by Jan Karon
She scratched a splotch on her neck and leaned toward him. “Who’s going to ask?”
“Not me,” he said, meaning it.
The screen door of the Grill slapped behind him. “What’s going on?” the rector asked Percy.
“All I lack of bein’ dead is th’ news gettin’ out.”
“What’s the trouble?”
“Velma.”
“Aha.”
“Wants to drag me off on another cruise. I said we done been on a cruise, and if you’ve seen one, you’ve seen ’em all—drink somethin’ with a little umbrella in it, dance th’ hula, make a fool of yourself, and come home. I ain’t goin’ again. But she’s nagged me ’til I’m blue in th’ face.”
“ ’Til she’s blue in the face.”
“Whatever.”
Velma, who had heard everything, walked over, looking disgusted.
“I hope you’ve told th’ Father that th’ cruise you took me on was paid for by our children, and I hope you mentioned that it’s the only vacation I’ve had since I married you forty-three years ago, except for that run over to Wilkes County in th’ car durin’ which I threw up the entire time, bein’ pregnant.”
Velma took a deep breath and launched another volley. “And did you tell him about th’ varicose veins I’ve got from stompin’ around in this Grill since Teddy Roosevelt was president? Now you take the Father here, I’m sure he’s carried his wife on several nice trips since he got married.”
Velma tossed her order pad on the counter, stomped off to the toilet, and slammed the door.
Percy looked pained.
The rector looked pained.
If Velma only knew.
She would be let down, he thought, maybe even ticked off—and for good reason. After all, she had worked hard to plan something special.
“Listen to me, please,” he said. “I can’t go on our retreat.”
She gazed at him, unwavering, knowing that he meant it.
“I’ve got to go and look for Jessie Barlowe.”
“I’ll go with you,” she said.
He sat heavily on the side of the bed where she was propped against the pillows with a book. “It’s in Florida, a long drive, and I don’t know what we’ll run into. I also need Pauline to come along. Since she’s the birth mother and no papers were signed for Jessie to live with Rhody Davis, Pauline has custody. She can take Jessie legally.”
“Would you need . . . police to go in with you? A social worker?”
“It’s not required. Only if it looks like a bad situation.”
“Does it look bad?”
“I don’t know. There’s no way to know.”
“Do you think you should investigate further, I mean . . .”
“I feel we need to act on this now.”
“Will we be back for our dinner next Thursday?”
“Yes,” he said.
She leaned against him, and they sat together, silent for a time. “We need to pray the prayer that never fails.”
“Yes,” he said again.
He pled Pauline’s case with Lida Willis, who gave her dining room manager two days off.
“She’ll make it up over Thanksgiving,” said Lida. That was when families of Hope House residents would pour into Mitford, straining the reserves of the dining room.
He was vague with Dooley about what was going on and said nothing at all to Emma. He didn’t want anyone getting their hopes up. As far as everyone was concerned, he was taking his wife on a small excursion, and Pauline was riding with them to South Carolina and visiting a great aunt. He regretted saying anything to anybody about Florida.
“Florida in July?” asked his secretary, aghast.
“Lord at th’ salt they got down there!” said Harley. “Hit’ll rust y’r fenders plumb off. Let me git m’ stuff together and I’ll give you a good wax job.”
“You don’t have to do that, Harley. Besides, we’re leaving early in the morning.”
“I’ll git to it right now, Rev’rend, don’t you worry ’bout a thing. And I’ll sweep you out good, too.”
It was all coming together so fast, it made his head swim.
“Look after Dooley,” he told his resident mechanic as they loaded the car, “and hide your truck keys. Dooley will walk and feed Barnabas, Puny will be in tomorrow, help yourself to the pasta salad in the refrigerator, the car looks terrific, a thousand thanks, we’ll bring you something.”
Harley grinned. “Somethin’ with Mickey on it, Rev’rend! I’d be much obliged.”
Hot. He didn’t remember being so hot in years, not since his parish by the sea.
And the colors in this part of the world—so vivid, so bright, so . . . different. In the mountains, in his high, green hills, he felt embraced, protected—consoled, somehow.
Here, it was all openness and blue sky and flat land and palm trees. He never ceased to be astonished by the palm tree, which was a staple of the biblical landscape. How did the same One who designed the mighty oak and the gentle mimosa come up with the totally fantastic concept of a palm tree? Extraordinary!
He chuckled.
“Why are you laughing, dearest?”
“I’m laughing at palm trees.”
There went that puckered brow and concerned look again. Soon, he really would have to go on a retreat with his wife and act relaxed, so she’d stop looking at him like this.
“You’re flying,” announced Cynthia, craning her neck to see the speedometer.
Good Lord! Ninety! They’d be arriving in Lakeland in half the anticipated time.
He could feel the toll of the 670-mile one-way trip already grinding on him as they zoomed past Daytona and looped onto the Orlando exit.
The engine might be working in spades, and the wax job glittering like something off the showroom floor, but the air-conditioning performed only slightly better than a church fan at a tent meeting. He hadn’t noticed it at home where the elevation was a lofty five thousand feet, but here, where the sun blazed unhindered, they were all feeling the dismally weak effort of the a/c.
He peered into the rearview mirror, checking on Pauline. She had ridden for hours looking out the window.
He would let Cynthia drive when they got to the rest station in Providence, and once in Lakeland, they’d take a motel and rest before looking for Rhody Davis on Palm Court Way. In order to get Pauline back in time to keep Lida Willis satisfied, they would have only a few short hours to look for Jessie before they hauled back to Mitford on another ten-hour drive.
Maybe he’d been a fool to risk so much on this one grueling trip.
But if not now, when?
He parked the car under a tree by the sidewalk, where the early morning shade still held what fleeting cooler temperature had come in the night.
“That’s Rhody’s car in the driveway,” said Pauline.
“Sit here,” he said, “while I check this out. I’ll leave the engine running, so you can stay cool.”
“Cool!” said his wife. “Ha and double ha. Can’t I come with you, Timothy?”
“No,” he said.
He had worn his collar, but only after thinking it through. He always wore his collar, he reasoned—why should he not?
His eyes made a quick reconnaissance.
The small yard was nearly barren of grass. Plastic grocery bags were snared in the yucca plants bordering the unsheltered porch. The car was probably twenty years old, a huge thing, the hood almost completely bleached of its original color. A weather-beaten plastic tricycle lay by the steps. No curtains at the windows.
He rang the doorbell, but failed to hear a resulting blast inside, and knocked loudly on the frame of the screen door.
Hearing nothing, he knocked again, louder than before.
Already the perspiration was beginning a slow trickle under his shirt. He might have been a piece of flounder beneath a broiler, and it wasn’t even nine a.m.
Had they come so far to find no one home?
He glanced at the bar
e windows again and saw her face pressed against the glass.
His heart pounded; he might have leaped for joy.
She looked at him soberly, and he looked at her, seeing the reddish blond hair damp against her cheeks, as if she’d been swimming. There was no doubt that this was five-year-old Jessie Barlowe; the resemblance to her brothers was startling.
Not knowing what else to do, he waved.
She lifted a small hand and waved back, eyeing him intently.
He gestured toward the door. “May I come in?” he said, mouthing the words.
She disappeared from the window, and he heard her running across a bare floor.
He knocked again.
This time, she appeared at the window on the left side of the door. She pressed her nose against the glass and stared at him. Perhaps she was in there alone, he thought with some alarm.
She vanished from the window.
Suddenly the door opened a few inches and she peered at him through the screen.
“Who is it?” she asked, frowning. She was barefoot and wearing a pair of filthy shorts. Her toenails were painted bright pink.
“It’s Timothy Kavanagh.”
“Rhody can’t come!” she said, closing the door with force.
He was baking, he was frying, he was grilling.
He mopped his face with a handkerchief and looked toward the street, seeing only the rear end of his Buick sitting in the vanishing point of shade.
“Jessie!” he yelled, pounding again. “Jessie!”
He heard her running across the floor.
She opened the door again, this time wider. “Rhody can’t come!” she said, looking stern.
He tried the screen door. It wasn’t locked.
He opened it quickly and stepped across the threshold, feeling like a criminal, driven by his need.
The intense and suffocating heat of the small house hit him like a wall. And the smell. Good Lord! His stomach rolled.
He saw a nearly bare living room opening onto a dining area that was randomly filled with half-opened boxes and clothing scattered across the floor
“You ain’t ’posed to come in,” she said, backing away. “I ain’t ’posed to talk to strangers.”
“Where is Rhody?”
“Her foot’s hurt, she done stepped on a nail.” She wiped the sweat from her face with a dirty hand, and put her thumb in her mouth.
“Is she here?”
Jessie glanced down the hall.
“I’d like to talk with her, if I may.”
“Rhody talks crazy.”
“Can you take me to her?”
She looked at him with that sober expression, and turned and walked into the hall. “Come on!” she said.
The smell. What was it? It intensified as he followed her down the long, dark hallway to the bed where Rhody Davis lay in a nearly empty room. A baby crib stood by the window, containing a bare mattress and a rumpled sheet; a sea of garbage was strewn around the floor.
The woman was close to his own age, naked to the waist, a bulk of a woman with wispy hair and desperate eyes, and he saw instantly what created the odor. Her right foot, which was nearly black, had swollen grotesquely, and streaks of red advanced upward along her bloated leg. The abscesses in the foot were draining freely on the bedclothes.
Her head rolled toward him on the pillow.
“Daddy? Daddy, is that you?” Sweat glistened on her body and poured onto the soaked sheets.
“Rhody—”
“You ain’t got no business comin’ here lookin’ for Thelma.”
“What—”
“Thelma’s long gone, Daddy, long gone.” She moaned and cursed and tossed her head and looked at him again, pleading. “Why’d you bring that dog in here? Git that dog out of here, it’ll bite th’ baby . . . .” She tried to raise herself, but fell back against the sodden pillow.
“Do you have a phone?” he asked Jessie. He was faint from the heat and the stench and the suffering.
Jessie sucked her thumb and pointed.
It was sitting on the floor by an empty saltine cracker box and a glass of spoiled milk. He tried to open the windows in the room, but found them nailed shut.
Then he dialed the number everyone was taught to dial and went through the agonizing process of giving the name, phone number, street address, and the particular brand of catastrophe.
“Gangrene,” he said, knowing.
At the hospital, he got the payoff for wearing his collar. The emergency room doctor not only took time to examine Rhody Davis within an hour of their arrival, but was willing to talk about what he found.
“There was definitely a puncture to the sole of the foot. Blood poisoning resulted in a massive infection, and that led to gangrene.”
“Bottom line?” asked the rector.
“There could be a need to amputate—we don’t know yet. In the meantime, we’re putting her on massive doses of antibiotics.”
“What follows?”
“Based on what you’ve told me, our department of social services will plug her into the system.”
“She’ll be taken care of?” asked Cynthia.
The amiable doctor chuckled. “Our social services department loves to get their teeth into a tough case. This one looks like it fills that bill, hands down.”
“I’ll check on her,” said Cynthia. “I’m his deacon.”
He should have been exhausted, with one long trip behind him and another one ahead. But he wasn’t exhausted, he was energized. They all were.
Cynthia chattered, fanning herself with one of the coloring books she’d been optimistic enough to bring. Pauline talked more freely, telling them Miss Pattie stories from Hope House, and holding Jessie on her lap.
Jessie alternately ate cookies, broke in a new box of crayons, and asked questions. What was that white thing around his neck? What was their dog’s name? Where were they going? What was wrong with Rhody? Could they get some more french fries? Did they put her monkey in the trunk with her tricycle? Why didn’t Cynthia paint her toenails? Why did the skin on Pauline’s arm look funny? Could they stop so she could pee again?
Sitting behind the wheel on the first leg of the journey, he glanced often into the rearview mirror.
He saw Jessie touching her mother’s face, though the concept of having a mother was not clear to her. “You’re pretty,” said the child.
“Thank you.”
“You don’t got no ear.”
“It was . . . burned off.”
“How’d you burn it off? Did you cry?”
“I’ll tell you about it one day. That’s why my arm looks funny. It was burned, too.”
“Are we goin’ back to get Rhody? Are you Rhody’s friend?”
“I’m your mother.”
Stick in there, he thought, feeling the pain as if part of it belonged to him. He looked at his wife. He knew when she was praying, because she often moved her lips, silently, like a child absorbed in the reading of a book.
As soon as they got around Daytona, they all played cow poker with enthusiasm, using truck-stop diners in place of the nearly nonexistent cows.
He felt as if he’d been hit by a truck, but thanks be to God, he hadn’t.
They rolled into Mitford at midnight, dropped Pauline and Jessie at Betty Craig’s, and went home and found Dooley’s note that said he was spending the night at Tommy’s. Crawling into bed on the stroke of one, he looked forward to sleeping in, until Cynthia told him she’d asked Pauline to leave Jessie with them on her way to work. Betty Craig was spending a rare day away from home with a sister, and did it make sense to leave Jessie with her elderly grandfather, who was a total stranger?
He slept until seven, when he heard Jessie come in, shrieking with either delight or fear upon encountering Barnabas. He woke again at eight, when he heard Puny, Sissy, Sassy, and the overloaded red wagon bound over the threshold and clatter down the hall like so much field artillery.
He burrowed under the covers, fee
ling the guilt of lying abed while the whole household erupted below him.
Someone was bounding up the stairs, and it definitely wasn’t his wife.
“Wake up, Mr. Tim!”
Jessie Barlowe, freshly scrubbed, with her hair in a pony tail, trotted into the room. As he opened his eyes, she scrambled onto the bed and peered down at him.
“Time to put your collar on and get my tricycle out of your car!”
Actually, it was more like he’d gone a few rounds with Mike Tyson.
Standing helplessly by the coffeepot, he’d fallen prey to Puny’s plea that he “watch” the twins while she did the floors upstairs. Cynthia and Jessie had gone next door, out of the fray, and here he was, drinking strong coffee in the study behind closed doors, as Sassy bolted back and forth from the bookcase to the desk, laughing hysterically, and Sissy lurched around the sofa with a string of quacking ducks, occasionally falling over and bawling. Barnabas crawled beneath the leather wing chair, trying desperately to hide.
“Ba!” said Sissy, abandoning the ducks and taking a fancy to him. “Ba!”
“Ba, yourself!” he said.
With the vacuum cleaner roaring above his head on bare hardwood, and Sissy banging his left knee with a rattle, he read Oswald Chambers.
“All your circumstances are in the hand of God,” Chambers wrote, “so never think it strange concerning the circumstances you’re in.”
The fact that this piece of wisdom was the absolute gospel truth did not stop him from laughing out loud.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Amazing Grace
Pauline and Jessie were sitting at the kitchen table as he cooked dinner.
They heard Dooley coming down the hall.
“It’s Dooley,” said Pauline, gently pushing Jessie toward her brother as he walked into the kitchen.
Dooley was suddenly pale under his summer tan.
“Jess?”
It had been three years, the rector thought, and for a five-year-old, three years is a long time.