Jan Karon's Mitford Years

by Jan Karon

  “A microcosm of the world social order!” she said, laughing. “I hear the Turkey Club meets around eight o’clock most mornings?”

  “Alas, there are no secrets in Mitford!” he said.

  Joe Ivey seemed pale, withered.

  “They’s somethin’ else wrong, they don’t know what. They’re runnin’ tests enough t’ cave in th’ whole Medicare system.”

  “Sorry you’re down, buddy, but you’ll get up again.”

  “I hate t’ turn th’ haircut trade in this town over to that blankety-blank woman.”

  “She’ll be swamped, all right, you’ve built up a good business. But you haven’t turned it over yet.”

  “When Winnie rented ’er that space, Winnie seen it as a kind of hair emporium that would serve all y’r hair needs in one place—upstairs for a perm an’ rinse an’ whatnot, downstairs t’ my chair for a cut an’ maybe a shave. But nossir, Miz Fancy Pants got so she wanted th’ whole dern shebang.” Joe looked him in the eye. “I’m tryin’ not t’ hate ’er guts.”

  “That’s the ticket. Keep trying! Ask God to help you.”

  Joe sighed deeply. “You know th’ trouble with th’ barberin’ trade?”

  “What’s that?”

  “Nobody wants to do it n’more. Too much standin’ on your feet all day.”

  “I hear you.”

  “Varicose veins, lower back pain, bunions, I don’t know what all. That’s why I run off t’ Graceland that time t’ do security.”

  “And God used that time in your life. Just think—at Graceland, you gave up drinking.”

  Joe closed his eyes; a faint smile appeared on his face.

  “You did give it up?”

  Joe opened his eyes and burst into laughter. He laughed ’til he coughed. “Before God, I did, but I like to see you fret about whether I done it or not.”

  “You scoundrel,” said the priest. “Let me pray for you.”

  While he was on the hill, maybe he could work in a quick visit to Hope House—give Louella a kiss, swing by to see Pauline, catch up with his old friend Scott Murphy….

  But no. He didn’t have it in him.

  “Home,” he said to Barnabas.

  They loped down Old Church Lane and hung a right into the cool, green shade of Baxter Park. Why did he so often forget about Baxter Park and its sweet, hidden beauty? It was time to bring his wife here again for a picnic, maybe in early October when the sugar maples were turning.

  “Hello, Father!”

  Barnabas came to a screeching halt, his hair bristling, as Lace Turner appeared with a brown Labrador puppy on a leash. Barnabas stood, stiff and suspicious, uttering a low growl.

  “This is Guber!” said Lace, struggling to keep the leaping puppy at a proper distance.

  “Goober?” What kind of name was that for a beautiful young woman’s dog?

  “For gubernatorial. Hoppy says he looks gubernatorial, like our governor.”

  “By George, he does! How are you, my dear?”

  “Great! Look, Barnabas is getting friendly.”

  His dog’s tail was now wagging, albeit with a dash of caution. The puppy was barking to beat the band, and eager to get at the black behemoth on the red leash.

  “Think we could sit down and visit a minute?” asked Father Tim.

  “I don’t think it would be a good idea,” she said, smiling. “But—we could try!”

  She picked up her puppy and sat with it in her lap on one end of a park bench. He thumped down beside her.

  “Ahh,” he said. “This is a treat!” Barnabas sprawled in the grass, his eyes alert to the puppy. “Are you excited about the University of Virginia?”

  “Yes, sir. It’s beautiful there.”

  “I visited as a young seminarian. I remember they don’t call their campus a campus.”

  “Yes,” she said. “It’s called ‘the grounds.’”

  “You’ll do well. And if you ever need prayer—for anything, at any time, please give me a call. Will you remember that?”

  “Yes, sir. I will.”

  “I wore my boots the other day.”

  “Are they comfortable?”

  “Very! Thanks again. One of the most thoughtful gifts I ever received.”

  She smiled and nodded, pleased.

  “When are you off?”

  “Monday.”

  “That’s when Dooley leaves, as well.”

  She lowered her eyes and kissed the top of Guber’s velveteen head.

  “We’ve found Dooley’s brother Sammy,” he said.

  He heard her quick intake of breath.

  “They’ve had a visit, we’re hopeful about the future.”

  She continued to nuzzle the head of her puppy, silent.

  “I’m sorry for the times Dooley has treated you rudely.”

  She looked up at him; there was a flicker of sorrow in her amber eyes.

  “He told me you once declined to return his call. I think that…hurt him, somehow.” He was meddling, of course. Preachers couldn’t seem to help themselves when it came to meddling.

  “Why should I return his call, when he would only act arrogant and cold towards me?”

  “That’s a good question. I don’t think he wants to act arrogant and cold towards you.”

  “If he doesn’t want to, then he should stop doing it.” The anger he saw in her eyes might have been as ancient as the pyramids.

  “Yes. I agree. He should. And Lace…”

  “Yes, sir?”

  “I believe he will.”

  He didn’t know whether she heard him—or believed him.

  “Look,” said Lace. “Guber is asleep.”

  “You may leave early, if you’d like.”

  They were packing most of the gardening books into boxes; except for a couple of storms, the season in Mitford had been too dry for much enthusiasm in the garden. Hope hated returns—all that work to write a book, and then, in the end, if it didn’t sell, off it went to a book graveyard.

  “That’s OK, I’d rather stick around.”

  “You were here late yesterday, it would be fine for you to leave early.” She didn’t think people on a small salary should be required to work overtime, free.

  “Most people know the shop closes at six. It wouldn’t look right for me to be taking my ease at four-thirty.”

  She thought his eyes as blue as the sea. “Why not?”

  “I don’t want to cause any unnecessary talk or suspicion, because it all falls back on good people like you and Father Tim. If, God forbid, anything went wrong in town, a lot of eyes would turn to me—or to Harley. It’s just the way things are.”

  “Things shouldn’t be that way.”

  “Yes, but it’s the way things are.”

  She saw the resolve in him. “Yes,” she said. “Well.”

  She’d had few friends in her life, and had never once been friends with a man. But the feeling with George was different now; ever since the fall, it had been different. It was a nice, comfortable feeling.

  “How’s your mother?” he asked.

  “A little better. But not much. I think I should go see her in September.”

  “You seem to be doing fine since your fall.”

  “I feel wonderful, really. It’s hard to express, I’ve been trying to understand it. But something happened when I fell. Something…lovely.”

  “I’m glad. I’ve been praying for you.”

  She supposed that was what Christians did—they prayed for people. But she didn’t want them praying for her; it seemed an invasion of her privacy.

  “You really needn’t bother to pray for me, I don’t believe in it.” Something of the old, cold reserve returned and chilled her heart.

  “You don’t need to believe in it for me to pray for you. And it’s no bother, it’s a blessing.”

  “Oh,” she said, looking at him. She supposed he was still handsome, but she didn’t see that now. What she was seeing, more and more, was his kindness.

 
; “Since the fall,” he said, smiling, “you seem to be living up to your name.”

  “Yes.” She mused on this with wonder. “I think that’s true. I never really believed in my name. Hope seemed very…alien. I thought I should have been a Janet or a Peggy.”

  “I think Hope is right for you.”

  “Thank you.” A lovely warmth flooded her heart; tears sprang to her eyes. It was as if she’d been given her name for the first time, in a kind of baptism. “I remember when you looked down at me in the window—you said, ‘Hope! ’ as if it were a command. I didn’t associate the word with my name; instead, it was something you were urging me to do.”

  “Hope is a verb,” he said, “as well as a noun.”

  They were sitting on the floor now instead of squatting, the open boxes between them.

  “Where are your parents?” she asked. “Do they know you’re in Mitford?”

  “My parents were killed in a plane crash fifteen years ago. I was in the plane, also.”

  “Oh.” She couldn’t imagine such horror. “I’m sorry.”

  “I was pinned in the cockpit for three days, in freezing temperatures. Broken legs, fractured skull.”

  She shook her head, wordless.

  “I made a deal with God then, but I didn’t keep my end of the bargain.”

  “Are you…keeping your end of the bargain now?”

  He smiled. “I’m trying.”

  “Do you like it in Mitford?”

  “Very much.”

  “I don’t think I ever quite understood how you came here, why you picked Mitford.”

  “I didn’t pick Mitford, God did. I thought I was driving without purpose or direction. Mitford seemed no more than a random choice for a place to hide from the feds. Now I know that God led me here and put me in the attic of Lord’s Chapel, specifically, so that when Father Tim prayed the prayer of salvation in the nave, I would be there—at that precise moment in time—to pray it, too.”

  “Couldn’t it have happened anywhere?”

  “Possibly. But I don’t think so. I think this was my place, and that was my time.”

  “What sort of prayer is the prayer of salvation?” She had once read it in the letters-to-the-editor column of the Muse, but had no recollection of the words.

  “It’s simple. Very simple.”

  “But you don’t seem a simple person. What made you think it true or profound?”

  “The Holy Spirit spoke to my heart, and I knew it to be true.”

  She felt a slight shiver along her spine. The Holy Spirit. Speaking! “And it changed your life,” she said. It wasn’t a question; everyone in Mitford knew that some sort of prayer had changed the life of a man who turned himself in to face eight years of punishment.

  “Yes.”

  She didn’t relish the thought of asking him to recite the prayer, if, indeed, he could; it would seem awkward. But she wished to know its content; it was natural that she wished to know, she was a curious person.

  She was debating this when the bell jangled on the door and three Mitford School teachers breezed in, chattering happily. Hope knew they’d stopped by the bakery before coming to the bookstore; their clothes brought in a carefree scent of cinnamon and chocolate.

  He spoke with Cynthia at eight-thirty; she was missing him, too.

  “You miss me, I miss you. Bookends!” she said, calling the two of them by an affectionate name she’d contrived during their courtship.

  “But I’m glad I encouraged you to go.”

  “You didn’t encourage me at all, you insisted! But thanks for making me do it, Timothy, it’s been a wonderful experience—exhausting, but wonderful.”

  “It was good for me to send you away.”

  “Why, dearest?”

  “Because I’d grown afraid of losing you. Somehow, by sending you away, I lost the fear of losing you.”

  “Why were you afraid?”

  “Your success…. I wondered if it would overshadow what we had.”

  “Nothing can do that, Timothy. And you can never, ever lose me, I refuse to be lost.”

  “I love you, Kavanagh.” He was in the mood to be mushy with his wife. Life was short! “Madly.”

  “I love you madly back!”

  “I’ll have a surprise or two for you.” Salmon roulade was all he’d come up with so far, but surely he could think of something else.

  “I love surprises,” she said, happy. “Now hurry to bed, sweetheart. You sound bushed.”

  He read the evening office and was hurrying to bed, minding his wife.

  Somehow, the day had seemed a hundred years long. It might have been another age and time when he’d driven with Buck and the children down the mountain and witnessed their joy. Even Dooley, who usually chose his words carefully, had talked nonstop going home—what they’d all do when they got together with Sammy again, how they might talk him into coming to Mitford for his first visit, how he would buy Sammy a really great pair of tennis shoes, plus he’d give him a lot of stuff he no longer wore….

  Jessie was determined to give Sammy her savings, which amounted to more than forty dollars; Poo would probably hang on to his new bat, but would give his brother his catcher’s mitt and teach him to play softball; he was incredulous that Sammy didn’t know how to play softball….

  He couldn’t let the day end without talking to his boy.

  “Hey,” he said, when Dooley came to the phone.

  “Hey, yourself!”

  He heard the happiness in Dooley’s voice.

  “Just wanted to call and say how glad I am for today.”

  “Yes, sir. Me, too. I hate to go back Monday.”

  “I know. When you come home for Thanksgiving, maybe we can get Sammy to come, too.” He felt an unexpected knot in his throat.

  “He’s got bad teeth.”

  “Yes.”

  “Maybe somehow we could get his teeth fixed, like Miss Sadie left money to fix mine.”

  “We can probably work that out.” What a great idea. “Can you spare the time to swing by on Monday, on your way to Georgia? I should have Cynthia home a few minutes after twelve. You can have lunch with us, fill up on Puny’s macaroni and cheese.”

  “OK. Great.”

  “Terrific.”

  “You know when you were asking me what Reba Sanders is like?”

  “Yes.”

  “I forgot to tell you something.”

  “Ah.”

  “She’s beautiful. Really beautiful.”

  “I’d like to meet her sometime. Which reminds me—I saw someone beautiful today.”

  “Who?”

  “Lace Harper.”

  Silence.

  “Don’t hold her car against her, son. She’s worth more than that. Far more. Remember the day Barnabas got hit? God enabled you to save his life. But you couldn’t have done it without Lace.

  “Remember how she pitched in?” He was filled with emotion at the memory of his stricken dog, lying helpless in the street and bleeding from a wound in the chest cavity as his master stood by, more helpless still. Dooley had known exactly what to do, while Lace, leaning only on courage and raw instinct, assisted him as if trained.

  “I feel the greatest gratitude and pride toward you both.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Dooley had heard him; he felt the arrow hit its mark.

  So, maybe he was meddling, but he felt good about it. One thing he would not do is tell Dooley about Guber. He remembered Dooley once saying how much he wanted a brown Lab. Dooley might hear about the puppy from someone else, but no, indeed, he would not hear it from yours truly.

  Uncle Billy Watson lay in his bed at the rear of the Mitford town museum, next to his wife of more than a half century.

  He heard her snoring, and could plainly see the glow of the street lamp through the window, yet in some way he couldn’t figure, he wasn’t lying in his bed at all.

  He was standing barefooted by the train track in a bright cove of Turncoat Mounta
in, listening for the whistle and watching the hawks soar and dip on unseen waves of thermal.

  Yesterday he’d stood by the track in the very same place, and waited for the log train to come roaring through, blasting cinders and noise, power and heat on its way to Mortimer, fourteen miles south.

  The train wouldn’t even slow down here, nossir, this wasn’t even a wide place in the road, but something wonderful could happen anyhow, something nearly about as good as the train grinding to a stop and the conductor leaning out the window and hollering, “Want a ride, Little Billy?”

  His uncle, who helped the conductor, had several times in the past throwed him a packet from the train—though nothing in the past had ever matched the plain wonder of the little tin box that landed in his hands yesterday.

  He remembered the first time his uncle throwed something out the train window. It was a note weighted with a small stone and tied with twine. According to what his mama read off to him, the note said:

  Little Billy, I see you standin by the trak ever day wavin & think of your mama and how I haint seen my baby sister in two year. one day ill get off in mortimer & walk back to visit yall. be a good boy help your mama. yrs truly uncle joe.

  One time it was hard candy wrapped in a handkerchief that was none too clean.

  Another time it was a pair of work shoes—but they was way yonder too little. He’d worn them anyhow, they’d near about crippled both feet, then passed them on to Maisie. His little sister had wore the shoes all day and slept in them at night, even though they was about two years this side of a good fit.

  It was always a happy time standing there by the track, even if his uncle wasn’t on the train, or if he maybe waved and didn’t throw nothing down; it didn’t matter. It made him swimmy-headed just to stand there and let that blast of heat run by him, scorching his bones and rattling his teeth ’til he sometimes hollered for pure joy.

  Whatever was throwed out, he never messed with it right there by the track. He as good as shut his eyes and run all the way home about three mile, before he’d let it enter his mind what he was toting.