A New Song

by Jan Karon

  “Aha.”

  “I think he’s living on the island.”

  He shook his head. What could he say?

  “He thinks this is his church, that it belongs to him because his father and grandfather were members here, as if half the congregation couldn’t say the very same thing.” She gave a mild shudder. “Oh, how I’d hate to see him come back. Some predict he’ll try. It would put us through the wringer.”

  “Once through the wringer seems quite enough to me,” he said, meeting her gaze.

  “They say the business with Avery Plummer didn’t work out, she left him and went to her mother in Goldsboro.” Marion sighed. “I always felt sorry for Janette, being so plain and her husband so handsome. Some people, I won’t say who, called her Church Mouse. The boy has his mother’s sweet spirit, but looks the spit image of his father, don’t you think?”

  “I agree.”

  “Jeffrey always reminded me of an apple I took my sixth-grade teacher, Miss Fox. I’ll never forget that apple. I was so proud of it, I polished it on my dress all the way to school; it was the prettiest thing in our orchard. I stood right by her desk and watched her bite into it. I thought she’d say, Why, Marion Lewis, this is the best apple I ever tasted! Well! When she bit into it, she had the oddest look on her face.”

  “Really?”

  “Rotten inside! I was embarrassed to death, just mortified.”

  “Aha.”

  “We’re all excited about the tea,” she said, changing a sore subject. “I’m taking a day off from the library to help Cynthia, and Sam and I will loan you our nice canvas folding chairs for the garden. At the ECW meeting, we prayed for sunshine. I don’t think that’s too pushy, do you?”

  “ ‘Come boldly to the throne of grace!’ ” he quoted from Hebrews.

  “Well, no rest for the weary!” she exclaimed, rising from the chair. “I’ve got to clean up under the sink, you never saw such a mess of old vases, there’s enough oasis under there to capsize a ship. Speaking of ship, when are you going on your big fishing trip with Cap’n Willie?”

  “Postponed!”

  “Oh, I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be,” he said.

  It was nagging him, reminding him of the time years ago when he’d found the lock broken on the church door. He’d found nothing stolen, nothing amiss, and he didn’t report it. Then he’d discovered the burial urn filled with precious stones, sitting innocently on the shelf of the makeshift columbarium in the church closet. . . .

  “Rodney? Tim Kavanagh, how’s business?”

  “Slow, thank th’ Lord,” said Mitford’s police chief. “How you doin’ down there at th’ end of th’ world?”

  “Pretty well, thanks. Listen, Rodney—an odd thing . . . Puny Guthrie, Joe Joe’s wife, you know she’s our housekeeper . . .”

  “Right.”

  “She tells me something is missing from our house next door to the old rectory. Just disappeared off the mantel.”

  “What’s th’ missin’ item?”

  “A bronze angel on a green marble base, probably about eighteen inches high, maybe twenty.”

  “What’s th’ value?”

  “I don’t know. But it’s a fine piece, very fine. I’d estimate three thousand, at least. Old bronzes aren’t cheap.”

  “What else is missin’?”

  “Nothing. And nothing out of place. But Puny had left the door unlocked by mistake, and there’s work being done on the street out front, so . . .”

  “Any suspects?”

  “No, and nobody was seen going in or out. No one even knew the door was unlocked.”

  “I don’t know what we can do but file a report. No suspects, nothin’ else missin’, no vandalism. That don’t leave much to go on. What we probably need to do is go down and take fingerprints.”

  He remembered that Rodney Underwood loved taking fingerprints.

  “Wouldn’t it cause an uproar to have your men crawling all over the house? Besides, this was maybe a week or so ago, and Puny dusts pretty faithfully, wouldn’t that remove fingerprints?”

  “Don’t you worry about a thing, you let me take care of it! Now, how do we get in?”

  Given the excitement in Rodney’s voice, he might have handed the chief the keys to a Harley hog. “Talk to Puny,” he said, half regretting he’d brought it up in the first place.

  With the newspaper sufficiently dry, he reassembled it and carried it to his desk.

  He was surprised to see the gated, well-secluded mountain lodge of Edith Mallory in a photograph. A white arrow pointed to a grove of trees next to Edith’s rambling house.

  Mallory Property Sight of Tension Over Town History

  When the great-great-grandfather of Mitford native and mayoral candidate, Coot Hendrick, settled our town in 1853, he built a dog-trot cabin on Lookout Ridge, and a small trading depot where Happy Endings Bookstore now stands.

  Later, as the family of Hezikiah Hendrick grew, our town founder built a spring house, barn, and corncrib on his forty-acre ridge property.

  The cabin and outbuildings are long gone, but the stone foundations remains, according to Dr. Lyle Carpenter of Wesley College in our neighboring township. There is also a family graveyard and the graves of five Union soldiers reputed to exist on the property.

  “What we discovered on the ridge is a classic example of how our early mountain settlers lived,” says Carpenter. “We wish to see this valuable site preserved, perhaps with an eventual replication of buildings, so that residents and visitors can understand and enjoy our mountain frontier heritage.”

  Dr. Carpenter reports that the Hendrick family dump sight, allegedly located only yards from where the cabin stood, may contain pottery shards, milk buckets, plow shares and other remnants of early highland life.

  There is a rub, however. The Hendrick property is now owned by Mrs. Edith Mallory, whose 95-acre ridge-top estate, Clear Day, includes the old homesite. In fact, her house is reported to sit but forty-six feet from the south-facing foundation of the Hendrick cabin.

  Mrs. Mallory currently has a town permit to construct an additional 3,000 square feet of residential space, which will intrude on part of the historic sight. She is reported to say she has no intention of halting construction, which is scheduled to begin in September, and has issued a no trespassing warning.

  “This is a crucial moment in our local history,” says Dr. Carpenter. “We must find a way to preserve this important property, which my colleagues and I have only recently discovered, thanks to the fine work of the Mitford town museum and its archives.”

  Coot Hendrick, the great-great-grandson of Mitford’s founder, says he will fight for the old homeplace to be designated a historic sight.

  Dr. Carpenter said that a walking path to the sight from the town, and a nature trail identifying the abundant flora, would also be a fine idea.

  The town council is appealing to the State Department of History and Archives for counsel in the matter.

  Mrs. Mallory could not be reached for comment.

  Edith Mallory, he thought, had the ominous persistence of leaking propane. Just when he thought she had vanished forever in Spain or Florida, she reappeared, and always with malice.

  Surely there was some way she could come to terms with the town over this thing.

  In the end, had she ever done anything for the benefit of Mitford? Never once, as far as he could remember. Her multimillion-dollar home sprawled along the ridge above the village, looking down on a community of souls who’d been through one tough scrape after another, yet she’d never been forthcoming, even to the library when it was struggling for its very existence.

  And hadn’t he been sent knocking on her door when the town museum was trying to pull itself together, and hadn’t she made her usual seductive, albeit fruitless, overtures and sent him packing? The annual Bane and Blessing had long ago given up asking for contributions, not to mention the volunteer fire department.

  Of course, she had given f
ifteen thousand to add beds to the Children’s Hospital, his favorite charity. He’d quickly learned, however, that it was all part of a plan to get him into a bed of her own.

  His very skin crawled at the thought of how she’d trapped him in that blasted Lincoln, forcing him to leap from the thing while it was still moving.

  He folded the Muse and threw it in the wastebasket. As far as he was concerned, the only good news was that J. C. Hogan had evidently installed software with a spell check. Too bad there was no software out there for grammar.

  In truth, he was tired of knowing what was going on in Mitford. He didn’t want to hear another peep from that realm for a while.

  He was going to do what Mona’s sign said, and bloom where he was planted.

  Somehow, he’d managed to turn the ringer off and didn’t hear the phone while he was washing his cup at the sink down the hall.

  “I don’t know why I keep missin’ you,” said Emma, when he punched the play button.

  “I thought you’d want to know the scoop on Father Talbot, it’s what everybody’s talkin’ about. I didn’t lay eyes on him when he was here tryin’ out, but Esther Bolick says he’s good-lookin’ as anything, and tall. Very tall. Oh, and thin, she thinks he exercises, maybe with weights. Esther Cunningham said he walked up the street to her office when he was here, said he just wanted to meet the mayor of such a fine town, wanted to shake her hand, wadn’t that nice?

  “He’s comin’ in November, is what they’re sayin’, has a wife that could be th’ twin of Meg Ryan, and two kids, both on th’ honor roll. Anyway, people are real excited about finally gettin’ somebody permanent down at Lord’s Chapel, and from a big church, too, I think it was Chicago. They say they saw him on a video and he preaches up a storm and is funny as heck, he had everybody rollin’ in th’ aisles.

  “Let’s see, what else . . . somebody, I forget who, said he sings great an’ has real white teeth an’ looks terrific in . . . whatever it is, maybe his hassock.”

  Wears a halo, he thought, has wings . . .

  “Oh, Lord, here comes Harold back, he must’ve forgotten his bag lunch.”

  Click. Beep.

  “Timothy?”

  “Walter!” His only living cousin, as far as he knew, and lifelong best friend into the bargain. “It’s been a coon’s age.”

  “I thought I’d ring down to the boondocks while I’m waiting for a client to show up. How’s the fishing?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “Swimming? Doing any swimming?”

  “Nope. No swimming.”

  “Clamming? Crabbing? Duck hunting? Anything?”

  “Just the same old stick-in-the-mud you’ve always known me to be.” Darn Walter, he was always looking for some big story, some action. So far, the most exciting thing he’d ever done was marry Cynthia Coppersmith. That was such a big one, it got him off the hook with

  Walter for a couple of years, but now his attorney cousin was at it again.

  “Listen, Potato Head, I’ve got a new parish to take care of and a yard to mow. That’s all the action I can handle right now. How’s Katherine?”

  “Mean as a snake, skinny as a rail.”

  “The usual, then!” They laughed easily together. They were both pretty fond of Walter’s wide-open wife, her dazzling laughter and unstoppable generosity of spirit.

  “And Cynthia?”

  “Busy. Doing another book, reading at the library, tending a three-year-old.”

  “You’ve taken in another one?”

  “Only briefly, his mother’s in the hospital.”

  “How do you like your new parish?”

  “I like it. Good people. We’re happy here. When can you and Katherine come down? You haven’t been my way in years, I was there last, you owe me.”

  “After you finish this interim, we’ll drive down to Mitford for a week, how’s that? Slog around in our bathrobes and eat you out of house and home.”

  “You can’t scare me, pal.”

  “Speaking of scare,” said Walter, “we had a little break-in the other night. They took our TVs and my Rolex. We’re surprised it wasn’t worse.”

  “We’ve just had an odd thing happen. Remember the angel I once mentioned, the one from Miss Sadie’s attic? It disappeared off the mantel in Mitford. Nothing else was disturbed in the house, no sign of entry, nothing. Just gone, vanished. Very queer.”

  “Valuable?”

  “Probably three thousand or so, maybe more. Bronze. On a heavy marble base. French, I think.”

  “Life has always been too mysterious to suit my tastes. Well, Cousin, here comes my erstwhile client. It’s good to touch base. Love to Cynthia, love to Dooley—how is he?”

  “Great!”

  “Good. I’ve got a stock tip for you, so call me, you dog, and let’s catch up.”

  “Consider it done,” he said.

  He’d written it everywhere but on his hand to make sure he didn’t forget. No, indeed, forgetting birthdays and anniversaries did not cut it at his house—nor at any other house, as far as he could tell from his years in clergy counseling.

  Headed for the town grocer with the windshield wipers on high, he mulled over the coming event.

  They’d already gone to the beach and taken a blanket, but they hadn’t gone to the beach and taken a blanket and a Coleman stove.

  Just down the strand from the old Miller cottage with the red roof, he would set everything up in their favorite spot.

  They would watch the sunset and he would grill fresh mahimahi and corn in the shuck.

  He would cut a ripe, sweet melon—he didn’t think it was too late in the season to find one—and pour a well-chilled champagne. He noted that he’d have to go across to find a decent label, but while he was there, maybe he could also find something to drink it from, since all they had in the cabinet were what appeared to be top-of-the-line jelly glasses.

  For dessert, of course, he’d make her sworn favorite—poached pears—the very thing he’d served Cynthia Coppersmith the first time she came to dinner at the rectory.

  All in all, pretty creative thinking for a country parson . . .

  As for entertainment, they could search the night sky for Arcturus and Andromeda, maybe Pegasus. He’d bought a book at Ernie’s that told very plainly how to find something other than the Big and Little Dippers, which, he’d been disappointed to learn, weren’t even constellations.

  He went over the list again.

  Leonard and Marjorie Lamb had offered to babysit, and were scheduled to arrive at Dove Cottage at six-thirty. . . .

  What had he forgotten?

  He realized he was holding his breath, and exhaled. All bases covered. Consider the thing done!

  Had it been four years ago when he’d raced through the sacristy into the nave of Lord’s Chapel, trembling like a leaf in the wind, late for his wedding through no fault of his own, and spied his bride, also late and flushed from running, who appeared like a vision in the aisle?

  If ever he’d known the definition of a waking dream, that had been it.

  He remembered standing there, terrified that he’d burst into tears with half the congregation, and noted that he’d never seen so many handkerchiefs waving in the breeze. Under the swell of the organ music, there had been a veritable concerto of sniffing and nose-blowing by men and women alike.

  And then, there she was, standing with him. He later admitted to his cousin, Walter, that the earth had moved at that moment. He felt it as surely as if the long-inactive fault running from somewhere in the Blue Ridge Mountains to Charleston, South Carolina, had suddenly heaved apart.

  He remembered thinking, with a glad and expectant heart, I’m in for it now.

  They were out of Jonathan’s favorite milk at the grocer’s, so back he schlepped to Ernie’s, clobbered by rain.

  “We had doubles developed,” said Ernie, showing him three-by-five glossies of Junior. “These are th’ two that went off Friday, what do you think?”

&nbs
p; In the first snapshot, Junior had a pained expression, as if he were sitting on a carpet tack. The other was of a red-eyed Junior standing like a statue in front of the drink boxes. He didn’t believe Junior had gotten around to ironing his shirt, after all.

  “What about these red eyes?” he asked, concerned for the outcome of the whole deal.

  “I don’t know what that is. Seems like Junior’s camera wadn’t too swift.”

  “Well ...”

  “It’s been five or six days an’ he hadn’t heard back.”

  This didn’t look promising. . . .

  “Tell me about Junior,” he said. “He seems a good fellow. Any family?”

  “Junior lost his mama when he was pretty young, and his daddy’s not much account. Me an’ Roger and Roanoke try to see after him, kind of help raise him.”

  “Doesn’t seem like he’d need much raising at the age of thirty-six.”

  “Well, but th’ thing is,” said Ernie, lowering his voice, “Junior’s not the sharpest knife in the drawer.”

  “Who is?”

  “We’d like to see him settle down, get married, have a family. He’s a hard worker, got money saved, has a little house, and there’s not a bigger heart on Whitecap. Helps look after his next-door neighbor, she’s blind as a bat. . . .”

  “Good fellow!”

  Ernie removed his glasses and squinted at Father Tim. “Roanoke told me he barbered you.”

  “Even my wife was pleased,” he said, taking a gallon of milk from the cooler.

  “We got a bad storm comin’ Thursday.”

  “I hope it clears out by Friday evening.”

  Ernie opened the register and gave him change. “Big doin’s on Friday?”

  “Yep. Fourth anniversary.”

  “I got one comin’ up here sometime, I can’t recall when.”

  “Let it pass and you’ll be stepping over something worse than a yellow line.”

  “You got a point,” said Ernie. “By th’ way, I’m readin’ that Wads-worth book.”

  “How do you like it?”