Shepherds Abiding

by Jan Karon

  He lay still for a long time, scarcely breathing, before finishing that thought.

  . . . but if He wanted it, He could have it.

  Hope stood at the windows looking down on Main Street. In truth, one could hardly tell there was a street there at all. The tracks of the snowplow, made less than an hour ago, were vanishing under fresh snow.

  “Thank you, Lord!” she whispered, glad for the beauty and peace of this morning.

  Since she had prayed that prayer last September, a lot of things had changed. It was easier and easier to blurt something out to God, or ask Him for guidance, or, right on the spot, thank Him for the simplest things.

  The midnight service at Lord’s Chapel had been transporting; she had never attended such a service. The smell of the cedar and pine . . . the lovely and moving voices of the choir, often singing a cappella in the candlelit church . . . and her hand warm in Scott’s hand . . .

  She knew she had never done anything to deserve any of this, which made God’s love for her all the more amazing and inexplicable.

  Walking toward the hot plate where she would soon prepare her first Christmas breakfast for company, she recognized the deep fatigue she felt from the long weeks of not knowing, and the lack of help with the rare-books business, and the loss . . . But it was Christmas, and she mustn’t think of loss.

  She felt compelled to turn and look at the light spilling through the lace.

  “Mother!”

  The grief was sharp and sudden, and she put her head in her hands and wept, feeling, even in her sorrow, an assurance she could not define.

  “We need a carrot!”

  “We ain’t got any carrots, I looked!”

  “Dooley says don’t say ‘ain’t’!”

  “We could use a stick for ’is nose. I guess there’s plenty of sticks around.”

  “Yeah, but how can you see where they’re at under th’ snow?”

  In the yard of the small house in the laurels, Poo and Jessie Barlowe built a snowman that they planned to top off with their stepfather’s yellow hard hat. Dooley would come over today, and they would go with him to the preacher’s house for Christmas dinner, where they’d see their other brother, Sammy, and get presents. Then, maybe everybody would drive by their house and see their snowman. This possibility was so exciting they couldn’t eat breakfast, though each had ventured out into the cold and snowy morning with a pocketful of M&M’s.

  “How can we make ’im smile?”

  “Little rocks, like from a driveway. We could stick ’em in ’is face in a little curve.”

  “We don’t have no driveway.”

  Jessie thought hard, her breath clouding the air in short puffs. “We could use M&M’s!”

  “I ain’t usin’ mine.”

  “I can’t believe how selfish you are! Don’t you know it’s Christmas? Plus everybody might ride over to see.”

  “OK,” said Poo, emptying his pocket.

  She had never made an omelet using a two-burner hot plate, but Scott cheered her on, and with the salsa and toast and plum jam and tea, it all seemed magical. Sitting in her new home with Scott, his dogs sleeping on the old rug she loved, she felt suddenly grown-up and invincible, taller, even.

  “Merry Christmas!” she said, overcome by his presence across her small table.

  “Merry Christmas,” he said, taking her hand.

  She’d certainly had dreams of romance, sometimes even foolish dreams about men on moors, usually on horseback, with their capes blown by some stern highland wind. But never had she dreamed she might know someone so peaceable and kind, so genuine and true. She pressed his hand, unable to speak, and again felt tears shining in her eyes.

  He settled back in the chair, looking easy and relaxed. “Tell me—what is your chief desire for Happy Endings?”

  She thought for a moment. “I’d like my bookstore to be a place where people feel truly at home.”

  He smiled. “Your bookstore.”

  “Yes!” she said, marveling. “My bookstore!”

  “You know what?”

  “What?”

  “Your bookstore is living up to its name.”

  It felt wonderful to laugh, as if the sound were coming from a new person, someone she was excited about getting to know. The dogs jumped up and ran to her at once, as if called by her laughter.

  She looked into their brown and eager eyes. “May I give them a bite of toast with jam?”

  “They’d like that.”

  She felt their soft, nuzzling way of taking the toast from her hand.

  “Beautiful!” Scott said, with special tenderness. “Sparkling!”

  She touched the small diamonds at her ears. “They’re wonderful, I love them!”

  He grinned. “I wasn’t talking about the earrings,” he said.

  On the deck of Esther and Gene Bolick’s green cottage east of Main Street, fourteen terra-cotta flowerpots filled with snow, and mounded like ice cream cones.

  Beyond the sliding doors, Esther and Gene sat by the fireplace in their twin recliners, drinking coffee and opening presents. The fake fireplace, which Gene had given her ten Christmases ago, featured a forty-watt bulb that glowed through a revolving sheet of red cellophane, a setup that Esther had often pronounced “cozy.”

  “I can’t believe this!” said Esther.

  “What?” Gene had just opened a can of nuts from a pal at the Legion hut, and was searching for a cashew.

  “This laundry bag with the B monogram! From Hessie Mayhew!”

  “What about it?”

  Incredulous, Esther held the gift aloft. “I put this old thing in th’ Bane an’ Blessin’ a hundred years ago!”

  “Well, I’ll be,” said Gene, trying to sound interested.

  Esther dropped the laundry bag into her lap and sat frozen with disbelief. “And to think I gave her a two-layer marmalade.”

  “Th’ poor woman has a gimp leg, Esther, which don’t leave much room for shoppin’. Besides, why did you put it in th’ Bane an’ Blessin’? It looks perfectly good to me.”

  “Well, yes,” said Esther, examining it more carefully. “After I put it in, I wished I hadn’t.”

  “See?” said her husband, hammering down on a couple of cashews. “What goes around comes around.”

  At Hope House, Louella Baxter Marshall rolled onto her right side, heaved herself up, and sat on the edge of the bed.

  “Merry Christmas, Miss Sadie! Merry Christmas, Moses, honey. Merry Christmas, my sweet boy in heaven! Merry Christmas, Mama!”

  A string of lights twinkled on a red poinsettia on her windowsill; thirty-two Christmas cards were Scotch-taped to her doorframe. It was a nice Christmas, yes, it was, and, about three o’clock, she would put on her new cherry lipstick and a dab of eye shadow in a color that looked good with her skin, and the nurse would help zip her blue dress with the long sleeves. Then she would wrap the little something she’d bought for Father Tim and Miss Cynthia, who were nearly as close as kinfolk, and her little preacher, Scott Murphy, would carry her off to the Kavanaghs’ for a fine dinner.

  “Miss Louella, are you talkin’ to yourself this mornin’?”

  “I’m wakin’ myself up. Merry Christmas!”

  “Merry Christmas to you! We got a big snow in th’ night, and it’s still comin’.”

  Louella did not care for snow, and refused to recognize this observation.

  “Are you ready for a nice breakfast this mornin’?”

  “What is it, honey?” She knew they tried hard, but she didn’t think much of the victuals at Miss Sadie’s rest home.

  “It’s turkey sausage with scrambled eggs, and one of your nice biscuits.”

  “You take th’ sausage on back an’ leave me th’ biscuit an’ eggs.” Sausage from a turkey! What was the world comin’ to? “An’ when you step down to Miss Pattie’s room, would you carry this?”

  Louella placed a small gift, tied with a red ribbon, on the tray. “I ain’t got but one visit in my bones t�
�day.”

  “Yes, ma’am, Miss Louella.”

  “An’ don’t let me go off an’ forget my pan of rolls from th’ kitchen.”

  “No, ma’am, I won’t. You want this little string of lights turned off?”

  “No, I don’t. I want it left on ’til Christmas is over.”

  “That would be tomorrow,” said Nurse Austin, who hated to see electricity wasted in broad daylight.

  “No, honey, Christmas ain’ over ’til midnight on January six.”

  “Is that right!” said Nurse Austin, who was accustomed to residents with memory problems and general confusion.

  One mile north of the Mitford monument, Old Man Mueller sat at his breakfast table in the unpainted house surrounded by a cornfield, and, with his dentures soaking in a jar by the bed, devoured a large portion of the cake Esther and Gene Bolick had brought him last night on Christmas Eve.

  He didn’t have any idea why they would bring him a cake every Christmas, as he hardly knew them or anybody else at that rock church on Main Street. All he knew is, if one year they forgot and didn’t show up, he’d set down and bawl like a baby.

  His dog, Luther, who was known to have a total of 241 separate freckles on his belly, stood and placed his paws on the table, gazing solemnly at his master.

  “Don’t be givin’ me th’ mournful eye,” said Old Man Mueller. He dragged the cake box over, cut a good-size piece, slapped it into an aluminum cake pan, and set the pan on the floor.

  “There!” he said. “An’ Merry Christmas to y’r brute self.”

  “Bill Watson!”

  “That’s m’ name, don’t you know.”

  “You’re the best ol’ Santy ever was.”

  “I ain’t no Santy! What makes you think such as that?”

  “I have two eyes in my head, and a brain!”

  He had no idea what to reply to such a statement.

  In her slippers and robe, Miss Rose shuffled to the chair by the window where he sat with his cane between his knees, watching the snow top off the monument.

  She leaned down and laid her head on his, and put her arms around his neck. “You’ve always been my good ol’ Santy,” she said.

  He patted her bony arm with an inexpressible happiness.

  “An’ always will be,” he replied. “Always will be.”

  In the study of the yellow house on Wisteria Lane, an e-mail rolled into Father Tim’s mailbox.

 
  <8 lbs 9 oz

  <4 o’clock this morning.

 
 
 
  Even on this gray, snowbound morning, the dining table in the yellow house looked festive and expectant. Sitting on a heavy linen cloth were a low vase of yellow roses and a ham platter decorated with exotic birds, which Cynthia had found in a long-ago ramble through New England. On the sideboard, the Kavanagh family silver gleamed in a shaft of early light.

  Father Tim was awake, as was his wife, though they hadn’t climbed into bed until after three o’clock.

  “I thought I’d never go to sleep,” said Cynthia.

  “It was the excitement,” said Father Tim.

  “Plus the caffeine! I drank coffee yesterday afternoon with the Methodists. Will I never learn?”

  He yawned. “Wait ’til we get some Irish coffee in you.”

  “Who do you think it was, Timothy?”

  “Who what was?”

  “The stable. Who do you think did it?”

  “I don’t know. I almost don’t want to know.”

  They lay together, happy and exhausted, like two spoons in a drawer.

  “It’s all a miracle,” she whispered.

  “Yes!” he said. “To think that you’d come to take me to lunch just after Fred carried the box with the broken angel to the alley! Truth really is stranger than fiction.”

  She had her go at yawning. “I parked behind the Oxford and walked up the alley and, nosey me, looked into that box sitting on the garbage can. When I saw her lovely face, I knew at once I wanted her. I’d worked with plaster years ago, and believed I could make her whole.

  “I brought it home and thought, Timothy gave Hélène his beautiful bronze angel, I want to do this for him. Because if I could do it, it would represent the very reason Christ was born. He came to put us back together, and make us whole.”

  “Christmas is real,” he said. “It’s all true.”

  “Yes,” she said. “It’s all true.

  “Merry Christmas, my love.”

  “Merry Christmas, dearest.”

  “By the way,” he said. “What was that noxious smell coming from your workroom?”

  “Auto body putty! The perfect solution for putting together all those smashed pieces.”

  She snuggled her head into the crook of his arm. “You know, Timothy—since the table is set and most of the cooking is done, and since we got to bed so late and it’s still so early, and since no one is coming until four, and since I hardly ever get to do it . . .”

  “Spit it out, Kavanagh.”

  “ . . . I’m going back to sleep!”

  “Wonderful idea! And since Barnabas went out at two-thirty, and since the ham is glazed and the fire is laid and the egg nog is done and the front steps are salted, I’ll join you!”

  He punched up his pillow and pulled the covers to their chins, and held his wife closer.

  After all, it was Christmas.

  “And the child grew, and waxed strong in spirit, filled with wisdom: and the grace of God was upon him.”

  Luke 2:40, KJV

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s Imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

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