Shepherds Abiding

by Jan Karon

  “Since when is it th’ business of this place to meddle in what people order?”

  “Take it or leave it,” said Velma. She was sick and tired of J. C. Hogan bossing her around and biting her head off for the last hundred years.

  J.C.’s mouth dropped open.

  “I’ll order while he’s rethinking,” said Father Tim. “Bring me the usual.”

  Velma glared at the editor. “If you’d order like th’ Father here, you’d live longer.” She felt ten feet tall telling this grouchy so-and-so what was what, she should have done it years ago.

  “I wouldn’t eat a poached egg if somebody paid me cash money. Give me three eggs, scrambled, with grits, bacon . . .” J.C. repeated his order loud and clear, as if Velma had suddenly gone deaf. “ . . . an’ two dadgum biscuits.”

  Father Tim thought his boothmate’s face was a read-out of his blood pressure rating—roughly 300 over 190.

  “If you want to drop dead on th’ street, that’s your business,” said Velma, “but I won’t be party to it. Get you some yogurt and fresh fruit with a side of dry toast.” “This is dadblame illegal! You can’t tell me what to order.”

  “Suit yourself. I promised Adele, and I’m stickin’ to it.”

  J.C. looked at Father Tim to confirm whether he was hearing right. Father Tim looked at Velma. Maybe this was a joke. . . .

  But Velma was a brick wall, an Army tank. End of discussion.

  J.C. drew himself up and played his trump card. “Do I need to remind you that this is a democracy?”

  Velma glared at the editor over her half-glasses; heads turned in their direction. “Where’s Percy this mornin’?” demanded J.C. He would call in the troops and nip this nonsense in the bud once and for all.

  “Down with th’ Mitford Crud!” snapped Velma.

  The young man at the grill turned his back on the whole caboodle, lest he be drawn into the altercation.

  There was a long moment of silence, the sort that Father Tim never enjoyed.

  “Then I’ll just take my business down th’ street!”

  J.C. grabbed his briefcase and blew out of the rear booth like a cannon shot. Father Tim’s coffee sloshed in its mug.

  Roaring past the counter, the Muse editor peppered the air with language not fit to print and, arriving at the front door, yanked it open, turned around, and shouted, “Which, you may be happy to know, is where I intend to keep it!”

  The cold rain blew in, the door slammed, the bell jangled.

  “Good riddance!” said Velma, meaning it.

  At the counter, Coot Hendrick dumped sugar into his coffee and stirred. “I didn’t know there was anyplace down th’ street to take ’is business to.”

  “I suppose he meant the tea shop,” said Luke Taylor, who hadn’t looked up from his newspaper.

  Guffaws. Hoots. General hilarity among the regulars. In Mitford, the Chelsea Tea Shop was definitely the province, indeed the stronghold, of the fair sex. Hardly a male had ever set foot in the place, except for a few unsuspecting tourists.

  Father Tim cleared his throat. “I do think it’s illegal,” he said to Velma, “to refuse to . . . you know . . .”

  Velma adjusted her glasses and glared at him from on high. “Since when is it illegal to save somebody’s life?”

  Clearly, Velma Mosely was ready for retirement.

  It was one of those rare days when he sensed that all the world lay before him, that it was indeed his oyster.

  Upon leaving the Grill, he stood beneath the green awning, scarcely knowing which way to turn. Though the chilling rain continued to fall and the uproar between Velma and J.C. had definitely been unpleasant, he felt light; his feet barely touched the ground. How could someone his age feel so expectant and complete? How indeed? It was the grace of God.

  “Lord, make me a blessing to someone today!”

  He uttered aloud his grandmother’s prayer, raised his umbrella, and, beneath the sound of rain thudding onto black nylon, turned left and headed to Lord’s Chapel to borrow a volume of Jonathan Edwards from the church library.

  “Father!”

  Andrew Gregory’s head poked from the door of the Oxford Antique Shop. “Stop in for a hot cocoa.”

  Hot cocoa!

  He hadn’t tasted the delights of hot cocoa since the Boer War. In truth, the phrase was seldom heard on anyone’s lips—the going thing today was an oversweet and synthetic chocolate powder having nothing to do with the real thing.

  “Bless my soul!” said Father Tim. He always felt a tad more eighteenth century when he visited the Oxford. He shunted his umbrella into an iron stand that stood ready at the door and strode into one of his favorite places in all of Mitford.

  “Excuse the disarray,” said Andrew, who, though possibly suffering some jet lag, never looked in disarray himself. In truth, Andrew’s signature cashmere jacket appeared freshly pressed if not altogether brand-new.

  “The shipment from my previous trip arrived yesterday, on the heels of my own arrival. It all looks like a jumble sale at the moment, but we’ll put it right, won’t we, Fred?”

  Fred Addison looked up from his examination of a walnut chest and grinned. “Yessir, we always do. Good mornin’, Father. Wet enough for you?”

  “I don’t mind the rain, but my roses do. This year, we exchanged Japanese beetles for powdery mildew. How was your garden this year?” Fred Addison’s annual vegetable garden was legendary for its large size and admirable tomatoes; Father Tim had feasted from that fertile patch on several occasions.

  “Had to plow it under,” said Fred, looking mournful.

  “Let’s look for a better go of things next year.”

  “Yessir, that’s th’ ticket.”

  Andrew led the way to the back room, where the Oxford hot plate and coffeepot resided with such amenities as the occasional parcel of fresh scones fetched from London.

  “Careful where you step,” said Andrew. “I’m just unpacking a crèche I found in Stow-on-the-Wold; a bit on the derelict side. Some really odious painting of the figures and some knocking about of the plaster here and there . . .”

  Father Tim peered at a motley assortment of sheep spilling from a box, an angel with a mere stub for a wing, an orange camel, and, lying in a manger of bubble wrap, a lorn Babe . . .

  “Twenty-odd pieces, all in plaster, and possibly French. Someone assembled the scene from at least two, maybe three different crèches.”

  “Aha.”

  Andrew poured hot milk from a pot into a mug. “Not the sort of thing I’d usually ship across the pond, yet it spoke to me somehow.”

  “Yes, well . . . it has a certain charm.”

  “I thought someone might be willing to have a go at bringing it ’round.” Andrew handed him the mug. “There you are! Made with scalded milk and guaranteed to carry you forth with good cheer and optimism.”

  Coffee and cocoa, all within the span of a couple of hours. Father Tim reckoned that his caffeinated adrenaline would be pumping ’til Christmas; he felt as reckless as a sailor on leave.

  Mitford’s capable mayor, restaurateur, and antiques dealer beamed one of his much-lauded smiles. “Come, Father, I’ll show you a few of the new arrivals—and perhaps you’ll catch me up on the latest scandals in Mitford?”

  “That shouldn’t take long,” said Father Tim.

  He felt the warmth of the mug in his hands and saw the rain slanting in sheets against the display windows. Everywhere in this large room that smelled of lemon oil and beeswax was something to be admired—the patina of old walnut and mahogany, a tapestry side chair bathed in the glow of lamplight, and, over there, a stack of leather-bound books just uncrated.

  He had a moment of deepest gratitude, and the odd and beguiling sense that he was on the brink of something. . . .

  But what?

  Something . . . different. Yes, that was it.

  The day after his visit to Oxford Antiques, he realized that the angel had seized his imagination.

  H
e was surprised by a vivid recollection of her face, which he’d found beautiful, and the piety of her folded hands and downcast eyes.

  As for the missing wing, wasn’t that a pretty accurate representation of most of the human horde, himself certainly included?

  The image of the Babe had also come to mind. The craziness and commerce of Christmas, so utterly removed from the verity of its meaning, had served to make the bubble-wrapped figure a profoundly fitting metaphor.

  He hadn’t given much consideration to crèche scenes in recent years. They had used his maternal grandmother’s once or twice, but found the dull, base-metal figures so forbidding, he’d packed them away. Generally, he and Cynthia had been making do with hers, which she’d miraculously rescued from a hither-and-yon childhood. It was an odd and poignant thing, which she’d created from scraps of yarn, felt, and straw, and included clothespin shepherds for whom, at the age of fourteen, she had sewn silk robes.

  Prior to arriving in Mitford, he had used his family’s Irish-made crèche, observing Anglican traditions taught him by his now-long-deceased father.

  Though Matthew Kavanagh had been decidedly hostile to the church and its associations, he’d celebrated Christmas, and Christmas only, with certain feeling. And, eager to promote any stirring of his heart toward God, his wife, Madelaine, had carried forth the observance of Advent and Christmas with particular zeal.

  As an only child, he, Timothy, had the privilege and pleasure of setting up the Nativity scene on the first day of Advent. He always began, as his father directed, by placing Mary and Joseph and the empty manger on top of a low bookcase in their parlor. Then he grouped the two donkeys, a doleful horse, a cow, a calf, and two sheep to one side, where they stood in a concert of expectation.

  His mother and father sat in the parlor with him as he assembled the hand-carved, hand-painted figures into a scene that he tried to make fresh and different each year. During one year, he might place the horse so that it looked down on the manger. Another year, he might give the cow and calf this privilege of station.

  He felt happy in bringing the small setting to life, and happier still that his usually dour and remote father seemed interested in his son’s effort.

  “The horse will do well there,” Matthew Kavanagh might say. Or, “The manger wants less straw.”

  “Father likes the crèche,” he said to his mother.

  “Yes,” she said, “he has always loved it. Your great-grandmother brought it over from Ireland, and she taught your father to set it up exactly as he’s teaching you.”

  He remembered being thrilled by this newfound connection with his father’s boyhood, and even with a great-grandmother he’d never seen. He turned his face from his mother so she couldn’t look upon the pride that laid his feelings bare.

  During the heady days of Advent, with its special wreath and candles, and the baking done by his mother and Peggy, the house was filled with wonderful smells. These aromas, including an ever-present fragrance of chickory coffee perking on the stove, were dense and rich; he could sometimes smell them all the way to the rabbit pen, where his best friend, Tommy Noles, came to help “feed up.”

  “Them little pellets go in, an’ th’ same little pellets come out, ’cept in a different color,” said Tommy.

  “Yep.”

  “What’re you gettin’?”

  “I hope a bike. What’re you gettin’?”

  Tommy shrugged, looking mournful. “Prob’ly nothin’.”

  “Everybody gets somethin’ at Christmas,” he said.

  “Not if they’re poor, they don’t.”

  “You’re not poor.”

  “Becky says we are.”

  “But you’ve got a house and a barn and lots of things, even horses, and we only have rabbits.” He had always wanted horses.

  “We got a cow, too, an’ a calf,” Tommy reminded him.

  “Besides, she’s just your little sister. She’s dumb to say that. Y’all even have a truck, and we don’t have a truck, only a Buick.” He had always wanted a truck.

  Tommy had seemed encouraged.

  Four shepherds, in the meantime, waited in the dining room on the walnut sideboard, to journey to the manger on Christmas morning. In his mother’s sewing room, he knew that presents waited, too. His mother spent many hours in that room, always with the door closed, wrapping presents with yards and yards of her signature white satin ribbon and protecting with uncommon zeal the wonderful secrets that he tried diligently to puzzle out.

  During the long days before Christmas, he could scarcely wait to put the Babe in the manger, and often made the trek to the silver drawer of the sideboard to peer at the infant resting safely in the bowl of a gravy ladle.

  At a time when his friends had stopped believing in Santa Claus, he was still believing in the powerful reality of the small tableau—in much the same way, he supposed, that a boy believes his action heroes to be living, and the battles on the parlor floor to be real.

  Years later, he had stored the Irish crèche in the basement of the riverside rectory in Hastings, where he was rector for ten years prior to Mitford. He remembered driving home from a diocesan conference in a frightening storm, then opening his basement door and seeing the water risen above the bottom step.

  Floating on the small, enclosed river in the lower portion of his house were the Nativity figures—camels without riders, shepherds without crooks, the stable with its pointed roof and fixed star, a miniature bale of sodden straw, and, here and there, a sheep or donkey along with other detritus loosed from cardboard containers and set free upon the floodwaters of southern Alabama.

  He had rescued them and put them into a box and, in the upheaval following the flood, had forgotten them. When he opened the box months later, the figures were rank with a fetid damp that caused them to stick together in a mildewed and forbidding clump.

  He’d felt a deep sense of loss, as well as relief, when, months later, he discovered that the movers had failed to load the box on the truck to Mitford.

  Dear Hope,

  Due to the serious nature of the following proposal, I’m not e-mailing or calling you. Instead, I’m allowing you ample time to consider my idea, and thereby give it the careful and positive thinking you’ve displayed in making Happy Endings a more profitable enterprise.

  Mitford has great charm, but, as you’re aware, it has distinct limitations, as well. Of the entire population, scarcely a tenth enjoys a thumping good read or has any inclination to open the covers of a book. We’ve had to go further and further afield to pay the rent and stock our shelves, and no coffee bar or gallery of so-called amusing greeting cards could ever turn this distressing circumstance around.

  Your clever marketing of HE to surrounding communities, your committed endeavors with the literacy council, and your development of a rare-books business on the Internet, have certainly paid off. But only to the extent that the rent, the utilities, and your salary are met each month, with barely enough left to restock the shelves.

  In other words, though you work very hard and have made a far better go of it than I did while living in Mitford, the profit margin remains slim and tenuous. I don’t enjoy telling you this, but it’s best to make a clean breast of things.

  The HE lease is up at the end of December, and I’ve decided I simply don’t wish to carry on in Mitford. Instead, I’m inviting you to join me at the store in Florida and help grow the business here.

  Really, my dear, I see no reason at all for you to remain in Mitford. I assure you that your dull and solitary life there will be replaced by a very exciting life here. And—Peter and I have a charming guesthouse where you can live in great comfort until you get your wings!

  I won’t ring you for a week, as P and I shall be in the Keys, and thus you shall have every opportunity to think this through and give me the answer I hope—and indeed expect—to hear!

  Yours fondly,

  Helen

  P.S. We will, of course, pay all moving expenses, which
should be minimal, given your minuscule accommodations over the Tea Shop.

  P.P.S. I’ll contact Edith Mallory’s attorneys tomorrow, with a sixty-day notice. As you’re aware, the dreadful fire at Clear Day handicapped her severely, and though she’s proved to be a grasping and unlovely landlord, I admit to feeling a certain pity for the poor creature.

  Don’t let the word out until Christmas is behind us—they’d all be wanting something for nothing, and I have no intention of putting on a going-out-of-business sale; remaining inventory will be moved here.

  The first time Hope read this letter, her heart had raced with excitement. Now she felt it racing for quite another reason.

  It was from fear of what lay ahead.

  He had every reason in the world not to do it.

  First, he’d never attempted anything like this before. Not even remotely like this.

  Second, it was the sort of project Cynthia might take on and accomplish with great success, but as for himself, he had no such talent or skill—indeed, except for a fair amount of aptitude for gardening and cooking, he was all thumbs.

  Third, there would hardly be enough hours left in the year to get the job done, though when he made an inquiry by phone, Andrew offered to help him every step of the way, vowing to call upon his professional resources for advice.

  Fourth, the thing was too large, too out of proportion for the corner of the study: some figures were easily fifteen or sixteen inches tall.

  Last, but definitely not least, he had enough to do. He was struggling with yet another piece of business for which he probably had no talent or skill—he was writing a book of essays. Truth be told, he’d hardly enjoyed a moment of writing the blasted things; he’d like to chuck the whole lot in the trash and be done with it. But, no, he’d invested untold hours. . . .

  He put on his jacket and opened the door of the yellow house, inhaling the crisp morning air.