by Jan Karon
He was relishing the many wonders of his new parish, not the least of which were the sisters, one as round as the moon and shy, the other as tall as a corn shock and bold. Indeed, Martha McKinney appeared able to roof a house single-handedly, or possibly plow up forty acres with a mule.
“Mr. Adderholt,” said Agnes, “was making squirrel stew when we stopped by.”
Martha laughed. “Jubal Adderholt has helped himself to every squirrel in the county. They’ll be a lost species if that old so-and-so keeps livin’. Five years ago Christmas, he promised to shoot me a squirrel, but I haven’t seen hide nor hair of it!”
“I’ll remind him,” said Father Tim.
“Tell him to send two while he’s at it, they’re scant meat.You’ll not see me wastin’ a shell on a squirrel.”
“You have a gun?” he asked.
“Of course I have a gun!”
“She has a gun,” said Mary, wide-eyed.
“Oh, pshaw! Everybody on this ridge has a gun.”
“Johnny had a gun,” said Mary.
Having refused all offers of assistance, Martha was clearing dishes from the table as the orange and white cat devoured giblets from a saucer behind the stove.
“Miss Mary’s Johnny once brought us tenderloin of bear,” said Agnes. “Johnny was a lovely man who plowed our garden before Clarence was old enough to do it.”
The younger sister smiled broadly, revealing a set of new dentures. “Of a day, me an’ Johnny stayed out of one another’s way,” she confided to the vicar, “but of a e‘enin’, we come home an’ jis’ courted.” She put her hand over her mouth and giggled.
“A good plan,” he said, meaning it.
“We was married forty-two years.”
“See there? A very good plan!”
Martha threw up her hands. “Don’t mind her, she talks about Johnny all th’ time!”
“I talk about Johnny all th’ time,” said Mary. “Johnny was part Cherokee, his great-granddaddy was a medicine man. Did you know a Cherokee medicine man cain’t doctor his own self? It was a rule. I’m a Chiltosky, but ever’body calls us th’ McKinney sisters.”
“Where in th’ nation did I put my pot scrub?” asked Martha. “Sister, have you seen my pot scrub?”
“When he passed ten years ago, I left my place down th’ road an’ moved up with Sister.”
“Yet another good plan, if you ask me. Miss Martha, your chicken and dumplings are the finest I’ve enjoyed in many years. Are you sure you aren’t from Holly Springs, Mississippi?”
Martha scraped the remains of the pot into a bowl. “Born and raised on this ridge, and never left it except to go to college at Connelly Springs. Then I moved back to the home place and taught fifth grade for forty years in the valley.
“I had to go off this ridge every day of th’ school week, in every kind of weather you’d want to name. Walked a mile to th’ creek, then trotted across on a log, or pulled my shoes off and waded through—whatever it took. I did everything but swing over on a vine!”
Martha had a good laugh over this, as did the rest of the assembly.
“I’d meet Portman Henshaw who was a bank clerk in Holding, and ride as far as Granite Springs, where he dropped me at the school door. Every single year, I had to get permission from his wife, Miss Hettie, to ride with him. I had to ask her in a formal note the first of January, and the answer always came back in a note toted to me by her poor, hen-pecked husband.
“‘Dear Mrs. Henshaw,’ was my petition, ‘I would be beholden to you if I could ride to school and back with Mr. Henshaw this year. Thank you in advance.Yours sincerely.’ I would always send two quarts of string beans with that note and a jar of strawberry jam.
“In a flash, here’d come her little jot, added to the bottom of mine, and not a word in long-hand! She printed like a second grader! ‘Dear Miss McKinney, You may ride to school with Mr. Henshaw if you do not keep him waiting at the creek. Please don’t track mud on the floorboards. Yours sincerely.’ At the end of the year, I always sent a bushel of potatoes with four jars of butter beans and five one-dollar bills, which I thought was a gracious plenty since he was goin’ that way anyhow.”
Mary nodded in agreement. “He was goin’ that way anyhow.”
“Portman drove a Ford in the beginning; I always liked a Ford, but over the years, we went through five or six different buggies, one being a Pontiac.”
Martha shook her head, disapproving. “I don’t know what possessed Portman Henshaw to buy that Pontiac. Agnes, do you remember that Pontiac?”
“I do. Dark green, with slipcovers sewn by Miss Hettie.”
“I missed thirty-three days of school over that bloomin’ Pontiac. It was a lemon if I ever saw one, and I still had to send over a basket of rations and five hard-earned dollars.”
Martha poured Agnes a cup of coffee from the battered pot on the stove.
“Anyhow, I rode with Portman ‘til he retired, then I tried hitchin’ a ride with every Tom, Dick, and Harry who had a wheel, but it never worked, so I up an’ retired, too. It was either that or buy my own buggy, and I didn’t want to fool with it!”
“How do you ladies shop for food and get to church?” asked the vicar.
“Portman’s oldest boy, Thomas, took over where his daddy left off; he hauls us food shop-pin’ once a week. I’m goin’ to leave him that tractor in th’ yard when I pass, it’s an antique. He’ll get good money for that tractor.
“Then there’s Agnes’s boy, Clarence, he takes us around every chance he gets; I’m leavin’ him that waterin’ trough to soak his grapevine in. Course, I put in a big garden every year; it keeps us goin’ pretty strong if we miss a week or two down at Winn Dixie, and Sister and I still go blackberryin’ ...”
Martha opened the oven door, and a furnace of heat blasted the small kitchen. Father Tim realized he was on the edge of his chair with anticipation.
Wearing a pair of long-used oven mitts, Martha removed a cobbler, still bubbling in its crockery dish and, with evident pride, thumped it onto an overturned skillet on the table. “Picked the first week of August an’ all th’ chiggers removed free of charge.”
He had the impulse to cross himself.
“As for church ...” Martha dug into the steaming blackberry cobbler with a wooden spoon, “we walk if we have to. For goodness’ sakes, it’s only two miles.” Out of respect for clergy, Martha passed the first serving to Father Tim, who handed it off to Agnes.
“Two miles?” Hadn’t Agnes said that Miss Martha was Jubal’s senior by a decade?
“Keeps us hale!” declared Martha. “Besides, somebody always brings us home.”
Mary nodded. “Somebody always brings us home!”
Had he checked his sugar this morning? He couldn’t recall. Lord...
Agnes inhaled the fragrant steam rising from her coffee cup. “Miss Martha, won’t you take your apron off and sit down with us?”
“Oh, law, no, I never take my apron off!” said Martha.
“She never takes her apron off!” said Mary.
Father Tim noted that the woodstove had lent a rosy flush to every cheek.
“Miss Martha, Miss Mary, it’s time we told you why we came. We feel we have some very good news.”
“Well, now!” exclaimed Martha. “I like good news!”
“She likes good news!” said Mary, showing her dentures to good effect.
Thumb up, forefinger out, the remaining three fingers tucked into the palm.
“This,” said Agnes, “is L. And that—is Donny Luster’s trailer. You’ll notice I don’t tell you much about your new parishioners beforehand; it seems best to let you form your own impressions. I’ll just say that Donny is a most remarkable young man.”
“Spotless,” he said, peering around as he parked beside a pickup truck. “Someone is proud to live here.”
Agnes looked for a moment at her hands, lying palms up in her lap. “Father, I must say what I have to say ... now. It can’t wait any longer.
”
She lifted her head and looked at him; he saw the firm resolve in her eyes.
“The longer I hesitate, the more I dread my confession.”
“You needn’t confess anything to me.”
“It’s important that it be done. Then I shall be free to tell you in peace the rest of my story, which is also Holy Trinity’s story”
Behind the trailer, early afternoon light sparkled on upland pasture where a small herd of cows grazed.
Agnes crossed herself as she told him what must be spoken.
“I never married,” she said.
“I’m five.”
Sissie Gleason held up as many fingers.
“Five!” exclaimed the vicar. “I remember being five!”
It was merely a flash of memory, like a sliver of celluloid carved from a lengthy documentary. His mother was pushing him on the tree swing behind their house in Holly Springs. It was the day before his fifth birthday, and she was singing the song he would never forget as long as he lived.
Baby Bye, here’s a fly,
Let us watch him you and I...
“I’m not a baby!” he shouted.
“Is that so? I did forget for a moment, but only a very tiny moment!”
He thought his mother the most beautiful woman in the world ...
“I’m five!” he shouted again, flying toward a perfectly blue sky. The soles of his bare feet pushed against silken summer air.
“You have a whole day left before you’re five! I want this day to go on and on and...”
“It’s good to be five,” he said, stooping down to look into the solemn eyes of the child with tangled hair. In the corner of the room, a TV hawked the wares of a shopping network.
“I was this many b’fore.” She held up four fingers. “How many are you?”
He raised both hands and extended his fingers seven times.
She observed this lengthy communication. “That’s too many.”
“Darn right,” he said, creaking upward on resistant legs.
“What’s ’at roun’ your neck?”
“My tab collar.”
“What’s it f’r?”
“It marks me as a preacher, a priest. It lets people know I’m someone they can come to, confide in, pray with.”
“And this,” Agnes told him, “is Dovey Gleason, Sissie’s mother and Donny’s sister.”
He bent over the bed where Dovey lay, and looked into another pair of brown and solemn eyes. “Dovey.” He took her hand and instinctively held it in both of his.
“Dovey,” he said again; the name seemed an odd comfort to him. “May I pray for you?” He knew nothing about her except what he saw in her eyes.
“Yes,” she whispered.
He sat in the chair beside her. “Dear God and loving Father, Creator of all that is, seen and unseen, we thank You for Your presence in this home, at this bedside, and in the heart of Your child, Dovey. Give us eyes to see Your goodness in her suffering, give us faith to thank You for her healing, give us love to strengthen us as we wait. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen.”
“Amen,” said Agnes.
“Amen,” whispered Dovey.
When he looked up, he saw Donny Luster standing at the foot of the bed. “Amen,” said Donny. “Miss Agnes, how you?”
“Very well, Donny, thank you. Please meet Father Timothy Kavanagh.” The thin, blond young man leaned toward him and they shook hands.
“Very pleased to meet you, Donny. I’ve been called to be the vicar at Holy Trinity.”
“That’s good. We was startin’ to get shed of all our churches around here, what our’n burnin’ down an’ your’n closed up.”
“What is Dovey’s illness?”
“We don’t know, ain’t found nobody that knows. I’ve took ’er to Wesley and Holdin’ both. They’re treatin’ ’er for depression, but they’s some as thinks it was a tick bite.”
“How long ... ?”
“She’s been down th’ last four, five months, an’ wadn’t feelin’ too good way b’fore that.”
“She cain’t do nothin’,” said Sissie. “Sometime she cain’t git up, she pees in th’ bed.”
Donny gave Sissie a sharp look. “You hush up, little miss.”
Father Tim continued to hold Dovey’s hand. “I saw some fine-looking cows on the hill. They’re yours, Donny?”
“Yeah, I run a few head now an’ then.”
“Very nice place you have here. Slick as a whistle. May I ask what do you do?”
“He does ever’thing!” said Sissie.
“Is that right?”
“Cookin’...”
“That’s a good thing to do.”
“... washin’ dishes, cleanin’ up th’ whole place.”
“Ah.”
“Takin’ care of me an’ Mama.”
“The best of things to do!”
“I got a loggin’ b’iness,” said Donny “I do a little drywall on th’ side, an’ cut hay in th’ valley.”
“An’ he plays th’ fiddle an’ all them things hangin’ on th’ wall.” Sissie looked proud.
Only now did he see that the wall leading into the next room was hung with musical instruments.
That ’n’s a guitar.” Sissie pointed. “That ’n’s a banjer. That ’n ... what’s that ’n, Donny? I f’rgit.”
“Dulcimore. But he don’t want t’ hear that mess.”
“Yes, I do. You play all those instruments?”
“Yeah.”
“How did you learn?”
“Come natural,” Dovey whispered.
“He plays th’ jaw harp, too,” said Sissie.
“Sissie,” said her mother, “please hush.”
“I’m jis’ talkin’, Mama.”
Donny sat on the foot of the bed. “Mine an’ Dovey’s granpaw was a picker, he was th’ best in this county an’ ever’ where else; he taught me t’ play anything with a string on it. I started out when I was nine year old, playin’ ‘at ol’ washtub base settin’ yonder.”
“Where do you play?”
Sissie clambered onto the bed. “He plays at churches an’ camp meetin’s, ain’t that right, Donny?” Sissie crawled over and patted her mother’s cheek. “Donny, he preaches, too.”
“Preaches?”
Donny’s face colored. “Don’t worry, I ain’t no competition for a real preacher!”
“This beats all. Logging, cooking, cleaning, making hay, playing music, preaching...”
“A Renaissance man!” said Agnes, looking pleased.
Dovey lifted her head from the pillow. “Sissie, bring m’ pitcher, m’ cup’s right here.”
Sissie scrambled off the bed and went to the sink and fetched a pitcher. “It ain’t got much in it.”
“Fill it up,” said Dovey. “I got t’ take m’ medicine.”
Sissie trotted back with the pitcher and set it on the bed table. “’At pitcher was her mama’s. Mamaw Ruby give Mama a whole set of dishes when she was little. She uses ’em ever’ day, won’t use nothin’ else.”
“All cracked an’ chipped,” said Donny, disapproving. “They need t’ be thowed out.”
“They was Mama’s,” Dovey said fiercely.
Sissie bounced on the bed. “Turn on y’r record player, Donny!”
“They don’t want t’ hear that; now, hush up.”
“Hit’ll play anything,” Sissie informed the vicar. “Donny he likes th’ Monroe Brothers. He tries t’ sing like ’em.”
“See that switch over yonder? You’re lookin’ t’ git wore out, an’ I don’t mean maybe.”
“Would you play something for us?” asked Father Tim. “Would you mind?”
“He don’t mind,” said Sissie.
Donny looked at his sister. “If Dovey’ll sing with me.”
“I cain’t, Donny, I cain’t sing now.”
“Yes, you can, Dovey; you know you can. Come on an’ try.”
Donny went to the wa
ll and studied it a moment, then took down a guitar.
“‘What Would You Give,’ Dovey.” He pulled a stool to the foot of the bed and propped his foot on a rung.
“I don’ know if I can, Donny...”
“Sure you can.” He turned the pegs, tuning. “Come on, now. Jis’ a little on th’ chorus, I’ll do th’ verses.”
Donny Luster strummed the guitar and began to sing. His voice was clear, and plaintive.
“Brother afar from your Savior today
Risking your soul for the things that decay
Oh, if today God should call you away
What would you give in exchange for your soul?
What would you give... ”
Still holding the vicar’s hand, Dovey sang, her voice trembling, “In exchange...”
“What would you give...”
“In exchange,” she sang again.
“Oh, if today God should call you away...”
The brother and sister finished the refrain together. “... What would give in exchange for your soul?”
“That’s good, Dovey. One more time.”
“Mercy is callin’, won’t you give heed
Must th’ dear Savior still tenderly plead
Risk not your soul, it is precious indeed
What would give in exchange for your soul?
What would you give...”
Waiting for Dovey to respond, Donny sang the line again. “What would you give...”
“I cain’t, Donny.”
Father Tim turned to Dovey and saw the tears on her cheeks.
Sissie patted her mother’s arm. “It’s OK, Mama. Donny, stop makin’ Mama sing if she don’t want to!”
“I’m sorry,” said Father Tim. “I shouldn’t have asked.”
“It ain’t your fault,” said Donny. He turned from the bed, angry, and hung the guitar on the wall, then looked at Dovey as he pulled on his jacket. “I come in t’ tell you Granny’ll be here in a little bit; I won’t git home ’til after dark. You ‘n’ Sissie have y’r dinner, I done eat.”
“I’ll walk out with you,” said Father Tim, as Donny headed for the door.
Donny went to his truck, ignoring the vicar.
“Donny...” Preaching and meddling were often accused of being one and the same, thought Father Tim, but so be it.