by Jan Karon
“One time is right. But only ’cause you busted yo’ hard head open an’ had to go to th’ hospital. That’d be th’ first time an’ th’ last time. Go ahead an’ call it th’ only time.”
“I get th’ message. I ain’t pushin’ you on that.”
“How did y’all team up?”
“I met Ray in Memphis, turns out we were both goin’ through a divorce. My brother had just asked me to come down here and pull this place out of th’ hole—I figured why hire a bunch of subs who’re scared t’ death of hard work, when I could hire a brother who can work and cook. Ol’ Ray, he’s rough as a cob, but a pretty straight shooter.”
Ray laughed. “It wadn’t my cookin’ he was after, it was my new set of telescopin’ ladders.”
T laughed, coughed hard, and spit in the wheelbarrow. “A man can rise pretty high in th’ world with a good set of ladders.”
“’Bout all I had left after th’ divorce lawyer worked me over.”
“Ray did a long pull in th’ contractin’ business, then spent a few years cookin’ down at th’ governor’s mansion in Jackson. He was th’ right hand to th’ main honcho.”
“Cooked for presidents, first ladies, governors, Indian chiefs, guys from th’ Mideast wearin’ those tablecloth hat deals…”
“How ’bout you, Tim? Can preachers marry in your church?”
He dug in his pocket for his wallet and flipped it open. “Mrs. Kavanagh.”
“Whoa,” said T. “Look here, Ray.”
“Nice,” said Ray. “Real nice.”
“Famous, too.”
“What fo’?”
“Writing and illustrating children’s books.”
“Very cool,” said T.
“And this is my boy, Dooley.”
“Good-lookin’ cat,” said Ray. “Redheaded.”
“We adopted him a few months ago. He was left on my doorstep at the age of eleven. He changed my life.”
“You’re a lucky man,” said Ray. “A wife, a kid…”
“Grace,” he said.
“Me an’ Ray have about laid offa women.”
“About laid off? I’m done. They got me three times.”
“Got me twice,” said T. “I’m way done.”
Ray tossed his empty bottle in the wheelbarrow and stood up. “I got to git in there an’ start flourin’ m’ catch. Tuesday’s our big night aroun’ here, I don’ cook but once a week. You ought t’ stay an’ eat wit’ us.”
“Very kind of you. Better get up the road.” He noticed for the first time the ache in his bones—Memphis seemed a thousand miles away; he wanted to sit on this porch for eternity.
“After he left th’ mansion, Ray went back to Memphis an’ hustled ribs at Rendezvous a few years. He’s good, you ought t’ stay. When my brother and his wife come down from Memphis, Ray does th’ cookin’.”
Ray squared back his shoulders and stretched. “T’night’s menu feature is catfish, caught this mornin’. Gon’ fry it extra crispy, whip up some hush puppies, then come in behin’ th’ hush puppies wit’ coleslaw. None of that mess in a package, we gratin’ a actual head.”
“Sittin’ in there on th’ sink right now,” said T. “A nice little head.”
“Who’s th’ grater?”
“We got a division of labor goin’ on. Ray fishes, I clean. I grate, he makes th’ slaw—his ingredients are so secret, I have to turn m’ back an’ swear on th’ Bible not t’ look.”
“You ain’t gon’ git no better offer,” said Ray.
Though his homeplace didn’t seem especially familiar, he felt at home with the kind of hospitality he’d been raised with. He crunched the last sliver of ice in his tea glass and got up from the porch step. He wouldn’t mind a refill, but didn’t want to trouble anybody. Leaving was the right thing to do—preachers were notorious for showing up at mealtime and wearing out their welcome.
“How about a rain check?” he asked.
“If you leavin’ Saturday an’ I only cook Tuesday, they ain’t gon’ be no rain check.”
“True.”
“Come back even if we’re not cookin’,” said T. “All us country dudes got on our calendars is, I’m makin’ up a new mess of kudzu cream on Thursday, an’ Ray’s pickin’ up his dentures.”
Ray grinned. “From th’ cat who do teeth fo’ th’ convicts.”
“Must be the price point.”
“You got it.”
They laughed and shook hands.
“It’s been a pleasure,” he said. “A real pleasure. Thank you.”
T scratched Barnabas behind the ear. “We get started around seven and wind down at four. When you come back, you can go through th’ box.”
“By the way, what happened to Tater and Tot?”
“They’re prob’ly haulin’ into Tupelo about now, with a squirrel in the lead.”
Ray looked bemused. “B’lieve I’ll put a pitcher of homemade lemonade behin’ that catfish. Plenty of cracked ice, sting it wit’ a little peppermint from m’ patch out back…”
He couldn’t take it anymore. Why should he be the one to redeem clergy’s reputation for lurking at mealtime?
“That did it,” he said. “I’m in.”
They sat around the kitchen table after supper and went through the plunder of lives that had been lived at Whitefield for a hundred and fifty years. He didn’t recognize the gizmo from a toy, or the plowshare or the buttons.
“Ain’t it somethin’, you settin’ right here in th’ kitchen where you was a boy?” Ray had cubed a fresh pineapple; they were eating it with their fingers and wiping up the juice with paper towels.
“Grace,” he said.
“When I went back to Memphis in th’ nineties, I went to see my ol’ house, an’ it wadn’t there n’ more. There was a basketball hoop and two white boys an’ a black. I say, ‘This is where I used t’ live at.’ Black boy, he ’bout fourteen, fifteen, say, ‘Ain’t nobody ever live here, I been here all my life an’ ain’t nobody live here but this hoop.’”
“Jus’ gone,” said T.
“Wit’ th’ wind,” said Ray. “You a lucky man, t’ come back to th’ homeplace an’ it still standin’.”
“Still standing and looking good,” he said.
Rosie’s yo-yo. He took it in his hand with reverence. Pieces of rotted string sifted back into the box…
He had mixed his blood with Louis Ponder’s youngest son, Rosie, because if it hadn’t been for Rosie, he couldn’t have saved Peggy’s life. Rosie had wanted a yo-yo worse than anything, and since it was right to do good stuff for your blood brother, he’d paid for it with his own money and given it to Rosie at Christmas.
Not long after that, Rufe told him where real brothers come from. Before he learned this horrible truth, he had often asked for a brother, and his mother always said it depended on what God thought about it.
He couldn’t imagine that God would have anything to do with giving him a brother the way Rufe said you get a brother. He asked Peggy how he might be able to get a brother without exactly requesting one from his mother.
‘That’s th’ good Lord’s business, let Him handle such as that. You cain’t be jus’ pressin’ a button on somebody an’ gettin’ a brother.’
So he prayed every night for a long time.
When nothing appeared to be happening, he bucked up his courage and went to his mother, completely blanking out of his mind anything Rufe had said.
‘Mama.’
She looked up and smiled. She was sewing a shirt for him; it was red and green plaid, his favorite.
‘Could I please, please have a brother? I’ve been prayin’.’
She leaned over and kissed him on the cheek. ‘Well, then, I’m sure He’ll answer. It may not be the answer we’re expecting, but God always answers.’
He wanted to say, Yes, but you have to do your part, are you doing your part? He knew that his mother and father weren’t sleeping in the same room anymore, which could have something to do wi
th the problem. He later asked Rufe if people got sisters the same way they got brothers, and learned the disturbing truth.
Feeling overwhelmed by the whole business, he did not ask again for a brother. But he kept praying…
His mother’s old trowel.
When he took it from the box, the worn wooden handle with traces of green paint seemed comfortable in his hand, and oddly consoling. The garden had been her life’s work, her confession that something lovely could be wrought from disappointment. Madelaine Kavanagh herself had lived out Roethke’s premise that “deep in their roots, all flowers keep the light”…
When he heard how gravely ill she was, he folded his purple and white ribbon stole and put it in his duffel bag. But this was admitting the worst, so he took it out and replaced it in the bureau drawer. As he was getting in the car for the drive to Holly Springs, he turned and looked at the house a long time, then unlocked the door and went inside. He knew he would need the stole, no matter how hard he may have prayed against her dying.
There were many assurances his mother had missed in her short life, not the least of which was the assurance of her husband’s innocence in the Martin Houck affair. The whole business—the tragedy, the lawsuit, the trial, and the suspicion that his father had been guilty—had eaten away at her, not to mention himself, for years.
His father’s clerk had attested to an argument between Houck and his employer, which led to a brief scuffle, and to his employer walking with Houck to the door, where the argument continued. The clerk testified that his quick glance at the scuffle led him to believe Houck started the altercation, soon after which he heard a shout. Then, he said, ‘Thumps racked the metal steps and were felt for a moment in the floorboards of my office.’ He rushed from his office to the landing, where he saw ‘the defendant, Matthew Kavanagh, standing white as a sheet and speechless, and Mr. Houck crumpled on the pavement below.’There were no other witnesses.
In the end, the only assurance he’d ever been able to offer his mother was his love. He would give anything to feel that had been enough, but it had not been enough.
His hands trembled as he put on the stole in her bedroom and poured wine into the small chalice.
She rallied a little after taking the infinitesimal crumb of bread, moistened with wine, but her eyes remained closed.
‘Timmy?’
‘Yes, ma’am?’
There was a long silence, then she said, ‘There’s someone at the door.’
He knelt and took her cold hand and held it against his cheek.
‘They’ve come to see the gardens,’ she whispered. ‘Tell them…’ She tugged at his hand, urgent.
‘I’m here, Mother.’
‘Tell them…’
He knew the sound; in the old days, it had been called the death rattle. He bent closer and listened.
‘Tell them…I’m so sorry, but…’
He clasped her hand in both of his.
‘…the garden is closed.’
He continued to kneel beside her, frozen in place, looking at the bluish shadow of her eyelids and the nearly invisible veins beneath her cheekbones. Her skin was translucent as porcelain against the pillowcase bordered with his grandmother’s tatting.
He kissed her forehead. Then he released her hand—it seemed to take a long time to lay it at her side—and, still kneeling, offered the supplication he’d memorized from the 1928 prayer book.
‘“Into thy hands, O merciful Saviour, we commend the soul of thy servant, now departed from the body. Acknowledge, we humbly beseech thee, a sheep of thine own fold, a lamb of thine own flock, a sinner of thine own redeeming. Receive her into the arms of thy mercy, into the blessed rest of everlasting peace, and into the glorious company of the saints in light. Amen.”’
He stood up and drew the sheet over her face, and went to the kitchen, where Louis and the doctor and nurse were drinking coffee, and said, ‘She’s gone.’
Louis uttered an instantaneous and primordial howl that might have been his own if he would allow it.
The funeral home dispatched a hearse to Whitefield, and afterward, he had gone to his room and stood at the open window for a long time, looking out to the moon-washed garden. He had never felt such agony; it was as if he couldn’t possibly go on…
He wiped his eyes with his handkerchief. “Better save this box for another day.”
“You ought to stay with us tonight,” said T.
“Yeah,” said Ray. “We take dogs.”
He blew his nose.
“You can have your old room; my brother uses it to bunk some of th’ guys he hunts an’ fishes with. Th’ sheets didn’t get changed since Charlie Stokes, but Charlie’s pretty clean, all things considered.”
“Plus, th’ toilet flushes,” said Ray, “an’ you got a ceilin’ fan.”
“Thanks, fellas, but I can’t do it. I’m diabetic, and my insulin’s at the motel. I need a shot tonight, and again in the morning.”
What he really needed was an airlift; he was completely, utterly fried.
At the end of Whitefield’s winding driveway, he stopped and put the top up, and called his wife.
“Touching base,” he said.
“Where are you?”
“Headed to Memphis. How’s your ankle?”
“Better. How’s your heart?”
“Better,” he said. “I love you.”
“I love you back.”
“I’ve just been to Whitefield; I’ll tell you everything in the morning.”
“I’ll come with you next time, no matter what.”
Maybe there wouldn’t be a next time.
He turned left and drove along the graveled country road until it turned to asphalt, then connected with the highway to Memphis and the motel whose roof was still decorated with Christmas lights. He slept soundly until sunrise.
By six-thirty, he had walked his dog, paid his bill, and was out of the Silver something or other with the top down, his good pants and sport coat lying flat in the trunk and his duffel bag on the backseat.
If the person who wrote the note was going to show himself, or even possibly, though not probably, herself, he wanted to get it over with. He was amazed, still, that he’d allowed two small words to whirl him like a dervish.
He hunkered over the wheel, liking the feel of the wind in his hair—what was left of it. And another thing: What kind of mind could reasonably believe that such spare communication would bring someone running across three state lines?
“You’re the one who wanted me to come back,” he said aloud. “That’s what this is all about. So here I am, as ready as Samuel to do whatever you want done.”
From the moment the note arrived, he’d felt called, led, drawn, pulled—the whole thing was clearly in God’s hands and out of his own. And since he didn’t know what else to do, he’d do something completely uncharacteristic—starting now, he would, as some were fond of saying, go with the flow.
“Wouldn’t mind seeing the old cotton compress,” he told his dog, “if it’s still standing. Maybe somebody will let us in Nanny Howard’s house.” If he got to the church today, fine; if not, he had time to cover that base. “We’ll definitely drive by my old school, and hey, maybe Phillips Grocery is still in the hamburger business.” After Stafford’s, Phillips Grocery had been his favorite food haunt.
His spirits were definitely charging. “If Phillips is still going, I’ll treat you to a burger.”
He looked at Barnabas, who eyed him from the passenger seat.
“But no onions,” he said.
SEVEN
He found coffee and an egg biscuit at a place on the square, and ate in the Mustang with yesterday’s South Reporter propped on the steering wheel. After talking with Cynthia for a half hour, he was at Tyson’s by nine, looking for razor blades and lip balm.
He bought a Commercial Appeal at the rack, and found Amy sorting change into the register.
“How are you, Amy?”
“Terrible,” she
whispered. “It’s Miz Lewis. I had to pick her up on my way in an’ bring her with me so I can take her to the doctor at eleven.”
“Where is she?”
“Over behind th’ card rack. She’s worse than ever, our pharmacist says it’s th’ medication for sure. If she speaks, don’t say a word back, it sets her off, okay?”
“Okay.”
“Lower your voice. Where’s your dog?”
“In the car. In the shade. I’ll bring him in tomorrow.”
“It’s goin’ to be ninety-nine today, with a storm this evenin’. You want your lip balm in cherry, lemon, or chocolate?”
“Can’t it just be plain?” Nothing was plain anymore.
“No plain. I like th’ cherry, it’s our most popular. Th’ chocolate feels icky.”
“Cherry, then.” He was whispering, too.
“Well, well, well!” boomed Mrs. Lewis, who was roaring up on his left flank. “If it isn’t Father Crowley!”
Amy gave him a desperate look. “You’re in for it,” she said under her breath.
“Back to try and mend broken fences, I suppose! And don’t bother apologizin’ to me, when you ought to be beggin’ forgiveness from th’ whole bloomin’ town!”
Keeping his mouth shut wasn’t a problem; he had no idea what to say. He dug in his pocket for his wallet.
“And what, may I ask, are you doing with th’ money you helped yourself to?”
He extracted a ten and he handed it to Amy.
Mrs. Lewis gasped. “Spending it, of course! Flinging it around like a heathen while children go hungry all over the world! It’s no wonder your church is in a fix, you people think you can get away with every trick in the book. Makes me glad to be a Presbyterian.” She frowned at Amy. “Or am I a Baptist?”
“The Gen’ral was a Presbyterian, Miz Lewis, you’re a Baptist.”
The old woman leaned toward him on her cane. “And proud of it!” she thundered.
He grabbed his change. “I’m out of here. I’ll pray for things to go well at eleven.”
“Thank you, we need it. Oh, and there’s an envelope for you. Th’ pharmacist said it was brought in late yesterday.”