by Jan Karon
“Creosote. Wind blew down part of our chimney. We’re working on it. Do you have a family, Violet?”
“Oh, no, sir, I’m barren like in th’ Bible, an’ my sweet husband died when he was thirty-five.” She snapped her fingers. “Th’ Lord took ’im just like that. Heart attack. It run in ’is fam’ly.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I ain’t found nobody as sweet as Tommy O’ Grady ...”
“I’m sure.”
Violet’s face was bright with good humor. “But that’s not t’ say I ain’t tryin’!”
“What do you think ... so far?”
“I love that she wants to dry sheets on the line instead of in the dryer. But she is terribly vocal. When she was hanging the wash, it sounded exactly like she was ... yodeling.” Cynthia appeared puzzled. “But surely not.”
“Surely not.”
He noted that their milkmaid had stopped on the path from the clothesline to the porch, and was watching the guineas careen through the yard.
Father Tim’s grin was stretching halfway around his head as he watched Lloyd watch Violet watch the guineas. “Lloyd,” he said beneath his breath, “your eyes are out on stems.”
Lloyd turned a fierce shade of pink. “Way out,” he said, grinning back.
“It’s a whole other world in here!”
Cynthia peered at the canopy of interlacing tree branches above the farm track. Light and shadow dappled the track, which was still recognizable beneath the leaf mold.
He knew at once an infilling peace. “Wordsworthian!” he said, smitten. “A leafy glade! A vernal bower!”
At the foot of the bank to their left, the creek hurried on its journey to the New River.
Cynthia released a long breath. “I could sit down right here and be happy.”
He sneaked a glance at his watch. In an hour and a half, he would need to talk to his lawyer about the adoption papers.
“I saw that,” she said.
“Saw what?”
“You looked at your watch.”
“I did. Force of habit.”
“What a lovely little creek—why don’t we pitch our camp here? I’m too famished to explore before lunch. And look, darling, this gives us a wonderful view of the sheep paddock.”
Indeed, the view along the track opened out of the woods to the green meadow, with ewes and lambs grazing among the outcrop of rocks. Beyond the rocks, the fence line, and farther along, the rooftop of the farmhouse beneath a spreading oak.
Happy, he smoothed their intended place on the cushion of leaves and moss, and together they spread the quilt on a slope toward the creek.
She lay on the quilt and gazed up at the tracery of limbs against a blue sky. “Thank You, Lord!”
“Yes, thank You, Lord.”
As he sat beside her, she turned her head and looked at him, content. “Churchill said, ‘We’re always getting ready to live, but never living.’ We should have done this sooner.”
“True enough. And then there’s this one, by a good fellow named Henry Canby:
“ ‘Live deep instead of fast.’ ”
Birds called throughout the copse of trees. “When the brick dust gets too thick, let’s always remember to come here and do what Mr. Canby suggests.”
He unwrapped their sandwiches. “We can handle that.”
She picked something from the leaves. “A brown feather,” she said, examining it. “Someday I’d love to do a book about how things look under a microscope.What might we see if I made a slide of it?” She twirled the feather between her thumb and forefinger. “What bird dropped it, do you suppose?”
“It’s a chicken feather,” he said.
Early afternoon sun filtered through the leaves above; they were light and shadow beneath.
He lay on his back beside her. “So what are we going to do about your work space?”
“Lloyd says we haven’t seen anything yet, it’s really going to get messy on Monday morning—they’ve been tiptoeing around the inevitable. Then there’s Lily, of course, who must have the kitchen if she’s going to cook, so we’re looking at ... chaos, to put it plainly.”
“Sammy’s room gets good light. Maybe, somehow...”
“I can’t do that.”
“Can we move you into the smokehouse? It has a window.”
“Ugh. Lots of creepy crawlies in there, and spiders with legs as long as mine.”
“Del would have them out of there in no time flat.”
“No, sweetheart. Even with a window, too dark and confining.”
“Here’s a crazy thought...” he said.
“I love your crazy thoughts.”
“The barn loft. The old hay doors open straight out to the north.”
“The barn?” She was quiet for a time, thoughtful. “I don’t know. But He knows. Could we pray about it?”
He took her hand.
“Father,” he said, observing St. Paul’s exhortation to be instant in prayer, “thank You for caring where Cynthia cultivates and expresses the wondrous gift You’ve given her. We’re stumped, but You’re not. Would You make it clear to us? We thank You in advance for Your wise and gracious guidance, and for Your boundless blessings in this life... for the trees above us, and the good earth beneath. For the people whose lives You intermingle with ours. For Sammy, who was lost and now is found. For Dooley, who’s coming home ...”
“And I thank You, Lord,” prayed his wife, “for my patient and thoughtful husband, a treasure I never dreamed I’d be given.”
He crossed himself. “In the name of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ...”
“Amen!” they said together.
“That feels better.”
“Thanks for the kind words to the Boss.”
She patted his hand; they listened for a while to the bleating of the lambs.
“I hope poor J.C. can step up to the plate, as you say; I’m sure he has all sorts of lovely feelings that need to get into general circulation.”
“Feelings. There’s the rub! It was all those scary feelings that held me back for so long. And then, standing at the wall that evening, I had the agonizing sense that I was losing you forever.”
“I was thinking of leaving Mitford.”
“What if I hadn’t thrown myself at your feet? We would have missed everything. We would have missed this.” The creek sang boldly; a junco called.
“Worse yet, we would have missed the sugar-free cherry tarts hidden under the tablecloth that we haven’t unpacked.”
“Aha!” he said, digging at once to the bottom of the basket.
Cynthia had trotted home to finish April and sketch May, and he’d stayed behind to check out what now appeared to be the track of long-ago hay wagons. He would take care of the papers before five.
He left the basket and blanket by the creek and trekked through the woods. Barnabas would love this ...
As he rounded a turn in the overgrown trace, he was startled to see a shingled, one-story house standing in a clearing.
Had he somehow walked off the Owens’ land and onto a neighbor’s property? He didn’t think so. The path had run here from the far side of the sheep paddock, well inside the property line marked by the state road ...
A gutter rattled as a squirrel raced across the roof and fled onto a tree limb.
Might have been charming once, he thought. He walked toward the house, taking his time, inventorying the ruin of weather and neglect.
... A large pine tree across the broken ridge of the roof.
... Roof tiles missing and decking showing through; broken window panes; a shutter propped against the porch; the chain of a porch swing dislodged from its hinge on one side ...
He didn’t remember this house. When he and Hal had walked the property with the dogs a few years ago, they’d kept to the fields, and the stand of old hardwoods to the north.
Probably a tenant house, disused since Willie’s little cottage was built in the fifties. His eyes roved the yard. A bale of rus
ted wire, discarded bottles, general rubbish.
With a good rehab and a coat of paint, exactly the sort of thing his wife would find intriguing. But she wouldn’t be intrigued by the eerie feeling he got as he stepped onto the porch.
Beyond the patched screen, the door stood open.
There was a distinct sense of emptiness about the place, but just in case...
“Hello!”
In the two front rooms, ivy was growing through fissures in a west wall; thanks to the derelict roof, a large portion of flooring was rotted through. The kitchen had been stripped of cabinets and appliances; only a rusted sink remained and a fireplace half filled with ashes. A few sticks of wood had been thrown down next to the hearth; a wooden chair sat on cracked and peeling linoleum.
Curious, he took the stick that leaned against the chimneypiece and poked the sour-smelling ashes. A couple of crushed beer cans. A plastic top from a fast-food drink. Chicken bones.
He looked around the room and saw a narrow door—possibly a space that contained an ironing board—and opened it.
The small pantry retained only one of its shelves; on it were a fast-food drink cup, a pair of sunglasses with one lens missing, an unopened can of pork and beans, several dead bees, an open box of saltines, a half-roll of toilet paper, small packages of mustard, ketchup, salt, and pepper, and a beer opener. He took the cup down and peered into it. Dentures. Lowers. Not a pretty sight.
He shut the pantry door, leaving everything as he’d found it, and walked out to the porch, closing the screen door behind him.
His plan was to circle the house, but he stopped when he came to the derelict woodshed, where he smelled a curious stench. He saw the fire pit first, then the large mound of feathers partially hidden beneath a slab of plywood.
In the farm library, illumined only by the glow of a computer screen, several e-mails queued up.
If I baked just one, they’d be checking me into Mitford Hospital on a gurney.
The vicar was hammering down on his Sunday morning toast when Sammy came in from the garden.
Sammy held forth an offering partially wrapped in newspaper.
“Asparagus!” crowed Cynthia.
“It’s g-gittin’ tall out there. I was j-jis’ lookin’ around in them ol’ beds th’ other side of th’ f-fence, an’ there it was.”
“Roasted with olive oil and garlic, and spritzed with lemon—heaven! Thank you, Sammy.”
“Lettuce might be in p-pretty soon, eight or ten days if we don’t g-git a frost.”
“I’ve been meaning to ask—what’s your favorite thing to eat in the whole wide world?”
“Fries.”
“Perfect! You’ve come to the right place. I’m doing a practice run Tuesday night.”
Father Tim spread his allotted dab of no-sugar-added marmalade. “There’s Irish in that boy somewhere.”
Cynthia squinted at Sammy’s home-style haircut, executed the night before.
“Short!” she said.
He shrugged; a light smile played at his mouth. “Won’t have t’ do it ag’in ’til th’t-taters come in.”
Accompanied by his fourteen-year-old daughter, Sally, Hank Triplett thumped down on the epistle side, as did nine Millwrights. Though recovered from the worst, the Millwrights produced a veritable symphony of coughing for everyone’s listening pleasure.
Lloyd Goodnight arrived with Buster, who, much against his will, had cleaned up considerably.
Miss Mary and Miss Martha brought a neighbor, Edna Swanson, who devoutly hoped that word of her visit to the Episcopalians wouldn’t get around to the Methodists, where she’d been a member for thirty-odd years.
Though Miss Martha explained that the Methodists and Episcopalians had formerly been one Communion, anyway, this fact was much doubted by Edna, who knew a thing or two about local church history and had written a pamphlet on the subject that sold for fifty cents and helped support field missions.
Unaccustomed as most of the congregation was to the Anglican hymns, Sparkle Foster, who’d learned to read music in ninth grade, today felt sufficiently comfortable to sing out, loud and clear.
Father Tim pitched in with Sparkle, Lloyd gave it what-for, and Cynthia brought up the rear, doing her level best. Together with Agnes’s confident but warbly soprano and Miss Martha’s roof-raising mezzo, the melody of the opening hymn launched out upon the air above the gorge, mingling with the balmy May thermals enjoyed by fourteen Cooper’s hawks.
“Thy beautiful care
What tongue can recite?
It breathes in the air,
It shines in the night;
It streams from the hills,
It descends to the plain,
And sweetly distills
In the dew and the rain ...”
Some minutes after the service began, two young children peered through the open front doors.
As the self-appointed greeter of latecomers, Miss Martha got up from the back row and went to see what was what.
“Well?” she demanded in a loud whisper.
The boy looked terrified, but courageous. “I’m Roy Dale; she’s Gladys, th’ baby. We heered you’uns got cake.”
“Come in, come in, we’ll see what we can do!”
As she herded them to her pew, Martha McKinney thanked God that Agnes had frozen the remains of last week’s German chocolate ...
Following the service and a brief tutorial on the rubrics, the vicar introduced Rooter Hicks. Rooter, he said, would demonstrate a way to communicate a simple greeting to Holy Trinity’s crucifer, Clarence Merton, or to anyone without full hearing.
Rooter was seized by terror as he stood to make his demonstration. He was, in fact, struck dumb, and signed the greeting repeatedly before he at last recovered his voice.
“‘Is here’s how t’ say How y’ doin’, man. Y’all are s‘posed t’ do it, too.”
Father Tim mimicked Rooter’s signing. “How are you doing, man,” he said as he signed. “Now, if we’re going to get out of here at a reasonable hour...”—he glanced at his watch—“... let’s all pitch in and sign with Rooter.”
At this exhortation, the congregation pitched in and signed with Rooter.
“Now you’re talking!” said the vicar.
Fond of counting heads, Cynthia was pleased to report that attendance at Holy Trinity had shot to twenty-eight. Including their vicar, of course.
He was at first elated, then glum. Twenty-eight was more than half the capacity of their nave. What would they do if ... ?
“Chairs in the aisle!” said his mind-reading deacon.
“
Two services!” he said, astounded by the thought.
Cynthia threw up her hands. “Wait a minute; wait a minute. We’re starting to mess around in the Lord’s business.”
He laughed, instantly relieved. “Thanks, Kavanagh. I was just cranking up to a full building program.”
“If Roy Dale and Gladys come back, Sammy and I could have twelve in our Sunday School next week. Twelve! I’m sort of... nervous, really.”
“Don’t be. Have you talked to Sammy?”
“Not yet. Timing is everything. But I think he’ll do it.”
“Have you thought the lesson through?”
She gestured toward her heart. “It’s kind of ... soaking in there.”
“And all the better for it!” he said.
He prayed for Esther Bolick, who was reeling with a hurt he could only dimly imagine.
Having known her for nearly twenty years, he came to a simple conclusion: Esther is grieving. And out of it was coming considerable good.
He hit “send.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Shady Grove
A blue plastic tent, occupying a large area around the mouth of the fireplace, had been erected to keep mortar dust and creosote from sifting into the room.
As anyone could see, it wasn’t working.
The stuff continued to leak its way into the kitchen, living room, and dining room, and then turn the corner and drift along the hall to the library. The soot had a greasy base, which meant that wiping it off a surface had to be handled with some discretion.
Adding insult to injury, the pile of wet sand next to the back porch was slowly making its way into the house on the soles of Lloyd’s and Buster’s work boots. Then there was the issue of the kitchen table, which had to be jammed cheek by jowl with the stove, making it a nuisance to get the oven door open.