by Jan Karon
‘Did you talk about college?’
‘He’ll work hard to make it on his own, but I know he’ll need help. He doesn’t think he should take money from us to go to school in Oregon.’
‘That’s not the point.’
‘I told him that. He had great grades in high school, and a year in community college. He thinks he can get into the university in Eugene. It’s about thirty miles from his grandparents, he could probably live at home—maybe take a bus, buy a used truck, I don’t know.’ Dooley was the older brother, for sure; he had the worried look of a parent. ‘He’s got a girl in Eugene.’
‘Well, there you go.’ He would also regret losing the wise and amiable Kenny, who, among other virtues, had a good way with Sammy. ‘I’ll split some of his expenses with you. You’re going to need a good chunk of cash when you finish buying out Hal’s practice.’
Dooley laughed and Dooley grinned, but Dooley seldom smiled. Here was a smile to remember.
‘Thanks, Dad. Thanks.’
‘What about you?’ he said. ‘Tell me about you.’
‘I joined the University Chorus. That’s the Monday and Wednesday night stuff. Rehearsals. Brahms. You love Brahms.’
‘That’s great! Proud of you.’
‘A hundred and twenty singers. Big concert in April, full orchestra.’
‘Wow. We’ll come hear you in April.’
‘I thought I could forget about singing, but I really want to do it, I need to do it. Music is in my head all the time. The singing helps me figure things out.’
He realized Dooley had been staring at him intently.
‘What?’ he said.
‘You’re lookin’ like a wild man.’
‘Me? A wild man?’
‘Your hair is really long; you’re headed into a ponytail. You should let me cut it.’
He laughed and Dooley laughed with him. Dooley had cut his hair once. Not a good idea.
Wanda Basinger was on the move with her coffeepot. ‘I hear your boy’s in town,’ she said. ‘This him?’
‘Mrs. Basinger, Dooley Kavanagh.’
Dooley stood. ‘Pleased to meet you. Congratulations on your new place. Serious fries.’
‘Well, thanks,’ said Wanda. ‘Nice manners you’ve got there.’
‘Prep school.’ Dooley grinned. ‘They made me do it.’
• • •
LAST YEAR, he met the improbably named Bud Wyzer at the ball hall in Wesley, and watched Sammy shoot a few games with a trio of hustlers from the college. Sammy had whipped them badly, which had not gone down well with the college president’s son.
Bud was a good man, he would be helpful.
While Dooley was catching the deep sleep of the clinically exhausted and university-educated, he sat at the kitchen counter and consulted the phone book.
‘Bud, Tim Kavanagh. Hope to see you soon. Would you keep an eye out for our boy, Sammy Barlowe? You were kind to do that once before. If you see anything going on that shouldn’t be going on, I’d like to know about it. Grateful for your help, Bud, here’s my number.’
Little drops of water, little grains . . .
He rang Harley and made his proposal. Good. Okay. Done.
He made another quick call, put on his best jacket, and went to the kitchen. His wife was making egg salad, a Dooley favorite which wouldn’t be turned down next door, either.
‘I’m going to apply for a job,’ he announced.
‘About time,’ she said, giving him a smooch like he hadn’t enjoyed in some time.
‘Hooray!’ said Puny. Bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, that was Puny Guthrie on emergency call to catch up Dooley’s laundry.
‘Applying is one thing,’ he said, snapping on his clergy collar. ‘Getting the job is another.’
• • •
THEY SAT ON A MEMORIAL BENCH in the rear churchyard.
‘Something must be done about the hedge out front.’
‘Th’ hedge. Right.’
‘Pruning, feeding—and a new dressing of mulch wouldn’t hurt.’
Bill Swanson blinked.
‘The roses also need to be pruned back, hard. And right away. I recommend a light feeding of bone meal, fish meal, sulfur, magnesium sulfate, Epsom salts. But first, the beds will want refurbishing.’
‘Refurbishing,’ said the senior warden, blank as printer paper.
‘New soil, new mulch. New all around. And of course the old Sunday school has to be dealt with—get the vines off, dig out the roots, replace the gutters—or the building will come down in a heap one of these days.’
‘Right, right,’ said Bill, not knowing what else to say.
‘You may even want to go forward with liming and fertilizing the lawn.’
‘A lot of mowing comes with that. Who has time?’
‘So, if a parishioner volunteers to get the work done—fine! Great! If not, we’d like to have the job starting next week. When Father Brad comes, he may, of course, want to go another way—also fine.’
Bill looked at him, overwhelmed.
‘Free,’ he said. ‘We’ll do it for free, myself and a couple of helpers.’
‘Free? Since when have I turned down free?’ Swanson’s relieved smile, followed by a dark look. ‘Is that free labor and free materials or just free labor?’
‘Both,’ he said.
‘Wow,’ said Bill.
• • •
AS HE WAS WALKING HOME from Lord’s Chapel, a gust of wind plastered a vagrant piece of paper against his pant leg.
Attention Merchants Of Mitford’s Main Street:
Wash your windows—make ’em shine, people!!
Set an example—use the litter bins on Main!!
Sweep your sidewalks daily!!
And remember—no postings on display windows! It’s a town regulation!
Be living proof that—
Mitford Takes Care of Its Own!!!
Office of the Mayor
He stopped at the next trash bin, tossed in the broadside. No, no, he would never move to Linville. The laughs were better in Mitford.
• • •
AFTER DOOLEY’S NAP and the job interview and the communal Great Folding of Laundry, they dug out Dooley’s laptop.
‘Look up the top ten best-gas-mileage sedans,’ he said.
Toyota Prius. Volkswagen Jetta. Ford Fusion Hybrid. Toyota Camry Hybrid. Volkswagen Passat . . . too many websites, way too much information.
‘I surrender,’ he said. He had more fun walking, all those years ago. ‘Is the Minivan still your best shot?’
‘Mini Cooper. Yeah. Yes. Hatchback.’
‘What do we have to do?’ He was exhausted just thinking about buying a car.
‘We can run down the mountain tomorrow after church, the dealership opens at one o’clock, and I’ll leave from there for Athens.’
In his mind’s eye, there was the Mustang, backed in and headed out to pasture. For something like four thousand dollars, he could have it fixed and enjoy the manifold comforts of the old shoe.
‘It would still be an old car,’ said Dooley, reading his mind. ‘Four thousand today, a couple thousand tomorrow. YOLO, Dad.’
‘YOLO?’
‘You only live once.’
‘Okay,’ he said. ‘Okay.’
‘I already called. They have exactly what you need, you can drive it home. You’ll love it, Cynthia will love, it, Barnabas will love it. And it can kick a little asphalt if you’re in the mood.’
‘What color?’ he said.
‘Blue. Your favorite.’
High five. Dooley’s laughter.
‘Stick with me, Dad.’
‘I’m stickin’,’ he said.
• • •
SHE SAT IN HER CHAIR in the bedroom, eye
s closed, barefoot. He pulled up the footstool, took one of her feet in his lap, massaged the instep. ‘It seems it’s always about me around here. What about you? What’s going on? How’s the book coming?’
‘My eyes . . .’ she said, giving them a rub.
‘Cornflower blue! The color of a volcanic lake!’
‘All those years of painting tiny feet and minuscule claws and infinitesimal whiskers.’
‘Voles,’ he said. ‘And cats, of course.’
‘Voles and cats and moles and mice and owls and baby birds—so many feathers with birds. The strain . . .’ She closed her eyes. ‘Poor Miss Potter, her eyes were her undoing. That’s one reason I liked painting portraits in Ireland. People’s heads seemed so . . . huge; the strokes could be so bold. It took more than a single marten hair to get the job done.’
‘New glasses, maybe. I’ll drive you to the eye doc.’ He hated his need for her to be ever strong, fearless, and wise.
‘I think I’m beyond new glasses.’
‘Meaning?’
‘Surgery.’
The word frightened him, always had. ‘It could be the light in your workroom, there’s so little of it. The new room we talked about in Ireland—that would be the very thing. All those windows facing north! It would help, I promise.’ He felt a deep urgency to fix this for her.
‘Besides, your workroom shelves are groaning under the weight of your art—and no place to store anything else. Stacked around the walls, overflowing the hall closets . . .’
She smiled. ‘It’s okay. I’ll put some things in the auction.’
‘You need the new room, Kav’na. Let me do it.’
‘It would be a pain, all that banging and hammering.’
‘But the final result would give you pleasure.’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘It would. Let me finish this book and we’ll talk about it.’
‘When will you finish?’
‘May, I think. Or maybe June, July.’
He needed to remember that he went through something like this with every new book, worrying about her eyes, her right arm, her neck, her shoulders, her lower back. Who said art isn’t manual labor, right up there with digging ditches?
‘How about a long weekend in Whitecap?’
‘Not now, sweetheart. Let me finish the book.’ She plopped the other foot in his lap. ‘And maybe one day . . .’
‘One day what?’
‘. . . we can go across the country in an RV.’
He laughed. ‘Where did that come from?’
‘I think about it a lot. All that lovely freedom—parking in churchyards overnight, stopping at flea markets, sketching in meadows. I’ll let my hair go gray and knit while you drive.’
What a wild notion. He never knew what to expect from his wife.
‘Speaking of hair,’ she said, ‘when are you going to get a cut?’
The bloody nuisance of it.
• • •
HE LAY AWAKE, listening for Dooley to come home. Barnabas would bark a couple of times, out of courtesy to the household.
Eleven-thirty.
Ten ’til twelve.
Midnight.
Dooley was twenty-two years old. Kenny was nineteen, soon to be twenty. Yes, but Sammy was seventeen, and there was the memory of the college president’s son and his surly minions.
Twelve-twenty.
There went the barking. A light glowing on the stair. Dooley coming up and going to his room across the hall and the stair light switching off and the door closing.
Thanks be to God.
• • •
THE PHONE RINGING . . . ONE O’CLOCK.
Addled, he remembered that Dooley was across the hall, so this wasn’t the call every parent feared.
‘It’s Mary Talbot, forgive me, Father. It’s Henry . . .’
‘Henry.’
‘He left the house at six this evening. In his running clothes.’ Mary Talbot was breathless, as if she had been running. ‘He hasn’t come home. I should have called sooner, but I hated to involve . . . You’re the only one . . .’
‘His car?’
‘It’s here. His billfold, his watch, everything is here. What shall I do, Father? I mustn’t call the police, it would attract attention . . .’
‘Let me think. No, let me dress. Don’t worry, I’ll be in touch.’ He hung up, grabbed his khakis from the back of the chair.
Cynthia stirring.
‘I’m going out for a time. Henry Talbot.’ He pulled on a shirt, a sweater, cords, socks, a jacket; it was cold out there. His wife turned over, sighed, slept on.
He needed a flashlight, he needed Dooley.
‘Wake up, buddy. Wake up.’
‘What?’
‘I need you to come with me. Sorry. Get up.’
Dooley got up, sat on the side of the bed, stared at him. ‘What?’
‘It’s important. Please get dressed.’ He handed over the clothes Dooley had just taken off.
• • •
DOOLEY DROVE THE PICKUP to the hospital and around to the rear of the building and parked near the entrance of the trail into the woods. In the beam of their headlights, cans, bottles, fast-food bags, detritus.
‘What do you think?’ said Dooley.
‘I’m not thinking, just going on instinct. This is where he runs, I don’t know, it could be a dead end.’
They got out of the truck; he switched on the flashlight.
‘Spooky,’ said Dooley.
‘Why anyone would run back here is beyond me.’
They entered the trail, which he had checked out years ago as a possibility for his own route—a round-trip three-mile stretch of rough ground, tailor-made for spraining an ankle or sprawling over the gnarly roots of old trees.
If Talbot left his house at six, he would have had less than thirty minutes of diminishing daylight. An odd time to go running over this terrain.
‘Man,’ said Dooley.
‘Thanks for coming with me.’ He didn’t like the feel of this. ‘How did it go at Bud’s?’
‘Some guy from Winston merked Sammy, they were shootin’ straight pool.’
‘That’s good.’
‘What’s good?’
‘Losing once in a while will help keep his feet on the ground.’
‘Yeah, well, I don’t like losing.’
‘Who does?’
What had Talbot lost, that he would run only where he could hide?
They concentrated on negotiating the path and ignoring the trash. He was so wired, his teeth chattered. Maybe they were wasting precious time in here, and yet the hunch was too strong to ignore. The night was damp, claustrophobic; a nearly full moon had vanished behind sullen clouds.
Midway into the path, they heard a movement to their right. An animal scurrying through leaf mold. And the smell . . .
‘Puke,’ said Dooley.
They stopped, panned the trees with the beam of the flashlight. Maybe someone had come in here with a bottle of whisky, but the smell was different—he knew the stink of alcohol-related vomitus.
The small movement again; the sour reek. The hair stood on the back of his neck.
‘Careful, Dad.’
He lowered the beam, illumined the form sprawled in the leaves by a tree. ‘Who’s there?’ he said.
A voice—hoarse, unintelligible. Somebody drunk or in another kind of trouble.
He was aware of a slippery feel beneath the soles of his shoes as he walked toward the tree; he stumbled, righted himself, the fumbled beam of light picking out a couple of empty water bottles, a discarded jacket, Henry Talbot’s agonized face.
Dear God.
He fell to his knees. Henry lay on his back, eyes open, pupils dilated. Henry’s hairpiece was missing. The sight of him with
out it was jarring.
‘“Living darkly,”’ Henry whispered, ‘“with no ray of light . . .”’
He handed the flashlight to Dooley, pressed his fingers to the carotid artery, felt the faint, rapid pulse.
‘Henry! It’s Tim and Dooley Kavanagh.’
The suffocating smell.
‘Can you get up? Can we help you up?’
‘I was coaching back then . . .’
‘Let’s get him into a sitting position,’ he said. ‘Go easy, we don’t know . . .’
Henry Talbot might have been a rag doll, his limbs and torso dead weight, his upper body and running shirt slick with vomit. He could not be set upright or brought to his feet; they laid him again on the ground, on his back. Apparently nothing was broken, or pain would be evident. They needed a plan.
Talbot was easily six-two, one-eighty or one-ninety. No way to get an ambulance or Dooley’s truck into these woods.
‘We’ll have to carry him out, what do you think?’
‘We can do it.’ He heard the alarm in Dooley’s voice, and the resolve.
But he’d been too quick. Wilson lived roughly a block from the hospital, and had a golf cart—Wilson’s wife was often seen wheeling her husband’s lunch to the side entrance.
‘Better plan. Go to Wilson’s house and ask for the golf cart. Tell him we’ll see him in ER, and bring a medic with you if one’s available.’
Dooley hesitated briefly, then set off running.
The light bobbed along the trail and vanished—he was alone in the night with a man who could be dying.
‘Jesus,’ he whispered into the darkness.
This was a dream, nothing about it smacked of reality. He shivered in the damp air and felt about for the jacket to put around Henry, but it was saturated with a cold slime, and useless.
He had spent a few nights camping with youth groups, but was hardly an outdoorsman. The silence unsettled him; he needed the sound of the human voice, he needed something to put under the head of a broken man lying in the woods, surrendered to fear and remorse. There was nothing to do but wait. He hunkered on the ground by Henry’s side.
‘“Living darkly, with no ray of light . . .”’ He repeated Henry’s quote, drawn from the half-delirious poem by John of the Cross.
‘“And darker still, for I deserved no ray.”’ Henry’s voice might have emanated from an octave never before heard.