by Jan Karon
"That bad?"
"You wouldn't believe it. Southern pine, plenty old, and rotten to the core. I've seen it a hundred times. It's a miracle we haven't all been dumped in the basement. Especially the rear booth—it's a real hot seat."
"The new tenants come in tomorrow morning."
"Not in here, they don't. When the town inspector gets a look at this..."
"Could we call him, get him to take a look at it...now?"
"Now?"
"Edith Mallory needs to hear this, but she probably needs to hear it from a town authority."
"It's eleven o'clock at night..."
"How long could it take for repairs?"
Ron looked up and around. "Two months, six months. There's a lot of hidden stuff in a setup like this. Who knows? Minimum, maybe two months. You got to rip out the joists from front to back...lay a new floor....Maybe we could salvage some of the old floor. I don't know. I saw this same thing happen in a church once—a few more Sundays and the entire gospel side could have been swallowed up.
"They'll want to check the stairwell that goes to J.C.'s press room, too. That whole area is pretty bouncy, as I recall."
"Let's think this through," said the rector, sitting down on the bottom step.
Edith Mallory looked as if she'd dressed for a bridge luncheon, although it was nearly midnight. She drummed her fingers on the surface of her breakfast counter where they sat on stools. A cigarette smoldered in the ashtray.
"Rotten," said the rector.
"Clear through," said the former builder. "I plan to report it to the town inspector first thing in the morning, because it's a hazardous situation. Somebody could get killed in there."
The muscles in her face appeared to tighten, which made her enormous eyes seem larger. "I have a moving van arriving in Wesley at seven o'clock in the morning."
"When the inspector sees the problem, chances are he'll condemn it."
She uttered an oath.
"It'll take a couple of months, maybe more, to make repairs. Worst case, other problems could be lurking in the structure, as well."
She put the smoldering cigarette out. "I'm flying to Spain day after tomorrow." She sat immobile, frozen. "I don't suppose this is some cookedup ruse to keep your friend from leaving..."
"Keep him from leaving?" said Father Tim. "He's already gone. Midnight, remember?"
She stared at the wall clock, a nerve twitching under her left eye.
"How long will you be in Spain?"
"Three months," she snapped. "Then on a world cruise."
"You said the dress shop would have to go elsewhere if they couldn't occupy tomorrow, is that correct?"
"That," she said, turning on him with a kind of seething fury, "is precisely what I said and precisely what they will be forced to do." She drew one of her brown cigarettes out of the package. "That odious place has never been anything but trouble to me."
"Perhaps the space will be attractive to another of your connections..."
"I wanted it finalized before I leave." She got up and paced the kitchen floor. "I suppose you think I have time to recruit tenants before Wednesday?"
"I have a tenant for you."
She looked at him condescendingly. "Really?"
"The same tenant who occupied it for thirtyfour years."
She sniffed.
"I hear you'll be spending more of your time in your Florida home."
"You heard correctly."
"Sign a lease with Percy and make your repairs. This would put the place in good hands, with no running back and forth to pacify a highrent lessee. You'd have no fancy carpeting to pay for, no walls and ceilings to restore and paint, no upgraded toilet to install." He paused and plunged ahead. "A fiveyear lease with a twenty percent rent increase."
She glared at him. "You must be kidding."
"Five and twenty," he said evenly.
The nerve under her left eye twitched again. "One year at forty percent."
"Five and twenty, and you replace the awning. We'll scrape and paint the front of the building."
"Right," said Ron.
She stood in the middle of the floor, rigid. "One and thirty. Bottom line."
The rector got off the stool. "Have a good trip, Edith." Ron followed him to the door.
He was turning the knob when she came into the foyer behind them. "All right, then. Five and twenty."
He turned around to face her cold rage. Edith hissed a bitter curse, which, for all its foulness, didn't surprise him in the least.
"Not one bit of skin off Percy's nose," said Emma. "He had to move out, anyway, for all that work to get done. Plus, it was in the nick of time, before the whole thing caved in and people raised a stink."
It hadn't been what the scripture from Isaiah had meant, exactly, but God had given Percy a treasure in the darkness. There in that dim basement were the rotten joists—which, oddly, had been worth their weight in gold.
"It's wonderful," said Cynthia. "You're the man of the hour!"
He'd never been the man of any hour. He discovered that he felt taller, even thinner. How that was possible, he had no idea. However, he didn't want to get carried away with such nonsense. And he also didn't want to gloss over the most important of his feelings, which was joy.
A comfortable way of life was being changed—and that was good— but then, it would soon be restored. Percy would not die, Velma would not cry, he could get a bowl of soup somewhere other than his own kitchen, and life would go on.
He walked to the church and knelt down and prayed, having a good laugh with the Lord as he confessed he had no idea that he'd wind up playing hardball with Edith Mallory—and win.
He would have to do something about Meg Patrick, but he didn't know what.
Also, he needed to contact a few more schools and meet with at least two of Dooley's teachers for the hopedfor recommendations.
Most important, Mitford School would be out in June, which was next month, so he'd better get cracking and have a talk with Dooley Barlowe.
June! he thought, sitting uneasily at his desk. The month in which a tutor would have to be brought in, Puny would be getting married and going away for two weeks, Hoppy and Olivia would be married at Lord's Chapel and feted at Fernbank, and, last but not least, the bishop would come to perform the annual confirmation service—one in which both Dooley and Cynthia would be welcomed into the church. This time, Martha would come with the bishop, and he felt compelled to entertain them.
It seemed that something else was going on in June, but he was relieved that he couldn't remember what.
He took a break and drove to the country to see Brother Greer.
They sat on the porch of the store that looked out to a pasture across the road and slugged down a couple of Cheerwines from the drink box.
Barnabas slept with his head on the old pastor's foot.
"That little handful still needs a preacher," he told Absalom.
"I laid it before the Lord and let it winter over."
"And?"
"I'll do it."
"Splendid! Wonderful!" He felt invigorated by the cheerful light in his friend's eyes.
"How do I get in there and all?"
"Rodney Underwood, our police chief. He said he'd have you picked up and escorted every Wednesday at six o'clock. It's hard to find your way along the creek, and it's rough territory into the bargain. Are you sure you want to do it?"
"The Lord spoke to my heart about what to preach, so I'm set on doing it. 'Behold, now is the accepted time; behold, now is the day of salvation.'
"Lots of folks plan to get around to the Lord tomorrow, but tomorrow never comes. I'm to go on from there with something else Paul said to the Corinthians, Therefore, if any man be in Christ, he is a new creation; old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.'"
"Amen!" said the rector. "Will you drop in on us now and again?"
"Consider it done," he said, warmed by the old man's fire.
Buck Leeper shouted an oa
th into the phone and merely said, "Get up here. Now."
He had driven to the office this morning, because it was Saturday and he needed to run errands, but it never occurred to him to drive to the job site. Leaving the office unlocked, he raced up Old Church Lane and headed right on Church Hill, glad for the running shoes he'd worn.
There was something in Buck Leeper's voice that told him everything and nothing. Something was horribly wrong; he could feel it.
His heart pounded as he raced over the brow of the hill and onto the Hope House property. From the direction of the hospital, the shrill whine of the ambulance pierced the air.
He ran toward the group of men standing by a pile of lumber and saw what appeared to be a boy lying on the ground.
Dear God! he prayed, his heart bursting, don't let it be Dooley!
It wasn't Dooley.
"It's Tommy," said Dooley, his face a shocking mask of fear. He was shaking uncontrollably as the rector clasped him to his side.
Buck Leeper loomed over him, cursing so vehemently that he drew back. "Didn't I tell you to keep these kids off my job? I hope to God you like what you see."
What he saw was the boy, lying unconscious on his back. A terrible bruise colored his temple, and his bleeding right leg was gashed from the calf to the thigh, exposing the bone. He had seen this very sight before, in a dream about Buck Leeper. The strangeness of the coincidence was unspeakable.
He instinctively stepped toward Tommy.
"Don't touch him," growled Leeper.
Dooley was sobbing. "We was playin' on that pile of lumber. It started rollin' and Tommy fell down in it. He went on down and hit th' ground. When it started rollin', I jumped off." A deep moan came from Dooley.
The men stood by, shaken, helpless. "We wasn't workin' today. We just drove up to check...," somebody murmured. Then, the ambulance attendants were among them, and the quiet, wounded boy was laid on a gurney and the doors slammed shut and the ambulance was gone up the hill, and they were left there, stunned.
Buck Leeper's presence seemed to consume the very air, so that the rector gasped for breath. He had seen the man angry, but this was something else, something more frightening than anger.
He instinctively looked around for his car, but of course, it wasn't there, and Buck Leeper had turned and headed toward his red pickup.
He looked helplessly to the men.
"Let's go!" They sprinted toward a truck parked at the trailer.
"It's the head I'm worried about, not the leg," said Hoppy.
"Wilson's giving the leg a pressure dressing, and we're taking him to Wesley immediately. Must have been a nail—as he fell, the nail kept ripping. It just missed the femoral artery. I could see the artery and the nerve right beside it. Another quarter of an inch and he could have bled to death before we got to him.
"They'll do a CAT scan in Wesley. I've got a call in to Doctor Hadleigh. Good man. Neurosurgeon. There could be blood between the skull and the swelling, a hematoma. He'll need watching."
"Is he still unconscious?"
"Big time. What about his parents?"
"Can't reach them. Got an answering machine."
"Listen," said Hoppy, his face troubled, "I'm praying about this—for whatever it's worth."
"It's worth more than we know," said the rector, who could not stop shaking inside.
They sped to Wesley, trying to keep the ambulance in sight.
He burned with shame and guilt. In all his life, he couldn't remember feeling this terrible nausea of the spirit; he had wounded Tommy by his own hand, by an act of senseless, unforgivable neglect.
He glanced at Dooley, whose face remained a mask of white. The responsibility for Dooley was not only real, it was constant—twenty-four hours a day. He had failed, he had let down, he had only been pulling halftime, when overtime was clearly required.
Five miles out of Mitford, Buck Leeper's truck passed them and held the lead.
He had never felt so worthless, so frightened, and so desperately out of control.
Tommy's stricken parents arrived, responding to the rector's answeringmachine message to call him on the third floor at Wesley Hospital.
He wanted nothing more than to say, "I'm sorry, it's all my fault," but could not speak when they came in. A clergyman who couldn't speak in someone's time of need? He felt miserably impotent.
Buck Leeper paced in and out of the smoking room, hovering on the fringes.
"No hematoma," said Dr. Hadleigh, who had just read the xrays. "We don't know how long he'll be unconscious. It could be hours or days. Actually, it could be weeks, but we're hoping against that."
Tommy's mother looked at him and held out her hand. "Go in with us, Father." It was something in her voice, perhaps, but he felt forgiven. He began to weep, unable to control it, and they walked into Tommy's room together.
"I puked," said Dooley, wiping his mouth and getting in the car.
"Good."
"I been wantin' to. Is he goin' to die?"
"No."
"It was my fault," said Dooley, suffering.
"Why?"
"It was my idea. Tommy said we better not go up there n'more. Mr. Leeper told us not to."
He drove in silence. It was nine p.m. They had stayed through the operation that mended the hideous gap in the boy's leg. He felt exhausted, he felt angry, he felt unutterably sad, he felt too much at once.
"Are you mad?" asked Dooley quietly.
"Yes," he said, meaning it.
There was a long pause. "I'm sorry," Dooley whispered.
"Are you?"
"Yeah."
"It seems to me you're in a big hurry lately to mess up your life."
Dooley stared ahead.
"You get thrown out of school and a friend nearly gets killed, all because of breaking the rules. You could have been killed yourself. What is it with you? Talk to me about this."
"I just done it, is all."
"Tell me why you did it."
"It was fun."
"What was fun?"
"Smokin', playin' on 'at ol' lumber pile, messin' around."
"I didn't see you having fun when smoking got you stuck in the house for ten days. How much fun have you had today?"
"I don't know."
"The accident happened about eleven o'clock. How long had you been playing on the lumber?"
"We jis' started. About ten minutes."
"You swapped ten hours of agony for ten minutes of fun."
Dooley was silent.
"Think about it. You're smart enough to know that's stupid."
Sending him off to school could now seem a punishment instead of a privilege. But that's the way it was and no turning back.
"For Tommy, the agony will last more than ten hours. It'll be ten weeks, three months, maybe six months 'til that leg heals up. And when he gets off crutches, he could walk with a limp."
He didn't mention that the boy could lie for weeks in a coma or that serious complications could result from the head injury.
Maybe what Dooley Barlowe needed wasn't talk but a good hiding. Frankly, he couldn't imagine giving him one, but perhaps that's why they were in this predicament.
Dooley didn't speak again until they turned into the garage. "Yeah," he said slowly. "It was stupid."
He sat at his kitchen table with Cynthia, having a bowl of her leek soup and talking about what had happened.
He heard the guest room door open. If Meg Patrick came down his stairs and along his hall and into his kitchen where he was trying to sit peacefully with his neighbor, he would dump her in the street, bathrobe and all, followed by her suitcases that approximated the weight of a pair of 1937 Packard sedans.
His cousin must have read his mind, because he heard the door close firmly.
"Nobody's perfect," Cynthia said.
"To roughly paraphrase Paul, why do I do what I don't want to do and don't do what I want to do? I find it one of the most compelling questions in Scripture."
; She nodded.
"Why can't I get it right, Cynthia? Right with you, right with Dooley? Blast it, a man's life has to count for more than getting it right in the pulpit once in a blue moon.
"Speaking of which, my sermon for tomorrow is as rough as a cob. I'm going to toss it and ask the Holy Spirit to take over—start to finish. After what I've seen today, it makes the whole thing seem...insipid."
He stood up and paced the kitchen. "I'm sick of preaching, anyway."
"Timothy! You can't mean it."
"Oh, but I do mean it. I'm sick of boundaries and twentyminute sermons and manmade rigmarole. I meant it when I said I want the Holy Spirit to be in control. I don't want to go into the pulpit with anything in my hands...'in my hands no typewritten pages I bring, simply to Thy cross I cling.'
"I'm tired of trying to hold onto the reins and go in this direction or that direction because that's where the propers are leading me, or the congregation is pulling me, or the signs of the times are yanking me. Tomorrow, I'm going to talk about rules—and about breaking them— and what it costs when we choose any means at all to satisfy our own shallow and insatiable longings."
She gazed at him steadily.
"I'm glad you're here," he said, feeling suddenly weak and exhausted.
She came and put her arms around him and held him and patted him gently on the back, and he realized something he hadn't realized before:
Cynthia Coppersmith was his friend.
He wasn't going to wait any longer. He was going to catch up and stay caught up.
After the second service, he would talk with Tommys parents and confess his neglect in warning Dooley, then commit his help throughout the long ordeal ahead.
Next, he would talk with Dooley and lay out the school proposition. Maybe the time wasn't right, but waiting for the right time had caused this whole tragic episode in the first place.
Finally, he owed an apology to Buck Leeper, plain and simple.
He went into the first service fired with an energy and conviction that lasted through the second, and he delivered a message that made his scalp tingle.