by Jan Karon
He walked to the truck, whistling a tune he’d heard on the radio.
There was nothing like a visit to Mitford to get a man’s spirits up and running.
He blew through the door of one of his favorite Mitford haunts, the bell jingling behind him.
“‘I love the smell of book ink in the morning! ’” he called out, quoting Umberto Eco.
“Father Tim!” Hope Winchester turned from the shelf where she was stocking biographies. “We’ve missed you!”
“And I, you. How are you, Hope?”
She lifted her left hand to his gaze.
“Man!” he said, quoting Dooley Barlowe.
“It was his grandmother Murphy’s. Scott is at a chaplain’s retreat this week, he gave it to me before he left.”
“One knee or two?”
“Two!”
“Good fellow!” He still felt a sap for having done a mere one knee with his then neighbor.
He gave Hope a heartfelt hug. “Felicitaciones! Mazel tov!”
“Muchas gracias. Umm. Obrigado!”
They laughed easily together. He thought he’d never seen the owner of Happy Endings Bookstore looking more radiant.
“I have a list,” he said, hauling it from the breast pocket of his jacket.
“Your lists have helped Happy Endings stay afloat. Thank you a thousand times. Oh, my, that’s a long one.”
“It’s been a long time since I came in. Tell me, how is Louise liking Mitford?”
“I’ll be right back,” she said. She hurried to the foot of the stairs and called up for her sister, recently moved from their deceased mother’s home place.
Louise came down the stairs at once, fixing her eyes on her feet. Hope took her sister by the arm and trotted her over.
“Father Tim, this is my sister, Louise Winchester.”
With some difficulty, Louise raised her eyes and met his gaze. “So happy . . .” she said.
Hope smiled. “Louise is shy.”
“I find shyness a very attractive characteristic. It’s as scarce these days as hens’ teeth.”
He took Louise’s hand, finding her somehow prettier than her sister, with a mane of chestnut hair and inquisitive green eyes.
“Louise, we’re happy to have you among us, you’ll make a difference, I know. May God bless you to find your way here, and prosper you in all you do.”
He was delighted by her seemingly involuntary, albeit slight, curtsy.
“Father Tim wondered how you like living in Mitford.”
A slow flush came to her cheeks. “It feels like . . . home.”
“Louise is working wonders with our mail-order business and has organized everything from A to Z.”
“Well done, Louise!” He felt suddenly proud, as if she were one of his own.
“Here’s Father Tim’s list. We have only three of the nine. Could you order the others today?”
“Just regular shipping,” he said, noting that Margaret Ann, the bookstore cat, was giving his pant legs a good coating of fur. “I’m about to be covered up, and not much time to read.”
“Pleased to meet . . .” said Louise.
By George, she did it again! If push came to shove, Emma Newland could get a curtsy demo right here on Main Street.
“Any plans?” he asked Hope.
“We’d like to talk with you about that; we’re thinking October, when the leaves change. Would you marry us, Father?”
“I will!” he vowed.
“Though we attend Lord’s Chapel, we’re hoping to find a little mountain church somewhere. Something . . .” She hesitated, thoughtful.
“Something soulful and charming?”
“Why, yes!”
“Completely unpretentious, with a magnificent view?”
“That’s it!”
“I’ll put my mind to it,” he said.
He told her about the hospital staff that was blown away by its patient’s delivery of a second set of twins; how the boys looked strong, healthy, and uncommonly like their paternal great-grandmother and Mitford’s former mayor, Esther Cunningham; how Louella had apprised him of nine thousand dollars that she thought was hidden in Miss Sadie’s car, and that so far, he had no clue what to do about it.
He reported that the snow on the roads was freezing fast; that Edith Mallory had spoken an intelligible, not to mention extraordinary, word for the first time since her grave head injury seven months ago; that J.C. Hogan was wearing aftershave again, for whatever this piece of news was worth; that Avis had given him a considerable bit of advice about perfecting oven fries; that Hope Winchester had an engagement ring and wanted him to marry them; that Louise Winchester promised to be a fine addition to Mitford; and last but certainly not least, that he’d seen a crocus blooming in the snow, hallelujah.
He was positively exhausted from the whole deal, both the doing of it and the talking about it; he felt as if he’d trekked to another planet and back again.
“Good heavens,” said his wife, “I’m worn out just listening.”
And how had her day gone?
Joyce Havner had called in sick.
Violet, the aging model for the cat books his wife was famous for writing and illustrating, had brought a dead mouse into the kitchen.
A pot of soup had boiled over on the stove while she did the watercolor sketch of Violet gazing out the window.
She had handed off the sketch to the UPS driver at one o’clock sharp; it was on its way to her editor in New York.
Olivia Harper had called, and Lace was arriving from UVA tomorrow.
“That’s it?” he asked.
“Don’t get high and mighty with me, Reverend, just because you’ve gone to the big city and bagged all the news, and your wife stayed home, barefoot.”
He laughed. “Missed you.”
“Missed you back,” she said, laughing with him.
In the farmhouse library, an e-mail from Father Tim’s former secretary, Emma Newland, joined the queue.
They had prayed their Lenten prayer, eaten their modest supper, and made the pie—which would doubtless improve by an overnight repose in the refrigerator.
Now, they drew close by the fire, to the sound of a lashing March wind; she with Mrs. Miniver and he with The Choice of Books, a late-nineteenth-century volume he’d found in their bedroom. He was vastly relieved that she’d made no more mention of his hair, what was left of it.
“Listen to this, Timothy.”
Cynthia adjusted her glasses, squinting at the fine print. “ ‘It’s as important to marry the right life as it is the right person.’ ”
“Aha! Never thought of it that way.”
“I considered that very thing when I married you.”
“Whether I was the right person?”
“Whether it would be the right life,” she said.
“And?”
“And it is. It’s perfect for me.”
His wife, who preferred to read dead authors, put her head down again.
“How dead, exactly, must they be?” he had once asked.
“Not very dead; I usually draw the line at the thirties and forties, before the mayhem began setting in like a worm. So ... moderately dead, I would say.”
He tossed a small log onto the waning fir
e; it hissed and spit from the light powder of snow that had blown into the wood box by the door. A shutter on the pantry window made a rattling sound that was oddly consoling.
“And here’s something else,” she said.
“‘This was the cream of marriage, this nightly turning out of the day’s pocketful of memories, this deft, habitual sharing of two pairs of eyes, two pairs of ears. It gave you, in a sense, almost a double life: though never, on the other hand, quite a single one.’”
He nodded slowly, feeling a surge of happiness.
“Yes,” he said, meaning it. “Yes!”
CHAPTER TWO
The Vicar
He awoke from a dream in which he felt a frantic impulse to deliver Russell Jacks’s bimonthly treat of livermush.
Russell had watched for his visits at the door of Betty Craig’s little house, as eager as any boy for his two weeks’ worth of livermush sandwiches on white loaf bread with mayo. But Russell Jacks was dead and gone, never again to entertain a hankering for “poor man’s pate.”
Miss Sadie, about whom he often dreamed, was also gone. And then there was Absalom Greer: “Gone to glory!” as the old preacher might have said.
Gone . . .
The thought of loss gave him a hollow feeling.
He wasn’t, however, afraid of dying; he knew where he was going. Of course, he wasn’t going there because he had been “good,” however nominally, but because he had long ago committed his heart to God, made known through the One who had died in order that he, Timothy Kavanagh, might have eternal life.
Strange. The anomaly of livermush seemed far odder than the extraordinary fact that Jesus Christ had chosen to sacrifice Himself for a small-town parson.
He would be seventy in June, a truth that he considered often these days. Seventy! He had no ability to effectively process this fact; it was beyond belief. But no, growing older hadn’t made him fearful of death—hadn’t Thomas Edison said, “It is very beautiful over there!” and Cotton Mather, he’d always liked Mather’s last words: “Is this dying? Is this all? Is this what I feared when I prayed against a hard death? Oh, I can bear this! I can bear it!”
What he feared, instead, was leaving some crucial work undone, thereby failing to complete his mortal mission. This fear had nagged him for much of his life as both an active and now-retired priest.
It brightened his spirit, then, to remember that Dooley was asleep in the next room, his own mortal mission to be hammered out.
What if God hadn’t sent Russell Jacks’s eleven-year-old grandson to his door, like some precious special delivery that must be opened quickly and handled carefully, lest it perish? Indeed, in the ten years since Dooley had become his charge, he’d learned to love him as his own flesh.
As might be expected, some said that he’d “saved” Dooley’s life. The truth was, Dooley more likely saved his. At the age of sixtysomething, he had gone from an inward-looking bachelor to an outward-striving father. And then, of course, Cynthia had moved in next door. A double miracle if ever there was one.
Lord, he prayed, thank You for Your continued grace. Help me fulfill Your plan for my life; give me a heart to hear Your voice.... And please, if You would do the same for Dooley . . .
He rolled toward his wife, slipped his arm around her, and felt the deep, drowning mystery of sleep come upon him.
After the Morning Office, he prayed with Cynthia, then came to the kitchen and went about the business of laying the fire.
He squatted on the hearth and placed a loose network of cedar kindling in the still-warm grate above the coals. After adding three sticks of well-seasoned oak and striking a match to the fatwood, he watched the flames lick up, and listened eagerly to the crackle and snap of the cedar.
He stood then, content, warming his backside until Cynthia joined him in her favorite, albeit threadbare, robe, to begin their team effort over breakfast.
“So tell me the truth about the oven fries,” she said, buttering the toast.
“Good. Very good,” he said, poaching the eggs.
“I’m looking for outstanding!” she said, pouring the juice. “Next time I’ll brine the water.”
“Reading War and Peace would be simpler,” he said, mashing the plunger on the French press.
They sat and ate by the fire, receiving its benediction.
“Does he seem taller to you?” she asked.
“Six-two.”
“When do you think you might tell him?”
“I’ve never enjoyed hauling around secrets. But something tells me to wait.”
“I’ve always trusted you to know when the time is right.” She sipped her coffee. “His Jeep is a mess; he needs a car.”
“Agreed.”
“You could use money from the trust to buy him a car.... You wouldn’t have to reveal the extent of Miss Sadie’s gift until you’re ready.”
“I’ve been considering that.”
“I feel he should have something he really wants, not another used vehicle with someone else’s troubles thrown in.”
“What if he wants a BMW?”
“Lace has one. He might like one, too.”
“BMWs are fast.”
“I think he would be responsible.”
“I mean really fast.”
“Timothy, I love the little wrinkle that pops between your eyebrows when you worry. It’s sort of . . . cute.”
Cute! He’d never understood why others didn’t fret about the things that plagued him. Not only were BMWs fast, they cost more than some people’s houses; such a high-dollar car could give Dooley the big head; plus, the other students might hate his guts....
His wife leaned her head to one side and blasted him with the cornflower blue of her eyes. “‘Taste and see that the Lord is good,’ dearest, ‘happy are they who trust in Him.’”
“Preaching to me again, Kavanagh?”
“Psalm thirty-four,” she said, smiling at her husband.
He blew through the kitchen door from the woodpile, an icy wind at his back.
“I have some good news and some bad news,” she said.
“The bad first.” He trotted to the hearth, Barnabas at his heels.
“Joyce won’t be coming again for several months. Blockages in her arteries, she’ll need stents. The doctor says she shouldn’t be cleaning houses at her age.”
“Ah.” He lowered the wood onto the hearth. “I’m sorry to hear it. I’ll deliver a baked ham; we’ll keep her in our prayers.”
“Ready for the good news?”
“Always.”
“James just called. Everyone loved the watercolor of Violet looking out the window at the snow. I did it for a little mailing piece, and now they’d like to have twelve watercolors of Violet’s life in the country—for a wall calendar.
“Since I’m not writing a book these days, I thought it might be a wonderful idea. I’d give all royalties to the Children’s Hospital.”
“That’s a new wing on the building right there!”
“I didn’t give James an answer, yet; I wanted to see how you feel about it. I know you love it that I haven’t slaved over a drawing board since we came to Meadowgate. We’ve had such a lovely time out here in the sticks, with nothing pulling at us.”
He took off his jacket and tossed it on the window seat. “I want what you want, and I mean it.” He did mean it—even though he lost her for long intervals when she was working on a book. But this wasn’t a book.
“I’d like to do it,” she said. “I think it would be fun. Liberating, somehow.”
He sat in the wing chair and pulled her into his lap. “Violet chasing the guineas?”
“Wonderful! And how about Violet in the barn loft where we found the bantam nest?”
“Violet stuck in the chinaberry tree by the chicken coop!”
“Perfect!” she said. “Violet sunning herself at the smokehouse! Or better yet, perched on the roof of the smokehouse, peering out at the mountains.”
“R
emember the time I had to fetch her down from your rooftop? While you went off to the country club to do the tango with Andrew Gregory?”
“The rhumba,” she said.
“So, how many months do we have so far?”
“January, February, March, April.”
“Terrific. Do it. Piece of cake.”
She smooched the top of his head. “It’s a dream come true, really. Doing watercolors, living in the country in a wonderful old house on a beautiful farm, without any responsibilities . . .”
“Walking the dogs,” he said, continuing the litany, “reading aloud by the fire ...”
“Hey.” Dooley stood in the doorway, in pajama bottoms and a tattered University of Georgia sweatshirt. He stretched and yawned hugely.
“Hey, yourself,” crowed Cynthia. “It’s twelve o’clock, you big lug.”
“Man, I never saw so many dogs piled on one bed, I had to get up and sleep on the couch in the library.” Barnabas shambled to Dooley, who gave him a good scratch behind the ear. “Hey, buddy, you’re in the doghouse for rootin’ me out last night.”
Cynthia trotted to the refrigerator and opened the door. “Breakfast or lunch?”
“Pie!” said Dooley.
“It’s Marge,” she whispered as he came in from the library. “Yes, Marge, I’m sorry, too. The doctor said she mustn’t even think of coming back for several months....
“Oh, no, I’m sure Timothy and I can keep the place straightened up, certainly nothing like Joyce has always done, but . . .
“Really, no, you mustn’t . . .
“But we couldn’t . . .
“The Flower Girls? They clean and wash windows and cook—the whole nine yards?
“I’m sure we won’t need any help, though. It’s just the two of us.
“Of course, yes, everything is lovely here. Lots and lots of snow since you left, but today should be bright, and warmer. Dooley’s here, I know he’d want me to send his love. How is Rebecca Jane? Speaking French? Yes, static on our end, too, very hard to hear . . .