Out to Canaan

by Jan Karon

  . . . and taking care of them.

  Some who had planned to vote for Mack Stroupe changed their minds, and came over and shook Esther’s hand, and the brass band nearly busted a gut to be heard over the commotion.

  Right! That was the ticket. Esther was right for Mitford. Mack Stroupe might be for change, but Esther would always be for the things that really counted.

  Besides—and they’d tried to put it out of their minds time and time again—hadn’t Mack Stroupe been known to beat his wife, who was quiet as a mouse and didn’t deserve it, and hadn’t he slithered over to that woman in Wesley for years, like a common, low-down snake in the grass?

  “Law, do y’all vote in th’ summer?” wondered a visitor. “We vote sometime in th’ fall. I can’t remember when, exactly, but I nearly always have to wear a coat to the polls.”

  Omer looked at the rector. The rector looked at Omer.

  They shook hands.

  It was done.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Life in the Fast Lane

  “What I done was give you thirty more horses under y’r hood.”

  “Did I need thirty more horses?” He had to admit that stomping his gas pedal had been about as exciting as stepping on a fried pie. However . . .

  Harley gave him a philosophical look, born from experience. “Rev’rend, I’d hate f’r you t’ need ’em and not have ’em.”

  What could he say?

  On Monday morning, he roared to the office, screeching to a halt at the intersection of Old Church Lane, where he let northbound traffic pass, then made a left turn, virtually catapulting into the parking lot.

  Holy smoke! Had Harley dropped a Jag engine in his Buick?

  Filled with curiosity, he got out and looked under the hood, but realized he wouldn’t know a Jag engine from a Mazda alternator.

  “Can you believe it?” asked Emma, tight-lipped.

  He knew exactly what she was talking about. “Not really.”

  For a while, he thought they’d lost his secretary’s vote to Esther Cunningham’s competition. Last week, however, had turned the tide; she’d heard that Mack Stroupe had bought two little houses on the edge of town and jacked up the rent on a widow and a single mother.

  “Sittin’ in church like he owned th’ place, is what I hear. Why th’ roof didn’t fall in on th’ lot of you is beyond me.”

  “Umm.”

  “Church!” she snorted. “Is that some kind of new campaign trick, goin’ to church?”

  He believed that particular strategy had been used a time or two, but he didn’t comment.

  “The next thing you know, he’ll be wantin’ to join. If I were you, I’d run his hide up th’ road to th’ Presbyterians.”

  He laughed. “Emma, you’re beautiful when you’re mad.”

  She beamed. “Really?”

  “Well . . .”

  “So, what did he do, anyway? Did he kneel? Did he stand? Did he sing? Can you imagine a peckerwood like Mack Stroupe singin’ those hymns from five hundred years ago, maybe a thousand? Lord, it was all I could do to sing th’ dern things, which is one reason I went back to bein’ a Baptist.”

  She booted her computer, furious.

  “I heard Lucy was with him, wouldn’t you know it, but that’s the way they do, they trot their family out for all the world to see. Was she still blond? What was she wearin’? Esther Bolick said it was a sight the way the crowd ganged up at the museum watchin’ the air show, and that barbecue sittin’ down the street like so much chicken mash.”

  She peered intently at her screen.

  “Well,” she said, clicking her mouse, “has the cat got your tongue? Tell me somethin’, anything! Were you floored when he showed up at Lord’s Chapel, or what?”

  “I was. Of course, there’s always the possibility that he wants to turn over a new leaf . . . .”

  “Right,” she said, arching an eyebrow, “and Elvis is livin’ at th’ Wesley hotel.”

  As much as he liked mail, and the surprise it was capable of bringing, he let the pile sit on Emma’s desk until she came back from lunch.

  “No way! I can’t believe it!” She held up an envelope, grinning proudly. “Albert Wilcox!”

  She opened it. “Listen to this!

  “ ‘Dear one and all, it was a real treat to hear from you after so many years. My grandmother’s prayer book that gave us such pain—and delight—sits on my desk as I write to you, waiting to be handed over to the museum in Seattle, which is near my home in Oak Harbor . . . .’ ”

  She read the entire letter, which also contained a great deal of information about Albert’s knee replacement, and his felicitations to the rector for having married.

  “Have you ever? And all because of modern technology! OK, as soon as I open this other envelope, I’ve got a little surprise for you. Close your eyes.”

  He closed his eyes.

  “Face the bookcase!” she said.

  He faced the bookcase.

  He heard fumbling and clicking. Then he heard Beethoven.

  The opening strains of the Pastorale fairly lifted him out of his chair.

  “OK! You can turn around!”

  He didn’t see anything unusual, but was swept away by the music, which seemed to come from nowhere, transforming the room.

  “CD-ROM!” announced his resident computer expert, as if she’d just hung the moon.

  He went home and jiggled Sassy and burped Sissy, as Puny collected an ocean of infant paraphernalia into something the size of a leaf bag.

  After a quick trot through the hedge to say hello to his hardworking wife, he and Dooley changed into their old clothes. They were going to tear down Betty Craig’s shed and stack the wood. He felt fit for anything.

  “Let’s see those muscles,” he challenged Dooley, who flexed his arm. “Well done!” He wished he had some to show, himself, but thinking and preaching had never been ways to develop muscles.

  What with a good job, plenty of sun, and a reasonable amount of home cooking, Dooley Barlowe was looking good. In fact, Dooley Barlowe was getting to be downright handsome, he mused, and tall into the bargain.

  Dooley stood against the doorframe as the rector made a mark, then measured. Good heavens!

  “I’ll be et for a tater if you ain’t growed a foot!” he exclaimed in Uncle Billy’s vernacular.

  Soon, he’d be looking up to the boy who had come to him in dirty overalls, searching for a place to “take a dump.”

  They were greeted in the backyard by Russell Jacks and Dooley’s young brother.

  “I’ve leaned th’ ladder ag’inst th’ shed for you,” said Russell.

  “Half done, then!” The rector was happy to see his old sexton.

  Poo Barlowe looked up at him. “Hey!”

  “Hey, yourself!” he replied, tousling the boy’s red hair. “Where were you on Saturday? We missed you at the town festival.”

  “Mama took me to buy some new clothes.” The boy glanced down at his tennis shoes, hoping the rector would notice.

  “Man alive! Look at those shoes! Made for leaping tall buildings, it appears.”

  Poo grinned.

  “Want to help us pull that shed down?”

  “It ain’t hardly worth pullin’ down,” said Poo, “bein’ ready t’ fall down.”

  “Don’t say ain’t,” commanded his older brother.

  “Why not?”

  “ ’Cause it ain’t good English!” Realizing what he’d just said, Dooley colored furiously.

  Father Tim laughed. He’d corrected Dooley’s English for three long years. “You’re sounding a lot like me, buddy. You might want to watch that.”

  Betty Craig ran down the back steps.

  “Father! Law, this is good of you. I’ve been standin’ at my kitchen window for years, lookin’ at that old shed lean to the south. It’s aggravated me to death.”

  “A good kick might be all it takes.”

  “Pauline’s late comin’ home, she called to say sh
e’d be right here. Can I fix you and Dooley some lemonade? It’s hot as August.”

  “We’ll wait ’til our work is done.”

  “Let’s get going,” said Dooley.

  Father Tim opened the toolbox and took out a clawhammer and put on his heavy work gloves. He’d never done this sort of thing before. He felt at once fierce and manly, and then again, completely uncertain how to begin.

  “What’re we going to do?” asked Dooley, pulling on his own pair of gloves.

  He looked at the shed. Blast if it wasn’t bigger than he’d thought. “We’re going to start at the top,” he said, as if he knew what he was talking about.

  He had removed the rolled asphalt with a clawhammer, pulled off the roofboards, dismantled the rafters, torn off the sideboards with Dooley’s help, then pulled nails from the corners of the rotten framework, and shoved what was left into the grass.

  Running with sweat, he and Dooley had taken turns driving the rusty nails back and pulling them out of every stick and board so they could be used for winter firewood.

  Dooley dropped the nails into a bucket.

  “Wouldn’t want t’ be steppin’ on one of them,” said Russell, who was supervising.

  They paused only briefly, to sit on the porch and devour a steaming portion of chicken pie, hot from Betty’s oven, and guzzle a quart of tea that was sweet enough to send him to the emergency room.

  Betty apologized. “Hot as it is, your supper ought to be somethin’ cold, like chicken salad, but you men are workin’ hard, and chicken salad won’t stick to your ribs.”

  “Amen!”

  “I want you to come and get your kindlin’ off that pile all winter long, you hear?”

  “I’ll do it.”

  After they ate, he and Dooley and Poo carried and stacked and heaved and hauled, until it was nearly nine o’clock, and dark setting in.

  “You’ve about killed me,” grumbled Dooley.

  “I’ve done sweated a bucket,” said Poo.

  “I’m give out jis’ watchin’,” sighed Russell.

  As for himself, the rector felt oddly liberated. All that pulling up and yanking off and tearing down and pushing over had been good for him, somehow, creating an exhaustion completely different from the labors surrounding his life as a cleric.

  And what better reward than to sit and look across the twilit yard at the mound of wood neatly stacked along the fence, with two boys beside him who had helped make it happen?

  Dooley was inspecting Poo’s new, if used, bicycle, Russell had shuffled off to bed, and Betty had gone in to watch TV. He sat alone with Pauline.

  He didn’t see any reason to beat around the bush. “We need to talk about Jessie.”

  There was a long silence.

  “I can do it,” she said.

  “I need to know everything you can possibly tell me, and the name of the cousin who took her and where you think they might be, and the names of any of your cousin’s relatives—everything.”

  He heard the absolute firmness in his voice and knew this was how it would have to be.

  As she talked, he took notes on a piece of paper he had folded and put in his shirt pocket. Afterward, he sat back in the rocker.

  “If we find Jessie, can you take care of her?”

  “Yes!” she said, and now he heard the firmness in her own voice. “I think about it all the time, how I want to rent a little house and have a tree at Christmas. We never had a tree at Christmas . . . maybe once.”

  His mind went instantly to all that furniture collecting dust at Fernbank. He and Dooley would load up a truck and . . . But he was putting the cart before the horse.

  “There’s something we need to look at, Pauline.”

  “Is it about the drinking?”

  “Yes.”

  “I don’t crave it anymore.”

  “Alcohol is a tough call. Very tough. Do you want help?”

  “No,” she said. “I want to do this myself. With God’s help.”

  “If you ever want or need help, you’ve got to have the guts to ask for it. For your sake, for the kids’ sake. Can you do that?”

  Betty switched the porch light on, and he saw Pauline’s face as she turned and looked at him. “Yes,” she said.

  “Didn’t want y’all to be setting out there in the dark,” said Betty, going back to her room.

  They were silent again. He heard Poo laughing, and faint snatches of music and applause from Betty’s TV.

  “There’s something you need to know,” she told him.

  He waited.

  “I won’t make trouble, I won’t try to make Dooley come and live with us. He’s doing so well . . . you’ve done so much . . .

  “If he wants to, he can come and stay with us anytime he’s home, but I want you to be the one who . . . the one who watches over him.”

  She was giving her boy away again. But this time, he fervently hoped and prayed, it was for all the right reasons.

  He kissed her on the cheek as he came into the bedroom.

  “Kavanagh . . .” he said, feeling spent.

  “Hello, dearest,” she said, looking worn.

  After he showered, they crawled into bed on their respective sides and were snoring in tandem by ten o’clock.

  “Emma, that program on your computer, that thing that helped you find Albert Wilcox . . .”

  “What about it?”

  “I’d like you to search for these names. I’ve written down the states I think they could be in.”

  “Hah!” she said, looking smug. “I knew you’d get to liking computers sooner or later.”

  Some days were like this. One phone call after another, nonstop.

  “Father? Emil Kettner. We met when Buck Leeper—”

  “Of course, Emil. Great to hear your voice.” Emil Kettner owned the construction company that employed Buck Leeper as their star superintendent.

  “I have good news for you, I think, if the timing works for Lord’s Chapel.”

  “Shoot.”

  “The big job we thought we had fell through, and to tell the truth, I think it’s for the best—as far as Buck’s concerned. He needs a break, but he’d want to be working, all the same. I wondered if we could send him out to you for the attic job.”

  He was floored. This was the best news he’d had since . . .

  “The way he described it, it sounds like six months, tops. I hate to send him on a job that small, I know you understand, but it’s the kind of job he’d find . . . reviving, though he’d never admit it.”

  “We’d be thrilled to have Buck back in Mitford. We’ll look after him, I promise.”

  “You looked after him before, and it worked wonders. There’s been a real change in him, but he still works too hard, too fast, and too much. You won’t hear many bosses complaining about that.”

  They laughed.

  “The money’s in place if we can keep on budget,” said the rector.

  “That’s what Buck’s all about, if you remember.”

  “I do! Well, I can’t say enough for your timing, Emil. Our Sunday School enrollment is mushrooming, I’ve had three baptisms this month, and the month’s hardly begun. When can we expect to see Buck?”

  “A week, maybe ten days. And we can’t give him much support on this project, he’ll be rounding up locals to do the job. How does that sound?”

  “Terrific. The carved millwork in the Hope House chapel is locally done. We’ve got good people in the area.”

  “Well, then, Father, I’ll be looking in on the project like I did last time. Until then.”

  “Emil. Thanks.”

  He’d asked for Buck Leeper to do the attic job, never really believing it could happen, only hoping.

  And—bingo.

  “Father? Buck Leeper.”

  “Buck!”

  He heard Buck take a drag on his cigarette. “You talked to Emil.”

  “I did, and we’re thrilled.”

  “You reckon I could get that cottage a
gain?”

  That dark, brooding cottage under the trees, where the finest construction superintendent on the East Coast had thrown furniture against the wall and smashed vodka bottles into the fireplace? He didn’t think so.

  “Let me look around. We’ll take care of you.”

  “Thanks,” Buck said, his voice sounding gruff.

  And yet, there was something else in his voice, something just under the surface that the rector knew and understood. It was a kind of hope.

  “Father. Ingrid Swenson.”

  Dadgum it, and just when he was having a great day.

  “Ingrid.”

  “We’re very close to getting everything in order. I’d like to personally make a proposal to you and your committee on the fifteenth. I’m sure the timing will be good for Lord’s Chapel.”

  He didn’t especially care for her almighty presumption about the timing.

  “Let me get back to you,” he said.

  “Father, it’s Esther.” Esther Bolick didn’t sound like herself. “This is th’ most awful thing I ever got myself into . . . .”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean I’ve never heard such bawlin’ and squallin’ and snipin’ and fussin’ in my life! I’m about sick of workin’ with women, and church women in particular!”

  “Aha.”

  “Why I said I’d do it, I don’t know. Th’ Bane! Of all things to take on, and me sixty-seven my next birthday, can you believe it?” She sighed deeply. “I ought to be sent to Broughton.”

  “Don’t beat yourself up.”

  “I don’t have to, a whole gang of so-called church workers is thrilled to do it for me!”