These High, Green Hills

by Jan Karon

  “Emma ...”

  “I know you’re mad as a wet hen. But when things get so bad you can’t leave a file folder on your own desk without somebody helping themselves, what do you expect?”

  “For God has not given us the spirit of fear, but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind,” he read aloud from Paul’s second letter to Timothy.

  He remembered Katherine’s passionate counsel on the phone last year before he proposed to Cynthia. He had been sorely afraid of letting go, and Katherine had reminded him in no uncertain terms where fear comes from. If, she reasoned, it doesn’t come from God, there’s only one other source to consider. “Teds,” she said, “fear is of the Enemy.” And she was right.

  As a young seminarian, he had wanted to believe the letters were, in some supernatural way, written directly to him. There were oddly personal links throughout the letters, not the least of which was Paul’s reference to Timothy’s mother and grandmother as women of “unfeigned faith.” No better description could have been rendered of his own mother and grandmother.

  It was a long-standing tradition to read the letters on or near his birthday. Of course, there had been several years when he didn’t have a clue that his birthday had come and gone, but this year was different. Now, there was more to celebrate about June 28, only days away, than his nativity in Holly Springs, Mississippi. Now it was also the date on which he’d proposed to his next-door neighbor.

  He adjusted his glasses and read toward a favorite passage, a passage that, every year, seemed to stand apart for him.

  “Continue in the things which you’ve learned and have been assured of, knowing of whom you learned them, and that from a child you’ve known the holy scriptures, which are able to make you wise unto salvation through faith in Christ Jesus.”

  He read on, toward the end of the second letter, where the chief apostle made a request. “The cloak that I left at Troas ... , when you come, bring it with you....” Because Paul was then almost certainly ill and dying, those few lines never failed to move him.

  “Do thy diligence to come before winter,” the letter said in closing. In other words, Hurry! Don’t let me down. Soon, it will be bitterly cold.

  In the end, would he be able to say with Paul, I have fought a good fight! I have finished the course! I have kept the faith!

  Time, which tells everything, would tell that, also.

  He was running late and no help for it.

  Opening the office door, he was about to say good morning to his secretary when something brown dashed from nowhere and attached itself to his right ankle, growling.

  “What in the dickens?”

  Emma lunged from her desk. “Snickers! Come here this minute!”

  “Good heavens,” he said, trying to shake his ankle free. The teeth weren’t actually puncturing the skin, but if he made a wrong move ...

  “Don’t mind him,” said Emma.

  Don’t mind him? This dog was determined to attach itself to his leg permanently.

  “Don’t pay any attention and he’ll stop doing it.”

  “Oh.” He walked to his desk, dragging the dog with him, as if it didn’t exist.

  “That’s Snickers,” said Emma. “Since you’ve pretty much quit bringing Barnabas to work, I thought I’d bring Snickers once in a while.”

  Was there any balm in Gilead?

  “I suppose I could just leave my ankle in his mouth until he falls asleep,” said the rector, taking the cover off his Royal manual.

  Emma peered at him over her glasses. “You don’t like my dog?”

  “Well...”

  “He certainly likes you,” she said, offended.

  He had wired Roberto in Florence, asking if his grandfather might write a letter to Miss Sadie.

  It would be good medicine to have word from her childhood friend, Leonardo. As a young boy, Leonardo had lived at Fernbank with his artist father for three years, transforming the ballroom ceiling into a heavenly dome alive with a host of angels.

  When the letter arrived at the church office, carefully translated into English, he took it to the hospital at once.

  “May I read it to you?” he asked, sitting by her bed.

  She nodded, and he noticed how transparent her skin seemed. He had never noticed that before.

  My dearest Sadie,

  Time continues to be money, my cherished friend, but I no longer care about such things.

  What do I care about, then, and what moves me, still? Hearing Roberto sing your praises, and tell of the journey he made last June into the bosom of your family and friends, and of the grand occasion held in your ballroom, that same lovely room in which my father and I labored so happily.

  I delight to listen again and again to Roberto’s description of the ceiling, which had grown faded in memory, but which he has made vividly fresh and beautiful to me once more.

  I care, Sadie, that I have lived my life doing what I loved most passionately—painting.That is all I ever wanted to do, I never once thought of being a banker, or pondered the lure of exporting, I was able to do what I loved! I consider this a most extraordinary miracle in a world which conspires to rob us of our dreams, and even of our passion.

  Your priest tells us that you have fallen, but that your spirits are strong and you are singing in your bed! That is the Sadie Baxter who met us at the door so many years ago and said, Tempo e denaro! Time is money! Did you know that my father often pressed me to quicken my brushstrokes, in remembrance of what you said to us in greeting? He thought your father had asked you to say it, being too much a gentleman to press us himself.

  I, also, lie in bed these days, and am not often up. My old enemy, arthritis, afflicts me savagely. Yet I, too, sing in my bed, Sadie, the old music from La Traviata. I have no voice left, it is my spirit which sings.

  My dear friend, across half the world, I challenge you:

  Sing on! Sing on!

  You live forever in my soul.

  Yours faithfully,

  Leonardo Francesca

  Miss Sadie nodded, which told him she had heard and was pleased.

  “Where is Louella?” she asked, looking out the window.

  “I’m going to get her at nine o‘clock and bring her to see you.”

  “Oh, Father,” she said slowly, “you don’t have time to be ferrying people around.”

  “It’s my job to ferry people around, if it has anything to do with you.”

  She turned her gaze to him. “I wasn’t going to tell you this, Father, for it might give you the big head ... ”

  “Tell me!” he said, urgent. “Whatever it is, I promise I won’t get the big head.”

  “We’ve had seven priests in my eighty years at Lord’s Chapel, and you ... you are the one who has loved us best.”

  He swallowed hard. Whatever he did, he must seize the moment. “And the thanks I get from you is no more stories?”

  She closed her eyes and smiled. “When you come again,” she said. “But I hope you won’t expect too much, Father. I think I’ve spoiled you with stories of angels and painted ceilings, and broken hearts that never mended.”

  “Miss Sadie, you can tell me anything. You can read me the phone book, for all I care! Just keep ... ”

  She looked at him.

  “Just keep being Miss Sadie.”

  She closed her eyes again and he bent down and kissed her forehead. “Would you like me to bring you a bag of donut holes?” Please say yes, he thought.

  “Oh, no. No.”

  He tried to sing “Love Divine, All Loves Excelling” as he drove down the hill, but he could not.

  “Happy birthday!” crowed his wife, kissing his face.

  “What in the world?”

  “Wake up, sleepyhead, it’s your birthday! You’re now a full seven years older than me, and I’m thrilled!”

  “Being seven years older than you will last less than a month, so enjoy it while you can.”

  “Oh, I will, I will! Now sit up, I’ve broug
ht your coffee.”

  “I’ve never had coffee in bed in my life, except for a cup Dooley brewed when I had the flu. What time is it, anyway? Good Lord, Kavanagh, it’s not even daylight.”

  “I had to do it now because if I didn’t, you’d be careening down Main Street in that funny jogging suit, or in your study doing the Morning Office.”

  “What is this?” he asked suspiciously, taking the tray on his lap and looking at something discreetly covered with a napkin.

  “First, drink your coffee. Then I have a little present for you.”

  “A present? At five‘clock in the morning? This is earlier than I ever got up for Santa Claus when I was a kid.”

  “Isn’t it fun?” she asked, sitting cross-legged on the bed.

  “For you, maybe. I have my hospital visits, two meetings before noon, Winnie Ivey to fetch back to the bakery, and a sermon to finish so I can squire you out to dinner Saturday evening. Not to mention another round with the computer technician.”

  “Oh, dear. Dave?”

  “Dave.”

  “Ummm. Drink your coffee, dearest.”

  “By the way,” he said, “happy anniversary of ... well, you know.”

  “Say it, you big lug.”

  “Of the night I hauled myself down on one knee and recklessly abandoned my freedom, my liberty—”

  “Your boring existence as a dry old crust...”

  “Exactly.”

  He had taken his first sip of coffee from his favorite mug when the phone rang. No, he thought. Please, not that....

  It was Nurse Kennedy. Someone had been critically burned. Would he come and pray at the hospital, or did he want to do it at home?

  “Pray,” he told Cynthia as he hurriedly dressed. “A burn victim.”

  All he could think as he drove up the hill was, Why, God?

  “They don’t know who it is, Father. It’s somebody from the Creek, that’s all I can tell you. Dr. Harper’s having a trauma surgeon fly in who knows more about what to do. He and Dr. Wilson are both working in there. He says to pray like you’ve never prayed before.”

  “It’s bad?”

  “It’s very bad.”

  Bill Sprouse had talked about families who got burned out at the Creek, but that was in winter, when kerosene stoves and open fireplaces posed a threat.

  He didn’t dare think....

  He ran after the retreating nurse, his heart pounding. “Kennedy! Is it a girl?”

  “I don’t think so, Father. Is it important to know?”

  “Yes!” he said. “Very!”

  “I’ll find out as soon as I can.” She walked away quickly, the soles of her shoes making loud squishing noises along the empty hallway.

  Kennedy knocked lightly and opened Hoppy’s office door. “One of the nurses says it’s not a girl. It’s an adult female.”

  “Do you know who it is, then?”

  “No, sir. Nurse Gilbert says the patient can’t talk, and whoever brought the patient didn’t stay.”

  “No idea who she is?”

  “They said she’s wearing a bracelet with the initials LM. I think Dr. Harper wants you with her when she goes to isolation, that’s what I heard—but he hasn’t come and said anything to me.”

  “Whatever,” he said, meaning it.

  There were two choices, Hoppy once told him. A doctor could believe the patient was going to live, or that the patient was going to die. He had referred to something a patient told him about her former physician. She said he hadn’t believed she was going to live. In fact, she went on to say she felt like the doctor’s attitude was killing her.

  Nurse Kennedy rapped on the door and peered in.

  “Father, Dr. Harper wants you in isolation in ten minutes. He asked me to give you a run-down.

  “It’s a forty percent burn, primarily on the left side of the body and mostly third-degree. No eye injury, but a lot of grafting will be necessary. They’ve put the patient on a respirator, to keep the airway open. It was a flash burn with kerosene, there was some inhalation injury, and swelling was occluding the airway. She can’t talk, even without the endotracheal tube, and probably won’t be able to for several days.”

  “grafting...” he said, remembering a seminary friend who was in a car accident.

  “Yes, sir. They’ve just washed off the debris and given her another shot of morphine for the pain, but there’s a lot of pain that can’t be controlled. The trauma surgeon said to talk to her, it will calm her. We hope you don’t mind doing it. You’re so good at it.”

  “Of course I don’t mind. Anything else I should know?”

  “Dr. Harper will tell you anything else. They’ve admitted her as LM, for the time being. Want some coffee?”

  If he had passed out when Sassy Guthrie came into the world, what might he do in the face of this hellish thing?

  Isolation.

  As he opened the door to the gray room, he felt he was stepping into a place removed, out of time. And the smell. There was always the alien smell of fluids that didn’t belong to the human frame, but could, nonetheless, sustain it.

  The suffering beneath the mound of wet dressing was palpable. He felt the impact of it like a blow.

  He walked to the bed and looked hard at what he could see of the patient. Only a small portion of the right side of her face was visible, distorted by the large tube that entered her mouth. The smell of saline, which permeated the dressings, came to him like a sour wind from the sea. Dear God. Could he speak?

  The patient opened her eye and gazed into his, and he suddenly felt the power to do this thing surge through him.

  “You’re not alone. I’m with you.”

  Tears coursed from her eye onto the pillow, and he took a tissue from the box by the bed. He started to wipe her tears, but instinctively drew back, afraid of inflicting pain with his touch.

  “I’ve asked the Holy Spirit to be with us, also.”

  He had seen eyes that beseeched him from the very soul, but he hadn’t seen anything like this in his life as a priest.

  He had no idea where the thought came from—it seemed to come from a place in him as deep as the patient’s desperation. “I’m asking God to give me some of your pain,” he said, hoarse with feeling. “I’ll share this thing with you.”

  She looked at him again and closed her eye.

  He brought the chair from the corner of the gray room and placed it next to her bed, and sat down.

  Lord, give me power and grace to do what I just said I’d do. Whatever it takes.

  He called the little yellow house and told Cynthia what he knew.

  “The decision has been made, then,” she said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “The burn victim from the Creek—I was praying for a sign, something certain, and this is it. Lace must be taken out of that hell.”

  “Yes,” he said.

  “I can’t imagine what’s going on, why we haven’t seen her. I’ll call social services and find out if they’ve learned anything. Then I’ll go and sign the papers.”

  “Let me know. I’ll be home ... sometime. Probably before dinner. I have the distinct sense I’m to stick here.”

  “I’ll bring Louella to see Miss Sadie at eleven, and I’ll fetch Winnie this evening. Against everything that strives to make it otherwise, I shall say it anyway—happy birthday, dearest love.”

  “You’re precious to me, Kavanagh.”

  His wife gulped and hung up.

  He had missed Dave, the computer technician, but Emma had not. She’d been there, alone, for a two-hour session he presumed would put her over the edge.

  The least he could do was call. “How was it?” he asked cautiously.

  “It was terrific! It was fabulous!”

  “It was?” Had his hearing failed utterly?

  “Dave brought lunch, it was cheeseburgers all the way and fries with milkshakes. We ate ours and split yours.”

  “Glad to be of service.” He dreaded the rest of t
he conversation.

  “Finally, I don’t know how it happened, but I just got ... I don’t know, it started coming together. You won’t believe this ... ”

  “Try me.”

  “I did the first page of the newsletter.”

  “No!”

  “All the margins, a bulleted list, your message of the month, and the masthead.”

  “Fantastic!”

  “Not to mention a border. And not just a bunch of those dumb rule lines, either.”

  “Really?”

  “Greek keys,” she said with feeling. “Dave brought me a free solitaire program, and you get Learning the Books of the Bible.”

  “I’ll be darned.”

  “You won’t have to hire some young thing with her skirt up to here, after all,” she crowed.

  “Aha.”

  “But you will have to give me a raise.”

  “Well ...”

  “And I don’t mean maybe!”

  He viewed this turn of events as the best birthday present, bar none, since Cynthia Coppersmith accepted his marriage proposal. If Emma Newland would take on the infernal nuisance of the whole thing, including hanging indents, he wouldn’t oppose her raise for all the tea in China.

  “By the way,” said Emma, “I found the file folder with the lists in it.”

  “Where?”

  “Under the seat cushion of Harold’s recliner next to the TV in our sunroom.”

  He didn’t inquire, because he didn’t want to know.

  Hoppy creaked back in his desk chair, exhausted.

  “What’s the worst that can happen?” he asked, exhausted himself.

  “Infection. Pneumonia. Setbacks. If we don’t have one or all of these, it will be a minor miracle.”

  “Tell me everything.”

  “The burns are of mixed depths—some partial, but mostly full-thickness burns. I don’t think there’ll be any grafting to fat, but I won’t know until Cornell Wyatt gets here. He’ll fly in tomorrow with his burn nurse, and we expect to harvest the donor sites the following day.”

  “What areas will need new skin?”