by Jan Karon
He watched her pause, listening, then grin from ear to ear.
“Thanks for calling, Joe Joe. That’s wonderful! Congratulations! Give Puny our love. I’ll be over on Thursday. Timothy’s headed into Mitford now, I’m sure he’ll stop by.”
“So?” he asked, excited as a kid.
“Boys! Weighing in at fifteen pounds total! Thomas and . . .” She paused, and looked all-knowing.
“And?”
“Thomas and Timothy!”
“No!”
“Yes! One named for Puny’s grandfather and one named for you. Now there are two little boys in this world who’re named for you, and I hope you realize that people don’t go around naming little boys for a bump on a log.”
Boys! And because Puny’s father was long deceased, he would be their granpaw, just as he was granpaw to Puny and Joe Joe’s twin girls.
His entire chest felt suffused with a warm and radiating light.
He turned onto the state road, which had already been scraped for the school buses, and headed south past the Baptist church and its snow-covered brush arbor. He glanced at the wayside pulpit, which was changed weekly.
IF LOVING GOD WERE A CRIME, WOULD YOU BE IN JAIL?
Getting around was a piece of cake. The heavens had given them only a couple of inches, and in a farm truck built like a tank, he felt safe and thoroughly above it all.
Patently envious. Patently envious. What could a bigwig bishop, albeit his oldest friend, envy in a country parson? There it was again, the tape running in a loop and promising to work his mind into a lather.
“I roll this whole mystery over to You, Lord,” he said aloud, “and thank You for this day!”
In truth, the whole day belonged to him. He would stop by the hospital to see Puny and her new brood; he would run over to Hope House and visit Louella; he would make a noon stop at Lew Boyd’s Exxon where the Turkey Club was lately convening; he would have a chin-wag with Avis at The Local....
As for getting a haircut, he had no intention of trusting his balding head to Fancy Skinner ever again, period; Joe Ivy had retired from cutting hair and wanted nothing more to do with such a trade; trooping to the barber shop in Wesley would take too much time. So, no, indeed, absolutely not, there would be no haircut on this trip into civilization.
The sun broke through leaden clouds and flooded the countryside with a welcome light.
“Yee hah!” he shouted against the considerable din of the truck engine.
Why had he felt so bereft and grumpy only a half hour before, when he was now beginning to feel like a new man?
He switched on the radio to the blast of a country music station; it was golden oldies time.
“I bought th’ shoes that just walked out on me. . . .” someone sang. He sang along, hardly caring that he didn’t know the words.
“Country come to town!” he whooped as he drove into Mitford.
Roaring past the Exxon station, he blew the horn twice, just to let the general public know he’d arrived.
He bent and kissed her forehead.
“Well done,” he said, a lump in his throat. Two sets of twins! May God have mercy....
“They’re whoppers,” she said, smiling up at him.
His so-called house help of ten years, and the one whom he loved like a daughter, lay worn but beaming in the hospital bed.
He took her hand, feeling the rough palm that had come from years of scrubbing, polishing, cooking, washing, ironing, and generally making his life and Cynthia’s far simpler, not to mention indisputably brighter.
“Thank you for naming one of your fine boys after this old parson.”
“We won’t call ’im by th’ fancy name. It’ll jis’ be Timmy.”
“Timmy. I always liked it when Mother called me Timmy.”
“Timmy an’ Tommy,” she said, proudly.
“Timmy and Tommy and Sissy and Sassy.”
“You’ll be the boys’ granpaw, too,” she said, in case he hadn’t considered this.
“It’ll be an honor to be their granpaw.”
“Father?”
Since he’d officiated at her wedding several years ago, she had taken to calling him by his priestly title in a way that subtly claimed him as her true father. He never failed to note this. Blast, if he wasn’t about to bawl like baby. “Yes, my dear?”
“I sure do love you and Cynthy.”
There they came, rolling down his cheeks like a veritable gulley washer....
“And we sure do love you back,” he croaked.
“So, how’s the food at Hope House these days?”
He sat on the footstool by Louella’s rocking chair, feeling roughly eight or ten years old, as he always had in the presence of Miss Sadie and Louella.
“Oh, honey, some time it’s good, some time it ain’t fit for slop.” He noted that Louella said ain’t now that Miss Sadie, who forbade its use, had passed on. “You take th’ soup—th’ menu has th’ same ol’soup on it every day, day after day, long as I been here.” She looked thoroughly disgusted.
“What soup is that?”
“Soup du jour! If they cain’t come up with more’n one soup in this high-dollar outfit, I ain’t messin’ with it.”
“Aha,” he said.
“My granmaw, Big Mama, said soup was for sick people, anyway, an’ I ain’t sick an’ ain’t plannin’ to be.”
“That’s the spirit.”
Louella rocked on. The warm room, the lowering clouds beyond the window, and the faint drone of the shopping network made him drowsy; his eyelids drooped....
Louella suddenly stopped rocking. “I been meanin’ to ask—what you doin’ ’bout Miss Sadie’s money?”
He snapped to attention. “What money is that?”
“Don’t you remember? I tol’ you ‘bout th’ money she hid in that ol’ car.”
“Old car,” he said, clueless.
“In that ol’ Plymouth automobile she had.” Louella appeared positively vexed with him.
“Louella, I don’t have any idea what you mean.”
“Your mem‘ry must be goin’, honey.”
“Why don’t you tell me everything, from the beginning.”
“Seem like I called you up an’ tol’ you, but maybe I dreamed it. Do you ever dream somethin’ so real you think it happened?”
“I do.”
“A while before she passed, Miss Sadie got mad ’bout th’ market fallin’ off. You know she made good money in that market.”
“Yes, ma’am, she did.” Hadn’t she left Dooley Barlowe a cool million plus at her passing? This extraordinary fact, however, was not yet known to Dooley.
“She say, ‘Look here, Louella, I’m goin’ to put this little dab where those jack legs at th’ market can’t lose it.’ I say, ‘Miss Sadie, where you goin’ to put it, under yo’ mattress?’ She say, ‘Don’t be foolish, I’m goin’ to put it in my car an’ lock it up.’ She’d quit drivin’ an’ her car was up on blocks in th’ garage. She say, ‘Now don’t you let me forget it’s in there.’”
“And?” he asked.
“An’ I went an’ let ’er forget it was in there!”
The 1958 Plymouth had been sitting for several years in the garage behind Fernbank, Miss Sadie’s old home on the hill above Mitford. Fernbank was now owned by Andrew Gregory, Mitford’s mayor, his Italian wife, Anna, and his brother-in-law, Tony.
“Well, it probably wasn’t much,” he said, reassuring.
“Wadn’t much? It mos’ certainly was much. It was nine thousand dollars!”
“Nine thousand dollars?” He was floored.
“Don’t holler,” she instructed. “You don’t know who might be listenin’.”
“You’re sure of that amount, Louella?”
“Sure, I’m sure! Miss Sadie an’ me, we count it out in hun‘erd dollar bills. How many hun’erd dollar bills would that be? I forget.”
“Umm, that would be ninety bills.”
“Yessir, honey, it was ninety,
it took us ‘til way up in th’ day to count them hun’erds out, ’cause ever’ time we counted ’em out, Miss Sadie made us start all over an’ count ’em out ag’in!”
“Good idea,” he said, not knowing what else to say.
“We got a rubber band and put it aroun’ all them bills, an’ took out a big envelope and whopped ’em in there, an’ I licked th’ flap and sealed it up tight as Dick’s hat band, so nothin’ would fall out.
“She say t’ me, ‘Louella, you th’ best frien’ I ever had, but you cain’t go down there with me, this is between me an’ th’ Lord.’
“Then she struck out to th’ garage, an’ when she come back, she was proud as a pup wit’ two tails.
“I say, ‘Miss Sadie, where you put that money in case you pass?’ She say, ‘I ain’t goin’ t’ pass any time soon, don’t worry about it. Sometime later she mention that money; we was livin’ at Miss Olivia’s ol’ house. She say she ought to go get it out of where she put it, but th’ market was still real bad.
“Then, we both plumb forgot.
“Th‘other day I was settin’ in this rockin’ chair watchin’ th’ soaps an’ it come to me like a lightnin’ strike. I said, oh, law! Somethin’ bad goin’ to happen to Miss Sadie’s money, an’ Miss Sadie, she’ll be hoppin’ mad.”
He was dumbfounded by this strange turn of events. As far as what might be done about it, his mind felt oddly pickled.
Louella’s immense bosom heaved with a sense of the urgent mission to be carried forth; she leaned toward him and lowered her voice.
“So,” she said, “what you goin’ t’ do ’bout Miss Sadie’s money?”
On the way to Main Street, he zoomed by their yellow house on Wisteria Lane and found it looking spic, not to mention downright span. Harley’s general supervision of its welfare made it possible to spend this carefree year at Meadowgate.
He threw up his hand and waved.
“We’ll be back!” he shouted.
He wheeled into Lew Boyd’s Exxon, still occasionally referred to as the Esso station, and saw the Turkey Club sprawled in plastic deck chairs inside the front window. The lineup included J. C. Hogan, longtime Mitford Muse editor; Mule Skinner, semiretired realtor; and Percy Mosely, former proprietor of the now-defunct Main Street Grill.
He’d been hanging out with this bunch for eighteen or twenty years, and it had been a rude awakening when Percy and Velma packed it in last Christmas Eve, vacating a building that quickly became a discount shoe store. Currently occupying the spot where the club’s rear booth had stood was a rack of women’s pumps, sizes eight to ten.
“Hooboy!” Mule stood and saluted. “Here comes our Los Angelees movie producer.”
“Who, me?”
“Pretty soon, you’ll be whippin’ that back in a ponytail an’ wearin’ a earring.”
Father Tim suddenly felt his hair flowing over his shoulders like a medieval mantle.
“Come on, leave ‘im alone,” said Percy. “He’s livin’ out in th’ boonies, he don’t have to slick up like we do.”
“If you call that slicked up, I’m a monkey’s uncle.”
“How long’re you stuck out there in th’ sticks?” asked Percy.
“Hal and Marge will be living in France for a year, so ... roughly nine more months. But we don’t feel stuck, we like it.”
“I lived in th’ country when I was comin’ up,” said Percy, “an’ it like to killed me. They ain’t nothin’ but work on a farm. Haul this, fix that, hoe this, feed that. If it ain’t chickens, it’s feathers.”
“About time you showed up, buddyroe, my fish san’wich is goin’ south.” J.C. rooted around in his overstuffed briefcase and came up with something wrapped in recycled foil.
Mule sniffed the air. “How long has that thing been in there?”
“Seven o’clock this morning.”
“You’re not goin’ to eat it?”
“Why not? Th’ temperature’s just a couple degrees above freezin’.”
Father Tim noted that the editor’s aftershave should effectively mask any offensive odors within, loosely, a city block.
“What’d you bring?” Mule asked Percy.
“Last night’s honey-baked pork chop on a sesame-seed roll with lettuce, mayo, and a side of chips.”
“Man!” said Mule. He expected that anybody who’d owned the Grill for forty-odd years would show up with a great lunch, but nothing like this. He peered into his own paper sack.
“So, what is it?” asked J.C., hammering down on the fish sandwich.
“I can’t believe it.” Mule appeared disconsolate. “Fancy’s got me on some hoo-doo diet again.”
“Why is your wife packin’ your lunch?You’re a big boy, pack your own bloomin’ lunch.”
Mule examined the contents of the Ziploc bag. “A sweet potato,” he said, devastated. “With no butter.”
“A sweet potato?” Percy eyed the pathetic offering with disbelief. “What kind of diet is that?”
Mule slumped in his chair. “I can’t eat a sweet potato; no way can I eat a sweet potato. I feel trembly, I had breakfast at six-thirty and now it’s way past twelve.”
“What’d she give you for breakfast? A turnip?”
“Hard-boiled eggs. I hate hard-boiled eggs; they give me gas.”
“So, Percy,” said Father Tim, unwrapping a ham and cheese on white from the vending machine, “see what you did by going out of business? Left us all high and dry.”
“Yeah,” said Mule. “I was happy with things th’ way they were.”
J.C. gobbled the remaining half of his sandwich in one bite. “Ah guss nobar hurrbowwissonor . . .”
“Don’t talk with your mouth full,” snapped Mule, who was digging in his pockets for vending machine change.
J.C. swallowed the whole affair, and knocked back a half can of Sprite. “I guess you turkeys didn’t hear the latest about th’ Witch of th’ North.”
“Witch of th’ South,” said Percy, recognizing the nickname, albeit incorrect, for his much-despised former landlord.
“Turns out she said her first clearly understandable word since that big crack on th’ head in September.”
“Money!” exclaimed Percy.
“What about money?”
“Money had to be th’ first word out of that back-stabbin’, hardhearted, penny-pinchin’ ...”
“Now, Percy,” said Father Tim.
J.C. glared at the assembly. “Do you want to hear th’ dadgum story or not?”
“Say on,” commanded Father Tim.
“Ed Coffey was in town yesterday, haulin’ stuff out of her carriage house up at Clear Day to take down to her Florida place. He said that right before he left, she was sittin’ in her wheelchair at th’ window, lookin’ at birds, and she motioned him to come over. . . .”
Mule looked disgusted. “If brains were dynamite, Ed Coffey wouldn’t have enough to blow his nose!”
“Then, she motioned ’im to come closer. . . .”
The Turkey Club sat forward.
“Ed said instead of all that word salad she’d been talking, she spoke up as good as anybody. . . .”
“What’d she say, dadgummit?” Percy’s pork chop was stuck in his gullet; if there was anything he disliked, it was the way some people had to be th’ bride at every weddin’ and th’ corpse at every funeral.
“Yessir, he said he was standin’ right there when it rolled out, slick as grease.”
“You already told us that, you goofball. What was it she said?”
J.C. wiped his perspiring forehead with a wadded-up paper towel. “Get off my bumper,” he snapped at Percy.
The Muse editor sat back in the plastic chair and looked once more at the eager assembly. “She said God.”
“God?” Percy and Mule exclaimed in unison.
“No way!” Mule shook his head. “No way Edith Mallory would’ve said God, unless she was tryin’ to say th’ word that used to get my butt whipped when I was little.”
Yes, thought Father Tim. Yes!
He stopped by the grease pit where Harley Welch was lying on his back under a crew-cab truck.
“Harley!” He squatted down and peered at his old friend.
“Rev’ren’, is that you?”
“What’s left of me. How’s it going?”
“Goin’ good if I can git this U joint worked offa here. When’s our boy comin’ home?”
“Tomorrow We’ll catch up with you in a day or two. Did you hear about the twins?”
“Yessir, hit’s th’ big town news. Spittin’ image of th’ ol’ mayor, they say.”
He laughed. “I guess Lace is coming in?”
“Yessir, she’s wrote me a time or two lately; you know she got that big scholarship.”
“I heard. That’s wonderful! By the way, when is the last time you worked on Miss Sadie’s car?”
“Oh, law, that’s goin’ too far back f‘r m’ feeble mind. Let’s see, didn’t she pass in th’ spring?”
“She did.”
“I worked on it sometime before she passed, she was still drivin’. I remember she rolled in here one mornin’, I had to change out ’er clutch. Miss Sadie was bad t’ ride ’er clutch.”
“Do you know if it’s still parked in the garage up at Fernbank?”
“I don’t know if he’s sold it. They was some talk Mr. Gregory was goin’ to restore it.... George Gaynor worked on it a day or two, maybe. I cain’t hardly recall.”
“You pushing along all right with Miss Pringle?” Hélène Pringle was the piano teacher who rented his house in Mitford, and Harley was his old buddy who lived in the basement.
“Let’s jis’ say I’ve heered more piana music than I ever knowed was wrote.”
Father Tim laughed. “Come out to the sticks and see us, will you?”
“I will,” said Harley. “I’ll bring you’uns a pan of m’ brownies.”
“I’ll hold you to it.”
“How’s Miss Cynthy?”
“Couldn’t be better.” He stood, hearing the creaking of his knees. “Got to put the chairs in the wagon, as my grandmother used to say, and run to The Local. Regards to Miss Pringle!”