by Jan Karon
“The Flower Girls, yes. The number is in your little red book? But only if things get desperate, which I can’t imagine . . .
“Love to Hal and Rebecca Jane, I think I’m losing you....
“Oui, bon soir, ma cherie!”
As he took his jacket off the peg, he heard Dooley’s size twelves on the stairs.
“Taking the dogs for a walk; how about coming along?”
“Sure. Then I’m checking the clinic to see what Blake has goin’ on.”
Dooley and Blake Eddistoe, Hal’s junior vet, had differing ideas about the practice of veterinary medicine. While Dooley preferred using more natural, noninvasive methods whenever possible, Blake inclined toward aggressive programs of drug treatment. No doubt Blake’s philosophy had worked, as he was well liked by Hal, whose four decades of experience wasn’t exactly chopped liver. In any case, Dooley and Blake would be working together this summer, and Father Tim prayed that the old, sore issues between the two would be resolved.
They huffed to the driveway and hooked a right toward the barn, passing Willie Mullis’s little house. From the kennel, Willie’s beagles loosed a fervent hue and cry as the two men and the farm dogs trooped north into a stinging wind.
“Let’s cut by the tractor shed into that little field by the sheep,” said Father Tim. “I haven’t explored over there.”
Hoary pasture grass crackled under their feet; their breath formed clouds upon the air.
“I really like this place,” said Dooley.
“It’s your second home. Remember the first time we came out here, and Goosedown Owen bucked you off in the hog slop?”
Dooley laughed as they headed toward the woods, crunching through random patches of lingering snow. Beyond the fence, fourteen Dorset sheep lay under the run-in shed, chewing their cud.
“Do you and Cynthia like it?” asked Dooley.
“We feel like we’re on vacation, actually. But that can be ... sort of a problem....”
“What kind of problem?”
He felt a certain joy that Dooley was interested.
“I suppose I feel trifling sometimes. I’m used to being out there, doing what God called me to do.”
“Can’t you be out there ... out here?”
“I suppose I can, but ...”
Dooley looked at him, his blue eyes piercing.
“But I’ve been waiting for my marching orders, you might say. Bishop Cullen has something for me, but I haven’t heard anything yet.”
“You will,” said Dooley. He threw a stick for Bodacious. “Yo, Bo!”
“I will?”
“Yessir. People really need what you have to give.”
Father Tim pulled his knit cap over his ears. “Which is what?”
“God,” said Dooley. “You give people God.”
He felt moved by this, and genuinely contrite. Why had he been whining? He could get out there without the bishop’s seal of approval. What was he waiting for? His heart suddenly lifted up.
“Thanks, son, for your encouragement.” He grinned at the handsome, freckled boy who had come into his life—and changed it utterly.
Dooley studied him for a moment. “Umm, your hair is really long.”
“Yes, true.” And he didn’t have a clue what to do about it. He’d been barbered by everybody from an erstwhile house painter to a former Graceland security guard to a crazy woman in capri pants, and nothing ever seemed to work out for the long haul.
“Can Sammy come up and stay awhile this summer?”
“Of course! Absolutely” Dooley’s younger brother Sammy had disappeared with his father years ago. And though Sammy had at last been found, he refused to leave the unemployed, alcoholic Clyde Barlowe, alias Jaybird Johnson, with whom he lived in a trailer that had no phone or postal delivery. To make things more complex, Sammy was forced to visit Dooley and his Mitford siblings on the sly—never a good thing.
Dooley walked with his head down. “I think a lot about Kenny.”
“God knows exactly where he is, and one day, I believe He’ll send him to us.”
“Do you really believe that, or ...”
“Or what?”
“Or is it something you think you’re supposed to say because you’re a priest?”
“I really believe it. Have you forgotten our deal? The one we made before Christmas last year?”
“I guess I forgot.”
“We’ll keep thanking God for His providence in giving us Poo and Jessie and Sammy, and praying and expecting Him to lead us to Kenny.”
A small light returned to Dooley’s eyes.
“High five,” said Father Tim. The smack of their palms was crisp and clear on the frozen air.
“So! What kind of vehicle would you like to have?” Lord, have mercy ...
“A pickup.”
“Ah!” His breath released like air from a tire.
“Short bed. Crew cab. CD player. Leather seats. Tilt wheel. Cruise control ...” Dooley shot a sidelong glance at Father Tim to see how this was going down.
“No MG? No Mercedes?”
“For old people.”
“No BMW?”
“Too hot.”
He laughed, relieved, as they walked on. “I didn’t know there was such a thing as too hot for a college student.”
“It’s not cool to be too hot,” said Dooley.
Over there, between the oaks, a path leading into the woods ... a grand possibility for a springtime walk, thought Father Tim.
“What do you suppose this truck would cost?”
“Maybe thirty thousand.”
That’s what he’d paid for his two-bedroom house in Alabama when he was a curate all those years ago.
Dooley shoved his hands deeper into the fleece-lined pockets of his school jacket. “Six cylinders. Sliding rear window. Electronic shifter ...”
“Sounds like you’ve done your homework. Anything else?”
“Red.”
Father Tim laughed. “Color of your head,” he said, voicing their old joke.
They rounded the bend by a copse of trees, where the dogs burrowed their noses into the pungent leaf mold beneath the snow.
“Are you planning to, like, buy me one?”
“We definitely need to get you a good, safe vehicle. So ...” His voice trailed off as they walked.
He had memorized most of the letter Miss Sadie’s attorney had delivered to him after she died.
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.
Miss Sadie’s letter was mildly confusing—though the money was legally Dooley’s at the age of twenty-one, he was not to know about it until he could bear the responsibility with dignity.
They stopped to unlatch the gate.
“So?” asked Dooley. “You said ‘so.’ You’re starin’ a hole through me.�
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“So, yes! We need to do something. But why a truck? What are you planning to haul around?”
“I’ll just be breakin’ it in for when I get out of vet school. By then, it’ll be totally right for haulin’ around a bunch of mangy ol’ mutts like this crowd.” Dooley threw another stick. “Git it, girl!”
Son, I have something important to tell you. When the time comes, yon’ll be able to buy your own building, have your own practice, and drive around in a brand-new truck, or even two ... Why didn’t he tell him right now, as they stood in the stinging cold by the gate? Holding this enormous secret inside felt as if he’d swallowed a watermelon.
“I don’t like riding in Lace’s car all the time.”
“Is that her idea?”
Dooley shrugged. “She likes my Jeep. But her car is warm in th’ winter and cool in th’ summer, and since th’ passenger door won’t open in th’ Jeep, she has to go in my side or ... crawl through th’ window.”
Dooley flushed to the very roots of his red hair. This was definitely an embarrassment to him, and Father Tim was beginning to feel a shame of his own.
“OK.” He gave his boy a clap on the shoulder. “We’ll deal with it.”
“Soon?”
“Soon. Before you go back to school.”
Dooley beamed. But Father Tim saw in his eyes the faintest flicker of doubt and suspicion; it was a glimpse of the old Dooley who had been betrayed again and again.
“Tracy? Tim Kavanagh here,” he said to the trustee handling Dooley’s account. “Just wondering what our bottom line is these days—the after—tax value.
“I’ll hold. Sure. Thanks.”
He was taking a swig of tea when Tracy came back to the phone and gave him the numbers.
“Holy smoke!” He nearly spit the tea across the kitchen.
One million seven hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars.
“Well done!” he said, meaning it.
A strong wind keened around the farmhouse; they might have been crossing the Atlantic in a gale for all the rattling and groaning of hundred—year—old rafters and floorboards.
His wife lay next to him, peaceful as any lamb, while he tossed and turned and tried to settle his wayward imagination.
Winding mountain roads in both Georgia and North Carolina, the volume on the CD player cranked to the max, the cab and even the bed filled with his friends, six cylinders of torque under the hood; worst case scenario, Dooley, with little or no sleep, headed down the mountain on cruise control ...
“Timothy!” said his wife, reading his mind.
“Right!” he said, reading hers.
He turned over and buried his face in the pillow.
He’d been thinking.... What, after all, was so wrong with hanging loose, as he’d done these last few weeks? Wasn’t it the first time in his life, for Pete’s sake, that he’d ever hung loose? Why couldn’t he take one year after having served nearly forty? Why did he feel like a heel for not rising at five o’clock sharp as he’d done for decades and setting forth on his mount to joust among the rest of the common horde?
Hadn’t he dreamed for years of doing this very thing? Hadn’t he hankered for time to loll around, gabbing with his best friend and soul mate, reading whatever came to hand, walking in the frozen woods, watching 60 Minutes and even an occasional Turner Classic movie? And so what if he flipped over to the cooking channel once in a while, what was wrong with that? Nothing!
“Timothy!”
“Don’t let the bedbugs bite.”
Indeed, if such a sum were stashed in Miss Sadie’s ’58 Plymouth, he’d have to keep mum about it or the news would spread through Mitford like a virus.
He dialed the restaurant at Fernbank, looking for Andrew.
Andrew’s Italian brother-in-law and Lucera chef, Tony, answered.
“Andrew is buying for Oxford Antique in England, and be gone for three weeks.”
“Well, then. I’ll call in three weeks. Just wondering. Tony—is Miss Sadie’s old Plymouth still in the garage?”
“On blocks. Andrew had work on it, something here, something there. He says to use it in the Fourth of July parade.”
“Wonderful idea! It’ll bring back fond memories to see that great tank on the street again. So how is business at the high country’s finest restaurant?”
“Slammed! I hope you and Cynthia will come see us soon.You always be our guest. Andrew says Fernbank would not be ... belonging to us without the help from you.”
“We’ll drive in one evening and paint the town red! Give our warm regards to your lovely sister, I’ll speak with Andrew when he returns. Ciao!”
So the car was still there. But what about the nine thousand dollars?
Not a word from on high.
If Absalom Greer were alive today, he’d be hunkered over the wheel of his old Ford sedan, faithfully burning up the back roads to his little handfuls, as he’d called the small churches scattered through the coves. And what was he, Timothy Kavanagh, hunkered over? A volume of English poets.
He stuck the bookmark between the pages and got up and paced to the window seat and gazed out to the snow melting off the smokehouse roof.
... It isn’t anything fancy, and God knows, it will be a challenge.
He turned and paced to the kitchen door, pulled back the curtain, and looked toward the barn without seeing.
And now Cynthia had this terrific new project to get behind, and what did he have to get behind?
Four dogs and an armload of firewood.
“Three,” said Willie Mullis.
Willie stood at the kitchen door, bareheaded and mournful, holding forth a battered fedora containing the day’s egg inventory.
“Three’s all we need,” said Father Tim, reaching into the hat. “We thank you. Think the laying will pick up come spring?”
“Yessir.”
“Good! Think we’ll be having any more snow?”
“Nossir.”
“Your arthritis coming along a little better?”
“Yessir.”
“Looks like a nice, warm day. The temperature could soar into the high sixties, don’t you think?”
“Yessir.”
“Need any help at the barn?”
“Nossir.”
“If you do, just give me a call.”
“Yessir.”
He put the brown eggs into a bowl on the table, observing them with satisfaction. With a little grated cheese, a tot of cream, a smidgen of onion ...
“Was that Willie?” asked his wife, coming into the kitchen.
“Three eggs,” he said, pointing. “The laying will, of course, pick up come spring; we won’t be having any more snow; the temperature will probably be in the high sixties today; and his arthritis is improving.”
“My goodness,” she said, “I never get that sort of information from Willlie. He’s a perfect chatterbox with you.”
March 19. He turned the page on the Owens’ desk calendar.
Dooley was spending a couple of nights in town with his blood family and taking Lace to a movie in Wesley. Then he and Dooley would hie down the mountain to Holding where truck prices, according to Lew Boyd, were competitive. While in Holding, they’d try to hook up with Sammy.
In the meantime, he was plenty disgusted with his bishop and even more disgusted with himself. He had determined to go forth and do something, even if it was wrong.
First, he would call on his old friend and back-country soup-kitchen boss, Homeless Hobbes, who had moved to this neck of the woods when the Creek was developed into a mall. Maybe he could give Homeless a hand with his soup ministry.
Then he’d drop in on Lottie Greer, Absalom’s elderly sister, who lived up the road in the rear of a country store Absalom built in his youth. Dooley wouldn’t mind if he took Miss Lottie a piece of his chocolate pie....
“Bloom where you’re planted!” he muttered to himself, quoting a bumper sticker. Ah, but Wordsworth had had a far better way of putting it
.
“If thou, indeed, Timothy, derive thy light from Heaven...” He walked to the coat pegs and took down his jacket.
“‘Then,’” he bawled in a voice designed to reach the uttermost pew, “ ’... to the measure of that heaven-born light ...’ ” He pulled on his jacket, shoved his stocking feet into his outdoor boots, and rummaged for his gloves....
“‘Shine, Preacher! In thy place, and be content!”’
“What on earth are you doing?” asked Cynthia, coming in from the hall.
He felt his cheeks grow warm. “Preaching myself a sermon!”
“You were rattling the windows.”
“Yes, well ...”
“It’s the snow,” she said, commiserating. “Three months of snow, certain to be followed by two weeks of slush.”
“Listen to this, it’s coming back and I can’t waste it. He’s talking of stars here.
“... Though half a sphere be conscious of their brightness,
Are yet of no diviner origin,
No purer essence, than the one that burns,
Like an untended watch-fire on the ridge
Of some dark mountain; or than those which seem
Humbly to hang, like twinkling winter lamps,
Among the branches of the leafless trees....”
“Untended watch-fire,” she mused. “Twinkling winter lamps. Nice!”
He heaved a sigh and thumped onto the stool by the door.
“I need a ob,” he said.
“And I need you to have one, dearest. Oh, brother, do I ever.”
He was backing the farm truck onto the drive when Cynthia ran from the kitchen and waved him to a stop.
He rolled the window down.
“It’s Stuart!” she called.
He trotted up the walk, his heart pumping.
“Timothy, Stuart here, with unending apologies for the long delay. I could go on and on, but—to make a long story short ...
“How would you like to be a vicar?”
CHAPTER THREE