Jan Karon's Mitford Years

by Jan Karon

  He pulled his cell phone from his pocket and went through the rigmarole of being hooked up to the hotel. Dogs were definitely not allowed, and he was definitely not spending another night at the Silver something or other. Scratch Plan B.

  So how should tomorrow fall out? Hill Crest, of course, then he’d take the photographs back to Mrs. Lewis. Jim Houck—he’d promised to have coffee with Jim Houck, and he’d want to say goodbye to Amy, and maybe Red. Then there were Rosie and Sylvie; he had to take the picture of Louis and Ol’ Damn Mule to Rosie. As for Frank, maybe he’d stop by on the way out of town, plus, he’d just had a great idea.

  So, no, he couldn’t leave a day early. He rocked a little, realizing the truth: He didn’t want to leave a day early.

  He also didn’t want to call his wife and tell her what was going on, but the cell phone was burning a hole in his pocket. He’d rather wait ’til he talked with the doctor, so he could give her the full story.

  But talk with the doctor or no, he had to call his wife, he always called his wife.

  Fine, but he wouldn’t know what to say unless he spilled everything. It was against the rules to hide their feelings, and hadn’t he paid his dues, big time, to work up to that life-changing agreement?

  But she would be worried if she knew he might be considering what Peggy wanted him to do.

  Then again, he wasn’t really considering that, not until he knew more—much more.

  Bottom line, he had to call his wife and tell her everything. Besides, she wasn’t the worrier in the family—he was.

  “Hail to thee, blithe spirit,” he said.

  “Hello, sweetheart. I was just going to call you.”

  “Cynthia…”

  “You’re going to tell me something,” she said, “but you want me to sit down first. I can hear it in your voice.”

  She had the most remarkable propensity for this sort of thing.

  “‘Are you sitting down?’ is what you always asked before you told someone you were going to marry me.” She laughed a little.

  He could read her, as well—she was mildly uneasy.

  “I have a half brother.”

  She drew in her breath.

  “It’s Henry Winchester, Peggy Lambert’s son.”

  “Peggy!”

  “She’s alive and well, I’ve just spent the afternoon with them.”

  “Give me time, I’m…”

  “So am I,” he said.

  “I mean, I’m just floored. I must say, though, since family is so darned hard to come by, it might be a very good thing.”

  His wife always won the medal for quick recovery. “I love you,” he said.

  “I love you back, with all that is in me. What is he like?”

  “Tall. Well-spoken. Genuine. Writes poetry.”

  “Poetry!”

  “Gentle. Nice-looking.”

  “Like you.”

  “Retired from the railroad; loved a woman named Eva who died of cancer.”

  “What’s on your heart about this, Timothy?”

  He told her the ruminating he’d done, the shock he’d felt and was still feeling.

  “There’s something else,” he said. He told her that, too.

  She had been holding her breath, and let it out. “I want to be with you when you talk to the doctor.”

  “And how will you do that, for Pete’s sake? You can’t drive.”

  “Not right now. But Dooley can.”

  It was completely unnecessary for her to come, but he was thrilled.

  “Great,” he said. “Wonderful. But you don’t have to.”

  “I’ll call Dooley as soon as we hang up. We’ll be there. Where will we meet you?”

  “I’m seeing the doctor Saturday morning at ten o’clock. That means you’ll need to leave first thing tomorrow, it’s a long drive—nine or ten hours with a break for lunch. Are you sure you want to do this?”

  “I’m doing it.”

  “I’ll call and make reservations for you and Dooley at the Peabody for Friday night, late arrival. Wish I could be there to meet you, but the Old Gentleman, you know, isn’t allowed. I’ll leave here early Saturday morning and see you at the hotel; we’ll go to his office together. Thanks be to God you’re coming.”

  “I should have gone with you in the first place.”

  “None of that guilt stuff,” he said. “It’s not allowed. What if Dooley can’t do it?”

  “Can’t do it? Of course he can do it. He’ll want to do it. And if he doesn’t want to do it, I’ll make him do it.”

  “In other words,” he said, grinning, “he’ll do it.”

  “I can’t wait to see you,” she said. There was always a note of music in her voice.

  “I’ll call him with directions—I think I came the quickest way.”

  Grace, and grace alone. After their talk, he sat listening to the rain as if newly released from incarceration.

  It was convenient in any circumstance to have an opinion, a settled view of things. But he couldn’t get at how he felt about what he’d learned today, or how it might change his life. ‘The truth must dazzle gradually,’ Emily Dickinson had written, ‘or every man be blind.’

  “Mind a little comp’ny?”

  “Hey, T. I’d appreciate your company.” He stood up. “Take the rocker.”

  “We done took it one time. You sit. We were ridin’ by when some dude was off-loadin’ his truck into th’ dumpster. He dropped a sofa, two chairs, a table, this rocker, I don’ know what all in there. We loaded up Ray’s old truck an’ furnished th’ garage apartment.”

  They laughed.

  “What goes around comes around,” said T.

  “There’s no way I can ever thank you for your kindness to me. You’re the balm in Gilead. What goes around does come around; one day, somehow, I hope to repay you.”

  “Don’t mention it, we like havin’ you. Looks like you’re goin’ through some pretty heavy stuff. To my way of thinkin’, it helps to have somebody around when th’ cheese gets bindin’. If I was doin’ this job out here in th’ boonies by myself, they’d have t’ commit me.”

  “Ray’s a great guy. You both got bingo. Where are th’ boys?”

  “Slung up on their bed at th’ garage, with their feet in th’ air.”

  Tree frogs. Rain shaking down among the leaves.

  “I just had an idea,” he said. “I’m a pretty dab hand in the kitchen. Let me cook tomorrow night. Steak—and my wife’s scientifically tested oven fries. Got a grill?”

  “Got a grill,” said T. “Sounds great. Ol’ Ray’s gon’ be over th’ moon, he’s had to eat his own cookin’ for four years. I burn water, you might say.”

  “How’s it going out at the lab?”

  “It ain’t goin’. See this place here?” T bent his head down and flicked his cigarette lighter. The small flame illumined a hairless spot the size of a jar lid on T’s crown.

  “I hadn’t noticed it.”

  “I’m taller’n you, that’s why. Three years I’ve messed with th’ notion that kudzu could do th’ job. I’ve used every formula in th’ book, an’ a couple dozen of my own. But it ain’t workin’.” T took a cigarette from behind his ear and lit it.

  “Failure has been called the highway to success. When it starts working, count me your first customer.”

  “I know good as I’m sittin’ here that kudzu is th’ next big thing. It’s gon’ be like gettin’ in on th’ ground floor of Co-Cola. But personally, I’m about done with it.”

  “You’re giving it up?”

  “Tonight I am. Tomorrow might be different.” T took a long drag off his cigarette.

  “You ever talk to God about what you’re trying to do?”

  “I guess I believe in God, but can’t say prayin’ has any attraction—if you don’t mind me sayin’ so.”

  “Say on.”

  “Seems like God makes us, puts us down here, an’ we’re on our own. Like, Okay, buddy, I give you a brain and two hands, let’s
see what you can do with that. That’s th’ way I was raised by my old man, if you could call it raisin’.

  “Look here, boy, he’d say, see that junk car I picked up for a hundred bucks? You make it run, now, you hear, but I ain’t givin’ you no money to do it with. One way or another, I’d get it runnin’, he’d jump in it an’ leave, come back a couple of weeks later, walkin’, with some crazy woman hangin’ on his arm.

  “He was bad to drink, bad to fight, an’ hell to live with. But no use goin’ on about it.

  “I finally got some sense an’ left home at sixteen, in behind my brother who’s two years older. He was a whole lot smarter than me, he’s th’ lawyer in Memphis who owns this place. Anyway, I hoboed out West an’ got a job with a rodeo. Near about killed myself right out of th’ box.”

  T laughed a little.

  “Some sonofagun cowboy said he’d give me ten bucks to ride this ol’ bull named Red. Said he was th’ rodeo pet, gentle as a lamb.”

  “Uh-oh,” he said.

  “Ol’ Red, he rode me around th’ ring one time, then a second time, t’ kind of show me off. Then he lit into savin’ that cowboy ten bucks. Torpedoed me into th’ stands an’ busted my head wide open. It was a crowd-pleaser.”

  “Your father—is he still living?”

  “If he is, he’s in a ditch somewhere.”

  “Your mother?”

  “Took off when I was ten. How ’bout your old man?”

  “Deceased. He was a hard man, a broken man.”

  “Broke breeds broke,” said T. “Try sayin’ that after a couple shooters of Jack Daniel’s.”

  “Thank God I never messed with alcohol,” he said. “Not much, anyway. I got dog-drunk one night before a big track meet at Albany. Woke up in a pool of vomit—couldn’t run, could barely walk. I was completely dysfunctional and completely humiliated. Truth is, I didn’t have all the fun some people claim to have, or if I did, I couldn’t remember it. Sick an’ sorry, that was me. Right then, I knew one thing for sure. Alcohol wouldn’t be my downfall. There might be a downfall in the cards, but it wouldn’t be booze.”

  “I broke myself of booze.”

  He whistled. “Tough to get sober without help.”

  “Tough to get sober with help,” said T. “Prob’ly ought to quit smokin’, too, like Ray did a while back. Man. Quit drinkin’, quit smokin’, quit messin’ with women. I might as well lay down an’ die. Never expected t’ end up some ol’ dude out in th’ sticks, playin’ gin rummy an’ watchin’ th’ History Channel.”

  T took a drag off the cigarette and exhaled. “So tell me somethin’. Goin’ back to bein’ broke, how come you ain’t broke?”

  “I am broke. What I’ve found in being a priest is that we’re all broken. Fallen is perhaps a more scriptural concept, but usually what falls gets broken, so it’s all the same.

  “The upside is, he promises we’ll be made whole in heaven. ’Til then, we keep seeking him, keep trusting him, keep letting him have his way with us. That’s our job.”

  “Yeah, fine, but what’s his job?”

  “His job is to keep forgiving us and keep loving us. That’s why, when he gives us something tough to do, he doesn’t turn his back and walk away. He sticks with us, sees us through—but only if we ask him to. If we ask, he supplies everything we need to make our hundred-dollar car go like a scalded dog—to quote a friend of mine.”

  “I don’t know about religion. It don’t make sense t’ me.”

  “Too complicated, that’s why. I say, forget religion. What it’s about, T, is the two of you, you and him. Nothing more, nothing less. A lot of people wonder why they were born. I believe what scripture says, that he made us for his pleasure. You might say he made us because he wants somebody around, somebody like you and somebody like me. Kind of what you said a while ago. Pretty amazing that he would want me around, I can tell you that.”

  T leaned his head against the back of the chair. “Too much for me, th’ whole deal of livin’.”

  “I’m with you on that. Even with God in the picture, I still go through some hard stuff, and always will. But he’s in it with me, which makes all the difference.

  “The bottom line is, it’s totally, fatally about surrender. That’s what it takes—throwing out your agenda and trusting his. I was in my forties before I really got it. I was a priest before I got it.”

  “So how’d you get it?”

  “One night, I came to the end of myself. I hit a wall and I couldn’t go over it or under it or around it or through it. Dead end. I’d been reading a good deal, trying to figure it out.

  “I thought a lot about something a young French mathematician wrote. He said, ‘Let us weigh the gain and the loss, wagering that God is. Consider these alternatives—if you win, you win all. If you lose, you lose nothing. Do not hesitate, then, to wager that he is.’

  “I’d been wagering a little here, a little there. That night, I wagered everything. I prayed a prayer that went something like this: Thank you, God, for loving me, and for sending your son to die for my sins. I sincerely repent of my sins and turn my entire life over to you. Amen.”

  “That’s it?”

  “That’s it.”

  Barnabas growled as the headlights of a vehicle bounced along the gravel drive toward the house.

  “Here comes ol’ Ray with a head full of teeth. Wait’ll you see these choppers, they’ll scare you to death.”

  He smiled, oddly content. Considering tomorrow night’s menu, Ray’s timing was about as good as it could get.

  TWENTY

  She was waiting for him; he saw the curtains move.

  Abandon hope, all ye who enter here. There would be no depositing of his delivery and running like a hare; no, indeed, this was life in the raw.

  He checked his watch. Eight o’clock. He had five minutes, max, to endure fire from the Lewis cannons.

  Fortunately, he’d met the florist having coffee on the square and she offered to open her shop. Bearing a dozen coral gladioli in one hand and the prints in the other, he rang the bell as directed.

  Garbed in her wrapper and gown, Luola Dabney Randolph Lewis charged out the door on her cane, bearing a paper cone of coffee grounds. “I didn’ sleep a wink last night, not one wink, so excuse my looks,” she shouted. “Did you wash your hands first?”

  “Yes, ma’am, I did.”

  “Do y’all use coffee grounds on your potted plants?”

  “No, ma’am. But I hear it can produce a mass of blooms.”

  “A mess of brooms?”

  “A mass of blooms!”

  “Maxwell House,” she said, dumping the contents of the cone into an urn filled with unidentifiable nursery stock. “French roast. I’ll have begonias big as dinner plates. I don’t like coffee anymore, th’ medication makes my mouth taste like Reynolds Wrap; but I perk it anyhow, for the plants, then drink th’ whole pot to keep from wastin’ it. Waste not, want not, idn’t that how Madelaine raised you?”

  “Yes, ma’am.” He proffered the flowers. “I brought you these as a token of my thanks.”

  She cupped a hand to her ear and shouted, “As a what?”

  “As a token of my thanks!”

  She stared at them as if they had wronged her.

  “Glads,” she muttered, snatching them from his hand. “I’ll stick ’em in a jar in th’ kitchen, comp’ny never goes back there. Do you think we can get a nice exhibit out of those eight-by-tens?”

  “Absolutely. They’re wonderful. I greatly appreciate seeing them. Thank you.”

  “I ought to give you one,” she said, looking at him as if searching for a reason to do it.

  “I wouldn’t want to take—”

  “Go on an’ pick one. But I’ll have to approve which one.” She wagged the glads at a decrepit rocker. “Sit down right there, but watch it, it tips back if you’re not careful. It threw a Baptist preacher on th’ floor, he was fillin’ in from Charleston.”

  He withdrew the prints from the
envelope and paged through while she stood over him, breathing heavily. He knew exactly which one he wanted.

  “There!” she shouted. “That one. That’s th’ one I might give you.”

  The statue in the pond grasses.

  “That statue was never anything but trouble. When we did th’ big garden in th’ park, we had to plant a bush in front of it to keep th’ town council happy.”

  “Aha.”

  “It wadn’t our fault th’ bush died in a hard freeze an’ exposed th’ whole business to th’ good Lord an’ everybody. It’s stored in Sue Riley’s basement. Do you want it back? I’m sure you could get it back, since it was you who gave it. It’s a shame not to use it.”

  “No, thank you, I must get moving. I leave early tomorrow.”

  “Except for th’ goat, I think it’s a copy of David’s Michelangelo. It’s th’ way God made th’ opposite sex, for pity’s sake. As far as I know, nobody in Paris ever planted a bush in front of th’ real thing.”

  He laid the prints on the table and bolted from the rocker.

  “Where’s your dog?”

  “In the car.”

  “Don’t let ’im in my yard,” she said.

  “No, ma’am.”

  He was heading for the steps.

  “They say dogs in New York do whatever they want to in people’s yards and you have to scoop it up and carry it home in a ziplock bag.”

  “That’s what they say. Well, goodbye, Mrs. Lewis, and—”

  “Hold on!” she said, waving the photos at him. “You didn’t pick one.”

  He wheeled around and took the prints and searched through quickly. “This one,” he said. Please.

  She squinted at it, then smoked him over, dubious. “Will you take care of it? You won’t put it in a drawer, will you? Some people toss pictures in a drawer every whichaway, you ought to see some people’s picture drawers.”

  “I’ll take care of it. I promise.”

  “Well, go on an’ take it, then, an’ think of me when you look at it. I always believed your daddy was innocent.”

  “Thank you! Thank you very much, Mrs. Lewis, and God bless you. I’ll never put it in a drawer, we have just the frame for it. Sterling. Hallmarked!” He was inspired to kiss her hand, but restrained himself. Too European for Holly Springs, much less clergy.