by Jan Karon
After Esther Bolick agreed to chair the historic church event, she went home and asked her husband, Gene, to have her committed. The Bane and Blessing was known, over the years, for having put two women flat on their backs in bed, nearly broken up a marriage, and chased three families to the Lutherans in Wesley.
Besides, hadn’t she virtually retired from years and years of churchwork, trying to focus, instead, on cake baking? Wasn’t baking a ministry in its own right? And didn’t she bake an orange marmalade cake at least twice a week for some poor soul who was down and out?
In the first place, she couldn’t remember saying she’d do the Bane. She had been totally dumbfounded when the meeting ended and everybody rushed over to hug and thank her and tell her how wonderful she was.
In the end, she sighed, determined that it should be done “as unto the Lord and not unto men.”
“That’s the spirit!” said her rector, doling out a much-needed hug.
He wouldn’t have traded places with Esther Bolick for all the tea in China. Esther, however, would do an outstanding job, and no doubt put an unprecedented amount of money in the missions till.
Because it was the most successful fund-raising event in the entire diocese, the women who pulled it off usually got enough local recognition to last a lifetime, or, at the very least, a couple of months.
“October fourth,” Esther told Gene.
“Eat your Wheaties,” Gene told Esther.
He’d rather be shot. But somebody had to do it.
“Hey,” said Dooley, knowing who was on the phone.
“Hey, yourself. What’s going on up there?”
“Chorus trip to Washington this weekend. We’re singing in a church and a bunch of senators and stuff will be there. I bought a new blazer, my old one got ripped on a nail. How’s ol’ Barnabas?”
“Sitting right here, licking my shoe, I think I dropped jam on it this morning. There’s something I need to talk with you about.”
Silence.
“Hal Owen hired an assistant.”
He may as well have put a knife in the boy, so keenly could he feel his disappointment.
“That means he’ll have help this summer, and the fellow will be . . .”—he especially hated this part—“be staying in your room until he gets situated.”
“Fine,” said Dooley, his voice cold.
“Hal had to do it, he’s been asked to vet a riding stable that’s moving in up the road. He’s got his hands full and then some.”
He couldn’t bear Dooley Barlowe’s silences; they seemed as deep as wells, as black as mines.
“Hal and Marge want you to come out for two weeks when you get home from school. They’ll . . . miss having you for the summer.”
“OK.”
“You might want to think about a job.”
More silence.
“Tommy’s going to have a job.”
“Where?”
“Pumping gas at Lew’s. He’ll probably have a uniform with his name on it.” It was a weak ploy, but all he could come up with. He pushed on. “Summer will give you time with your brother. Poobaw would like that. And so would your granpaw.”
Give him time to think it over. “Listen, buddy. You’re going to have a great summer, you’ll see. And we love you. Never forget that.”
“I don’t.”
Good! “Good. I’ll talk with you Saturday.”
“Hey, listen . . .” said Dooley.
“Yes?”
“Nothin’.”
“OK. God be with you, son.”
He took out his handkerchief and wiped his forehead.
“He who is not impatient is not in love,” said an old Italian proverb.
Well, that proved it right there, he thought, leaving his office and hurrying up Main Street toward home.
Why did he feel such excitement about seeing his wife, when he had seen her only this morning? She had brought them coffee in bed at an inhuman hour, and they’d sat up, drinking it, laughing and talking as if it were high noon.
A woman who would get up at five o’clock in order to visit with her husband before his prayer and study time was a saint. Of course, he admitted, she didn’t make a habit of it. And didn’t that make it all the more welcome?
Cynthia, Cynthia! he thought, looking at the pink dogwood in the yard of the tea room across the street. Like great pink canopies, the trees spread their lacy shade over emerald grass and beds of yellow tulips.
Dear Lord! It was nearly more than a man could bear—spring coming on like thunder, and a woman who had kissed him only hours ago, in a way he’d never, in his bachelor days, had the wits to imagine.
It wouldn’t take more than a very short memory to recall the women who’d figured in his life.
Peggy Cramer. That had taught him a thing or two. And when the engagement broke off while he was in seminary, he’d known that it was a good thing.
Then there was Becky. How his parish had worked to pull that one off! She was the woman who thought Wordsworth was a Dallas department store. He hoofed it past Dora Pugh’s hardware, laughing out loud.
Ah, but he felt an immense gratitude for his wife’s spontaneous laughter, her wisdom, and even her infernal stubborness. He snapped a branch of white lilac from the bush at the corner of the rectory yard.
He raced up his front steps, threw open the door, and bounded down the hall.
“Cynthia!”
As if he had punched a button, a clamor went up. Puny Guthrie’s red-haired twins, Sissy and Sassy, began squalling as one.
“Now see what you’ve done!” said Puny, standing at the ironing board in the kitchen.
“I didn’t know you’d still be here,” he said lamely.
“An’ I just rocked ’em off to sleep! Look, girls, here’s your granpaw!”
His house help, for whom he would be eternally grateful, was determined that he be a granpaw to her infants, whether he liked it or not.
“So, looky here, you hold Sissy and I’ll jiggle Sassy, I’ve got another hour to finish all this ironin’ from th’ tea.”
He took Sissy and, as instantly as Sissy had started crying, she stopped and gazed up at him.
“Hey, there,” he said, gazing back.
“See? She likes you! She loves ’er granpaw, don’t she?”
He could not take his eyes off the wonder in his arms. Because Puny was often gone by the time he arrived home, or was next door at the little yellow house, he hadn’t seen much of the twins over the winter. And now here they were, nearly a full year old, and one of them reaching up to pull his lower lip down to his collar.
Puny put Sassy on her hip and jiggled her. “If you’d jis’ walk Sissy around or somethin’, I’d ’preciate it. Lord, look at th’ ironin’ that come off of that tea, and all of it antique somethin’ or other from a bishop or a pope . . . .”
“Where’s Cynthia?”
“I’ve not seen ’er since lunch. She might be over at her house, workin’ on a book.”
As far as he knew, his industrious wife was not working on a book these days. She’d decided to take a sabbatical since last year’s book on bluebirds.
“I’ll just take Sissy and go looking,” he said.
“If she cries, jiggle ’er!”
Wanting to be proactive, he started jiggling at once.
He walked through the backyard, ignoring the dandelions that lighted his lawn like so many small, yellow fires. No, indeed, he would not get obsessive over the dandelions this spring, he would not dig them out one by one, as he had done in former years. Dandelions come and dandelions go, and there you have it, he thought, jiggling. Wasn’t he a man heading into retirement? Wasn’t he a man learning to loosen up and live a little?
Sissy gurgled and squirmed in his arms.
“Timothy!”
It was his wife, trotting through the hedge and looking like a girl.
“You’ll never guess what!”
“I can’t guess,” he said, leaning over to kiss h
er. He tucked the branch of lilac in her shirt pocket as Sissy socked him on the chin.
“Thank you, dearest! Mule just called to say someone’s interested in Fernbank! He tried to ring you at the office, but you’d left. Can you imagine? It’s someone from out of town, he said, a corporation or something. Run and call him, and I’ll take Sissy!”
Why didn’t he feel joyful as he went to the phone in his study? He didn’t feel joyful at all. Instead, he felt a strange sense of foreboding.
He lay on his side, propped up on his elbow. “I thought about you today,” he said, shy about telling her this simple thing.
She traced his nose and chin with her forefinger. “How very odd! I thought about you today.”
“It was the five o’clock coffee that did it,” he said, kissing her.
“Is that what it was?” she murmured, kissing him in return.
Perhaps almost anyone could love, he thought; it was the loving back that seemed to count for everything.
He tossed the thing onto a growing pile.
A man who had time to dig dandelions was a man with time to waste, he thought.
While he had no time at all to do something so trivial, he found he couldn’t help himself. He’d been lured into the yard like a miner lured to veins of gold.
There were, needless to say, a hundred other things that needed doing more:
The visit to Fernbank’s attic, and get cracking now that a possible buyer was on the scene.
Fertilize the roses.
Mulch the beds.
Get up to Hope House and talk to Scott Murphy . . . .
Scott was the young, on-fire chaplain that he and Miss Sadie had hired last year. Ever since he’d come last September, they’d tried to find time to run together, but so far, it hadn’t worked. Scott was like the tigers in a favorite childhood story—he was racing around the tree so fast, he was turning into butter.
The new chaplain not only held services every morning, but was making personal rounds to every one of the forty residents, every day.
“It’s what I was hired to do,” he said, grinning.
In addition, he’d gotten the once-controversial kennel program up and running. In this deal, a Hope House resident could “rent” a cat or a dog for up to two hours a day, simply by placing an advance order for Hector, Barney, Muffin, Lucky, etc. As the rector had seen on his visits to Hope House, this program doled out its own kind of medicine.
Evie Adams’s mother, Miss Pattie, who had been literally out of her mind for a decade, had taken a shine to Baxter, a cheerful dachshund, and was, on certain days, nearly lucid.
Every afternoon, the pet wagon rolled along the halls at Hope House, and residents who weren’t bedridden got to amuse, and be amused by, their four-legged visitors. There were goldfish for those who couldn’t handle the responsibility of a cat or dog, and, for everyone in general, Mitford School kept the walls supplied with bright posters.
“I’ll be dadgum if I wouldn’t like to move in there,” said several villagers who were perfectly able-bodied.
He sat back on his heels and dropped the weed-puller. What about the Creek community? Hadn’t he and Scott talked last year about doing something, anything, to bring some healing to that place? It was overwhelming even to think about it, and yet, he constantly thought about it.
And Sammy and Kenny and Jessie . . . there was that other overwhelming, and even more urgent issue, and he had no idea where to begin.
He dug out a burdock and tossed it on the pile.
And now this. A corporation? That didn’t sound good. Mule hadn’t known any details, he had merely talked on the phone with a real estate company who was making general inquiries about Fernbank.
“Take no thought for the morrow . . .” he muttered, quoting Matthew.
“Don’t worry about anything . . .” he said aloud, quoting his all-time standby verse in the fourth chapter of Philippians, “but in everything, by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving, make your requests known unto God, and the peace that passes all understanding will fill your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.”
He’d been doing it all wrong. As usual, he was trying to focus on the big picture.
He glanced at the stepping-stones he and Cynthia had laid together last year, making a path through the hedge. There! Right under his nose.
Step by step. That was the answer.
CHAPTER THREE
Eden
“You know how some people think all we have to do in Mitford is watch paint peel?”
“I do.”
Emma snorted with disgust. “Mack Stroupe’s house could’ve held us spellbound for th’ last fifteen years.”
“I haven’t driven by there in a while.”
“Looked like a shack on th’ Creek ’til guess what?”
“I can’t guess.”
“Four pickups hauled in there this mornin’ with men and stepladders. Th’ first coat was on by noon, I saw it myself when I went to Hessie’s for lunch.”
“Aha.”
“They painted it blue. I hate blue on a house. Somebody said blue is the color of authority—which is why police officers are th’ men in blue. They say it’s a color that makes you look like you are somebody!”
“Well, well . . .”
“An’ take pink. What do you think happened when a sheriff in Texas painted his jail cells pink? The men calmed down, no more violence, can you beat that?”
“Hard to beat,” he said, gluing the wooden base back onto the bookend. “And Texas, of all places.”
“Where do you think Mack Stroupe gets his money?”
“What money?”
“To buy a new truck, to paint his house. I even heard he had a manicure at Fancy Skinner’s place.”
“A manicure? Mack?”
“A manicure,” she said icily.
“Good heavens.” This was serious. “He didn’t get a mask, too, did he?”
“A mask? Why would he need a mask when he can lie, cheat, and steal without one?”
“Now, Emma, I don’t know about the stealing.”
“Maybe you don’t, but I do.” She looked imperious.
Run from gossip! the Scriptures said. It would be hard to put it more plainly than that.
“I’m going up the street a few minutes. It looks like rain, better close the windows before you leave. Give Harold my congratulations on being moved off the route and into sorting.”
“Sorting and working the window,” she said proudly.
“Winnie!” he called, as the bell jingled on the bakeshop door.
Blast if he didn’t love the smell of this place. What would happen if the bakery was sold? Anybody could move in here, hawking any manner of goods and wares. Could cards and stationery smell this wonderful, or piece goods, or kitchen wares?
Five years before he arrived on the scene, Winnie had scraped together the money for this storefront, painted it inside and out, installed ovens and secondhand display cases, stenciled Sweet Stuff Bakery on the window, and settled into twenty years of unflagging hard work.
Her winning smile and generous spirit had been a hallmark of this street. Hadn’t she faithfully fed Miss Rose and Uncle Billy when the old couple tottered by for their daily handout? Yes, and sent something home for the birds, into the bargain.
He found her in the kitchen, sitting on a stool and scribbling on a piece of paper. “Winnie, there you are!”
She beamed at the sight of her visitor. “Have an oatmeal cookie,” she said, passing him a tray. “Low-fat.”
He was suddenly as happy as a child. “Well, in that case . . .”
He sat on the other stool and munched his cookie. “You know, Winnie, I’ve been thinking . . .”
Winnie’s broad face sobered. She had never known what preachers thought.
“Sweet Stuff isn’t a bakery.”
“It’s not?”
“It’s an institution! Do you have to go to Tennessee? Can’t we keep you?”
&n
bsp; “I might be here ’til kingdom come, the way things are lookin’. Not one soul has asked about buyin’ it.”
“They will, mark my words. God’s timing is perfect, even in real estate.”
“If I didn’t believe that, I’d jump out th’ window.”
“Wouldn’t have far to jump,” he said, eyeing the sidewalk through the curtains.
Winnie laughed. He loved it when Winnie laughed. The sound of it had rung in this place far more often than the cash register, but she had done all right, she had come through.
“I’m goin’ home in a little bit,” she sighed. “I’m not as young as I used to be.”
“Who is? I’ll be pushing off soon myself, I just came to say hello. How do you like living on Lilac Road?”
“I miss my little cottage by the creek, but that young preacher from Hope House takes good care of it.”
“Scott Murphy . . .”
“He washed the windows! Those windows have never been washed! My house sittin’ right on th’ street and all keeps ’em dirty.”
“Well, never much traffic by there to notice.”
They sat in silence as he finished his cookie.
“Have another one,” she said, wanting him to.
He did. It was soft and chewy, just as he liked cookies to be, and low-fat into the bargain. This was definitely his day. “What do you hear from Joe?”
“Homesick.”
“But Tennessee is home.”
“Yes, but Mitford’s more like home; he’s been away from Tennessee fifty years. To tell th’ truth, Father, I don’t much want to go up there, but here I am with no family left in Mitford, and it seems right for me to go.”
Sometimes, what seemed right wasn’t so right, after all, but who was he to say?
“Look here,” she said, picking up the sheet of paper she’d been scribbling on. “I’m enterin’ this contest that’s twenty-five words or less. You’re educated, would you mind seein’ if th’ spelling is right?”
