The Mitford Bedside Companion

by Jan Karon

  He looked out to the congregation who packed the nave to bursting, and saw that they knew it too. They had caught the spark. A kind of warming fire ran through the place, kindled with excitement and wonder.

  When Louella sang, her voice was steady as a rock, mingling sweetly, yet powerfully, with the boy’s. Their music flooded the church with a high consolation.

  Jesus, Thou art all compassion

  Pure, unbounded love Thou art

  Visit us with Thy salvation

  Enter every trembling heart…

  Into the silence that followed the music, and true to his Baptist roots, Absalom Greer raised a heartfelt “Amen!”

  The rector looked to the pew where Sadie Baxter had sat for the fifteen years he had been in this pulpit, and saw Olivia and Hoppy, Louella and Absalom holding hands. Those left behind….

  “We don’t know,” he said, in closing, “who among us will be the next to go, whether the oldest or the youngest. We pray that he or she will be gently embraced by death, have a peaceful end, and a glorious resurrection in Christ.

  “But for now, let us go in peace—to love and serve the Lord.”

  “Thanks be to God!” said the congregation, meaning it.

  The trumpets blew mightily, and the people moved to the church lawn, where Esther Bolick’s three-tiered cake sat on a fancy table, where the ECW had stationed jars of icy lemonade, and where, as any passerby could see, a grand celebration was under way.

  These High, Green Hills, Ch. 18

  Primrose Tea at the Rectory

  IF HE AND Cynthia had written a detailed petition on a piece of paper and sent it heavenward, the weather couldn’t have been more glorious on the day of the talked-about tea.

  Much to everyone’s relief, the primroses actually bloomed. However, no sooner had the eager blossoms appeared than Hessie Mayhew bore down on them with a vengeance, in yards and hidden nooks everywhere. She knew precisely the location of every cluster of primroses in the village, not to mention the exact whereabouts of each woods violet, lilac bush, and pussy willow.

  “It’s Hessie!” warned an innocent bystander on Hessie’s early morning run the day of the tea. “Stand back!”

  Armed with a collection of baskets that she wore on her arms like so many bracelets, Hessie did not allow help from the Episcopal Church Women, nor any of her own presbyters. She worked alone, she worked fast, and she worked smart.

  After going at a trot through neighborhood gardens, huffing up Old Church Lane to a secluded bower of early-blooming shrubs, and combing four miles of country roadside, she showed up at the back door of the rectory at precisely eleven a.m., looking triumphant.

  Sodden with morning dew and black dirt, she delivered a vast quantity of flowers, moss, and grapevine into the hands of the rector’s house help, Puny Guthrie, then flew home to bathe, dress, and put antibiotic cream on her knees, which were skinned when she leaned over to pick a wild trillium and fell sprawling.

  The Episcopal Church Women, who had arrived as one body at ten-thirty, flew into the business of arranging “Hessie’s truck,” as they called it, while Barnabas snored in the garage and Violet paced in her carrier.

  “Are you off?” asked Cynthia, as the rector came at a trot through the hectic kitchen.

  “Off and running. I finished polishing the mail slot, tidying the slipcover on the sofa, and trimming the lavender by the front walk. I also beat the sofa pillows for any incipient dust and coughed for a full five minutes.”

  “Well done!” she said cheerily, giving him a hug.

  “I’ll be home at one-thirty to help the husbands park cars.”

  Help the husbands park cars? he thought as he sprinted toward the office. He was a husband! After all these months, the thought still occasionally slammed him in the solar plexus and took his breath away.

  Nine elderly guests, including the Kavanaghs’ friend Louella, arrived in the van from Hope House and were personally escorted up the steps of the rectory and into the hands of the Altar Guild.

  Up and down Wisteria Lane, men with armbands stitched with primroses and a Jerusalem cross directed traffic, which quickly grew snarled. At one point, the rector leaped into a stalled Chevrolet and managed to roll it to the curb. Women came in car pools, husbands dropped off spouses, daughters delivered mothers, and all in all, the narrow street was as congested as a carnival in Rio.

  “This is th’ biggest thing to hit Mitford since th’ blizzard two years ago,” said Mule Skinner, who was a Baptist, but offered to help out, anyway.

  The rector laughed. “That’s one way to look at it.” Didn’t anybody ever walk in this town?

  “Look here!”

  It was Mack Stroupe in that blasted pickup truck, carting his sign around in their tea traffic. Mack rolled by, chewing on a toothpick and looking straight ahead.

  “You comin’ to the Primrose Tea?” snapped Mule. “If not, get this vehicle out of here, we’re tryin’ to conduct a church function!”

  Four choir members, consisting of a lyric soprano, a mezzo-soprano, and two altos, arrived in a convertible, looking windblown and holding on to their hats.

  “Hats is a big thing this year,” observed Uncle Billy Watson, who stood at the curb with Miss Rose and watched the proceedings. Uncle Billy was the only man who showed up at last year’s tea, and now considered his presence at the event to be a tradition.

  Uncle Billy walked out to the street with the help of his cane and tapped Father Tim on the shoulder. “Hit’s like a Chiney puzzle, don’t you know. If you ’uns’d move that’n off to th’ side and git that’n to th’ curb, hit’d be done with.”

  “No more parking on Wisteria,” Ron Malcolm reported to the rector. “We’ll direct the rest of the crowd to the church lot and shoot ’em back here in the Hope House van.”

  A UPS driver, who had clearly made an unwise turn onto Wisteria, sat in his truck in front of the rectory, stunned by the sight of so much traffic on the usually uneventful Holding/Mitford/Wesley run.

  “Hit’s what you call a standstill,” Uncle Billy told J. C. Hogan, who showed up with his Nikon and six rolls of Tri-X.

  As traffic started to flow again, the rector saw Mack Stroupe turn on to Wisteria Lane from Church Hill. Clearly, he was circling the block.

  “I’d like to whop him upside th’ head with a two-by-four,” said Mule. He glared at Mack, who was reared back in the seat with both windows down, listening to a country music station. Mack waved to several women, who immediately turned their heads.

  Mule snorted. “Th’ dumb so-and-so! How would you like to have that peckerwood for mayor?”

  The rector wiped his perspiring forehead. “Watch your blood pressure, buddyroe.”

  “He says he’s goin’ to campaign straight through spring and summer, right up to election in November. Kind of like bein’ tortured by a drippin’ faucet.”

  As the truck passed, Emma Newland stomped over. “I ought to climb in that truck and slap his jaws. What’s he doin’, anyway, trying to sway church people to his way of thinkin’?”

  “Let him be,” Father Tim cautioned his secretary and online computer whiz. After all, give Mack enough rope and…

  Cynthia was lying in bed, moaning, as he came out of the shower. He went into the bedroom, hastily drying off.

  “Why are you moaning?” he asked, alarmed.

  “Because it helps relieve exhaustion. I hope the windows are closed so the neighbors can’t hear.”

  “The only neighbor close enough to hear is no longer living in the little yellow house next door. She is, in fact, lying right here, doing the moaning.”

  She moaned again. “Moaning is good,” she told him, her face mashed into the pillow. “You should try it.”

  “I don’t think so,” he said.

  Warm as a steamed clam from the shower, he put on his pajamas and sat on the side of the bed. “I’m proud of you,” he said, rubbing her back. “That was a tea-and-a-half! The best! In fact, words fail. You’
ll have a time topping that one.”

  “Don’t tell me I’m supposed to top it!”

  “Yes, well, not to worry. Next year, we can have Omer Cunningham and his pilot buddies do a flyover. That’ll give the ladies something to talk about.” He’d certainly given all of Mitford something to talk about last May when he flew to Virginia with Omer in his ragwing taildragger. Four hours in Omer’s little plane had gained him more credibility than thirty-six years in the pulpit.

  “A little farther down,” his wife implored. “Ugh. My lower back is killing me from all the standing and baking.”

  “I got the reviews as your guests left.”

  “Only tell me the good ones. I don’t want to hear about the cheese straws, which were as limp as linguine.”

  “‘Perfect’ was a word they bandied around quite a bit, and the lemon squares, of course, got their usual share of raves. Some wanted me to know how charming they think you are, and others made lavish remarks about your youth and beauty.”

  He leaned down and kissed her shoulder, inhaling the faintest scent of wisteria. “You are beautiful, Kavanagh.”

  “Thanks.”

  “I don’t suppose there are any special thanks you’d like to offer the poor rube who helped unsnarl four thousand three hundred and seventy-nine cars, trucks, and vans?”

  She rolled over and looked at him, smiling. Then she held her head to one side in that way he couldn’t resist, and pulled him to her and kissed him tenderly.

  “Now you’re talking,” he said.

  He sat on the study sofa and took the rubber band off the Mitford Muse.

  Good grief! There he was on the front page, standing bewildered in front of the UPS truck with his nose looking, as usual, like a turnip or a tulip bulb. Why did J. C. Hogan run this odious picture, when he might have photographed his hardworking, good-looking, and thoroughly deserving wife?

  Primrose Tee Draws Stand-Out Crowd

  Clearly, Hessie had not written this story, which on first glance appeared to be about golf, but had given her notes to J.C., who forged ahead without checking his spelling.

  Good time had by all…same time next year…a hundred and thirty guests…nine gallons of tea, ten dozen lemon squares, eight dozen raspberry tarts…traffic jam…

  Out to Canaan, Ch. 1

  Political Barbecue

  “HAVE YOU SEEN Mack’s new boards?” asked J.C.

  They hadn’t.

  “They rhyme like those Burma-Shave signs. First one says, ‘If Mitford’s economy is going to move’…th’ second one says, ‘we’ve got to improve.’ Last one says, ‘Mack for Mitford, Mack for Mayor.’”

  “Gag me with a forklift,” said Mule.

  “Esther Cunningham better get off her rear end, because like it or not, Mack Stroupe’s eatin’ her lunch. She’s been lollin’ around like this election was some kind of tea party. You’re so all-fired thick with the mayor,” J.C. said to the rector, “you ought to tell her the facts of life, and the fact is, she’s lookin’ dead in the water.”

  “Aha. I thought we agreed not to talk politics.”

  “Right,” said Mule, whose escalating blood pressure had suddenly turned his face beet red.

  J.C. looked bored. “So what else is new? Let’s see, I was over at the town museum ’til midnight watchin’ those turkeys get ready for the festival. Omer Cunningham was draping th’ flag on Esther’s booth and fell off the ladder and busted his foot.”

  “Busted his foot?” the rector blurted. “Good Lord! Can he fly?”

  “Can he fly? I don’t know as he could, with a busted foot.”

  Mule cackled. “He sure couldn’t fly any crazier than when his foot’s not busted.”

  “Toast!” said Velma, sliding two orders onto the table.

  The rector felt his stomach wrench.

  “Biscuits!” said Velma, handing off a plate to J.C.

  “May I use your phone?” asked Father Tim.

  “You can, if you stay out of Percy’s way, you know where it’s at.”

  He went to the red wall phone and dialed, knowing the number by heart. Hadn’t he called it two dozen times in the last few days?

  No answer.

  He hung up and stood by the grill, dazed, his mouth as dry as cotton.

  Out to Canaan, Ch. 8

  HIS PALMS WERE damp, something he’d never appreciated in clergy. Also, his collar felt tight, even though he’d snapped the Velcro at the loosest point.

  When he and Cynthia arrived on the lawn of the town museum at nine thirty-five, they had to elbow their way to the Lord’s Chapel booth, which was situated, this year, directly across from the llamas and the petting zoo.

  “Excellent location!” said his wife, who was known to rely on animals as a drawing card.

  They thumped down their cardboard box filled with the results of last night’s bake-a-thon in the rectory kitchen. Three Lord’s Chapel volunteers, dressed in aprons that said, Have you hugged an Episcopalian today? briskly set about unpacking the contents and displaying them in a case cooled by a generator humming at the rear of the tent.

  Though the festival didn’t officially open until ten o’clock, the yard of the Porter mansion-cum-town museum was jammed with villagers, tourists, and the contents of three buses from neighboring communities. The rear end of a church van from Tennessee displayed a sign, MITFORD OR BUST.

  The Presbyterian brass band was already in full throttle on the museum porch, and the sixth grade of Mitford School was marching around the statue of Willard Porter, builder of the impressive Victorian home, with tambourines, drums, and maracas painted in their school colors.

  Why was he surprised to see posters on every pole and tree, promoting Mack Stroupe’s free barbecue at his campaign headquarters up the street?

  His eyes searched the crowd for the mayor, who said she’d be under the elm tree this year, the one that had miraculously escaped the blight.

  “I’ll be back,” he told Cynthia, who was giving him that concerned look. The way things were going, he’d need more than a domestic retreat, he’d need a set of pallbearers.

  He spotted Esther and her husband, Ray, shaking hands by a booth draped with an American flag and a banner hand-lettered with the mayor’s longtime political slogan.

  “Mayor! Where’s Omer?”

  “Where’s Omer? I thought you’d know where Omer is.”

  “What about his foot?”

  “Broken in two places.”

  “Right, but what about…can he fly?”

  She glared at him in a way that made Emma Newland look like a vestal virgin. “That’s your business,” she said, and turned back to the people she’d been shaking hands with.

  He headed to the Lord’s Chapel booth, his heart hammering. He was afraid to let his wife see his face, since she could obviously read it like a book—but where else could he go?

  Dooley! Of course! A Taste of America!

  He hung a hard left in the direction of Avis Packard’s tent, cutting through the queue to the cotton candy truck, and ran slam into Omer Cunningham on a crutch.

  “Good heavens! Omer!” He threw his arms around Esther Cunningham’s strapping brother-in-law and could easily have kissed his ring, or even his plaster cast.

  Heads turned. People stared. He wished he wasn’t wearing his collar.

  Omer’s big grin displayed teeth the size of keys on a spinet piano. “We’re smokin’,” he said, giving a thumbs-up to the rector, who, overcome with joyful relief, thumped down on a folding chair at the Baptists’ display of tea towels, aprons, and oven mitts.

  He noticed the crowd was starting to thin out, following the aroma of political barbecue.

  In his mind, he saw it on the plate, thickly sliced and served with a dollop of hot sauce, nestled beside a mound of coleslaw and a half dozen hot, crisp hush puppies….

  He shook himself and ate four raisins that had rolled around in his coat pocket since the last committee meeting on evangelism.

 
At eleven forty-five, Ray and Esther Cunningham strode up to the Lord’s Chapel booth with all five of their beautiful daughters, who had populated half of Mitford with Sunday school teachers, deacons, police officers, garbage collectors, tax accountants, secretaries, retail clerks, and UPS drivers.

  “Well?” said Esther. The rector thought she would have made an excellent Mafia don.

  “Coming right up!” he exclaimed, checking his watch and looking pale.

  Cynthia eyed him again. Mood swings, she thought. That seemed to be the key! Definitely a domestic retreat, and definitely soon.

  And since the entire town seemed so demanding of her husband, definitely not in Mitford.

  Nobody paid much attention to the airplane until it started smoking.

  “Look!” somebody yelled. “That plane’s on f’ar!”

  He was sitting on the rock wall when Omer thumped down beside him. “Right on time!” said the mayor’s brother-in-law. “All my flyin’ buddies from here t’ yonder have jumped on this.” The rector thought somebody could have played “Moonlight Sonata” on Omer’s ear-to-ear grin.

  “OK, that’s y’r basic Steerman, got a four-fifty horsepower engine in there. Luke Teeter’s flyin’ ’er, he’s about as good as you can get, now watch this….”

  The blue and orange airplane roared straight up into the fathomless blue sky, leaving a plume of smoke in its wake. Then it turned sharply and pitched downward at an angle.

  “Wow!” somebody said, forgetting to close his mouth.

  The plane did another climb into the blue.

  Omer punched him in the ribs with an elbow. “She’s got a tank in there pumpin’ Corvis oil th’ough ’er exhaust system…ain’t she a sight?”

  “Looks like an N!” said a boy whose chocolate popsicle was melting down his arm.

  The plane plummeted toward the rooftops again, smoke billowing from its exhaust.