by Jan Karon
He rolled toward his wife, slipped his arm around her, and felt the deep, drowning mystery of sleep come upon him.
After the Morning Office, he prayed with Cynthia, then came to the kitchen and went about the business of laying the fire.
He squatted on the hearth and placed a loose network of cedar kindling in the still-warm grate above the coals. After adding three sticks of well-seasoned oak and striking a match to the fatwood, he watched the flames lick up, and listened eagerly to the crackle and snap of the cedar.
He stood then, content, warming his backside until Cynthia joined him in her favorite, albeit threadbare, robe, to begin their team effort over breakfast.
“So tell me the truth about the oven fries,” she said, buttering the toast.
“Good. Very good,” he said, poaching the eggs.
“I’m looking for outstanding!” she said, pouring the juice. “Next time I’ll brine the water.”
“Reading War and Peace would be simpler,” he said, mashing the plunger on the French press.
They sat and ate by the fire, receiving its benediction.
“Does he seem taller to you?” she asked.
“Six-two.”
“When do you think you might tell him?”
“I’ve never enjoyed hauling around secrets. But something tells me to wait.”
“I’ve always trusted you to know when the time is right.” She sipped her coffee. “His Jeep is a mess; he needs a car.”
“Agreed.”
“You could use money from the trust to buy him a car.... You wouldn’t have to reveal the extent of Miss Sadie’s gift until you’re ready.”
“I’ve been considering that.”
“I feel he should have something he really wants, not another used vehicle with someone else’s troubles thrown in.”
“What if he wants a BMW?”
“Lace has one. He might like one, too.”
“BMWs are fast.”
“I think he would be responsible.”
“I mean really fast.”
“Timothy, I love the little wrinkle that pops between your eyebrows when you worry. It’s sort of . . . cute.”
Cute! He’d never understood why others didn’t fret about the things that plagued him. Not only were BMWs fast, they cost more than some people’s houses; such a high-dollar car could give Dooley the big head; plus, the other students might hate his guts....
His wife leaned her head to one side and blasted him with the cornflower blue of her eyes. “‘Taste and see that the Lord is good,’ dearest, ‘happy are they who trust in Him.’”
“Preaching to me again, Kavanagh?”
“Psalm thirty-four,” she said, smiling at her husband.
He blew through the kitchen door from the woodpile, an icy wind at his back.
“I have some good news and some bad news,” she said.
“The bad first.” He trotted to the hearth, Barnabas at his heels.
“Joyce won’t be coming again for several months. Blockages in her arteries, she’ll need stents. The doctor says she shouldn’t be cleaning houses at her age.”
“Ah.” He lowered the wood onto the hearth. “I’m sorry to hear it. I’ll deliver a baked ham; we’ll keep her in our prayers.”
“Ready for the good news?”
“Always.”
“James just called. Everyone loved the watercolor of Violet looking out the window at the snow. I did it for a little mailing piece, and now they’d like to have twelve watercolors of Violet’s life in the country—for a wall calendar.
“Since I’m not writing a book these days, I thought it might be a wonderful idea. I’d give all royalties to the Children’s Hospital.”
“That’s a new wing on the building right there!”
“I didn’t give James an answer, yet; I wanted to see how you feel about it. I know you love it that I haven’t slaved over a drawing board since we came to Meadowgate. We’ve had such a lovely time out here in the sticks, with nothing pulling at us.”
He took off his jacket and tossed it on the window seat. “I want what you want, and I mean it.” He did mean it—even though he lost her for long intervals when she was working on a book. But this wasn’t a book.
“I’d like to do it,” she said. “I think it would be fun. Liberating, somehow.”
He sat in the wing chair and pulled her into his lap. “Violet chasing the guineas?”
“Wonderful! And how about Violet in the barn loft where we found the bantam nest?”
“Violet stuck in the chinaberry tree by the chicken coop!”
“Perfect!” she said. “Violet sunning herself at the smokehouse! Or better yet, perched on the roof of the smokehouse, peering out at the mountains.”
“Remember the time I had to fetch her down from your rooftop? While you went off to the country club to do the tango with Andrew Gregory?”
“The rhumba,” she said.
“So, how many months do we have so far?”
“January, February, March, April.”
“Terrific. Do it. Piece of cake.”
She smooched the top of his head. “It’s a dream come true, really. Doing watercolors, living in the country in a wonderful old house on a beautiful farm, without any responsibilities . . .”
“Walking the dogs,” he said, continuing the litany, “reading aloud by the fire ...”
“Hey.” Dooley stood in the doorway, in pajama bottoms and a tattered University of Georgia sweatshirt. He stretched and yawned hugely.
“Hey, yourself,” crowed Cynthia. “It’s twelve o’clock, you big lug.”
“Man, I never saw so many dogs piled on one bed, I had to get up and sleep on the couch in the library.” Barnabas shambled to Dooley, who gave him a good scratch behind the ear. “Hey, buddy, you’re in the doghouse for rootin’ me out last night.”
Cynthia trotted to the refrigerator and opened the door. “Breakfast or lunch?”
“Pie!” said Dooley.
“It’s Marge,” she whispered as he came in from the library. “Yes, Marge, I’m sorry, too. The doctor said she mustn’t even think of coming back for several months....
“Oh, no, I’m sure Timothy and I can keep the place straightened up, certainly nothing like Joyce has always done, but . . .
“Really, no, you mustn’t . . .
“But we couldn’t . . .
“The Flower Girls? They clean and wash windows and cook—the whole nine yards?
“I’m sure we won’t need any help, though. It’s just the two of us.
“Of course, yes, everything is lovely here. Lots and lots of snow since you left, but today should be bright, and warmer. Dooley’s here, I know he’d want me to send his love. How is Rebecca Jane? Speaking French? Yes, static on our end, too, very hard to hear . . .
“The Flower Girls, yes. The number is in your little red book? But only if things get desperate, which I can’t imagine . . .
“Love to Hal and Rebecca Jane, I think I’m losing you....
“Oui, bon soir, ma cherie!”
As he took his jacket off the peg, he heard Dooley’s size twelves on the stairs.
“Taking the dogs for a walk; how about coming along?”
“Sure. Then I’m checking the clinic to see what Blake has goin’ on.”
Dooley and Blake Eddistoe, Hal’s junior vet, had differing ideas about the practice of veterinary medicine. While Dooley preferred using more natural, noninvasive methods whenever possible, Blake inclined toward aggressive programs of drug treatment. No doubt Blake’s philosophy had worked, as he was well liked by Hal, whose four decades of experience wasn’t exactly chopped liver. In any case, Dooley and Blake would be working together this summer, and Father Tim prayed that the old, sore issues between the two would be resolved.
They huffed to the driveway and hooked a right toward the barn, passing Willie Mullis’s little house. From the kennel, Willie’s beagles loosed a fervent hue and cry as the two men and the farm dog
s trooped north into a stinging wind.
“Let’s cut by the tractor shed into that little field by the sheep,” said Father Tim. “I haven’t explored over there.”
Hoary pasture grass crackled under their feet; their breath formed clouds upon the air.
“I really like this place,” said Dooley.
“It’s your second home. Remember the first time we came out here, and Goosedown Owen bucked you off in the hog slop?”
Dooley laughed as they headed toward the woods, crunching through random patches of lingering snow. Beyond the fence, fourteen Dorset sheep lay under the run-in shed, chewing their cud.
“Do you and Cynthia like it?” asked Dooley.
“We feel like we’re on vacation, actually. But that can be ... sort of a problem....”
“What kind of problem?”
He felt a certain joy that Dooley was interested.
“I suppose I feel trifling sometimes. I’m used to being out there, doing what God called me to do.”
“Can’t you be out there ... out here?”
“I suppose I can, but ...”
Dooley looked at him, his blue eyes piercing.
“But I’ve been waiting for my marching orders, you might say. Bishop Cullen has something for me, but I haven’t heard anything yet.”
“You will,” said Dooley. He threw a stick for Bodacious. “Yo, Bo!”
“I will?”
“Yessir. People really need what you have to give.”
Father Tim pulled his knit cap over his ears. “Which is what?”
“God,” said Dooley. “You give people God.”
He felt moved by this, and genuinely contrite. Why had he been whining? He could get out there without the bishop’s seal of approval. What was he waiting for? His heart suddenly lifted up.
“Thanks, son, for your encouragement.” He grinned at the handsome, freckled boy who had come into his life—and changed it utterly.
Dooley studied him for a moment. “Umm, your hair is really long.”
“Yes, true.” And he didn’t have a clue what to do about it. He’d been barbered by everybody from an erstwhile house painter to a former Graceland security guard to a crazy woman in capri pants, and nothing ever seemed to work out for the long haul.
“Can Sammy come up and stay awhile this summer?”
“Of course! Absolutely” Dooley’s younger brother Sammy had disappeared with his father years ago. And though Sammy had at last been found, he refused to leave the unemployed, alcoholic Clyde Barlowe, alias Jaybird Johnson, with whom he lived in a trailer that had no phone or postal delivery. To make things more complex, Sammy was forced to visit Dooley and his Mitford siblings on the sly—never a good thing.
Dooley walked with his head down. “I think a lot about Kenny.”
“God knows exactly where he is, and one day, I believe He’ll send him to us.”
“Do you really believe that, or ...”
“Or what?”
“Or is it something you think you’re supposed to say because you’re a priest?”
“I really believe it. Have you forgotten our deal? The one we made before Christmas last year?”
“I guess I forgot.”
“We’ll keep thanking God for His providence in giving us Poo and Jessie and Sammy, and praying and expecting Him to lead us to Kenny.”
A small light returned to Dooley’s eyes.
“High five,” said Father Tim. The smack of their palms was crisp and clear on the frozen air.
“So! What kind of vehicle would you like to have?” Lord, have mercy ...
“A pickup.”
“Ah!” His breath released like air from a tire.
“Short bed. Crew cab. CD player. Leather seats. Tilt wheel. Cruise control ...” Dooley shot a sidelong glance at Father Tim to see how this was going down.
“No MG? No Mercedes?”
“For old people.”
“No BMW?”
“Too hot.”
He laughed, relieved, as they walked on. “I didn’t know there was such a thing as too hot for a college student.”
“It’s not cool to be too hot,” said Dooley.
Over there, between the oaks, a path leading into the woods ... a grand possibility for a springtime walk, thought Father Tim.
“What do you suppose this truck would cost?”
“Maybe thirty thousand.”
That’s what he’d paid for his two-bedroom house in Alabama when he was a curate all those years ago.
Dooley shoved his hands deeper into the fleece-lined pockets of his school jacket. “Six cylinders. Sliding rear window. Electronic shifter ...”
“Sounds like you’ve done your homework. Anything else?”
“Red.”
Father Tim laughed. “Color of your head,” he said, voicing their old joke.
They rounded the bend by a copse of trees, where the dogs burrowed their noses into the pungent leaf mold beneath the snow.
“Are you planning to, like, buy me one?”
“We definitely need to get you a good, safe vehicle. So ...” His voice trailed off as they walked.
He had memorized most of the letter Miss Sadie’s attorney had delivered to him after she died.
As you know, I have given a lot of money to human institutions, and I would like to give something to a human individual for a change.
I have prayed about this and so has Louella, and God has given us the go-ahead.
I am leaving Mama’s money to Dooley.
We think he has what it takes to be somebody. You know that Papa was never educated, and look what he became with no help at all. And Willard—look what he made of himself without any help from another soul.
Father, having no help can be a good thing. But having help can be even better—if the character is strong. I believe you are helping Dooley develop the kind of character that will go far in this world, and so the money is his when he reaches the age of twenty-one.
(I am old-fashioned, and believe that eighteen is far too young to receive an inheritance.)
I have put one and a quarter million dollars where it will grow and have made provisions to complete his preparatory education. When he is eighteen, the income from the trust will help send him through college.
I am depending on you never to mention this to him until he is old enough to bear it with dignity. I am also depending on you to stick with him, Father, through thick and thin, just as you’ve done all along.
Miss Sadie’s letter was mildly confusing—though the money was legally Dooley’s at the age of twenty-one, he was not to know about it until he could bear the responsibility with dignity.
They stopped to unlatch the gate.
“So?” asked Dooley. “You said ‘so.’ You’re starin’ a hole through me.”
“So, yes! We need to do something. But why a truck? What are you planning to haul around?”
“I’ll just be breakin’ it in for when I get out of vet school. By then, it’ll be totally right for haulin’ around a bunch of mangy ol’ mutts like this crowd.” Dooley threw another stick. “Git it, girl!”
Son, I have something important to tell you. When the time comes, yon’ll be able to buy your own building, have your own practice, and drive around in a brand-new truck, or even two ... Why didn’t he tell him right now, as they stood in the stinging cold by the gate? Holding this enormous secret inside felt as if he’d swallowed a watermelon.
“I don’t like riding in Lace’s car all the time.”
“Is that her idea?”
Dooley shrugged. “She likes my Jeep. But her car is warm in th’ winter and cool in th’ summer, and since th’ passenger door won’t open in th’ Jeep, she has to go in my side or ... crawl through th’ window.”
Dooley flushed to the very roots of his red hair. This was definitely an embarrassment to him, and Father Tim was beginning to feel a shame of his own.
“OK.” He gave his boy a clap on the shoulder. “We’
ll deal with it.”
“Soon?”
“Soon. Before you go back to school.”
Dooley beamed. But Father Tim saw in his eyes the faintest flicker of doubt and suspicion; it was a glimpse of the old Dooley who had been betrayed again and again.
“Tracy? Tim Kavanagh here,” he said to the trustee handling Dooley’s account. “Just wondering what our bottom line is these days—the after—tax value.
“I’ll hold. Sure. Thanks.”
He was taking a swig of tea when Tracy came back to the phone and gave him the numbers.
“Holy smoke!” He nearly spit the tea across the kitchen.
One million seven hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars.
“Well done!” he said, meaning it.
A strong wind keened around the farmhouse; they might have been crossing the Atlantic in a gale for all the rattling and groaning of hundred—year—old rafters and floorboards.
His wife lay next to him, peaceful as any lamb, while he tossed and turned and tried to settle his wayward imagination.
Winding mountain roads in both Georgia and North Carolina, the volume on the CD player cranked to the max, the cab and even the bed filled with his friends, six cylinders of torque under the hood; worst case scenario, Dooley, with little or no sleep, headed down the mountain on cruise control ...
“Timothy!” said his wife, reading his mind.
“Right!” he said, reading hers.
He turned over and buried his face in the pillow.
He’d been thinking.... What, after all, was so wrong with hanging loose, as he’d done these last few weeks? Wasn’t it the first time in his life, for Pete’s sake, that he’d ever hung loose? Why couldn’t he take one year after having served nearly forty? Why did he feel like a heel for not rising at five o’clock sharp as he’d done for decades and setting forth on his mount to joust among the rest of the common horde?
Hadn’t he dreamed for years of doing this very thing? Hadn’t he hankered for time to loll around, gabbing with his best friend and soul mate, reading whatever came to hand, walking in the frozen woods, watching 60 Minutes and even an occasional Turner Classic movie? And so what if he flipped over to the cooking channel once in a while, what was wrong with that? Nothing!