by Jan Karon
“That’s who I had in mind, actually.”
Buck’s face colored. “That crap don’t work for me.”
“How long have you hauled the pain of your dead brother in your gut? And how much longer do you want to haul it? Stop, friend. Stop and look at this thing that cheats you out of all that’s valuable, all that’s precious.”
The superintendent turned and stared out the window, his back to the rector.
“You can’t beat this alone, Buck. You’ve tried for years and it never worked. Bottom line, we’re not created to go it alone, we’re made to hammer out our lives with God as our defender. Going it alone may work for a while, but it never has and never will go the mile.”
Buck shrugged his shoulders, still looking out the window. “Pauline knows about God and she couldn’t make it.”
“No, but she’s going to. In any case, we don’t come to God to attain perfection, we come to be saved.”
“You remember my grandaddy was a preacher. There’s no way I could be good enough to get saved or whatever you call it. No way.”
“It isn’t about being good enough.”
Buck turned to him, furious. “So what is it about, for Christ’s sake?”
“It’s about letting Him into our lives in a personal way. You can do that with a simple prayer you can repeat with me. When we let Him in, He guarantees that we become new creatures.”
“New creatures?” Buck laughed bitterly. “Who wants to be a new creature when you can’t even get the old one to work?”
“New creatures make mistakes, too, they stumble around and fall in a ditch. But once the commitment is made with the heart, He takes it from there.”
“It always sounded like a lot of bull to me.”
Father Tim got up and stood beside his desk. “I could tell you all day what you’d gain by making that commitment—but look at it another way: What do you have to lose?”
For a time, the only sound was the ticking of the clock on the bookshelf.
“Listen,” said Buck, “I’ll be out of the house in a couple of days.”
He moved suddenly to the door and opened it, then went down the walk to his truck, not looking back.
“The fields are white . . .”
“Buck!” said the rector. “Wait . . .”
But he didn’t wait.
“They want to buy me out and let me run it,” said Winnie, looking anxious. “What do you think?”
If he ever had to mess with another real estate deal . . .
“What do you think?” he asked.
“It sounds like a good idea. I mean, I do the work and get a regular paycheck, and they have all th’ headaches.” She sighed. “That might be refreshin’.”
“Weren’t you going to wait ’til after the cruise to make a decision?”
“They want an answer right away. Soon.” She wrung her hands. “At once!”
He didn’t feel he had the credentials to counsel Winnie on what amounted to the next few years of her life. “What’s God saying to you about all this?”
“I still have that stuck feelin’, like I don’t know which way to turn.”
Definitely not a good sign, but what more could he say?
“Your hair . . .” said Emma.
“What about it?” he snapped.
“Dearest,” said Cynthia, “about your hair . . .”
“Don’t touch it!” he said. So what if he had hacked on it himself? At least it wasn’t draping over his collar like so much seaweed.
“Man!” exclaimed Mule, eyeing him with interest.
“You don’t like it?” he asked. “I never say anything about your hair, I never even notice your hair, why you can’t do the same for me is beyond all imagining—”
“Gee whiz,” said Mule, looking perplexed. “I was just goin’ to ask where you got that blue shirt.”
When he walked into Esther’s hospital room on Thursday morning, her bed was surrounded by Bane volunteers. One of them held a notepad at the ready, and he felt a definite tension in the air.
They didn’t even look up as he came in.
Hessie leaned over Esther, speaking as if the patient’s hearing had been severely impaired by the fall.
“Esther!” she shouted. “You’ve got to cooperate! The doctor said he’d give us twenty minutes and not a second more!”
“Ummaummhhhh,” said Esther, desperately trying to speak through clamped jaws.
“Why couldn’t she write something?” asked Vanita Bentley. “I see two fingers sticking out of her cast.”
“Uhnuhhh,” said Esther.
“You can’t write with two fingers. Have you ever tried writing with two fingers?”
“Oh, Lord,” said Vanita. “Then you think of something! We’ve got to hurry!”
“We need an alphabet board!” Hessie declared.
“Who has time to go lookin’ for an alphabet board? Where would we find one, anyway?”
“Make one!” instructed the co-chair. “Write down the alphabet on your notepad and let her point ’til she spells it out.”
“Ummuhuhnuh,” said Esther.
“She can’t move her arm to point!”
“So? We can move the notepad!”
Esther raised the forefinger of her right hand.
“One finger. One! Right, Esther? If it’s yes, blink once, if it’s no, blink twice.”
“She blinked once, so it’s yes. One! One what, Esther? Cup? Teaspoon? Vanita, are you writin’ this down?”
“Two blinks,” said Marge Crowder. “So, it’s not a cup and it’s not a teaspoon.”
“Butter!” said somebody. “Is it one stick of butter?”
“She blinked twice, that’s no. Try again. One teaspoon? Oh, thank God! Vanita, one teaspoon.”
“Right. But one teaspoon of what? Salt?”
“Oh, please, you wouldn’t use a teaspoon of salt in a cake!”
“Excuse me for living,” said Vanita.
“Maybe cinnamon? Look! One blink. One teaspoon of cinnamon!”
“Hallelujah!” they chorused.
Esther wagged her finger.
“One, two, three, four, five . . .” someone counted.
“Five what?” asked Vanita. “Cups? No. Teaspoons? No. Tablespoons?”
“One blink, it’s tablespoons! Five tablespoons!”
“Oh, mercy, I’m glad I took my heart pill this morning,” said Hessie. “Is it of butter? I just have a feelin’ it’s butter. Look! One blink!”
“Five tablespoons of butter!” shouted the crowd, in unison.
“OK, in cakes, you’d have to have baking powder. How much baking powder, Esther?”
Esther held up one finger.
“One teaspoon?”
“Uhnuhhh,” said Esther, looking desperate.
“One tablespoon?” asked Vanita.
“You wouldn’t use a tablespoon of baking powder in a cake!” sniffed Marge Crowder.
“Look,” said Vanita, “I’m helpin’ y’all just to be nice. My husband personally thinks I am a great cook, but I don’t do cakes, OK, so if you’d like somebody else to take these notes, just step right up and help yourself, thank you!”
“You’re doin’ great, honey, keep goin’,” said Hessie.
“Look at that!” exclaimed Vanita. “She’s got one finger out straight and the other one bent back! Is that one and a half? It is, she blinked once! I declare, that is the cleverest thing I ever saw. OK, one and a half teaspoons of bakin’ powder!”
Everyone applauded.
“This is a killer,” said Vanita, fanning herself with the notebook. “Don’t you think we could sell two-layer triple chocolates just as easy?”
“Ummunnuhhh,” said Esther, her eyes burning with disapproval.
Hessie snorted. “This could take ’til kingdom come. How much time have we got left?”
“Ten minutes, maybe eleven!”
“Eleven minutes? Are you kidding me? We’ll never finish this in eleven minutes.�
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“I think she told me she uses buttermilk in this recipe,” said Marge Crowder. “Esther,” she shouted, “how much buttermilk?”
Esther made the finger and a half gesture.
“One and a half cups, right? Great! Now we’re cookin’!”
More applause.
“OK,” commanded the co-chair, “what have we got so far?”
Vanita, being excessively near-sighted, held the notepad up for close inspection. “One teaspoon of cinnamon, five tablespoons of butter, one and a half teaspoons of baking powder, and one and a half cups of buttermilk.”
“I’ve got to sit down,” said the head of the Food Committee, pressing her temples.
“It looks like Esther’s droppin’ off to sleep, oh, Lord, Esther, honey, don’t go to sleep, you can sleep tonight!”
“Could somebody ask th’ nurse for a stress tab?” wondered Vanita. “Do you think they’d mind, I’ve written checks to th’ hospital fund for nine years, goin’ on ten!”
“By the way,” asked Marge Crowder, “is this recipe for one layer or two?”
He decided to step into the hall for a breath of fresh air.
Hammer and tong. That’s how one Bane worker said they went at it on Friday.
The weather was glorious, the parish hall was full to overflowing with both goods and people, the lawn was adorned with three white tents, sheltering from any possible bad weather everything from fine antiques and children’s toys to hot meals and homemade desserts. Three tour buses stood parked at the curb, signaling the penultimate event of the year.
Parkers filled the two church lots first, then sent traffic up the hill to satellite hospital parking, and down a side street to the Methodists. A stream of cars and pickups also flowed into lots behind the Collar Button, the Irish Woolen Shop, and the Sweet Stuff Bakery.
Mitford Blossoms kicked in ten parking spaces while several Main Street residents, including Evie Adams, earned good money renting their private driveways.
For the Bane workers, it was down in the trenches, and no two ways about it.
For eleven hours running, the rector made change, sorted through plunder for eager customers, dished up chili and spaghetti, boxed cakes, bagged cookies, carried trash bags to Gene Bolick’s pickup, made coffee, hauled ice, picked up debris, found Band-Aids and patched a skinned knee, demonstrated a Hoover vacuum cleaner, took several cash contributions for the dig-a-well fund, told the story of the stained-glass windows, and mopped up a spilled soft drink in the parish hall corridor.
Uncle Billy came to supervise, armed with three new jokes collected especially for the occasion.
After five o’clock, vans from area companies and organizations hauled in and out like clockwork, carrying employees who proceeded to eat heartily and shop heavily.
By eight o’clock, the cleaning crew came on with a vengeance, and at eight-fifteen, a small but faithful remnant, despite weariness in every bone, arrived at the hospital, where they gathered around Esther Bolick’s bed and sang, “For she’s a jolly good fellow.”
The marmalades, they reported, had been among the first items to go, with some anonymous donor kicking in sixty bucks—thereby bringing the total to three hundred dollars, or ten feet of well-digging.
It had been the most successful Bane in anyone’s memory, and had raised the phenomenal sum of twenty-two thousand dollars. This total not only defeated the Bane’s previous record by several thousand, it clearly put every other church fund-raiser, possibly in the entire world, to utter vexation and shame.
Pauline came to his office in the afternoon and sat on the visitor’s bench, looking proud and strong.
“I’m goin’ to AA,” she said, “and I’m not seein’ Buck anymore. That’s the best I can do, Father, and I want to do it, and I’m askin’ God to give me strength to do it.” She looked at him earnestly. “Will you pray that I can?”
It was the longest speech he’d ever heard her make.
He walked home with Pauline, loving the crisp air, the blue skies.
“Whenever you think you’d like to move into your own place, I’ll give you a hand, and so will Harley.”
“Thank you. But I don’t deserve—”
“Pauline, you’ve given me one of the richest gifts of this life—the chance to know Dooley Barlowe. I don’t deserve that. So, let’s not talk about deserving, OK?”
She looked at him and smiled. And then she laughed.
“Mr. Tim!” Jessie ran up the hall and grabbed him around the legs. “I ain’t suckin’ my thumb n’more. Looky there!” She held her thumb aloft and he inspected it closely.
“Buck got me to quit,” she said, grinning up at him. “He give me a baby doll with hair to comb, you want to see it?”
“I do!” he said.
Jessie darted into the living room and returned with the doll. “See how ’er hair’s th’ color of mine, Buck said he looked at a whole bunch of baby dolls ’til he found this ’un. You want to hold it? Her name’s Mollie, she don’t wet or nothin’.” She took him by the hand. “Come and sit down if you’re goin’ to hold ’er. Buck holds ’er a lot, but he cain’t come n’more, Pauline said he cain’t.”
Jessie popped her thumb in her mouth, then took it out again.
Pauline glanced at the rector and shrugged and turned away, but he’d seen the sorrow in her eyes.
Bane is a Blessing
To Thousands
Last Friday, Lord’s Chapel gave their annual Bane and Blessing sale, which netted the record-braking sum of $22,000.
According to Bane co-chair Hessie Mayhew, major funding will be provided to dig wells in east Africa, and buy an ambulance for a hospital in Landon county. Other recipients of Bane funds include mission fields in Bosnia, Croatia, Ruwanda, Harlan County, Kentucky, and food banks throughout our local area.
Mrs. Mayhew said that special thanks are due to co-chai, Esther Bolck, who demanded the best from all voluntears and got it.
A list of voluntears is printed on the back page of today’s edition. As Mrs. Bolik is sadly laid up in the hospital with two broken arms and a fractured jaw, you may send a card to room 107, but please, no visits until next Wednesday, doctor’s orders. She is allergic to lilies, which kill her sinuses, but likes everything else.
A photograph of a large, fake check for twenty-two thousand dollars was included in the story.
“Who wrote this?” asked Father Tim.
“I’ve hired help,” said J.C., looking expansive. “Vanita Bentley!”
“Who keyed it in?”
“I did, Vanita only does longhand. She’ll be writin’ a special ‘Around Town’ column every week from here out.”
“Congratulations!” said the rector. So what if the Muse would never win a Pulitzer? It wasn’t like it was The New York Times, for Pete’s sake.
“Buon giorno, Father! Andrew Gregory, home at last!”
“Andrew! By George, you’ve been missed!”
Andrew laughed. The rector didn’t think he’d ever heard his friend sounding quite so . . .
“Fernbank has been my fervent contemplation since we last talked,” said Andrew. “I’m eager to go up and have a look. How’s it faring?”
“Well, for one thing, you have an orchard full of apples, and the roof is holding its own.”
“Splendid! Can you let me in to have a look around?”
“Absolutely. What’s good for you? How about . . . fifteen minutes?”
“Perfect!” said Andrew, sounding . . . how was Andrew sounding, anyway? Was it carefree? Boyish? Relaxed?
Come to think of it, who wouldn’t be relaxed after three months of visiting cousins in Italy?
When Father Tim arrived at Fernbank, Andrew’s gray Mercedes was already parked in the drive, and Andrew stood waiting on the porch with a man and woman.
As he trotted up the steps, he couldn’t help but notice that the woman was exceedingly attractive, nearly as tall as the tall Andrew, and with a striking figure. He blinked in
to the dazzling warmth of her smile, hardly noticing the dark-haired man standing with them.
“Father!”
“Welcome home, my friend!”
They embraced, and Andrew kissed the rector, European-style, on both cheeks.
“Father, first I’d like to introduce you to Anna, my cousin . . .”
Good heavens, this was a cousin?
“ . . . and my wife,” said the beaming Andrew.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Fernbank
Surprised, if not stunned, by joy, the rector could scarcely speak. “Congratulations!” he blurted. “Mazel tov! Ah, felicitaziones!”
Andrew pumped his hand. “Well done, Father! And this is Anna’s brother, Antonio Nocelli.”
“Call me Tony!” said Antonio, embracing the rector and kissing him on either cheek. “I have heard much about you, Father.”
“While I have heard nothing at all about you and Anna!”
Anna laughed, throwing her head back. “Let me say, Father, that Andrew is our fourth cousin, so you must not alarm.”
“Yes, for heaven’s sake, don’t alarm!” said Andrew, chuckling.
Anna shrugged and smiled. “My English? Not perfect.”
“Whose is?” asked the rector. “Well, shall we go in? Would you like to take them in while I wait outside?”
“Heavens, no, you must come in, also,” said Andrew. The rector thought he’d never seen his friend so tanned, so boyish, so eager.
“Here’s the key, then. Fernbank will be yours soon enough, why don’t you unlock the door?”
“I am very excited,” Anna told her husband.
Tony agreed. “We could not sleep for thinking of the house Andrew has taken into his heart.”
Andrew swung the double doors open, and they walked in. There was a moment of hushed silence.
“Ahh, bella . . .” said Tony. “Molto bella!”
Anna opened her arms to the room. “It is beautiful! Just as you said!”
“A bit damp, my dear, but—”
“But, amore mio, sunlight can fix!”