by Jan Karon
‘What kind of cake?’
‘Yeller cake wit’ lemon icin’, thass her fav’rite an’ Mr. Boss’s fav’rite, too. Near ’bout ever’ Sunday, Miz Lula give me a piece of yeller cake. M’ mama, she won’ give me yeller cake, but Miz Lula, she do.’
Peggy would give him things his mama wouldn’t. Like Co-Cola. ‘That ol’ Co-Cola gon’ rot th’ teeth out yo’ head,’ Peggy would say. ‘But I ain’t lookin’ at you suckin’ it down, nossir, I’m lookin’ how this mornin’ glory vine gon’ take th’ place if I don’ cut it back.’
When they passed from the porch to the front hall, he peered into Miz Lula’s parlor and saw the piano. He had always wanted a piano, but his father didn’t like noise in the house.
‘I could prob’ly play that,’ he told Willie.
‘Does y’all know how?’
‘We have a piano at our house.’ The lie had slipped out so easy, it was as if someone else had said it.
‘I reckon you could play a minute if you don’ tell nobody. Does you play ragtime?’
‘I can play most anything.’ Another lie had just rolled out; he hadn’t even known it was coming. People weren’t supposed to lie, even to colored.
‘Okay,’ said Willie. ‘Come on. But don’ touch nothin’ else, you hear?’
‘I won’t,’ he said. And then he did.
The blue vase sat on the piano on a fringed silk shawl that draped onto the floor. As he walked to the keyboard, numb with humiliation at being caught in his sin, he stepped on the shawl. The shawl slid toward him, dislodging the vase; it toppled to the floor and smashed.
‘Lord Jesus,’ Willie whispered. ‘Mr. Boss give ’er that. That was give to him for bein’ th’ mayor of Memphis.’
Stunned, and frozen with fear, he stared at the blue fragments scattered along the polished hardwood floor.
‘Timothy.’
It seemed that the simple act of raising his head took an eternity. He saw his father in the doorway and realized that his mouth was open and he could not shut it.
His father remained in the doorway. ‘I was just coming in to see about you. Who did this unholy thing?’
The silence hung in the parlor for what seemed a long time.
‘I done it,’ said Willie.
As the Buick navigated the rough road toward home, he lay like a stone on the backseat, sick with fear and self-loathing, pretending to sleep. When Willie took the blame, his father had grabbed Willie by the shirt and marched him out of the room—and what had he done to stop it? He’d stood there, mute, helpless, worse than a baby.
Willie had looked back at him and grinned. Yes, grinned. As if he was thrilled to death about the unmentionable act that would happen sure as fire. He couldn’t get that grin out of his mind, the thought of it chilled him. If his mother knew he’d allowed Willie to be dragged away for a crime which her son had committed…But he could never tell her, he could never tell anybody, not even Peggy, he was in this alone. Sometimes it was hard to believe there were so many things you could never tell anybody.
He prayed with all his might that they would give Willie a nice funeral, with a black car in the lead and curtains at the windows. If they invited him, he wouldn’t be able to go, of course, because he’d be too sick to get out of bed.
‘…since Greece surrendered to Hitler.’
‘…Germans…London…’
‘…shouldn’t have humiliated that boy in front of the servants, Matthew.’
‘…weary of your tiresome sentimentalities, Madelaine.’
He couldn’t hear all they were saying over the roar of the motor. But he knew they were talking about the terrible thing that had happened because of his carelessness, and the worse thing that had probably already happened because of his cowardice.
The wrapped slice of yellow cake, sent to him by Miz Lula, lay on the seat beside him; he would never put a bite of it in his mouth.
His mother came into his room the following morning and stood by his bed. He squeezed his eyes shut even tighter, praying she would go away and let him suffer. Lord, he prayed, silent as a tomb, let me die and be happy again.
‘Timothy?’
He twitched his nose as he’d seen Louis do while sleeping.
‘You aren’t sleeping. Tell me what’s troubling you.’
The thought occurred to him out of the blue. ‘I have th’ yeller fever.’
‘Really?’
He did not open his eyes, he did not want to see her face or make eye contact with someone who was not desperately fallen like himself.
‘What are your symptoms?’
He didn’t know the symptoms of the deadly fever that had raged through town and left hundreds dead. Even the Catholic priest. Even seven nuns. He’d been told that bodies had been stacked up like firewood, waiting to be buried. Now they were all in the ground at Hill Crest as proof of the worst thing that ever happened in Holly Springs.
‘What are your symptoms, Timothy?’
His mother had nailed him, but he couldn’t quit now.
‘Itchin’ all over. Had t’ go to th’ pot a hun’erd times. Skin burnin’ like fire. Feet stinkin’ real bad.’
‘I’ll see you in the kitchen in short order. Peggy has cinnamon rolls in the oven.’
She closed the door behind her, obviously not sorry for a minute that he had yellow fever and could die and be stacked up at Hill Crest like a hickory log.
He heard his father’s footsteps coming along the hall—the sharp tap, the dragging sound. His voice was muffled outside the door. ‘What is it?’
‘Timothy has yellow fever.’
This announcement was followed by something that shocked him to the marrow. It was his father’s laughter; his father’s scary, out-of-control laughter.
THREE
DICKERSON
CARPENTER
GHOLSON
He drove along a narrow lane bordered by pear trees, reading the names chiseled into the headstones.
SORRELL
CLAYTON
AIRLIE
MACKIE
Here and there, the iron fences enclosing family plots nearly disappeared beneath masses of climbing roses. Cedars, magnolias, and blackjack oaks grown to what seemed enormous size cast islands of shade on mown grass. The hill seemed smaller than he remembered, but greener and more beautiful.
He had followed the hearse to Hill Crest for his Aunt Lily, Uncle Clarence, Uncle Chester, Grandpa Yancey, and then, only months later, Nanny. Far too soon after that, they’d driven up with the urn for his father’s memorial service, and finally, he’d ridden in the black, chauffeured town car, known as the family car, behind his mother’s hearse. He’d realized that he had no family to ride with him, as his first cousin, Walter, was in Europe at the time. He’d spoken with the funeral director about what he intended to do. There had been some raised eyebrows among funeral home staff when he and Louis, recently widowed and now doubly bereaved, climbed in the backseat together and off they went.
He parked in the lane now and retrieved the roses from the trunk. Then he let his dog out the passenger side and they walked west toward the oldest blackjack oak on the grounds. The age of the oak had been a matter of pride to his grandfather and even to his parents. Back then, owning plots near this oak, which was older than the 1851 cemetery in which it grew, had been loosely akin to owning a house on Salem Avenue.
His eyes roamed his old playground. There ought to be a law against plastic flowers, poinsettias in particular. No, a stiff tax would be better; that would get the job done. In the years he’d visited Hill Crest with his mother, there had been no such abomination…
He liked going to town with his mother on Saturday, which was the only day she could have the car. His Aunt Lily never went to town on Saturday, she said Saturday was for the negroes, but his mother enjoyed Saturdays in town as much as he did.
She always dressed up, and put on perfume and a hat and sometimes gloves, and always a little rouge, which she rubbed on her cheeks with her fin
gers. In spring and summer, they cut flowers from the garden and went to the cemetery every month to decorate the Howard family graves. He liked riding into town with the smell of lilacs or peonies or tulips or roses, and going to the cemetery, which was cool in summer because of the big trees. He was allowed to run up and down the lane, but not at all in the cemetery, because whatever he did, he must never step on a grave. That was fine with him, he didn’t want to step on a grave and be hainted for the rest of his life.
Before he could read, his mother read the headstones to him.
‘Lieutenant George Anderson said, and this is worth remembering, Timothy: “He longest lives who most to others gives, himself forgetting.”’
She told him that Lieutenant Anderson, whose plane went down at the South Pole, lived up to those words every day, according to a letter that Admiral Byrd wrote to the Anderson family.
Fifteen-year-old Robert Walter McGuirk, Jr., was buried at Hill Crest with a letter to his dad dated December 20, 1906. Everybody seemed to know what the letter said, including his Sunday School teacher at Walnut Grove, who learned to recite it by heart as a lesson on the spirit of giving.
Dear Pap,
…You know I want to give Mother a comb, brush and mirror and I want you to send me $10 or $20 maybe. When you send me the money please address the letter to me for I want it to be a surprise to Mother and I have to get a lot of other presents so I will be obliged to you if you come across with about 15 bucks. All are well. Your loving son, Walter. P.S. Don’t be afraid that the money will be spent foolishly for I am an old head.
There were also ancestors of his mother buried here, who had died with the yellow fever.
In some ways, he thought the cemetery almost as good as a movie because you could imagine the people and their lives, and see the plane going down over the frozen South Pole, and wonder if the boy named Robert ever got his mother the comb and brush and mirror; he really wanted Mrs. McGuirk to have gotten at least the comb. In one way, Hill Crest was maybe even better than the movies, because you could go back to the cemetery again and again, and movies always left town.
Sometimes Peggy came with them and they ate lunch under a shade tree, then went shopping, and sometimes they visited his mother’s friends who had kids his age, or they would go see his grandmother and have chicken salad on a pineapple ring with a hot roll, or maybe when they shopped on the square they would get a grilled cheese at Stafford’s. Plus his mother always gave him a dime, which he spent at Tyson’s.
‘Thank you for your business,’ they said at Tyson’s, which made him feel as if a dime to them was as important as a dime to him.
When he rode to town with his father, it was different. His father hardly ever spoke, and also kept his eyes glued to the road because of his bad leg, which had nerve damage and made driving a hard thing to do.
He asked a lot of questions so his father would talk to him.
‘What makes big holes in the road?’
‘Rain.’
‘How long do butterflies live?’
‘Not long.’
‘Why do we have to die?’ He really wanted to know the answer to this.
A muscle twitched in his father’s jaw, and he didn’t reply.
He often asked questions he’d asked before, just in case the answers would be different this time.
‘Can I ever have a dog?’
‘No.’
‘Why?’
‘For God’s sake, the place is swarming with dogs. Rufe, Louis, everybody has a mongrel dog. Play with their dogs.’
Tommy had a dog, too, his name was Jeff; he helped teach Jeff to catch sticks in midair, and even heel and sit. But he didn’t want to play with other people’s dogs, he wanted his own. Why his father couldn’t understand something so simple made him crave to roll down the window and holler ’til his eyes bugged out.
‘Why can’t I go swimmin’ in th’ pond, just once?’
‘Water moccasins.’
‘Everybody goes swimmin’ in th’ pond.’
No answer.
‘Can I go fishin’ in th’ river?’
‘Absolutely not.’
He would be quiet for a time, to give his father a break from so many questions.
Before he asked the next question, he always prayed. God, let him say yes. Amen.
‘Can I ever, ever play with Tommy?’
‘No.’
‘Not even once?’
‘Don’t ask again.’
He was playing with Tommy, anyway; he and Tommy were making a dam at the creek. But it would help a lot if he had permission, it just would.
He didn’t see why Tommy’s daddy being a ‘secret drunk’ had anything to do with why he couldn’t play with Tommy. Besides, if his daddy’s drinking was such a big secret, how did people know about it? Plus, Tommy’s daddy was a schoolteacher, and schoolteachers couldn’t get drunk or else they couldn’t teach, and since Mr. Noles was teaching every day, then the talk about him staying liquored up must not be true.
There was something even more important that he wanted to ask, but he never did. He wanted to ask, Why do you hate me?…
The family plot was contained by an ornate iron fence, bought nearly a century ago in Memphis and heavily tangled with climbing roses whose canes were as large as his forefinger. The plot had been mowed, but weeds grew thick around the head-and footstones. He had pruning shears in the trunk, and a spade and fertilizer; he’d take care of what needed to be done before he headed back to Mitford.
Mildly detached and fully prepared, he might have been walking into a vestry meeting as he lifted the latch on the creaking iron gate and stepped inside.
REVEREND YANCEY PINCKNEY HOWARD
Safe in
the Arms
of Jesus
Grandpa Yancey had died at age seventy—the same birthday he’d celebrated only two days ago with Cynthia, Dooley, and Dooley’s siblings. As for himself—with the exception of his blasted diabetes—he thought he was in pretty decent shape for seventy. But then, Grandpa Yancey had thought the same thing—he’d been chopping wood when he keeled over with a heart attack.
No pain, no lingering illness, just taken.
Two funeral celebrations had marked Yancey Howard’s passing—one at Walnut Grove, the small country church he had pastored in his early years, and another at First Baptist in town, where he had preached for nearly two decades. First Baptist had been packed; the overflow crowded the churchyard and lined the sidewalk, as if a head of state lay in the open casket beyond the double front doors. His mother and grandmother had been deeply moved, as had he, by the legions of men who, unable to find a seat in the pews, stood outside on a frigid January morning, holding their hats over their hearts in a stinging west wind.
A knot rose in his throat and he felt at once the shame he had so long denied, the shame of being inexcusably late to stand here and pay respects that could never be fully paid.
ELIZABETH JANE MELROSE HOWARD
Her Soul Is
Christ’s Abode
“Nanny,” he said. The sound of her name, so long unspoken, produced a rush of feeling like he hadn’t known in years.
Barnabas sat by his feet, gazing up at him as he mopped his eyes and blew his nose.
“My grandmother,” he explained. Following Grandpa Yancey’s passing, Nanny had been seized with a racking cough, and died of pneumonia four months later. His mother had been devastated; he’d come home from Sewanee for ten days, wrenched with grief, but stricken even more by his mother’s suffering.
He’d bought the roses this morning from a florist on the square. Did he want vases? No, he didn’t need vases. Did he want green florist’s paper? Not needed, thank you, and no ribbon. Just newspaper would do, something to collect the two dozen stems for the ride up to Hill Crest.
He squatted between his grandparents’ graves and placed a red rose on Nanny Howard’s, then turned and placed a yellow rose on his grandpa’s mound.
“In the
name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,” he said, making the sign of the cross. “Thank you for loving me. Thank you for the model you set for me, though I was often too blind to see it.”
His heart was leaden as he stood and tore the petals from several roses and scattered them over the mounds of earth, giving thanks. Then he wiped his eyes and gazed at the green space to the far right of his grandparents’ graves.
That green space was reserved for him.
Turning seventy had given him something to think about, all right. In terms of landmarks, it was right up there with turning forty, when he’d recognized that life would probably always be difficult, and also that it wouldn’t go on forever.
At forty, he’d been pathetically overweight. To paraphrase an old saying, what he lacked in being tall, he made up in being wide. Worse still, it lent him an increasing resemblance to his Grandpa Kavanagh. The family likeness was the torment of his existence; he found it brutally ironic that he should be trapped inside a body so similar in appearance to a man he despised.
Then, to top it all, no pun intended, he was clearly on the cusp of losing his hair. As there was no pattern baldness in his bloodline that he knew of, this reality had come fully loaded with complete shock and bewilderment, feelings he couldn’t talk about with anyone, including his barber. He learned the best way to handle it was to make self-deprecating jokes, and he frequently kicked himself for an overblown vanity that had nothing to do with the mind of Christ.
Those seemingly insurmountable issues had been definitely exacerbated by the feeling of isolation in a remote parish given to gray winters. Soon after his forty-third birthday—he remembered the moment vividly—he realized he was sitting with his head in hands, exactly as his father had so often done. He bolted from the chair and ran out to the small, fenced yard, panicked. What if the depression that had consumed his father was consuming him? He leaned against the fence and implored God to deliver him from the darkness that so often clouded his mind in this parish—or had it been there all along, metastasizing like a tumor?
He realized as he cowered by the fence that he had struggled for years to get it right—struggled to experience the joy, the peace, the sense of oneness with the One who was born for him, gave himself for him, and in so doing, offered Timothy Kavanagh the supernatural gift of eternal life.