by Jan Karon
“You missed it,” she said archly.
Why did he ever part with fifty cents for a newspaper, when all the news that was fit to print poured unhindered from his secretary?
“Say on.”
“You know th’ big wooded area behind the Shoe Barn?”
“I do.”
“When Mack is elected, that whole sorry-looking scrub pine deal will be a fancy new development called Mitford Woods.”
“Mitford Woods?”
“Plus, he said he personally knows of big-money interest in Miss Sadie’s old house, which will be revealed shortly.”
“Aha.” If there was nothing to worry about as far as Mack Stroupe’s mayoral win was concerned, why did he feel as if someone had punched him in the solar plexus? “So how was the barbecue?”
“Great. None of that vinegary stuff you sometimes get with politics. Plus, he had a whole raft of country musicians that got half th’ crowd to clogging.”
He looked at her, but she avoided his eyes. “Hmmm. So what do you think about Mack?”
“Oh . . . time will tell,” she said, clicking on her menu. Was this the woman who, barely forty-eight hours ago, had labeled the candidate low-down scum?
“Esther Cunningham has been a great mayor for this town,” she said, “but . . .”
He hated to hear it.
“ . . . but there’s always room for improvement.”
At the light on Main Street, Rodney Underwood yelled from his patrol car.
“What do you think this is? Talladega?”
Could he help it if Harley’s truck blew past Rodney like he was standing still? Besides, what business did Rodney have being on Main Street every time he tried to do somebody a favor and take care of their vehicle?
Rodney winked at him. “Don’t let it happen ag’in, buddyroe.”
He felt the heat above his collar as the truck lunged away from the light and roared south on Main Street.
“What have you got under the hood of that ’72 Ford? You nearly got me nailed twice in a row.”
The rector thought Harley’s toothless grin might meet at the back of his head.
“Lord, I was hopin’ you’d ask. Here’s what I done. I got rid of th’ Ford engine and transmission, took out th’ drive train an’ rear end, an’ dropped a ’64 Jagwar XKE engine and transmission in there. Then I bolted in a Jagwar rear end and hooked it up to a new drive shaft. Three hundred and twenty horses! Course, that’s all a man needs on a public highway.”
He didn’t understand a word Harley said, but he knew one thing: He was leaving that truck alone.
“I messed with flathead V-8s most of my life, ’til one day I looked under th’ hood of a Jag and seen a steel crank case, twin alumium valve covers, an’ a alumium head. Now, you take Junior, he didn’t like nothin’ foreign, but t’ me, hit was th’ prettiest thing I ever seen. Well, Rev’rend, when I left th’ business, I fell away from flatheads an’ ain’t never looked back.”
“Aha.”
“You got t’ handle it gentle or it’ll jump over th’ moon.”
Father Tim laid the keys on the dresser. “Tell me about it. I sucked the awnings off every storefront on Main Street.”
Harley hooted and cackled ’til the tears streamed from his eyes. If laughter was the medicine the Bible claimed it to be, Harley Welch was a well man.
The patient wiped his eyes on his pajama sleeve. “I thank you ag’in f’r all you an’ th’ missus do f’r me. Ain’t nobody ever treated me s’ good, an’ I’m goin’ t’ make it up to you. Doc Harper lets me up tomorrow, said take it easy a day or two an’ first thing you know, I’ll be ol’ Harley ag’in. I’ll git me some new dogs an’ go back t’ my little setup on th’ Creek. But not before I do somethin’ t’ repay y’uns.”
“Don’t think about it, my friend. Do you have a job to go back to?”
“I had one, but it give out th’ same time as I did. I ain’t worked in a good while, what with my stomach s’ bad off. But I’ll git back, I ain’t lazy—I like a good job of work.”
“We’ll see how it goes,” said Father Tim. “Has our boy been around this afternoon’
“Heard ’im come in, heard ’im go out is all.”
“This was his first day at the store. Where’s Lace?”
“After her school lets out tomorrow, she’ll be here t’ he’p me git up, take me out in th’ fresh air an’ all.”
“Good! I want you to take it easy.”
“Yessir, Rev’rend, I will. I want t’ be feelin’ strong when I go t’ work on y’r car engine.”
The rector laughed. “You leave my car engine alone,” he said, meaning it.
CHAPTER FIVE
Out to Canaan
He peered into the vegetable crisper and took out three zucchini, a yellow onion, two red potatoes, and a few stalks of celery.
Somewhere in here was a beef bone he’d picked up at The Local. Aha. Wrapped in foil, behind the low-fat mayonnaise which he wouldn’t touch with a ten-foot pole . . .
He put it all in a brown paper bag with a can of beef broth and a pound of coffee, and set out to Scott Murphy’s house next to the bridge over Little Mitford Creek.
They walked along the path by the creek, with Luke and Lizzie straining ahead on their leashes.
It was hot for a June afternoon in the mountains, and he and Scott Murphy were going at a trot. The rector moved the grocery bag to his other arm and took out his handkerchief and wiped his face.
“Father, about your concern for having a Creek ministry . . .”
“Yes?”
“It occurs to me that you have one.”
The rector looked at him, puzzled.
“You brought Dooley’s kid brother out of there, who’s living in the first real home he ever had. You’re also providing a home for their mother . . . .”
“But—”
“And look at Lace Turner—last year she was living in the dirt under her house, trying to keep away from an abusive father. Now she’s living with one of the most privileged families in town and making straight A’s in school.”
“Aha.”
“And Harley Welch, your race car mechanic . . . you and Mrs. Kavanagh have taken him in, nursed him, maybe even saved his life.”
“Yes, well . . .”
Luke stopped to lift his leg at a tree.
“I think we’re always looking for the big things,” Scott mused. “The big calling, the big challenge. Seems like Bonhoeffer had something to say about that.”
“He did,” said the rector. “Something like, ‘We think we dare not be satisfied with the small measure of spiritual knowledge, experience and love that has been given to us, and that we must constantly be looking forward eagerly for the highest good.’ ”
“Yes, and I like that he talks about being grateful even where there’s no great experience and no discoverable riches, but much weakness, small faith, and difficulty.”
The two men pondered this as they walked. It was good to talk shop on a spring day, on a wooded path beside a bold creek.
“Before I came here,” said Scott, “I told you I’d go in there and see what can be done. I’m sticking to it.”
“Good fellow.”
“I’ve been meaning to tell you we got the garden in at Hope House, fourteen of the residents are able to plant and hoe a little, we have peas coming up.”
“You’re everything Miss Sadie wanted,” said the rector. “You’re making Hope House live up to its name.”
“Thank you, sir. Mitford is definitely home to me. Maybe I can buy Miss Ivey’s little cottage when she sells the bakery and moves to Tennessee—I don’t know, I’m praying about it.”
They rounded the bend in the footpath and saw Homeless Hobbes sitting on the front step of his small, tidy house, a colorful wash hanging on the line.
“Lord have mercy, if it ain’t town people!” Homeless got up and limped toward them on his crutch, laughing his rasping laugh. His mute, brown-and-white spo
tted dog crouched by the step and snapped its jaws, but no sound escaped. Luke and Lizzie barked furiously.
“Homeless!” The rector was thrilled to see his old friend, the man who’d given up a fast-lane advertising career, returned to his boyhood home, and gone back to “talkin’ like he was raised.”
“I’m about half wore out lookin’ for company! I told Barkless a while ago, I said somebody’s comin’, my nose is itchin’, so I put somethin’ extra in th’ soup pot!”
The rector embraced Homeless and handed over the bag. “For the pot. And this is Scott Murphy, the chaplain at Hope House. He works sixteen hours a day and still has time to meddle in Creek business.”
Homeless looked at the tall, lanky chaplain approvingly. “We need meddlin’ in here,” he said.
“I’d like to see th’ dozers push th’ whole caboodle off th’ bank, and good riddance!”
Homeless had brought out two aluminum folding chairs that had seen better days, and set them up for his guests. He sat on the step, and the dogs lay panting in a patch of grass.
“They say th’ whole thing’ll be a shoppin’ center in a couple of years. Where all them trailers is parked—Wal-Mart! Where all them burned-out houses is settin’—Lowe’s Hardware! Where you could once go in and get shot in th’ head, you’ll be able t’ go in an’ get you a flush toilet.
“Still an’ all, two years is a good bit of time, and you could do a good bit of work on the Creek, if you handle it right. Now, you take ol’ Absalom Greer, he come in here and preached up a storm and some folks got saved and a good many lives were turned around, but Absalom was native and he was old, and they let him be.
“They won’t take kindly to a young feller like yourself if you don’t give ’em plenty of time to warm up.
“What I think you ought to do is come to my place on Wednesday night when I make soup for whoever shows up, and just set an’ talk an’ be patient, an’ let th’ good Lord do a work.”
“I’ll be here,” said Scott.
Homeless grinned. “I wouldn’t bring them dogs if I was you. Jack Russells are a mite fancy for my crowd.”
“We lost our dining room manager last week,” Scott said on the walk back home. “A family problem. Everybody’s been pitching in, it’s kind of a scramble.”
“I like scrambles,” said the rector, who was currently living in one.
Sometimes, a thought lodged somewhere in the back of his mind and he couldn’t get it out, like a sesame seed stuck between his teeth.
Walking down Old Church Lane the following day, his jacket slung over his shoulder, he tried to focus on the place—was it in his brain?—that had something to tell him, some hidden thing to reveal.
Blast! He hated this. It was like Emma’s aggravating game, Three Guesses. He couldn’t even begin to guess . . . .
A job. Why did he think it had to do with a job?
We lost our dining room manager last week, Scott had said.
Yes!
Pauline!
Hanging on to his jacket, he started running. He could go to the office and call from there, but no, he’d run across Baxter Park, through his own backyard, and then up the hill and over to Betty Craig’s house. Why waste a minute? Jobs were scarce.
He was panting and streaked with sweat when he hit the sidewalk in front of Betty’s trim cottage. He stopped for a moment to wipe his face with a handkerchief when Dooley blew by him on his red bicycle.
“Hey!” shouted Dooley.
“Hey, yourself!” he shouted back.
He saw the boy throw the bicycle down by Betty’s front steps, fling his helmet in the grass, and race to the door.
“Mama! Mama!” he called through the screen door.
Pauline appeared at the door and let him in as the rector walked up to the porch.
“Mama, there’s a job at Hope House! Something in the dining room! I heard it at the store, they need somebody right now.”
“Oh.” Pauline grew pale and put her hand to the left side of her face. “I . . . don’t know.”
“You’ve waited tables, Mama, you can do it! You can do it!”
He saw the look on Dooley’s face, and tried to swallow down a knot in his throat. In only a few years, this boy on a bicycle would be worth over a million dollars, maybe two million if the market stayed strong. Dooley wouldn’t know this until he was twenty-one, but the rector could see that Sadie Baxter had known exactly what she was doing when she drew up her will.
“Come on, Mama, get dressed and go up there, I’ve got to get back to The Local or Avis’ll kill me, I got five deliveries.”
“I’ll take you,” the rector told Pauline. “I’ll go home and get the car, won’t be a minute.” Hang the meeting in the parish hall at two o’clock.
Pauline looked at him through the screen door, keeping her hand over the left side of her face. “Oh, but . . . I don’t have anything to . . . I don’t know . . .”
“Don’t be afraid,” he said.
Tears suddenly filled Pauline’s eyes, but she managed to smile. “OK,” she said, turning to look at her son. “I can do it.”
“Right!” said Dooley. He charged through the door and raced down the steps and was away on his red bicycle, but not before the rector saw the flush of unguarded hope on his face.
“I’ll be back,” said Father Tim. “Wear that blue skirt and white blouse, why don’t you? I thought you looked very . . .”—he wasn’t terribly good at this; he searched for a word—“nice . . . in that.”
She gazed at him for a long moment, almost smiling, and disappeared down the hall.
An attractive woman, he thought, tall and slender and surprisingly poised, somehow. Her old life was written on her face, as all our lives are written, but something shone through that and transformed it.
In his opinion, Hope House might have done a notch better on their personnel director, Lida Willis.
“How long have you been sober?” asked the stern-looking woman, eyeing Pauline.
“A year and a half.”
“What happened to turn you around?”
“I prayed a prayer,” said Pauline, looking fully into the director’s cool gaze.
“You prayed a prayer?”
Though he sat well across the room, feigning interest in a magazine, Father Tim felt the tension of this encounter. God was calling Pauline Barlowe to come up higher.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Are you in AA?”
“No, ma’am.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t know. I . . . feel like God has healed me of drinkin’. I don’t crave it no more.”
“Shoney’s fired you for drinking on the job?”
“Yes. But they said that . . . when I was sober, I was the best they ever had.”
“Miss Barlowe, what makes you think you might be right for this job?”
“I understand being around food, I get along real well with people, and I’m not afraid of hard work.”
The director sat back in her chair and looked at Pauline, but said nothing.
“I need this job and would be really thankful to get it. I know if you call Sam Ward at Sam and Peg’s Ham House in Holding, he’ll tell you I do good work, I never missed a day at th’ Ham House, my station was fourteen tables.”
“Were you drinking when you worked there?”
Pauline looked down for a moment, then looked straight at Lida Willis. “Not as bad as . . . later.”
“Has your personal injury handicapped you in any way?”
“Sometimes I don’t hear as good out of my left ear, but that’s all. My arm works wonderful, it’s a miracle.”
“I appreciate your honesty, Miss Barlowe.” She stood up. “Please don’t call us. We’ll be in touch.”
Pauline stood, also. “Yes, ma’am.”
Dear God, he wanted this job for Pauline. No, wrong. He wanted this job for Dooley.
He saw Scott Murphy in the hall. “If there’s anything you can do,” he said unde
r his breath as Pauline drank at the water fountain. “Your dining room manager’s job . . .” He never begged anyone for anything, but this was different and he didn’t care.
Scott looked at him, knowing.
“She can do it,” he told the chaplain.
He was looking something up in his study when he heard a noise in the garage. It sounded like his car engine revving.
Surely Harley wasn’t already working on . . .
He went through the kitchen, carrying J. W. Stevenson’s rare volume on his ministry in the Scottish highlands.
Dooley was sitting in the Buick, gunning the motor. Barnabas sat on the passenger side, looking straight ahead.
“What’s going on?” Father Tim asked through the open car window.
“Nothin’.”
“Nothing, is it? Looks like you’re gunning that motor pretty good.”
“I’m checking it out for Harley.”
“Really?”
“He didn’t ask me to, but I thought it would help him to know how it sounds.”
“Right. Well, you’re out of there, buddy. Come on.”
Dooley gave him an aloof stare. “Jack’s dad lets him—”
“Look. What Jack’s dad does is beside the point.” Was it, really? He didn’t have a clue. Why would people let fourteen-year-old kids drive a car, two years before they could get a license? Or was that the going thing and he was a stick-in-the mud? “Maybe one day we can drive out to Farmer . . . .”
Dooley turned off the ignition: “Cool,” he said. “Your engine’s got a knock in it.”
At six-thirty, Barnabas was finishing up last week’s meat loaf, Violet was sneering down from the refrigerator, Cynthia was running a garlic clove around the salad bowl, Dooley was taking one of his endless showers, and Lace was stuffing a snack down a reluctant Harley Welch.
Father Tim still couldn’t get over the fact that only three or four years ago, the rectory had been quiet as a tomb. No dog, no boy, no wife in an apron, no red-haired babies, and hardly ever a soul in the guest room, with the agonizing exception, of course, of his phony Irish cousin and an occasional overnight visit by Stuart Cullen, his seminary friend and current bishop.