Out to Canaan

by Jan Karon

  Buck took the toothpick from his mouth and stared around the small room. “You want to live in it a year from now?”

  “Right!”

  “You’ll have to haul ass,” he said.

  Mack Struope

  Already Working For

  Improved Economy

  “I’m not going to wait til I’m elected to work hard for Mitford,” says mahoral candidate MackStrouope at his downtown campaign headquarters. “I’m already working hard to bring in new growth and development.

  “For example, I recommended the fine property of Sweet Stuff Bakery to one real estate company, and was able to get another realtor to look at Fernbank. When the Fernbank deal goes through, it will put big dollars in everybody’s pockets.

  “I’m not one to say if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. I say let’s make a good thing better.”

  Strouple is running against mayoral incumbent, Esther Cunninghanm, who has seen eight terms in local office, with three of those terms unopposed.

  Stroupe’s free Saturday barbecues will be held until election week at his campaign headquarters on Main Street.

  ThisSaturdzy will feature the live country music of everybody’s favorit, the Wesley Washtub Band. All are invited.

  He hadn’t missed Mack’s terminology, “when the Fernbank deal goes through . . .”

  Part of Miss Sadie’s letter had been running through his mind like a chanted refrain.

  “I leave Fernbank to supply any requirements of Hope House,” she had written. “Do with it what you will, but please treat it kindly.”

  Treat it kindly.

  Was selling it for half its worth treating it kindly? All her adult life, Sadie Baxter had done without, so that her mother’s and father’s money could be invested wisely. Hadn’t her penury and smart management provided a five-million-dollar budget for Hope House, and a home for forty people who needed one?

  Who was he to swallow down an arrogant offer that robbed the coffers of a deserving institution?

  But then, what was the alternative?

  Back and forth, back and forth—always the same questions, and never any answers. At least, not as far as he was concerned.

  He couldn’t deal with this any longer.

  He got up from the sofa and knelt by his desk in the quiet study.

  “Lord, Miss Sadie’s house belongs to You, she told me that several times. You know I’ve got a real problem here.”

  He paused. “Actually, You’ve got it, because I’m giving it to You right now, free and clear. I’ll do my part, just show me what it is. In Jesus’ name, amen.”

  “Poached, whole wheat, no grits,” he told Velma, as he walked to the rear booth and slid in.

  “J.C., I’ve got a story idea for you.”

  “Don’t give me any small-town, feel-good stuff,” snapped the editor. “I’ve had enough of that to choke a horse.”

  “I hear political candidates have to fill out a form that discloses the amount of a campaign contribution and who made it. I’m also told that anyone, including media, can ask to see that form.”

  He could tell J.C. was getting the message, and didn’t particularly like it, either. “So why don’t you get Mack to show it to you?” asked the editor.

  “So why don’t you?” asked the rector.

  “Father?”

  It was Lottie Greer. Years of experience told him all he needed to know.

  “I’m on my way,” he said.

  He parked behind a long line of cars and pickup trucks on the country road, and walked to Greer’s Store.

  Men were congregated on the porch, dressed in overalls and work clothes; many were smoking, and all talked in undertones.

  They nodded to him as he came up the steps. He heard the faint singing inside.

  “How is he?” he asked an elderly man sitting on a bench.

  “Bad off, Preacher.”

  He opened the fragile screen door that had slapped behind him on happier occasions, and entered the store that resembled a room in a Rembrandt canvas. The aged floors and burnished wood, the low wattage in the bulbs, the fading afternoon light through the windows—it was beautiful; saintly, somehow, more a church than a store. But then, hadn’t Absalom Greer preached the gospel in this place for nearly seventy years?

  Several women sat around the cold summer stove, talking in low voices. One sang softly with the chorus inside. “ . . . that calls me from a world of care, and bids me at my Father’s throne, make all my wants and wishes known . . .”

  Three men in ill-fitting dark suits met him at the door of the rooms where Absalom lived with his sister, Lottie. All were clutching Bibles, and all spoke or nodded as if they knew him.

  Lottie Greer sat in the chair by the fireplace, where she always implored him to sit when he visited.

  “Miss Lottie . . .”

  She looked up, gaunt and shockingly frail, her cane across her knees. “He said yesterday he wanted to see you, Father. He asked to die at home, the old way.”

  He put his hand on her shoulder.

  “He’s lingered on,” she murmured, lowering her head. “It’s been hard.”

  “Yes,” he said. “I understand.” And he did. His mother had lingered, fighting the good fight.

  Seven or eight men were gathered outside Absalom’s open bedroom door, and quietly, but forcefully, singing the old hymn the rector had known since a child.

  “He wanted us to sing his favorites,” said one of the men with a Bible. “Join in, if you take a notion. Th’ doctor’s with ’im right now, looks like he’s in an’ out of knowin’ where he’s at.”

  “Lena, get the Father something,” said Lottie.

  “I’ve just poured him a glass of tea, Miss Lottie. I hope you like it sweet,” she said, placing the icy glass in his hand.

  “Oh, I do. Thank you.”

  “And some cake, you’ll want some cake,” she said, eager to please.

  “Thank you, not now.”

  “You help yourself, then, anytime,” she said, pointing to the kitchen table, which was laden with food. “It’s to eat, not throw out.” She colored slightly, and made a faint curtsy. “I hope you’ll try my pineapple upside down, it’s over by the sink.”

  “Sing up!” said one of the chorus. “Brother Greer likes it loud.”

  “Jesus, lover of my soul . . .” they began, limning the words of Charles Wesley.

  He joined in.

  . . . Let me to Thy bosom fly,

  While the nearer waters roll,

  While the tempest still is high:

  Hide me, O my Savior hide,

  Till the storm of life is past;

  Safe into the haven guide,

  O receive my soul at last.

  Other refuge have I none;

  Hangs my helpless soul on Thee;

  Leave, O leave me not alone,

  Still support and comfort me . . .

  He felt as if he were a child again, in his mother’s Mississippi Baptist church, where his own grandfather once preached. A kind of joy was rising in him, but how could it not? Absalom Greer would soon pass safely into the haven . . . .

  Someone who appeared to be the doctor stepped out of Absalom’s room. “Go in, Father,” he said. “He’s asked for you.”

  The bed on the other side of the spartan room seemed far away. It was as if he treaded water to reach it.

  He heard the dense rattle in Absalom’s chest.

  “Brother Timothy, is that you?” The old man kept his filmy blue eyes fixed on the ceiling.

  “It is.”

  “I’ve been lookin’ for you.”

  Over the years, he’d seen it—as death drew near, the skin had a way of connecting with the bones, of fusing into a kind of cold marble that was at once terrible and beautiful.

  “The Lord’s given me a truth for you,” said Absalom. It was as if each word were delicately formed, so it would move through the maze of the rattle and come forth whole and lucid.

  Father Tim
bent closer. “I’m listening, my Brother.”

  “The fields are white . . . .”

  Jesus had said it to the disciples . . . .

  Then Absalom turned his head and looked past him, his face growing suffused with a kind of joy. “Glory, glory . . . there they are . . . I knew they’d come again . . . .”

  The rector’s heart raced with feeling—he knew instinctively that Absalom Greer was seeing the angels, the angels he’d once seen as a young boy, swarming around his mother and baby sister in the next room.

  The old preacher lifted his trembling hands above the coverlet, issuing a last pastoral command.

  The men stopped singing. The talking in the kitchen ceased.

  Lottie came into the room, leaning on her cane. “Is it his angels?” she whispered.

  “I believe so,” he said.

  He took the back roads, wanting to see pastures and open fields, wanting a span of silence between dying and living.

  Perhaps Sadie Baxter had been among the first to greet Absalom, to bestow some heavenly welcome upon one to whom God would surely say, “Well done, good and faithful servant.”

  He would miss Absalom Greer. It had been a privilege to know him. He was the last of a breed, willing, like Saint Paul, to be “a fool for Christ.”

  In the fields, Queen of the Meadow towered over goldenrod and fleabane, over milkweed and wild blue aster. Beautiful, but dry. They needed rain. He wished he had his dog with him, licking up the windows to a fare-thee-well.

  He made a turn onto the state highway and spoke it aloud: “The fields are white . . . .”

  “Lift up your eyes, and look on the fields,” Jesus had said to his disciples, “for they are white already to harvest.”

  The standing fields were the legions who hadn’t filled their God-vacuum with the One who was born to fill it; the standing fields were those who waited for someone to reach out and speak the truth, and tell them how they might be saved.

  He had received Absalom’s message as a reminder, and did not take it lightly.

  He glanced at the gas gauge. Nearly empty.

  There was a little grocery store and service station up the road. He’d once stopped there for a pack of Nabs and a Cheerwine.

  It came up sooner than he expected. He wheeled in and parked beside the building, then got the key from the store owner and walked around and unlocked the restroom. First things first.

  Coming out of the restroom, he saw the black Lincoln pull off the road and ease past the gas pumps.

  He stepped back instinctively, and watched Ed Coffey get out of the Lincoln and go into the station.

  Ed Coffey. Edith Mallory’s chauffeur. The one who was driving when he leaped from the moving car in the Shoe Barn parking lot, the one who’d driven him home after the gruesome, rain-drenched night at Clear Day.

  Ed wasn’t wearing his uniform. The rector didn’t think he’d ever seen Ed out of uniform since Pat Mallory died.

  He stood by the building, wondering why he didn’t step forward and speak to the man, a Mitford native who had always seemed a decent fellow, though clearly snared by the lure of Mallory money. Hadn’t Ed looked at him a couple of times as if to say, I don’t want to do this, I know better, but it’s too late?

  Ed left the station with a bulging paper sack in his arm, which he put in the trunk. Then he got in the car and quietly pulled onto the road, headed south.

  A new Lincoln, clearly, not the old model Edith had kept around after Pat’s death. And this one had dark windows. He despised dark windows in a car . . . .

  So Edith was back in Mitford. He could probably expect to see her at Lord’s Chapel. Edith on the gospel side, Mack Stroupe on the epistle side.

  What happened when clergy looked into their congregations, only to see a growing number of people whose motives they distrusted, and whose spirits made their own feel anxious and uneasy?

  He noticed that a new battery of yard signs had gone up, along with the general clutter.

  We’re stickin’ with Esther

  BILL AND ARLENE

  We’re stickin’ with Esther

  Ralph And Fay Lewis

  OUR BANE WILL

  BE YOUR BLESSING

  Best Sale Ever!

  Oct. 4, from 10 a.m.

  After Work Supper

  6:00 p.m.

  MACK MEANS

  MONEY IN

  MITFORD POCKETS.

  $Mack for Mayor$

  VOTE YOUR VALUES

  Esther for Mayor

  Play Ball!

  Come one, come all

  Baxter Field, August 10

  HOTDOGS $1

  “Seventy-five bucks from the glove factory, a thousand from Leeland Mining Company—which should be no surprise, that’s his fourth cousin. Five hundred from the canning plant, who’d also like to see some more development in these parts, ten bucks from Lew Boyd’s cousin, fifteen from Henry Watts, blah, blah, blah—exactly what you’d expect.” J.C. looked pleased with himself. “You can get off your high horse, buddyroe.”

  Why pursue it? “So, tell me, have you seen Ed Coffey around lately?”

  “Ed Coffey? If he’s around, so’s your old girlfriend.”

  He felt as if he’d been dashed with cold water. “You might rephrase that,” he said.

  “You’re plenty touchy,” snapped the editor.

  “I learned it from you,” he replied.

  Lace Turner was visiting Harley and had come up to the kitchen to have a piece of cake with Cynthia. He was taking the pitcher of tea out of the refrigerator when they heard a light knock at the door.

  Jenny stood outside, peering through the screen. “Hello! Is Dooley home?”

  Barnabas skidded into the kitchen, barking.

  “He ain’t here!” Lace said.

  “Why, Lace!” said Cynthia. “He is here. Won’t you come in, Jenny?”

  “No ma’am. I just brought Dooley this.”

  Cynthia opened the screen door and took the parcel. “We’re having cake, it’s chocolate—”

  “No, ma’am, I can’t. Thank you.” She ran down the steps and across the yard.

  Cynthia looked at Lace. “Why did you lie?”

  “I didn’t know he was here.”

  “But you did. You saw him come in ten minutes ago. So, that’s two lies.” His wife never pulled punches.

  Lace shrugged.

  “I’m not going to preach you a sermon,” said Cynthia, “but I want you to know something. I’m disappointed that you’d lie to her and to me. You’re better than that.”

  Lace stared at the half-eaten cake on her plate. “I hate that girl.”

  “Why?”

  “She thinks she’s so smart, so pretty, so . . . fine.” Lace spit the word.

  “Lace, look at me, please.” Lace looked at her. “You’re smart. You’re pretty. You’re—”

  “I ain’t! I ain’t nothin’!” She stood up from the table, weeping, and ran down the basement stairs.

  “So,” said his wife, looking grim. “She’s crying—it’s what Olivia’s been hoping for.”

  “That’s good news,” he said, putting his arm around her shoulders.

  She smiled weakly. “Yes, but sometimes even good news feels bad.”

  Esther Bolick picked up on the first ring.

  “So, Esther, how’s it coming?”

  “You’ll never believe it—we got an armoire from Marie Sanders!”

  If he had anything to do with it, Esther would have two armoires. “How’s Hessie working out for you?”

  “A saint, Hessie’s a saint. She’s heading up the After Work Sale, includin’ th’ supper.”

  “Wow.”

  “Did you know Hessie and I are wearin’ beepers? I feel like Dick Tracy.”

  “I’ve heard everything.”

  “Course, th’ polyester and double-knit is still pourin’ in.”

  “Find me an orange leisure suit with stitched lapels, I’ll pay big money.”

&nb
sp; “Too late, Mule Skinner already spoke for it.”

  “Oh, well.”

  “But the quality’s picking up, we just got a Hoover vacuum cleaner and a whole set of Hummel figurines. Oh, and a mink jacket, th’ hole’s where you can’t even see it.”

  “How’s Gene?”

  “Suing for divorce.”

  “It could be worse,” he said.

  Esther laughed heartily. How he loved hearing a Bane chairperson laugh. A minor miracle!

  He was putting the receiver on the hook when it came to him out of left field.

  Land of Counterpane. Black car, blue pickup.

  Surely not . . .

  And the black car that had eased around the monument at two in the morning, so quiet he scarcely heard the engine . . .

  But that was weeks ago. That was the evening of his birthday, which was well over a month back, maybe five or six weeks. If Edith was around, why hadn’t anyone seen her?

  Was Ed Coffey steering clear of Mitford, buying their groceries at country stores, keeping to the back roads, going ununiformed to attract less attention?

  He’d drive by Clear Day and see what was going on, but there wasn’t any way to spot the house, since it sat a half mile beyond a locked electronic gate. That gate had been locked even on evenings when Edith invited the vestry to meet at her house. Guests were required to punch a password into a black box at the entrance.

  There was a churning sensation in his stomach.

  Not knowing what else to do, he went into the office bathroom and stuck his finger for a glucometer check. In his opinion, the glucometer was a decided improvement over peeing on a strip to check his sugar.

  One twenty-four. Not bad.

  He made a call from the office, still knowing the number by heart, and went home and got his old gardening hat from the closet shelf.

  Rifling through the chest of drawers, he found the sunglasses he seldom wore because someone said they made him look like a housefly.