A New Song

by Jan Karon

  “I’m sorry,” she said, “I lost my point, somehow.”

  “Take a deep breath,” he said. “Let’s rest for a moment, shall we?”

  “Rest?”

  There! For one fragile instant, he thought he saw Miss Sadie in Hélène Pringle’s face.

  “Oh, no, Father, I can’t rest until I’ve told you everything.”

  He nodded.

  “I was very bold that day to look into your window. I stacked one cement block on top of another. Can you imagine my great joy and consternation when I peered into your lovely, sunlit room and spied the angel?”

  He nodded.

  “It was precisely where my grandmother contended it would be found. I was dumbstruck. I hadn’t realized I might have to . . . to thieve something that in a sense didn’t belong to me, but which, in quite another sense altogether, was mine.”

  “Yes,” he said. A conundrum if ever there was one.

  “Perhaps I deceived myself that if I located it, I could buy it, or . . . I suppose I never thought it through. And so, I began to watch your housekeeper come and go, and one afternoon I saw that she failed to lock the door when she departed. At dusk, I slipped to your house and let myself in. I was as quiet as a breath, and it was all done very quickly.

  “My good fortune was alarming, Father; to want something so terribly for so many years, and then . . . it was unthinkable! I began to believe that circumstances had been formed just for me, just for this moment, it was a sign that all I was doing was destined. I brought the angel here.”

  Relief flooded her face. She seemed immediately stronger as she openly confessed the theft to him.

  “I drew all the shades and draperies, and placed it on my bed, where I used the little key to unlock the base, and there . . . there were the papers, never once disturbed for more than a half century. I wept like I had never wept before, to hold something of my father’s in my hands. I read the letter, and in it, I found a tenderness of feeling which I’d never hoped he might possess. The letter opened its secrets before me like the petals of a flower, and I discovered my father’s true affection—and his humanity. I know that his behavior was very wrong, but you see, for all his wrongdoing, I was able at last to love him a little.”

  Now he heard a clock ticking somewhere, perhaps in the hallway, as if the bubble had been pierced and life was flowing into them again.

  “I sent the papers to my mother’s attorney in Boston. I was fearful to have them copied, fearful of being seen using the Xerox machine at the post office, and knowing no other way to proceed, I sent the papers by registered mail to Monsieur d’Anjou. He encouraged me in this thing which others might deem merely a bizarre and frivolous gamble.

  “After I sent the papers, I became frightened that the angel would be found here, and so I hid it in the trunk of my car.

  “I express to you again my sorrow at having done something that grieved you and the trustees at Hope House.”

  “It is a cloud,” he said, “with a silver lining.”

  “Do you really believe so?” she asked, anxious again.

  “I can’t know so, but I do believe so.”

  “Thank you,” she said, looking at him directly. “I went up to Hope House before Monsieur d’Anjou served the lawsuit, and looked around. It is . . . a wonderful place, the sort of place I wish for my mother.”

  “It was all Sadie Baxter’s idea,” he told her, “every bit of it, from the rooms overlooking the valley to the Scriptures over each doorway ... the atrium, the fine medical help, the chaplain, all.”

  “I know the consequences of my actions, Father. I know that I can go to prison for what I have done. Nonetheless, I must tell you that I’m glad I did it. Very, very glad. I took something from you, yet I gained far more than the temporary possession of an angel on a marble base. There’s a surprising sense, now, of owning something deeply precious—I don’t yet understand what it is. But I know . . . it is in here.” She placed her hand over her heart.

  “I’ve grown to feel almost at home in Mitford. I’ve never known what it is to feel completely at home anywhere, but here, there’s a solace I never found before. And so, I have gained even that.”

  Now it was he who got up and walked to the window and stood with his hands behind his back, peering without seeing through the sheer panels. It was hard to take it all in, to know what to do with all he had heard, but he knew this:

  Something must be done with it. For Hélène Pringle; for Sadie Baxter, who, in heaven, would not be judging wrongdoing on anyone’s part; and for himself; for his own peace of mind; and certainly for God, who may, indeed, have brought this woman to a crisis of renewal.

  “Miss Pringle,” he said, turning around, “I’m prepared to drop all charges against you. That may take some doing. I understand I’ll have to meet with the district attorney, who may not take kindly to dropping the charges. But that is what I intend to do.”

  “Father,” she said, standing. “I withdraw the lawsuit.”

  “Thank you,” he said. “And the angel is yours.”

  “Non! Ce ne serait pas juste! That would not be fair. . . .”

  “It is completely fair. It was the rightful and intended home for the letter and the will. They are all pieces of God’s puzzle, and I believe the pieces must be kept together.”

  She stood by the sofa, awkward and moved; he wanted to go to her and give her a hug, but clergy had been historically advised to avoid such intimate contact, with no one looking on to approve.

  “Well,” he said, swallowing hard.

  “Thank you, thank you, Father. Mon Dieu, encore des larmes!” She retrieved the handkerchief from her cardigan pocket and pressed it again to her eyes.

  “Miss Pringle,” he said, taking a handkerchief from his own pocket, “we are a pair.”

  He walked across to the rectory before they left for Whitecap, and knocked on the door. He hardly recognized Hélène Pringle. She was holding her shoulders erect; she was looking him in the eye.

  “May I have a moment?”

  “Please!” she said, opening the door wide.

  Aha. There was that blasted cat, curled on the sofa and staring him down. “I won’t come in; I just wanted to give you something.”

  He handed her an ivory envelope.

  “Whatever you find inside, please receive it in the spirit in which it is given. Promise me that.”

  She looked dubious for a moment, then smiled. “Well, then. I shall do it, Father!”

  “Good. And Miss Pringle?”

  “Yes?”

  “We hope you’ll stay on in Mitford.”

  “But ...”

  “I know it’s too soon to say, but we trust you’ll think about it.”

  Tears swam in her eyes. “Oui,” she said. “Oui. J’y penserai.”

  Passing from the rectory into the bright midday of Mitford, he looked again at the sign in the yard.

  He thought it might as easily have read, Lessons for the Heart, Inquire Within.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  A New Song

  On the morning of the second Sunday of Easter, seven wild ponies trotted through the open gate of the corral near the lighthouse. Cropping grass with seeming contentment, they were spied by a jogger, who managed to close the rusting gate and then ran on, shouting the news along his route to whoever was up and stirring.

  The marvelous sight drew Whitecappers of every age and disposition, all gleeful that the ponies from up Dorchester had escaped the government fence that ran into the Sound and, swimming around it, had struck out for Whitecap.

  Penny and Marshall Duncan packed up their brood and drove the derelict Subaru to the corral, where they proffered a thank offering of hay and a large scoop of oats purloined from their lean-to barn. On Monday, the Whitecap Reader announced that the government would be coming to cart the ponies back where they belonged, so if anybody wanted to observe their brief homecoming, they’d better hop to it.

  In the village, merchants pr
epared for the wave of tourists that would wash over them only two or three weeks hence. They were eager to see an economy that had slowed to a trickle once again surge like the incoming tide: quite a few prices were discreetly raised and the annual flurry of stocking nearly empty shelves began.

  The dress shop reordered Whitecap T-shirts printed variously with images of the lighthouse, the historic one-room schoolhouse moved from the Toe to the village green, and the much-photographed St. John’s in the Grove; the grocery store manager decided to dramatically expand his usual volume of hush puppy mix, much favored by tourists renting units featuring a kitchen; and Whitecap Flix, the sixty-two-seat theater rehabbed from a bankrupt auto parts store and open from May 15 through October 1, voted to open with Babe, convinced it was old enough to bill as a classic. To demonstrate their confidence in the coming season, Flix scheduled a half-page ad to hit on May 15, and included a ten-percent-off coupon for people who could prove it was their birthday.

  Hearing of the advertising boom coursing through the business community, Mona elected to run a quarter-page menu once a month for three months, something she’d never done before in her entire career. Plus, she was changing her menu, which always thrilled a paltry few and made the rest hopping mad. She figured to put a damper on any complaints by offering a Friday night all-you-can-eat dinner special of fried catfish for seven ninety-five, sure to pacify everybody. Due to space too small to cuss a cat, she had resisted all-you-can-eat deals ever since she opened in this location, since any all-you-can-eat, especially fried, was bad to back up a kitchen. All-you-can-eat was a two-edged sword, according to Ernie—who could not keep his trap shut about her business, no matter what—because while you could draw a crowd with it, in the end you were bound to lose money on it since people around here chowed down like mules. In the end, all-you-can-eat was what some outfits called a loss leader. Mona did not like the word “loss,” it was not in her vocabulary, but she would try the catfish and see how it worked, mainly to draw attention from the fact there was no liver and onions on her new menu, nor would there ever be again in her lifetime, not to mention skillet cornbread which crowded up the oven, cooked cabbage which smelled to high heaven, and pinto beans. Lord knows, she couldn’t do everything, this was not New York City, it was Whitecap, and though she’d been born and raised here, it was not where she cared to spend the rest of her life, she was investing money in a condo in Florida, even if Ernie had expressed the hope of retiring to Tennessee. Tennessee! The very thought gave her the shivers. All those log cabins, all those grizzlies stumbling around in the dark, plus moonshine out the kazoo . . . no way.

  Sometime in April, a sign appeared in the window of Ernie’s Books, Bait & Tackle:

  Buy Five Westerns

  Any Title, Get a

  Free Zane Grey

  or Louis L’Amour,

  Take Your Pick.

  Hardly anyone going in and out of Mona’s had ever read Zane Grey, though several had heard of him, and a breakfast regular seemed to remember L’Amour as a prizefighter from Kansas City. Two days after the sign went up, a potato chip rep dropped a hundred and eighty-seven bucks on the special offer and posted Ernie’s phone number and address in a chat room devoted to the subject of Old West literature. In the space of eight working days, the book end of the business had blown the bait end in the ditch, and Ernie hired on a couple of high school kids to handle mail orders.

  Roanoke Clark was painting one of the big summer houses, and had hired on a helper who, he was surprised to learn, stayed sober as a judge and worked like a horse. He pondered making this a permanent deal, if only for his partner’s nearly new pair of telescoping ladders, not to mention late-model Ford truck, an arrangement that would prevent the necessity of renting Chess Doyle’s rattletrap Chevy with a homemade flatbed, for which Chess dunned him a flat forty bucks a week.

  In the Toe, Bragg’s was busy pumping diesel and dispatching tons of gravel and cement to construction sites as far away as Williamston, not to mention an industrial park in Tyrrell County.

  At the north end of the small island shaped like a Christmas stocking, St. John’s in the Grove was at last divested of its scaffolding. The heavy equipment had vanished, the piles of scrap lumber and roofing had been hauled away, and the errant flapping of loose tarps was heard no more.

  Behind this effort had come a parish-wide cleanup. Brooms, rakes, hoes, mattocks and shovels were toted in, along with fresh nursery stock to replace what had been damaged in the general upheaval.

  During the windy, day-long workfest, someone discovered that the coreopsis was beginning to bloom, and Father Tim was heard to say that their little church looked ready to withstand another century with dignity and grace.

  For months on end, winter weather had delayed work on the reconstruction. He was up to here with plaster dust, drilling, sanding, and sawing. No wonder some of his colleagues resisted the role of “building priest.” It probably wasn’t the fund-raising they detested, it was the actual putting up and hammering down.

  Fortunately, they’d been able to save the old oak, and he was glad for the bonus of increased light that now shone on St. John’s.

  On a bitterly cold, but bright May morning, he unlocked the front door and stepped across the threshold into a new nave, yet with its old spirit still intact. He sat midway on the gospel side and looked around paternally.

  A church, like any other home, had its own singular and individual spirit, and he’d grown to love the unique spirit of St. John’s. At Lord’s Chapel, he’d felt the bulk and weight of the river stone as a mighty fortress, a sure defense. St. John’s, on the other hand, gave him the distinct sense of vulnerability and innocence; it seemed fragile, somehow, as indeed it had been.

  Two Sundays hence, the parish would celebrate this glad rebirth with a dinner on the grounds and the first homecoming in more than thirty years. They wouldn’t take the long tearing out and putting back for granted, not at all; they would observe it for what it was—a benediction of a high and precious order.

  “St. John’s in the Grove, Father Kavanagh here.”

  “Hey, Dad.”

  “Hey, yourself, buddy!”

  “Me and Caroline broke up.”

  “Ahh. Too bad.”

  “I’m glad, though. You know what she did?”

  “What?”

  “Just ran up to me at th’ dance and grabbed th’ chain around my neck and yanked it so hard, it came apart, and she took her ring back.”

  “Good grief !” That sounded exactly like something Peggy Cramer might have done.

  “Next time, I’m goin’ out with somebody more like . . . like . . .”

  “Like who?” Lace Turner!

  “Like, you know, maybe Cynthia.”

  He could practically feel his chest expand. “Now you’re talking!” he said.

  “I really liked it down there at Christmas.”

  “It was great, and we’re looking forward to spending the summer together.”

  “Me, too, and when are we goin’ to talk about my Wrangler?”

  “I’ve got Harley checking around for the best deal. We’ll get back to you as soon as we find something.”

  “Not too old,” said Dooley, meaning it.

  “Right. Not too old. We’re looking for mint condition, low mileage, so don’t worry about it.”

  He wasn’t going to worry about it, either. This summer, Dooley would be living at the beach with a sharp little ride and a job at Mona’s. Father Tim felt the excitement of it as his own.

  “So, tell me, why did Caroline do . . . what she did?” Dooley Barlowe seemed to bring out mighty strong feelings in the opposite sex. He remembered the time Lace Turner had nearly knocked Dooley’s head off for stealing her hat.

  “I don’t know, it was weird. Somebody said I was supposed to be dancin’ with Caroline, and that I forgot and talked the whole time to Lace, but that’s not true, I hardly talked to Lace more than five minutes—I don’t know, maybe fifteen.�
�

  “Aha. Well.” Well, well, well.

  He sat in his office, mildly addled by the persistent smell of fresh paint and new carpet, and struggled without success to keep his mind on his sermon outline.

  Finding Jessie Barlowe had been a fluke, but finding Sammy and Kenny would take a miracle.

  There was no way he could trace Kenny via the clues of “thinning hair” and “headed for Oregon.”

  As for Sammy, Buck had called to say that someone saw Sammy with the road crew who worked on the highway from Holding to New Hampton more than six years ago. The boy’s father had once worked on that road crew; maybe Sammy had been taken by his father. It disturbed him that he might one day have to confront Dooley’s father; it wasn’t a pleasant thought at all, yet he couldn’t shut it out of his mind.

  When they returned to Mitford, he would have to pursue this fragile thread, this vapor upon the air.

  Before lunch, he went down his list of calls.

  “If I was going to pass from a broken hip, I’d already have passed,” said Ella Bridgewater.

  “Absolutely!”

  “I’m not ready to be carried down the road in a box just yet!”

  “Amen!”

  “I am going to the graveyard, though, to plant a little something on Mother’s grave. We’ll see how this hateful contraption works on gravel.”

  Ella Bridgewater hobbling down an isolated gravel lane on an aluminum walker? Wearing a long, black dress and toting a spade and a bush?

  “I’ll come up next week and go with you.”

  “Now, Father,” she said, obviously pleased, “you don’t have to do that!”

  “I know I don’t have to, which is another reason I’m happy to.”

  “You beat all!”

  “Worse has been said,” he told her.

  “Louella!”

  “Who that talkin’?”

  “Father Kavanagh.”

  “Honey, how you doin’?”