by Jan Karon
He genuinely believed in this One, had even been ordained as a priest in his service, and yet, in all the long years of his faith since childhood, he had never deeply, viscerally known the warmth and protection of the divinely unconditional, even tender love about which he had heard and read so much. He had trembled to think he was a fraud.
He stood now gazing at the plot he would not occupy. In a world gone berserk with asphalt, it would be good to leave a span of green earth untrammeled.
What epitaph would he want when the time came for his farewell in Mitford? He remembered the gravestone of a woman parishioner in the churchyard at St. John’s in the Grove. DEMURE AT LAST, it read. He thought that the single most definitive and amusing epitaph he’d ever come across.
He saw that his father’s urn had taken on a dark patina; moss grew freely on the north side. Then he looked at his mother’s headstone, and the inscription he’d chosen with such care and suffering.
No. He couldn’t do this now.
Turning away, he opened the gate and walked to the oak, then sat and leaned against it, still holding the roses in their shuck of newspaper. The rough bark felt good to his back; he would pray until he received the grace to pay respects at his mother’s grave and his father’s urn. He should also get over to Aunt Lily and the uncles, and then to his great-great-grandparents at the north corner of the hill.
A few yards away, a young woman helped an elderly lady of considerable girth transplant a geranium from a plastic pot to the head of a grave. He watched for a time, feeling invisible in the shade of the tree. The young woman watered the fresh planting from a green can, and tamped the earth around it with her foot; the old woman leaned on her cane, giving orders.
They looked up, suddenly, and stared at him; perhaps they thought he was loitering or up to no good.
He raised his hand. “Good afternoon.”
“Good afternoon!” the old woman bellowed. “Who’re you visitin’?”
“My family.” He felt hollow as a gourd.
He realized the young woman had sold him the postcards at Tyson’s; he scrambled to his feet as they made their way toward the shade.
“Amy McPherson! Long time, no see.”
“Hey,” said Amy. “I thought I recognized your dog.”
The old woman grasped the handle of her walking stick with both hands and leaned toward him. Given the heavy-duty bifocals that had ridden down her hooked nose, and a good deal of lipstick that had overshot the mark, he thought she looked pretty ferocious.
“I’m Luola Dabney Randolph Lewis, descendant of the Dabneys and Randolphs who came horseback from Virginia in 1834. They bought this land from th’ Chickasaw Cession.”
“Aha.”
“My people settled Holly Springs,” she thundered.
“Well done.”
“An’ this is th’ girl who brings me here every week to visit my husband, General Horace Parkinson Lewis. Who’re you?”
“Timothy Kavanagh, ma’am.” He bowed slightly.
“What kind of dog d’you call that?”
“Bouvier with more than a touch of Irish wolfhound.”
“I assume he doesn’t bite.”
“So far, so good.”
“I see by your collar you’re a priest.”
“Retired.”
“You live in Holly Springs?”
“No, ma’am. I’m from North Carolina, but…”
“I knew I’d never laid eyes on you.”
“…I was born in Holly Springs.”
“What’s that name again?”
“Kavanagh. Timothy Kavanagh.”
“Speak up, my hearin’s gone in one ear!”
“Timothy Kavanagh!” he bellowed back.
“Kavanagh. Would you be Madelaine Kavanagh’s boy?”
“Yes, ma’am.” He felt socked in the gut, as if being Madelaine Kavanagh’s boy had been only a dream, and had suddenly become a reality.
“Your mother was a beautiful woman.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“A fine Baptist, into the bargain.” Mrs. Lewis adjusted her glasses and squinted at him. “You don’t have her good looks.”
“No, ma’am.”
“Step here so I can get a better look at you.”
He walked closer.
“You don’t favor either one of your parents.”
He eyed his car sitting in a patch of shade; he could be behind the wheel in thirty seconds, max.
“Your father was a bitter man. Awfully good-lookin’ an’ dressed like a peacock, but bitter. Episcopalian, of course. I see you’ve got Madelaine’s complexion. She had a lovely complexion.”
Mrs. Lewis was eyeing the very pores of his skin. He stepped back and clung to a headstone.
“It’s a pity your mother and father were taken so young. Madelaine would be ninety-five if she’d lived; I’m ninety-three in August; she was two years ahead of me in school. I admit I was jealous of her figure, she had th’ tiniest waist you’d ever want to see. An’ popular—she was very popular. We were in garden club together, th’ club met any number of times at Whitefield. Your mother worked like a dog in those gardens, with hardly a soul to help but that colored girl who ran away. To this day, I never knew what she saw in your father—an’ look how he dragged her out to the country an’ kept her hidden from proper society. Such an air he had, as if we were all dirt under his feet, but I always believed he was innocent.”
Amy put her hand over her face; he stood, stiff and silent, astounded.
“And why did you leave us for North Carolina?”
“I went away to college and—”
“That’s no excuse. None at all. That’s the way young people do—run off and do their own thing, as they say, and bankrupt the economy of the town that made them who they are in the first place! What happened when the yellow fever left half of Holly Springs dead as doornails? What happened when th’ damn Yankees moved in an’ ate up or stole everything that wadn’t nailed down?”
“Please, Miz Lewis.” Amy tugged at the old woman’s arm.
“What happened when th’ Depression wiped us out, an’ th’ war took our boys off to Europe an’ shipped ’em home in boxes, an’ th’ civil rights people swarmed in here an’ yanked us all up by th’ scruff of th’ neck?”
Amy clapped both hands over her face.
“Our young people ran off an’ left us high an’ dry, that’s what happened. An’ what did you do when cotton pulled out an’ left us boilin’ up chicken bones for soup? This closed down, that closed down, our beautiful depot sittin’ there like a mausoleum, an’ where were the young people to help us back on our feet? Gone to greener pastures!”
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“Speak up!”
“I’m sorry!”
“I’m sorry,” said Amy, looking aghast.
“Too late for sorry,” boomed Mrs. Lewis. “Are you visitin’ th’ Baptists or th’ Episcopalians while you’re here?”
“Some of both, perhaps. Well, a pleasure meeting you.” An out-and-out lie. “And good to see you again, Amy.”
Amy looked close to tears. “It’s her medication.”
“Make sure you leave somethin’ in th’ plate both places,” Mrs. Lewis instructed. “Somethin’ we can all be proud to talk about when you run off again.”
He was pouring sweat. At the car, he took out his handkerchief and realized his hand was shaking as he wiped his face. Had that been real, or a dyspeptic dream? And how much of this heat could these people take, anyway? Not very much, if that voracious old buzzard was any indication.
He sat in the car and pretended to look at the road map until Amy and her charge walked up the lane with the watering can and got into a vehicle that had seen better days.
Good riddance. “Okay, buddy, here we go again.”
He slid from under the wheel and stood by the car, feeble as an infant. He couldn’t go anywhere; he was fried.
A terrible exhaustion had been working i
n him since morning. A marathon drive yesterday. A rotten room last night. An hour’s time difference. A full day today, with no nourishment beyond an egg biscuit and a stick of sugarless gum. And when had he last drunk water? He was parched as a stone.
Twice, he’d been in a diabetic coma, thanks to his thoroughly dim-witted ways. He needed a beeper that would sound an alarm—something to protect him from himself.
He gulped warm water from the jug, and poured the remainder into the dog bowl. What time was it, anyway? Two-thirty. He had to fly out of here and get something in his stomach. Tomorrow—he’d come back to Hill Crest tomorrow, first thing. And he’d need to stock up on water and fruit; he wanted fruit.
A car moved toward him along the lane and braked a few feet from the front bumper of the Mustang. Barnabas growled, but lay motionless on the passenger seat.
A man roughly his own age, wearing a straw hat and seersucker suit, got out of the car and flipped a cigarette into the grass. “How you?”
“Good. And you?”
“Jus’ jolly. Do I know you?”
“Don’t believe so; I’m visiting from North Carolina.”
The man folded his arms and leaned against the grille of his car. “Jim Houck.”
His heart thundered. Right here in the cemetery, he would meet his first ghost.
“Tim Kavanagh.”
“Lawyer Kavanagh’s boy.”
“Right.”
“Heard you were comin’ up t’ Hill Crest. Thought I’d ride up an’ say hello. For ol’ times’ sake.”
“That was kind of you. I was just leaving.”
“Case you don’t remember, your daddy was tried for pushin’ my daddy down th’ steps at th’ bank.”
“He was found not guilty.”
“Yeah, well, you know those ol’-time judges. Man’s a bigwig in town, he’s off th’ hook, no problemo.”
He was out of breath, as if he’d run up the hill. “I’m sorry about your father.”
“Water over th’ dam. What’s done is done. Just came up t’ say I heard you were in town, wanted you t’ know I noticed. That a dog?”
“It is.”
“Thought it might be a sofa you’re haulin’ around.” Jim Houck let loose with a laugh that sounded like chalk moving over a blackboard; Barnabas laid his ears back.
“Maybe we’ll see you around, Jim.” He dug in his pocket for the key.
“You’ll definitely see me around.” Jim Houck got in his car, slammed the door, gunned the motor, and backed down the lane, tires squalling.
His hand was trembling as he stuck the key in the ignition.
REST IN PEACE, he read on a headstone by the lane.
How anybody could rest in peace in this place was beyond him.
FOUR
He stood and read the chalkboard over the grill. He was in the wrong place, big time.
Whip potoatos & gravy
Country stile steak
Country stile ribs
Green beans & side meat
Collard greens
Cold slaw
Black eye peas
Mac & cheese
Cornbread or biscuits
Sweet potato pie
Blueberry cobbler
Stroke City.
The cook looked up from cleaning the grill. “How you?”
“Good, thanks. This is some menu. You do this every day?”
“Ever’ day th’ Lord give me breath, ’cept Sunday. That’s m’ Sabbath rest.” He wiped his hands on his apron. “Frank King.”
“Tim Kavanagh.” They shook hands across the counter.
“Pleased t’ meet you. You ain’t from around Holly Springs.”
“Born here, grew up here. Been gone a long time.”
“Same deal. Born here, grew up here, gone a long time—got hungry for home.”
“Speaking of hungry, I could gnaw a table leg. Got anything left?”
“They ’bout cleaned me out, but I’ll find you somethin’ fo’ sho.”
“I’m diabetic, which means—”
“I know what that means. I got diabetes m’self. Type One.”
“Type Two here. Traded up from One.”
“How you like takin’ them shots?”
“Not bad, I’m used to it now.”
“Miss’ippi got mo’ diabetes than any state in th’ union.”
He thought Frank seemed oddly proud of the superlative. He eyed the menu again. “This is a mighty dangerous place to work.”
“I don’ eat this stuff, I jus’ cook it. Course, Miss Ella Moffatt, she make th’ biscuits, th’ cobbler, an’ th’ pies.”
In his fervid imagination, he was wolfing down country-style ribs, mashed potatoes with gravy, and a slab of cornbread. “Let me have the collard greens, the green beans, the coleslaw, and”—he was going for it—“the cornbread.”
“Thass three greens you ordered. You want three greens?”
“I’ve been traveling.”
“Got you covered. What you drinkin’?”
“Something sugar-free. Surprise me.” He didn’t have an active cell left in his brain.
“You got kin here?” asked Frank.
“No kin. But looking for a few people I once knew.”
“Who you lookin’ fo’?”
“Tommy Noles. Small build. Sandy hair. Well, it was sandy at one time, probably gray now. My age.”
“Tommy Noles. Don’ know ’im.”
“Roosevelt Ponder, a year or two older than me. We called him Rosie.” All of Louis’s and Sally’s boys had been older, but maybe Rosie was still around.
“Roosevelt Ponder. Sounds familiar. But no, can’t say I know ’im.”
“I’d also like to find a man called Willie, maybe Will or William. A few years older than me. Missing a thumb on his left hand.”
“I know somebody name’ Tyrone got this finger gone.” Frank held up a forefinger. “Stuck it in a horse’s mouth on a bet. Who else you lookin’ to find?”
“Not my high school basketball coach, that’s for sure. He rode me so hard I’ve never shot a basket since.” He’d been the shortest guy on the team; Coach Mickie was determined to make him grow three inches, do or die.
Grinning, Frank passed the plate over the counter. “Git on wit’ it fo’ it git cold.”
He sat in a booth and got on with it, thinking of the motel room.
Beggars couldn’t be choosers. It was the only place he’d found online that would let him bring his dog.
The day was about shot, as far as kicking around Holly Springs was concerned, but going back to the motel room early wasn’t an option. If he could get his blood sugar out of his socks, he’d swing by the homeplace on the way to Memphis.
He’d call his wife tonight, of course, and read, that was the ticket. Stick his nose in a book, and he could leave any room far behind. He was in the books of Timothy again, as he was nearly every year on his birthday. He had always felt that St. Paul intended the letters not only for his young and eager disciple, but for him, Timothy Kavanagh, a couple millennia down the pike. He’d confessed this odd notion to his mother, his bishop, his wife, and his dog, in that order, and even his dog had seemed open to the idea.
He patted his shirt pocket, checking for the phone—he’d lost two of the darned things in three months—and remembered the note. It was a relief to have forgotten it for a while.
Frank set a dish of blueberry cobbler on the table. “There you go. On th’ house.”
“Whoa. Thanks a lot. But—should I eat this?”
“One time ain’t gon’ hurt.”
He studied the way the juice purpled the rim of the white dish…
‘I need to go to Miz Lula’s,’ he told his mother.
‘Miss Lula died, remember? Your father and I went to her funeral. She’s not at her house anymore, she’s with the Lord in heaven.”
‘I need to go real bad.’
‘But there’s no reason, Timothy. I hear the family is packing up the
house.’
‘I really need to do it, Mama.’
It had been weeks since the party and the awful night of the broken vase, and he knew nothing of what had happened to Willie. For a long time, he’d been afraid to find out. Now he had to know.
‘Please, please, I need to so much.’ He didn’t know what else to say—and then he remembered he could tell a lie. ‘I left my best marble in th’ whole wide world at Miz Lula’s.’
‘But you’d never find a marble in what’s going on over there.’
‘But I need to do it.’ He wanted to fall on the floor and writhe around and scream, but he was too old for that, and besides, the only time he ever tried it, it didn’t work.
‘I suppose I could buy butter from Jane Witherspoon along the way. But with the price of gas these days…’
‘Please, please, please.’ He was exhausted from begging.
His mother smiled. ‘Like Peggy says, you are the aggravatin’est little weasel.’
They drove into town the following Saturday, while his father worked with Louis and his boys to string fence.
On the way to Miz Lula’s, he studied his mother: both hands firmly on the wheel, wearing the little hat she often wore to town, the faint trace of rouge on her cheeks. He thought she was the most beautiful lady in the whole wide world. And she was going to town just because of him, because he had begged her to do it. He wished he deserved her love.
They parked the Buick in the driveway, where Boss Tate’s car had left dark circles of oil.
‘Run and find Mose,’ she said. ‘Perhaps he’s seen your marble. And don’t tarry.’
While his mother talked with the mammy, he found Mose outside the summer kitchen. He was sitting on a bench, banging a cook pot with a mallet.
‘What you doin’?’
‘Fixin’ this here dent. Ol’ Lucy th’owed a pot at me f’r sayin’ she was old an’ ugly. Course, she ain’t near as old as she is ugly.’