Jan Karon's Mitford Years

by Jan Karon

  Everyone found this hilariously funny, but he did not.

  ‘What if they come back?’ he asked Louis. ‘What if they come looking for who did the shooting?’

  ‘They ain’t gon’ be lookin’ fo’ you ’cause they never seen who done it. You was hid in th’ woods. You take it from ol’ Louis, them low-down, badass peckerwoods ain’t never comin’ back here.’

  His father mentioned in his distracted way that Rosie had done a good job of routing the trespassers.

  It wasn’t Rosie, he longed to say. It was me, Timothy. But he said nothing, for he wasn’t allowed to use guns, nor would his father have believed him capable of doing what had been done.

  Otherwise, he was a hero at Whitefield. To Peggy. To his mother. To Louis and Sally and Rufe and Washington and Link and Rosie and, of course, to Tommy. But that didn’t make the nightmares stop. Again and again, the men saw him in town and jumped out of a truck and grabbed him off the street and took him to the woods, where, right before he woke up, they were about to do what he’d done to them.

  His brain burned with a thousand questions, but none of them could be put to his mother or father. ‘How come Father won’t take ’em to court?’ he asked Louis. He was accustomed to people being taken to court when they did something bad.

  ‘It ain’t took as rape if it be a white man doin’ it to a colored woman.’ Louis looked him in the eye. ‘Thass th’ way it is.’

  Rape. He looked it up in the dictionary. It was a plant, you could cook it and eat it. It was an act of forced sexual intercourse.

  He felt violently ill. If what Rufe told him was right, it was sexual intercourse that made people have babies. Deeply distressed, he went to Louis.

  ‘Peggy, she fought ’em like a wildcat,’ Louis said, ‘then our little man here whup ’em good an’ run ’em off ’fore anything happen.’

  He had racked his brain about what he wanted to be when he grew up. Now he knew. He would be a lawyer. But unlike his father, he would be a lawyer who would prosecute white people for hurting colored people without any reason at all…

  They stood at the front door and talked. No, Rosie didn’t know of a Will or Willie with a thumb missing, nor did he have any idea of Tommy’s whereabouts.

  “I wish you’d stay an’ eat with us,” said Rosie. “Sylvie, she th’ best cook of anybody.”

  “I’ll see you before I leave,” he said. He would give Jessica’s photo to Rosie on the next visit, when they had time to relish the surprise together.

  “If Rosie was still huntin’,” said Sylvie, “I’d make you some dumplin’s.”

  He took both her hands in his. “Thanks. Just hearing you say it is a blessing.”

  “Where you stayin’ at?”

  “You won’t believe this. Looks like I’ll be staying in my old room at Whitefield. A couple of good fellows are out there fixing the place up, I believe they’ll let me in.”

  “You come on back here if they don’t.”

  Sylvie slipped her arm around her husband. “We got a nice roast in th’ oven, makin’ its own gravy. Got potatoes boilin’. Got green beans cookin’ with a little ham. You ought t’ stay.”

  But he had to get to Whitefield and nail down his room reservation, and feed Barnabas and call his wife and put something in his growling stomach and fall into bed, he was sinking.

  “Y’all come an’ go with me,” he said. It’s what everyone said when he was growing up, and what no one ever said anymore.

  Rosie grinned. “We better sit tight right here, stick wit’ what th’ good Lord give us.”

  Rosie got it. Actually, Rosie had always gotten it.

  It was after six o’clock when he headed to the country, then turned around and went to Frank King’s place and bought two chicken dinners.

  “Fresh an’ smokin’ hot. Mashed p’tatoes? Gravy?”

  “Th’ whole nine yards.” He’d eaten pretty carefully today, had actually shucked the bun off his burger and made up for the lack with double coleslaw. Now he needed something to stick to his ribs.

  “And give me a country-style steak with lima beans, mashed potatoes, gravy, coleslaw, and cornbread.” T Pruitt would definitely let him spend a couple of nights in his old room.

  Frank filled the Styrofoam boxes. “Find any yo’ people yet?”

  “Thanks for asking. I did, I found my blood brother, Rosie Ponder. I guess the reason you don’t know him is, his wife can cook like a house afire.”

  “I hope you round ’em all up fo’ it’s over.”

  He put the take-out dinners on the floor behind the driver’s seat, feeling as fried as the chicken.

  “Hey, Tim!”

  Frank King came through the door waving something.

  “I forgot somebody lef’ this t’day.”

  “How’d anybody know to leave it here?”

  “I tol’ people ’bout th’ white brother come home lookin’ fo’ ’is people, told ’em you was comin’ back t’ see me.”

  “Thanks, Frank. Catch you later.”

  He stared at the envelope, forgetting to breathe. It was the same handwriting. Reverend Timothy Kavanagh.

  At last.

  Something would be required of him—he could sense it. And whatever it might be, he didn’t know whether he’d have the strength for it. He got in the car and sat looking at the envelope for several minutes. He didn’t really want to open it.

  But he opened it.

  Dear Reverend Kavanagh,

  I will greatly appreciate it if you will call me at the following number at your earliest convenience.

  It is a matter of utmost and extreme importance.

  Very sincerely yours,

  Henry Winchester

  He felt suddenly feeble, as he had all those years ago when Louis told him the news…

  ‘They done hauled one of ’em off to th’ chain gang. An’ you really gon’ like this—that other peckerwood got hisself killed.’

  His whole being turned to jelly; he would hate to faint in front of Louis.

  Louis grabbed him and gave him a big hug and a slap on the back.

  It was the best news he’d had in his whole life.

  TEN

  He sniffed the air.

  Yeast rolls baking, coffee perking.

  It was definitely Sunday.

  Without opening his eyes, he knew it was still dark; his mother and Peggy were up before sunrise, cooking and baking so the Howards could come to Whitefield after church.

  Like lots of ladies in Holly Springs, his mother would be serving Boss Tate’s favorite Sunday dinner. Used to, Mr. Boss would drive his touring car all the way from the mayor’s house in Memphis to Miz Lula’s house on Gholson Avenue, and every single Sunday Miz Lula served the very same dinner, it was a tradition. Since Miz Lula died, Mr. Boss hardly ever came to town anymore, but the menu, right down to dessert, had caught on in Holly Springs.

  Mr. Boss’s favorite Sunday dinner included butter beans, so most everybody in Holly Springs would be having butter beans today. There would also be rice and gravy, and a million biscuits with plenty of peach jam. There were only three things they never had at Whitefield that Boss Tate liked. One was biscuits, because the Howards and Kavanaghs liked yeast rolls—soft and hot, with butter melting inside. One was sherry for the pound cake, because the Howards were Baptists. The other thing was spinach, because at Whitefield, not even his mother would eat spinach.

  Mr. Boss was crazy about fried chicken, too, but only if fried real crispy. Hardly anybody could get the hang of frying their chicken crispy. Peggy said three ladies had the gall to ask for his mother’s recipe, which was famous for crispy, but it was a really big secret. Peggy was the only other person in the whole wide world who knew the secret, but she had sworn not to tell. All he could find out was that it had something to do with buttermilk. He hated buttermilk, and chose to believe this particular information was a dodge to throw people off the track.

  He thought about going down the hall to the
bathroom, but decided to wait. He would rather see how long it took his bladder to bust from drinking a quart of lemonade before bedtime.

  They almost never had the whole Howard ‘clan,’ as his father called them. Which, considering his goony cousins, was fine by him. Abigail ate her boogers, and as for Ferdy, Ferdy was a goofball who blew his nose on his shirttail and broke wind whenever he wanted to.

  Peggy said if she ever caught him doing some of the stuff his cousins did, she would kill him on the spot.

  He imagined the lemon pie and the pound cake sitting on the sideboard under glass domes, and the bowls and platters being passed around the table.

  His eyes followed the chicken platter. Nanny Howard liked breast meat at her house, but at Whitefield she always took a back, saying the oysters were the most delicious ‘morsels’ on any chicken; Uncle Clarence would make jokes about the part that goes over the fence last, fork a breast, and look for the liver, which was always left for him because he’d fought in the war and had to walk with a crutch he’d made himself. Aunt Lily would take a wing.

  ‘Peggy and I fried two of our very best hens,’ his mother would say. ‘Please take something more substantial, sister.’ Once or twice, he prayed that Aunt Lily would take something more substantial and please his mother, but she never did.

  ‘We love the wing,’ Aunt Lily would say.

  He found that remark stupid. It might be possible to like a wing, but it would be impossible to love a wing. Besides, Pastor Simon said people were not supposed to love things, only humans. Uncle Chester would take white meat—and plenty of it, because he was a bachelor with nobody to cook for him; Grandpa Yancey would take a drumstick and a thigh, and he, Timothy, would have the same as his grandpa. Later, while everybody was eating cake and pie, his mother was going to ask him to recite the thirteenth chapter of First Corinthians, which he had practiced for two weeks.

  He hoped his father would stay at the table to hear him recite. He hadn’t stayed the last time, he’d gone to his office in the basement to work on the farm ledger. The time before that, he had gone to the field to do something with Louis.

  His mouth formed the words. Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity.

  He opened his eyes and looked around the darkened room.

  Dear God!

  He sat up, dazed. He was no farm boy on his cot, he was an old man dreaming.

  The Howards were at Hill Crest—except for himself and Ferdy, every soul who sat at the table so many years ago was on the hill near the blackjack oak. Abigail, who was four years his senior, had married a man from Hattiesburg and later died in a train wreck, but he had no idea what had become of Ferdy; as far as he knew, Timothy Kavanagh was the last of the Holly Springs clan.

  He swung his legs over the side of the bed. The last of the clan. He had never felt it as sorely as now. But of course somebody had to be last, just as somebody had been first.

  He realized that the furniture, what there was of it, was placed as it had been when this room was his own. The head of the bed on the east wall, the chest of drawers on the south wall. Strange. And now the second note, and whatever strangeness might await when he called Henry Winchester.

  A moth slammed against the window screen; he switched on the lamp and looked at his watch. Four o’clock.

  He switched off the lamp and walked to the open window. Stars. Bright and shimmering in a cloudless sky. The air cool and clean after the rain that still sounded in the gutters. He stood there for a long time, gazing out, half dreaming and half sentient.

  An awareness was dawning in him, an awareness of the close presence of the land whose boundaries once enclosed six hundred and fifty-four acres in which he’d sweated and yearned and dreamed and swam naked in spite of the water moccasins. He realized he’d never experienced this familiar connection to the land anywhere else—not in his twenty years in North Carolina, nor in his long exile in Arkansas or any other place in which he’d served. This connection, which he’d thought forever lost, was in him still, as ingrained and natural as the impulse to breathe.

  “Major General Edward C. Walthall.”

  Out of nowhere, the train was suddenly moving again. “Brigadier General Absalom West. Brigadier General Daniel C., maybe D., Govan. Ha!”

  At the sound of his voice, his good dog got up from the rug by the bed, and stretched, and came and lay at his feet.

  All things work together for good to those who love God…

  A motley collection of nonsense and wisdom often swam into his sleep-drugged consciousness.

  …to those who are the called according to His purpose.

  The smell of yeast rolls baking had been so real. So real.

  “All things,” he whispered into the dark…

  As usual, his father hadn’t gone with them to Walnut Grove, and now he was late to dinner, also as usual.

  They sat through the awkward mess of waiting. Grandpa Yancey pulled out his pocket watch and stared at it. The grown-ups talked about dumb things that didn’t matter. His mother made excuses for his father. He hated this for his mother’s sake, but what could he do, he was starving.

  ‘I’m starving,’ he said.

  ‘You are not starving,’ said Aunt Lily. ‘The children in France are starving, thanks to the Germans. The children of Berlin are starving, thanks to the Russians.’

  ‘And thanks to Madelaine and Peggy,’ said Nanny, ‘we have all come together at a board laden with the fruits of His mercy and grace.’

  ‘Amen!’ said Grandpa Yancey. ‘Why don’t we thank the good Lord for His provisions before they’re cold as a stone? I’m sure Matthew will understand.’

  They were joining hands when they heard his father approaching the dining room. As he entered through the archway, something fell—the sound was sharp, like the report of a pistol—and clattered on the hardwood floor. Looking startled, his father appeared to lie back as if in a swoon, and then, in slow motion, he was falling.

  Because he sat on the opposite side of the table, he saw his father simply disappear from view, followed by a jolt to the floor that rattled the ice in their tea glasses.

  ‘Matthew.’ His mother rose from her chair.

  He was stunned, then humiliated, by his father’s fall.

  ‘Stand back, Madelaine.’ His father struggled to his feet, holding Uncle Clarence’s crutch; his face was white beneath the silver hair.

  When it happened, there was the instant recognition that this moment would be too awful to ever think about again. His father gripped the crutch at either end, drew up his good knee, and lowered it with full force onto the crutch, snapping the wood in half. Then he tossed the pieces to the floor.

  No one moved.

  His father looked at Uncle Clarence, who sat with his mouth open.

  ‘Cripple,’ said his father.

  They heard the hard tap of his right foot and the dragging of his left as he walked from the room. Then the screen door slammed.

  And still no one moved.

  After Uncle Clarence’s homemade crutch fell from its leaning post against the archway and tripped his father, he started hearing things he’d never heard before—his grandmother talking to his mother, his mother whispering to Peggy, Peggy whispering to Louis, his grandfather talking to his grandmother. Over and over again, he was banished from the room or ordered into the yard to play, but still he heard things.

  ‘In my time, it was melancholia,’ said Nanny. Her knitting needles clicked very fast. ‘They call it depression now.’

  ‘Forgiveness, my dear, forgiveness,’ said his grandpa, ‘or we’ll all be taken down by depression.’

  ‘It’s hard to imagine ever going there again.’

  ‘Of course we’ll go again, we’re her family, we can’t abandon our own child. And what about Timmy? Of course we’ll go again.’

  ‘Clarence and Lily will never step foot in that house again, nor will Chester. And what a shame. A child needs aunts and uncles, too.
’

  ‘Don’t let it trouble you so, my girl.’

  ‘How I wish we’d known before they married what a terrible relationship he had with his father. God help that dreadful old reprobate! And Matthew so angry over it all, he wouldn’t take the money his father offered as a wedding present. It would have paid for everything, surely Matthew would never have used Madelaine’s money to buy Whitefield if he had money of his own.’

  ‘Your blood pressure won’t take kindly to this, Betsy.’

  ‘For the life of me, I can’t think why Madelaine lets the old blasphemer in her house, it makes no sense.’

  ‘He forces those visits, of course. She’s trying not to make more trouble, and believes some good could come of it, some healing.’

  ‘Without the grace of the Savior,’ Nanny said, ‘there can be no healing between two such stubborn and godless men.’

  ‘Amen and amen. That’s why we must continue to forgive—and continue to pray.’

  ‘I’m trying, Yancey. But look what happened because the innocence and trust of one motherless boy was defiled—one whole family is left suffering for it. And look at Matthew’s poor brother and how their father has sullied even that relationship. On and on the suffering goes, into the next generation and, God forbid, even into the next unless Matthew comes to his senses. We’re all held hostage by his rage.’

  He heard the striking of a match on the hearthstone; then came the scent of tobacco, sweet as cherries.

  When Louis and Peggy were pulling onions, he hunkered behind the board fence and listened.

  ‘His Gran’paw Kav’nagh goan burn in hell fo’ what he done t’ Mr. Matthew,’ Louis said.

  ‘Yes,’ said Peggy. ‘He will.’

  ‘Course, a person can’t keep blamin’ ever’thing on what happen’ a long time back, we got t’ git up an’ go on.’

  ‘Yes. We do.’

  He was consumed by wanting to ask what Grandpa Kavanagh had done to his father. But he was terrified of the answer.

  On Friday afternoons in spring and summer, he often went with Grandpa Yancey to Indian Camp, the Howard homeplace where his grandpa was born and raised.