Shepherds Abiding

by Jan Karon

  All seated on the ground,

  The angel of the Lord came down,

  And glory shone around. . . .”

  When the congregants poured out into the night through the red doors, a fresh snow was swirling down in large, feathery flakes, anointing collars and hats, scarves and mittens. Two people put their heads back and stuck out their tongues and felt the soft, quick dissolve of the flakes.

  “Merry Christmas, Father!”

  “Merry Christmas, Esther, Gene! God bless you! And there’s Hessie, merry Christmas to you, Hessie!”

  “Why, Tom Bradshaw! Merry Christmas! What brings you back to the sticks?”

  Laughter. Vaporizing breath. The incense of snuffed candles wafting on the air . . .

  “Merry Christmas, Cynthia!”

  “Merry Christmas, Hope, how lovely you look! And Scott, dear—merry Christmas!”

  “They’re goin’ home, now,” Mamy Phillips said to Popeye. “They’ve sung themselves out, I expect.”

  She was relieved, actually, for even with the sash down, it was a strain to try to hear every word through a stone wall and a hedge. Time and again, they’d invited her to attend services over there, but she was still thinking about it.

  She locked the sash and went to the kitchen, where she crumbled saltines into a glass of milk. Then she set down a saucer of milk for Popeye, wondering if she would ever understand what all that church business was about, anyway.

  They sat on the study sofa, catching their breath.

  “I’m exhausted!” she said, taking his hand.

  “Ditto. Thoroughly.”

  “Happiness is very demanding.”

  “Agreed!” Thank God for his robe and slippers. The craziness was past; Christmas had come!

  She put her head on his shoulder. “The angel tree was one of the most wonderful things I’ve ever done. So many families came in for their bags of food . . . They say more people will sit down to Christmas dinner in Mitford and Wesley than ever before.”

  “Well done,” he said, squeezing her hand. “I’m proud of you.”

  “Thanks. Everyone worked so hard. I’d like to do it again next year, and the next.”

  He kissed the top of her head.

  “Did I tell you about the little girl who walked five miles to fetch the two bags of groceries for her family?”

  “Tell me.” He put his head back and closed his eyes, savoring the peace and privilege of nothing more to be done.

  “There was no way on earth she could have carried them home, so I drove her; I can’t tell you what terrible living conditions I saw. Timothy, if we were younger, I’d love for us to adopt.”

  “You may get your wish. Dooley is thinking of changing his name to Kavanagh.”

  “Ahhh.”

  “I asked him to think about it a while longer. It’s a serious step.”

  “You’re always wise, Timothy.”

  “Not always.”

  “When do you think you’ll tell him about the money from Miss Sadie?”

  “I don’t know. He’ll be twenty-one in February, that may be the time. Her letter asks us not to tell him ’til he can shoulder the responsibility.”

  “You’ll know when. God will tell you when.”

  He glanced at the clock above the mantel. Good grief! “Shall we do it?”

  “Let’s!”

  They bolted from the sofa and sprinted along the hall. “Okay,” he said when they reached the lamp table. “Stop and close your eyes. Promise not to look.”

  “I promise!”

  He took her by the hand and led her to the door of the living room. Though he’d personally set out each of the figures and arranged them near the manger at the base of their tree, he saw it all with new and wondering eyes. It was the light, perhaps, richer and more radiant in the deep of night.

  “Now,” he said.

  He had done it all in order to see her face, and, instantly, she made it all worthwhile. “Timothy,” she whispered. “Oh!”

  He put his arm around her waist and drew her to him.

  “Merry Christmas,” he said, shy and solemn.

  “Oh,” she said again. “I can’t find words. . . .”

  Barnabas trotted up the hall and stood by them, wagging his tail.

  “Does this lovely crèche have anything to do with your long weeks at the Oxford?”

  “It does.”

  Tears coursed along her cheeks. “Did you in some way . . . that is, what did you do, exactly?”

  “I painted it.”

  “You painted it?”

  “Fred helped. He stippled the sheep. We fixed an ear here and there. And a hand. He helped with the camel, too.”

  “The camel!”

  “Back there. In the bushes, sort of.”

  She dropped to her hands and knees and examined the little colony of shepherds and wise men and animals and the reverent and amazed parents kneeling by the Child. She held her hand up to him, and he took it and knelt beside her.

  “I can’t believe my eyes, Timothy. Everything, every creature, is so lovely, so . . . real, somehow.”

  “I was plenty nervous about doing it, about getting it right. After all, you’re the artist in the family.”

  She stared into each face. “I love this angel! How did you decide on these wonderful colors for her robe and gown?”

  “We looked in a book,” he said, feeling like a schoolboy.

  “And this dear old shepherd, with his lovely bald head . . .”

  “Autobiographical!”

  “But the eyes on this camel!” She hooted with laughter. “He looks up to something, don’t you think?”

  “That camel was the straw that nearly broke my back! We worked on the eyes, but, alas, what can I say? Fred and I are not Leonardos.”

  “This is so exciting! I’m discovering a whole other part of my husband.”

  He shrugged, speechless, thrilled to the core with her praise.

  She rose on her knees and put her arms around his neck and looked at him, beaming. “You’ve found something fresh and wonderful in yourself; God has given you a brand-new gift.”

  “No, not a gift.” He was blushing. “But He did help me do it. It was hard.”

  “I can’t take it all in, I’ll be crawling around under here for days.” She returned to her hands and knees; Barnabas trotted in and lay behind the angel.

  “One more visitor to the stable!” he announced. “Where the deuce is Violet?”

  “On top of the refrigerator. Leave well enough alone.”

  The refrigerator! “I’m hungry as a bear,” he said. “I’ll fix us something; how about a bowl of cereal?”

  “I can’t wait another minute to give you yours, Timothy. Then I’ll fix us both a bowl of cereal. Help me up!”

  “Ah, but who will help me up?” His knees creaked like the hinges of a loose shutter.

  “You can’t look,” she said, as he hauled her to her feet.

  “I promise.” He loved it when someone had a secret thing to present, and asked him not to look, and he had to promise he wouldn’t.

  “By the way, the angel is glorious. Was there only one to gaze down upon this wondrous assembly?”

  He faced the tree and, as an extra precaution, shut his eyes. “There were two, but . . . I dropped the other one and broke it.” He hated the thought even now.

  He heard her slippers whisper across the hall and back again.

  “Timothy . . .”

  “Yes?”

  “You said you broke the other angel?”

  “Yes,” he said, feeling oddly sad and repentant.

  “Would this be it?” she asked.

  He turned and saw the angel with the serene countenance and slender feet held close, and complete, in Cynthia’s arms.

  His breath went out of him.

  “Your broken angel is made whole,” she said.

  It was that time before sunrise that elderly people in the coves around Mitford still called “first ligh
t.” Nothing at all could be seen of the sun; the winter sky and snow-covered mountains beneath were gray as stone.

  At the town museum, Uncle Billy Watson shuffled along the dark hallway in his bathrobe, carrying the tray under his arm and thanking the Good Lord the paint had dried overnight. He would set out her Santy and mix up the pancake batter, and, in a little bit, go wake her up.

  His heart was pounding with pure excitement. “Th’ way my ticker’s a-goin’,” he muttered, “th’ gover’ment’s gittin’ its money’s worth out of them pills.”

  He fumbled for the switch plate inside the door of the kitchen. As three hundred watts blazed into the room, he nearly jumped out of his skin.

  “Law help!” he hollered, surprised by his wife, whom he’d thought still sleeping. She sat in her chair looking mad as a wet hen, her white, uncombed hair standing ever’whichaway.

  “Rose!” he said, concealing the tray behind his back.

  “What?”

  “I didn’t know you was up!” He’d decided to talk plenty loud this morning so she could understand every word. After all, it was Christmas.

  She scowled, pulling together dark, heavy eyebrows that looked like two woolly worms. “Here it is daylight,” she squawked, “and not hide nor hair of Santy!”

  He’d seen her mad plenty of times, but this was one for the dadgum books. He wanted to run down the hall and jump out the window in his stocking feet.

  “It’s snowin’ out!” He was going to keep the peace today if it killed him. “He’ll be along directly!”

  “Everybody knows Santy never comes after daylight!”

  “Ever’body knows he don’t come a’tall if you’re settin’ there f’r ’im t’ stumble over!”

  “I just sat down here, Bill Watson. I was hiding by the Kelvinator ’til a minute ago.”

  “I reckon he must’ve got a look at you somehow.” Boys howdy, if that was a fact, ol’ Santy had took off a-runnin’, an’ by now he’d made it to th’ other side of th’ mountain. He continued to hold the tray behind his back, though it made his arm tremble.

  “What he’s done is not show up at all, just like people have said all along. And after you poked a stick up the chimney and made that awful mess!”

  Still facing his wife, he maneuvered to the table they’d started housekeeping with, the cherrywood table he’d made with his own hands all those years ago. He slid the tray onto the table without making a sound, then turned around and looked at it sitting there on the checked oilcloth with the red bow taped to a handle. Keeping his back to his wife, he slipped the envelope from his pocket and onto the tray.

  “Law help, Rose, looky here!”

  “What?”

  “Here on th’ table!” He yelled over his shoulder, hoarse as a frog, “Hit’s y’r Santy!”

  The tray was beauteous, it truly was, and the handle pull on each side was just the trick for picking it up and carrying it around. He hoped she wouldn’t recognize the pulls under their coat of green paint.

  “What is it?”

  “Wellsir, I reckon hit’s a tray f’r earbobs an’ brooch pins an’ whatnot, like you been a-needin’.” He went to her, leaning on his cane and carrying the tray.

  Her face lit up. “A jewelry tray! I vow I always wanted a jewelry tray!”

  “Santy must’ve come while we was sleepin’.” He stood by her chair, presenting the tray. His right hand shook, which made the bow jump around.

  “Why, Bill Watson! It’s real nice—I declare it is!”

  “Ol’ Santy done pretty good, I reckon.” His heart was about to bust.

  “What’s that lying on it?”

  “Y’r tray’s got a letter with it, looks like.”

  Carefully, he stooped and placed the tray in her lap, and, for that moment, his arthritis didn’t bother him at all.

  As good as he could hear, his wife could see. She picked up the envelope and, squinting through second-hand glasses from the Lion’s Club, examined the inscription.

  She caught her breath.

  “I’ll make us a pancake,” he said, swallowing hard.

  But his feet wouldn’t move. Instead, he watched his helpmeet of more than fifty years, she the rose and he the thorn, as tears of happiness streamed along her wrinkled cheeks.

  She took the letter from the envelope, unfolded it, and read aloud, lingering over the words as if each were a gift in itself.

  “ ‘My . . . dear . . . little . . . sister . . .’ ”

  As his wife sounded out the words, he discovered a wonderful thing—he wadn’t jealous n’ more, not even a whit.

  “ ‘You . . . please me . . . very much . . . with . . . your . . . fine reading, . . .’ ”

  He wiped his eyes on his sleeve, ashamed that he’d ever harbored a bitter thought toward Willard Porter, and, right then and there, without speaking his petition aloud, asked the Good Lord to forgive him.

  In the small house in the pines at the end of the road, the coffeemaker kicked on and brewed four cups of Wal-Mart’s breakfast blend as Lew Boyd slept warm next to his wife. Beyond the window, snow swirled as in a miniature globe.

  He gave a loud snort, which startled him awake, and looked about as if uncertain of his surroundings. Then he saw Earlene nestled into the crook of his right arm.

  His heart flooded with a joy he hadn’t known before, not even on their furtive honeymoon to Dollywood. He gazed at the streaks of gray in her chestnut hair, and the little lines at the corners of her eyes and mouth, and felt the love beat up in him, and the thanksgiving, and didn’t mind that his arm had gone numb as a two-by-four—nossir, he wouldn’t disturb this moment for anything.

  He remembered last night, how they’d gone to church down at First Baptist, and how he could hardly believe he was standing next to her, singing his heart out and hearing her voice lift onto the high notes. The sound was almost more than he could bear and keep his eyes dry.

  He’d been awful proud to introduce Earlene around, and he’d never seen such a swarm of flabbergasted people. Some hugged her neck right off the bat, and everybody said they were mighty happy for him. A few said they figured something was going on with those visits to his old aunt in Tennessee.

  Afterward, they’d jumped over to Wesley for Chinese take-out, and come home and sat down to eat at the kitchen table like normal people. As far as he could recall, he’d mostly gobbled his dinner at the kitchen sink since Juanita passed.

  Then they hauled the fake tree from the corner of the dining room where it had stood against the wall for seven years, mashing one side completely flat.

  They set it in a stand by the front window and went after it like a house afire, weaving six strings of colored lights among the branches and decorating with everything they could find in the long-neglected boxes. As they did this, the flat side fluffed out—the plastic branches fell into place, one by one, until the tree looked good as new. He and Earlene stood there like little young ’uns and clapped their hands.

  The very thought made him grin like a monkey, and he turned his head and nuzzled his wife’s hair, and offered a silent prayer.

  Thank you. . . .

  He didn’t know whether to say “Thank you, God” or “Thank you, Lord,” or “Thank you, Father.” Down at church, Preacher Sprouse said all three at one time or another, even “Yaweh.” Harley Welch called Him “Lord an’ Master,” sometimes talkin’ about Him as if He was standin’ right there, and Father Tim prayed like him and God was old friends, kind of like, “Hey, buddy, how’s it goin’?”

  It was hard to think about something new, like what to call the Almighty. He hadn’t exactly closed his mind in church, but he hadn’t exactly paid attention, either; he’d been bad to think about business when sitting in the pew—was gasoline goin’ up or was it goin’ down? Why couldn’t this country find its own instead of leanin’ on the Middle East? And why were customers so dadblame hard to please?

  Then there was the EPA—the worst torment a man could have in this life. F
orget down yonder, they made it hell enough right here! Every ten years, regular as clockwork, they checked him out, and ten years ago, they’d tore up his tanks and jackhammered his concrete pads an’ dug down t’ Beijing, an’ th’ mess they found had cost him thirty thousand smackers.

  He thought he’d just let th’ whole dadgum thing go south, but he’d tightened his belt and held on for everything he was worth, and somehow he’d made it through. Others hadn’t been so lucky; he’d watched the EPA shut down his competition ’til he was the only gas station left open for eight miles to th’ north an’ six to th’ south. Trouble was, in just three months, his ten years were up, and they’d be knockin’ on his door again.

  He felt his temples pounding just thinkin’ about the gover’ment. . . . Nossir, he didn’t want to do that, his blood pressure would shoot out th’ roof, wake up Earlene, and set th’ neighbor’s dogs to barkin’.

  He guessed th’ only time he really paid attention in church was when it was time to sing. He’d heard enough preachin’ to know that pride goeth before a fall, and he was prideful about his voice, he admitted it. As he was th’ only bass at First Baptist, his singin’ stood out, causing people to turn their heads and look, and sometimes even smile or give him a thumbs-up.

  But th’ bottom line was, he hadn’t done right by God. Or th’ Lord. Or th’ Heavenly Father. Not that he’d killed anybody or coveted anybody’s wife or anything like that, but, all his life, he’d gone on his merry way, doin’ his own thing. To tell th’ truth, he’d like to give it all to somebody bigger an’ smarter than him.

  One of these days, maybe he would pray that other prayer, after all. Something deep inside had shifted in a way he couldn’t explain. He couldn’t remember all the words Father Kavanagh had said, except the part about surrendering his life. That didn’t seem so frightening now, with Earlene lying beside him and the snow brushing against the window and piling up on the railing outside.

  He just couldn’t imagine what possible interest Almighty God could have in his life . . . but . . .