by Jan Karon
What saved her in these final couple of years was teaching art to children at a nonprofit in Chapel Hill, where she moved to be near Dooley. She had learned more from her students than she could ever teach. It had been, in some ways, the time of her life, and she had loved each of them fiercely.
Perhaps she would teach again one day. But what she wanted now was to work with Dooley in the clinic. Though it was an established vet practice of thirty-five years, the changeover would be big and how they handled it would be important. She would be there for Dooley completely.
Dooley stopped and wiped the perspiration pearling on his forehead. ‘You’ve been workin’ really hard. You and Cynthia both. Thanks for everything. I want you to know we appreciate it.’
‘Thank you,’ he said, ‘for the chance to do it. We’re having a good time.’
Herding Dooley’s new cattle into the pasture a couple of weeks ago had been the hoot of the month. They were a start-up herd of five heifers with the self-determination of a vestry. It had taken a village to get them off the truck and through the open cattle gate. The hauler had left more room than needed between the trailer doors and the gate, so there went Willie and Harley, racing to head one off from the barn, and there was Lily brandishing her apron like a matador as another trotted toward the corncrib. He had stood by the trailer like a bump on a log, waiting for directions from Dooley.
‘I was no help,’ he said later of receiving no directions.
‘I didn’t want you running around like that.’
‘Because I’m old?’
‘Not old. But well, you know . . .’
He did know. He’d be into the double sevens at the end of June. Knees stiff, harder to keep the weight down, the occasional diabetic flare-up. Worse, he hadn’t run seriously for nearly a year, something he hadn’t confided to his doctor, who ran twenty miles, three days a week.
They worked for a time, silent. The buzzing of flies, a vagrant bee, the scent of grasses they were trampling.
Nobody was talking about the honeymoon. All he and Cynthia knew was that Hoppy and Olivia had offered something exotic, Hawaii or the Caymans, he couldn’t remember, and according to Cynthia, the offer had been ‘gently declined.’
‘So. Any honeymoon plans yet?’
‘See that house in the grove? That window over the front porch? That’s it.’
‘Aha. If you change your mind, you know we’ll do anything we can. We’ll help sit the farm, give a hand to Willie and Harley.’ He and Cynthia had sat the farm for the Owens a few years back and managed pretty well.
‘What would you do if Choo-Choo and th’ girls got out?’
‘I’d do whatever Willie and Harley were doing.’
Dooley laughed. Things were okay. What he’d said earlier about children had been forgotten.
‘Hammer an’ staples,’ said the fence doctor.
Ha! Something he could absolutely recognize.
‘Sammy’s pumped about coming to the wedding,’ said Dooley. ‘He texted me last night.’
Sammy. Almost twenty-two, now, with a manager, dental veneers, and a hot name on the pro pool circuit. He had hoped to adopt Dooley’s brother a few years back, but Sammy Barlowe didn’t want to be adopted. ‘My daddy made Barlowe a bad name,’ Sammy said. ‘I’m goin’ to make Barlowe a good name.’
He had loved Sammy as well as he knew how. But it was Father Brad, the then-new hire at Lord’s Chapel, who had stepped up to the plate and worked wonders. Thank God for Father Brad’s boot camp. He would take the camp himself if he weren’t so . . . along in years? Aged out? What was the language to be learned for being old?
Dooley worked for a time, silent, squinting, then stood back and viewed the repair. ‘Done. That’s it. We can pack up and go in.’
He was more than proud of his son’s vet school credentials and his wedding coming up and his bull coming in. Youth wasn’t entirely wasted on the young. But he was sobered, too—by the big responsibilities that lay ahead. It was no dream anymore, it was the real deal.
‘I’m in over my head, Dad. I look at you—always so patient. I can never be patient like you.’
‘I don’t know that I’m so patient. Ambrose Bierce called patience a minor form of despair, disguised as a virtue.’ He had always liked that.
‘You goin’ to cry at my wedding?’
‘I’m not planning to cry. I’ll leave that to the women.’
Dooley grinned, wiped his hands on a rag. ‘I cried at your wedding.’
‘You did?’ What a wonderful thing to know. ‘So, okay. I’ll cry at yours.’
They had a laugh. He put his arm around his boy, slapped him on the back.
‘I love you,’ he said.
She sat on the side of her bed and stared at the painting without seeing it.
It was easy now to forget the fights and the tears, but still hard to forget the devastating disappointment that came nearly a year ago and the grieving that followed. She had wondered if they could survive that, but they did, because there was love they didn’t even know they had till then. A raw new strength was born from that grief, and for the first time they both understood that no matter what, they could do this.
So the waiting had been a good thing, like a huge investment sufficient to pay out over a lifetime. Most important, the waiting had been worth it because she had lost the fear of surrendering her heart. For years she had believed her strong will could be enough to make their relationship work. At one point she decided her courage could be enough. And during one of her crazier phases she tried to believe that just being pretty, as some said she was, could be enough.
But none of that was enough for the great journey they would be taking. She came to know this during his second year at vet school, after a long week of prayer and loneliness and weeping. She had surrendered her heart once before, as a kid, when Preacher Greer brought revival to the Creek. She had jumped down from the tree limb and Preacher Greer had prayed for her and she was warm for the first time in her life. To think that she must again surrender the core of her being was too much. Surely it was more than was needed to get by.
He had come home to Mitford that last weekend of October—documented in her Dooley book for three long pages—and with an ease unlike any she might imagine, she had at last opened her heart to him completely.
It was every prayer answered, every benediction composed into one.
She remembered his weekend smell of a burger on the highway and his shampoo and his favorite jacket with the top button missing, all that, and his hands cold from the October wind. She had held him, unguarded and certain, and he looked at her and she knew that he understood. Dooley really got stuff that didn’t come with words.
Words! For days she had wanted to write a special word in the Dooley book, but things had been so crazy. She cleaned her brushes and went to the shelf and took down the once-blank book and let it fall open of its own accord. Some days it fell open to the really good times. Now it fell open to the other times.
Oct 19~ He called last night and said he was sorry. We are always sorry about something with each other; then we have to go back to school before we finish working things out. This is incredibly hard. Sometimes I don’t want to do it anymore and he says he doesn’t either. But we can’t stop. I can’t stop loving him.
Oct 22~ I painted all day yesterday. Drove to the country and had no idea where I was going. Found a farm and climbed over the fence and set up my easel in the field. D doesn’t understand how solitude is the only way to get my work done~ he is always ‘up and doing with a heart for any fate,’ according to Fr Tim. But people say we are so much alike~ both of us with scary childhoods, both adopted by people who gave us everything, both working hard in school to prove whatever. But we aren’t alike at all. It was our experiences that were alike. I am quick flame, he is slow-burning ember. Or maybe it’s the other way around
. Our counselor who has a woodstove says any good fire is both.
Oct 25~ D almost never tells me what he’s thinking. It’s like when we’re together I’m jumping into a river with no idea which way the current is moving.
The counselor Olivia gives us lives near the grounds at school. But unless D comes here, we have to do the sessions on the phone like a conference call. D definitely does not like to do this, but we know it is helping. I can’t really think about anything right now without crying, I didn’t cry for years because I couldn’t. Olivia says crying is good for nearly everything and she should know since she had a heart transplant before she and Hoppy were married. She says if it hadn’t been for Hoppy diagnosing the issue and getting her to Boston, she would not be here to cry ever again.
Nov 6~ It was this date ten years ago when I was legally adopted by Olivia and Hoppy and since I never had a middle name the attorneys said if I wanted one this would be a good time so I took Harper. That will be your last name, they said, do you also want it for a middle name? And I said yes.
I could not imagine O and H would keep me forever and if anything happened I would always have this special name. I thought they pitied me~ a poor Creek kid in a mashed-up hat with stringy hair and dirty clothes.
They kept loving me but I had a terrible fear of loving them back. I did everything I could to keep from loving them back.
It was totally exhausting for all of us. I could see it in Hoppy’s face where I also saw patients dying and his heart condition that he wouldn’t confront and the years of lost sleep and Olivia’s drained look when we tried to talk. All of it probably caused by regret that they had taken me in. All I knew is that I did not deserve to be loved~ it was their own fault for trying to do the impossible. I wanted them to just leave me alone because they didn’t deserve to suffer because I couldn’t love them back.
And then the year I studied in France and painted and they came to see me and somehow~ I honestly think it was the way the light moved over the lavender fields~ my heart was very full for them and grateful and I was able to say to the concierge, These are my parents!
I felt a stone lift off my heart. After that I said it to everyone~ my parents, my parents!
Thank you, God, for helping us through hard times. They are my mom and dad forever.
Maybe the 20th~ D and I talk a lot about living at Meadowgate. It has felt like home to us for years. If we ever marry~ it is scary to write that word!~ I want to stay at home. But I never tell anyone I would like to stay home. What’s so wrong with that anyway? Beth dreams of a big job at Goldman Sachs and Laurel wants to design cars. Cars! And she doesn’t want children. She says no way.
D and I agree that four would be perfect. He helped raise his four sibs when he was little. He was ten years old and feeding them out of cans and then they all got scattered to the wind and all but Pooh were lost for years. We will never let scattering happen.
Nov 28~ Dooley wants to feel safe with me, but he can’t. And I don’t really feel safe with him because I don’t know where this is going. Beth says that knowing where a relationship is going doesn’t solve everything.
She let the journal lie open in her lap. She shouldn’t be reading these entries when there were so many happy ones. But the old stuff was good, too—it was a reminder.
She was aware of another reminder—the pain that was so familiar she sometimes forgot it. She reached for the pills she kept in a box on a shelf with the old Britannicas, and swallowed one with a glass of water from their well.
It was her night to make supper happen and she’d hardly given it a thought. Meadowgate was a total commune right now. When the Owens moved out a month ago, she and Father Tim and Cynthia and Harley piled their belongings into three vehicles and moved into this rambling old house, where everybody immediately went to work making things ready for June fourteenth, for the beginning of another life.
Father Tim and Cynthia would move home to Mitford the night of the wedding, but Harley would stay on, helping with farm chores and general improvements and living in Rebecca Jane’s old room with the princess canopy bed. Harley had been her true family when she lived at the Creek; he had been the best place to run when she needed to hide from her father. Not only had Harley protected her when he could, he had encouraged her passion for books and learning. Harley was the best, and now she would take care of him, which was great with Dooley since he also considered Harley ‘blood.’
She loved having family around, including Willie, who had his own little house on the place. He had been the main hand at Meadowgate for years and was always in and out with his weather predictions. Sometimes Blake Eddistoe, Hal’s vet tech who would stay on in the practice, stuck around for supper, and sometimes Rebecca Jane Owen, almost sixteen and still crazy about Dooley, would come over with her mom and dad, and there was Lily Flower, who cleaned two days a week and was such a fun nutcase and worked harder than anybody and sometimes had supper with them and washed up after.
Okay. Boiled red potatoes with chives and butter. A salad. And roast chicken with rosemary from the garden. Not two chickens, but three. Enough to make great sandwiches for tomorrow’s lunch and soup after.
She paged forward to a blank sheet in the Dooley book, took a deep breath, and wrote the word: Cherish.
She did not date the entry.
She returned the book to the shelf and hurried to the west-facing windows of the attic studio. In the far corner of the fence line, she saw them. Dooley and Father Tim were specks as they climbed into the truck.
‘Dooley!’ Her breath formed a small vapor on the glass.
She lifted her hand and waved, though she knew he couldn’t see her.
‘I’ve been meaning to ask,’ he told Cynthia as he changed clothes for supper. ‘What do you wear to a potluck wedding?’ He couldn’t just float around all day with his vestments flapping in the breeze.
‘Very casual.’
‘A knit shirt?’
‘I don’t know about a knit shirt,’ she said. ‘Maybe too much of a golfer look.’
‘So, a white dress shirt, maybe? Without the starch?’
‘How about your blue stripe or your blue check? And khakis, I think.’
Khakis. This would be a first. Back in the day, seersucker suits had been de rigueur for Mississippi summer weddings.
‘And socks with your loafers,’ she said. ‘Loafers without socks is sort of a good-old-boy look, someone said.’
He ran a comb through what was left of his hair. ‘I’m a pretty good old boy.’
‘The chickens will be done in twenty minutes,’ said Lace. ‘If you could please take them out?’
‘Will do.’ Cynthia was putting potatoes on to boil.
‘I just need to run up to Heaven. Back in a flash.’
‘I know the feeling. Take your time.’
She did run. All the way to the top of the house to the room Cynthia had called Heaven and claimed as her art studio while living at Meadowgate years ago.
Right there! On just this apple at just this spot, this one simple thing. She brushed in a rough semblance of the Coccinella septempunctata and stood back. Yes. Cecil Kennedy would be crazy about it if he weren’t dead as anything. She wished she could work on it right now, but no way; maybe tomorrow. This painting would rock.
Dooley had come in; she could hear his voice all the way from the kitchen.
She cleaned her brush and, inhaling the aromas rising from the oven, ran down the stairs. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes . . .
She was starved and he would be, too.
He had never been to a wedding except the one for his two cousins in Kentucky when he was still haulin’ liquor. They were cousins by marriage, not by blood, so no chance of any funny business happenin’ to their young’uns.
‘What am I gon’ wear?’ said Harley.
‘Your teeth, for sure,’ said Lace. ‘A
nd a clean shirt and khakis. I’ll lay it all out on your bed.’
That dadgum bed. He was mighty thankful to have a bed an’ wouldn’t complain, but it was criminal for a grown man to be sleepin’ in a pink bedstead with a ruffled thingamajig on top.
‘Man,’ said Dooley.
She put her hand on his leg—her signal for him to stop jiggling, as she called it.
The house was quiet now, people sleeping, a bit of light from Father Tim and Cynthia’s window—Father Tim would be reading in the room that he and Cynthia would turn over to the newlyweds after the wedding. And Harley, Harley would be snoring downstairs in Rebecca Jane’s left-behind princess bed, and Willie would be having his midnight snack of cornbread and milk in the little house with walls covered by vintage calendars from the tractor supply, and over at Hilltop, Hal and Marge and Rebecca Jane would be sleeping in rooms still smelling of fresh paint . . .
It was strangely calming to know where everyone was, including Bowser, Bo, Buck, and Bonemeal, the four old farm dogs slung up on the porch at their feet. When Hal and Marge moved to the hill, they had taken five canines, but four had come back and wouldn’t go again. They had seen the new place and didn’t care for it; this was home.
It had been a long day for Dooley, for everyone at Meadowgate. The clinic closed on Saturdays at noon, but he’d gone in at seven-thirty and looked at the books and rearranged his office and cussed his copier and had a meeting with Hal and Blake and greeted everybody who came through the door. He’d given shots to the heifers, improved the way the south well had been closed up, and checked out the barn loft for hay storage.
‘Five rotten timbers,’ he said. ‘Could be worse.’ He closed his eyes and leaned back against the cushion of the porch glider. ‘All the waiting we did to get here, and we thought that was hard.’ He exhaled. ‘Dreams are a lot of work.’
And she didn’t have a dress yet and there were the rentals to be preordered from Holding, who had to order them from Charlotte—tables, chairs, tablecloths, napkins, plates, flatware, glasses. And lanterns to be found for the tables, probably at the co-op—Cynthia would help her paint them—and the invitations waiting to be addressed and this time she would say yes to Olivia, who had volunteered to arrange the flowers, and of course she and Lily would soon be getting on with the rosemary bread they would bake and freeze, four loaves per table, plus cheese wafers . . .