by Jan Karon
“Set him to barking, then. We’re here to celebrate!” He hurried toward the sacristy, calling over his shoulder: “Christ being raised from the dead dieth no more!”
Cynthia smiled at the early comers. “My husband is always like this at Easter,” she said.
His wife, a gift from God.
Sammy Barlowe, a gift from God.
His eyes roved the pews.
Agnes Merton, Clarence Merton, gifts from God . . .
Robert Prichard . . . yes, a gift from God . . .
Every saint has a past, the sixteenth-century poet had said, and every sinner has a future. And all because of what He did for love.
“Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us: therefore let us keep the feast. Not with old leaven neither with the leaven of malice and wickedness; but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth . . .”
“As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end . . .”
The old words seemed somehow reborn, as his spirit stepped forth to embrace his new parish.
They gathered in the churchyard, close by the stone wall.
How many souls had gathered at this wall in the life of Holy Trinity, and looked out to clear skies and dark alike? One thing the vicar knew for certain, there wouldn’t be many Easter morns as glorious as this.
A soft, impressionist light bathed every ridge; the still-bare trees, seemingly grim and resolute only days ago, appeared relieved and hopeful; for the first time, he noticed buds on the rhododendron.
Barnabas sprawled atop the wall, eyeing all comers.
“‘At’s’ th’ biggest dern dog I ever seen in m’ life,” said Rooter. “Is ’e a bitin’ dog?”
“Not so far,” said Father Tim.
“I don‘ want t‘ be eat up by no dog.”
“Shouldn’t be a problem; he had breakfast before we left.”
He stood with Cynthia and Agnes by the wall, dispensing cartons of eggs. Sissie Gleason was first in line, holding fast to Granny’s hand.
Sissie looked up at Father Tim. “Was God here t’day?”
“He was!” said the vicar. “And is.”
Sissie raised one foot in the air. “I wanted ’im t’ see m’ new shoes.”
“Ain’t them th’ prettiest little yeller shoes you ever laid eyes on?” asked Granny.
“They are!” Cynthia agreed. “I’d love a pair exactly like them.”
Sissie peered into the carton of eggs. “They ain’t colored,” she said. “They ain’t fit t’ hide.”
“Take them home and boil them hard,” said Cynthia, “then color them with your Magic Markers and hide them to your heart’s content. Do you have Magic Markers?”
“What is Magi Markers?”
“I’ll bring you some next Sunday. Do you read?”
“Nope. I ain’t in school yet.”
“I’ll bring you a book,” said Cynthia. “It has lots of pictures. Kiss your mother for us.”
Father Tim squatted to Sissie’s level. “Thank you for coming, Sissie. Tell your Uncle Donny he’d sure be welcome to join us. And tell your mother she’s in our prayers.”
“Sparkle Foster,” said the fortyish woman, shaking Cynthia’s hand. “I do hair in th’ valley, pleased to meet you. An’ this is my husband, Wayne.”
“Sparkle! Wayne! A blessed Easter to you!”
“Same to y’all.This is sure a different kind of church for us. I was raised Holiness,Wayne was raised Baptist.”
“I was raised t’ shout,” said Wayne, setting the record straight, “but fell away to th’ Baptists.”
Cynthia handed off a carton to the redhaired Sparkle, who appeared touched by the gesture. “Why, thank you, how nice. Other than it bein’ Easter, is there a special meanin’ to givin’ eggs away at church?”
“There is, actually! Our hens lay faster than we can use up the proceeds! Where did you get your wonderful name?”
Sparkle laughed. “My granmaw got it out of th’ funny papers.”
“Very creative of your granmaw! We’re happy to have you and hope you’ll come again.”
“I don’t know if we can keep up with th’ way y’ all do things.”
Wayne nodded, clearly in agreement.
“We need to have some lessons on the prayer book,” said the vicar. “Would be good for everybody. What about a covered dish next Sunday? Followed by a discussion on how we do things?” In his new parish, there would be no slacking; it was fish or cut bait.
“Great idea!” boomed Martha McKinney, moving up in line. “I’ll bring my German chocolate cake.”
“She’ll bring her German choc’late cake,” said Mary, clearly thrilled by the prospect.
“Miss Martha, Miss Mary, He is risen!”
“He is risen, indeed!” they recited in unison.
Martha received their dozen with obvious gratitude. “We used to be covered up with eggs, everybody and his brother kept chickens! But today, there’s hardly a soul who’ll keep a chicken.”
“They run out in th’ road,” said Mary. “That’s why.”
Father Tim indicated the open doors and the crowd milling about in the churchyard. “Well, ladies, what do you think?”
Tears brimmed in Martha’s eyes. “It’s the best thing that’s happened on this ridge in more years than I can count. I was so excited, I was up half th’ night!”
“We was both up half th’ night!” said Mary.
“A blessed Easter to you!” He hugged Miss Mary, while Cynthia hugged Miss Martha. Teamwork!
“Lloyd!” The vicar clasped the hand of the other cradle Episcopalian in their midst. “He is risen!”
“He is risen, indeed!” said Lloyd, who received his dozen with a big grin. “Come summer, I’ll keep you an’ Miz Kavanagh in corn. I grow Silver Queen.”
“Our sworn favorite! I meant to ask you yesterday what you do with your time now that you’ve moved home.”
“I was in th’ contractin’ bi‘ness a good many years, workin’ as a brick mason. I’m what you call semiretired, but I still lay a little brick now an’ again.”
“Look how the Lord works! I’m just getting estimates on a chimney that blew down in the wind. Quite a mess. Care to give us a price? We’re in th’ valley, Dr. Owen’s place.”
“Glad to. Happy to! I know right where you’re at.”
“Tuesday morning, first thing?”
“You can count on it.”
“A blessed Easter to you, Granny. Fresh from the nest.”
“Rooter’ll have th’ whole bunch et up b’fore you can say jackrabbit.”
Rooter took the eggs. “We wouldn’t mind gittin’ some more when you’uns have ’em,” said Rooter.
“What d’you say?” prompted Granny.
“Thank you’uns.”
“You’re welcome,” said the vicar, giving Rooter a clap on the shoulder.
Rooter made a face. “I ain’t never heerd none of them songs you’un’s sing.”
Father Tim heard Agnes chuckle.
“Come again next Sunday,” he said, “and we’ll have some more songs you never heard! But guess what?”
“What?”
“You and Granny keep coming, and one day, you’ll start recognizing the words and the tunes, and next thing you know . . .”
Rooter grinned. “I might keep a-comin’, but I won’t be a-singin’, I c’n tell y’ that.” He turned to Agnes. “I’d like t’ say somethin’ to Clarence. Can you show me some of them hand words y’all do?”
“What would you like to say?”
“How you doin’, man?”
“Step over here and I’ll show you,” said Agnes.
“And by the way,” said Father Tim, “I’d like to see Clarence’s work, myself. When it’s convenient.”
“Consider it done!” said Agnes, borrowing his line.
“Robert . . . for you. A blessed Easter!”
Robert took the carton without speaking, his head lowered. When he looked up, Fath
er Tim felt his very soul pierced. In Robert Prichard’s eyes was a look of utter desolation.
Father Tim spontaneously embraced him. “He is risen!” he whispered, hoarse with feeling.
The cookies had vanished, as had the juice, when Rooter ran back to Agnes.
“I done it! What else can I say to ’im?”
“What else would you like to say?”
“I want t’ know how he makes all them things in ’is little house. Them bears an’ deer an’ all, an’ them bowls, I want t’ know how ’e makes them bowls. I don’t see how he done ’at.”
“Watch,” said Agnes.
She made a sign. “Can you do this?”
“Yeah.” He did it.
“That means how. Can you make this sign?”
“Yeah.”
“That means do. Now here’s the rest of your question: this? How do this?”
Rooter watched intently, duplicating the last sign.
“I done it right, didn’ I?”
“You did it perfectly! Here comes the hard part; let’s do them all in a row now. How ... do ... this?”
Father Tim looked on. This boy was quick.
“I done it ag’in!”
“Yes, you did. How amazing.”
“I’ll be et f’r a tater!” said Granny, marveling. Agnes brushed a wisp of hair from her forehead. “Let’s go over it once more.”
They went over it once more.
“Now, run find Clarence!”
Rooter started to race away, then turned back. “Don’t he talk none a’tall?”
“None at all.”
“How’d he learn to make them things?”
“God taught him.”
“I ain’t believin’ that. You cain’t see God.”
“God put the gift to carve wood in Clarence’s heart and mind and hands. Clarence touches the wood and knows things that most of us can’t know.”
Rooter sighed. “Now I done forgot what I learnt.”
“Look here.” She made the signs, and he mimicked them without fault.
“Hurry, now! Run!”
Rooter ran.
“Ain’t he a catbird?” said Granny.
They were pulling out of the church lot as Lloyd was getting into his pickup.
“What would you think,” he asked Cynthia, “about setting another plate for Easter dinner?”
“I would think it’s a wonderful idea.”
He leaned out the window of the Mustang and shouted. “Lloyd!”
“Yessir?”
“Do you like ham and corn pudding and hot rolls and green beans?”
With Lloyd following behind, he steered the Mustang down the gravel road toward the creek, still intoxicated by the scent of beeswax, old wood, lemon oil, lilies . . .
He wanted to remember the happiness of this day for a very long time.
“How’s it going back there, Sammy?” A quick glance in the rearview mirror . . .
Just as Sammy had maintained his distance from the parishioners, he was giving wide berth to his companion on the backseat.
After Lloyd had gone home to the ridge, he sat with Cynthia in the library and totted the numbers.
Not counting his good dog, Holy Trinity had expanded from seven parishioners to fourteen.
Though numbers weren’t everything, he was mighty impressed with their rate of growth, which was a whopping 100 percent.
“One hundred percent!” he announced to his wife. “In the space of a single week, mind you.”
“Let the megachurches top that,” she said.
Willie Mullis was living up to something Father Tim’s grandmother used to say of the overharried—he looked like he was sent for and couldn’t go.
“Triplets.”
“Triplets?”
“Two ewes an’ a ram. All hale.”
“Wonderful! Thanks for the report.” It was nine o’clock at night, for Pete’s sake, he didn’t know if he could handle another lifetime event today. “Want to step in for some hot chocolate? It’s chilly this evening.”
Willie frowned. Why would anybody want to waste time drinking hot chocolate when they could come to the barn and witness something that didn’t happen every day of the week? Twins were pretty common. But triplets? He shook his head, disgusted with town people in general.
As Willie turned to leave, Father Tim felt Violet wrapping herself around his ankles. Suddenly, the proverbial lightbulb switched on. He looked at his wife; she looked at him.
“Violet and the triplets!” they whooped.
“I’ll grab my sketchbook!”
“Get Sammy while you’re at it!” he said. “I’ll get a flashlight. Hey, Willie! Wait up, we’re coming!”
Before he could round up the flashlight and don his boots, his wife had commandeered Sammy, raced to the coatrack by the door, found her wool socks and pulled them on, shoved her feet into her boots, stuffed her pajama bottoms therein, drawn her barn jacket on over her chenille robe, crammed a knit hat on her head, and was out the door with Sammy and Barnabas at her heels, the screen door slapping behind.
Lambs on long, wobbly legs.
If there was ever a sight to restore one’s hope, it was a lamb.
His wife was sitting in the straw of the triplets’ lambing pen, sketching her brains out while two of the newborns suckled with good appetite. Sammy looked on from outside the pen, awed.
“This, I presume,” he said to Cynthia, “knocks out March.”
“March, and possibly even April,” she said.
Willie came in with a bottle. “I had t’ pull that ’un yonder. ’E’s not takin’ dinner from ’is mama, an’ I got t’ go look about th’ rest of th’ lot.” Willie gave Father Tim a meaningful look.
“You want me to ... umm ...”
“Yessir.”
The vicar took the bottle and sat in the straw beside Barnabas. “Hand him over here, get me started. I’m new at this.”
Willie picked up the lamb and forked it over; it was wet and sticky from the birth sac, and its iodine-treated umbilical cord was still bloody.
With a little coaxing, the lamb found the nipple of the bottle and nursed with surprising energy.
Father Tim leaned back against the boards of the lambing pen, grinning. His new barn jacket had at last been broken in.
“Close up the house,” said Hal. “You don’t need the aggravation of a chimney being rebuilt under your noses. Willie can look after things.”
“No, no, we’d like to stay on. I confess we’ve gotten pretty comfortable here and we’re looking forward to spending the summer with Dooley. We hope we have years yet to be at home in Mitford.”
“Whatever suits you, old friend. Glad to hear Sammy showed up; that’s four out of five, thanks be to God!”
As the usual static came on the line, Father Tim hung up, relieved.
Somehow, he and Cynthia had gotten rooted into Meadowgate like turnips; yanking it all up and moving back to Wisteria Lane would be a job of no mean proportion. Besides, he wanted to watch the lambs grow up, and eat okra and tomatoes from the alluvial soil of a valley garden.
“Okra!” he said aloud, rhapsodic.
His wife stopped squinting at her sketchbook and squinted at him. “Okra?”
“Fried, whenever possible.”
“Certainly not stewed!” she said, meaning it.
During a light spring rain on Wednesday, the UPS driver screeched into the driveway and, unable to summon anyone to the backdoor of the farmhouse, used a dolly to transport twenty boxes to the rear steps. Seeing no way around the onerous task of off-loading them onto the porch, he sighed deeply and went to work.
Holy Trinity’s kneelers had arrived.
Shortly afterward, the driver of a competitive delivery service huffed a weighty carton onto the front porch and sprinted to the truck before anyone could ask him to set it in the front hall.
Holy Trinity’s candles, Host box, altar vases, chalice, paten, hymn board, and altar sticks had reached
their destination.
CHAPTER TEN
So Shall Ye Reap
Twins.
A single.
A single.
Twins.
A single.
Twins.
Twins.
A single.
At Meadowgate Farm, lambs were arriving as frequently as flights into Atlanta.
As if fitted with coils, they sprang around the barn and over the pasture, doing what the English long ago defined as gamboling.
“Also known as frisking,” said his wife, hunkered down with a camera.
“How many rolls so far?”
“Only eleven.”
“Ah yes, but shooting them is one thing, and having them developed is another.”
“In my calling, dearest, all tax deductible!”
Satisfied ewes lay about the greening pasture in fleecy mounds, chewing their cud. Here and there, a mistaken lamb gave a ewe’s udder a great, upheaving nudge and was scolded off to its own mother.
It was the time of year at Meadowgate when cars and trucks slowed along the state road. Whole families occasionally piled out of their vehicles to stand at the fence and marvel.
Father Tim threw up his hand to Willie, who was heading down the pasture with his walking stick. Willie waved back.
Using her zoom lens, Cynthia shot several frames of their good shepherd, who, due to the lambing and calving season, was looking decidedly overworked. Indeed, in the Meadowgate pasture to the north, four calves had recently been born, with six more expected.
“He needs the help of a wife, poor soul.”
“He has the neighbor boy,” said Father Tim.
“Yes, but does the neighbor boy have a hot meal on the table when Willie straggles in from the barn?”
“You have a point.”
“We’ll send him an apple pie. I found two in the freezer, I’ll pop both in the oven this afternoon; the kitchen will smell wonderful.”
“One for Willie and one for Sammy?”
“Precisely You and I will feast merely on the aroma.”
“Works for me,” he said.
He looked up and saw something moving at a pace along the brow of the hill. Guineas. The entire flock. Chasing madly after something white ... aha!