by Jan Karon
Morris Love plays the organ each Sunday. We’ve never heard such a holy racket! People come from far and wide to enjoy the music & end up hearing about God’s grace which is a tidy arrangement.
Ella Bridgewater brings dear Captain Larkin to church most
Sundays and subs for Morris on fifth Sunday. Jeffrey Tolson is working across at the college three days and up
Dorchester at the big dock two days. He is in church with
Janette and the children every Sunday. Some think he will slip back into his old ways, but Sam thinks he will work out.
We miss you greatly. Otis and Marlene had a playground built behind the church and Jean Ballenger is writing a history of St. John’s with a list of all the gravestone inscriptions, including Maude Boatwright’s “Demure at last,” which I recall was your great favorite. I will dispatch a copy as soon as the ink is dry.
Sam has a kidney infection, we would covet your prayers. You are always in ours.
Best love to you and dear Cynthia. When you left it was as if a candle flame had been snuffed out, but we are soldiering on.
He straightened up, clutching his back.
“Wait!” she said. “There’s more.”
“My back…,” he said, feeling a creak in every joint.
“If you weren’t too cheap to buy a printer, you wouldn’t have to read your mail hangin’ over my shoulder!”
Blast and double blast today’s technology. He’d stood firm for years until just the other day when he’d finally sold out and let Puny teach him to work the microwave. It was a watershed moment, something he wasn’t proud of, but in the space of a few heartbeats his tepid tea was steaming. Maybe he did need to buy a printer.
“Look,” she said. “Your pal in Mitford, England.”
“Move it this way, there’s a glare on the screen.” He bent closer, battling the heavy scent of My Sin that rose from his secretary like a cloud off Mount Saint Helens. “The type is too small!”
“Your back hurts, there’s a glare on the screen, the type is too small. The answer is to get your own laptop, like a normal person!” She snorted. “Sit down, I’ll read it to you. ‘Dear Father…’”
She blinked and looked up. “You know, I can get you online in a heartbeat!”
“I don’t want to be online!”
“Anytime! Just let me know.”
“No way,” he said, meaning it.
“Stick your head in the sand, let life pass you by,” she muttered.
“‘Dear Father…’”
A sudden shower pecked at the windows. He heard his wife’s radio playing in her workroom.
“‘What a thumping good idea to have your Mitford and ours become sister villages. I’m sure the whole business wants a bit of pomp to make it official. I can’t think what sort but I’m certain my wife Judy can make it click. She’s known for pulling off the best jumble sales in the realm, and our vicar is clever at this sort of thing, as well. We’ll all of us put our heads together and come up with something splendid, I’m sure. Sincere best wishes on your mission work in Tennessee, I believe that’s where a considerable amount of your whisky comes from. Will keep in touch through your good sec’y. Yours sincerely, Cedric Hart, Esq.’”
“Terrific,” he said. “Anything else?”
“That’s it. Anything you want to send before I look for Clyde Barlowe?”
“This,” he said, handing her a piece of paper on which he’d scrawled a quote for Stuart Cullen.
“You could do it yourself,” she said.
“Blast it, Emma…”
Church architecture, she typed, ought to be an earthly and temporal fulfillment of the Savior’s own prophesy that though the voices of men be still, the rocks and stones themselves will cry out with the laud and praise and honor due unto the King of kings and the Lord of lords. Michel di Giovanni, medieval builder and designer.
“Who to?” she asked.
“The bishop.”
He watched her move the mouse around. “Done! Now. Ready if you are.”
“Excellent!” He was on the edge of his seat.
“But don’t get your hopes up,” she said, peering over her half-glasses.
“Oh, no,” he said.
“This will take a little time.”
“Right.”
She waved her hand at him. “So do what you have to do to your essay so I can input it before I leave.”
Trying to cast the search from his mind, he created two paragraphs from one and crossed out a line that he’d formerly thought stunning. He noted by the faded type that the ribbon on his Royal manual was wearing through, a circumstance that Emma wouldn’t favor in the least when transcribing.
The clock ticked, the rain pecked, the radio played Brahms. Couldn’t she somehow just go to the B’s and find it? What was taking so long?
He deleted a paragraph, transposed two lines, and capitalized Blake as in William. Thirty minutes to find one ordinary name?
“Lookit!” she exclaimed.
“What?”
“I’ll be darned.”
“What?”
“Well, well,” she said, paying him no attention at all.
There was nothing to do but get up and look over her shoulder.
“See there?” She jabbed her finger at a list of names.
“Where?”
“Right there. Cate Turner. Idn’t that Lace Turner’s daddy’s name?”
“Why, yes.”
“There’s only one Cate Turner on th’ list, and he’s livin’ in Hope Creek, that little town close to Holding.”
“Lace isn’t anxious to know where her father is. Far from it. Keep looking.” In truth, Lace had been legally adopted by the Harpers and had taken their surname, though most Mitfordians, out of habit, still referred to her as Lace Turner.
“Why are you in the T’s, anyway?” he asked, irritated. “You can’t find Barlowe in the T’s.”
“I was lookin’ for Caldecott Turner, my high school sweetheart, we called him Cal.”
“Emma, Emma…”
“I already looked in th’ Barlowes.”
“And?”
“And I hate to tell you, but there’s no Clyde Barlowe.”
“There’s got to be a Clyde Barlowe. Both names are common to this area.”
“I looked in all fifty states and everywhere in Canada, including Nova Scotia and the Yukon, plus—”
“But it’s such a simple name. Surely—”
“See for yourself.” She stood up, thrusting the laptop in his direction. “Just sit down right here and fool with it while I go to the johnny.”
He backed away, grinning in spite of himself. “Oh, no, you don’t! I’m not falling for your flimsy ploy to get me hooked on this miserable contraption.”
Emma chuckled, a rare thing to witness. “You’ll be hooked sooner or later. Might as well be sooner.”
“When you come back,” he said, ignoring her prediction, “I’d like you to look for a fellow named Shorty Justice.”
But there was no Shorty Justice, either.
As he walked Emma to the front door, he knew he’d ask, and he knew he’d regret it.
“Ummm. Your eyebrows…”
“What about my eyebrows?” she snapped.
“They just look…” He shrugged. “Different!” Didn’t he know that curiosity killed the cat?
“Do I ask about your eyebrows?”
“Well, no, but there’s nothing different about mine.”
“Oh, really? Have you looked in the mirror lately?”
She swept out the door, blowing him in the ditch.
He went at once to the downstairs powder room. Consulting the mirror, he saw there was absolutely nothing different about, much less wrong with, his eyebrows.
“Do my eyebrows look funny?” he asked Cynthia.
She studied him soberly. “No. Why?”
“Emma said I should look in the mirror at my eyebrows.”
“Why would she say that
?”
“I don’t know. I guess because I asked about hers, they seemed…different.”
“Oh, that! Of course, they are different! Which is to say she doesn’t have any! Fancy Skinner talked Emma into thinning her eyebrows, and instead of plucking them, Fancy used a wax thing that pulled off the whole shebang.”
“Oh, boy.”
“When I croak, Timothy, remember my instruction. You do remember?”
He remembered. This instruction was handwritten and paper-clipped to his wife’s will, which specified burial instead of the increasingly popular cremation. TIMOTHY, Do not let Fancy Skinner touch my hair!!! Yours from above and beyond, C.
Dooley’s Wrangler was at Lew Boyd’s, where Harley was working on the stick shift, which was, in fact, living up to its name and sticking.
“I’ll drive you to your mom’s,” said Father Tim. He didn’t want Dooley to leave, not at all, but of course he wouldn’t mention it….
“Can I have your car tonight since mine won’t be ready ’til tomorrow?”
“Can you?”
“May I?”
Father Tim smiled, waiting.
“Please!”
“Yes, you may,” said Father Tim, tossing him the keys. “Thanks, Dad!”
“You’re welcome.”
He was touched that the boy gave him a good punch on the arm.
All the books they could possibly wish to read or refer to while in Tennessee were at last in boxes. He noticed they were virtually the same books they’d schlepped to Whitecap, with the addition of a crate of children’s books.
He stood back and scratched his head. What else? Ah! He’d want the Tozer and the complete works of George Macdonald, which were upstairs, he’d forgotten about those; then there was the business about the Galsworthy….
He recalled that his wife had preached him a sermon about popping into Happy Endings for any reason other than to say goodbye to Hope Winchester. The drill was that neither he nor Cynthia was permitted to add another ounce to their current shipping charges.
He hadn’t promised her he wouldn’t buy another book, though he did say he considered her counsel wise. That was, of course, before he realized how much he needed the Galsworthy volume. One little book! And a paperback, at that! How much could it weigh, after all? He wouldn’t put it in the book crates, anyhow, he’d stuff it in his duffel bag, he’d tote it in his rolled-up pajamas. Some men chased women, some were smitten with fast cars. Big deal, he liked books.
Before going on his mission, he opened the refrigerator door and spied the cache of Cokes they kept for Dooley’s comings and goings. He realized he’d been ignoring his pressing thirst, and though he shouldn’t do this, the can was already open…probably flat, but what the heck, just a sip. He drained the contents, rinsed the can, flattened it, and tossed it in the recycle bin in the garage.
He shelled out thirteen dollars and change.
“Don’t, ah, mention this,” he said, confident that Hope would get his meaning.
“Of course not!” said Hope, offended. “I’m asked to keep all sorts of things confidential!”
“Really? Like what?”
She peered at him through her tortoiseshell-rim glasses and smiled. “If I told you, Father, then it wouldn’t be—”
“Confidential!” he said. “Of course.”
She dropped the book into a bag and handed it to him. “I suppose you know that some people are making exceedingly captious remarks about the Man in the Attic.”
“I’m not surprised.”
“They say his flagitious behavior will almost certainly assert itself again.”
There was nothing he could say to that, nor could he help noticing that Hope looked oddly worried, a little pale. “I pray that all will be well and very well,” he said. “Perhaps you’ll pray about it, also.”
“I don’t pray.”
“Aha.” He tucked the bag under his arm.
“But I believe in God,” she said.
“Good! God believes in you.”
“So, I hope you have a really great trip, I admire you for going up there and living in the wilderness, I hope you’re taking a snake kit.”
“Umm, I don’t think so. Well! Probably won’t see you again ’til September, I hope everything—”
“Father?”
“Yes?”
“Do you have a moment?”
“Of course.”
She lowered her eyes. “I think I…need to tell you something.”
In all the years he’d known Hope Winchester, she had never confided in him.
“I wrote the Man in the Attic a letter,” she whispered. “I told him Happy Endings would have a job for him when he comes.”
“Why, that’s wonderful!”
“You see, I thought everyone liked Mr. Gaynor for how he handled what he’d done, making his confession before your congregation and then asking you to call the police to take him away. I remember how the schoolchildren made drawings for him while he was in jail, and all those pairs of shoes that were brought to the police station. Someone said you preached a sermon about him and called him a type of St. Paul. Now I’m not sure anymore, some people say he’d be tempted to steal again. I feel very distressed about making such a precipitate gesture. What if people refuse to come in, what if it hurts sales?”
“Have you told Helen you did this?” Though absent nine months of the year, the owner was known to be seriously interested in the details of her business.
“A few weeks ago, she told me to hire part-time help to take care of our mail order for the rare books. I know she trusts me completely, I’ve never let her down.”
“I’m sure you haven’t.”
“Now I don’t know what to do.”
“Speaking of St. Paul, he asked us to be instant in prayer. Don’t be alarmed, but I’m going to pray about this right now.”
“Right now?” asked Hope.
He bowed his head. “Father,” he said, “we’re in a pickle here. Thank You for giving Hope wisdom about what to do and putting Your answer plainly on her heart. In Jesus’ name, amen.”
Hope looked at him quizzically. “Is that all?”
“That’s it!” he said. “Just check your heart, you’ll know what to do.”
“Oh,” she said, oddly relieved.
“And by the way, I think everyone will love George Gaynor all over again.”
“Thank you, Father, thank you!”
“I’ll drop you a postcard with our new address,” he said. “Let me know how it goes.”
He stopped by the drugstore, made a beeline for the candy section, and set about examining the see-through packages of jelly beans.
“Lookin’ for jelly beans for your doc?” asked Tate Smith.
“Yep.”
“I think he made a pretty heavy sweep through here th’ other day.”
Father Tim inspected one package twice. “This looks like it has quite a few green. I’ll take it.”
Hoppy Harper was known to be inordinately fond of green jelly beans; he carefully picked through mixed flavors and, after robbing the bag in his favor, turned the remains over to his nurses.
“Seems like a doctor that scarfs down jelly beans idn’t a very good example to his patients,” said Tate. “My doc’s got me plumb offa sugar, but he don’t let me see what he eats. Doc Harper, he don’t care who knows he’s got a sugar jones.”
Tate rang up the dollar-and-seventy-nine-cent sale. “Prob’ly eats bacon an’ who knows what all.”
“Link sausage!” said Father Tim.
“You playin’ for th’ Reds this year?” asked Tate.
Father Tim tucked the jelly beans into the bag with his book.
“Can’t do it this year. We’re headed up to Tennessee for a while. Maybe next year.”
He realized he was greatly relieved not to be playing on Mitford’s star softball team. The thought of running around the bases, hitting the ball, just picking up the bat…
He was
tired, somewhere deep in himself, in a place where he hadn’t really looked before. But that didn’t make sense. He was no longer a full-time priest; he wasn’t sweating vestry meetings, building campaigns, or quirky parishioners; he had only occasional weddings, baptisms, or funerals to perform, and no confirmation classes to teach. He didn’t even have to dash to the rest room, as he’d done at Whitecap, and jiggle the ball when someone left the toilet running.
Running! That was the solution right there. He needed to get back to his running schedule. As soon as he left Joe Ivey’s barber chair, he’d head home, put Barnabas on the leash, and take a go at his old route—up Main Street, right on Lilac Road, down Church Hill, and right on Old Church Lane to Baxter Park and then home.
On the way to Joe’s, he ducked into The Local and rounded up Avis, who was cutting a leg of lamb.
“Looks like a superb cut,” said Father Tim.
“How do you roast your lamb?”
“Varies.”
“Here’s how you do it, no fail. Heat your oven to four-fifty, OK?”
“OK.”
“Rub your meat with garlic and lemon, push some fresh rosemary under the skin, slap it on a rack uncovered, OK?”
“OK.”
“Reduce your heat to three twenty-five, and let ’er rip ’til the internal temperature’s around one seventy-five. Superb! Outstanding! Delicious! OK?”
“Got it.”
“While you’re at it, quarter and roast a few potatoes, and make a salad with my balsamic vinegar in th’ green bottle, third row, second shelf. You want my mint jelly recipe?”
“I have one, thanks.” He stood on one foot and then the other.
“Avis! Any more thoughts about hiring a new driver?”
“Already hired! Starts Wednesday.”
“Aha.”
Avis wiped his hands on his apron. “I’d top that off with a nice merlot, is what I’d do.”
In other words, thought Father Tim, the job opening was definitely closed.
Joe Ivey whipped open a folded cape, draped it over Father Tim’s front section, and tied it at the back of his neck.
“I hear you got a convict comin’.”
“He won’t be a convict when he gets here; he’ll be a free man, repentant and eager to join society.”