by Jan Karon
“Amen!” she said.
“Shall we talk to her together?”
“I’ve said it all, she’s heard enough from me, I think. Would you . . . ?”
He found Lace in her room, wearing the filthy hat from her days at the Creek, and zipping up a duffel bag.
She turned and glared at him. “I knowed you’d come. You cain’t stop me. Harley’s sick and I’m goin’.”
“What’s the matter with Harley?”
“Pukin’ blood. Blood in ’is dump. Cain’t eat, got bad cramps, and so weak he cain’t git up. But they’s somethin’ worser.”
“What?”
“Somebody stoled ’is dogs.”
“Why is that worse?” He’d try to stall her until he collected his wits.
“His dogs bein’ gone means anybody could go in there and take th’ money he’s saved back in ’is bed pillers. I’ve got t’ drive ’is truck out, too, or they’ll be stealin’ that.”
“What do you think the sickness might be?”
“I ain’t no doctor!” she said, angry.
“It could be something contagious.”
“So? Harley done it f’r me time an’ again. I was sick nearly t’ dyin’ an’ he waited on me, even went an’ fed my mam when my pap was gone workin’.”
She picked up the bag and shoved the hat farther down on her head, and walked to the door.
“I’ll go with you,” he said. Was he crazy? It was broad daylight. He had gone into the drug-infested Creek with her once before, to bring out Poobaw Barlowe—but that had been under cover of darkness and he’d never felt so terrified in his life.
“You ain’t goin’ in there with me in th’ daylight, a preacher wouldn’t be nothin’ but trouble. Besides, you couldn’t hardly git up th’ bank that time, you like t’ killed y’rself.”
She was right about that. He’d taken one step up and two back, all the way to the top. “What kind of medicine have you got?”
She stopped and looked at him.
“Why go in empty-handed? What can you do, not knowing? Come with me to the hospital, we’ll talk to a nurse.”
“I ain’t goin’ t’ no hospital.
“Lace. Get smart. You can’t do this without help. Drive to the hospital with me, I’ll get Nurse Kennedy to come out to the car, if necessary. Tell her what you know, see what she thinks.”
Lace looked at the floor, then at him. “Don’t try t’ trick me,” she said.
“I don’t think you’d be easy to trick.”
God in heaven, he didn’t have a clue where this was leading.
Nurse Kennedy leaned down and talked to Lace through the open car window. Lace sat stoically, clutching the duffel bag in her lap.
“It could be a bleeding ulcer,” said Kennedy. “Does Harley drink?”
“Harley was bad to drink f’r a long time, but he’s sober now.”
“Any diarrhea?”
“An awful lot, an’ passin’ blood in it.”
“How’s his color?”
“Real white. White as a sheet.”
The nurse looked thoughtful. “Vomiting blood, passing blood, pale, weak, cramps, diarrhea. All symptoms of a bleeding ulcer.”
At least whatever it was wasn’t contagious, thought the rector, feeling relieved. And it was curable.
“What’s the prognosis?” he asked.
“I could be wrong of course, but I don’t think so. If it’s a bleeding ulcer, it can be treated with antibiotics. Diet plays a part, too. The main thing is, he’ll need treatment. His hemoglobin will be low, and that’s serious.”
“We can’t thank you enough.”
As they drove down the hill, he still didn’t know where he was headed or how this would unfold.
He pulled the car to the curb in front of Andrew Gregory’s Oxford Antique Shop. “Let’s stop and think this through. If you go to the Creek, there’s nothing you can do. You heard the nurse, he’s got to have treatment. Let me get Chief Underwood to drive us in there, we’ll bring Harley out, money, truck, and all.”
“Where would you take ’im to? He ain’t goin’ t’ no hospital.”
“I don’t know. Let me think.” Not Betty Craig’s, that was for certain. Betty’s little house was stuffed to the gills with Russell Jacks, Dooley’s disabled grandfather; Dooley’s mother, Pauline Barlowe, who was looking for work; and her son, Poobaw. There wasn’t a bed available at Hope House, even if Harley could qualify, and the red tape for the county home would be a yard long.
“Blast!” he said.
“Is that some kind of cussin’?” asked Lace.
“In a manner of speaking,” he replied.
He was running late for dinner, and he had no idea how he would explain it all to his wife.
Of course, she was vastly understanding about most things, he had to hand her that. So far, she hadn’t run him out of the house with a broom or made him sleep in the study.
This, however, could definitely turn the tide in that direction.
She was standing at the back door, looking for him, when he walked up to the stoop with Lace Turner and a weak and failing Harley Welch.
She said only “Good Lord!” and came out to help him.
Hoppy Harper was on his way, possibly the last of that sterling breed of doctors who made house calls.
Heaving Harley up the stairs to the guest room was worse than hauling any armoire along the same route. Though shockingly frail, Harley’s limp body seemed to have the weight of a small elephant. It took three of them to get Harley on the bed, where the rector undressed him and bathed him with a cloth, which he dipped in a pan of soapy water.
Harley looked comic in the rector’s pajamas, which had to be changed immediately, given Harley’s inability to make it to the adjoining bathroom on time. “I didn’t go t’ do that,” said Harley, whose flush of embarrassment returned a bit of color to his face.
What had he gotten into? Father Tim wondered. He didn’t know. But when Harley Welch looked at him and smiled weakly, the rector felt the absolute wisdom of this impulsive decision, and smiled back.
He went to bed, exhausted. Lace had gained permission to stay over, sleeping in Dooley’s room next to Harley’s, and keeping watch.
He reached for his wife, and she took his hand. “Am I dead meat around here?” he asked.
She rolled toward him and kissed him softly on the nearly bare top of his head.
“I married a preacher,” she said. “Not a banker, not an exporter, not an industrialist. A preacher. This is what preachers do—if they do it right.”
Nobody on the vestry had heard a word from the real estate company that had made inquiries around town.
Oh, well, they’d thrown out the line and there would be another bite at another time. But had they made the bait attractive enough? They couldn’t worry about that. They couldn’t install additional bathrooms in the hope that Fernbank would lure a bed and breakfast. They couldn’t cut up the ground floor into classrooms in the hope it would lure an academy. In the end, they couldn’t even afford to paint and roof it, hoping to lure anyone at all.
At eight in the morning he dropped by Town Hall and sat in a Danish modern chair that once occupied the mayor’s own family room. He declined the weak coffee in a Styrofoam cup.
“Barbecue?” growled the mayor. “Barbecue? Two can play that game. Ray Cunningham makes the best barbecue in the country—outside the state of Texas, of course.”
“I don’t know if I’d fight barbecue with barbecue,” he said. “I hear Mack’s planning to have these things right up ’til election day.”
The mayor was just finishing her fast-food sausage biscuit. “Why do anything at all, is what I’d like to know! I don’t see how that snake could oust me, even if I was the most triflin’ mayor ever put in office.”
“Any town in the country would be thrilled to have you running things, Esther. Look at the merchant gardens up and down Main Street, look at our town festival that raised more money than a
ny event in our history. Look at Rose Day, and how you put your shoulder to the wheel and helped turn the old Porter place into a town museum! Look how you rounded up a crew and painted and improved Sophia’s little house . . . . The list is endless.”
“And look how I don’t take any malarkey off the council. You know we’ve got at least two so-and-sos who’d as soon put a paper plant and a landfill in here as walk up th’ street.”
“You’ve never taken your eyes off the target, I’ll hand you that.”
“So what do you think?” asked Esther, leaning forward. The rector saw that she’d broken out in red splotches, which usually indicated her enthusiasm for a good fight.
“I think I’d wait a while and see how things go in the other camp.”
“That’s what Ray said.”
“In the meantime, I hope you’ll have a presence at the town festival. I hear Mack’s setting up quite a booth.”
“You can count on it! Last year I kissed a pig, this year I’ll be kissin’ babies. And one of these days, I want to do somethin’ for the town, thanking them for their support all these years. Lord, I hope talkin’ to you doesn’t infringe on any laws of church and state!”
He laughed. “I don’t think so. By the way—how about laying off the sausage biscuits for a while? I’d like to see you make it through another couple of terms.”
She wadded up the biscuit wrapper and lobbed it into the wastebasket. “You’re off duty,” she said. “So I’ll thank you not to preach.”
School would be out in two weeks and Dooley would be home.
Where in the dickens would he find the boy a job, or where would Dooley find one for himself? It would have to be in Mitford, which was no employment capital. He’d talk to Lew Boyd when he filled up his tank, or maybe the fellow who was looking after the church grounds could use a helper . . . .
Another thing. Maybe he and Cynthia could do something he’d never done in his life: take a week at the beach, rent a cottage—his wife would know how to do that. As for their mutual dislike of sand and too much sun, weren’t there endless compensations—like time to read, the roar of the ocean, and seafood fresh from the boat?
Dooley would like that, and he could take Tommy. They’d load the car and head out right after Dooley’s two weeks at Meadowgate Farm.
A vacation! For a man renowned for his stick-in-the-mudness, this was a great advance.
Whistling, he headed toward home.
Lace Turner was still wearing the battered hat. But her life with the Harpers had revealed a certain beauty. Her once-tangled hair was neatly pulled away from her face, dramatizing the burning determination in her eyes.
“He ain’t doin’ too good,” she said, indicating the pale, small man who lay in the guest room bed.
For someone devoid of a single tooth, Harley Welch’s smile was infectious, the rector thought. “I am, too, Rev’rend, don’t listen to ’er. She’s makin’ me walk a chalk line.”
“He ain’t eat nothin’ but baby puddin’.”
“Cain’t have no black pepper, no red pepper, no coffee, and no choc’late candy,” said Harley. “They say it makes you gastric. Without a little taste of candy, I’d as soon be dead.”
“You nearly was dead!” said Lace.
“How’s your setup?” asked the rector. “Do you have everything you need?”
“Everything a man could want, plus Lace an’ your missus an’ Puny to look after me. But I feel it’s my bounden duty t’ tell you I run liquor most of my early days, and I been worryin’ whether th’ Lord would want me layin’ in this bed.”
“Seems to me the Lord put you in this bed,” said the rector.
Harley’s birdlike hands clutched the blanket. “I’ve not always lived right,” he announced, looking the rector in the eye.
“Who has?” asked Father Tim, looking back.
“I pulled y’r shades down,” Lace said, “ ’cause he cain’t have no sunshine, he’s on this tetra . . . cyline stuff four times a day f’r three weeks. He’s got t’ take all that’s in this other bottle, too, an’ look here—Pepto-Bismol he’s got t’ swaller twice a day.”
“I ain’t never lived as bad as all that,” said Harley.
Father Tim sat on the side of the bed. “Dr. Harper says you’re going to be all right. I want you to know we’re glad to have you and want you to get strong.”
“He has t’ eat six times a day. It ain’t easy f’r me’n Cynthia t’ figure out six snacks f’r somebody with no teeth.”
“Teeth never give me nothin’ but trouble,” said Harley, grinning weakly. “Some rotted out, some was pulled out, and th’ rest was knocked out. I’ve got used t’ things th’ way they are. Teeth’d just take up a whole lot of room in there.”
“I’m comin’ after school an’ stayin’ nights,” Lace announced. “Olivia and Cynthia said I could.”
“Good, Lace. Glad to have you around. You’ve got a fine friend, Harley.”
Harley grinned. “She’s a good ’un, all right. But awful mean to sick people.”
“Well, you’re lying on your money and your truck’s over at Lew Boyd’s getting the oil change you mentioned, so you can rest easy.”
“I hate that I’ve let my oil go, but here lately, I’ve had t’ let ever’thing go. I didn’t mean f’r you t’ do that, Rev’rend, I’m goin’ t’ do somethin’ for you an’ th’ missus, soon as I’m up an’ about.”
“Oh, but I wasn’t saying—”
“I know you wasn’t, but I’m goin’ t’ do it, I’m layin’ here thinkin’ about it. Lace tol’ me you got a Buick with some age on it, I might like t’ overhaul your engine.”
Father Tim laughed heartily. “Overhaul my engine?”
“After my liquor days, I was in car racin’.”
Was he imagining that good color suddenly returned to Harley Welch’s cheeks? “You were a driver?”
“Nossir, I was crew chief f’r Junior Watson.”
“Junior Watson! Well, I’ll say!”
Harley’s grin grew even broader. He didn’t think preachers knew about such as that.
That explains it, mused the rector, going downstairs. Yesterday, he had headed Harley’s old truck onto Main Street, thinking he’d have to nurse it to Lew Boyd’s two blocks away. When he hammered down on the accelerator, he saw he had another think coming. He had roared by Rodney Underwood’s patrol car in a blur, as if he’d been shot from a cannon.
He had never gone from Wisteria Lane to the town monument in such record time, except on those occasions when Barnabas felt partial to relieving himself on a favorite monument boxwood.
“Landscaping,” announced Emma, her mouth set like the closing on a Ziploc bag.
“Landscaping?” he asked.
“Mack Stroupe.”
“Mack Stroupe?”
“Hedges. Shrubs. Bushes.” In her fury, his secretary had resorted to telegraphic communications. “Grass,” she said with loathing.
He didn’t recall ever seeing grass in Mack’s yard. Dandelions, maybe . . .
“Plus . . .”
“Plus what?”
Emma looked at him over her half-glasses. “Lucy Stroupe is getting her hair dyed today!”
Manicures, landscaping, dyed hair. He didn’t know when his mind had been so boggled by political events, local or otherwise.
He thought he’d never seen his garden look more beautiful. It filled him with an odd sense of longing and joy, all at once.
Surely there had been other times, now forgotten, when the beauty and mystery of this small place, enclosed by house and hedges, had moved him like this . . . .
The morning mist rose from the warm ground and trailed across the garden like a vapor from the moors. Under the transparent wash of gray lay the vibrant emerald of new-mown grass, and the unfurled leaves of the hosta. Over there, in the bed of exuberant astilbe, crept new tendrils of the strawberry plants whose blossoms glowed in the mist like pink fires.
It was a moment of p
erfection that he would probably not find again this year, and he sat without moving, almost without breathing. There was the upside of a garden, when one was digging and planting, heaving and hauling, and then the downside, when it was all weeding and grooming and watering and sweating. One had to be fleet to catch the moment in the middle, the mountaintop, when perfection was as brief as the visit of a butterfly to an outstretched palm.
For this one rare moment, their garden was all gardens, the finest of gardens, as the wild blackberry he’d found last year had been the finest of blackberries.
He remembered it distinctly, remembered looking at its unusual elongated form, and putting it in his mouth. The blackberry burst with flavor that transported him instantly to his childhood, to his age of innocence and bare feet and chiggers and freedom. The blackberry that fired his mouth with sweetness and his heart with memory was all the blackberry he would need for a very long time, it had done the work of hundreds of summer blackberries.
He gazed at the canopy of pink dogwoods he had planted years ago, at the rhododendron buds, which were as large as old-fashioned Christmas tree lights, and at the canes of his French roses, which were the circumference of his index finger.
Better still, every bed had been dressed with the richest, blackest compost he could find. He had driven to the country where the classic makers of fertilizer resided, and happened upon a farmer who agreed to deliver a truckload of rotted manure to his very door. He’d rather have it than bricks of gold . . . .
He took a deep draught of the clean mountain air, and shut his eyes. Beauty had its limits with him, he could never gaze upon great beauty for long stretches; he had to take rest stops, as in music.
“Praying, are you, dearest?”
His wife appeared and sat beside him, slipping her arm around his waist.