A New Song

by Jan Karon

  He had stumbled into some kind of brier patch, or tangle of vines that scratched like a cat. Extracting himself from the snare of this blasted stuff was no easy job. Maybe he shouldn’t forge ahead, but retrace his steps. This was maddening, alarming. He felt a moment of panic.

  “Go back the way you came.” Morris Love was speaking directly above his head.

  He tore himself from the vines that snarled about his clothes and stomped back the way he’d come.

  Fleas. Emma’s suspicion was being confirmed. He yanked up his pants legs and was relieved to find they weren’t fleas after all, though something probably worse. He went at a trot, trying to avoid the pile of rubble, and finally made it to the driveway, where he stood and wiped his dripping face with the tail of his T-shirt.

  “There’s water in the faucet behind you.”

  Water! He turned and saw the spigot attached to a pipe standing about knee level. He cranked open the tap, letting the sediment flow out, then washed the cut on his hand and splashed his face and head. Cupping his hands, he drank deeply and let Barnabas drink, then drew off his shirt and dried himself and slipped it on again. Good Lord, what a refreshment. He was revived, restored; holy water, indeed!

  “God bless you!” he shouted, spontaneous and thankful.

  “I don’t believe in God.” Morris Love’s voice contained a positive snarl.

  “God believes in you!”

  “Then why did He give me such a body?”

  “Why did He give you such musical genius?”

  “I assure you I think very little of answering a question with a question.”

  “Sometimes a question is the only answer I have, Mr. Love.”

  He saw a rusted ornamental lawn chair a few feet to his right, just below the upstairs window where he presumed Morris Love to be standing. He hadn’t noticed the chair on his previous safari, nor had he been aware, until now, of his extreme weariness.

  He walked to the chair and sat, glad for the chance to catch his breath. What could the lord of the manor do to him anyway—dump a flowerpot on his head?

  “I’m sitting down for a moment,” he announced, too spent to shout. “I hope you don’t object.”

  He gazed at the view before him, the way the light slanted into the dense tangle of trees and was lost in the foliage. A jungle, indeed. Yet this place had surely been beautiful once, a tropical island within an island, so exotic and unfamiliar that the thought of busy lives just over the wall seemed preposterous.

  “Let me ask you, Father, how do you find the conscience to go about practicing the sham of belief ?”

  He was stunned by the question.

  “I don’t get your meaning,” he said, and he didn’t.

  “The meaning seems clear enough. You wear a collar, you recite a creed, you speak of God, and yet, as a man whom I presume to be more than nominally intelligent, you cannot possibly believe there is a loving God, or any God at all.”

  “Quite the contrary, Mr. Love. I find it impossible not to believe in a loving God.”

  “I see it is useless to discuss a high truth with you.”

  “Then you see blindly.” Though he didn’t wish to be harsh, he had every desire to be plain.

  “Blindness, you may be certain, has never been one of my handicaps.”

  “Do you consider your physical condition a handicap?”

  “You speak as a fool. Of course I do.”

  “Many do not, Mr. Love. For example, there are currently several practicing and highly successful physicians with your precise physical condition.”

  “Not my precise condition at all. You deceive yourself grossly, Father, by presuming to know me. You do not know me now, nor will you ever.”

  “We’re both being presumptuous, Mr. Love. You presume me to be covertly faithless, I presume you to be more physically proficient than you think you’re able to be. Tit for tat, as my grandmother used to say. Now let’s be done with it, shall we?”

  “Out! Out!” bellowed Morris Love.

  “Yes, indeed, and thank you for your hospitality.” He set off at a trot down the driveway, his dog loping ahead on the leash.

  The shouting continued in his wake. “Out! Out!”

  “Out and away, and never to return!” he muttered, breaking into a run as he neared the gate.

  In the last couple of days, the air had been miraculously devoid of humidity, and was instead filled with snap and sparkle. Light slanted, sound intensified, clouds vanished from a sky so cerulean it appeared enameled.

  He was on his knees, weeding and adding fresh pine straw to the beds, glad to feel his hands in the dirt.

  He couldn’t, however, ignore the sense of conflict in his spirit—of loving the new season and at the same time feeling the sorrow it brought. It had taken years to name the sorrow and, at last, to face it down.

  His father had died on October twelfth, more than forty years ago, and every autumn the heaviness surfaced again. During that dark time in the cave, he’d been able to forgive his father once and for all, which had worked wonders in his spirit, in his whole outlook. Yet something of the suffering remained, like a tea stain on linen, and returned each autumn in the changing light, to remind him.

  The conflicting feelings experienced at his father’s death were so intricately entwined that he’d never been able to disentangle them, and saw no useful purpose in trying again.

  Indeed, perhaps it was time to forgive himself—for having felt relief at his father’s passing, for anguishing, even now, over never having pleased him, for continuing to wonder, when he could not know, about his father’s soul. Oh, how he’d longed to lead Matthew Kavanagh to Christ, to see the hellish torment of his father’s spirit transformed by peace and certainty. But it hadn’t happened; it was as if his father, in a last effort to thwart his son, had determined to hold himself away from God for all eternity.

  Yes! he thought, thrusting the trowel into the dirt. It’s time to let go of it, all of it. . . .

  He would surrender this thing right now, completely, though he may be tempted again and again to snatch it back.

  He sat in the grass like a child, his legs in a V in front of him, and prayed.

  When he lifted his head, he knew at once that he was being watched. He looked through the pickets to Morris Love’s hedge and, without thinking, threw up his hand and waved.

  He’d broken a few lacy tendrils from the sweet autumn clematis, and was coming into the kitchen to wash up and find a vase when he saw Cynthia in the window seat. She was joggling Jonathan on her knee, as the boy laughed and clapped his hands. Seeing the look on her face, he felt a stab of something he couldn’t name.

  “Hello, darling!” said his wife.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Lock and Key

  On his way home from a visit with Janette, he stopped by Ernie’s.

  Roger looked up and nodded, absorbed in burning the speculum feathers of his duck. Roanoke hoisted a forefinger.

  “Junior’s got good news!” said Ernie. “He got that letter said she wouldn’t go out with ’im, but said she was comin’ with her sister to see a girlfriend that lives here, an’ she’s goin’ to drop by and say hello. October twenty-second!” Ernie announced the date as if it were right up there with the day the English landed on Whitecap.

  “Said she’n her sister would meet Junior for coffee somewhere, so he wrote back and said Mona’s, nine-thirty!”

  “Bingo!” Father Tim exclaimed, pulling up a chair. “I’m glad to hear it.” He liked the smell of Roger’s burning wood, it made the place seem positively cozy.

  “Junior’s goin’ to quit drinkin’ beer ’til then, see if he can drop ten pounds.”

  “Aha.”

  “Yeah, an’ goin’ to massage his scalp, try to grow some hair,” said Roanoke. “But there ain’t no way that’s goin’ to happen.”

  “If it works, let me know,” said Father Tim.

  “Plus,” said Ernie, “plus I sold Elmo’s bed—lock, stock
, and barrel.”

  “The Zane Greys?”

  “Th’ whole shootin’ match. Man come in yesterday, bought a couple sinkers, wandered off in there, come back with th’ box in his hands. He said how much, I said fifty bucks, he said I’ll take it.”

  “Where did Elmo wind up sleeping last night?” he asked.

  “A box of mixed westerns is where I found ’im this mornin’.”

  Roger didn’t look up from his work. “Tell him about The Last of the Plainsmen.”

  “Fella gave me cash, sat down right over yonder, went through th’ whole box one by one, an’ found it—a signed hardback first edition! Didn’t even know it was there. Worth a fortune, prob’ly two hundred, easy. He said I ain’t payin’ any more for this, I said I ain’t askin’ any more, a deal is a deal. But I got to tell you, it broke my heart. Two hundred bucks!”

  “It’d bring a tear to a glass eye,” said Roanoke, tapping a Marlboro from the pack.

  Elmo appeared at the door of the book room, looking frazzled and disgusted.

  “So, Elmo,” said Father Tim, “how are you liking mixed westerns?”

  He didn’t go home from the office; he went to the beach.

  At the bottom of the dune, he took off his socks and stuffed them into his shoes, then rolled up his pants legs and started to walk. No wife, no toddler, no dog, no nothing.

  There was a fierceness in him that he didn’t completely understand. Maybe he could walk it off, walk it out; maybe it would vaporize over the ocean and descend on Argentina as a minor typhoon. He felt angry at a lot of people for a lot of reasons—at Jeffrey Tolson for being cruel, at Janette Tolson for being passive, at Cynthia Kavanagh for losing her heart to someone else’s child, at Morris Love for being imprisoned when he might be free. He was even angry with himself, but for what?

  A gull started up from a tidal pool and circled above him, crying. He realized, then, that he was running, running for the way it felt to his bones, his beating heart. He heard the sand churning away from his feet, chuff, chuff, chuff, and realized he was the only soul on the beach.

  All this vast world, all this great ocean, all this infinite sky, he thought—and Morris Love imprisoned behind a wall in a body he hated.

  But, thought Father Tim, hadn’t he, too, lived in a prison of his own for years on end, alternately fearing and despising and secretly rebuking his father? As a believer, his freedom in Christ had been severely handicapped for wont of letting go of the old bondage; of the old Adamic bitterness he’d unwittingly nurtured. Chances are, Morris Love’s father had been much like Matthew Kavanagh—disappointed and indignant, betrayed by the issue from his own flesh.

  And who was praying for Morris Love? Who remembered him at all, except in island legend? Instead of a living, breathing, feeling soul, he’d become apocryphal in the minds of everyone but a housekeeper, an organ tuner, and a retired clergyman who, but for the grace of the living God, would himself be a soul under the Enemy’s lock and key.

  And another thing—if Morris Love so renounced God, why did he play so much of His music?

  Chuff, chuff, chuff . . .

  He wondered why he hadn’t been praying for Morris Love. How could he continue shirking a mission that had, literally, been dumped in his own backyard?

  He muttered aloud as he ran, panting and huffing in a chill breeze coming off the water. That was precisely why he was feeling aggravated with himself: God had found him out for a shirker.

  He looked up from the kitchen sink where he was washing tomatoes. His wife, on an errand to pick the last of the basil from the herb bed, suddenly hooted, threw her basket into the air, and began hopping on one foot.

  “Ow! Ow! Rats, darn! Hoo! Hoo! Ha!”

  His wife was a veritable rain dancer, complete with tribal language. What in the world . . . ?

  “Timothy! Timothy! Help! Oh, ow, ow, ugh!”

  “Cynthia?” He flew out the back door. Please, God, not a snake or a terrible cut from broken glass. . . .

  “Yellow jackets!” she shouted, still hopping.

  “Here,” he said, taking her arm, “I’ll help you in.”

  “I can’t put my foot down, Timothy, it’s dreadful, it’s excruciating, I can’t walk!”

  “Climb on, then,” he said, bending his knees. She threw her arms around his neck and clambered onto his back and he hauled her to the kitchen and thumped her in the window seat like a sack of onions.

  “Let’s have a look,” he said, squatting down. “Aha, two stings, and right between the toes.”

  “Do something, Timothy, you can’t imagine how it hurts!” His wife was not a complainer, he knew she meant business.

  “Tobacco!” he said. He’d heard that tobacco draws the sting out. He’d seen a cigar butt just the other day. Where was it? “I’ll be back!”

  Exactly where Otis had thrown it into the bushes when he came by last Tuesday. . . .

  He shredded the short stub and mixed it into a paste with water. “Here!” he said, rushing to present it in one of his grandmother’s soup bowls. “Put your foot in this.”

  She did as she was told, shutting her eyes and grimacing. “Ugh! My toes feel exactly like they’re being amputated with a handsaw by a doctor in the wilds of Montana, sometime around 1864.”

  “Really, now.” His wife could go a tad over the top.

  “It’s true, Timothy, that’s exactly the way it feels.”

  Jonathan, fully awake from a nap, was pounding him on the back as he squatted by the soup bowl. “You stop!” he shouted. “You stop makin’ her cry!”

  Truth be told, he was a mite weary of surrogate parenting.

  “Look,” said his stricken wife, “my toes are swelling up and turning red. How hideous.”

  “Give it time,” he said of his home remedy. “I’ll get you a couple of aspirin, then I’ll call Marion and see what she recommends.”

  She drew her breath in sharply and winced. “Have you ever been stung?”

  “Not once,” he said. “Not a single time.”

  Even in her suffering, his wife was able to summon an imperious look. “What kind of American boyhood could you possibly have had, Timothy?”

  He always enjoyed that moment when he could gaze out to his congregation and, as it were, take its pulse. Did it appear eager? Resigned? Grumpy?

  Every Sunday, he discovered a different climate of affections, a brand-new meshing of personalities and spiritual longings, all of which assisted in the feeling that what he did was never the same old thing.

  There was his buddy, Stanley Harmon, on vacation from the Baptists and seeing what the Anglicans were up to. Stanley would supply St. John’s on the twenty-seventh while Father Tim married Pauline and Buck in Mitford.

  His wife was beaming at him from the second row of the gospel side, where she sat with Sam and Marion . . .

  . . . and there were the Duncans, with their children lined up like so many goslings. Once a month, according to family tradition, the whole lot skipped Sunday School and joined in the service. One, two, three, four hair bows bobbed on dark curls, as the two boys busily colored pew bulletins.

  He was dropping his eyes to the opening hymn when he glanced to the rear of the church and saw a face as coldly immobile as if it were carved in stone.

  His heart pounded as his gaze locked briefly with Jeffrey Tolson’s, in whose countenance he saw anger and arrogance and, yes, defiance.

  “ ‘Ye who do truly and earnestly repent you of your sins, and are in love and charity with your neighbors . . .’ ”

  Because he had long ago committed these words to memory, he wasn’t looking at the prayer book, but at his congregation. He noted that some swiveled in their pews and glared at the man in the back row.

  “ ‘. . . and intend to lead a new life, following the commandments of God, and walking from henceforth in his holy ways, draw near with faith, and make your humble confession to Almighty God, devoutly kneeling.’ ”

  The parishioners sank to th
eir knees as one, producing a corporate sound of rushing water. Jeffrey Tolson stood and looked for a moment toward the altar, then turned and walked quickly from the nave.

  He dreaded his time in the churchyard today, as people poured out into the sunshine. Oliver Hughes withheld his hand, muttering, “. . . to let him come back in here, ransackin’ th’ church, takin’ th’ women out one by one like a fox in a henhouse . . .”

  “. . . carryin’ ’em off to his den!” said Millie Hughes, stomping away in disgust.

  Marion Fieldwalker gave him a wordless hug. Sam murmured, “My goodness gracious,” and laid his hand on his priest’s shoulder.

  Otis stopped and looked him in the eye, saying only, “We want you to fix this.”

  Jean Ballenger shook his hand, as usual, but said nothing. Her mouth, which was set in a distinct grimace, said it all.

  His wife, who was walking with a temporary limp, came to him and slipped her hand in his.

  There were more eloquent ways to express it, but his grandmother’s way covered it sufficiently:

  When it rains, it pours.

  They were leaving for Mitford in a matter of days, and in the meantime, he must find and talk with Jeffrey Tolson, speak with Stanley Harmon and inform him of the circumstances, and confirm Father Jack as the celebrant when Stanley preached. He also needed to oversee loose ends for the Fall Fair on November ninth, and meet with the indomitable Busy Fingers group who were going hammer and tong to complete nearly a thousand dollars’ worth of items for the fair, including aprons, embroidered pillowcases, oven mitts, and an ambitious needlepoint of the Last Supper. Most important, he must get up to Dorchester, with the Eucharist for the captain and his visit with Ella.

  Possibly the Dorchester trip could wait, but no, his heart exhorted him otherwise. The old captain had waited long enough—no more excuses, this must be done. And how was he to find Jeffrey Tolson, who, some said, was living on the island, but was as elusive as a trout in a pool?