Jan Karon's Mitford Years

by Jan Karon

“Hi, everybody!” said Lace, “This is Guber. For gubernatorial.”

  Father Tim found Lace Turner a sight for sore eyes—her smile was lighting up the street.

  “Olivia and I are driving to Virginia in a couple of hours, I had to give Guber a long walk first.” She stooped and stroked her puppy’s head. “I hate to leave him.”

  Guber wriggled from under her hand and executed a couple of high leaps aimed at Dooley’s chest.

  “No, Guber! Down!” Lace tried controlling the puppy with the leash. “Down!”

  “Hey,” Dooley said to Guber.

  “No, Guber!”

  As Lace scooped the puppy into her arms, Father Tim glanced at Dooley, who was gazing at Guber’s mistress.

  “I’m glad you found your brother,” said Lace.

  “Thanks.”

  In Dooley’s blue eyes, Father Tim recognized desire, tenderness, dejection…hope. He turned quickly away, oddly ashamed to have seen the soul of his boy so utterly exposed.

  He knew he would never have to worry about Reba Sanders. No, indeed. Not at all.

  “Timothy, she’s done this before, surely you remember the time you came home looking like you’d been in a cat fight, trapped all night in that woman’s house, miles from any living soul…”

  “Roughly a mile and a half. Yes.”

  “…and now she’s done it again. Locking you in a room like that! What will she do next? I won’t have it, I won’t have it !

  “And that horrid henchman of hers, slinking around Mitford like some cat with a mouthful of feathers. Laundry! Laundry! Dry cleaning!”

  She was flinging the contents of her suitcase into piles on the carpet.

  “I never liked that woman, not for one second, why doesn’t she leave Mitford alone? She was never one of us, anyway, always so high and mighty and arrogant and prideful, as if we’re vermin to be trodden underfoot, and chasing my husband like a snake with her fangs dripping venom—”

  “Calm down, Kavanagh. Come and sit a minute.” He pulled her onto his lap in the wing chair. “It’s OK. She’s selling Clear Day, she says she despises Mitford. I believe we’ve seen the last of her.” He searched his heart to know whether he truly believed this.

  “But how can you say that? This was a low and malevolent trick. There’s bound to be some other malicious deceit up her sleeve, something far more dangerous than being locked with her in a room for an hour, though I can hardly think of anything worse than being imprisoned with that lawless and unrepentant witch on a broom!”

  What could he say?

  “Can’t we sue? Can’t we do something? Must we be two hapless victims waiting for the next strike?”

  “The thing in Kinloch worked out in the end. It’s nothing to sue over—what a turmoil that would cause.”

  “Timothy, I can’t sit on your lap all day like a child, I have things to do!”

  She tumbled off his lap and went back to her suitcase. “Laundry! Laundry! Dry cleaning! Medicine cabinet!”

  Pajamas, panty hose, a skirt, a pillbox—the air was alive with the contents of her suitcase.

  He slipped down to the kitchen.

  “What’s goin’ on upstairs?” asked Puny. “It sounds like Mr. Sherman advancin’ through Atlanta.”

  “You’re close,” he said.

  “Timothy! Your bishop here!”

  “Stuart! What does your doctor say? What’s the problem?”

  “Stress! The scourge of the postmodern horde. All the tests were great, actually, but my doctor insists on a new regime—diet, exercise, and rest. In any case, I have less than one short year to raise the rest of the capital, and I’m still determined to go into this project debt-free.”

  “Can’t someone else move and shake the cathedral project?”

  “Absolutely not! Would you turn your fondest dream over to someone else? Besides, if people are going to give money, they want to be asked by the guy in the pointed hat.”

  “Stuart, Stuart…”

  “Martha’s using a new cookbook, I’m walking every day and seeing the grandchildren on Tuesdays. I’m going to be fine. Now. You know this is the poorest diocese in the state. I need serious capital, Timothy.”

  Father Roland, Bishop Cullen…was there no end to it?

  “You have to know some bigwigs I don’t know,” said Stuart, “or maybe someone lost to the records of the diocesan filing cabinet. Lord’s Chapel always had its share of Florida money. Help me out here, brother—tell me again the name of that woman who was such a pest.”

  “Edith Mallory. I have no idea how to phone her—she has a home in Florida and a new place in Kinloch.”

  “Pat Mallory’s widow, right?”

  “Right.”

  “We can find her. Anybody else?”

  “I can’t think of anyone else. Shouldn’t you be taking it easy for a while?”

  “I am taking it easy. I’m supposed to lie down, every day at three o’clock.”

  Father Tim consulted his watch. “It’s ten after three, go lie down, for Pete’s sake.”

  “I am lying down.”

  “You call this lying down? This is fund-raising, this is nudging and nagging, this is work!”

  “The first three million came easy enough, but the last three is a stretch, it’s like squeezing blood from a turnip.”

  “You’re talking to a turnip right now, which shows how your prospects have dwindled. I’ll speak with Cynthia and we’ll send a check.”

  “Any idea how much?”

  “Not until I’ve talked with Cynthia. Remember the sermon you preached us before we married? The one on marital finances?”

  Stuart chuckled. “You’re a hard man.”

  “Worse has been said.”

  “When are you coming my way?” asked Stuart. “I’d like to see your face.”

  “Soon, brother, soon. I’ll come and let you drag me over that wind-whipped cow pasture again.”

  “I’d like nothing better. I want you to see the plans; it will be wonderful, my friend, wonderful! There’ll be nothing else like it in the whole of America. God will be honored in our log cathedral; I have every confidence He’ll be pleased.”

  “Are people warming to the idea?”

  “Oh, yes! Most are beginning to understand that a cathedral is a center for liturgical life, a space for music and worship and prayer and coming together. I believe the popish image is slowly, I repeat slowly, wearing away, and there’s growing excitement about the choir school.”

  “You’re faithfully in my prayers, Stuart.”

  “As you are in mine. And look—when you come, bring Cynthia. I’d like to see her beautiful face into the bargain.”

  “She’s a treasure.”

  “I knew it before you did!”

  “Always hogging the credit. Just like a bishop.”

  They laughed together, at ease. Few things in life were more consoling than an old friendship in which all the hair, as in the story of the velveteen rabbit, had been rubbed off.

  Happy Endings’ rare book business was definitely growing, as Hope could see by last month’s sales records. She would e-mail everything to the owner by the end of the day, and would look for Helen’s usual single-word e-mail reply of Bravo! to a strong bottom line. In this case, Hope thought she could count on a rare double bravo, considering that the dismal Mountain Month promotion had not impacted overall sales.

  She went to the room where George was working at the computer.

  “We had a great month!” she said as he glanced up. “You’re doing a wonderful job.”

  She thought he appeared stricken, somehow, by this declaration. She had noticed for days that he was unusually quiet, even distant.

  “Thank you,” he said. He stood and looked at her in a way he had never looked at her before. “There’s something I need to tell you.”

  She stepped back, as if fearing a blow, then sat down in the rickety chair she’d once dragged to Happy Endings from the Collar Button Dumpster.


  “I’m going to be leaving,” he said.

  Leaving? She tried to speak the word aloud, but could not.

  “I wanted to wait until after your bookkeeping was done. I know how you dislike doing it.”

  “Leaving,” she said.

  “I’m going back to prison.”

  Tears welled in her eyes, she who had never wept until these last weeks. “I don’t understand.”

  “I’ve known for some time that my coming here wasn’t what I was supposed to do. Let me put it another way: I was supposed to come to Mitford, it was vitally important for me to come, but I can’t stay. I didn’t know that in the beginning, but as I came to know it and pray about it, God put a call on my heart to go back into the prison system, into ministry.”

  “Ahhh,” she said.

  “I can never thank you enough for giving me a job and trusting me to handle it.”

  She shrugged. “It was nothing.”

  “I can never thank you enough for the way you stood up for me when people made snide remarks. You have great character, Hope, and I’m grateful.”

  She had always thought character something old-fashioned, out of a book, something no one seemed to bother having anymore, but if it meant so much to George…

  “Thank you,” she said.

  “I’ll be sorry to leave.”

  “Oh,” she said, hearing a disgusting bit of whine in her voice.

  “I’m going to Connecticut—first there’s a training program, then I’ll be working in ministry at a federal penitentiary.

  “In the eight years I served time, I saw men who had no hope come to trust in the one true hope. I saw families rebuilt and lives changed in ways no one could have dreamed—but not every life.

  “I remember the nine o’clock lockdown, we had five minutes to get to our cells. For a lot of inmates, this was payback time—a time when the dark night of the soul devoured them alive, while I went into my cell with a Brother, a Friend, a Confidant. No matter how tough it got, I had that consolation, that power—I had everything, I could make it.”

  She let her breath out in a long, slow, unconscious sigh.

  “With God’s help, I’ll be serving as assistant chaplain—if I can get through the red tape.”

  “You can do it, George! If He’s going to help you, He can certainly do something about the red tape.”

  “There you go, living up to your name.” He laughed, tears shining in his eyes. “I’ll be here for two more weeks, if you’ll have me. I’ll show you how I’ve been handling your Internet sales, and help out any way I can. Of course, you can’t manage the store and the rare book business, too. I’m praying God will send the right person.”

  “I think…” She drew a deep breath.

  “What do you think?”

  “I want to tell you something.” She was afraid to tell him, but it was important. “I thought I was…” This was hard, and embarrassing.

  “I thought I was falling in love with you, and then…I don’t know what happened, it had something to do with really falling and landing on all those books, because after that I realized how much I value you as a friend. I knew that, more than anything, I was grateful for your kindness to me.” She drew a deep breath again and smiled as he sat on the edge of the desk and looked at her, seeming relieved about this, about everything.

  “I felt comfortable with you after the fall, I wasn’t afraid anymore. I want to tell you again how I’ll never forget the way you spoke my name when I was lying in the window.”

  She saw the way his eyes looked into hers as she spoke, saw some joy in them that moved her.

  “I truly have begun to hope,” she said. “I feel there’s something more for me, for my life. I can’t explain it, I don’t know what it is. But I do know that I’m glad for you, George. I think I can honestly say I’m happy you’ll be leaving.”

  He moved from the desk, pulled his chair close to hers, and sat down, leaning forward.

  “Did you know your name is everywhere in the Bible?”

  “No,” she said. “I don’t read the Bible. I tried once because it’s said to be great literature, but Mr. Wordsworth and Miss Austen seemed more accessible. And Mr. Wodehouse was loads more fun.”

  He laughed a little; she was consoled by the sound of it.

  “Then you couldn’t know that He’s called the God of hope.”

  She felt an odd excitement, something like a child might feel….

  “In the letter to the Romans, Paul wrote, ‘Now the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, that you may abound in hope, through the power of the Holy Spirit.’”

  “Abound…,” she said, liking the word.

  “I trust that one day you’ll come to believe, and that He’ll fill you with joy and peace in your believing. That’s how your hope will come to abound, to grow a thousand times over. I pray for that daily.”

  “But I don’t want you to pray for me, remember?”

  “I know.” He rolled his chair back to the computer. “By the way, I’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t say anything to Father Tim until I see him on Wednesday.”

  “I promise. Does Harley know?”

  “I told him last night.”

  She nodded and turned to leave the room.

  “Hope?”

  “Yes?”

  “It occurs to me that I’ve also seen a building named after you.”

  “Really?” she said, laughing.

  “Hope House. Have you ever been up to Hope House?”

  “Never!”

  “Over their door, engraved in limestone, you’ll find this: ‘Let thy mercy, O Lord, be upon us, according as we…hope in thee.’” His grin was warmly ironic.

  “I’ll be darned,” she said, grinning back. “We’d better get to work, or next month we won’t have any sales at all to report.”

  The rolls were coming out of the oven when the phone rang. “Hello!” he said, decked out in a matched pair of oven mitts.

  “Father! It’s Marion Fieldwalker, I have news that deserves better than e-mail!”

  “I’m all ears.”

  “Junior and Misty have a baby boy! Four o’clock this afternoon!”

  “Thanks be to God!”

  “You’ll never guess its name!”

  “Jedediah?” Nobody seemed to used the “iahs” these days.

  “It’s Timothy! Named after your own good self.”

  He was dumbfounded. No one had ever been named after him, as far as he knew.

  “Great news, Marion! Give them my congratulations, we’ll send a gift right away.”

  After hanging up the phone, he turned to his dog. “Junior and Misty Bryson, you remember them, they had a baby boy!” Barnabas cocked his head to one side. “Named Timothy,” he said proudly. “After me.”

  He took off the mitts and raced to the bottom of the stairs.

  “Cynthia! Junior and Misty had a baby boy.”

  “Lovely!” she said, appearing at the top of the stairs in a chenille robe she confessed to have owned since Watergate.

  “Dinner’s ready. His name is Timothy.”

  “Timothy! My favorite!”

  “Named after me.”

  “Congratulations, dearest, what an honor.” She blew him a kiss.

  “Would you mind if I come down in this old robe you hate with a passion?”

  “Of course not. If I had time, I’d get into that old robe of mine you hate with a passion.”

  “Timothy Bryson,” he said to himself as he went to the kitchen to serve their plates. “Timothy Bryson! A fine name.”

  His travel-worn wife was devouring the salmon roulade as if she hadn’t eaten in weeks.

  “Heavenly!” she murmured. “Divine!”

  “Thank you.” His cheeks grew warm with pleasure. “I got the recipe from Avis.”

  “Perfection!”

  He’d nearly forgotten her boundless enthusiasm, it was wondrous to have it again, he’d been barren without her….


  She peered at him over the vase of late-blooming roses. “It’s no wonder women chase after you, Timothy.”

  “Now, Kavanagh…”

  “It’s true. You’re handsome, charming, thoughtful, sensitive—and you can cook! The very combination every woman dreams of. However…” She patted her mouth with her starched napkin and went after another forkful of wild rice. “Do remember this….”

  “Yes?”

  “You’re mine.”

  He laughed.

  “All mine.”

  “Amen,” he said.

  “Totally, completely, absolutely mine, just like it says in the marriage service.”

  “I vowed so once, I vow so again.”

  “So watch it, buster.”

  “Consider it done,” he said, grinning like an idiot. He loved it when she talked like that.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Even to the Dust

  “Does it have to be used in the lap?”

  “Of course not! I use mine in my lap because there’s nowhere else to put it when I work in your study. What a question!”

  Emma rolled her eyes as if he were the dunce of the millennium. The computer salesman stared at the ceiling as if counting the acoustic tiles.

  Why did he have to do this, anyway? He’d rather go out in the yard and eat worms.

  He walked to Winnie Ivey Kendall’s house, formerly Oliva Harper’s mother’s house, and more recently the house where Miss Sadie and Louella had lived before Miss Sadie died. Musical chairs!

  He’d been here to a hat party, he’d visited Olivia in that terrible hour before her heart transplant, he’d come to see Miss Sadie the day she hung up her car keys, and now he was paying a call on Winnie’s brother, also his retired barber. Indeed, there was an ever-changing drama behind every door on which a priest knocked.

  Joe Ivey opened the door, unshaven, barefoot, and in his pajamas.

  “Just dropping by to get a little taken off the sides,” said Father Tim.

  Joe didn’t find this humorous.

  “I won’t stay but a minute, just wanted to see how you’re pushing along.”

  Joe hobbled to the sofa, where a pillow and blankets awaited. He lay down, leaving his caller to shift for himself. “I’m makin’ it.”