by Jan Karon
Then, mad as a wet hen, she turned and hotfooted it to the elevator.
“Don’t move,” said Father Tim. The pounding of his heart nearly took his breath away. “Look there.”
They watched the tall, barefoot boy come along the riverbed, walking on boulders that inlaid the stream.
Sunshine filtered through the canopy of trees overhanging the water; as he stepped into a patch of light, Sammy Barlowe’s hair blazed like a coronet of fire.
They had walked to the bridge, crossed over, and come along a path by a pine wood to their left. They paused when they approached the clearing where the Barlowe trailer sat on an underpinning of concrete blocks.
A dog limped toward them with its tail between its legs. Father Tim judged it to be a member of the hound family; he could easily have counted its ribs.
“If that’s a bad dog, I’ll eat a billy goat,” said Buck.
Father Tim reached into his shirt pocket and withdrew the rest of the granola bar his wife had sent on this mission. He unwrapped it and laid it by the root of a white oak at the edge of the yard. “Good fellow!” he said as the dog devoured it and sniffed for crumbs.
“Are you ready?” asked Buck.
“Ready. And praying there won’t be any guns in this encounter.” He was also praying that his headache would ease off. It was the worst he could remember.
“A man with a dog like that prob’ly don’t keep a gun.”
“I’d stop right there if I was you.”
Both men jumped, startled by the voice from the shadow of the woods. Peering into the pine grove, they saw the boy standing by a large outcropping of rock.
“We’re looking for Sammy Barlowe,” Buck said.
“You ain’t g-goin’ t’ find ’im. He’s done m-moved off t’ Statesville an’ ain’t comin’ back.”
Father Tim looked into the face of a younger Dooley Barlowe, and knew he must make an effort to keep his voice calm. “But you’re Sammy, of course.”
“No, I ain’t! An’ you better git out of here right now, this is p-private property.”
The dog sniffed Father Tim’s pant legs. “We’ve come to talk with you about your brothers and little sister.”
Sammy uttered Dooley’s once-favorite four-letter word. “I ain’t got no brothers an’ sisters.”
Had Pink led them on another wild goose chase? No. This was Dooley Barlowe’s blood kin, freckles and all; nothing in him doubted it.
“Jessie doesn’t remember you,” said Buck, “but Poo does, and Dooley. They really want to see you.”
“I’m goin’ t’ b-bash y’r heads in if you don’t git on.” Sammy picked up a stick and brandished it.
“You remember Dooley,” said Father Tim. “He took care of you that time you were so sick with the flu, he gave you his best jacket to wear to school and put a dollar in the pocket. You remember.” He was piecing together fragments of stories Dooley had told him. They didn’t amount to much, but it was the best he could do.
He walked closer to the patch of woods, to the narrow path that led into the cool, chiaroscuro shade. Even from this distance, he saw the anger and fear in the boy’s eyes; he thought he also saw something else—a kind of hope or longing. “And Dooley was saying how—”
“Come another step an’ you’ll fall in a nest of rattlers big as y’r arm!”
“Right,” said Buck, “and Jessie was sayin’ how if she could see her brother, Sammy, she’d give him all the money she’s saved and make him scrambled eggs every mornin’. Jessie makes fine scrambled eggs.”
“I’ve got a shotgun hid under this rock. I’ll blow y’r brains out if you don’t git back where you c-come from.”
“She likes to crumble up livermush in her scrambled eggs,” said Buck, “the same as your granddaddy Russell Jacks likes to do.”
“We’ve got pictures to show you,” said Father Tim, reaching into his jacket pocket. Sammy’s confusion was visible; he appeared ready to turn and run. Instead, he stood his ground as if frozen.
“Sometimes,” said Buck, “Jessie sets a place at the table for you. She turned ten years old last week.”
They were walking into the woods now, toward the rock, toward the boy with the blanched and stricken face.
Without looking at each other or exchanging a word, the two men knew they had to show Sammy these pictures; it was crucial. Father Tim wondered if there might really be a shotgun, but something in him doubted it. He felt a kind of eagerness about walking into the wood; it had to be done. He smiled at Sammy, though it was Dooley he saw in this thin boy with the scar on his cheek and the lank red hair pulled into a ponytail.
He stood aside to let Buck walk ahead of him on the narrow path, and reminded himself to keep talking. “Dooley dreams about you, Sammy. He saved his first bicycle for you….”
Sammy didn’t move; he was listening now. He was trying not to, Father Tim observed, but he was listening, waiting, letting them come in. Buck drew the pictures from his pocket. Father Tim did the same. Be with us, Lord, send Your Holy Spirit….
As they approached the rock, he looked directly into Sammy’s eyes. The joy this gave him was indescribable; he wanted to throw his arms around the boy and shout, but restrained any show of feeling. They were walking on eggs. Stay calm, stay cool. He laid the pictures on the rock, silent; Buck followed suit, fanning the snapshots like a hand of cards. They had run the bases; they were nearly home.
“That’s Poo, he’s eleven,” said Buck, keeping his voice casual. “His school picture, he made an A in geography, I never even knew where Idaho was when I was in school. This is him with his new bat, he can hit a softball all th’ way to Tennessee…. An’ this is him on his bike….”
Buck breathed deeply, as if he’d held his breath for a long time. “And this is Jessie…her last school picture…she’s ten.”
Father Tim felt the hard knot in his throat; this was a type of miracle and he was standing in the midst of it. He pointed to a picture of Dooley and Cynthia sitting on the front steps of the yellow house. “This is Dooley,” he said, “he’s nineteen.”
Father Tim watched Sammy Barlowe resist the depth and power of his feelings. Sammy was doing what Dooley had always done, hardening his face into a mask, a stone; only his eyes betrayed the depth of his longing to examine the images spread before him.
Sammy stepped back from the rock. “You’uns better git out of here. When my p-paw sees you hangin’ around, you’ll be skinned.”
Buck grinned. “It’d take a while to skin me. He prob’ly don’t have time to complete th’ job.”
Father Tim realized his adrenaline had been pumping hard all morning; exhaustion was sweeping through him in a wave. His vision suddenly blurred, then cleared. In that moment, the exhaustion vanished, taking his headache with it.
“Ahh,” he said aloud, amazed and grateful. The place where they stood became abruptly vivid; he hadn’t looked about him until now. It was wondrously cool in this light-and-shade-dappled copse; indeed, they were standing in a garden.
“Lady slipper!” said Father Tim. “And by heaven, look there! Jack-in-the-pulpit.” Though the blossom had gone, he recognized the leaves.
“Stay on th’ path!” commanded the boy. “W-watch where you’re steppin’.”
“Of course. I’m sorry. And there’s trillium, a whole grove! Is the bloom white or pink?”
Sammy hesitated a long moment. “W-w-white,” he said.
Father Tim heard water rushing along the nearby riverbed, the first time he’d heard it since they crossed the bridge “These lovely things surely didn’t grow here in the same patch?”
“I dug some in th’ woods over yonder.”
In a space hardly bigger than Cynthia’s workroom, and carpeted with black loam and leaf mold, was a remarkable variety of wild plants—tall ferns with furred fiddleheads, a colony of silvery Dutchman’s-pipe that lit the woods floor like small candles, a grove of mayapple….
Father Tim squatted down and peered
beneath the leaves of a plant where rows of onyx berries hung like necklaces.
“Solomon’s seal?” he asked, looking up at Sammy.
“It’s common,” said Sammy. “Not diff’rent like some of th’ others, but it g-grows good and gives cover to th’ jacks.”
“And these pink lady slippers,” said Father Tim. “I’ve never seen so many in one place.”
“They was already growin’ in here, in a bunch, it give me th’ idea to”—Sammy glanced around—“d-do this.”
“Is that a yellow slipper over there?”
“Yeah, they’s five kinds of slipper. This is th’ only yeller I ever found. They’s a yeller an’ white, too, but Lon Burtie says it don’t grow excep’ out West som’ers.”
“What a blessing to see all this,” said Father Tim, smiling up at the boy. “A blessing.” Sammy’s grandfather, Russell Jacks, had been the finest gardener Lord’s Chapel had ever hired…. “I believe the slipperis in the orchid family.” He was feeling like a new man, light of spirit, the headache vanished.
“Lon Burtie was in a jungle in Nam where he seen plenty of orchids. He says they’s two million kinds of orchids.”
“And that purplish leaf? Let’s see, I can’t think of the name…”
“Galax. I didn’t dig that, it was already g-growin’ over there, but I’ve got t’ take s-some of it out, it’s forceful.”
Father Tim squatted for a moment more, then stood, his knees creaking like rusted gates. Something had just happened in here, quite a lot had happened….
“This is a private place, isn’t it, Sammy?”
The boy lowered his eyes and shrugged.
“Thanks for letting us come in.”
“Yeah,” said Buck, clearing his throat. “Thanks.”
“Let me say that last ’un back t’ make sure I learned it right.”
“Take your time,” said the trucker, who had just ordered apple pie à la mode. “This is a easy run, nothin’ perishable like last week when I was haulin’ cantaloupes to Pennsylvania.”
Uncle Billy cleared his throat. “Woman went to th’ new doc, don’t you know, he was s’ young he was hardly a-shavin’. Wellsir, she was in there a couple of minutes when all at once’t she busted out a-hollerin’ an’ run down th’ hall.”
Uncle Billy paused.
“You got it,” said the trucker. “Keep goin’.”
“Wellsir, a doc that was a good bit older took off after ’er, said, ‘What’s th’ problem?’ an’ she told ’im. Th’ ol’ doc went back to th’ young doc, said, ‘What’s th’ dadjing matter with you? Miz Perry is sixty-five a-goin’ on sixty-six with four growed chil’ren and seven grans—an’ you told ’er she was a-goin’ t’ have a young ’un?”
“New doc grinned, don’t you know, said, ‘Cured ’er hiccups, didn’t it?’”
Uncle Billy knew when a joke hadn’t gone over, and this one hadn’t gone over—not even with the person he’d gotten it from in the first place.
The trucker gazed thoughtfully at his reflection in the chrome napkin dispenser. “Seem like it was funny when I heard it th’ first time, but now it might be what you call…” He shrugged.
“Flat,” said Uncle Billy, feeling the same way himself.
“I’d advise you to axe it,” said the trucker, digging into his apple pie. “Start off with your two guys on a bench, slide in with your cabdriver joke, and land you a one-two punch with th’ ol’ maids.”
Uncle Billy wished he had some kind of guarantee this particular lineup would work.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Waiting for Wings
As families around Mitford waked and stirred, more than a few wondered what last night’s violent storm might have done to the valley corn crop. Second only in importance to the town’s Independence Day parade was the season’s first delivery of Silver Queen corn, expected to arrive any moment at The Local.
After hearing a weather bulletin, Neese Simmons and his wife and four children had picked corn until two o’clock in the morning before the storm broke over the valley at three a.m. Working by torch and flashlight, they loaded their hasty harvest in the farm truck and backed it into the barn in the nick of time. From three until seven, the storm dumped five inches of precipitation into the valley below Mitford, washing out large crops of potatoes, cantaloupes, and strawberries, all destined for sale at The Local. This devastation caused the Simmons family to worry whether their prayers for rain had been too fervent. Neese told his wife, Vada, that he would make a point of discussing it with their preacher to see whether any of the blame for crop loss might, in fact, lie squarely on the shoulders of the Simmonses.
“Hush an’ go to sleep,” she said, patting his hand. “Th’ Lord knows what He’s doin’.”
“Will you ride up with me t’morrow?” he asked.
“If I’m not too give out,” she said.
On the way to the airport, Father Tim passed Neese and Vada Simmons driving into Mitford as he and Cynthia drove out. Both parties threw up a hand in greeting.
“There’s our corn,” said Father Tim. It would be a big day in Mitford. By one o’clock, every ear would be emptied from the bins on Main Street, and by six o’clock, the lot of it would be boiling on village stoves, his own included.
But his wife wouldn’t be here to enjoy it with him. For two weeks, she would be touring the world—and he was the one who’d encouraged her to do it.
The truth was, she needed a chance to relish the fruits of her labors, to see the rapt faces of the children for whom she’d written and painted with such passion for so many years. And there was a further truth, one they hadn’t talked about, one that he’d hidden in his heart so carefully he hardly knew it himself—he needed time.
Time for what? To somehow get his act together, to work on his essays, and pitch in with George and Harley to build bookcases in the hallway and maybe a cabinet for her illustrations. Just a little time, that’s all he needed, and he would once again be himself.
For weeks on end, he’d been a swimmer sinking to the pond bottom, with his brave wife struggling to pull him ashore. He’d been a heaviness to her, though she’d never said it; indeed, she may not even have known it. But he’d known it, for he’d seen it in her face and heard it in her voice. If he were half the man he’d like to be, they’d be driving to the airport on their way to Venice or Tuscany, or one of those other places she might love to go…even their honeymoon cottage in Maine, for heaven’s sake. But he was not that man, and there was no use thinking he would one day become that man. He was the worst bump on a log ever given breath.
He swallowed until the knot in his throat disappeared. “I’m not going to cry,” he said, taking her hand.
The tears were streaming down her cheeks, though they were scarcely beyond the town limits.
“Thank you, dearest. I’m so sorry I’ll miss your sermons.”
“Rats in a poke!” he said, quoting one of her favorite epithets.
“You’ve heard me preach a hundred times and I hope you’ll hear me preach a hundred more. I’ll save you my notes…if I use any.”
She looked at him, smiling. “Promise me something.”
“Anything,” he said.
“Don’t put butter on your corn.”
No butter on his corn!
“Use olive oil, it’s better for your health.”
“No rest for th’ wicked,” he sighed.
She squeezed his hand and laughed through the tears. “An’ th’ righteous don’t need none!”
His house was not a tomb nor a crypt, after all. The very light may have gone from it, but Puny Bradshaw Guthrie, his appointed guardian and watchdog, was doing her mightiest to make it shine. Dooley was coming to lunch and they were having a feast fit for royals—nay, for the heavenly hosts.
“Alleluia!” he declared to Puny, who wiped her face with her apron as she stood at the stove. Not even the air-conditioning could spare them from the furnace produced by roiling steam, sizzling g
rease, and the divine tumult of preparation in general.
Their house help, a.k.a. his nonlegally adopted daughter, was frying chicken, making potato salad with scallions, bacon, and sour cream, cooking fresh cranberries with shavings of ginger root and orange peel, simmering a pot of creamed corn, deviling eggs with homemade mayonnaise, and rolling out biscuits on the countertop. A pitcher of sweet tea stood at the ready, covered with one end of a tea towel; his grandmother’s heavy glass pitcher, filled with unsweetened tea, was covered by the other end. A three-layer coconut cake, set square in the center of the kitchen island, reigned over the room next to a small vase of early, apple-green hydrangea blossoms.
Excited as a child, he went to the downstairs powder room and tested his sugar.
The banquet being prepared for Dooley Barlowe had none of the criminal restrictions required by the diabetic. Thus, lunch would be filled with land mines that he must circumnavigate as best he could. Even so, a man could die with happiness on a day like this and have nothing at all to regret.
He’d discussed it in detail with Cynthia, and they’d agreed: Go straight to the point—but only after the cake.
“So, what do you think?”
“Good!” said Dooley, looking up and grinning. “Really good. The icing’s great.”
“Tell Puny.”
“Yes, sir, I will.”
“Remember when you first came to bunk with me, and Puny dunked you in the tub?”
Dooley grinned. “I remember.”
“She had to chase you around the house a time or two.”
“I chased her back.”
Father Tim laughed, aware that simply watching Dooley eat cake today would be among his happiest memories.
Dooley licked the icing off his fork. “I’d like to stay with you and Cynthia next summer.”
Something like joy surged in him. “We’d love nothing better, but be warned—it’s pretty dull around here.”
“That’s OK.”
It seemed eons since Dooley had lived in their house, clattered up and down the stairs, sat at their table. They were silent for a moment.