by Jan Karon
Lady Spring’s Grand Surprise
—by Mitford Muse reporter Hessie Mayhew
Lady Spring has surprised us yet again.
Arriving in our lofty Citadel prematurely this year, she caught us looking to the mending of our winter mittens. As early as mid-April, the first bloom of the lilac peeked out, whilst in years past, not one of us had caught its virtuous scent until May. Last April at this time, you may recall, we were shivering in our coats as white icing lay upon the bosom of our Village as upon a wedding cake.
In any case, Lady Spring has left her calling card in our expectant Garden—this little Niche where, upon the margin of a rushing streamlet, the woods violet first revealed its innocent face on yesterday morn.
Those with an eye for fashion will wonder what fanciful attire our Lady is wearing this year. I have as yet glimpsed her only briefly, and cannot be certain of every detail, but she appears to have arrayed herself in lacy ferns from her maiden Breast to her unshod feet, and crowned her fickle head with trumpet vines and moss.
At any moment, she will make her couch upon the banks of Miss Sadie Baxter’s hillside orchard, so that every rude Cottage and stately pile might have a view of Heaven come down to earth.
Gentle Reader, may fragrant breezes fan thy brow this Spring, and whether you meet our Lady upon the wild summit or in the sylvan glade, please remember:
Do not plant until May 15.
He dropped the newspaper beside his wing chair, laughing.
Hessie Mayhew had been reading Wordsworth, again, while combing the village environs with looking-glass and flower press.
Rude cottages and stately piles, wild summits and sylvan glades! Only in the Mitford Muse, he thought, unashamedly proud of a newspaper whose most alarming headline in recent months had been “Man Convicted of Wreckless Driving.”
These High, Green Hills, Ch. 7
IF SPRING HAD blown in like a zephyr, its mood soon changed. Gentle rains became wind-lashed torrents, washing seeds from furrows and carving deep gullies in driveways and lawns. Power blinked off and surged on again, those with computers kept them unplugged, and TVs went down before the lightning like so many ducks in a shooting gallery. Sudden, startling downpours of hail unleashed themselves on the village, leaving holes the size of dimes in the burgeoning hosta, and flattening whole groves of trillium and Solomon’s seal. Seedlings kneeled over in the mud, and Winnie Ivey’s hens and chicks scattered for high ground.
Mitford was driven indoors for three days running, to watch the mildew make its annual invasion of basements, bathrooms, and closets.
It was Tuesday morning before the village awoke to a dazzling sunrise, clear skies, and balmy temperatures. The foul weather, however, lingered on in his secretary.
“If I ever read another word about Hessie Mayhew’s Lady Spring, I’ll puke,” Emma said.
These High, Green Hills, Ch. 9
FIELDS OF BROOM sedge turned overnight into lakes of gold, and the scented vines of Lady’s Mantle crept into hedges everywhere, as the sun moved and the light changed, and the brisk, clean days grew shorter.
“You always say this is the best fall we’ve had,” Dora Pugh scolded a customer at the hardware. “How can every year be the best?”
Avis Packard put up a banner, Percy Mosely at last took his down, and the Collar Button was having its annual fall sale. The latter encouraged the rector to make a few purchases for Dooley Barlowe, now back at school, which included three pairs of khakis, four pairs of socks, and a couple of handkerchiefs that Dooley would never use for their intended purpose.
These High, Green Hills, Ch. 21
AN EARLY OCTOBER hurricane gathered its forces in the Caribbean, roared north along the eastern seaboard, and veered inland off Cape Hatteras. In a few short hours, it reached the mountains at the western end of the state, where it pounded Mitford with alarming force.
Rain lashed Lord’s Chapel in gusting sheets, rattled the latched shutters of the bell tower, blew the tarps off lumber stacked on the construction site, and crashed a wheelbarrow into a rose bed.
The tin roof of Omer Cunningham’s shed, formerly a hangar for his antique ragwing, was hurled toward Luther Green’s pasture, where the sight of it, gleaming and rattling and banging through the air, made the cows bawl with trepidation.
Coot Hendrick’s flock of three Rhode Island Reds took cover on the back porch after nearly drowning in a pothole in the yard, and Lew Boyd, who was pumping a tank of premium unleaded into an out-of-town Mustang, reported that his hat was whipped off his head and flung into a boxwood at the town monument nearly a block away.
Phone lines went out; a mudslide slalomed down a deforested ridge near Farmer, burying a Dodge van; and a metal Coca-Cola sign from Hattie Cloer’s market on the highway landed in Hessie Mayhew’s porch swing.
At the edge of the village, Old Man Mueller sat in his kitchen, trying to repair the mantel clock his wife asked him to fix several years before her death. He happened to glance out the window in time to see his ancient barn collapse to the ground. He noted that it swayed slightly before it fell, and when it fell, it went fast.
“Hot ding!” he muttered aloud, glad to be spared the aggravation of taking it down himself. “Now,” he said to the furious roar outside, “if you’d stack th’ boards, I’d be much obliged.”
The villagers emerged into the sunshine that followed, dazzled by the spectacular beauty of the storm’s aftermath, which seemed in direct proportion to its violence.
The mountain ridges appeared etched in glass, set against clear, perfectly blue skies from horizon to horizon.
At Fernbank, a bumper crop of crisp, tart cooking apples lay on the orchard floor, ready to be gathered into local sacks. The storm had done the picking, and not a single ladder would be needed for the job.
“You see,” said Jenna Ivey, “there’s always two sides to everything!” Jenna had closed Mitford Blossoms to run up to Fernbank and gather apples, having promised to bake pies for the Bane just three days hence.
“But,” said another apple gatherer, “the autumn color won’t be worth two cents. The storm took all the leaves!”
“Whatever,” sighed Jenna, who thought some people were mighty hard to please.
Out to Canaan, Ch. 18
“THE LAST TIME we had snow at Christmas, we burned the furniture, remember that?” he asked, as Dooley turned onto Main Street. It was, in fact, the blizzard the media had called the Storm of the Century.
Dooley cackled. “We were bustin’ up that ol’ chair and throwin’ it in th’ fireplace, and fryin’ baloney…”
“Those were the good old days,” sighed the rector, who certainly hadn’t thought so at the time.
Dashing through the snow…
He was losing track of time, happy out here in this strange and magical land where hardly a soul marred the snow with footprints, where Dooley sang along with the radio, and Harley looked as wide-eyed as a child….
And there was Fernbank, ablaze with lights through the leafless winter trees, crowning the hill with some marvelous presence he’d never seen before. He wanted suddenly to see it up close, feel its warmth, discover whether it was real, after all, or a fanciful dream come to please him at Christmas.
They eased down the Fernbank drive and saw the town lying at the foot of the steep hill like a make-believe village under a tree. There was the huge fir at Town Hall with its ropes of colored lights, and the glittering ribbon of Main Street, and the shining houses.
An English writer, coincidentally named Mitford, had said it so well, he could recite it like a schoolboy.
She had called her village “a world of our own, close-packed and insulated like…bees in a hive or sheep in a fold or nuns in a convent or sailors in a ship, where we know everyone, and are authorized to hope that everyone feels an interest in us.”
Go tell it on the mountain, over the hills and everywhere…
After a stop by Tommy’s and then by Hattie Cloer’s, they h
eaded home.
“Harley, want to have a cup of tea with us before tonight’s service?”
“No, sir, Rev’rend, I’m tryin’ t’ fool with a batch of fudge brownies to bring upstairs tomorrow.”
Temptation on every side, and no hope for it.
“Say, Dad, want to watch a video before church? Tommy loaned me his VCR. It’s a baseball movie, you’ll like it.”
If there were a tax on joy on this night of nights, he’d be dead broke.
“Consider it done!” he said.
He sat clutching the pint of cream in a bag, feeling they’d gone forth and captured some valuable trophy or prize, as they rode slowly between the ranks of angels on high and turned onto their trackless street.
Out to Canaan, Ch. 21
THE RAIN THAT began so violently at two-thirty stopped at three o’clock, then returned around three-thirty to pummel the car with renewed energy, as lightning cracked around them with a vengeance.
Sitting on the shoulder since the last downpour began, they briefly considered trying to get back on the highway and drive to a service station, a bridge, anything, but visibility was zero.
Pouring sweat in the tropical humidity of the car, they found the air-conditioning was no relief. Its extreme efficiency made them feel frozen as cods in their wet clothing.
If only they were driving the Buick, he thought. The feeble air-conditioning his wife had so freely lambasted would be exactly right for their circumstances. In fact, his Buick would be the perfect security against a storm that threatened to rip a frivolous rag from over their heads and fling it into some outlying tobacco field.
The temperature in the car was easily ninety degrees. He remembered paying ten pounds for an hour’s worth of this very misery in an English hotel sauna, without, of course, the disagreeable odor of steaming dog and cat fur.
“When life gives you lemons…,” he muttered darkly.
“…make lemonade,” said his wife, stroking her drenched cat.
“Four o’clock,” he said, pulling onto the highway. “We’ve lost nearly two hours. That means we’ll get into Whitecap around dark.”
“Ah, well, dearest, not to worry. This can’t go on forever.”
He hoped such weather would at least put a crimp in the ridiculous notion of wearing grass skirts at tomorrow night’s cookout.
The aftermath of the storm was not a pretty sight. Apparently, they’d missed the worst of it.
Here and there, billboards were blown down, a metal sign lying in the middle of the highway advertised night crawlers and boiled peanuts, and most crops stood partially immersed.
“Our baptism into a new life,” he said, looking at the dazzling light breaking over the fields.
When they reached the bridge to Whitecap, the wind and rain had stopped; there was an innocent peace in the air.
A sign stood at the entrance to the bridge, which had been closed off with a heavy chain and a soldierly row of orange cones.
BRIDGE OUT
FERRY 2 Blocks and left $10
No Ferry
After 10 p.m.
“Good heavens,” said his wife, “isn’t it after ten o’clock?”
“Five ’til,” he said, backing up. He made the turn and hammered down on the accelerator.
“That’s one block…,” she said.
Going this fast on wet pavement didn’t exactly demonstrate the wisdom of the ages. “This is two,” he counted.
“Now turn left here. I’m praying they’ll be open.”
He turned left. Nothing but yawning darkness. Then, a dim light a few yards ahead, swinging.
They inched along, not knowing what lay in their path. A sign propped against a sawhorse revealed itself in the glare of the headlights.
Ferry to Whitecap
Have Your $ Ready
A lantern bobbed from the corner of what appeared to be a small building perched at the edge of the water.
He’d read somewhere about blowing your horn for a ferry, and gave it a long blast.
“Lord, is this a joke?” his wife inquired aloud of her Maker.
A light went on in the building and a man came out, wearing a cap, an undershirt, and buttoning his pants.
Father Tim eased the window down a few inches.
“Done closed.”
“Two minutes,” said Father Tim, pointing to his watch. “Two whole minutes before ten. You’ve got to take us across.” He nearly said, I’m clergy, but stopped himself.
“You live across?”
“We’re moving to Whitecap.”
“Don’t know as you’d want to go across tonight,” said the man, still buttoning. “’Lectricity’s off. Black as a witch’s liver.”
Father Tim turned to Cynthia. “What do you think?”
“Where would we stay over here?”
“Have t’ turn back fourteen miles.”
Cynthia looked at her husband. “We’re going across!”
“Twenty dollars,” said the man, unsmiling.
“Done,” said Whitecap’s new priest.
A New Song, Ch. 4
Lady Spring Coy Flirtation Fails to Amuse
—by HESSIE MAYHEW
For three days in mid-February, Lady Spring cajoled our wintry spirits with zephyrs so balmy that we found ourselves utterly deceived. How quickly we forget, year to year, the heart-wrenching extent to which this frivolous and unrepentant lady betrays us.
Our power lines felled by ice storms in March! Our rooftops laden with snow in April! Our lilacs lashed by bitter winds on May Day! One shudders to think what
June may bring, the dear June that once gave us roses and clematis!
On the southerly slopes of the mountain, where the Japonica has long since shed its crimson petals, we, hapless stepchildren that we are, must find delight in adorning our homes with sprigs of withered berries!
However much the heart may yearn toward Lady Spring’s vernal passage, hearken, I implore you, to the one bit of counsel that, come what may in this earthly life, will never, ever betray you:
Do not plant until May 15.
Hessie Mayhew’s annual spring angst….
He sighed and dropped the newspaper to the floor.
Once he’d clipped along through the Mitford Muse in twenty, thirty minutes, max. Looking at his watch, he was dismayed to learn he’d just spent an hour and a half with the darned thing, as absorbed as if it were the Chicago Tribune.
In This Mountain, Ch. 2
THE STORM REACHED Mitford shortly after dark. He’d taken Barnabas to the backyard as the rain began—fat, pelting drops that smarted when they hit his shirt. At ten o’clock, a full-bore electrical storm was up and running, dousing power in the village and waking him from a deep sleep.
A dazzling flash of platinum lit the room. He turned on his side and listened to the pounding of rain on the roof, and the great flume of water flushing through the downspouts.
He hadn’t taken his medication for depression; he would leave it off for a few days and see what happened. It was humiliating to be taking such a thing. The only consolation was that millions of others were in the same boat; depression was common, run-of-the-mill stuff. But he’d never aspired to being run-of-the-mill; he was certain that in a few days, his energy would increase—his spirits would be stronger, his outlook brighter, and this whole miserable experience would be over.
He was clinging to the Rock, trusting it to cleft for him.
In This Mountain, Ch. 10
THE RAIN BEGAN punctually at five o’clock, though few were awake to hear it. It was a gentle rain, rather like a summer shower that had escaped the grip of time or season and wandered into Mitford several months late.
By six o’clock, when much of the population of 1,074 was leaving for work in Wesley or Holding or across the Tennessee line, the drops had grown large and heavy, as if weighted with mercury, and those running to their cars or trucks without umbrellas could feel the distinct smack of each drop.
; Dashing to a truck outfitted with painter’s ladders, someone on Lilac Road shouted “Yee haw!,” an act that precipitated a spree of barking among the neighborhood dogs.
Here and there, as seemingly random as the appearance of stars at twilight, lamps came on in houses throughout the village, and radio and television voices prophesied that the front passing over the East Coast would be firmly lodged there for two days.
More than a few were fortunate to lie in bed and listen to the rain drumming on the roof, relieved to have no reason to get up until they were plenty good and ready.
Others thanked God for the time that remained to lie in a warm, safe place unmolested by worldly cares, while some began at once to fret about what the day might bring.
Shepherds Abiding, Ch. 1
WHEN THE CONGREGANTS poured out into the night through the red doors, the snow was swirling down in large, feathery flakes, anointing collars and hats, scarves and mittens. Two people put their heads back and stuck out their tongues and felt the soft, quick dissolve of the flakes.
“Merry Christmas, Father!”
“Merry Christmas, Esther, Gene! God bless you! And there’s Hessie, merry Christmas to you, Hessie!”
“Why Tom Bradshaw! Merry Christmas! What brings you back to the sticks?”
Laughter. Vaporizing breath. The incense of snuffed candles wafting on the air…
“Merry Christmas, Cynthia!”
“Merry Christmas, Hope, how lovely you look! And Scott, dear—merry Christmas!”
Shepherds Abiding, Ch. 9
THE FIRST FLAKE landed on a blackberry bush in the creek bottom of Meadowgate Farm.
In the frozen hour before dawn, others found their mark on the mossy roof of the smokehouse; in a grove of laurel by the northwest pasture; on the handle of a hoe left propped against the garden fence.
Close by the pond in the sheep paddock, a buck, a doe, and two fawns stood motionless as an owl pushed off from the upper branches of a pine tree and sailed, silent and intent, to the ridge of the barn roof.