Jan Karon's Mitford Years

by Jan Karon

  By johnny, that did it. A tall stand of grass keeled over, exposing a shallow hole the size of a man’s hand.

  “Hallelujah!” he hollered.

  He looked toward the house to see if Rose was watching. As far as he could see, which wasn’t very far, she wasn’t.

  He decided to sit a minute and catch his breath, but the dadblame chair was halfway to China. He dropped the hoe in the grass and hobbled toward the tree, clutching his lower back, where a shooting pain bubbled up like carbonation in a soft drink.

  He thumped down in the chair on the packet of seeds, wiped his forehead with his sleeve, and considered the satisfying hole he had just dug with only one whack.

  How many whacks would it take to make room for a handful of seeds? How long would it take to see sprouts? Would he have to build a fence around the bloomin’ things to keep the town crew from…

  He dozed, dreaming of the creek near his boyhood cabin, the creek where he caught his first tadpole and saw his first bear and got bit by a snake. In this dream, however, there were no snakes, just his mama standing in the bend of Little Jack Creek, stooped over and washing out his school britches and humming “Redwing.”

  At Happy Endings Bookstore, Hope Winchester opened the front door, looked at her watch, then trotted to the rear of the shop and unlocked the back door, which led to the loading dock. She didn’t care if the flies came in the back door, which had never had a screen, she would deal with it, she was absolutely craving a breath of cool air.

  Cross-ventilation! Wasn’t that the crux of all important southern architecture? She slid a box of paperbacks across the floor to hold the back door open and, satisfied that she might make it until the air-conditioning was repaired on Tuesday, returned to her stool by the cash register and picked up her 1913 edition of Aunt Olive in Bohemia, which had mistakenly been shipped with an order of rare and used books.

  Hope had seen immediately that this was not literature, it was shallow entertainment, but perhaps she should loosen up just this once and read something light and unimportant, which was precisely what most of her customers enjoyed. With the exception, course, of her good clientele from the college in Wesley or Mrs. Harper and Lace Turner and Mr. Gregory and a sprinkling of others, not to mention her favorite customer, Father Kavanagh.

  She sighed, suddenly miserable at the thought of what had happened to him, and how inauspicious the whole dreadful thing had been. She wished she could do something to help, but there was nothing she could do. Two people had told her they were praying for him and suggested she might do the same, but she didn’t believe in prayer, she was a lifelong friend of optimism and reason.

  She had succeeded in avoiding her deepest feelings all morning, as they served only to inspire a wild swing between morbid anxiety and sheer exhilaration. Indeed, she would concentrate her energies on reading this innocuous book, keeping the shop cool, and satisfying the needs of her customers, should she have one. Whatever she did, she would make a strict and disciplined effort to keep firm control of her imagination, which had always been wayward and fitful—a problem, according to her mother, caused by too much reading.

  She glanced at her watch again, and opened the book to Chapter Three.

  It was nearly seven o’clock in the evening, and through one of the windows of the newly-furnished studio a shaft of sunlight had found its way. It formed a patch of light on the blue drugget on the floor, and caught the corner of an oak dresser on which the old Worcester dinner service was arranged…

  Hope thought the imagery deft enough and liked very much the word drugget, which she’d never before seen or heard. It must surely be a rug, but as she’d never learned anything by guessing, she put the book down and hurried to the dictionary on the little stand by the front door, placed there for customers to peruse at their leisure.

  …a rug from India, of coarse hair with cotton or jute…

  She felt the breeze then, so cool and sweet against the back of her neck that she let down her guard and closed her eyes and found herself standing on a moor in England, her long, dark cape snapping in the wind and George Gaynor riding toward her on a gray steed—

  “Good morning, Miss Winchester. I hope it’s all right if I’m early.”

  She shot awake from her dream, burning with mortification and alarmed by the uncontrolled pounding of her heart. She was struck dumb before the tall, lean silhouette of George Gaynor standing in the shop door, the afternoon light shining behind him.

  Hélène Pringle stood at the upstairs bedroom window in what had once served as the rectory for the Chapel of our Lord and Savior, otherwise known as Lord’s Chapel.

  She felt terribly perplexed and anxious—on pins and needles, really—trying to decide what might be proper.

  Should she go next door and pay her respects and possibly be thought intrusive at this sensitive time? Or wait until things were back to normal and perhaps be thought cold and uncaring for not calling sooner? She had always been a worrier, and often found herself torn between complete opposites of choice and affection.

  Before and after piano lessons and visits to her mother at Hope House, she had been glued to this window, thinking she may find some clue to what was transpiring at the Kavanaghs’. But the yellow house next door might have been a sepulchre; she had seen Cynthia only once, dashing from her front door in robe and pajamas, picking up the newspaper, and running in again. Since the Muse was delivered on Monday and this was Saturday, it had literally been days since she’d witnessed movement. Of course, she couldn’t see the new garage side of the house, where people probably came and went all the time, and certainly nothing could be seen through their upstairs windows, as they were always shuttered on the side facing her own.

  Her cat, Barbizon, rubbed himself against her ankles, though she took no notice.

  She couldn’t bear this dreadful anxiety another moment, and certainly not another day.

  How was the dear man? Was his diabetes so advanced that his life might be threatened? Was he grieved beyond telling? As someone of infinite sensitivity, and a dog lover to boot, he would have taken this thing very, very hard.

  While shopping at The Local, she had questioned Avis Packard about Reverend Sprouse and learned he must endure another several weeks of bed rest, but would recover. Further, Reverend Sprouse was stricken about the loss of his dog, but made every attempt to remain jovial and to lift the spirits of others. She hadn’t the courage to inquire about Father Tim, afraid that Mr. Packard might interpret the depths of her concern as odd or extreme.

  She found that she was wringing her hands, and knew she must put this thing away from her once and for all. It had jangled her nerves most dreadfully and distracted her attention from her students.

  “Ça ne va pas!” she said aloud, scolding herself.

  “Bake a loaf of bread, if you must, and leave it on their doorstep! Better still, roast a nice poulet !” He’d told her he enjoyed roast chicken.

  Bien sûr! That solved it, then!

  Since her youthful faith grew cold years ago, she regretted that she hadn’t often prayed. Of course she must pray at once; she had quite neglected to do this most crucial thing for a man who had, in almost every sense, saved her life, whose tender forgiveness of the wrong she’d done him had resurrected her from a grave of bitterness and guilt.

  She crossed herself quickly and looked toward the ceiling. “Saint Père, accorde-moi, s’il te plaît, l’occasion de faire quelque chose pour ton cher émissaire, quelque chose que fera une différence!”

  She reflected a moment, then spoke the same words in English. “Holy Father, please give me the opportunity to do something for your dear emissary, something that will make a difference.”

  She hoped that two separate pleas might be doubly persuasive, yet had no idea at all that she’d been heard. She felt an odd relief, nonetheless, as she straightened the collar of her blouse and pinched her cheeks and walked downstairs to prepare for her next student.

  In the hallw
ay, she hesitated—was that a sound from the basement?

  No, it was a car on the street. Since the Man in the Attic, as Mitfordians often called him, moved in with Mr. Welch two days ago, she thought she might hear uproarious laughter or a great deal of coming and going. In truth, she wouldn’t have known another soul was down there if he hadn’t come knocking on her door to introduce himself. He’d even invited her to call on him if she needed anything at all.

  She had thought him attractive, or perhaps comely was a more precise term, and was relieved to see he was clean-shaven, which she supposed was required in prison. He had also been immensely courteous—but, of course, if he was going to get ahead in the world, he could hardly afford to be otherwise. On the whole, she had approved, confident that Father Kavanagh would not send anyone suspicious to live on his own property.

  She moved toward the music room, thinking, the man in the attic….

  She mused on this odd appellation, finding it odder still that George Gaynor was now l’homme au sous-sol.

  After a meatloaf sandwich and iced coffee for lunch, Esther Bolick lay in her plaid recliner in full repose, listening to the snores of her husband and wondering what she could do for Father Tim.

  It was hard, very hard, when people couldn’t—and, in today’s world, wouldn’t—eat cake. When she was coming up, families lived from cake to cake. A cake was a special event, it meant something. Now a homemade, baked-from-scratch cake meant next to nothing. For one thing, most young people had never experienced such a thing. All they’d ever known was bought from a store and tasted like hamster shavings, or had been emptied from a box into a bowl, stirred with low-fat milk, and shoved into an oven that nearly blew a fuse from being turned on in the first place. Such a cake could never be your cake, no way, it would be Betty Crocker’s or Duncan Hines’s cake, and the difference between yours and theirs was vast and unforgivable.

  And look how people acted these days at the mere sight of a piece of cake. Cake? Get it out of here! I’m on a diet! I don’t want it in the house!

  Worse yet was the inevitable declaration: I never touch cake!

  Never touch cake. Pathetic! The world was increasingly filled with such people, not to mention the crowd that ate cake in secret, stuffing it in their faces when nobody was looking, and claiming to nourish themselves on a diet of boiled eggs and dry toast. She knew who they were.

  Father Tim was different, of course; eating cake would not merely add a measly pound or two, it would kill him dead as a doornail. Just look what he’d done to himself with a Coke, or was it a Pepsi?

  Gene snorted and woke himself up. He raised his head and looked at her inquiringly. “What’d you say, Sugarfoot?”

  “Go back to sleep!” she snapped, fed up with the whole notion of modern civilization.

  And take biscuits—biscuits had fallen into disgrace right along with cake. Would anybody eat a biscuit anymore? No way, not on your life. Too fattening! Too much cholesterol! All that white flour! All that shortening! On and on, ’til you could keel over and croak. She’d been born in the wrong century.

  She cranked her chair upright, dismounted, and went in the kitchen and jerked open her cabinet doors.

  Nothing. There was absolutely nothing in this house that the father could eat, except maybe a can of salmon.

  A card, then. Pitiful though it was, it was the best she could come up with. She had waited ’til the dust settled on this awful mess before acting, and now was the time to act; it was a new season and a fresh beginning—Father Tim would want to know that people didn’t hold anything against him….

  She went to the downstairs half bath and ran water over a washrag and scrubbed her perspiring face and dried it, then dipped her little finger in the lipstick tube. She had gouged stuff out of there for so long, there was hardly a scrap left; she’d get another tube at the drugstore when she went looking for a card. She stretched her lips in a wide grimace and applied the dab of color with her finger. Maybe coral this time, instead of mauve—mauve made her look washed out.

  She sighed, hoping she’d be able to find something that would make him laugh.

  Over the last few days, he’d had the odd impression of a recent visit with Miss Sadie. There was some fresh, instinctive connection to her that he hadn’t experienced since her death. Perhaps he’d dreamed….

  Father Tim sat at his desk, looking out to the space where the garage had stood. He was surprised by two extremes of feeling—he would miss seeing the moss on the roof tiles and the nest the swallows were building with daubs of mud; at the same time, the opening of the view gave him a sense of liberty he realized he’d been craving.

  He watched George Gaynor toss a couple of old boards into the bed of Harley’s truck, as Harley swigged Gatorade from a plastic bottle. He’d mentioned to Harley his sudden inspiration about tearing out the garage, a project they might do together when he was feeling stronger. The next thing he knew, the two men were at work, fulfilling his vision within hours of the telling.

  With Harley’s cleanup of the hedge, Father Tim could see into Baxter Park as if with new eyes. The labor of yesterday and today had revealed a corner of the park grounds he’d never especially noticed, including a red maple that spread its branches over summer grass that, even in today’s sultry heat, appeared cool and inviting.

  He felt his dog move at his feet. “Good fellow,” he whispered, the lump coming again to his throat.

  What would he have done if someone had…if the same thing had happened to Barnabas? He looked down into the dark and soulful eyes from which he’d drawn consolation for so many years, eyes that sometimes seemed a window into the depths of his own soul. Had Bill Sprouse known this mysterious and consoling connection with Sparky?

  Of course…and it had been violently wrenched from him.

  Cynthia came into the room and stood by his chair, watching George toss another board onto the truck bed.

  “A blessing!” she said.

  “A blessing, yes.”

  She leaned down and kissed the top of his head. “God is good.”

  “Yes,” he replied. “God is good.”

  He heard her leave the room and wanted to turn around and watch her go, but he could not.

  “Barnabas!” Cynthia called, jingling the leash. “Monument time!”

  Barnabas rose slowly and trotted to the kitchen, where Cynthia snapped on the worn red leash.

  “Back in ten, dearest! Then I’m dashing to the Sprouses’ with a tuna casserole.”

  They were gone along the hall and out the front door.

  He sat as if frozen. At least a month of rest, Hoppy had said; now three weeks had gone by and he hadn’t recovered an ounce of strength; in truth, he couldn’t even walk his dog. Perhaps he’d ask Dr. Wilson about his medication, perhaps it wasn’t doing the job. He resented Hoppy’s absence—he who had urged his doctor, year after year, to take a vacation.

  He glanced at the open journal on his desk, and the quote from Thomas à Kempis which he’d inscribed early this morning: “Great tranquillity of heart is his who cares for neither praise nor blame.”

  He had no tranquillity of heart; the blame that he felt from himself and imagined from others was corrosive. He regretted, in some perverse way, that Bill Sprouse would not sue him.

  “I’m not a suing man,” Bill had said when they spoke on the phone. “‘Dare any of you, having a matter against another, go to law before the unjust and not before the saints?’ St. Paul said it, and I trust it! Then over in Luke, we’re told, ‘As ye would that men should do to you, do ye also to them likewise.’ The Lord himself said it, and I trust it! Besides, I wouldn’t want you suing me for something I couldn’t help. You couldn’t help it, brother. Let up on yourself.”

  “I’ll be over to see you as soon as I can,” he had said, mopping his eyes.

  Bill had laughed. “Whichever cripple is th’ first to get up an’ around calls on th’ other one. How’s that?”

  “Deal.”
/>   “God bless you, Timothy.”

  “And you, my friend.”

  You couldn’t help it, Bill had said. But he could have helped it. He could have helped it by not cutting back on the insulin, by buying another glucometer and using it, by not skipping meals, by sticking to his exercise, by drinking water instead of sugar-loaded soda….

  But he couldn’t say that to anyone, he couldn’t utter the horrific truth that he had been that day like a loose cannon, that, indeed, he could have helped it.

  The rabbits…he still thought about his little herd and how they had been seemingly well one day and dead the next, every one of them. He would never forget his father’s wrath, the conviction that his son had done nothing to prevent the wasteful crime of their loss and the useless drain on the family finances.

  Yes, he had noticed some listlessness in several of the does, but he hadn’t known it was anything serious, he hadn’t known he could…help it.

  He watched Harley’s truck pull out of view; he was headed to the dump, where, for fifteen dollars a load, a garage built more than seventy years ago would vanish from the face of the earth.

  If only…

  He realized he’d sat here like a stone for what seemed to be hours, and stood, stiff in every joint.

  He wanted his wife—her softness, her breath on his cheek, her warmth, her benediction.

  He went slowly up the stairs and into their room and began to turn back the bedspread. When had he ever gone to bed in the afternoon? Even when he’d had the flu a time or two, he’d toughed it out on the sofa. He wanted to stop turning back the covers, but he could not.

  He undressed, noting for the first time that he’d buckled his belt differently and that his pants were surprisingly loose-fitting. Then he hung his clothes in the closet and put on his pajamas; the whole thing seemed to take a long time.

  He lay down, then, and pulled the sheet over him and waited for his wife, ashamed for her to find him like this, yet eager for her touch.

  “Timothy?” she said, standing in the doorway. He couldn’t see her face and read her thoughts about his lying in bed like a sluggard. He wanted desperately to please her; perhaps she would forgive him.