Jan Karon's Mitford Years

by Jan Karon

  “I saw him on the street yesterday. He suggested we meet him down at the tea shop.”

  “J.C.’s hangin’ out at th’ tea shop?” Mule’s eyebrows shot skyward.

  “Actually, he hasn’t had the guts to go there yet—he’s been packing a sandwich—but he said he’d do it if we’d go with him.”

  “Percy won’t like us goin’ down th’ street.”

  “Right. True.” The owner of the Grill thought he also owned his regulars. One underhanded meal at another eatery was grimly tolerated, but two was treason, with scant forgiveness forthcoming.

  “I double dare you,” said Mule.

  Father Tim dipped his toast into a poached egg and considered this. Buying the crèche had made him feel slightly reckless. . . .

  “I will if you will,” he said, grinning.

  At the Oxford, he and Fred unpacked the last of the figures and lined them up along the far wall of the back room. “What do you think?” he asked Fred.

  Looking soberly at the lineup, Fred pondered his reply for some time. “Wellsir, you’ve got your work cut out for you.”

  Two angels, one with a missing wing. A camel with a single ear. Two sheep minus tails, and the whole flock painted a deadly chalk white. A donkey painted black, eyes and all, and looking like a lump of coal. One shepherd in decent repair, with the exception of damage to a hand that had removed three fingers; the other shepherd painted a wretched iron gray—skin, robes, shoes, and all.

  The three kings had hardly fared better. In what biblical scholars generally conceded was a two-year journey to the Child, one fellow had lost a nose, another was missing part of his crown, and all were painted something akin to a mottled, industrial teal. What could Andrew have been thinking?

  The Virgin Mary’s bright red robe with orange undergarments was a definite redo, and indeed, the angels’ gear was hardly an improvement—both wore robes in a ghastly saffron color, only a shade removed from the hue of their skin. One needn’t be Leonardo da Vinci to see that the whole parcel needed redemption, save for the Babe, whose figure in the attached manger was amazingly unharmed, and not badly painted.

  “Carved wood,” said Andrew, peering with a loupe at a section of the small figure. “Not plaster, as I’d thought. Original paint surface, with gilt overlay. Given the wear on the gilt, perhaps mid- to late nineteenth century.”

  “So what do you think?” asked Father Tim, craving assurance.

  “I think that as soon as I hear back from my restoration contact in England, we should get started . . . begin at the beginning!”

  “Aha,” he said, feeling a dash weak in the knees.

  He and Mule legged it south toward the tea shop, adrenaline pumping. Cynthia Kavanagh knew what he was up to today, and had already gotten her laugh out of it. Next, the whole town would be hee-hawing—with the exception, of course, of Percy Mosely.

  In the meantime, they were Lewis and Clark, heaving off to explore a vast and unknown territory.

  “You be Lewis,” said Father Tim. “I’ll be Clark.”

  “Huh?”

  “And look at the timing! Cynthia says the tea shop is now serving real food, not just little sandwiches with no crusts. There’s a soup of the day and dessert made in their own kitchen.”

  Mule looked skeptical. “Tryin’ to win over th’ male market, is what I heard.”

  “And see?” said Father Tim. “It’s working!”

  Dear Hope,

  I was so happy when you were born. We brought you home from the hospital in a little white outfit I had knitted.

  We all suffered during the years after your father died and you girls had to do without many things you wanted but you didn’t complain.

  Remember when you won that baking contest and bought me a wedding band because I lost mine in the laundry so long ago? I don’t think I ever loved you enough, and I am sorry. I hope you will forgive me. Because you said you know God now, I hope you will be able to.

  I am leaving each of you girls $5,000 in addition to the house. Your daddy’s mother left me a little something when she died and I never touched it even when we needed it for your college education. I always had a feeling you would need it more for something else.

  I’m afraid I won’t make it but please don’t cry over me. You girls be good to each other.

  Love, Mother

  Dictated to Amanda Rush, R.N.

  “I left my glasses back at th’ office,” said J.C. “Somebody read me what’s on this pink menu deal.”

  “Let’s see.” Mule adjusted his glasses. “Chicken salad with grapes and nuts. That comes with toast points.”

  “Toast points? I’m not eatin’ toast points, much less anything with grapes and nuts.”

  “Here’s a crepe,” said Father Tim, pronouncing it in the French way. “It’s their house specialty.”

  “What’s a krep?” asked Mule.

  “A thin pancake rolled around a filling.”

  “A filling of what?” J.C. wiped his forehead with a paper napkin.

  “Shredded chicken, in this case.”

  “A pancake rolled around shredded chicken? Why shred chicken? If God wanted chicken to be shredded . . .” “I could gnaw a table leg,” said Mule. “Let’s get on with it.”

  “I can’t eat this stuff. It’s against my religion.”

  “Whoa! Here you go,” said Father Tim. “They’ve got flounder!”

  “Flounder!” J.C. brightened.

  “Fresh fillet of flounder rolled around a filling of Maine cranberries and baked. This is quite a menu.”

  “I don’t trust this place. Everything’s rolled around somethin’ else. No way.”

  “Look,” said Father Tim. “Aspic! With celery and onions. Hit that with a little mayo, it’d be mighty tasty.”

  J.C. rolled his eyes.

  “I was always fond of aspic,” said Father Tim.

  “You would be,” snapped J.C. “Let’s cut to the chase. Is there a burger on there anywhere?”

  “Nope. No burger. . . . Wait a minute . . . organic turkey burger! There you go, buddyroe.” Mule looked eminently pleased.

  “I’m out of here,” said J.C., grabbing his briefcase.

  “Wait a dadblame minute!” said Mule. “You’re th’ one said meet you here. It was your big idea.”

  “I can’t eat this stuff.”

  “Sure you can. Just order somethin’ an’ we’ll have th’ kitchen pour a bowl of grease over it.”

  “This kitchen never saw a bowl of grease, but all right—just this once. I’m definitely not doin’ this again.”

  “Fine!” said Mule. “Great! Tomorrow we’ll go back to th’ Grill, and everybody’ll be happy. I personally don’t take kindly to change. This is upsettin’ my stomach.”

  “I’m not goin’ back and let that witch on a broom order me around.”

  “Hey, y’all.”

  They turned to see a young woman in an apron, holding an order pad. Father Tim thought her smile dazzling.

  “Hey, yourself,” said Father Tim.

  “I’m Lucy, and I’ll be your server today.”

  “All right!” said Mule.

  “What will you have, sir?” she asked J.C.

  “I guess th’ flounder,” grunted the editor. “But only if you’ll scrape out th’ cranberries.”

  “Yessir, be glad to. That comes with a nice salad and a roll. And since we’re taking out the cranberries, would you like a few buttered potatoes with that?” Father Tim thought J.C. might burst into tears.

  “I would!” exclaimed the Muse editor. “And could I have a little butter with th’ roll?”

  “Oh, yessir, it comes with butter.”

  “Hallelujah!” exclaimed Mule. “An’ I’ll have th’ same, but no butter with th’ roll.”

  “Ditto,” said Father Tim. “With a side of aspic.”

  “No, wait,” said Mule. “Maybe I’ll try it with th’ cranberries. But only if they’re sweet, like at Thanksgiving. . . .”
<
br />   “Don’t go there,” said J.C. “Bring ’im th’ same thing I ordered.”

  Father Tim didn’t mention to his lunch partners that Hessie Mayhew and Esther Bolick were sitting on the other side of the room, staring at them with mouths agape.

  “Seems to me,” said Mule as they hotfooted north on Main Street, “that if they’re goin’ for th’ male market, they’d change those pink curtains.”

  He supposed he should begin with a sheep, maybe the one painted with the iniquitous grin. . . .“Pink isn’t so bad, all things considered. We have a pink bedroom.”

  “There’s no way I’m believin’ that.”

  “Cynthia calls it Faded Terra-Cotta.” . . . He could earn his wings with the small stuff. . . .

  “Pink is pink,” said Mule. “Th’ least they could do is take th’ ruffles off.”

  “That’s a thought.” What kind of paint would they be using? And brushes? And where would they get such items? He had a yard-long list of questions. . . .

  “An’ maybe change th’ color of th’ menu to, say, the color of my sweater.”

  “Garage-sale brown? I don’t think so.”

  . . . Or maybe he should begin with the shepherds, so they could be put in place the first day of Advent. . . .

  “I thought th’ food was pretty good,” said Mule.

  “Me, too.” . . . He’d have to hustle. . . .

  “But overpriced. Way overpriced. That’s why th’ male demographic has steered clear of th’ place. We’ve got more sense than to shell out six ninety-five for a piece of flounder.”

  “We just did.” He saw the look of amazement on Cynthia’s face—she was dazzled, she was thunderstruck. . . .

  “Yeah, but I won’t be goin’ back, will you?”

  “We’ll see.”

  “So what’re you doin’ th’ rest of th’ day?”

  What could he say? That he was starting work on the crèche? He couldn’t say that. Nor could he say that in the evening, he’d be working on his essays. Mule Skinner wouldn’t know an essay if he met it on the street.

  “A little of this and a little of that. The usual.”

  “Me, too,” said Mule, who certainly didn’t want it known that he was headed home for a long nap.

  He looked at his watch. If he scurried, he could trot to Happy Endings and get back to the Oxford for an hour and a half before picking up Cynthia at the car dealership in Wesley.

  “Any books with the Nativity scene, or about Nativity scenes in general, or . . . like that?”

  “No, sir, not right now,” said Hope, “but our Christmas stock is starting to come in.”

  Margaret Ann, who moused for her bed and board, stood up from the sales counter and stretched, then padded over to him and licked his hand. Though he wasn’t immensely fond of cats, they seemed to take to him with alacrity.

  “I’d like to see, for example, what color the robes of angels might be.” Hadn’t he received literally thousands of Christmas cards over the years, many featuring angels? Yes. But could he remember the fine particulars of their robes? No.

  “Robes of angels,” Hope said aloud, taking notes. “What else, Father?”

  “I’d like to see some wise men while I’m at it, and shepherds. A few camels and donkeys wouldn’t hurt, either.”

  “You’re having a Christmas tableau at your church?”

  “A tableau, yes, but not necessarily at church.” He could see, up front, that keeping this thing secret would have its pitfalls. He would have to be careful, always, to tell the truth, even while avoiding it.

  “I think I know just what you need. It’s a beautiful picture book with lots of artists’ renderings of the Holy Family and the Nativity. In color! Shall I order it for you?”

  Hope’s eyes were bright behind the lenses of her tortoiseshell-frame glasses.

  “Please! Would you? I need it ASAP.”

  “Consider it done!” she said, quoting one of his own lines. “I’ll have them ship it two-day air.”

  “While we’re at it, Hope, let me tell you how much Cynthia and I appreciate the great job you’re doing here. You’ve turned Happy Endings into a bookstore we’re all proud of.”

  Her eyes suddenly flooded with tears. “Thank you,” she whispered.

  “You and your sister, Louise, are faithfully in my prayers,” he assured her. “I’m sorry about the loss of your mother.”

  “Thank you,” she said again.

  “Let me pray for you.”

  “Yes.”

  He reached across the counter and took her hand, and held it.

  He thumbed through his engagement calendar with his right hand while holding a mug of hot tea in his left. A cold wind had come up, causing a branch of the red maple to lash against the guttering.

  Let’s see, he was celebrating at St. Paul’s on Sunday next, then at St. Stephen’s two weeks further. He could use a tad of help from his erstwhile secretary, but she was in Atlanta through Christmas, helping monitor her daughter’s high-risk pregnancy.

  They were racing toward the holidays, into the time when Dooley would be home from the University of Georgia, and Dooley’s long-lost younger brother, Sammy, would join them at the yellow house for Thanksgiving dinner. He sat back and closed his eyes, and warmed both hands on the mug.

  He remembered the first time he ever saw Dooley Barlowe—barefoot, unwashed, and looking for a place to “take a dump.” He chuckled. How could he ever have guessed that this thrown-away boy, then eleven years old and now twenty, would change his heart, his life, for all time? But Dooley wasn’t the only thrown-away Barlowe—three brothers and a sister had been let go by their mother, and it had long been his personal mission to find them all, to see the sundered nest made whole.

  On Thanksgiving Day, four of the five siblings would break bread together at the Kavanagh board. Only Kenny remained lost to them, and only God knew where he might be found.

  Uncle Billy Watson shuffled to the chair by the kitchen window and peered out to his yard at the north end of Main Street.

  The boys from town hall had come by to cut grass, but had jumped in their truck and roared off before he could holler at them to come hear his new joke. He’d found it in a periodical that Betty Craig brought, and had studied it out in the night when his wife’s snoring had kept him awake.

  He squinted through the panes of the upper sash.

  Th’ dern jacklegs had come through th’ yard a-flyin,’ an’ left th’ grass a-layin’ in rows ever’whichaway. Triflin’ is what it was, th’ way th’ town let th’ weeks go by between mowin’s, then was too shif’less t’ rake th’ leavin’s!

  He wouldn’t’ve told ’em ’is new joke, nohow.

  He clutched at his heart. There it was, flipping around like a catfish on a riverbank. “Lord, I’ve give up on them boys, don’t You know, but You ain’t. I hope You won’t give up on me, amen.”

  He fiddled with the window sash and finally raised it about a foot, then thumped into his chair and propped his cane against the wall. He figured if he sat here long enough, somebody would walk by on the street, and he’d call them over an’ fire off his joke.

  Trouble was, they didn’t nobody walk n’more; seem like every dadjing one of ’em had a vehicle, which they drove aroun’ th’ monument like they was goin’ to a Democrat barbecue. These days, about th’ only people a man could see a-walkin’ was preachers—Preacher Kavanagh with ’is big black dog, an’ Preacher Sprouse with ’is new dog that trotted sideways like a crab.

  Either more people needed t’ git ’em a dog—or more people needed t’ go into preachin’.

  Here it was October, an’ th’ trees was colorin’ up good since th’ rain. Pretty soon, Thanksgivin’ would be along, then hit’d be Christmas, don’t you know.

  He recollected th’ stockin’s him and Maisie used to git. He wished that one more time he’d git a stockin’ with a orange an’ a hard candy an’ maybe a little horse whittled out of a pine knot. Yessir, that’d be a treat.r />
  This year, he didn’t have no idea a’tall what to give Rose f’r Christmas. Ever’ year ’bout this time, he already had it studied out, which give him more’n two months to hand-make ’is present.

  For a good while, he’d built ’er a birdhouse, seein’ as she was tenderhearted about birds. They was sixteen or seventeen birdhouses he’d nailed around the yard over th’ years, but th’ town had tore ever’ one of ’em down when they fixed their two front rooms to be th’ museum.

  “Rotted!” was what the town boys had said.

  A man went down th’ street to Dora Pugh’s an’ got ’im a mite of lumber an’ nails an’ what all, an’ toted it home and built a fine birdhouse an’ painted th’ roof an’ all, an’ put a little peg under th’ hole so th’ bird would have a place to set an’ all, and what happens? Hit rots! They was no use to th’ whole dadjing business.

  It was queer th’ way Rose was s’ mean about ever’thing a man could think of, and then, come Christmas, she was google-eyed as a young ’un.

  More’n once she’d come over an’ hugged ’is neck.

  “What’s ’at f’r?” he’d ask.

  “For being Bill Watson!” she’d say, grinnin’ to beat th’ band.

  Of course, she’d also said, “Don’t you make me any more birdhouses, Bill Watson, do you hear?” Unlike hisself, Rose was educated. When she laid down the’ law, he always listened and tried to mind. That’s why he might as well git his mind off of birdhouses an’ onto somethin’ like . . . like what?

  B’fore ’is arthur had got s’ bad, he’d one year caned th’ bottom of ’er kitchen chair, an’ another year he’d made a little bread box with a knob he’d whittled in th’ shape of a squirrel.

  He searched around in his mind for something to do this year.

  But nossir, they wasn’t a single notion in ’is noggin. He shook his head to see if anything rattled; maybe his brain had rotted.

  He’d figure it out, somehow; he’d come up with somethin’. Hit would make ’is ol’ heart happy t’ have Rose huggin”is neck ag’in.