by Jan Karon
A freight train broke into view at the red barn, blowing its horn as it rushed past a field, disappeared into the trees, and appeared again along a row of tiny houses.
She applauded, and turned to him, laughing. No, indeed, it didn’t take much for his wife....
They tried the roasted garlic and spread the Saga bleu on crackers and munched the pecans and emptied the tea container and watched the sky blush with pink, then fuchsia.
“You’re sighing again,” he announced.
“I can’t think why.”
“You can’t fool me. If anybody can think why they do something, it’s you, Kavanagh.”
“OK. I think I’ll miss Mitford.”
“Aha. So will I.”
A bird called. Barnabas rolled over at his master’s feet and yawned, and the rector leaned down to scratch the pink belly that was offered.
“So ... ” she said, pausing thoughtfully.
“So?”
“It occurs to me that we’ve found a place that meets all our strict requirements.”
“Hmmm. Small house, big yard,” he mused.
“Winters that freeze our glasses to our noses ... ”
“Nothing flat, lots of hills...”
“No sand,” she said.
They turned to each other and smiled. Then they laughed.
Neither said anything more as they packed up the hamper and folded up the cloth and went down the hill with their dog at their heels.
Next year, they agreed, they’d be adding a large room to the back of the little yellow house. With lots of windows, said the rector. With gleaming hardwood floors, said his wife.
“ ‘There are two things to aim at in life,’ ” he quoted from Logan Pearsall Smith. “ ‘First, to get what you want, and after that, to enjoy it.’”
“There’s the rub!” she said.
Using a Magic Marker, she inscribed the wisdom on the wall above her drawing board, relishing the freedom to do it, loving the notion of making the little yellow house larger, and living there forever.
There was so much to do and so much to think about, they had trouble sleeping at night. He’d even talked the vestry into building the kennel and dog run, and two men from Farmer had been working around the clock to complete the job.
The ECW was out in force, canvassing every garden and meadow for autumn flowers, dried herbs, pumpkins, and gourds to decorate the public rooms at Hope House. Cynthia volunteered to round up vases, buckets, and mounds of oasis from the florist, not to mention bake six dozen lemon squares for the reception.
J. C. Hogan’s wedding was coming straight up, in the middle of the week after the grand opening, and the rector would not only officiate, but had offered to bake a ham.
Immediately following the police station wedding at which Mule Skinner would be best man, they would troop to the Skinner household, where Fancy was giving a reception on the premises of Hair House, owing to the fact that their living quarters were being repainted.
For this affair, Cynthia had been asked to contribute four dozen vegetable sandwiches, four dozen lemon squares, and as many barbecued chicken drumettes as she could manage.
“I will not make drumettes, barbecued or otherwise,” she told her husband. “There are two cardinal rules from which I will not depart—I will not cook with Cheez Whiz and I will not do drumettes. I will substitute meat balls in sauce.”
Scott Murphy was collecting animals, large and small, having them vetted by Hal Owen, and installing them in the brand-new Hope House kennels, which were complete except for fencing in the runs.
The Presbyterian brass band was busy rehearsing three nights a week and could be heard through half the village. The Lord’s Chapel Youth Choir was holding rehearsals in Jena Ivey’s florist shop because the Sunday School rooms were overtaken by the ECW, who had twenty-seven major floral arrangements to pull together.
“Raffia!” cried the frantic Hope House chairperson for opening day events. “We need raffia!”
“What’s raffia?” several volunteers wanted to know.
“Don’t use raffia,” said Jena Ivey. “The last I got had bugs in it.”
Someone said Buck Leeper had bought a suit at the Collar Button that wasn’t even on sale, and J. C. Hogan was seen leaving the Collar Button with a box the size of a small garage. He was reported to have been with Officer Lynwood, who was out of uniform and looking good in a pants suit.
Percy Mosely was running a special on a vegetable plate: collards, black-eyed peas, candied yams, cornbread, and banana pudding for two-fifty, during the week of the Hope House grand opening, only. After that, three bucks.
Happy Endings Bookstore was giving twenty percent off every title starting with H. “Does that include th‘ Holy Bible?” asked Uncle Billy Watson, who, when assured that it did, shelled out fourteen dollars on the spot, plus three-fifty for a magnifying glass.
Hardly anyone in the village was untouched by the excitement of the great glass and brick building at the crest of the hill, which stood where the town’s first Episcopal church had burned to the ground in a tragic fire. Only one living person knew the full truth about that fire, thought the rector, and he was the one.
Sadie Baxter’s attempt to right a wrong was a better thing than he could now imagine. Good things would come of Hope House; he could feel it in his bones.
“I’m here,” said Scott Murphy, “because God brought me here. And so are you.”
Clearly, the chaplain’s message was directed at the forty new residents of Hope House, most of whom were present, and all of whom were in unfamiliar circumstances.
“Because God has brought us here, we’re going to honor Him by having fun, and enjoying this wonderful and remarkable place.
“You need to know that I do not now, nor will I ever, consider this a nursing home, though some of you will need nursing. Good nursing care is vital, but it isn’t everything.”
The mayor looked at the rector and nodded.
Ron Malcolm sat back and relaxed.
A muscle jumped in Buck Leeper’s jaw.
“We’re going to sing here,” said Scott Murphy, stepping from behind the pulpit and walking into the aisle. “We’re going to dance here. We’re going to pray here. We’re going to laugh here, and love here. And we’re going to do all that by sustaining the powerful, eternal, and life-giving spirit of hope through Jesus, the Christ.
“As your chaplain, I will not be working alone. That’s because I come to you not as an individual, but as part of a team.
“Luke!”
A Jack Russell terrier trotted out from the behind the pulpit, wagged its tail, and sat down.
The audience laughed with surprise.
“Lizzie!”
Another Jack Russell, nearly identical, shyly poked its head around the side of the pulpit, then walked out and sat down next to Luke.
The audience applauded wildly, glad for laughter after the formality of a ribbon-cutting in a whipping October wind, a lengthy dedication with choral music, and a bombastic mayoral speech.
“You hit a home run with the chaplain,” whispered the mayor to the rector.
“I wasn’t the one who hit it,” whispered the rector to the mayor.
After the grand reception, held around the splashing fountain in the atrium, forty residents, many in wheelchairs, took occupancy of their new quarters.
Louella Baxter Marshall was escorted to Room Number One by Olivia and Hoppy Harper, Lacey Turner, Cynthia and Timothy Kavanagh, and Dooley Barlowe. Miss Pattie was led to Room Thirty-four by Evie Adams, who was weeping with gratitude and relief.
Up and down the corridors, families helped loved ones settle in, meeting nurses, talking with doctors, and admiring the lavish display of flowers that filled rooms and nursing stations.
“I’m movin‘ in here as soon as Gene kicks,” said Esther Bolick.
“But you’re not sick!” said Fancy Skinner.
“No, but I’m workin‘ on it,” declared Esther, lookin
g around at the rose-colored carpet, Palladian windows, and crystal chandeliers.
“Buck,” said the rector, shaking the superintendent’s rough hand, “this is as fine a job as I’ve ever seen done. Personally, I can’t thank you enough, nor can Lord’s Chapel.”
Buck nodded, and the rector was suddenly moved by the reality of thousands of hours of labor, and a promise that, at great personal sacrifice, had been kept. He threw his arms around the man and hugged him. “May God bless you for this, Buck.”
“No problem,” said Buck Leeper, turning to walk away.
“Wait! When are you leaving?”
“I’ll be pulling out tomorrow.” The nerve twitched in his jaw.
He didn’t want to see Buck Leeper go. No, he didn’t want that at all.
“The church attic—all that space Miss Sadie’s father wanted to turn into Sunday School rooms—is that job big enough for you? Could we get you back for that?”
Buck shrugged. “Maybe.”
“Could you—would you come over for supper tonight? We’d love to have you.”
“I’ve got a lot to pull together,” said Buck Leeper, looking awkward.
The rector tried to smile. “Maybe another time.”
He felt deflated as he and Cynthia drove home with Dooley. He was glad they’d had the plaque made, honoring Buck.
“What is it?” she asked, always knowing his heart.
He couldn’t find the words, exactly. Tomorrow he’d start looking into the attic project, and how they might initiate fund-raising; he would call Buck’s boss, whom he’d met at the country club, and put in a special request for his star superintendent.
Something told him very clearly that Buck Leeper was not finished in Mitford.
Not by a long shot.
“Well, buddy.”
Fall break was over and they had delivered Dooley back to school, taking Poobaw along for the ride.
“You know we love you,” said the rector, giving the boy a hug. With the obvious exception of Miss Sadie, he couldn’t remember ever hugging a millionaire before.
Cynthia kissed him on the cheek. “Yes, you big lug, we love you.”
“I love you back,” Dooley said, meeting their gaze.
Dooley squatted on one knee and put his hands on Poobaw’s shoulders. “Stay cool, Poo.”
“I will,” said Poobaw, nodding and smiling. “I’ll see y‘uns later.”
“Don’t say y‘uns,” his brother admonished.
“What should I say?”
“Get them to tell you what to say.” Dooley stood up and smiled, then turned around and was gone along the hallway.
“Today’s the day!” announced his wife, looking infernally pleased with herself.
“Today,” he murmured, trying to accept the inevitable.
“It will be over in no time!” she said, beaming.
“Over in no time. Of course.”
“So, let’s roll up our sleeves and begin!”
He began rolling. “ ‘He has half the deed done who has made a beginning.’ ”
“Plato!” crowed his wife.
“Horace!” he snapped.
Cynthia brushed her hair from her eyes and peered at him with cool disdain. “My escort to the junior prom, as I recall. I didn’t realize you’d met.”
They emptied everything onto the floor in a pile that, he surmised, was altogether large enough to fill an eighteen-wheeler.
After removing the drawers and roping the doors shut, they muscled the thing down the stairs and through the hallway, out to the stoop and down the steps, then across the side yard and through the hedge, where they set it on the flagstones.
He mopped his face.
She panted and moaned.
He squatted on his heels and looked at the ground.
She leaned against a tree and stared at the sky.
A bird called. An airplane roared over.
“Ready?” she inquired.
“Ready,” he replied.
“Didn’t I tell you we could do it?”
“You did.”
“OK,” she shouted, “one, two, three, lift!”
Off they bolted like two pack mules, across the side yard of the rectory, up the steps, and over the threshold, where the door was propped open with a broom handle.
Safely inside, they set their cargo down and fell exhausted into chairs at the table.
“Lemonade?” she asked after a labored pause.
“And step on it,” he said, mopping again.
He looked at the alien thing sitting in his kitchen. A three-bedroom condo, at the very least. A shipping crate for a Canadian moose....
“There!” she said, handing him the lemonade and gulping hers.
If this wasn’t the last blasted piece of decorating business on his wife’s agenda, he was going to build a brick wall across the path through the hedge and be done with it.
“You might have waited for Puny to give us a hand,” he said.
“I can’t ask a new mother to be hauling heavy furniture.”
“Heavy? Did I hear you say heavy? You’ve insisted for a year that this thing is light as a feather!”
“Oh, poop,” she said darkly, “you know what I mean.”
He downed his lemonade and stood up to take his medicine like a man. “Ready?”
‘“Ready,” she said, eyeing him. “And don’t scratch the hall floors. They’ve just been waxed.”
Waxed, was it? He could see them taking one wrong step, skating up the hall, bursting through the front door, and landing in the street with the blooming thing on top of them. Bachelors didn’t rearrange the decor, no, indeed. In fifteen years, he had scarcely moved a side chair from one place to another.
He sighed deeply.
“You’re sighing,” she said.
“A penetrating observation.”
“One, two, three, lift!”
Away they went, lumbering down the hall. He tried to grip the slick floor with his toes, but they were imprisoned in his loafers.
“There!” she said happily, stepping back from the guest room wall to take a look. “What do you think, darling?”
“It’s wonderful!” he said, meaning it. “It belongs there. You were right all along, Kavanagh.”
“We’ll have so much more room for towels and linens ...”
“Exactly!” he said, mopping his face. “Absolutely.” What was that zapping pain that raced up his right leg? Or was it coming from his lower back?
“... and wonderful storage for sheets and pillowcases!”
“Well done,” he said, ready to crash on the study sofa, next to the electric fan.
“However ... ” She stood still farther from the wall and peered over her glasses. She folded her arms across her chest and frowned.
“However, what?”
“When you consider the way the windows are situated in this room, it looks out of proportion to the wall. Rats! Do you see what I mean?”
He recognized the faraway look she often got when thinking up a book. “Not at all,” he said. “I don’t see that at all, it’s wonderful right where it is, we should have done this ages ago.” He regretted sounding desperate.
“In fact, Timothy, do you know where it would really look grand? In our bedroom! On the wall to the right as you go in the door, just where your family chest is. We could move the chest in here—it would look terrific. All that old, dark wood with all this old, dark wood. I think that’s the answer.”
He backed from the room, looking pale.
“But not today, dearest!” she said, coming after him and planting a kiss on his cheek. “More like ... in the spring.”
“Of course!” he said, feeling brighter. “In the spring!”
They walked across the hall and into their bedroom. “Right there!” she said, pointing at the wall behind the family chest. “Perfect!”
He took a deep breath.
“In the spring,” he said, smiling at his determined wife. “Perfect!”<
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Visit America’s favorite small town—
one book at a time
Welcome to the next book,
Out to Canaan
CHAPTER ONE
A Tea and a Half
THE INDOOR PLANTS were among the first to venture outside and breathe the fresh, cold air of Mitford’s early spring.
Eager for a dapple of sunlight, starved for the revival of mountain breezes, dozens of begonias and ferns, snake plants, Easter lilies, and wandering Jew were set out, pot-bound and listless, on porches throughout the village.
As the temperature soared into the low fifties, Winnie Ivey thumped three begonias, a sullen gloxinia, and a Boston fern onto the back steps of the house on Lilac Road, where she was now living. Remembering the shamrock, which was covered with aphids, she went back and fetched it out and set it on the railing.
“There!” she said, collecting a lungful of the sharp, pure air. “That ought to fix th‘ lot of you.”
When she opened the back door the following morning, she was stricken at the sight. The carefully wintered plants had been turned to mush by a stark raving freeze and minor snow that also wrenched any notion of early bloom from the lilac bushes.
It was that blasted puzzle she’d worked until one o‘clock in the morning, which caused her to forget last night’s weather news. There she’d sat like a moron, her feet turning to ice as the temperature plummeted, trying to figure out five letters across for a grove of trees.
Racked with guilt, she consoled herself with the fact that it had, at least, been a chemical-free way to get rid of aphids.
At the hardware, Dora Pugh shook her head and sighed. Betrayed by yesterday’s dazzling sunshine, she had done display windows with live baby chicks, wire garden fencing, seeds, and watering cans. Now, she might as well haul the snow shovels back and do a final clearance on salt for driveways.
Coot Hendrick collected his bet of five dollars and an RC cola from Lew Boyd. “Ain’t th‘ first time and won’t be th’ last you’ll see snow in May,” he said, grinning. Lew Boyd hated it when Coot grinned, showing his stubs for teeth. He mostly hated it that, concerning weather in Mitford, the skeptics, cynics, and pessimists were usually right.