by Jan Karon
Fr Conklin means well, and heaven knows, he tries, but I’m not sure how he will do in the long run, if there is one.
I wish all news were good news. Sam is again going into the hospital, this time for a kidney operation. Everyone says it is nothing, not to worry, but of course I do, shame on me.
It has never been the same since you left, we would have kept you and Cynthia until the cows come home.
Give her my love and thank you for keeping us in your prayers, as we hold you faithfully in ours. I shall not rest until I hear you are feeling hale again.
Timothy, for heaven’s sake, can you not give a man WORD OF YOUR CIRCUMSTANCES?
Are you dead as a door nail, or only on the downward spiral toward last rites—which I shall be happy to come and administer if only you will ask.
We are pushing along up here in the wilderness, though frightfully short-handed. I’m wearing out a PERFECTLY GOOD pair of boots going up hill and down dale, all the while observing the most heartbreaking conditions imaginable. But we are making progress. The good Lord has brought a veritable drove of youngsters to our door, and one or two grim parents. They come out of curiosity and stay for cookies and tea and Bible stories. The flood is a particular favorite. Abner comes daily, I hope you are praying for him as I requested.
Well, brother, have you cast us utterly away? If you cannot write, for heaven’s sake do the next best thing…
SEND MONEY!!!
Sissy unrolled the watercolor and held it before him. “See, Granpaw? This is the church, will you put it on your ‘frigerator?”
“Absolutely! Well done!”
“An’ this,” said Sassy, “is Barnabas. I used the biggest piece of paper in th’ whole school !”
“Terrific!” he said, admiring the watercolor of a black hulk on a red rug. “However, like your subject matter, your painting is bigger than the refrigerator.”
“You could…umm…you could put it on the wall!”
“Ah, the wall.”
“You have tape in your desk drawer, we saw it when we used your colored pencils.”
“Let me think….”
Sassy ran to the wall by his desk. “Right here, Granpaw! It would look great! You can take this other stuff down.”
“I want mine on the wall, too,” said Sissy, “not on th’ ’frigerator.”
Life was short.
He went to the desk drawer and got out the tape. “Consider it done!” he said.
Amazing. He’d gone from a hopeless bachelor who lived alone to a man with a dog, a son, a wife, and two grandchildren. Thinking thus, he marched down Main Street, a red-haired twin on either side, glad to be alive.
He was standing at the bakery case with the girls when he heard the door open and the tick, tick, tick of heels on the tile floor. Knowing he was nailed to the wall, he turned to face the onslaught.
Fancy Skinner, in her signature uniform of hot-pink T-shirt and capri pants, arched one eyebrow and gave him a withering look. “Long time no see!”
“Fancy, how are you?”
She was smoking over his hair pretty good, he thought, ducking his head to peer into the bottom shelf of the case.
“Choc’late éclair!” said Sassy.
“Choc’late chip cookie!” crowed Sissy.
“I’m havin’ a sugar-free fruit tart,” Fancy informed him. “That’s my favorite, it sends me over the moon, all that custard and those little slices of kiwi, I hope they have kiwi today, some days they don’t have kiwi, sometimes it’s just raspberries an’ whatnot, thank th’ Lord Winnie never uses blueberries, which I can’t stand to put in my mouth, I don’t know why, prob’ly ’cause they turn your tongue blue, even your teeth, an’ bananas, you take bananas, I have never liked th’ texture of bananas, I don’t care if they do have potassium, they make me feel fat, don’t bananas make you feel fat?—but you take kiwi, now, kiwi is very tropical, very light an’ refreshin’…”
Actually, he hadn’t thought he could have anything. But a sugar-free fruit tart was another matter entirely. He brightened.
Winnie blew through the curtains that separated the kitchen from the bake shop. “Father! I’m so glad to see you, I could hug your neck!”
“Come and do it, then!”
Dear, good-hearted Winnie, smelling literally of sugar, spice, and everything nice, trotted from behind the bake case. “How’s business?” he asked, relishing her vigorous hug.
“Booming, now that your crowd is here!”
After the girls piped their orders, he gave his. “Sugar-free fruit tart!” he said with immeasurable anticipation.
“Just one?”
“Just one.”
“Good! Because that’s all that’s left!”
He had no intention of making eye contact with Fancy Skinner. He devoutly hoped there would never again be a necessity so dire as to force him into her chair.
“For here or to go?” asked Winnie.
“For here!” he chorused with the twins.
On her way out with a low-fat doughnut, Fancy gave his hair a final look of professional scorn. Or was it downright disgust?
“Do you think Granpaw needs a haircut?” he inquired of his counsel.
“Yessir,” said Sassy. “You really do.”
Sissy nodded, her mouth full.
“Well, then,” he said, making short work of the tart, which had come fully loaded with kiwi.
They’d left the house less than an hour ago, and already his small spring of energy had run utterly dry. As the girls drank soda pop at Sweet Stuff, he sat in Joe Ivey’s barber chair feeling raw, exposed.
“I prob’ly oughtn’t t’ tell y’ this…”
Snip, snip. Joe began his labors with the hair that had grown over his customer’s collar.
“So don’t,” suggested Father Tim.
“…but somebody said if you was goin’ to run over a preacher, you should’ve aimed for that clown over at Wesley Chapel.”
He stiffened.
“Wadn’t too funny, was it? I oughtn’t to have said that.”
Snip, snip.
“You’re lookin’ sort of down an’ out. I guess this has hit you pretty hard.”
Snip, snip, snip. The sound of a car horn on Main Street, footsteps above their heads, Winnie’s shop door opening, his blood pressure rising.
“I don’t reckon you’d like a little shooter?”
“I thought you were keeping away from that stuff,” he snapped.
“I am keepin’ away from it, it’s settin’ there for my customers.”
Next time he needed a haircut, he was going to Wesley, or down to Holding…anywhere but here.
He glanced up to the eastern ridge above Mitford and was surprised to see the chimneys of Clear Day, Edith Mallory’s rambling stone house, which boasted roughly eight thousand square feet. Apparently, some serious tree work had just been done; he’d liked it better when nothing at all could be seen of her ninety-acre property.
When he’d been rector at Lord’s Chapel, she had often invited the vestry there for meetings. He was thankful to God that he was no longer forced to endure the whole miserable experience—stopping at the electronic gate box and punching in numbers that seemed to change with each meeting, then making the long, dark drive through the narrow tunnel of low-arching rhododendron. He remembered the smothered feeling he often got when coming through that tunnel, followed by a long evening of dodging her attempts to make eye contact, hang on to his arm, or remove nonexistent lint from his lapel.
Then there was the stormy night the vestry had convened about Hope House. After sending his ride home while he was in the bathroom, she’d trapped him in her library, where, after a harsh exchange, he’d spent most of the night in a club chair. Ed Coffey had claimed Edith’s Town Car wouldn’t start, though he’d gotten the blasted thing started well enough by daylight. Yours truly had been dropped off at the rectory just as his next-door neighbor had come out looking for her cat. He would never forget the look on
Cynthia’s face as he slithered out of that black Lincoln feeling humiliated and furious.
As he entered the front door with the girls, he didn’t know if he could make it to the end of the hall and into the kitchen.
“Lord help!” cried Puny, looking shocked. “Go lay on th’ sofa this minute!”
He feebly obeyed; he had no choice.
When the phone rang, he sat up, confused. Why was he on the sofa? His head throbbed wildly. It was nearly dark, with no lamp burning. He fumbled for the phone and knocked the handset to the floor. “Hold on! I’m coming!” he shouted. He went to his knees, blindly searching the rug in front of the sofa. There.
“Hello, sweetheart,” he said, breathless.
“Why, Timothy!” Edith Mallory gave a husky laugh. “You must have been expecting…someone special.
“I won’t keep you. I’ve just come home to Mitford from Spain and heard the terrible thing that happened to you.”
“The terrible thing didn’t happen to me, it happened to Bill Sprouse,” he said coldly.
“Of course. Well, do let me say I hope you’ll soon be well and strong and that we’ll be seeing you back to normal very quickly.”
He heard her exhale smoke from a cigarette.
His impulse was to fling the handset across the room. Yet he sat speechless, enduring the pounding of his head.
“I must say, Timothy, that I hold no grudge against you, none at all. I ought to thank you. The people I might have rented the Grill to have gone bankrupt, while Mr. Mosely’s check arrives promptly every month.”
“I must go,” he said.
“Of course you must. I understand! Well, then, goodbye—”
He dropped the handset into his lap, feeling oddly alarmed, as if a viper now lay coiled in the darkened room.
Hessie Mayhew awoke at three in the morning to the sound of…what in the dickens was it, anyway?
Her vintage Sears box spring creaked as she sat up in bed and listened.
Hail!
The bedroom shimmered in a dazzling flash of light, and then came a crash of thunder that shook and rattled the windows.
She clapped her hands over her eyes as if to deny this could be happening. Hail meant that every rose in her garden would be shattered, she’d be lucky to have a fistful left for the wedding at Methodist Chapel tomorrow. She’d be forced to rogue roses in other people’s gardens from here to Wesley, and with a car that had tires so bald Lew Boyd said she should start writing her obituary.
Her mind was racing. Maybe Father Tim wouldn’t mind if she cut what was left of his antique Malmaisons; for Pete’s sake, he didn’t even live at the rectory anymore, it was just that little bitty Frenchwoman and that cat the size of a barn, she should be glad to get rid of some of those roses, how many roses could one little woman use anyway?
Father Tim! Hessie gasped. His garden basket! Clad only in a faded toile pajama top she’d found at last year’s Bane and Blessing, she bolted to the kitchen, switched on the light to the deck, and looked through the glass doors.
Mashed flat! Killed! Totaled! The beautiful basket with twelve herbs and five pots of miniature roses, lavender, and sweet william, all so carefully nestled into living green moss, moss which she had pulled with her own hands from her own special section of her own backyard, a gesture she extended only to very special people—ruined!
Hail the size of marbles jumped around on the deck and bounced against the glass doors. A blaze of lightning illumined her yard.
She turned from the awful sight and stormed into the kitchen. She wouldn’t wait ’til she was sixty-five, thank you very much, she was getting out of the flower business immediately. Just as soon as she got new tires, which two big weddings and a bridal luncheon would pay for, she was out of this racket—she couldn’t bear another day of something as fragile, as frail, as puny as flowers! She would go to work at Wal-Mart, maybe in the housewares section, or even at the front door where she would give people a shopping cart and tell them to have a nice day.
Completely disgusted and close to tears, she threw open the refrigerator door, snatched out last night’s meatloaf, and gave herself permission to eat the whole thing.
The sound of a hailstorm woke him from a deep sleep.
He was lying on the sofa, with something like a rock digging into his left rib. The blasted handset. He slammed it on the hook and dragged himself upstairs, where he found Barnabas under the bed and Violet curled on Cynthia’s pillow. He looked at the clock. Three in the morning, and not a word from New York. Should he call the hotel? Of course not. He wouldn’t call anyone at such an hour.
He sat in the wing chair, spent though wakeful. He pulled the chain on the floor lamp next to him and took what he called his Upstairs Bible from the table. If he was going to find what he was seeking, he’d have to look, it was that simple. “Show me, Lord,” he prayed aloud. “Lead me there and open my heart to Your wisdom….”
The Bible lay in his lap for a long time. He had no strength to open it.
He climbed into bed and, lying on his back, listened to the clatter of hail on the roof and the baritone snore of his dog. He felt as if he’d gone back in time to his bachelor days when the place beside him was always empty. But no, he wasn’t that bachelor anymore, he’d been completely changed, altered clear to his taproot. He had a wife, and day after tomorrow, she was coming home—then they’d be up and doing, with a heart for any fate.
He rolled onto his right side and punched up his pillow. He should have given Dooley another twenty.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
To Sing in the Dark
At seven A.M., he snatched the ringing phone from the hook.
“Cynthia?”
“Timothy! Are you all right?”
“Are you all right? That’s the question!”
“We tried and tried to call, but the phone was busy for hours. Who on earth were you talking to?”
“Nobody. I went to sleep on the sofa and must have rolled over on the receiver.”
“Pathetic! I can’t leave you alone for five minutes!” He heard the relief in her laughter.
“I’m sorry, sweetheart, forgive me. Was it wonderful?”
“More than wonderful!”
“Keep talking.”
“I love the hard work, and the agony of hardly ever knowing if what I’m doing is any good, and then the joy of the book being published and the children and parents liking it, and now…this.”
“Are you ten feet tall? Will you tower over your rustic husband?”
“My humility has made me small enough to put in your pocket.”
“And how’s Dooley treating his famous consort?”
“He’s taking the tenderest care of me, opening doors, even giving me his arm when we cross the street. You should see this, Timothy, I can’t imagine who taught him such lovely, outmoded courtesy.”
“Heaven only knows.”
“And he tips twenty percent! They must have a class in that sort of thing at the university.”
“I imagine so.”
“And the flowers! Armloads of roses and tulips! But all from you, of course. Thank you, my darling, I can’t wait to see you. How are you feeling?”
“Went out yesterday. Took the girls to Sweet Stuff. Got a haircut.”
“Joe Ivey?”
“Brace yourself.”
“Oh, dear. How did you feel, being out and about? Was it…all right?”
“I felt like a chick newly hatched from the shell. What are you up to today?”
“I’m buying Dooley a suit.”
“A suit?”
“Italian!”
“Have mercy, Kavanagh, he’s only a youth.”
“And a silk tie! He’ll make the earth tremble when he walks.”
He grinned. Dooley Barlowe would never be the same….
“The girls here absolutely fall over themselves when they see him. I can’t think how Lace has held out so long!”
“Think how long I held out,�
� he said, “and look what happened.”
“I miss my husband,” she said, suddenly pensive.
“I miss my wife…my extravagant, generous, witty, and important wife.”
“I love it when you talk like that.”
“Ah, Kavanagh, what don’t you love?”
“Taxis that go ninety miles an hour in midtown traffic, pantyhose that are a size too small, which one can’t know ’til dressing for the awards dinner, and then it’s too late, and, of course, age spots.”
He laughed. “That about covers it.”
“We’ll call you tonight and again in the morning, and before you know it, we’ll be home!”
“I count the hours.”
When he waked this morning at six, he’d felt leaden, old. Now that he’d heard her voice, he was fit for anything.
“Father?”
“George! Come in!”
“Is this a good time? I was praying for you next door, and felt a strong conviction to do my praying over here, instead.”
He opened the screen door to his tall, slender neighbor, known to all of Mitford as the Man in the Attic, and greeted him with a hug.
“Glad to see you, brother. Have a seat. Tell me how things are going in your new hometown.”
“If I could tell you another time, Father? I’ve got twenty minutes to get to the bookstore.”
“Whatever you say.” Though eight years in prison had added a few lines to George Gaynor’s face and his thinning hair had turned gray at the temples, Father Tim thought he’d never looked handsomer.
“Father, I understand a little of what you’ve been through. I’ve been hesitant to ask you to let me pray for you.”
“No need to hesitate with me, George. We all need prayer.” He wished he could confess just how much, indeed, he needed it….
After giving Barnabas a ramble around Baxter Park, he poked through the hedge to the old rectory. The hail would have made hash of his roses, and done a dandy job of hole-punching the hostas.