by Jan Karon
He heard a single intake of breath from the congregation, a communal gasp. As the man reached the floor and stood beside the altar, he turned and gazed out at them.
He was tall and very thin, with a reddish beard and shoulder-length hair. His clothing fit loosely, as if it had been bought for someone else.
Yet, the single most remarkable thing about the incident, the rector would later say, wasn’t the circumstances of the man’s sudden appearance, but the unmistakable radiance of his face.
Hal Owen stood frozen by his pew on the epistle side.
“I have a confession to make to you,” the man said to the congregation in a voice so clear, it seemed to lift weightlessly toward the rafters. He looked at the rector. “If you’d give me the privilege, Father.”
As Hal Owen looked to the pulpit, Father Tim raised his hand. Let him speak, the signal said.
The man walked in front of the communion rail and stood on the steps. “My name,” he said, “is George Gaynor. For the last several months, your church has been my home—and my prison. You see, I’ve been living behind the death bell in your attic.”
There was a perfect silence in the nave.
“Until recently, this was profoundly symbolic of my life, for it was, in fact…a life of death.
“When I was a kid, I went to a church like this. An Episcopal church in Vermont where my uncle was the rector. I even thought about becoming a priest, but I learned the money was terrible. And, you see, I liked money. My father and mother liked money.
“We gave a lot of it to the church. We added a wing, we put on a shake roof, we gave the rector a Cadillac.
“It took a while to figure out what my uncle and my father were doing. My father would give thousands to the church and write it off, my uncle would keep a percentage and put the remainder in my father’s Swiss bank account. Six hundred thousand dollars flowed through the alms basin into my uncle’s cassock.
“When I was twelve, I began carrying on the family tradition.
“The first thing I stole was a skateboard. Later, I stole a car, and I had no regrets. My father knew everybody from the police chief to the governor. I was covered, right down the line.
“I went to the university and did pretty well. For me, getting knowledge was like getting money, getting things. It made me strong, it made me powerful. I got a Ph.D. in economics, and when I was thirty-three, I had tenure at one of the best colleges in the country.
“Then, I was in a plane crash. It was a small plane that belonged to a friend. I lay in the wreckage with the pilot, who was killed instantly, and my mother and father, who would die…hours later. I was pinned in the cockpit in freezing temperatures for three days, unable to move.”
George Gaynor paused and cleared his throat. He waited for a long moment before he continued.
“Both legs were broken, my skull was fractured, the radio was demolished. Maybe you can guess what I did—I made a deal with God.
“Get me out of here, I said, and I’ll clean up my act, I’ll make up for what my father, my uncle, all of us, had done.
“Last summer, a friend of mine, an antique dealer, had too much to drink. He took me to his warehouse and pulled an eighteenth-century table out of the corner, and unscrewed one of its legs.”
Father Tim’s heart pounded dully. He could feel it beating in his temples.
* * *
Play It Again, Jan:
Rereading the Mitford Series
It’s one thing to read all nine novels in the Mitford series.
But it’s quite another to reread them. Again. And again. And again.
Indeed, I’ve heard from someone who has read the series seven times—and claims to find something fresh and new with each reading.
Believe it or not, so do I.
Occasionally, I’ll pull a Mitford novel from the shelf and scan the pages until a word, a conversation, or a story line compels me. Voilà! Though I wrote it myself, it is suddenly quite fresh and new.
Perhaps, though, what is really fresh and new when we reread a book is ourselves. Indeed, are we not a very different reader from the she or he who read The Great Divorce fifteen years ago? Or the Gospel of John only months ago?
In any case, to all of you who read, and read again, the Mitford novels, this is a short thank-you. Thank you for your enthusiasm and appreciation, and thanks also for your lively imagination, which helps you believe the characters to be quite real.
Which, of course, they are.
“What he pulled out of that table leg was roughly two and a half million dollars’ worth of rare gems, which were stolen from a museum in England, in the Berkshires.
“I’d just gotten a divorce after two years of marriage, and I’d forgotten any deal I’d made with God in the cockpit of that Cessna.
“The bottom line was that nothing mattered to me anymore.”
George Gaynor sat down on the top step leading to the communion rail. He might have been talking to a few intimate friends in his home.
“I discovered that thinking about the jewels mattered a great deal. I was consumed with the thought of having them, and more like them.
“The British authorities had gotten wind of the stuff going out of England in shipments of antiques, and my friend couldn’t fence the jewels because of the FBI.
“One night, I emptied a ninety-dollar bottle of cognac into him. He told me he had hidden the jewels in one of his antique cars. I stole his keys and went to his warehouse with a hex-head wrench. I lay down under a 1937 Packard and removed the oil pan, and took the jewels home in a bag.
“I packed a few things, then I walked out on the street and stole a car. I changed the tag, and started driving. I headed south.”
He paused and looked down. He looked down for a long time. A child whimpered in the back row.
He stood again, his hands in the pockets of the loose brown trousers. “I hadn’t spoken to God in years. To tell the truth, I’d never really spoken to God but once in my life. Yet, I remembered some of the language from the prayer book.
“‘Bless the Lord who forgiveth all our sins. His mercy endureth forever.’ That’s what came to me as I drove. I pulled off the road at a rest stop and put my head down on the steering wheel and prayed for mercy and forgiveness.
“I’d like to tell you that a great peace came over me, but I can’t tell you that. I just started the car and drove on.
“There was no peace, but there was direction. I began to have a sense of where I was going, like I was attached to a fishing line, and somebody at the other end was reeling me in.
“I stopped and bought a box of canned goods and crackers…candy bars, Gatorade, beef jerky, so I wouldn’t have to stop so often to eat and risk being seen.
“One morning about two, I hit the Blue Ridge Parkway and stayed on it until I saw an exit sign that said Mitford. I took the exit, and drove straight up Main Street, and saw this church.”
His voice broke.
“I felt I’d…come home. I had never felt that before in my life. I couldn’t have resisted the pull God put on me, even if I’d tried. I broke the side door lock, Father.”
The rector nodded.
George wiped his eyes with the sleeve of his shirt.
“I brought my things in…a change of clothes, a flashlight, a blanket, and my box from 7-Eleven. Then I parked the car several blocks away and removed the tag. No one was on the street. I walked back here and started looking for…a place to rest, to hide for a few days.”
George Gaynor moved to the lectern and gestured toward the attic stairs. “I’ve got to tell you, that’s a strange place to put stairs.”
Welcoming the relief, the congregation laughed. The placement of the stairs had been a parish joke for years.
“That’s how I came to live behind the death bell, on the platform where it’s mounted. I didn’t have any idea why I was in this particular place, as if I’d been ordered to come. But just before Thanksgiving, I found out.
“I kept my things behind the bell, where they couldn’t be seen. But I put the jewels in an urn in your hall closet. The closet looked unused, I figured nobody went in there, and I didn’t want them on me, in case I was discovered.
“During the day, I lived in the loft over the parish hall. I exercised, sat in the sun by the windows—I even learned a few hymns, to keep my mind occupied. On Sunday, I could hear every word and every note very clearly, as if we were all sitting in the same room.
“At night, I roamed downstairs, used the toilet, looked in the refrigerator, found the food supplies in the basement. And I always wore gloves. Just in case.
“One day in December, my shoes fell off the platform and landed at the bottom of the bell tower.” Grinning, he looked at his feet, then at the congregation. “Every time a box came in for the rummage sale, I was downstairs with my flashlight. But I’ve yet to find a pair of size elevens.”
A murmur of laughter ran through the congregation. Hal Owen continued to stand by his pew, watching, cautious.
“One afternoon, I was sitting in the loft, desperate beyond anything I’d ever known. It made no sense to be here when I could have been in France or South America. But I couldn’t leave this place. I was powerless to leave.
“I heard the front door open, and in a few minutes, a man yelled, ‘Are you up there?’
“I was paralyzed with fear. This is it, I thought. Then, the call came again. But this time, I knew the question wasn’t directed to me. It was directed to God.
“There was something in the voice that I recognized—the same desperation of my own soul. I told you the sound from down here carries up there, and I heard you, Father, speak to that man.
“You said the question isn’t whether He’s up there, but whether He’s down here.”
Father Tim nodded.
“He told you that he couldn’t believe, that he felt nothing. You said it isn’t a matter of feeling, it’s a matter of faith. Finally, you prayed a simple prayer together.”
Remembering, the rector crossed himself. A stir ran through the congregation, a certain hum of excitement, of wonder.
“That was a real two-for-one deal, Father, because I prayed that prayer with you. You threw out the line for one, and God reeled in two.”
The congregation broke into spontaneous applause. The rector noticed that Cynthia Coppersmith was letting her tears fall without shame.
George Gaynor came down the altar steps and walked into the aisle. “After I prayed that prayer with two people I had never seen, to a God I didn’t know, I came down, Father, and stole your Bible.”
He looked plaintively at the rector, who smiled at him, and nodded.
“As I read during the next few weeks, I began to find the most amazing peace. Even more amazing was the intimacy I was finding with God—one-on-one, moment by moment.”
The man from the attic moved to the first pew on the gospel side and leaned on the armrest.
“I come to you this morning, urging you to discover that intimacy, if you have not.
“I also come to thank you for your hospitality, and to say to whoever made that orange cake—that was the finest cake I ever ate in my life.”
Esther Bolick flushed beet red and put her prayer book in front of her face, as every head in the congregation turned to look where she sat in the third row from the organ.
“Father,” said George Gaynor, “thank you for calling someone to take me in.”
The rector looked at his senior warden. “Hal, go over to First Baptist and get Rodney Underwood.” Then he looked at his congregation.
“Let us stand, and affirm our faith,” he said, “with the reading of the Nicene Creed.”
At Home in Mitford, Ch. 15
The Arrival of the Church Bells
HOW COULD HE have considered taking Monday off? Monday was the diving board poised over the rest of the week. One walked out on the board, reviewed the situation, planned one’s strategy, bounced a few times to get the feel of things, and then made a clean dive. Without Monday, one simply bombed into the water, belly first, and hoped for the best.
To his astonishment, the bell crew met him in the churchyard promptly at eight, and it didn’t take long for his worst fear to be realized. The velvety lawn, which had lain under a persistent drizzle for two days, was so thoroughly mucked about with the heaving and hauling of three vast bells that it soon looked like a battlefield.
At a little after one o’clock, the bells were chiming.
“Let them ring!” he told the foreman. “Let them ring!” What a wildly tender thing it stirred in his heart to hear those glorious bells.
A small crowd gathered, staring with wonder at the Norman tower that was pealing with music. Andrew Gregory walked briskly down the lane to offer his congratulations. “I say,” he told the rector, “it’s been a bit dry around here without your bells.”
J. C. Hogan heard the pealing and came on the run, and was given an elaborate story of their history, manufacture, and recent long sojourn in their homeland.
It was two-fifteen before he went to his office for the first time that day and picked up the mail from the box, noting that the bundle seemed uncommonly fat. The phone was ringing as he unlocked and went in.
“Timothy! How grand of you to ring the bells on your birthday!” said Cynthia.
“My what?”
“I think that’s just the boldest, most unrepressed thing to do.”
“You do?”
“I’d never have thought you’d have the…I’ve always thought you were so everlastingly modest! What a surprise!”
His birthday! How extraordinary that he’d forgotten. But, of course, there had been no one around to remind him, and Walter never said a word before the fact, always letting a package from Tiffany’s stationery department send his greetings, which usually followed the actual date by several days.
He laughed. “Well, then, now you know the truth. It’s my birthday, but you got the surprise.”
“There’s a surprise for you, too. But only if you come for dinner this evening.”
“I’d like that very much. How did you know it was my birthday?”
“It’s on the church list I picked up last Sunday in the narthex.”
“Ah, well, is nothing sacred?”
He saw that the fat bundle was largely made up of birthday cards, two of which also extended dinner invitations. There was one from Jenna Ivey, which said, “Father Tim, you are dearer to us with each passing year.” And one from Meadowgate, signed by Hal, Marge, Dooley, Rebecca Jane, Goosedown, and the six farm dogs, who were all, according to the message, expecting him for an early supper on Sunday.
Emma sent a card with a watercolor of roses, and a Polaroid of Harold and herself on the beach, presumably taken by some stranger she’d snared to do the job. He put it on the bathroom door with a thumbtack, noting that Emma had picked up a jot of weight, while Harold looked a bit spindly.
There was a handwritten note from Stuart, with warm best wishes for a glad heart and good health.
He sat before the stack of cards, feeling a certain comfort.
Then he turned on the answering machine and listened to a lengthy series of well-wishers. “Father,” said Winnie Ivey, “I just hate to talk on this thing, but I wanted to tell you how much you mean to everyone. I don’t see how in the world any of us could get along without you….” He heard Winnie sniffing. “So…so, well…good-bye!”
What a pleasant lot of activity around an event he’d entirely forgotten!
At Home in Mitford, Ch. 21
Father Tim Leaves for Ireland
HE SAT LOOKING out at the runway, which was baking in a fierce summer sun. He was the one who was leaving; why did he feel rejected, somehow? Why had they all let him go? Now, here he was, forced to do this thing, to travel thousands of miles away, across an entire ocean, and have an adventure—whether he wanted one or not.
The little plane took off with a rattle and groan so ferocious, he f
elt the whole thing would come apart under him. If this was the so-called, much-touted technological age, how had they failed so miserably to make a plane that didn’t do its job any better than this?
He held on to the leather briefcase in his lap, the one the vestry had given him years ago for Christmas. What had he forgotten, after all? He was mildly alarmed that everything seemed to be taken care of, that there were no loose ends. And why on earth should that be alarming? For the simple reason that it happened so seldom in one’s life that it encouraged suspicion, that’s why.
He opened his briefcase and pulled out a folder with a legal pad and a pen, and began to make notes about a sermon topic that had occurred to him only yesterday. There. That felt better. Next, he’d make a list of things to write home about, like how had the Rose Festival done? He’d forgotten to ask. And would someone make sure the new bathtub at the Porter place had a rail to hold on to? And when Cynthia heard from her agent about Uncle Billy’s ink drawings, would she let him know at once? And had he put the premium increase notice on the Mortlake tapestry in his desk drawer, or given it to Ron for the next vestry meeting? He was surprised at the list he could make if he just put his mind to it.
He happened to look out the window.
They were flying over lush, rolling countryside, with his own blue mountains to the right. He thought it might be the most beautiful thing he had seen in a very long time.
There was a peaceful farm with acres of green crops laid out in neat parcels, and a tractor moving along the road. There was a lake that mirrored the clouds, and the blue sky, and the shadow of the little plane as it passed overhead.
Away toward the mountains, there was a ribbon of water flung out on the land, glittering in the sunlight, and beyond the river, a small, white church with a steeple catching the brilliance of the sun.
He closed the folder in his lap.
“Go in new life,” came unbidden to his mind.
He felt as if he were emerging from a long, narrow hallway, from a cocoon, perhaps. He felt a weight lifting off his shoulders as the little plane lifted its gleaming wings over the fields.