Out to Canaan

by Jan Karon

  “Can I talk t’ you som’ers?” Lace wanted to know.

  Harley was sitting on the side of the bed, fully dressed, but looking weak. He scraped the last bite from a cup of peach yogurt and wiped his mouth with his sleeve.

  “Rev’rend, Lace has got a notion I cain’t argue ’er out of. Don’t pay no attention to ’er if she talks foolish.”

  “I don’t believe I’ve ever heard Lace talk foolish,” he said. “You look a little peaked today, Harley. How’re you feeling?”

  “Wore out. We was up an’ down an’ aroun’ ever’ whichaway, th’ doc said I needed exercise. I been eatin’ like a boar hog an’ layin’ up in this bed ’til I was runnin’ t’ fat.”

  “We could go down t’ y’r basement,” said Lace, tugging at her hat brim.

  “My basement?”

  “I hate like th’ dickens I couldn’t talk ’er out of this,” said Harley. “She’s pigheaded as a mule, always has been since I knowed ’er as a baby.”

  “What’s the deal?” he asked as they trooped down the basement stairs.

  “You’ll see,” she said.

  The musty smell of earth came to him, and he remembered the cave he and Cynthia had been lost in only last year. They had wandered in circles for fourteen agonizing hours, until the local police, led by Barnabas, brought them out.

  He shuddered and flipped the switch that lit the dark hallway.

  There was the bathroom that hadn’t been used since he moved here fifteen years ago, and the two bedrooms and the little kitchen—which had served, during the tenures of various rectors, as a mother-in-law apartment, a facility for runaways and later for elderly widows, a home office, an adult Sunday School, a church nursery, and storage space for the detritus of nearly a century of clergy families.

  Lace folded her arms across her chest. “This is what I think.”

  “Shoot.”

  “When me’n Harley was ramblin’ around today outside, we seen y’r basement door. F’r somethin’ t’ do, I tried t’ git th’ door open and had t’ nearly bust it in.”

  “Really?”

  “But it ain’t broke, it was just stuck.”

  “Good!”

  “So we seen how this is a place t’ live, with a toilet an’ kitchen an’ all. An’ I got to thinkin’ how if Harley goes back to th’ Creek, how he ain’t goin’ t’ take care of hisself, an’ besides, somethin’ bad could happen to ’im.”

  “Aha.”

  “So I thought if you was to like th’ idea, Harley could live down here and go t’ work f’r you an’ Cynthia.”

  He pulled at his chin.

  “Harley can work, you ain’t never seen ’im work, you just seen ’im laid up sick. Harley can rake, he can saw, he can hammer, he can paint.”

  “I’ll be darned.”

  “An’ he wouldn’t charge you a cent to keep you an’ Cynthia’s cars worked on.”

  She looked at him steadily under the dim glow of the bulb.

  “Well, I don’t know. I’d have to think about it, talk to Cynthia about it.”

  “He wouldn’t be no trouble. They wouldn’t be no cookin’ or nothin’ to do for ’im, he could take care of hisself. He could paint this place for you, fix it up, I’d help ’im.”

  She paused, then said: “You ought t’ do it, it’d be good for ever’body.”

  Lace Turner had made her case, and rested it.

  “Can he draw cats?” asked Cynthia. “He could do my next book.”

  Uh-oh. “Your next book?”

  “I’ve been meaning to tell you, dearest. I’m starting a new book. You know how I said I’d never do another Violet book?”

  “You definitely said that. Several times.”

  “I lied.”

  “Aha.”

  “You won’t believe the advance they’ll give me to do another Violet book.”

  It was true. When she told him, he didn’t believe it. “Come on. That’s four times what they gave you for the bluebird book.”

  “Well, you see, I refused so fiercely to do another Violet book, they had to make me an offer I couldn’t resist.”

  “You’re tough, Kavanagh.”

  “So kiss me!” she said, laughing.

  He kissed her, inhaling the elusive scent of wisteria. “Congratulations! We can build a boat and retire to the Caribbean and spend our lives cruising and fishing.”

  “Where did you get an idea like that?”

  “From Mike Jones at Incarnation in Highlands. He said that’s what he wants to do when he retires—the only problem is, he’s never mentioned it to his wife.”

  “The only problem is,” she said, “we’ll need gobs of money to enlarge my little yellow house to contain a man, an ocean of books, and a dog the size of Esther Bolick’s Westinghouse freezer.”

  “Well, then. What do you think?”

  “I think we should let him have the basement and fix it up. I love Harley. He’s funny and good-hearted and earnest. And it would be wonderful to have some more help around here. For openers, your garage could use a cleanup and my Mazda needs a new alternator.”

  “What do you know about alternators?”

  “Absolutely nothing. Which means it would be nice to have Harley living in the basement. We’ll buy the paint and I’ll make his kitchen curtains.”

  “Done!” he said.

  A new book? He knew what that meant. It meant his wife would be working eight hours a day or more, complaining of a chronically stiff neck, staring out the window without speaking, getting headaches from eye strain, and crashing into bed at night as lifeless as a swamp log.

  Oh, well. He sighed, trudging up the stairs with his dog to tell Harley the news.

  “Goodnight, buddy.”

  He had left Harley’s room and stepped down the hall to sit on the side of Dooley’s bed.

  “ ‘Night.”

  “We’re praying that your mother gets the job.”

  “Me, too.”

  “How about your job? You like it all right?”

  “It’s neat. But I’m about give out.”

  When Dooley was tired or angry, Father Tim noted, he often lapsed into the vernacular. He grinned. That prep school varnish hadn’t covered the boy’s grain entirely. “Are you going to run a booth at the town festival?”

  “Yep. Avis wants Tommy and me to do it. Avis’ll be the bigwig and take the money.”

  “Sounds good. What will you do?”

  “We’ll sell corn and stuff from the valley. Avis has buckets of blackberries and strawberries comin’ in from Florida, and peaches from Georgia and syrup from Vermont and all. He’s calling it ‘A Taste of America.’ ”

  “Great idea! That Avis . . .”

  “I’m about half killed.”

  “Well . . . see you at breakfast.”

  “What were you doing up at Mama’s today? Taking livermush to Granpaw?”

  “Just dropped by to say hello, that’s all, and check on Poobaw.”

  “He likes to be called Poo now.”

  “I’ll remember that. I’m glad you heard about the job at Hope House and didn’t waste any time.”

  “Me, too. ’Night.”

  “Goodnight.”

  He went downstairs with a heart nearly full to bursting. To borrow a phrase from Dooley’s granpaw, blast if he didn’t love that boy better than snuff.

  In less than a week, the bishop would arrive at Lord’s Chapel on his annual confirmation pilgrimage. This year, however, he also had a dirty job to do. It had fallen on him to break the news of Timothy Kavanagh’s retirement, just eighteen months away.

  Stuart Cullen did not look forward to this bitter task. The parish wouldn’t like the news, not even a little. In fact, he was prepared to duck after divulging this woe. Unless he and Martha got out of there immediately after the service, he was in for a virtual cantata of moaning and groaning, not to mention wailing and gnashing.

  All that, he knew, would be followed by a series of outraged letters and phone
calls to diocesan headquarters, and possibly a small, self-appointed group who would show up on his doorstep, begging him to force Father Tim to remain at Lord’s Chapel until he was on a walker or, worse yet, senile and unable to commandeer the pulpit.

  The rector, in the meantime, was trying to get himself in shape for an occasion that seemed variously akin to a wedding and then a funeral. His feelings rose and plummeted sharply. Bottom line, he couldn’t dismiss the fact that once the words left Stuart’s mouth, the deed was done, it was writ on a tablet, he was out of there.

  His wife had certainly done everything in her power to help, though nothing seemed to calm his nerves. Certainly not the new suit she ordered from New York and which, he was aghast to find, was double-breasted. Would he look like some Mafia don at the parish brunch, as he struggled to give his stunned parish a look of innocent piety?

  And so what if he’d managed to lose a full four pounds six ounces and appear positively trim? The downside was, his stomach stayed so infernally upset, he couldn’t eat.

  For years, he had feared this whole retirement issue. Even Stuart confessed to dreading it, and had once called retirement “a kind of death.”

  For himself, however, he had made peace with his fear last year in the cave. He had been able, finally, to forgive his father, to find healing and go on.

  In some way he would never fully understand, he’d thought that by preaching into infinity, he could make up for having been unable to save his father’s soul. Not that he could have saved it, personally—that was God’s job. But he had somehow failed to soften his father’s heart or give him ears to hear, and had believed he could never make up for that failing, except to preach until he fell.

  Now he knew otherwise, and felt a tremulous excitement about stepping out on faith and finding his Canaan, wherever it may be. Indeed, the fear he now wrestled with was the fear of the unfamiliar. Hadn’t he been wrapped in a cocoon for the last sixteen years, the very roof over his head provided?

  “By faith, Abraham went out,” he often quoted to himself from Hebrews, “not knowing where . . . .”

  He knew one thing—he didn’t want to leave the priesthood. He was willing to supply other pulpits here, there, anywhere, as an interim. Wouldn’t that be an adventure, after all? Cynthia Kavanagh certainly thought so. He suspected she had already packed a bag and stashed it in the closet.

  There were only a couple of things left to be done prior to Sunday. One, attend the closed vestry meeting on Friday night and tell them the news before it hit the pulpit. He dreaded it like a toothache. As far as he knew, they didn’t have a clue what was coming, and they’d be shocked, stunned. He could stay and take it like a man, or duck out the back door while Buddy Benfield gave the closing prayer.

  The list was all downhill from there. Two, book Stuart and Martha’s lodging in Wesley, and three, get a haircut.

  But hadn’t he just had a haircut?

  His hair was growing fast, Cynthia said, because of the olive oil in his diet.

  Emma said he looked shaggy because Joe Ivey had gotten slack toward the end and hadn’t given him his money’s worth.

  Somebody else declared it was the time of year when hair had a growth spurt like everything else, from ragweed to burdock.

  He called Fancy Skinner for an appointment. Today, if possible, and get it over with.

  “Oh, law, I don’t have an openin’ ’til kingdom come! Ever’ since Joe Ivey went to Tennessee, I’ve gone like a house afire! The haircuts he’s let loose around here gives me th’ shivers, you can spot a Joe Ivey cut a mile away, it’s always these little pooches of hair over th’ ears, it’ll take me a year to get rid of that chipmunk look in this town.

  “Let’s see . . . Ruth Wallace at eleven for acrylic nails, J. C. Hogan at noon, that’s a cut, Beth Lawrence for a perm at twelve-thirty, that’ll take two hours, you should see her hair, she calls it fine, I say she’s goin’ bald. Do you know her, she always wears a hat—if you ask me, wearin’ a hat will make you bald, and oh, Lord, look here, at three o’clock I’ve got Helen Nelson, she will gnaw your ear off talkin’, you can’t get a word in edgewise, on and on and on, about every old thing from her husband growin’ a mustache and how it scratches when he kisses, to th’ pig they bought to keep as a house pet. Have you ever heard of keepin’ a pig as a house pet? They say they trained it to a litter box!

  “I’d rather have a dog any day, which reminds me, did you know one of my poodles ran away and Rodney Underwood found her under the bridge and brought her home in the front seat of his patrol car? Mule took a picture, you should ask to see it.

  “How’s your wife, how come she don’t let me highlight her hair sometime? Does she do it herself? It looks like she does it herself. I bet she uses a cap—honey, foil works better, but don’t tell her I said so.

  “Let’s see, four o’clock, oh, Lord, look here. I’ve got Marge Beatty’s three kids, all at the same time, I should get a war medal. Then at five, I’m doin’ a mask—which reminds me, have I told you about my new product line called Fancy’s Face Food? What it is, your face desperately needs nourishment just like your body, did you know that? Most people don’t know that.

  “First, I do th’ Vitamin E Deluxe Re-Charge and Hydration Mask, which is the entrée, followed by a Cucumber Apricot Sesame Soother, which is the dessert, and honey, I’m tellin’ you, you will walk out of here lookin’ ten years younger, some say fifteen, but I try not to stretch the truth.

  “The mask I’m doin’ at five takes an hour, so the answer is, no, I couldn’t take you today if my life depended on it, how about next Wednesday at ten o’clock?”

  Harley removed two twenty-dollar bills from under the guest room mattress and was on his way to the Shoe Barn for new work shoes.

  “Harley, be careful. Rodney Underwood has it in for that truck.”

  “Don’t you worry,” said Harley. “I’d never let them horses loose in town.”

  “I don’t want to have to haul you out of jail.”

  “Nossir, Rev’rend, you won’t.”

  So why did he watch that truck like a hawk, all the way to the end of Wisteria, ’til it turned north on Main?

  “Miami,” said Emma, looking curious.

  He lifted the receiver from the phone on his desk.

  “Hello?”

  “Father, this is Ingrid Swenson with Miami Development Group. I’d like to talk with you about the old Fernbank property, which we understand is owned by your church.”

  “That’s right.”

  “We’re very interested, Father, in viewing this property next week, if that would be convenient.”

  “Well . . .”

  “It is our intention, if everything looks as good as we hope it might, to develop this property as a world-class spa.”

  “A spa.”

  “Yes. We’ve developed similar properties around the country that have gained international clientele.”

  “Aha.”

  “How does next Wednesday look to you? Say, around eleven?”

  “Ah, well, fine, I think. Yes. I’ll have to gather up some of the vestry, and our realtor.”

  “Good. There’ll be two of us.”

  “We’re at the corner of Old Church Lane and Main Street, just as you come into town. Very easy to find.”

  “You may like to know that Mr. Mack Stroupe has highly recommended this property to us.”

  “I see.”

  “We’re very grateful for such valued assistance in locating a property as special as Fernbank promises to be. We’re told it has seventeen rooms.”

  “Twenty-one.”

  “Marvelous!”

  “Yes. Well. We’ll be looking for you, Miss Swenson.”

  “Ingrid, Father. And thank you for your time.”

  He put the phone on the hook.

  “You don’t look so good,” said Emma.

  Strange. He didn’t feel so good, either. That phone call should have him dancing in the streets, shouting from
the rooftops.

  If Fernbank was such an albatross, why did he suddenly know he didn’t want to lose it?

  His heart hadn’t pounded like this, even on the day of his ordination. It had pounded, yes, when he preached his first sermon to his first parish in his first small church. But he couldn’t remember anything like this. He was glad he was sitting down, and glad he’d been able to persuade Cynthia to trim his hair.

  He looked for his lifeline, which was the third pew, gospel side, where his wife sat scratching her nose. That was her signal for “Smile!”

  Sitting next to her was Pauline Barlowe, then Poobaw, who was gazing at the ceiling, and Dooley. Russell Jacks anchored the pew at the opposite end.

  “I have some good news and some bad news,” Stuart told the congregation at the eight o’clock.

  Did he have to put it that way? The rector shifted in the carved chair. This was the dress rehearsal for the more formal, well-attended eleven o’clock; whatever happened now would also happen then—except worse. Much worse.

  “The good news,” said Stuart, smiling the smile that had undoubtedly helped him rise in his calling, “is that Timothy Kavanagh, your beloved priest, generous counselor, and trusted friend . . .”

  Get it over with, he thought, gripping the chair arms and closing his eyes. This was like flying with Omer Cunningham in his ragwing taildragger . . . .

  “ . . . is getting ready to . . . go out to Canaan!”

  How odd that Stuart would have had the same thought, found the same analogy! He noted that most of his congregation didn’t seem to know anything about Canaan. Where was Canaan? He saw Esther Bolick glance at Gene and shrug her shoulders. Maybe it was overseas. Or maybe somewhere in Wilkes County, where they had that cheese factory.

  “We’re told in Genesis that Abram took Sarai his wife, and Lot his brother’s son, and all their substance that they had gathered, and they went forth into the land of Canaan . . . a strange land, an alien land.