These High, Green Hills

by Jan Karon

  “The left side of her face—we’ll probably harvest the graft from behind the ear and neck on the right side. Her neck, shoulder, arm, upper body, and portion of the upper hip will also be recipient sites. It looks like an explosion, maybe the kerosene ignited in front of her and exploded as she turned away.”

  “I have a special feeling for this patient.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t have a clue,” he said. “Maybe it’s the praying. I think when we pray for others, even total strangers, it bonds us in ways we can’t understand.”

  “We’re pulling this thing together by the seat of our pants. I’ve never had serious burn experience. Cornell owes me a big one, and this is a big one. By the way, LM lost her left ear.”

  “Blast.”

  “We’ll be changing her dressings twice a day until the grafts are done, and no amount of morphine can kill the pain that comes with that. I’d like you to be with her after the dressing changes, whenever you can, around nine in the morning and eight at night. I know you’re busy, this is not your job ...”

  “Actually, it is my job.”

  “LM,” said Hoppy, abstractedly looking at the wall. “Cornell said if we could call her by her first name, it would help.”

  “What’s the best that can happen?”

  “With no pneumonia, no infection, no setbacks, she’ll be here two, maybe three weeks, then to Winston-Salem for some very aggressive physical therapy. Best scenario, a long recovery and pronounced scarring.”

  “How is the grafting done?”

  “You don’t want to know.”

  “I do want to know.”

  “Picture a machine like an electric cheese slicer. You adjust the calibration to the desired thickness and width of the graft you need to harvest. I’ve heard burn patients say the sound of it gave them night-mares for years.

  “In any case, it generally gives you a nice sheet of skin from the buttocks, which can be used for trunk and arm injuries. Bottom line, grafting is a big slice of hell for everybody—doctors, staff, and patient alike.”

  “I wouldn’t have your job, pal.”

  “I wouldn’t have yours.”

  “So, it’s a wash,” said the rector, managing a smile. “I’m going in to talk with LM a few minutes, then I’ll step down the hall to Miss Sadie. How is she?”

  Hoppy ran his fingers through his graying hair. He started to speak, then changed his mind.

  If Hoppy was short on burn experience, so was he. They were all flying by the seat of their pants.

  He stood by her bed and held the rail, and watched the random flickering of the lid over her closed eye. Sleeping, perhaps, or lost in the mist produced by morphine. The air in the tube that formed her breath sounded harsh against the constant hiss and gurgle of the IV drips.

  He prayed aloud, but kept his voice quiet. “Our Father, thank You for being with us, for we can’t bear this alone. Cool and soothe, heal and restore, love and protect. Comfort and unite those who’re concerned for her, and keep them in Your care. We’re asking for Your best here, Lord, we’re expecting it. In Jesus’ name.”

  She opened her eye after a moment and he looked into the deep well of it, feeling a strangely familiar connection.

  “Hey, there,” he said, smiling foolishly.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Every Trembling Heart

  SADIE ELEANOR BAXTER died peacefully in her sleep on June 30, in the early hours of the morning.

  When the rector of Lord’s Chapel received the phone call, he went at once to the hospital room, where he took Miss Sadie’s cold hand and knelt and prayed by her bedside.

  He then drove to the church, climbed the stairs to the attic, and tolled the death bell twenty times. The mournful notes pealed out on the light summer air, waking the villagers to confusion, alarm, or a certain knowing.

  “It’s old Sadie Baxter,” said Coot Hendrick’s mother, sitting up in bed in a stocking cap. Coot, who was feeding a boxful of biddies he had bought to raise for fryers, called from the kitchen, “Lay back down, Mama!”

  Mule Skinner turned over and listened, but didn’t wake Fancy, who could have slept through the bombing of London. “There went Miss Baxter,” he whispered to the darkened room.

  J. C. Hogan heard the bells in his sleep and worked them into a dream of someone hammering spikes on a railroad being laid to Tulsa, Oklahoma. Bong, bong, bong, John Henry was a steel drivin‘ man ...

  Cynthia Kavanagh got up and prayed for her husband, whose pain she felt as if it were her own, and went to the kitchen and made coffee, and sat at the table in her robe, waiting until a reasonable hour to call Meadowgate Farm and all the others who’d want to know.

  Winnie Ivey, awake since four-thirty, stopped in the middle of the kitchen on Lilac Road, where a dim light burned in the hood of the stove, and prayed, thanking God for the life of one who had cared about people and stood for something, and who, as far as she was concerned, would never be forgotten.

  Louella Baxter Marshall had not been asleep when she heard the bells toll; she had been praying on and off throughout the night, and weeping and talking aloud to Miss Sadie and the Lord. When the tolling came, she sat up, and, without meaning to, exactly, exclaimed, “Thank you, Jesus! Thank you for takin‘ her home!”

  Lew Boyd heard the bells and woke up and looked at his watch, which he never took off except in the shower, and saw the long line of automobiles snaking up to his gas pumps and buying his candy and cigarettes and canned drinks. Sadie Baxter’s funeral would draw a crowd, he could count on it. He sighed and went back to sleep until his watch beeped.

  Jena Ivey, who was up and entering figures in her ledger for Mitford Blossoms, shivered. She would have to hire on help to do the wreaths and sprays for this one. This would be bigger than old Parrish Guthrie’s had ever hoped to be, the old so-and-so, and so what if Miss Sadie had never bought so much as a gloxinia from Mitford Blossoms, Sadie Baxter had been a lady and she had loved this town and done more for it than anybody else ever would, God rest her soul in peace.

  Esther Bolick punched Gene and woke him up.

  “Sadie Baxter’s gone,” she said.

  “How d‘you know?”

  “The bells are tolling.”

  “Maybe it’s th‘ president or somebody like that,” said Gene, who remembered the hoopla over Roosevelt’s passing.

  “I don’t think so,” said his wife. “I saw the president on TV yesterday and he looked fit as a fiddle.”

  Percy Mosely was leaving his house at the edge of town when he heard the first tolling. He removed his hat and placed it over his heart and was surprised to feel a tear coursing down his cheek for someone he’d hardly ever exchanged five words with in his life, but whose presence above the town, at the crest of the steep fern bank, had been a consolation for as long as he could remember.

  After tolling the bell, the rector went to Lilac Road and sat with Louella and prayed the ancient prayer of commendation: “Acknowledge, we humbly beseech You, a sheep of Your own fold, a lamb of Your own flock.... Receive her into the arms of Your mercy, into the blessed rest of everlasting peace, and into the glorious company of the saints....”

  Then he did what others after him would do with Sadie Baxter’s lifelong friend. He sat and wept with her, sobbing like a child.

  He dialed the number and listened to the odd, buzzing ring of a rural telephone.

  “Brother Greer ...” he said.

  “Is it Sadie?” asked the old man.

  “It is.”

  “I’ll come, then,” said Absalom.

  He had done this for thirty-eight years—arranging the funeral, delivering the service, consoling the family. But now he was the family, and there was no consolation anywhere. It was as if a part of his own life had been suddenly lost, and there was no getting it back again.

  He signed the papers that allowed her body to be taken to Holding and cremated, and was wondering what to do about a marker and urn when the phone rang
.

  “Father Kavanagh? Lewis Cromwell of Cromwell, Cromwell and Lessing, in Wesley. We’ve been the Baxter family law firm since the turn of the century.”

  “Of course. Miss Sadie often spoke of you and your father and grandfather.”

  “I’ve just learned of her passing; Louella called this morning. I wanted you to know there’s a letter here, and it was Miss Baxter’s express wish that you have it immediately following her death.”

  “How shall I get it?”

  “We’ll send it over to you. I have a young assistant who must come that way to pick up produce at your local grocery store. You know how fond we Wesleyans are of your fine grocer.”

  “Avis Packard is almost as famous as his advertising professes.”

  “I know you were important to Miss Baxter, and we’d like to express our condolences to you, sir.”

  “Thank you.”

  “It’s the end of an era,” said Lewis Cromwell.

  It was delivered to the office as he was leaving for home.

  He hardly knew what to do with it. Perhaps he should sit with it awhile before he opened it. She had inscribed his name on the front of the fat envelope in her spidery scrawl, and sealed it with Scotch tape that looked nearly fresh.

  When he arrived home, he thumped down at the kitchen table, holding it in his hand.

  “Take it to your study,” said Cynthia, “and I’ll bring you a pot of tea.”

  He didn’t want tea. He didn’t want to go to his study. He felt desperately worn and addled, as if he had overused his mind for something he couldn’t even call to memory.

  He wanted to lie down, that’s what he wanted. But somehow, that was no way to read a letter, especially a letter from the departed. That seemed to warrant sitting up in a straight-back chair.

  “Blast,” he said to nothing and no one in particular.

  “Then take it over to my house,” she said, reading his mind. “Sit on my loveseat in the studio. That’s what I do when I need consolation.”

  He didn’t want to go over to her small, empty house and sit on that small loveseat in that small room.

  “Why don’t I just sit here and read it?” he asked, looking forlorn.

  “Wonderful! Do you mind if I make dinner while you sit there?”

  Mind? He couldn’t think of anything he’d like better. He suddenly felt protected by his wife’s close presence, the familiarity of the cooking ritual, the ordinariness of it all.

  Brightening, he opened the letter with a table knife.

  The date was September seventh of the previous year.

  Dear Father,

  We have just come home from your lovely wedding ceremony, and I don’t know when our hearts have felt so refreshed. The joy of it makes my pen fairly fly over the page.

  To see you taking a bride, even after so many years, seemed like the most natural thing in the world. Certainly no one can ever say that you married in haste to repent at leisure!

  Long years ago when I loved Willard so dearly and hoped against hope that we might marry, I wrote down something Martin Luther said. He said, there is no more lovely, friendly and charming relationship, communion, or company than a good marriage.

  May God bless you and Cynthia to enjoy a good marriage, and a long and happy life together.

  As you know, I have given a lot of money to human institutions, and I would like to give something to a human individual for a change.

  I have prayed about this and so has Louella and God has given us the go ahead.

  I am leaving Mama’s money to Dooley.

  We think he has what it takes to be somebody. You know that Papa was never educated, and look what he became with no help at all. And Willard—look what he made of himself without any help from another soul.

  Father, having no help can be a good thing. But having help can be even better—if the character is strong. I believe you are helping Dooley develop the kind of character that will go far in this world, and so the money is his when he reaches the age of twenty one.

  (I am old fashioned and believe that eighteen is far too young to receive an inheritance.)

  I have put one and a quarter million dollars where it will grow, and have made provisions to complete his preparatory education. When he is eighteen, the income from the trust will help send him through college.

  I am depending on you never to mention this to him until he is old enough to bear it with dignity. I am also depending on you to stick with him, Father, through thick and thin, just as you’ve done all along.

  When you receive this letter, there are two things you will need to know at once. First, the urn for my ashes is in the attic at Fernbank. When you go up the stairs, turn to the right and go all the way to the back. I have left it there on a little table, it is from czarist Russia, which Papa once visited. Don’t scatter me among any rose bushes, Father, I know how you think. Just stick the urn in the ground as far away from Parrish Guthrie as you can, cover it with enough dirt to support a tuft of moss, and add my little marker.

  The other thing you need to know at once is that my marker is with Mr. Charles Hartley of Hartley’s Monument Company in Holding. It is paid for. You might say it is on hold in Holding, ha ha. I think it is foolish nonsense to choose one’s own epitaph, it makes one either overly modest or overly boastful. I leave this task to you, and trust you not to have anything fancy or high-toned engraved thereon, for I am now and always will be just plain Sadie.

  I am going to lay down my pen and rest, but will take it up again this evening. It is so good to write this letter, which has been composing in my head for years! It was your wedding today which made me understand that one must get on with one’s life, and that always includes the solemn consideration of one’s death.

  He looked up to see his wife rubbing a chicken with olive oil, and humming quietly to herself. An extraordinary sight, somehow, in view of this even more extraordinary letter.

  He noted the renewed strength of Miss Sadie’s handwriting as the letter resumed.

  We are going to watch TV this evening and pop some corn, so I will make it snappy.

  As for Fernbank, I ask you to go through the attic with Olivia and Cynthia and take whatever you like. Take anything that suits you from the house, also. I can’t imagine what it might be, but I would like you to select something for Mr. Buck Leeper, who is doing such a lovely job with Hope House. Perhaps something of Papa’s would be in order.

  Whatever is left, please give it to the needy, or to your Children’s Hospital. Do not offer anything for view at a yard sale or let people pick over the remains. I know you will understand.

  I leave Fernbank to supply any future requirements of Hope House. Do with my homeplace what you will, but please treat it kindly. If I should pass before Louella, she has a home for life at Hope House, and provision to cover any special needs. I know you will do all in your power to look after her, she is my sister and beloved friend.

  It would be grand if I could live to be a hundred, and go Home with a smile on my face. I believe I will! But if not, I have put all the buttons on my affairs, and feel a light spirit for whatever God has in store for me.

  May our Lord continue to bless you, Father, you mean the world to

  yours truly,

  Sadie Eleanor Baxter

  He looked up and met Cynthia’s concerned gaze.

  “What is it, dearest?”

  “You mustn’t speak this to another soul,” he said.

  “I won’t. I promise.”

  “Sit down,” he said. She sat.

  “Dooley Barlowe,” he told her, “is a millionaire.”

  “No one ever thinks the preacher might be sad at a funeral,” said Absalom Greer, who had come to the rector’s office.

  “You’re right about that.”

  “They don’t know we suffer, too.”

  The two men grew silent for a moment, drinking their coffee.

  “How did you get here?” asked the rector.

  “Th
‘ man that keeps my orchard, he brought me in his truck. He’ll bring me back for the memorial service.”

  “After the service, we’ll take the urn to the churchyard. There’ll be just a few of us for that. Will you come?”

  “Oh, I will,” said the old man. “I once told Sadie Baxter I’d love her to her grave, and I’m a man of my word.” His blue eyes twinkled. “Lottie told me this morning, she said, ‘Absalom, I forgive Sadie.’ It was all I could do to keep from saying, ‘This is a fine time to do it, after she’s dead and gone.’ If I was the Lord, I’d say that dog won’t hunt.”

  “Thank heaven you’re not the Lord,” said the rector.

  They laughed easily.

  “I wonder who she left her money to,” wondered Absalom. “The church, I’d say.”

  “That’s a good guess.”

  “Sadie’s life will preach up a storm. You’ll have a fine subject and a big crowd. What do you want me to do?”

  “I’d like you to sit with Louella and Olivia and Hoppy, as family.”

  “I will, and glad to.”

  “You sent Lacey Turner to see me,” said the rector.

  “I knew you’d help her, if you could.”

  “I want you to know we care about her. I reported the abuse, and the DA’s office is looking for her. They’ll put her in foster care if they can’t locate a relative.”

  The old preacher nodded. “It’s a hard case, Brother, a hard case. God help you to do what you can.”

  Louella would sing a hymn in her throaty mezzo soprano, which was as consoling as raisins in warm bread. No, she wouldn’t break down, she was wanting to do it! Hadn’t she sung with Miss Sadie since they were both little children?

  The choir director, who was known for inventiveness, suggested Dooley sing with Louella, but no one thought he would. The rector called the boy, anyway.

  “What’re we singing?” Dooley asked, already persuaded.

  “ ‘Love Divine, All Loves Excelling.’ ”