A New Song

by Jan Karon

  “No, thank you, Father, I’m ready to get on with it. I’ve been practicing like all get-out for days—you know they say if you fail to prepare, you prepare to fail.”

  “Perfect line for a wayside pulpit!”

  “That’s where I got it,” she said, with a burst of laughter. “Well, here goes.”

  She walked briskly up the aisle, clutching her manila envelope, and made short work of the stairs to the loft.

  There was a moment’s rustling in the loft and, he thought, a mite of hard breathing.

  “Great day in the morning!” she shouted down. “This organ is old as Methuselah.”

  “Manufactured the year of my fourth birthday!”

  “Which was a good year, I’m sure. Now . . .”—he heard her clear her throat and heave a sigh—“sit and close your eyes. I’ll give you a prelude and fugue, followed by a hymn. Then you’re allowed to make one personal request.”

  “Thank you, Miss Bridgewater.” He was glad he didn’t mind being told what to do by women; he’d never lacked for direction in that department.

  “My, my,” he heard her say. “Oh, yes.” She fiddled with the stops, pressed the pedals, hummed a little. “Well, then!”

  The old organ nearly blasted him out of the pew. Aha! It was Bach’s Little Prelude and Fugue in C Major, and she was giving it everything she had. This woman had eaten her Wheaties, and no doubt about it.

  At the end, she called in a loud voice, “How was that, Father?”

  “Why . . . play on!” he said. Very perky.

  “For All the Saints” boomed up to the rafters. Ah. Good to have the organ going in this place, a benediction.

  He listened carefully, unable to restrain himself from whispering the words under his breath.

  “ ‘For all the saints, who from their labors rest, who thee by faith before the world confessed, thy Name O Jesus, be forever blessed. Alleluia, alleluia . . .’ ”

  Not especially thrilling, as the rendition of it certainly could be, but better than he might have expected, to tell the truth. He patted his foot and attended each note, keeping an open mind to the very end.

  Agreeably workmanlike, he concluded.

  “How was that?” she trumpeted.

  “Well done!”

  “Thank you, Father, honesty is the best policy, and I don’t mind saying that all my priests have liked my playing.”

  Rain blew against the windows, peck, peck, peck.

  “Miss Bridgewater, is it time for my personal request?”

  “It is, and I must say I’m filled with curiosity.”

  “What about ‘Strengthen for Service, Lord’?” A communion hymn worth its salt and then some!

  “Excellent, Father! Two-oh-one in the old hymnal, three-twelve in the new. Here we go.”

  He chuckled. He hadn’t encountered such bravado since the last meeting of the youth group.

  “ ‘Strengthen for service, Lord,’ ” he whispered as she played, “ ‘the hands that holy things have taken; let ears that now have heard thy songs, to clamor never waken . . .’ ” To clamor never waken. His favorite line.

  He looked around the walls and up to the ceiling as if the music were painting the very timbers, bathing them, somehow, and making them stand more firmly.

  He was drinking it all in as if starved, and then the audition was over.

  He stood and faced the loft and clapped with some enthusiasm.

  Huffing slightly and clutching her envelope, she was down the stairs, along the aisle, and standing by his pew in a trice. Her long nose and stooped shoulders gave her the appearance, he thought, of an Oriental crane.

  “Well done!” he said again.

  “Thank you, Father. I have a confession.” She held her envelope like a shield against her chest, looking pained but confident.

  “Shall we . . . go to the altar?” he asked.

  “Don’t trouble yourself, I’ll just spit it out right here.”

  “Sit down,” he said. He sat, himself, and scooted over.

  She thumped into the oak pew. “I lied about my age.”

  “Oh?”

  “I turned seventy-four last month. I didn’t think you’d hire me if I told the truth, and I want you to know I’m sorry. As I was playing your request, the Lord convicted my heart and I asked Him to forgive me. Perhaps you’ll do the same.”

  She looked exceedingly pained.

  “Why, certainly, Miss Bridgewater. Of course. And may I say you don’t look seventy-four.”

  She brightened considerably. “Why, thank you, Father. You see, I believe the Lord called me to St. John’s. When I heard you had a need, I asked Him about it at once, and He said, ‘Ella Jean’—the Lord always uses my middle name—‘march over there and ask for that job, they need you.’ ”

  “Aha.”

  “He doesn’t speak to me in an audible voice.”

  “I understand.”

  “He puts it in my mind, you might say. As you well know, Father, you have to be quiet before the Lord and keep your trap shut for Him to get a word in edgewise, that’s my experience.”

  “Miss Bridgewater—”

  “Call me Ella,” she said.

  “Ella, if we can agree on your compensation, I think you may be just the ticket for St. John’s.”

  Tears sprang to her eyes. “Do you really think so?”

  “I do.”

  “But,” she said, regaining her composure, “you’ll have to run it by the vestry.”

  “Right. I intend to.”

  “When might that be?”

  “Wednesday. I’ll get back to you right after the meeting. Shouldn’t be any problem. Do you have family?”

  “I lived with my mother for many years, she went to heaven last March.”

  “I’m sorry to hear it. Or glad, as the case may be.” Heaven! The ultimate place to escape the clamor . . .

  “I’m an old maid,” she said, bobbing her head and smiling. “But not the sort of dried-up old maid you see in cartoons.”

  “Oh?” A priest never knew what he might be told. He shifted uneasily on the pew.

  “No, indeed. I fell head over heels in love when I was forty-seven, and truth be told, have never gotten over it. They say you came late to love, yourself.”

  “Late, yes,” he said, smiling. “But not too late.”

  “Minor was a young explorer with Admiral Byrd, and spent his last years as a maker of hot-air balloons.”

  “You don’t say!”

  “Oh, yes. And I went up in one!” Her eyes were bright with feeling. “We sailed up the coast and across Virginia and landed in a cow pasture, where we picnicked on cheese and figs. It was the single grandest thing I ever did.”

  “I’m happy to hear it,” he said. And he was.

  Miss Bridgewater adjusted her glasses and peered at him. “And when would I begin if . . . if . . .”

  “Sunday after next, I should think.”

  “Well!” she said, sitting back and beaming. “Well!”

  The everlasting rain was still going strong at four-thirty, when he pulled into Ernie’s for a gallon of milk.

  Roger Templeton sat in the corner by a small pile of wood shavings, and looked up when he came in.

  “Tim! Glad to see you! How’s your weather?”

  “You mean my own, apart from the elements? I’d say . . . sunny!” Hadn’t God just delivered an organist to St. John’s?

  He scratched Lucas behind the ears, then pulled up a chair next to Roger, peering into Roger’s lap at what had been a block of wood. The rough form of a duck, though headless, had emerged, its right wing beginning to assume feathers.

  “Amazing! May I have a look?”

  “Help yourself,” said Roger, pleased to be asked.

  He took the duck and examined it closely. In principle, at least, this was how David had escaped from Michelangelo’s block of marble.

  “That’s tupelo wood,” said Roger. “I get it from up around Albemarle Sound. With tupelo, you
can cut across the grain, with the grain, or against the grain.”

  “It’s beautiful!” he said. How had Roger known the wood contained a duck just waiting to get out?

  “That’s a green-winged teal. It’s not much to look at yet; I’ve rough-edged it with a band saw and now I’m carving in the feather groupings.”

  “How did you know you could do this?”

  Roger took a knife from an old cigar box next to his chair. “I didn’t. I’d never done anything with my hands.”

  “Except make money,” said Ernie, walking in from the book room. He thumped down at the table.

  “I used to go on hunting trips with my colleagues . . . Alaska, Canada, the eastern shore of Maryland around St. Michael’s and Easton. I recall the day I dropped a green-winged teal into the river. When the Lab brought it to me, I saw for the first time the great beauty of it. My eyes were opened in a new way, and I wondered how I’d managed to . . . do what I’d been doing.”

  “Aha.”

  “Oh, I’m not preaching a sermon against hunting, Tim. Let a man hunt! I also have a special fondness for a boy learning to hunt. But I quit right there at the river, I said if God Almighty could make just one feather, not to mention a whole duck, as intricate and beautiful as that, who am I to bring it down?”

  “He still fishes,” said Ernie.

  “Why did you start carving?”

  Roger shrugged. “I wanted to see how close I could come to the real thing. I thought I’d try to make just one and then quit.”

  “I see.”

  “But I never seem to come very close to the real thing, so I keep trying.”

  Father Tim had never done much with his hands, either, except turn the pages of a book or plant a rosebush. “How long does it take to make one?”

  “Oh, five or six weeks, sometimes longer.”

  “He works on ’is ducks in my place, exclusive,” said Ernie, as if that lent a special distinction to Ernie’s Books, Bait & Tackle.

  “Do you also work at home?”

  Roger colored slightly. “I paint at home, but my wife doesn’t allow carving.”

  He’d heard of not being allowed to smoke cigars at home, but he’d never heard of a ban on duck carving.

  “Roger, my wife has bought me a chair on Captain Willie’s fishing boat. You ever go deep-sea fishing?”

  “Does a hog love slop?” asked Ernie, who didn’t care to be out of the loop in any conversation.

  “Captain Willie has taken me out to the Gulf Stream many times.”

  “I don’t mind telling you I’m no fisherman. I’ve never spent much time around water.”

  “That’s no liability. Sport fishing is all about relaxing and having fun. It’s an adventure.”

  An adventure! He’d always wanted to have an adventure, but wasn’t good at figuring out how to get from A to B. Leave it to his wife to figure it out for him.

  “I hear a lot about spending the day with your head over the side.”

  Roger and Ernie laughed. “Don’t listen to that mess,” said Ernie. “You stay sober the night before and get a good night’s sleep and you’ll be fine.”

  “And don’t eat a greasy breakfast,” said Roger. “Besides, if it’s any comfort, statistics say only twelve percent get seasick.”

  He was encouraged.

  “What’ll we see out there?”

  “Out in the Gulf,” said Ernie, “you’ll see your blue marlin, your white marlin, your sailfish, your dolphin—”

  “There’s wahoo,” said Roger, “and yellow tuna—”

  “Plus your black tuna and albacore tuna. . . .”

  “Man. Big stuff !” He was feeling twelve years old.

  Roger whittled. “You can see everything from a thousand-pound blue marlin to a two-pound mahimahi.”

  “No kidding? But what kind of fish can you actually catch?”

  “Whatever God grants you that day,” said Roger. “Of course, we always release marlin.”

  “Fair enough. What sort of boat would we go in?”

  “Captain Willie runs a Carolina hull built over on Roanoke Island. About fifty-three feet long—”

  “—an’ eight hundred and fifty horsepower!” Ernie appeared to take personal pride in this fact. “What you might call a glorified speedboat.”

  “Eight hundred and fifty horsepower? Man!” He was losing his vocabulary, fast.

  Roger adjusted his glasses and looked at Father Tim. “Just show up ready to have a good time. That’s what I’d recommend.”

  “And be sure an’ take a bucket of fried chicken,” said Ernie.

  He cooked the requisite bowl of spaghetti while Jonathan sat in the window seat and colored a batch of Cynthia’s hasty sketches. Something baking in the oven made his heart beat faster.

  “Cassoulet!” said his creative wife. Though she’d never attempted such a thing, she had every confidence it would be sensational. “Fearless in the kitchen” was how she once described herself.

  “It’s all in the crust, the way the crust forms on top,” she told him, allowing a peek into the oven. “I know it’s too hot to have the oven going, but I couldn’t resist.”

  “Where on earth did you find duck?”

  “At the little market. It was lying right by the mahimahi. Isn’t that wonderful?”

  He certainly wouldn’t mention it to Roger.

  Jonathan had clambered down from the window seat. “Watch a movie!” he said, giving a tug on Father Tim’s pants leg.

  “Timothy, we’ve got to get a VCR. Could you possibly go across tomorrow, to whatever store carries these things? I don’t think I can make it ’til Monday without in-house entertainment!”

  “Do we just plug it in?” He’d never been on friendly terms with high technology, which was always accompanied by manuals printed in Croatian.

  “Beats me,” she said. “That’s your job. I’m the stay-at-home mommy.”

  He put his arms around her and traced the line of her cheek with his nose. “Thank you for being the best deacon in the entire Anglican communion.”

  Jonathan had wanted his mother tonight; his tears called up a few of Father Tim’s very own.

  He thought it must be agony to be small and helpless, with no mother, no father, no brother or sister to be found. He held Jonathan against his chest, over his heart, and let the boy sob until he exhausted his tears.

  He walked with him through the house in a five-room circle, crooning snatches of hymns, small prayers and benedictions, fragments of stories about Pooh and Toad and that pesky rabbit, Peter. He didn’t know what to do with a child who was crying out of bewilderment and loss, except to be with him in it.

  He covered the sleeping boy with a light blanket, praying silently. Then he closed the door and tiptoed down the hall and out to the porch where Cynthia sat waiting, a rain-drugged Violet slumbering in her lap.

  Barnabas followed and sprawled at his feet.

  What peace to retire into the cool August evening, after a dinner that might have been served in the Languedoc.

  For the first time today, he liked the rain, it was friend and shelter to him, enclosing the porch with a gossamer veil.

  They watched the distant patch of gray Atlantic turn to platinum in the lingering dusk.

  “Weary, darling?” she asked, taking his hand.

  “I am. Don’t know why, though. Haven’t done much today.”

  “You do more than you realize. Up at dawn, morning prayer, feed and bathe the boy, help the wife, write the pew bulletin, work on your sermon, hire an organist . . .”

  He took her hand and kissed it. Of all the earthly consolations, he loved understanding best. Not sympathy, no, that could be deadly. But understanding. It was balm to him, and he had sucked it up like a toad, often denying it to her.

  “Your book—how are you feeling about it?” he asked.

  “I guess I don’t know why I’m doing another book when I might have the lovely freedom to do nothing. I suppose I got excited
about being in a new place, the way the light changes, and the coming and going of the tide. It spoke to me and I couldn’t help myself.” She smiled at him. “I think I make books because I don’t know what else to do.”

  “You know how to make a ravishing cassoulet.”

  “Yes, but cassoulet has its limitations. Little books do not.”

  He nodded.

  “Do you think we’ll ever just loll about?” she asked.

  “I don’t think we’re very good at lolling.”

  She put her head back and closed her eyes. “Thank God for this peace.”

  He heard it first, even through the loud whisper of rain. It was the organ music of their neighbor. He sat up, alert, and cupped his hand to his ear.

  “What is it, Timothy?”

  “It’s Morris Love, in the house behind the wall. Listen.”

  They sat silent for long moments.

  “Wondrous,” she said quietly.

  The rain seemed to abate out of respect for the music, and they began to hear the notes more clearly.

  “Name that tune,” she said.

  “ ‘Jesus My Joy.’ A Bach chorale prelude.” He couldn’t help but hear the urgency—in truth, a kind of fury—underlying the music. He told her what he knew about Morris Love, leaving out the part about him shouting through the hedge.

  “Is Mr. Love a concert organist?”

  “Not unless you consider this a private concert for the Kavanaghs.”

  “What a lovely thought,” she said, pleased.

  When the phone rang, he fumbled for it. For a moment, he was at home in Mitford and expected to find it next to the bed. But blast, he was in Whitecap, and the phone was across the room.

  It rang again; he bumped into the chair and tried to figure what time it was. The rain had stopped, and a stiff breeze blew through the windows.

  As the phone continued to ring, he picked up his watch and glanced at the glowing dial. Twelve-forty. Not good. Lord, have mercy. . . .

  “Hello!”

  “I have a collect call from Harley Welch,” said an operator. “Will you pay for the call?”

  “Yes!”

  “Rev’rend?”

  “Harley?” His heart hammered.

  “Rev’rend, I hate t’ tell you this . . .”