The Mitford Bedside Companion

by Jan Karon

  “M!” shouted half the festivalgoers, as one.

  Esther and Ray and their daughters were joined by assorted grandchildren, great-grandchildren, and in-laws, who formed an impenetrable mass in front of the church booth.

  Gene Bolick limped over from the llamas as the perfect I appeared above them.

  “M…I!” shouted the crowd.

  “Lookit this!” said Omer, propping his crutch against the stone wall. “Man, oh, man!”

  The bolt of blue and orange gunned straight up, leaving a vertical trail, then shut off the exhaust, veered right, and thundered across the top of the trail, forming a straight and unwavering line of smoke.

  “M…I…T!”

  The M was fading, the I was lingering, the T was perfect against the sapphire sky.

  The crowd thickened again, racing back from Mack Stroupe’s campaign headquarters, which was largely overhung by trees, racing back to the grounds of the town museum where the view was open, unobscured, and breathtaking, where something more than barbecue was going on.

  “They won’t be goin’ back to Mack’s place anytime soon,” said Omer. “Ol’ Mack’s crowd has done eat an’ run!”

  “F!” they spelled in unison, and then, “…O…R…D!”

  Even the tourists were cheering.

  J. C. Hogan sank to the ground, rolled over on his back, pointed his Nikon at the sky, and fired off a roll of Tri-X. The M and the I were fading fast.

  Uncle Billy hobbled up and spit into the bushes. “I bet them boys is glad this town ain’t called Minneapolis.”

  “Now, look,” said Omer, slapping his knee.

  Slowly, but surely, the Steerman’s exhaust trail wrote the next word.

  T…A…K…E…S…, the smoke said.

  Cheers. Hoots. Whistles.

  “Lord, my neck’s about give out,” said Uncle Billy.

  “Mine’s about broke,” said a bystander.

  C…A…R…E…

  “Mitford takes care of its own!” shouted the villagers. The sixth grade trooped around the statue, beating on tambourines, shaking maracas, and chanting something they’d been taught since first grade.

  Mitford takes care of its own, its own,

  Mitford takes care of its own!

  Over the village rooftops, the plane spelled out the rest of the message.

  O…F…I…T…S…O…W…N…

  TAKES soon faded into puffs of smoke that looked like stray summer clouds. CARE OF was on its way out, but ITS OWN stood proudly in the sky, seeming to linger.

  “If that don’t beat all!” exclaimed a woman from Tennessee, who had stood in one spot the entire time, holding a sleep-drugged baby on her hip.

  Dogs barked and chickens squawked as people clapped and started drifting away.

  Just then, a few festivalgoers saw them coming, the sun glinting on their wings.

  They roared in from the east, in formation, two by two.

  Red and yellow. Green and blue.

  “Four little home-built Pitts specials,” said Omer, as proudly as if he’d built them himself. “Two of ’em’s from Fayetteville, got one out of Roanoke, and the other one’s from Albany, New York. Not much power in y’r little ragwings, they’re nice and light, about a hundred and eighty horses, and handle like a dream.”

  He looked at the sky as if it contained the most beautiful sight he had ever seen, and so did the rector.

  “I was goin’ to head th’ formation, but a man can’t fly with a busted foot.”

  The crowd started lying on the grass. They lay down along the rock wall. They climbed up on the statue of Willard Porter, transfixed, and a young father set a toddler on Willard’s left knee.

  People pulled chairs out of their booths and sat down, looking up. All commerce ceased.

  The little yellow Pitts special rolled over and dived straight for the monument.

  “Ahhhhhh!” said the crowd.

  As the yellow plane straightened out and up, the blue plane nose-dived and rolled over.

  “They’re like little young ’uns a-playin’,” said Uncle Billy, enthralled.

  Miss Rose came out and stood on the back stoop in her frayed chenille robe and looked up, tears coursing down her cheeks for her long-dead brother, Captain Willard Porter, who had flown planes and been killed in the war in France and buried over there, with hardly anything sent home but his medals and a gold ring with the initials SEB and a few faded snapshots from his pockets.

  The little planes romped and rolled and soared and glided, like so many bright crayons on a palette of blue, then vanished toward the west, the sun on their wings.

  Here and there, a festivalgoer tried getting up from the grass or a chair or the wall, but couldn’t. They felt mesmerized, intoxicated. “Blowed away!” someone said.

  “OK, buddy, here you go,” Omer whispered.

  They heard a heavy-duty engine throbbing in the distance and knew at once this was serious business, this was what everyone had been waiting for without even knowing it.

  The Cunningham daughters hugged their children, kissed their mother and daddy, wept unashamedly, and hooted and hollered like banshees, but not a soul looked their way, for the crowd was intent on not missing a lick, on seeing it all, and taking the whole thing, blow by blow, home to Johnson City and Elizabethton and Wesley and Holding and Aho and Farmer and Price and Todd and Hemingway and Morristown….

  “Got y’r high roller comin’ in, now,” said Omer. The rector could feel the mayor’s brother-in-law shaking like a leaf from pure excitement. “You’ve had y’r basic smoke writin’ and stunt flyin,’ now here comes y’r banner towin’!”

  A red Piper Super Cub blasted over the treetops from the direction of the highway, shaking drifts of clouds from its path, trembling the heavens in its wake, and towing a banner that streamed across the open sky:

  ESTHER…RIGHT FOR MITFORD, RIGHT FOR MAYOR

  The Presbyterian brass band hammered down on their horns until the windows of the Porter mansion rattled and shook.

  As the plane passed over, a wave of adrenaline shot through the festival grounds like so much electricity and, almost to a man, the crowd scrambled to its feet and shouted and cheered and whistled and whooped and applauded.

  A few also waved and jumped up and down, and nearly all of them remembered what Esther had done, after all, putting the roof on old man Mueller’s house, and turning the dilapidated wooden bridge over Mitford Creek into one that was safe and good to look at, and sending Ray in their RV to take old people to the grocery store, and jacking up Sophia’s house and helping her kids, and making sure they had decent school buses to haul their own kids around in bad weather, and creating that thing at the hospital where you went and held and loved a new baby if its mama from the Creek was on drugs, and never one time raising taxes, and always being there when they had a problem, and actually listening when they talked, and…

  …and taking care of them.

  Some who had planned to vote for Mack Stroupe changed their minds, and came over and shook Esther’s hand, and the brass band nearly busted a gut to be heard over the commotion.

  Right! That was the ticket. Esther was right for Mitford. Mack Stroupe might be for change, but Esther would always be for the things that really counted.

  Besides—and they’d tried to put it out of their minds time and time again—hadn’t Mack Stroupe been known to beat his wife, who was quiet as a mouse and didn’t deserve it, and hadn’t he slithered over to that woman in Wesley for years, like a common, low-down snake in the grass?

  “Law, do y’all vote in th’ summer?” wondered a visitor. “We vote sometime in th’ fall. I can’t remember when, exactly, but I nearly always have to wear a coat to the polls.”

  Omer looked at the rector. The rector looked at Omer.

  They shook hands.

  It was done.

  Out to Canaan, Ch. 8

  Play Ball!

  “MAN!” EXCLAIMED DOOLEY.

  The stands were
full, people were sitting on the grass, and the smell of hot dogs and chili wafted through the humid summer air.

  Tommy’s dad, who was the plate umpire, looked at the coin he’d just flipped. The Mitford Reds were the home team.

  The rector scanned the crowd, just as he always did at Lord’s Chapel.

  The residents of Hope House were lined up in wheelchairs and seated on the front bleachers, looking expectant.

  There was Mack Stroupe, standing with one foot on a bleacher and a cigarette in his mouth, and over to the right, Harley and Lace. He spotted Fancy Skinner and Uncle Billy and Miss Rose and Coot and Omer, and about midway up, Tommy, who had hurt his leg and couldn’t play. He noted that quite a few sported a strawberry sucker stuck in their jaw, evidence that the mayor had doled out her customary campaign favors.

  From the front row, where she sat with Russell Jacks and Betty Craig, Jessie waved to the field with both hands.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” announced town councilman Linder Hayes, “it is my immense privilege to introduce Esther Cunningham, our beloved mayor, who for sixteen years and eight great terms in office has diligently helped Mitford take care of its own! Your Honor, you are hereby officially invited to…throw out the first ball.”

  “Burn it in, Esther!” somebody yelled.

  The other umpire ran a ball to the mayor, who stood proudly in the dignitaries’ section, cheek by jowl with the county sheriff.

  At this, the Muse editor bounded from the concession stand to the bleachers and skidded to a stop about a yard from the mayor. He dropped to his knees and pointed the Nikon upward.

  “Dadgum it,” hissed the mayor, “don’t shoot from down there, it gives me three double chins!”

  “And behind the plate,” boomed Linder Hayes, “our esteemed police chief and vigilant overseer of law and order, Mr. Rodney Underwood!”

  Applause. Hoots. Whistles. Rodney adjusted his holster belt and waved to the crowd with a gloved hand.

  “Hey, Esther, smoke it in there!”

  The mayor threw back her head, circled her arm like a prop on a P-51, and let the ball fly.

  “Stee-rike one!” said the umpire.

  “Oh, please,” said Cynthia, who was perspiring from infield practice.

  “What is it?” whispered the rector.

  “I have to use the port-a-john.”

  “It’s your nerves,” declared her husband, who appeared to know.

  “Take the field!” yelled Buck.

  The players sprinted to their positions. Then, the home-plate ump took a deep breath, pointed at the pitcher, and shouted what they’d all been waiting to hear.

  “Play ball!”

  The Reds’ batboy, Poo Barlowe, passed his brother a bat which he had personally inscribed with the name Dools and a zigzag flash of lightning. He had rendered this personal I.D. with a red ballpoint pen, bearing down hard and repeatedly until it appeared etched into the wood.

  Dooley took a couple of warm-up swings, then stepped into the batter’s box. He gripped the bat, positioned his feet, and waited for the pitch.

  A high, looping pitch barely missed the strike zone.

  “Ball one!”

  The second pitch came in chest-high, as Dooley tightened his grip, took a hefty swing, and connected. Crack! It was the first ball hitting the bat for the newly formed Mitford Reds; the sound seemed to reverberate into the stands.

  “Go, buddy!”

  Dooley streaked to first base, his long legs eating the distance, and blew past it to second as the crowd cheered. He slid into second a heartbeat ahead of the ball that socked into Scott Murphy’s glove.

  “Ride ’em, cowboy!” warbled Miss Pattie, who believed herself to be at a rodeo.

  The game was definitely off to a good start.

  “Mama!”

  Fancy Skinner waved to her mother, who was shading her eyes and peering into the stands. “I’m up here!”

  Fancy was wearing shocking pink tights and a matching tunic, and stood out so vividly from the crowd that her mother recognized her at once and made the climb to the fifth row, carrying a knitting bag with the beginnings of an afghan.

  “I declare,” said Fancy, “I hardly knew that was you, don’t you just love bein’ blond, didn’t I tell you it would be more fun? I mean, look at you, out at a softball game instead of sittin’ home watchin’ th’ Wheel or whatever. And oh, my lord, what’re you wearin’, I can’t believe it, a Dale Jarrett T-shirt, aren’t you th’ cat’s pajamas, you look a hundred years younger!

  “Next, you might want to lose some weight, if you don’t mind my sayin’ so, around forty pounds seems right to me, it would take a strain off your heart. Lord have mercy, would you look at that, he backed th’ right fielder clean to th’ fence. Hey, ump, open your eyes, I thought only horses went to sleep standin’ up!

  “Oh, shoot, I forgot about your hearin’ aid bein’ so sensitive, was that me that made it go off? It sounds like a burglar alarm, I thought th’ old one was better, here, have some gum, it’s sugarless. Look! There he is, there’s Mule, Mama, see? Th’ one in the grass over yonder, idn’t he cute, Mule, honey, we’re up here, look up here, sweetie, oh mercy, the ball like to knocked his head off. Pay attention to what you’re doin’, Mule!

  “Mama, you want a hot dog? I’ll get us one at th’ end of fifthinnin’, Velma made th’ chili. I didn’t say it’s chilly, I said Velma—Mama, are you sure that hearin’ aid works right, it seems like th’ old one did better, and look at what you paid for it, an arm and a leg, you want relish? I can’t hardly eat relish, it gives me sour stomach.

  “How in th’ world you can knit and watch a ball game is beyond me, I have to concentrate. See there, that’s th’ preacher Mule hangs out with at the Grill, th’ one I gave a mask to th’ day you got a perm, you remember, I can’t tell whether he tries to hit a ball or club it to death. That’s his wife on third base, I think she bleaches with a cap, I never heard of a preacher’s wife playin’ softball, times sure have changed, our preacher’s wife leads th’ choir and volunteers at th’ hospital.

  “Go get ’em, Avis! Hit it outta there! I wonder why Avis idn’t married, I think he likes summer squash better than women, but it’s important to really like your work. Lord, he sent that ball to th’ moon! Look, Mama, right over yonder, see that man eyeballin’ you? So what if he’s younger, that’s th’ goin’ thing these days, I told you blondes have more fun. Whoa, did you see that, he winked at you, well, maybe he got somethin’ in his eye. Hey, ump, pitcher’s off th’ plate, how thick are your glasses?

  “That redheaded kid, that’s Dooley, he’s sort of th’ preacher’s boy, he’s a real slugger and he can run, too. Was that a spitball, Mama, did it look like a spitball to you? Spitball! Spitball! Who is that umpire, anyway, he’s blind as a bat and deaf as a tater, oops, I better go down an’ get in line, did you say you want relish?”

  Ben Isaac Berman, whose family had brought him to Hope House all the way from Decatur, Illinois, was liking this ball game better than anything he’d done since coming to Mitford in July.

  He liked the fresh air, the shouting, the tumult—even the heat was a makhyeh—though he didn’t like the way his hot dog had landed in his lap, requiring two Hope House attendants to clean it up. What he couldn’t figure was how chili had somehow made its way into one of his pants cuffs.

  He felt like a shlimazel for not having better control of his limbs. But then, there was Miss Pattie sitting right next to him, who couldn’t control a thought in her head, God forbid it should happen to him.

  He also liked the game because it reminded him of his boyhood, which was as vivid in his recall as if he had lived it last week.

  Take that boy at second base, that redhaired kid who could run like the wind. That was the kind of kid he’d been, that was the kind of kid he still was, deep down where nobody else had ever seen or ever would, not even his wife, blessed be her memory. Even he forgot about the kid living inside him, until he came out to a game l
ike this and smelled the mountain air and heard the crack of the bat—that was when he began to feel his own legs churning, flying around to the bases and tearing up the dirt as he slid into home….

  At the bottom of the seventh inning, the score was 10–10.

  “It’s our bat and we’ve got three outs,” said the rector. “We don’t want any extra innings, so let’s finish now and go home winners.”

  His shirt was sticking to him. He felt like he’d been rode hard and put up wet, as Tommy Noles used to say.

  He watched as Mule Skinner stepped up to bat.

  The ball came in high.

  “Ball one!”

  Mule swung at the next pitch and cracked it over second base into center field. The rector was amazed at Mule’s speed as he sprinted to first. This game would be fodder for the Grill regulars ’til kingdom come.

  After Jenna Ivey made the first out of the inning, it was Pauline Barlowe’s turn to bat.

  She looked confident, he thought. In fact, she’d made a pretty good showing all afternoon, but had a tendency to waffle, to be strong one minute and lose it the next.

  She took a couple of pitches and slammed a hit to second base. Dadgum, a double play! But the second baseman kicked the ball, and all runners were safe.

  “Time out!” yelled Buck, striding onto the field.

  “OK, Pitch,” he said to Lew Boyd, “you’ve been a defensive star all day, I want you to use that bat and get the big hit. Or give me a fly ball to the outfield to advance the runners.”

  “I’m gonna give you premium unleaded on this ’un.”

  The first pitch came down the middle.

  “Strike one!”

  Lew hit the next pitch into right field, where the outfielder nailed it and threw it to third. The runners held.

  Two outs.

  Dooley hurried into the batter’s box and scratched the loose dirt to get a strong foothold.

  Buck yelled, “You’ve got to get on base. Can you do it?”

  “I can do it!”

  Poobaw Barlowe squeezed his eyes shut and prayed, Jesus, God, and ever’body…

  The rector was holding his breath. Dooley had been on base every time he came to bat today. He saw the determined look on the boy’s face as he waited for the pitch.