To Be Where You Are

by Jan Karon

‘Stand back!’ hollered Hamp Floyd. ‘Get over behind th’ line yonder. If you’re not in this parade, stand back!’

  Captain Hogan wheeled her patrol car into the lot and onto the grass. ‘Cars parked every whichaway,’ she told Hamp. ‘Have you seen what a mess it is out there?’ Out there was the zoo, the anarchy, the craven horde. ‘Why do tourists think they can park on our grass when they’d never park on their own grass? Answer me that.’

  He was just a fire chief, he could not answer that.

  ‘Onboard!’ yelled Hamp. ‘All Cunnin’hams on board and make it snappy. Number thirty-two! Cunnin’ham! Number thirty-two, onboard!’ He had to dispatch number thirty-two before he could deal with the rest of the entries, as thirty-two would take forever to load. ‘Line up, thirty-two! Line up, for crap’s sake.’

  Lord knows he had a fire engine to roll out of here, a pep talk for Santy in case it was needed, and this entire wacko zoo to wrangle. The good news was, last night’s rain had cleared out, and there were no weather worries for today, zero—snow was comin’ later, on the eleventh. Though he’d given up predicting snowfall dates and inches—he had bombed five years in a row—he could feel this one in his bones.

  A llama sidled over, sniffed his hair. ‘Whoa! Whose llama is this? Get away, dadgummit!’ A llama had spit on him one time, which would be th’ last time.

  Though proud of his ability to project vocally, he used his bullhorn. ‘WHOSE LLAMA IS THIS? Don’t do that again, buster! SOMEBODY COME GET THIS LLAMA!’

  • • •

  He helped Esther up the makeshift steps.

  ‘This is a creation of great proportion!’ he said.

  ‘This, Father, is a float. What we have here is a float! The first float ever to ride in a Mitford Christmas parade!’

  And up went the jubilant queen, trailed by what she occasionally called her ‘begats.’ Moving along the jostling line behind were a slew of Cunningham family granddaughters and in-laws, all wiping noses, buttoning jackets, threatening the troops.

  Puny’s twins were starched, ironed, and receiving orders. ‘Do not stand up, you hear me? These side rails are plastic. You could fall off this thing an’ be squashed flat. If I see a single one of you standin’ up . . . ’

  The lead band had bused in from Wesley and was tuning their instruments. There went the tuba.

  ‘She’ll never get elected,’ said Hamp. ‘Half the people here don’t know who she is.’

  ‘I think she just likes to be remembered, which is something we all hope to be, wouldn’t you say? Let her have her day, and many more, if that’s what it takes.’ He was a little sentimental at the moment, though only yesterday he made an early New Year’s resolution, which was to steer clear of Esther Cunningham for all eternity. As the sap who had hunted down and engineered this entire rig, including the rug, he could not deal with another bid for reelection.

  ‘What’s her platform this time?’

  ‘Controlling growth, she says.’

  ‘Ain’t no way to do that,’ said Hamp. ‘Fat lady’s done sung.’

  And there went the trombone and the trumpet and the drum line with its raspy snares and throaty tenors.

  • • •

  I can see the world! I’m tall as the world!’

  Riding on his dad’s shoulders was his favorite thing. He bounced up and down and waved at the clown on stilts, who was tall like him. The clown waved back.

  ‘Hey, dude, hold it down up there.’

  ‘Th’ clown waved back, Dad!’

  ‘Wavin’ back is good,’ said Dooley.

  He loved riding his boy on his shoulders, the feel of Jack’s strong, sturdy legs tight around his neck. Since he was a kid, he loved the Christmas parade, too, and who ever thought he’d be watching it with his little guy and Lace? He looked at her and silently formed with his lips the two words she liked to be told, and she formed three words for him and smiled and took his hand.

  ‘There’s another band comin’!’ said Jack.

  He was the lookout tower, the one who could see what nobody else could see except maybe the clown on stilts. This would make three bands even if it was just a lots of kids smashing things together and blowing horns. It was the Mitford school band and the music was ‘Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer,’ which he knew all the words to.

  He bounced some more and sang the words as loud as he could. ‘An’ if you ever saw it, you would even say it GLOWS . . . ’

  • • •

  Unrestrained cheers as an enormous entity hove into view along the parade route.

  ‘Well, I’ll be,’ said Harold Mincer, who was using his army field glasses. ‘There’s th’ old mayor. I thought she was dead.’

  ‘Old mayors never die,’ said his wife, Dannye Lee.

  ‘How do that many young’uns ride a float an’ not break it down?’ said Harold.

  ‘It’s somethin’ to do with th’ suspension system,’ said Dannye Lee.

  All these years, Harold had believed everything Dannye Lee Mincer said. He had a scientific turn of mind, though he had not cultivated it.

  ‘How does a Cadillac haul that much freight?’

  ‘It’s a big vehicle,’ said his wife, done with the subject.

  The SUV passed by, slow as molasses. The driver waved, everybody was waving. Somebody recognized Jake Tulley, though it appeared he’d had his teeth whitened and was now doing a comb-over.

  On the flatbed trailer he was pulling, an artificial tree trimmed with strings of popcorn and a star stood by a cardboard chimney and mantel hung with stockings shuddering in a light breeze.

  On a vast hooked rug, courtesy of Wesley Floor Coverings, sat twenty-seven Cunningham great-grandchildren of various ages, waving madly. And there was Herself enthroned in an armchair, one hand tossing something to the masses, the other waving in concert with the begats. Ray stood by the throne, proudly enjoying fifteen minutes of Warhol’s allotted fame, and deserving more.

  Grace Murphy dodged through the crowd. ‘Me! Me!’ she cried, walking fast beside the float. ‘It’s for my grandma!’

  The old woman in the wing chair reached over the side rail. ‘Hold out both hands!’ Esther yelled above the tuba, and Grace did. It was a plastic bag with lots of chocolate Kisses! A whole bag!

  ‘Tell your grandma to vote for Esther!’ shouted Ray.

  Though the ensuing tricycle fleet—with a dozen riders dressed as reindeer—had many supporters in the crowd, some did not want to see the float vanish. They ran after it, waving and scooping up candy and reading the huge banner that floated from the bumper like a bridal train.

  HAVE A GREAT GRAND CHRISTMAS!

  ESTHER CUNNINGHAM AND FAMILY

  Omer Cunningham noted that everybody seemed glad to be alive.

  He threw up a hand and waved at all the kids sittin’ around th’ cardboard fireplace, and at his big brother, Ray, bless his heart, and his sister-in-law, the former mayor, whom he once took for a spin in his tail-dragger.

  He had no idea what to get his wife, Shirlene, for Christmas. She was crazy about caftans, but he would not go near buyin’ a caftan, online or otherwise. She liked palm trees, which she had painted and hung throughout the house he had lived in as a bachelor. It was a novel thing to look at palm trees indoors and step out and see his four acres of Fraser firs, which he could finally cut and sell next year. But he liked that about Shirlene, who had brought something fresh and full of beans into the life of a crazy old Nam vet.

  Father Tim threw up his hand to Doc Wilson, who was out in shorts, a sweatshirt, and a bandanna, running the parade line.

  Wilson pulled up to him, panting, clapped him on the shoulder.

  ‘What’s up with you, Father? Haven’t seen you filling that prescription I gave you. Come on. A measly five miles three times a week?’

  ‘I’ll be back,’ he said. ‘Have a minute to
tell me about Avis?’

  ‘Don’t know what to say. He’s slow on the uptake, but there is uptake. The problem is severe depression. The Local has been his passion all these years. Now there’s no passion for anything. I don’t know where this is going, but I’m workin’ on it. Gotta catch up with Esther, I hear she’s throwin’ th’ good stuff. Okay, Father, see you out here, no excuses.’

  He and countless others had prayed, were praying. Why did he feel that somehow it was up to him? He had been riddled with this mistaken notion all his life. Avis was up to God; Avis was up to Wilson.

  • • •

  Comin’ out of th’ Baptist lot, they made a left turn an’ there went th’ horn, it nearly blowed him off th’ truck.

  He throwed candy an’ hollered. ‘Ho ho ho, Merry Christmas!’ It was his first time hollerin’ and it come out in a squawk.

  ‘Ramp it up, Santy!’ said one of the guys on th’ tailboard.

  The yellow truck made a left on Main, and boy howdy, they was lined up like ants on both sides, hollerin’ to beat th’ band.

  ‘HO HO HO HO!’ he said. ‘MERRY CHRISTMAS!’

  He felt the cold on his face and the itch of the beard and the deep hum of the engine beneath. They was passin’ the bookstore and there was Hope an’ Sister Louise and a good many customers, lookin’ happy as pigs in mud. An’ up ahead was a little young’un settin’ on his daddy’s shoulders, near about as high as Santy hisself, an’ they went to wavin’ at each other.

  He felt the tears on his cheeks, hot against the cold, and went to laughin’ an’ touchin’ th’ side of his nose all at th’ same time an’ sayin’ HO HO HO HO, MERRY CHRISTMAS so they could hear it in Franklin, Tennessee, where his granpaw had been born at.

  He heard th’ band a-playin’ an’ th’ horn a-blowin’ an’ he dug into his sack an’ lifted his hand an’ th’ candy rose up an’ scattered among th’ crowd like a shower of rain.

  ‘Santy, Santy, bring me a fire engine big as yours!’

  ‘Could I have a doll with real hair, please, please?’

  If Dr. Seuss was to see him now, he would write a book.

  • • •

  Avis lay on top of the covers.

  It was cold and he was shivering, but he didn’t want to get up and mess with the thermostat, or put on his sleep gear, which was his I’d Rather Be in Mitford T-shirt and a pair of long drawers.

  He was tired of gettin’ up. Get up, lay down, get up, lay down, it was a whole lifetime of th’ same business. Maybe he would freeze and Johnsie would find him on Monday, a human Popsicle layin’ curled up in a ball.

  He would hate to do that to Johnsie. Or even Otis and Lisa. But Father Tim, he was a whole other deal. If Father Tim came to check on him this afternoon and found his remains, fine. He was th’ type who could handle findin’ a man dead as a doorknob.

  Love came down at Christmas,

  love all lovely, Love divine;

  love was born at Christmas,

  star and angels . . .

  Th’ music circled in his head all day and half the night. He didn’t know how he could make it through th’ trumpets an’ people singin’ high notes. He had covered up his head a while ago to keep out th’ parade music, faint as it was.

  His teeth chattered.

  ‘We’re prayin’ for you,’ people told him. They wrote it in cards, left messages on his phone.

  ‘Save your breath,’ he wanted to say. Oh, he was a mean sucker. He never knew he had a mean bone in his body, but he knew it now. He was a dead man forced to live and breathe and try to get well whether he wanted to or not.

  • • •

  He had thanked Jake Tulley for a fare-the-well and was on his way home to help Cynthia with dinner when he met Ray Cunningham in Sweet Stuff. Where grans and great-grans were concerned, there was usually a stop by Sweet Stuff.

  Ray was positively beaming.

  ‘Oh, Father, there you are!’ Ray shook his hand, then grabbed it and shook it again. ‘When I think of all you’ve done for us . . . the happiness of it . . . you are a saint. A saint!’

  ‘You’ve got the wrong man, Ray. You’re the saint.’

  Hamp Floyd, who was leaving with a bag of chocolate donuts and a relieved grin, overheard this remark.

  ‘Takes one to know one, don’t it, boys?’

  18

  MEADOWGATE

  FRIDAY, DECEMBER 11

  Meadowgate Farm was shaped on the county plat like a snow shovel with a T handle.

  Occupying the handle was a fenced plot known as the North Strip. Though the strip lay due south on Meadowgate property, it was thus named in 1802 as the north tip of eight hundred acres then owned by a Scotsman.

  In the shaft were the century-old farmhouse, the clinic with attached dog run, a corncrib cobbled together around the turn of the last century, a woodshed, a holding pen, a chicken house with fenced run, and the caretaker’s cottage, aka Willie’s house.

  The blade was comprised of a six-stall barn with hayloft, two run-in sheds, a three-acre pond, a bold creek flowing from a springhead in the west, and three pastures sown in fescue and clover mingled with rogue lespedeza. Of the precisely hundred acres, roughly twenty were comprised of a mature woodland. Oak, walnut, maple, dogwood, beech, cedar, the native eastern redbud—and no, they would never cut timber in there, not a single tree. And they’d leave most of the fallen trees for habitat and humus.

  He liked ticking off the features of their land as he ran around the pond with Charley.

  He had gone soft. Too many second helpings at the table, too many hours at the clinic. He had promised God he would do better and here he was doing it. At dawn, in forty-four degrees.

  Today was a celebratory run. Because the wait was over and the paperwork done. As of today, Jack was legally theirs and they were legally his for all time. Hard to believe.

  Kenny and Julie and the kids would pull in this afternoon, never mind the forecast. Less than two inches, starting tonight, with a prediction of slush by Sunday morning. Kenny had Monday off and they would drive back to Wilmington first thing. Around three, Sammy was flying into Holding from Chicago and renting a car to drive up the mountain. It was all coming together.

  He looked up as he ran. Cirrostratus—snow clouds. They could use the moisture. ‘Thanks,’ he said. The chill air received his breath, vaporized it.

  He slowed as he approached the cedar tree. It was eight feet tall and self-decorated with blue fruit. They would ride over in the truck on Sunday and take the cedar home to the kitchen. The house rule was no Christmas tree ’til after Name Day. These were two separate life events, to be celebrated on their own merits.

  He broke off a few needles, crushed them between his fingers and inhaled the sharp, resinous scent. Over by the tree line—three does, two fawns, ears up, alert.

  Life was good.

  ‘Thanks!’ he said again, and ran on.

  • • •

  Harley and Willie had put everything in place—the bed, the ragtag furniture she used when the studio was her bedroom, the pictures drawn by kids she taught at the nonprofit.

  Yesterday afternoon, they watched the long tube being loaded onto the truck; Dooley walked over from the clinic to see it happen.

  She had worked extra hard and long and was nearly ten days ahead of schedule. It was the very best she could do, she could not have done more. She was exhilarated but exhausted; the whole thing imprinted in her bones.

  Along the way, she had sent pictures from her phone. In her unstudied, even childlike way, Kim had liked everything, with only one request for change. ‘Please paint in your old tractor,’ she said. ‘It’s charming!’

  ‘That wouldn’t be my word for it,’ said Dooley.

  He was wearing his green scrubs; there were surgeries today.

  ‘We’re solvent,’ she said. ‘It sounds
like something to open the drains, but we’re solvent.’ They were actually well beyond solvent, and that would go into Jack’s education fund, too.

  He put his arms around her, touched his forehead to hers. ‘You’re brilliant. I owe you.’

  ‘Start paying now,’ she said.

  He kissed her. The truck drivers whistled.

  ‘In installments.’

  She laughed and he kissed her again.

  • • •

  She was in the kitchen, feeding the latest batch of kittens, when she saw the Mitford Blossoms truck pull up to the porch.

  That Tommy, she thought. He was crazy wild about Beth . . .

  She opened the door. A huge, fabulous arrangement! Tommy’s pockets were obviously getting deeper with so many gigs.

  ‘Miz Kavanagh?’

  ‘That’s me!’

  The delivery woman held forth a profusion of roses, hydrangeas, green berries . . .

  ‘For you.’

  ‘For me?’

  The woman grinned. ‘That’s what a lot of people say.’

  She carried the flowers to the kitchen, found the envelope among the blush of roses. Her mom was wonderful to help them get ready for a houseful of company.

  She slipped out the card.

  Forever.

  Dooley, Jack, and Choo-Choo.

  She sank into Dooley’s chair, feeling raw and somehow exposed, after the ardor—and the finality—of her work. And now flowers from her husband. She loved getting love in installments.

  • • •

  This wasn’t a good day for a doctor’s appointment, but they had recently done tests and wanted her to come in.

  So she would run to Mitford and hurry home. Lily was here, everything was moving in the right direction. They would lose Jessie and Mary Ellen and Father Brad, thanks to the snow, and Puny had called to say Sissy and Sassy had colds and Timmy and Tommy were coughing, so that brought the number to maybe twenty-nine? She could not keep up with the numbers, but there might be leftovers, after all. She did not like the snow forecast, but so far everyone else was coming, and everyone had four-wheel drive.