A New Song

by Jan Karon

  “Tell Harley hello.”

  “I miss ol’ Barnabas. Tell Cynthia hey, is she OK?”

  “She misses you, she looks great, she has a tan and a half.”

  “Well, I got to go.”

  “Love you, buddy.”

  “Love you back.”

  He sat for a moment at the desk, nodding to himself and smiling. He was proud of that boy. Though there was only about sixty thousand left of the inheritance from his mother, he should have kicked in an extra hundred.

  Hot. Hotter than hot.

  He walked into Dove Cottage, thankful for the fan whirring in the living room, and was greeted by his dog bounding down the hallway, pursued by a youngster.

  “Look who’s here!” he said.

  “Jon’than!” said Jonathan Tolson.

  Cynthia appeared from the kitchen. “Jonathan’s come to spend the day with us. I didn’t think you’d mind having company. We can go bike riding Saturday.”

  “Right!”

  “Your dog,” said Jonathan, hugging Barnabas around the neck. “My dog.”

  “Right. Any dog of mine is a dog of yours.” He squatted down and met the blue-eyed gaze of their blond-haired visitor.

  “I went to visit Jonathan’s mommy this morning and she wasn’t feeling well, so . . .” Cynthia lifted her palms, smiling.

  “So, we’ll have an adventure,” said Father Tim. “We’ll take a walk on the beach, then we’ll go eat hotdogs, and ice cream after. How’s that?”

  “Not hotdogs,” said Jonathan, wrinkling his nose.

  “Pizza, then! Or french fries. I’m easy.”

  Jonathan nodded eagerly, his curls bobbing. “French fries.”

  “You’re lots more fun with kids around,” announced his wife.

  “Your big dog can go?” asked Jonathan.

  “Absolutely. He loves ice cream.”

  Cynthia took her husband’s hand and pulled him along the hall to the kitchen.

  “Janette’s terribly depressed,” she said in a low voice. “She doesn’t want to get out of bed. I went to check on her this morning—I’m not sure Jonathan had been fed recently. He just devoured a whole plate of cheese and crackers, thank heaven I had milk. . . .”

  “What about the other children?”

  “Gone across to cousins. She said they didn’t have room for Jonathan. Apparently, Janette hasn’t been working for some time. She takes in sewing, you know.”

  “Dear Lord,” he murmured. He’d recommended medical help for Janette Tolson, but she refused, assuring him she’d be fine. He’d seen the emptiness in her gaze, heard it in her voice, and knew she was in trouble.

  “I’ll be back,” he said, kissing his wife.

  “The children . . . ,” he said, sitting by Janette’s bed.

  “I don’t . . . care,” she whispered.

  He remembered Miss Sadie talking about her love for Willard Porter, about caring so much for so long that all caring was at last exhausted.

  “God cares. He’s with you in this.”

  She turned her head slowly and looked at him, disbelieving.

  He put his right palm on her damp forehead. He remembered his mother’s cool hand on his forehead when he was sick, and how much that simple gesture had counted to him.

  “I promise,” he told her.

  She closed her eyes and the tears seeped from under her lashes.

  The average view of the Christian life, Oswald Chambers had said, is that it means deliverance from trouble. Father Tim agreed with Chambers that, in fact, it means deliverance in trouble. That alone and nothing more, and nothing more required. But the child of God had to face the strain before the strength could be provided. Janette Tolson could not face the strain.

  “Let me pray for you,” he said.

  He kept his palm against her forehead, and with his other hand, held hers.

  “I not stay,” said Jonathan, frowning.

  “We’ll have pancakes for breakfast,” he implored. It was a lame strategy, but the best he could do.

  Jonathan shook his head and stomped one foot. “No! I want to go home.”

  “In the shape of ducks!”

  “No.”

  “Babette and Jason are having fun with cousins. Don’t you want to spend the night and have fun with Barnabas?”

  They couldn’t take him home; his mother was in no condition to look after him. He had called Jean Ballenger, who, eager to please her new priest, had agreed to spend the night with Janette. Tomorrow, following the counsel of Hoppy Harper, he would talk with Janette’s own doctor, whom she had avoided for months, and take Janette across to the hospital. He dreaded the prospect.

  He looked to his wife, who, of all people, should be able to come up with something to entice a three-year-old.

  “I don’t know how to get little boys to spend the night in a strange house,” she said.

  Jonathan’s eyes were filling with tears.

  Hand shadows! He suddenly recalled a family friend in Holly Springs who had kept him engrossed for hours with a kerosene lamp, a bare wall, and two dexterous hands.

  “Turn off the lights in the study,” he said, feeling desperate.

  “Whatever for?”

  “Trust me.”

  “I want to go home!” said Jonathan, meaning it.

  “Light the big candle in the hurricane globe,” he said. Scalpel, sutures . . . “Put it on the table between our chairs.”

  Cynthia looked at him as if he’d lost his mind and hurried off to the study.

  “Movies!” he said to Jonathan. “Picture show!” He thought he could make a dog. At least a pig. He was certain he could make an eagle; he’d made one on his study wall in Mitford only months ago.

  “Popcorn?” asked the boy.

  “Now you’re talking! Cynthia!” he shouted. “Popcorn, and plenty of butter!”

  Cynthia appeared from the study.

  “Turn off the lights, light the candle, popcorn with plenty of butter . . . where’s the division of labor so popular in modern marriage?”

  “My dear, I am the entertainment, I can’t do it all, this takes teamwork!”

  “My mommy, my mommy makes popcorn!” said Jonathan, running behind Cynthia to the kitchen.

  Lying awake after midnight, he felt the humidity weighing upon them like a blanket. He also felt what he’d dismissed for weeks:

  He was homesick.

  He was homesick for Mitford and his boy and Harley, for all the countless components that made his mountain village home.

  Whitecap had its charms, of course. There was a great deal to be said for the smaller parish, not to mention the general ease induced by sunshine, salt air, and surf. In times past, hadn’t doctors prescribed the seashore as a cure-all for nearly anything that ailed?

  But he wasn’t ailing, and he didn’t need curing.

  He believed he was making progress in putting the parish into less quarrelsome order. Several rifts had been healed, and he had ignored the petty issues that, he wasn’t surprised, were fading away for want of being nursed.

  Better still, he saw his wife finding some repose and freedom of spirit after years of toiling like a Trojan. Yes, she’d begun the new book, but overall, he saw her rested, tanned, and vibrant, and flourishing like a kid at summer camp.

  Last and certainly not least, St. John’s had fallen in love with Cynthia Kavanagh and freely said as much. She stood with him in the churchyard every Sunday after services, giving and receiving hand-shakes and hugs, and serving in several parish trenches, including the nursery, like paid help.

  “But I love doing it!” she’d said only last week, when he thanked her again.

  “What don’t you love?” he asked.

  “Fading eyesight, creeping forgetfulness, and . . . and calendars with no room to enter all the day’s events!”

  His wife could derail a train of thought in a heartbeat, jump to another track, and run on it with all engines smoking.

  Hot.

 
He drew the sheet off, eased out of bed, and walked down the hall, floorboards creaking.

  In the living room, Barnabas left his blanket in the corner and stretched, then came and stood with him at the screen door, looking into the moon-silvered night.

  He unlatched the screen and stepped onto the porch. The full moon cast its image on the distant patch of water.

  The sight of two moons, voluptuous and shimmering between two sleeping cottages, caused him to shiver in the heat.

  What a different world, this immense expanse of sand and shelf that had heaved itself up from the deeps. . . .

  He sat on the top step and gazed at the vast dome above, at what James Joyce had called “the heaventree of stars, hung with humid nightblue fruit.”

  Great beauty was something he had to work up to, he had to take it in slowly, not gulping, but sipping. He put his hands over his eyes and saw the stars dancing behind his hands, another double image in this deep and silent night.

  In Mitford, he’d felt tethered; tethered to Lord’s Chapel, tethered to the rectory, tethered to the little yellow house. Here, he felt as if he were falling into space, tethered only to God.

  He got up and walked down the steps to the garden, restless and excited, like a child who wakes in the night, filled with fervent dreams.

  Barnabas lifted his leg against a favorite spot at the picket fence.

  If he could, he’d call home and talk with Dooley again. He’d talk even longer than he’d done today, then ask Dooley to pass the phone to Harley. Next, he’d call Esther and check on Gene, even though they’d spoken on Wednesday, and after that, he might ring Louella and they would sing a hymn, right on the phone. . . .

  Truth be known, he’d like nothing better than to call Miss Sadie and hear the bright voice that had always made him listen up and step more smartly.

  “Miss Sadie,” he said aloud to his still-favorite parishioner, “this is a toll-free call. I hope you like it up there and aren’t getting in trouble for bossing the angels around. . . .”

  He saw the shooting star plummet toward the silhouette of an oceanfront cottage and vanish.

  Then he heard the music.

  He turned, thinking that somehow a radio had come on in the house.

  But the music wasn’t coming from the house.

  It was Karg-Elert’s “Now Thank We All Our God,” and it was coming from . . . across the street.

  He stood, frozen and alert.

  Someone was playing their stereo full blast. It was an extraordinary rendition of one of his sworn favorites for the organ—mighty, dramatic, charged with power.

  He walked to the picket fence and looked across the street at the high-grown, moonlit hedge.

  Though distant, he could hear each note clearly and, perhaps because the piece was familiar, he was free to hear beneath the notes the terrible urgency of the music behind the wall, under the full and looming moon.

  He crept back to bed, thinking of Hélène Pringle and the faint piano music that had floated out on Mitford’s night air.

  He shivered in the breeze that came suddenly from the water and blew through their open windows.

  Sometime before dawn, he felt the bed move near his feet and thought it was Barnabas.

  It was Jonathan Tolson. The boy crept toward the head of the bed, silent, and found a place between them. Father Tim heard him sigh and then, in a moment, heard the boy’s rhythmic breathing and smelled his damp, tousled hair.

  He prayed for Janette and for today’s mission before he drifted again to sleep.

  On the way to St. John’s, he stopped by Mona’s for a coffee to go, and ducked into the bait and tackle shop.

  “Here’s th’ latest,” said Ernie. “Th’ Democrat hit th’ street last night, Junior’s already had an answer to his ad.”

  “And?” This was pretty exciting stuff, looking for a wife.

  “And it was a guy.”

  “Aha.”

  “Wanted to know if Junior’d be interested in sellin’ his Bronco.”

  “That’s it ?”

  Ernie shook his head, looking gloomy. “I think we need to doctor that ad.”

  “Maybe so. By the way, you were going to tell me who lives behind the wall.”

  “Oh, yeah. Right. Well, that’s Morris Love that lives back there.”

  “Morris Love.” He searched Ernie’s face. “Tell me more.”

  “Well, Morris is, you know . . .” Ernie pointed to his head and made a circle with his forefinger.

  “Like the rest of us,” said Father Tim, looking on the positive side.

  “Nothin’ to worry about. Morris keeps to hisself, never leaves th’ place, except he’s bad to holler at people sometimes. Kind of hides behind th’ wall and hollers crazy stuff. But tell your missus not to worry, he’s harmless.”

  “Why doesn’t he leave the place?”

  “Don’t want anybody to look at ’im.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “Well, see, he’s got this . . . handicap. There’s a woman takes care of him, comes every day or so, does his cookin’ an’ all, an’ th’ organ tuner, he comes in his panel truck from Virginia. Not enough traffic in and out of there to keep th’ grass off th’ driveway.”

  “Well, well.”

  “See, there was a big organ put in there by his grandaddy, they say it was world-class in its time, and ol’ Morris, he can play th’ hair off that thing, but I ain’t heard much about him playin’ lately. We all take Morris for granted. Most people don’t hardly remember he’s in there.”

  “I’ll be darned.”

  “But don’t you worry about a thing. He’s harmless, just a little mean streak like ’is grandaddy, is all.”

  “Aha. So, here’s the book I promised you.”

  “Holy smoke! I gave you a used paperback, and this sucker is leather.”

  “Take that and keep it, and I hope you like it.”

  “You got th’ wrong end of th’ stick, if you ask me, but I appreciate it.” Ernie opened the book, squinted at a random page, and read aloud, slowly:

  “On his morning rounds th’ Master

  Goes to learn how all things fare;

  Searches pasture after pasture,

  Sheep and cattle eyes with care;

  And, for silence or for talk,

  He hath comrades in his walk;

  Four dogs, each pair of different breed,

  Distinguished two for scent, and two for speed.

  “See a hare before him started!

  —Off they fly in earnest chase;

  Every dog is eager-hearted,

  All th’ four are in th’ race. . . .”

  Ernie looked up, grinning. “Got a good bit of action to it.”

  As he left the tackle shop, he glanced in the front window, pleased to see the proprietor giving rapt attention to the little book of pastoral ruminations.

  Janette Tolson wept all the way across the bridge to the hospital fourteen miles away. He sat with her through the admission to the psychiatric floor, explaining to the clerk there was no insurance, and giving his word the bill would be taken care of. How, he didn’t know; that would be God’s job. He waited until her doctor arrived and she was settled in a shared room.

  Reluctantly, she let go of his hand as he left. “Jonathan . . .”

  “Don’t worry,” he said.

  He clung to Cynthia before leaving for the vestry meeting at St. John’s.

  Oh, the blessed softness of a wife in a hard world . . .

  He kissed her, his hands at her waist. Even with all the bike riding, there was a pleasant little roll there.

  He winked. “See you later, Tubs.”

  She jerked away from him, glaring.

  No doubt about it, he thought as he raced for the door, he had stepped over his wife’s yellow line.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  The Spark in the Flax

  The rain began in the night, drumming steadily on the red roof of Dove Cottage.

  At six
a.m., he tried to think of one good reason to spend a full day at the church office, but couldn’t. Didn’t clergy usually take two days every single week, and hadn’t he taken only one since arriving? He would go in after lunch, that was the ticket.

  “Wonderful, darling, you can help me feed Jonathan!” His wife had a positively wicked gleam in her eye.

  “No! I don’t like it!” Jonathan shook his head vigorously when a bowl of cereal was set before him.

  Cynthia proffered buttered toast.

  “No!” said Jonathan. “No toast!”

  “What if we put jelly on it?” asked Father Tim.

  “I’ve tried that,” she said. “It doesn’t work. We go through this every morning while you trot happily down the street, whistling.” She sighed. “I don’t know how to make children eat things they don’t like.”

  “Hasn’t he given you any clues?”

  “I’ve tried oatmeal, Froot Loops, buttered grits, bacon, not to mention eggs scrambled and boiled. Nothing will do. He always ends up in tears with crackers and cheese.”

  “We could call someone,” he said brightly, “and ask what he likes for breakfast.”

  “Who could we call?”

  “Let’s see. Jean Ballenger! She knows the family!” What a great solution. He was a regular Sherlock.

  “I got to pee-pee,” said Jonathan.

  “You just pee-pee’d,” said Cynthia, looking frazzled.

  Jonathan tumbled from the chair and headed toward the bathroom at a trot.

  “Your turn to go with him,” said his wife. “And please put the seat down afterward.”

  “I have no idea!” exclaimed Jean when he rang her small cottage next to the library. “I never saw anyone eat anything while I was at the Tolsons’.”

  After the useless phone inquiry, Cynthia pulled him into the study. “I don’t suppose Jean would like to keep Jonathan for a little while?”

  “Jean Ballenger? I can’t imagine such a thing!” Jean, a fastidious spinster with crocheted antimacassars on her armchairs, would hardly be up for tending a strong-willed three-year-old.