by Jan Karon
“Well, you’ve had your bath,” said the rector, putting his arms around the boy in the navy school blazer. “Welcome home!”
“Welcome home, you big lug!” said Cynthia, giving him a warm embrace. “Good heavens, you’re tall! You’re positively towering!”
“I’m the same as when you saw me the last time,” said Dooley.
“Then I guess I’ve gotten shorter!”
Father Tim hoisted two duffel bags. “I’ll help carry your things up. There’s someone we’d like you to meet. We have a guest in the guest room.”
“Who?”
“Harley Welch,” said Cynthia. “He hasn’t been well, so he’ll be recuperating with us. Put on some old clothes and get comfortable, Dinner will be ready soon. Are you hungry?”
“I’m starved!” said Dooley, meaning it.
Dooley came into the kitchen, glaring at them. “Some girl’s stuff is in my room,” he said curtly.
Cynthia was taking a roast from the oven. “What kind of stuff?”
“A jacket. A hairbrush. Some . . . hair clips or somethin’.”
“Lace Turner has been staying in your room and helping nurse Harley.”
He glared at Cynthia. “That’s what I thought. My room smells different. She better not come in there again . . . and I mean it!” he said, raising his voice.
Cynthia set the roast on the stove top and took a deep breath. “For the moment, this is a happy, busy, contented household. That is a precious thing for any household to be, and each of us must work to keep it that way.
“It was important for Lace to help with Harley, as I could not do it all myself. She is now out of your room, and you are in it. I will expect you to treat her civilly when you see her, and I expect to be treated civilly, as well. Dinner is nearly ready, it is everything you like best. If your stomach is upset by this incident, which I expect it may be, go to your room and pray about it, then come down and eat like a horse.
“You have,” she said, looking at him steadily, “ten minutes.”
Dooley stood for a moment, then turned and stomped upstairs.
The rector placed forks, knives, and spoons on the table, trying to be quiet about it. With his wife and Lace Turner running things around here, he and Dooley might be heading for the piney woods, after all.
Dooley Barlowe was indeed taller and, if possible, thinner. For twenty thousand bucks a year, didn’t those people at school put food on the table?
And where were his freckles?
“Waiting for the sun to get to them!” exclaimed Cynthia.
What about his cowlick, then? Would they never see that again?
“Not in this lifetime,” his wife said.
And his grades—how about those grades? Not bad! Not bad at all! He owed the boy a small fortune. A couple of twenties, at least.
“Would you tell him?” he asked her after dinner.
“What do you think?”
“I think you won’t do it,” he said, striding into the study and trying to appear casual.
Dooley was waiting for Tommy to come over and fooling with the electric train they kept in the corner by the windows.
“Buddy, I’ve got good news!” He sounded as phony as a three-dollar bill. “You’ve got a job for the summer . . . which means, of course, that—”
“I know,” said Dooley, looking up.
“You do?”
“Avis told Tommy and Tommy called me up. Avis is hiring Tommy, too.”
“I thought Tommy was going to work for Lew Boyd.”
“He was, but Lew’s nephew turned up for the job. We start Monday.”
“Really?”
“Eight o’clock sharp, Avis said.”
“Ah, well. We were going to take you to the beach for a few days with Tommy or Poobaw. Stay in a cottage. Swim. Like that.” Swim? He couldn’t swim a stroke, but Cynthia was a fish. “Eat seafood.” Dooley was fooling with the train again. “Have . . . you know, fun.”
Dooley looked up and suddenly grinned at him. “That’s OK. You do stuff for me all the time. It’ll be fun working. Me’n Tommy will have a blast.”
“Right. Well. Congratulations! We can go out to Meadowgate on Saturday, then. For the day. How’s that?”
“Great.”
“There!” Cynthia said when he came back to the kitchen. “See how easy it was?”
Easy? Except for the relief of Dooley’s grin, he hadn’t found it easy at all.
There was, of course, an unexpected compensation.
Now they wouldn’t have to get in the car and drive five long hours to the beach. He could stay right here in Mitford like the stick-in-the-mud he was known to be.
Meadowgate.
The very name soothed him, and was, in fact, an apt description.
A broad, green meadow ran for nearly a mile along the front of the Owens’ property, sliced in half by a country lane that led through an open farm gate.
He had found solace in this place time and time again over the years, first as a new priest with a brand-new parish.
It had taken months, perhaps even a couple of years, to come to terms with the fact that he’d followed in the footsteps of a canonized saint. Father Townsend had been tall, dynamic, handsome, and at Lord’s Chapel for nearly twenty years. Though the parish had called Timothy Kavanagh after a tough and discriminating search, it had taken all his resources to wean them, at last, from the charismatic Henry Townsend.
He thought back on the pain he’d felt through much of that time, glad, indeed, that he could now laugh about it.
“Dearest, you’re laughing!”
“Darn right!” he said, feeling the happiness of driving along a beckoning lane with a comfortable wife, a happy boy, and a dog the size of a haymow.
“Let me drive the rest of the way.” Dooley was suddenly breathing on the back of his neck.
“I don’t think so.”
“Tommy’s dad lets him drive. Jack, this guy at school, his dad lets him drive his four-wheel all the time—”
“You can drive when you’re sixteen—and believe me, you won’t have long to wait.”
“You could just let me drive to the house. I know how.”
“Since when?”
“Since I went home with Jack and his dad let me drive.”
“Aha.”
The house came into view and, failing any more intelligent response, he stepped on the accelerator. He’d completely forgotten about the torrid romance between boys and cars.
Marge Owen’s French grandmother’s chicken pie recipe was a study in contrasts. Its forthright and honest filling, which combined large chunks of white and dark meat, coarsely cut carrots, green peas, celery, and whole shallots, was laced with a dollop of sauterne and crowned by a pastry so light and flaky, it might have won the favor of Louis XIV.
“Bravo!” exclaimed the rector.
“Man!” said Dooley.
“I unashamedly beg you for this recipe,” crowed Cynthia.
The new assistant, Blake Eddistoe, scraped his plate with his spoon. “Wonderful, ma’am!”
Hardly anyone ever cooked for diabetes, thought the rector as they trooped out to eat cake in the shade of the pin oak. Apparently it was a disease so innocuous, so bland, and so boring to anyone other than its unwilling victims that it was blithely dismissed by the cooks of the land.
He eyed the chocolate mocha cake that Marge was slicing at the table under the tree. Wasn’t that her well-known raspberry filling? From here, it certainly looked like it . . . .
Ah, well. The whole awful business of saying no, which he roundly despised, was left to him. Maybe just a thin slice, however . . . something you could see through . . . .
“He can’t have any,” said Cynthia.
“I can’t believe I forgot!” said Marge, looking stricken. “I’m sorry, Tim! Of course, we have homemade gingersnaps, I know you like those. Rebecca Jane, please fetch the gingersnaps for Father Tim, they’re on the bottom shelf.”
The four-year-old toddled off, happy with her mission.
Chocolate mocha cake with raspberry filling versus gingersnaps from the bottom shelf . . . .
Clearly, the much-discussed and controversial affliction from which St. Paul had prayed thrice to be delivered had been diabetes.
They were sitting on the porch, working up the energy to pile into the Buick and head back to Mitford.
When in Mitford, it seemed only the small, unhurried village that one loved it for being, with a populace of barely more than a thousand. From out here, however, Mitford seemed a regular metropolis, with traffic, political billboards, and barbecue events staged on slabs of asphalt.
Dooley had been to his room and silently carried out a box of his things.
Thump, thump, thump, thump . . . One of the farm dogs scratched himself vigorously, then licked the irritated flesh.
“Oh, dear,” said Marge. “Here we go! It’s skin allergy season for Bonemeal.”
Hal took his pipe from his pocket. “Every year, he has a hot spot on his right rear flank, where he chews and scratches the skin.”
“I can give him a shot of Depo-Medrol,” said Blake. He turned to the Kavanaghs. “A long-acting steroid. Goes into the system and lasts up to three months. He’ll stop scratching in a couple of hours.”
Dooley looked up from the box he was holding between his legs. “I wouldn’t do that.”
There was a brief silence.
Blake looked awkward. “What would you do?”
“Use a short-acting cortisone, which is easier on his system, and follow it up with tablets and a change of diet . . . medicate his shampoos.”
“This is a country practice,” said Hal Owen, tamping the tobacco in his pipe. “Not much time to fool with new diets and fancy shampoos.”
Dooley stood up with his box. “Right,” he said.
They were silent on the way home to Mitford. Maybe it was because of the late afternoon meal and the fresh country air.
“Is Dooley home from school yet?”
It was Jenny, the girl who lived down the street in the house with the red roof. She had shown up at their door, off and on, for the last couple of years, and he knew for a fact that Dooley had once spent hard-earned money on a coffee-table horse book for this girl.
“He is! Won’t you come in?”
She came in, looking only slightly less shy than last year.
Barnabas skidded up, wagging his tail and barking. But there was no need to shout a Scripture verse. Jenny looked his dog in the eye and began scratching behind his ears.
He dashed upstairs to Dooley’s bedroom, feeling some odd excitement in the air. “There’s someone here to see you.”
“Who?”
“Jenny.”
Aha. He couldn’t help but see Dooley’s face turning red.
“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 Cree
k.
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.”