by Jan Karon
“That’s what they say.”
“Have you heard th’one about ... ?”
“No, and don’t want to. I want to know what you know that I don’t know.”
J.C. cackled. “Maybe it’s for me to know and you to find out.”
“You’re playing hardball with me, buddyroe.”
“You get in my vehicle this time,” said J.C.
Father Tim parked in the rear of the station, and stroked around front to the SUV, which J.C. had rolled to the side of the grease pit. He hopped into the passenger seat and slammed the door.
“You’re not goin’ to believe it, anyway,” said the Muse editor.
“Try me.”
“Things are fixed with Adele. Have been for a couple of weeks, but didn’t see any reason to run tattlin’ to you; you ain’t my daddy.”
“What happened?”
“She arrested me.”
Father Tim whooped. “No kidding!”
“For ... let’s see, I got th’ papers right here.” J.C. ransacked his bulging briefcase.
“For being a cold-hearted, unemotional, self-indulgent, ah, hard-headed ... jerk,” he read. “Oh, an’ for jaywalkin’.”
“Man. Threw the book at you.”
“She busted me on Main Street; told me to get in the patrol car.”
“What a woman.”
“Drove me around. Read me the riot act.”
“Whoa.”
“You know what I said?”
“Not a clue.”
“I said, you’re right. And then I said ...”
“What?” He was pretty much on the edge of his seat.
“I said I was sorry.” J.C.’s face colored.
“Great! Good for you!” He suddenly remembered what he’d seen in Baxter Park; his unbounded delight turned sour.
J.C. grinned. “So ... that’s pretty much it.”
“No, it isn’t; there’s more. Spit it out.”
“Well, I mean, we like ... drove somewhere. And you know, parked.”
He’d take his chances. If the answer was no, he could cover things up.
“Under the tree in Baxter Park, by any chance?”
“How’d you know that?”
“I get around,” he said. Hallelujah! “So, what kind of time do you have to do?”
“Six months of take-out.”
“Take-out?”
“Take out th’ garbage, take ’er out to dinner, pick up take-out at th’ Ming Tree in Wesley ...”
“She could have given you a lifetime sentence. You got off easy.”
J.C. nodded, sober. “Real easy.”
“Think you’ll go straight after this?”
J.C. looked him in the eye. “With God’s help. That’s prob‘ly th’ only way.”
“Amen,” said the vicar, meaning it.
His adrenaline was pumping like an oil derrick as he came through the revolving door and along the carpeted hallway to Room Number One.
Louella was watering a gloxinia on her windowsill.
“Louella, Louella, Louella!” He threw up his arms as if delivering a speech from a balcony. “I have good news!”
She set the watering can down with a thump. “You foun’ Miss Sadie’s money!”
“Bingo!”
“Thank You, Jesus! Thank You, Jesus! An’ thank Miss Sadie, I bet she put th’ hidin’ place in yo’ head.”
“In a manner of speaking,” he said.
Hoppy ran his hand through his unruly hair.
“So there it was all the time. She was eating and drinking her own demise. As you know, Nurse Herman is the one who caught it.”
Father Tim shook the hand of Mitford Hospital’s director of nursing. “Very well done!”
“Like I said yesterday, I wouldn’t know old dishes from pea turkey if my cousin hadn’t been so sick with lead poisonin’. It was the same thing—she always ate and drank out of old transfer ware her grandma gave her in high school. She was treated for chronic fatigue syndrome for ten years before they figured it out!”
“I never thought about china containing lead,” said the vicar.
“The worst amounts are mostly in stuff made before the seventies. Plus, my cousin and Miss Gleason really did a number on themselves-they used the dishes to microwave food!”
“Microwaving leaches out dangerous lead levels,” said Hoppy. “And chips and cracks can be really lethal.”
“Do they still have to get out of the trailer?”
“That’s up to the state health crowd,” said Hoppy. “They’ll probably check the plumbing first thing—if there’s a problem, it could be as simple as the hot-water cylinder. It contains a very high level of lead solder, which can deteriorate and turn to sludge. Pure poison. »
“And,” said Nurse Herman, “Miss Gleason says she makes all her hot drinks with water from the hot tap!”
“When do you think she’ll go home?”
“Monday,” said Hoppy. “I’d let her go today, but don’t want to take any chances. If she’s here, I know she’s eating. She’ll improve on the chelation therapy, but it will definitely take time, and she’ll have to check in again for liver function testing.”
“What about the bill?” asked Father Tim. “There’s no insurance, and she hasn’t worked in some time. What’s the usual procedure for ...”
“I have a number you can call,” said Hoppy. “Not sure what the result will be, but this is a nonprofit that’s helped a lot of patients in her circumstances. Might work out. As for my bill, consider it paid.”
Hoppy raised his hand against his old friend’s protests.
“I’ve owed you a big one for a long time. Call it the chickens coming home to roost.”
He told her everything, feeling a trifle like St. Nick flying in on his sleigh. Each time he dipped into the day’s story bag, he brought forth yet another surprise for the wide-eyed kid in his spouse.
The money in the dome light (which he illustrated by displaying the cut on his head) ...
The further unraveling of Dovey’s curious mystery ...
Edith’s message to Mitford ...
And then, the upbeat turn of events with Adele and J.C.
“Your go,” he said, slurping down a glass of water.
“I could never top any of that,” said his marveling wife.
“Say on.”
“Hal didn’t approve the surgery.”
“Aha!”
“He didn’t approve the acupuncture, either. He wants to wait a few days and see what happens. If the stiffness persists, they’ll go to opiates and steroids.”
“How does Dooley feel about this?”
“He thinks it’s a fair compromise, though he believes acupuncture could alleviate the pain.”
“Have things settled down between our resident vets?”
“According to Dooley, Hal made it clear that he wasn’t siding with either viewpoint; it’s simply what Hal would do if he were here. So, maybe that helped take the sting out.”
“What if Hal’s plan doesn’t work?”
“Sounds like Blake will continue to stump for surgery, and Dooley for acupuncture.”
“How did it go with Sissie?”
“Great news! I found the videos you bought for Jonathan in Whitecap; they came out from Mitford in a box of books! She watched Babe twice, and is seeing it again even as we speak.”
“My kind of girl!”
“I saved The Little Mermaid for the two of you to watch tomorrow.”
“A thousand thanks.”
“So she ate an enormous lunch, and fell onto the library sofa where I thought she’d sleep as if drugged. But did she? Indeed not! She lay down for sixty seconds, then bobbed up again, full of questions.
“So, off we hied to the sheep paddock, where I got a moment’s respite as she chased the lambs, which, as you know, can never be caught. Afterward, we paid a call on the henhouse and did Willie’s job for him. I confess she was adorable; every egg was an amazement to her. I t
hought, aha, Sissie and Violet gathering eggs!”
“September?”
“October.”
“Brilliant.”
“By the way,” he said, “whatever happened to your needlepoint plan?”
“The calendar.”
“Of course.”
She sighed. “A mere one out of three.”
“Pretty good numbers,” he said.
By eight o’clock, they had collapsed into bed, with Sissie snoring on the love seat and Barnabas snoring on the landing.
As for the rest of the household, Dooley and Sammy were eating pizza in Wesley and washing the Jeep. Lace was coming home tomorrow, and his boy couldn’t hide his anticipation. He had tried, of course, but it wasn’t working.
“ ‘No disguise can long conceal love where it exists,’ ” Father Tim quoted aloud from La Rochefoucauld, “ ‘or long feign it where it is lacking.’ I committed that to memory when I was courting you.”
“I thought I courted you.” She kissed the bump on top of his head.
“Yes, well, the line did blur for a while.”
“I love you more than ever,” she said, patting his arm.
“I love you more than ever back.” He patted hers.
“Please don’t tell anybody we went to bed while it was still daylight.”
He was fried. “They’ll never hear it from me.”
“Will you pray for us, dearest?”
He prayed the prayer attributed to St. Francis.
“Watch, O Lord, with those who wake, or watch, or weep tonight, and give Your angels and saints charge over those who sleep. Tend Your sick ones, O Lord Christ. Rest Your weary ones. Bless Your dying ones. Soothe Your suffering ones. Pity Your afflicted ones. Shield Your joyous ones. And all for Your love’s sake.”
“Amen,” they said.
He took her hand and they lay quiet, the clock ticking on the mantel.
“I’m always moved by his petition to ‘shield Your joyous ones,’” she said at last, “by his recognition that joy is a terribly fragile thing, and the Enemy is bent on stealing it from us. Such a wise thing to ask for.”
She turned her head and gazed at her husband as if expecting a word from him, but he was sleeping.
After breakfast, he fished The Little Mermaid from the box, and settled Sissie in the parlor. He would do a lot of things in this world, but watching The Little Mermaid would never be one of them.
He set up his own camp in the library.
“Violet?”
“Who’s this?”
“Father Tim. I have a great idea. Is this a good time?”
“Yessir. I love great ideas!”
“You’re a fine singer.”
“Thank you.”
“And Sparkle doesn’t do badly, herself.”
“Oh, Sparkle’s good, really good. I love ’er alto.”
“I’m thinking we need a choir at Holy Trinity.”
“A choir!”
“Yes.To help encourage the others to sing; so many are afraid to sing in church.”
“They cain’t read music, that’s why; an’ they never heard those ol’ songs b‘fore. I mean, you got a whole lot of Baptists in y’r bunch.”
“True, true. In any case, a choir ...”
“Beggin’ your pardon, but I don’t have time t’ be in a choir. That’s a big commitment I ain’t ready to make.”
“I hear you. What I was wondering is, could you just sit over by the piano during the service, and stand and sing with Sparkle every time we have a hymn? That way, our two best voices would be united.”
“A choir of two?”
“Something like that, yes.”
“You sing pretty good, yourself.”
“I never thought so, but thank you.”
“You could come an’ stand with us. So, then we’d have three up front an’ Miss Martha in back—she totally loses ’er key now an’ ag‘in but she’s strong. An’ I guess with us in th’ front an’ her in th’ back, that’d ... hold up th’ middle!”
Violet giggled; his heart lifted. “Well said!”
A choir had to start somewhere.
He stepped down to the mailbox, then returned to the library, shutting the door against the chink, chink, chink of the masons’ trowels in the kitchen chimney and the video in the parlor.
Invitation to the annual barbecue of the electrical co-op. Bill from The Local. Credit card jive. Notice of a fish fry at Farmer’s fire hall.
Dear Father Kavanagah,
Thank you for the Bibles. Everybody was so happy to have one of their own. We are reading in the gospel of John and studying where Jesus says in chapter 14--if a man love me, He will keep my words and my Father will love him and We will come unto Him and make our abode with him.
It is a comfort to know that God hisself will come through these prison walls and set down with us in our cell which is our abode and be with each one of His incarcerated children. That is a thrilling thing and sometimes hard to believe but I have felt his presence and know it is true.
I don’t hardly know if I should write this, but I have been working real hard to earn time off of my sentence. It looks like I might be coming home soon but I don’t know yet so don’t please say nothing to Donny or Dovey or nobody else. My crime was a Class B2 feleny, and I have kep a clean record during my time of incarceration and my sentence might could be cut from ten years to seven years.
I will appreciate it if you will pray for them to be able to do this. I will let you know. Please pray for Lucy in our Bible study she has a really bad heart and for Sue and Lonnie. Thank you and God bless you.
Sincerely,
Ruby Luster
#10765L
“So, what does ‘e do in there all day? You f’rgot.”
He leaned forward and put his elbows on his knees, so he could look into her inquisitive eyes. “He guides and directs us, and helps us make decisions, if we ask Him. He gives us a sense of belonging.”
“What is belongin’?”
“Being important to someone, feeling at home somewhere. Because when He lives in our hearts, we belong to Hi
m, and He is our home.”
This was hard, he thought.
She placed her hand over her heart. “He ain’t doin’ nothin’ but goin’ ka-bump, ka-bump.”
“That’s your heart pumping blood through your body so you can live and breathe and walk and talk and watch videos and eat peanut butter. God lives in our hearts as a spirit. We can tell Him everything, and ask Him anything. He wants to help us because He loves us.”
“How come ’e loves us?”
“One reason is because He made us.”
“I come out of m’ mama’s belly. She said her’n’ m’ daddy made me.”
He took her hand. “Let’s go up and see Cynthia,” he said.
“Hey, Dad.”
“Hey, son.” He laid his book aside. “Sit down awhile.”
Dooley sat in the window seat next to the library fireplace.
“Looks like your Jeep cleaned up pretty good.”
Dooley shrugged.
“But you can’t be hauling the beautiful Miss Lace Harper around in a Wrangler with a busted door. Tell you what. We hardly use the Mustang since we came out here. Why don’t you drive it ’til your new truck comes in?”
“That’d be great. Really great.” Dooley was beaming. “Thanks.”
“It has a few idiosyncrasies; I’ll have to show you.”
“Sammy and I figured my truck comes in about the same time as his. He said he’ll get potatoes, cherry tomatoes, squash, all kinds of stuff around mid-July. Very cool.”
“I’m looking out for my first tomato sandwich. By the way, be careful coming home tonight; the roads are winding, as you know.”
“Right.”
“There’s that hairpin curve just after the FARMER sign.”
Dooley patted his foot.
“And that stretch by the old dairy farm—three people have ...”
“Got it, Dad.”
“So when will we see Lace?”
“I’m taking her for Mexican tonight in Wesley. Thought we’d eat with you all tomorrow night, if that’s OK. She really likes it out here.”