by Jan Karon
Father Tim had known Ed Coffey through some tough times; things had never been easy between them. He was surprised, and even moved, by the look in Ed’s eyes—there was no anger or defiance as before, but a warmth he’d never seen. Ed nodded and gestured for him to step closer.
“Look here, Miz Mallory. It’s Father Tim.”
Ed eased the chair around.
Father Tim was struck by the frailty of his old and bitter nemesis; always a petite woman, she now appeared shriveled, even childlike. Yet her face was radiant.
“Tim ... o ... thy ...” She scarcely spoke above a whisper.
“Edith.”
“For ... give ... me.”
“I did that long ago.”
“God ... is ... good.”
“Yes. Very good.” He squatted beside the chair and took her hand and held it. Tears streamed, uncontrolled, down his cheeks.
“Thank ... you.”
“Thank you, Edith, for your witness. And thank God for His faithfulness.”
She managed a smile from the left corner of her lips. “God ... is ... good,” she said again. The large eyes, which had always alarmed him, shone with new light.
He watched Ed and Edith pass up the street, stopping to talk with everyone they met. It was some minutes before he realized his knees were weak and shaking, as if a terrible storm had passed and the sun had come forth at last.
He walked into the garden between Sweet Stuff and the Collar Button and sat on the bench, the brown paper bag in hand.
Bill Sprouse sat beside him with his dog, Buddy, on a leash. “A miracle, brother.”
“It is.”
“Lord bless ’er, she’s puttin’ the gospel truth into three little words. Tellin’ everybody she sees”.
Father Tim mopped his eyes with his handkerchief. The tears wouldn’t stop; a dark weight, long carried, had been lifted.
“I know y’all went at it a time or two.”
“More than a time or two.”
“Old Scratch in a dress is what some called her. I love it when God reaches out and yanks up one of His bad young ’uns and holds ’em in His arms!”
“Like He did me,” said the vicar, blowing his nose.
“Like He did me,” said the preacher from First Baptist.
He and Harley pulled on their masks.
Andrew stood by, dressed to the nines in a cashmere jacket. Buttoned, noted the vicar. Still carrying a wooden spoon, Tony had taken a break from the Lucera kitchen, and thumped down on an ancient garden bench by the garage.
“What do you think, Harley?”
“Right off, let’s git th’ doors open an’ let some air circ’late in there.”
Andrew opened the rear left door; Tony opened the rear right door; he and Harley worked the front doors.
“Teamwork!” said Father Tim.
Harley stuck his head inside. “Been a mouse in here, looks like. An’ I heerd snakes’ll sometimes crawl up in a ol’ car.”
“Whoa, buddy; don’t go there.”
Tony brandished his spoon. “I’ll take care of snake.”
Father Tim laughed. “Good! Tony takes care of the snake; Harley takes care of the mouse.”
“If a mouse jumps out, I’ll be haulin’ over th’ county line. I never liked nothin’ in th’ rodent fam’ly.” Harley got in, cautious, and sat in the passenger seat.
“Louella said Miss Sadie was handy with her toolbox. I can’t imagine Miss Sadie han- dling a wrench or a drill. But maybe a screwdriver ...” He sat on the backseat, eyeing the surroundings, trying to see things with a fresh eye.
“Top t’ bottom is what you tol’ me,” said Harley. “So here we go ag’in.” Harley poked the felt roof liner; dust baptized the interior.
When all was said and done, he still didn’t know whether to take Louella’s story seriously. Louella certainly believed it; but was it, perhaps, some fragment of an old dream? He felt like a sweaty, overweight fool pulling such a caper in front of Andrew Gregory, who, as ever, looked trim, cool, and dashing.
“I been readin’ up on this deal,” said Harley. “She’s got it all—overdrive, power brakes, full-time power steerin’, you name it.” Harley continued to poke. “Prob’ly y’r worst problem’s goin’ t’ be y’r power steerin’, hit’ll need rebuildin’ ...”
Poke, poke; dust, dust.
“... an’ y’r fuel tank’ll mos’ likely need replacin’.”
“She’ll look good on the street again,” said Andrew. “Those tail fins will be a crowd pleaser.”
“Bello!” said Tony.
“Hit’ll be a jaw dropper, all right. Meantime, they ain’t nothin’ up here but roof an’ linin’. Same as b’fore.”
“What do you think about taking the door panels off?” asked Father Tim. “Looks like that could be done with a screwdriver.”
“Wouldn’ hurt.” Harley got in the backseat and began unscrewing the right rear door panel.
Nothing but door-panel entrails and more dust.
“What do you think? Should we take off all the door panels? And what about the dash?”
“Do dash,” said Tony, apparently having a delightful time. “Radio, clock, like that.” He waved his spoon for emphasis.
“If ’at little woman took out ’er radio, I’ll give y’ a brand-new five-dollar bill. We start messin’ around in th’ dash, we’ll be here ’til Christmas.”
Needing a breath of fresh air, Father Tim suddenly stood, cracking his head on the dome light. “Dadgummit!” He staggered out the door, his hand to his scalp. Just as he thought—blood.
“Man!” he squawked, quoting Dooley.
“I’ll bring alcohol and a Band-Aid!” said Andrew, looking concerned.
“I’ll get!”Tony struck out for the house.
“Or would you rather come up to the kitchen, Father?”
“Oh, no, no. I’ll be fine.” He mopped his smarting cranium with a handkerchief. “Not a problem.”
“Tell you what...,” said Harley.
“What?”
“I’m goin’ t’ take a look in that dome light y’ jis’ nailed. Hit’s a whopper.”
Harley unscrewed the dome light and trained his flashlight into the cavity. “I’ll be a monkey’s uncle!”
The men stooped down to peer in at Harley.
“You got bingo, Rev‘ren’.”
When he drove Harley back to Lew’s, J.C. was pumping gas into his beat-up SUV
J.C. threw up his hand, looking positively sunny. Father Tim eased the farm truck to the other side of the gas island.
“So. What’s going on?”
“Not too much.”
“What’s with the happy face? You look like the ice cream truck just stopped on your street.”
“You’re a meddlin’ fool,” said J.C.
“That’s what they say.”
“Have you heard th’one about ... ?”
“No, and don’t want to. I want to know what you know that I don’t know.”
J.C. cackled. “Maybe it’s for me to know and you to find out.”
“You’re playing hardball with me, buddyroe.”
“You get in my vehicle this time,” said J.C.
Father Tim parked in the rear of the station, and stroked around front to the SUV, which J.C. had rolled to the side of the grease pit. He hopped into the passenger seat and slammed the door.
“You’re not goin’ to believe it, anyway,” said the Muse editor.
“Try me.”
“Things are fixed with Adele. Have been for a couple of weeks, but didn’t see any reason to run tattlin’ to you; you ain’t my daddy.”
“What happened?”
“She arrested me.”
Father Tim whooped. “No kidding!”
“For ... let’s see, I got th’ papers right here.” J.C. ransacked his bulging briefcase.
“For being a cold-hearted, unemotional, self-indulgent, ah, hard-headed ... jerk,” he read. “Oh, an’ for jaywalkin’.”
“Man. Th
rew the book at you.”
“She busted me on Main Street; told me to get in the patrol car.”
“What a woman.”
“Drove me around. Read me the riot act.”
“Whoa.”
“You know what I said?”
“Not a clue.”
“I said, you’re right. And then I said ...”
“What?” He was pretty much on the edge of his seat.
“I said I was sorry.” J.C.’s face colored.
“Great! Good for you!” He suddenly remembered what he’d seen in Baxter Park; his unbounded delight turned sour.
J.C. grinned. “So ... that’s pretty much it.”
“No, it isn’t; there’s more. Spit it out.”
“Well, I mean, we like ... drove somewhere. And you know, parked.”
He’d take his chances. If the answer was no, he could cover things up.
“Under the tree in Baxter Park, by any chance?”
“How’d you know that?”
“I get around,” he said. Hallelujah! “So, what kind of time do you have to do?”
“Six months of take-out.”
“Take-out?”
“Take out th’ garbage, take ’er out to dinner, pick up take-out at th’ Ming Tree in Wesley ...”
“She could have given you a lifetime sentence. You got off easy.”
J.C. nodded, sober. “Real easy.”
“Think you’ll go straight after this?”
J.C. looked him in the eye. “With God’s help. That’s prob‘ly th’ only way.”
“Amen,” said the vicar, meaning it.
His adrenaline was pumping like an oil derrick as he came through the revolving door and along the carpeted hallway to Room Number One.
Louella was watering a gloxinia on her windowsill.
“Louella, Louella, Louella!” He threw up his arms as if delivering a speech from a balcony. “I have good news!”
She set the watering can down with a thump. “You foun’ Miss Sadie’s money!”
“Bingo!”
“Thank You, Jesus! Thank You, Jesus! An’ thank Miss Sadie, I bet she put th’ hidin’ place in yo’ head.”
“In a manner of speaking,” he said.
Hoppy ran his hand through his unruly hair.
“So there it was all the time. She was eating and drinking her own demise. As you know, Nurse Herman is the one who caught it.”
Father Tim shook the hand of Mitford Hospital’s director of nursing. “Very well done!”
“Like I said yesterday, I wouldn’t know old dishes from pea turkey if my cousin hadn’t been so sick with lead poisonin’. It was the same thing—she always ate and drank out of old transfer ware her grandma gave her in high school. She was treated for chronic fatigue syndrome for ten years before they figured it out!”
“I never thought about china containing lead,” said the vicar.
“The worst amounts are mostly in stuff made before the seventies. Plus, my cousin and Miss Gleason really did a number on themselves-they used the dishes to microwave food!”
“Microwaving leaches out dangerous lead levels,” said Hoppy. “And chips and cracks can be really lethal.”
“Do they still have to get out of the trailer?”
“That’s up to the state health crowd,” said Hoppy. “They’ll probably check the plumbing first thing—if there’s a problem, it could be as simple as the hot-water cylinder. It contains a very high level of lead solder, which can deteriorate and turn to sludge. Pure poison. »
“And,” said Nurse Herman, “Miss Gleason says she makes all her hot drinks with water from the hot tap!”
“When do you think she’ll go home?”
“Monday,” said Hoppy. “I’d let her go today, but don’t want to take any chances. If she’s here, I know she’s eating. She’ll improve on the chelation therapy, but it will definitely take time, and she’ll have to check in again for liver function testing.”
“What about the bill?” asked Father Tim. “There’s no insurance, and she hasn’t worked in some time. What’s the usual procedure for ...”
“I have a number you can call,” said Hoppy. “Not sure what the result will be, but this is a nonprofit that’s helped a lot of patients in her circumstances. Might work out. As for my bill, consider it paid.”
Hoppy raised his hand against his old friend’s protests.
“I’ve owed you a big one for a long time. Call it the chickens coming home to roost.”
He told her everything, feeling a trifle like St. Nick flying in on his sleigh. Each time he dipped into the day’s story bag, he brought forth yet another surprise for the wide-eyed kid in his spouse.
The money in the dome light (which he illustrated by displaying the cut on his head) ...
The further unraveling of Dovey’s curious mystery ...
Edith’s message to Mitford ...
And then, the upbeat turn of events with Adele and J.C.
“Your go,” he said, slurping down a glass of water.
“I could never top any of that,” said his marveling wife.
“Say on.”
“Hal didn’t approve the surgery.”
“Aha!”
“He didn’t approve the acupuncture, either. He wants to wait a few days and see what happens. If the stiffness persists, they’ll go to opiates and steroids.”
“How does Dooley feel about this?”
“He thinks it’s a fair compromise, though he believes acupuncture could alleviate the pain.”
“Have things settled down between our resident vets?”
“According to Dooley, Hal made it clear that he wasn’t siding with either viewpoint; it’s simply what Hal would do if he were here. So, maybe that helped take the sting out.”
“What if Hal’s plan doesn’t work?”
“Sounds like Blake will continue to stump for surgery, and Dooley for acupuncture.”
“How did it go with Sissie?”
“Great news! I found the videos you bought for Jonathan in Whitecap; they came out from Mitford in a box of books! She watched Babe twice, and is seeing it again even as we speak.”
“My kind of girl!”
“I saved The Little Mermaid for the two of you to watch tomorrow.”
“A thousand thanks.”
“So she ate an enormous lunch, and fell onto the library sofa where I thought she’d sleep as if drugged. But did she? Indeed not! She lay down for sixty seconds, then bobbed up again, full of questions.
“So, off we hied to the sheep paddock, where I got a moment’s respite as she chased the lambs, which, as you know, can never be caught. Afterward, we paid a call on the henhouse and did Willie’s job for him. I confess she was adorable; every egg was an amazement to her. I thought, aha, Sissie and Violet gathering eggs!”
“September?”
“October.”
“Brilliant.”
“By the way,” he said, “whatever happened to your needlepoint plan?”
“The calendar.”
“Of course.”
She sighed. “A mere one out of three.”
“Pretty good numbers,” he said.
By eight o’clock, they had collapsed into bed, with Sissie snoring on the love seat and Barnabas snoring on the landing.
As for the rest of the household, Dooley and Sammy were eating pizza in Wesley and washing the Jeep. Lace was coming home tomorrow, and his boy couldn’t hide his anticipation. He had tried, of course, but it wasn’t working.
“ ‘No disguise can long conceal love where it exists,’ ” Father Tim quoted aloud from La Rochefoucauld, “ ‘or long feign it where it is lacking.’ I committed that to memory when I was courting you.”
“I thought I courted you.” She kissed the bump on top of his head.
“Yes, well, the line did blur for a while.”
“I love you more than ever,” she said, patting his arm.
“I love you more than ever back.” He patt
ed hers.
“Please don’t tell anybody we went to bed while it was still daylight.”
He was fried. “They’ll never hear it from me.”
“Will you pray for us, dearest?”
He prayed the prayer attributed to St. Francis.
“Watch, O Lord, with those who wake, or watch, or weep tonight, and give Your angels and saints charge over those who sleep. Tend Your sick ones, O Lord Christ. Rest Your weary ones. Bless Your dying ones. Soothe Your suffering ones. Pity Your afflicted ones. Shield Your joyous ones. And all for Your love’s sake.”
“Amen,” they said.
He took her hand and they lay quiet, the clock ticking on the mantel.
“I’m always moved by his petition to ‘shield Your joyous ones,’” she said at last, “by his recognition that joy is a terribly fragile thing, and the Enemy is bent on stealing it from us. Such a wise thing to ask for.”
She turned her head and gazed at her husband as if expecting a word from him, but he was sleeping.
After breakfast, he fished The Little Mermaid from the box, and settled Sissie in the parlor. He would do a lot of things in this world, but watching The Little Mermaid would never be one of them.
He set up his own camp in the library.
“Violet?”
“Who’s this?”
“Father Tim. I have a great idea. Is this a good time?”
“Yessir. I love great ideas!”
“You’re a fine singer.”
“Thank you.”
“And Sparkle doesn’t do badly, herself.”
“Oh, Sparkle’s good, really good. I love ’er alto.”
“I’m thinking we need a choir at Holy Trinity.”
“A choir!”
“Yes.To help encourage the others to sing; so many are afraid to sing in church.”
“They cain’t read music, that’s why; an’ they never heard those ol’ songs b‘fore. I mean, you got a whole lot of Baptists in y’r bunch.”
“True, true. In any case, a choir ...”
“Beggin’ your pardon, but I don’t have time t’ be in a choir. That’s a big commitment I ain’t ready to make.”
“I hear you. What I was wondering is, could you just sit over by the piano during the service, and stand and sing with Sparkle every time we have a hymn? That way, our two best voices would be united.”