid back on th’ pillow, his face th’ color of dishrags.
Three words is all Father Tim said. ‘Rest, Avis. Rest!’
‘Th’ preacher’s right,’ said Otis. ‘It’s th’ only way you gon’ get better.’
P. S. HE COME HOME NEAR DEAD AFTER GOIN TO HIS STORE
• • •
Two big things was happenin’ today.
The first big thing was, him an’ Hope and Sister Louise had decorated th’ Fraser fir in th’ upstairs window of his apartment at Happy Endings; it was a nine-footer. They had started at ten-thirty an’ went off an’ on all day till four o’clock, they was that many things to hang on th’ branches plus untangle th’ lights. It has been him an’ Hope on th’ ladder, as Sister Louise had a bad ankle.
Hope an’ Scott, they could have rented out his two rooms over th’ bookstore with a toilet an’ hot plate, but nossir, they give it to him for livin’ there to look after th’ place, help out in th’ store, an’ keep things clean as a whistle. It was also his job to work on th’ furnace when it went to bangin’ an’ scarin’ th’ customers.
At five o’clock on th’ dot, he stuck his head around th’ tree an’ looked out th’ window an’ seen Hope an’ Scott an’ Grace an’ Sister Louise an’ a bunch of other people all lookin’ up an’ wavin’. Then he throwed th’ switch, so to speak, an’ it was official.
The room exploded with light. Ribbons of color danced on th’ walls an’ ceilin’. There was th’ sound of cheers across th’ street.
He let out his breath, stunned by it all. That right there was th’ most excitement he’d had since th’ Christmas he played Saint Nick.
Th’ other big thing was—right after supper, he was startin’ his last picture book before he changed over to chapter books. It was by his favorite picture book author, who had passed. He hoped he wouldn’t be causin’ him to roll over in his grave because of not readin’ picture books anymore.
• • •
Lew Boyd was nervous.
He was about to drop a huge wad on a Class A Sportscoach Cross Country 405FK. Used, of course, if that was any consolation. And he’d have to move fast, because this little number was mint condition and priced to sell.
When you figure that he’d never been much of anywhere, takin’ this rig to Missouri would be a big deal. If somebody had said he’d sell his business in two weeks an’ be goin’ to Missouri in a RV, he would have laughed in their face. Until he married Earlene, he had no idea where Missouri was. And then he learned that even the people who live there couldn’t pronounce it—some sayin’ Missourah an’ some sayin’ Missouree.
But his wife had kin in Hannibal, and given the fact that kin could be pretty scarce in today’s world,
they were goin’. They would see th’ fence Tom Sawyer made his buddies paint, visit th’ Mark Twain cave, and go on a riverboat.
Though they couldn’t make the trip till springtime, they had started a list of what to take. Earlene wanted to impress her relatives and carry a Valley beef roast the size of a South Carolina watermelon. As for hisself, he would make sure he loaded up with a crate of Cheerwine, which maybe they couldn’t find in Missourah or Missouree, whichever.
• • •
You want to ride down and see th’ bookstore tree?’ said J.C.
He was in his skivvies because as usual, she had th’ heat cranked up to sixty-eight.
‘Not really,’ said Adele. ‘Th’ lights’ll still be on in th’ mornin’ when I check in.’
She was cleaning her Sig Sauer in the bedroom where the Wheel was giving th’ clue of ‘A Thing,’ but he noticed she wasn’t watching. Why people cleaned a gun they never used was totally beyond him. All th’ MPD guys did it; it was regulation. Just in case, they said.
‘They stung you with th’ early shift?’
Head down, cleanin’ her equipment, lookin’ like she lost her best friend.
Th’ honeymoon was over. Again. He had romanced her with a forty-two-inch screen, then his top-of-the-line grill, a strategy that had lasted about, what? Three, maybe four weeks? All had been rosy, hunky-dory, life was good, and now look. What did he have to do to stay on her A-list? Tonight, ravioli stuffed with rosemary an’ Gouda, an’ no, not from scratch, he was not th’ Barefoot Countess or whatever, but still—with a nice salad an’ a bun.
• • •
Coot took the lid off the candy jar by his chair, eyed the contents, and picked out his one piece for th’ evenin’. He peeled back th’ red wrapper. Chocolate! His lucky day!
He let it melt in his mouth while he looked at th’ lights.
Then he commenced to read out loud, as th’ sound of his own voice was comp’ny.
‘How th’ Grinch Stole Christmas!
‘By Dr. Seuss.’
Then he turned to th’ first page, set back, cleared his throat, and kep’ goin’.