by Jan Karon
At Hope House, Louella Baxter Marshall rolled onto her right side, heaved herself up, and sat on the edge of the bed.
“Merry Christmas, Miss Sadie! Merry Christmas, Moses, honey. Merry Christmas, my sweet boy in heaven! Merry Christmas, Mama!”
A string of lights twinkled on a red poinsettia on her windowsill; thirty-two Christmas cards were Scotch-taped to her doorframe. It was a nice Christmas, yes, it was, and, about three o’clock, she would put on her new cherry lipstick and a dab of eye shadow in a color that looked good with her skin, and the nurse would help zip her blue dress with the long sleeves. Then she would wrap the little something she’d bought for Father Tim and Miss Cynthia, who were nearly as close as kinfolk, and her little preacher, Scott Murphy, would carry her off to the Kavanaghs’ for a fine dinner.
“Miss Louella, are you talkin’ to yourself this mornin’?”
“I’m wakin’ myself up. Merry Christmas!”
“Merry Christmas to you! We got a big snow in th’ night, and it’s still comin’.”
Louella did not care for snow, and refused to recognize this observation.
“Are you ready for a nice breakfast this mornin’?”
“What is it, honey?” She knew they tried hard, but she didn’t think much of the victuals at Miss Sadie’s rest home.
“It’s turkey sausage with scrambled eggs, and one of your nice biscuits.”
“You take th’ sausage on back an’ leave me th’ biscuit an’ eggs.” Sausage from a turkey! What was the world comin’ to? “An’ when you step down to Miss Pattie’s room, would you carry this?”
Louella placed a small gift, tied with a red ribbon, on the tray. “I ain’t got but one visit in my bones t’day.”
“Yes, ma’am, Miss Louella.”
“An’ don’t let me go off an’ forget my pan of rolls from th’ kitchen.”
“No, ma’am, I won’t. You want this little string of lights turned off?”
“No, I don’t. I want it left on ’til Christmas is over.”
“That would be tomorrow,” said Nurse Austin, who hated to see electricity wasted in broad daylight.
“No, honey, Christmas ain’ over ’til midnight on January six.”
“Is that right!” said Nurse Austin, who was accustomed to residents with memory problems and general confusion.
One mile north of the Mitford monument, Old Man Mueller sat at his breakfast table in the unpainted house surrounded by a cornfield, and, with his dentures soaking in a jar by the bed, devoured a large portion of the cake Esther and Gene Bolick had brought him last night on Christmas Eve.
He didn’t have any idea why they would bring him a cake every Christmas, as he hardly knew them or anybody else at that rock church on Main Street. All he knew is, if one year they forgot and didn’t show up, he’d set down and bawl like a baby.
His dog, Luther, who was known to have a total of 241 separate freckles on his belly, stood and placed his paws on the table, gazing solemnly at his master.
“Don’t be givin’ me th’ mournful eye,” said Old Man Mueller. He dragged the cake box over, cut a good-size piece, slapped it into an aluminum cake pan, and set the pan on the floor.
“There!” he said. “An’ Merry Christmas to y’r brute self.”
“Bill Watson!”
“That’s m’ name, don’t you know.”
“You’re the best ol’ Santy ever was.”
“I ain’t no Santy! What makes you think such as that?”
“I have two eyes in my head, and a brain!”
He had no idea what to reply to such a statement.
In her slippers and robe, Miss Rose shuffled to the chair by the window where he sat with his cane between his knees, watching the snow top off the monument.
She leaned down and laid her head on his, and put her arms around his neck. “You’ve always been my good ol’ Santy,” she said.
He patted her bony arm with an inexpressible happiness.
“An’ always will be,” he replied. “Always will be.”
In the study of the yellow house on Wisteria Lane, an e-mail rolled into Father Tim’s mailbox.
<8 lbs 9 oz
<4 o’clock this morning.
Even on this gray, snowbound morning, the dining table in the yellow house looked festive and expectant. Sitting on a heavy linen cloth were a low vase of yellow roses and a ham platter decorated with exotic birds, which Cynthia had found in a long-ago ramble through New England. On the sideboard, the Kavanagh family silver gleamed in a shaft of early light.
Father Tim was awake, as was his wife, though they hadn’t climbed into bed until after three o’clock.
“I thought I’d never go to sleep,” said Cynthia.
“It was the excitement,” said Father Tim.
“Plus the caffeine! I drank coffee yesterday afternoon with the Methodists. Will I never learn?”
He yawned. “Wait ’til we get some Irish coffee in you.”
“Who do you think it was, Timothy?”
“Who what was?”
“The stable. Who do you think did it?”
“I don’t know. I almost don’t want to know.”
They lay together, happy and exhausted, like two spoons in a drawer.
“It’s all a miracle,” she whispered.
“Yes!” he said. “To think that you’d come to take me to lunch just after Fred carried the box with the broken angel to the alley! Truth really is stranger than fiction.”
She had her go at yawning. “I parked behind the Oxford and walked up the alley and, nosey me, looked into that box sitting on the garbage can. When I saw her lovely face, I knew at once I wanted her. I’d worked with plaster years ago, and believed I could make her whole.
“I brought it home and thought, Timothy gave Hélène his beautiful bronze angel, I want to do this for him. Because if I could do it, it would represent the very reason Christ was born. He came to put us back together, and make us whole.”
“Christmas is real,” he said. “It’s all true.”
“Yes,” she said. “It’s all true.
“Merry Christmas, my love.”
“Merry Christmas, dearest.”
“By the way,” he said. “What was that noxious smell coming from your workroom?”
“Auto body putty! The perfect solution for putting together all those smashed pieces.”
She snuggled her head into the crook of his arm. “You know, Timothy—since the table is set and most of the cooking is done, and since we got to bed so late and it’s still so early, and since no one is coming until four, and since I hardly ever get to do it . . .”
“Spit it out, Kavanagh.”
“ . . . I’m going back to sleep!”
“Wonderful idea! And since Barnabas went out at two-thirty, and since the ham is glazed and the fire is laid and the egg nog is done and the front steps are salted, I’ll join you!”
He punched up his pillow and pulled the covers to their chins, and held his wife closer.
After all, it was Christmas.
“And the child grew, and waxed strong in spirit, filled with wisdom: and the grace of God was upon him.”
Luke 2:40, KJV
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s Imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
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First published in in the United States of America by Viking Penguin,
a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.2005
Published in Penguin Books 2008
Copyright © Jan Karon, 2005
Illustrations copyright © Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 2005
All rights reserved
“Let the Stable Still Astonish” by Leslie Leyland Fields, appearing in Christmas: An Annual Treasury (Augsburg Fortress, Minneapolis, 1995).
PUBLISHER’S NOTE
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
eISBN : 978-1-440-63296-9
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For my sister and brothers,
Brenda Wilson Furman, Barry Dean Setzer,
and Phillip Randolph Setzer,
who helped me become better
than I might have been . . .
And in memory of Clarence Bush,
beloved younger brother of my grandmother
(Miss Fannie), who perished in World War I,
and all the brothers and sisters who have
given their lives in mortal conflict
and are lost to us forever.
Acknowledgments
James Davison Hunter; Colin Hunter; Kevin Coleman; Mac McClung; Ed Abernathy; Jessi Baker; Gloria Berberich; Brenda Hyson; Fr. Anthony Andres; Stewart Brown; Fr. Edwin Pippin; Cook’s Illustrated; Robert Mares; Betty Pitts; Tanya Faidley; Alex Heath; Bobbie Dietz; Kathy Campbell; Melissa Wait.
Lacey Wood; Wayne Erbsen; Bill Watson; Carol Hill; The Anglican Digest; Mike Thacker; Cheryl Lewis; Rick Moore; Joel Valente; Bonnie Setzer; Johanna Farmer; Mrs. Scott Newton, deceased; Susan Cunningham; Brenda Furman; Goldie Stargell; Lillian Ballard; John (J. D.) Diven; Martha Sanusi; Tal Bonham; Royce Elliott; Jeff Pozniak; Judy Austin; Marcelle Morel; Wendell Winn Jr.; David Vander Meulen; Mary Ann Odom.
Dr. Paul Klas; Dr. August Sanusi; Dave Archer; Charlene Norris; Dr. Chris Grover; Fr. Peter Way; Dr. Christopher Holstege; Can-dace Freeland.
Special thanks to: Bishop Keith Ackerman; Joann Ackerman; Brad Van Lear; Richard Rankin; Polly Hawkes.
Light from Heaven
If thou indeed derive thy light from Heaven, Then, to the measure of that heaven-born light, Shine, Poet! In thy place, and be content . . .
—WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Acknowledgements
CHAPTER ONE - A Winter Eden
CHAPTER TWO - The Vicar
CHAPTER THREE - Faithful Remnant
CHAPTER FOUR - Agnes
CHAPTER FIVE - Loaves and Fishes
CHAPTER SIX - Above the Cloud
CHAPTER SEVEN - Go Tell It
CHAPTER EIGHT - This Dark Hour
CHAPTER NINE - Keeping the Feast
CHAPTER TEN - So Shall Ye Reap
CHAPTER ELEVEN - A Clean Heart
CHAPTER TWELVE - Covered Dish
CHAPTER THIRTEEN - Flying the Coop
CHAPTER FOURTEEN - Hungry and Imperfect
CHAPTER FIFTEEN - Shady Grove
CHAPTER SIXTEEN - Cake
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN - A Full House
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN - Wisely Measures
CHAPTER NINETEEN - Bingo
CHAPTER TWENTY - A Living Fire
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE - Let the Stable Still Astonish
Afterword
CHAPTER ONE
A Winter Eden
The first flake landed on a blackberry bush in the creek bottom of Meadowgate Farm.
In the frozen hour before dawn, others found their mark on the mossy roof of the smokehouse; in a grove of laurel by the northwest pasture; on the handle of a hoe left propped against the garden fence.
Close by the pond in the sheep paddock, a buck, a doe, and two fawns stood motionless as an owl pushed off from the upper branches of a pine tree and sailed, silent and intent, to the ridge of the barn roof.
The owl hooted once, then twice.
As if summoned by its velveteen cry, the platinum moon broke suddenly from the clouds above the pond, transforming the water’s surface into a gleaming lake of molten pearl.
Then, clouds sailed again over the face of the moon, and in the bitter darkness, snowflakes fell thick and fast, swirling as in a shaken globe.
It was twelve minutes after six o’clock when a gray light rose above the brow of Hogback Mountain, exposing an imprint of tractor tires that linked Meadowgate’s hay barn to the cow pasture and sheep paddock. The imprints of work boots and dog paws were also traceable along the driveway to the barn, and back to the door of the farmhouse, where smoke puffed from the chimney and lamplight shone behind the kitchen windows.
From a tulip poplar at the northeast corner to the steel stake at the southwest, all hundred and thirty acres of Meadowgate Farm lay under a powdery blanket of March snow.
Cynthia Kavanagh stood in the warmth of the farmhouse kitchen in a chenille robe, and gazed out on the hushed landscape.
“It makes everything innocent again,” she said. “A winter Eden.”
At the pine table, Father Timothy Kavanagh leafed through his quote journal until he found the record he’d jotted down. “Unbelievable! We’ve had snow one, two, three, four . . . this is the fifth time since Christmas Eve.”
“Snow, snow, and more snow!”
“Not to mention dogs, dogs, and more dogs! It looks like somebody backed up to the door and dumped a truckload of canines in here.”
Following his customary daylight romp, Barnabas, a Bouvier-wolfhound mix and his boon companion of ten years, was drowned in slumber on the hearth rug; Buckwheat, an English foxhound grown long in the tooth, had draped herself over the arm of the sofa; the Welsh corgi, aptly named Bodacious, snored in a wing chair she had long ago claimed as her own; and Luther, a recent, mixed-breed addition to the Meadowgate pack, had slung himself onto his bed in the corner, belly up. There was a collective odor of steam rising from sodden dog hair.
“Ugh!” said his wife, who was accustomed to steam rising off only one wet dog.
Father Tim looked up from the journal in which he was transcribing notes collected hither and yon. “So what are you doing today, Kavanagh?”
Cynthia mashed the plunger of the French coffee press. “I’m doing the sketch of Violet looking out the kitchen window to the barn, and I’m calling Puny to find out about the twins—they’re days late, you know.”
“Good idea. Expected around March fourth or fifth, and here it is the fourteenth. They’ll be ready for kindergarten.”
“And you must run to Mitford with the shopping list for Dooley’s homecoming dinner tomorrow.”
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“Consider it done.”
His heart beat faster at the thought of having their boy home for spring break, but the further thought of having nothing more to accomplish than a run to The Local was definitely discouraging. Heaven knows, there was hardly anything to do on the farm but rest, read, and walk four dogs; he’d scarcely struck a lick at a snake since arriving in mid-January. Willie Mullis, a full-timer who’d replaced the part-time Bo Davis, lived on the place and did all the odd jobs, feeding up and looking after livestock; Joyce Havner did the laundry and cleaning, as she’d done at Meadowgate for years; Blake Eddistoe ran the vet clinic, only a few yards from the farmhouse door, with consummate efficiency; there was even someone to bush hog and cut hay when the season rolled around.
In truth, it seemed his main occupation since coming to farm-sit for the Owens was waiting to hear from his bishop, Stuart Cullen, who had e-mailed him before Christmas.
He had scratched his head throughout the month of January, trying to reckon what the challenge might be. In February, he’d called Stuart, attempting to gouge it out of him, but Stuart had asked for another couple of weeks to get the plan together before he spilled the beans.
Now, here they were in the middle of March, and not a word.