by Jan Karon
Her people wanted to talk with the town engineer again, and expressed regret that the heating system appeared defunct and the plumbing would have to be completely modernized.
Before leaving, she mentioned the seriousness of the water damage due to years of leakage through a patched roof, and frowned when the subject of the well and sewer emerged again.
He tried to be elated, but was merely thankful that the first phase was over and done with. He made a note to get up to Fernbank with Cynthia and go through the attic, pronto.
Pauline Barlowe had the job and was to report to work on Monday morning at six-thirty.
He called Scott Murphy at once.
“Thank you!” he said. “I can’t thank you enough.”
“What for, sir?”
“Why, for . . . saying anything that might have helped Pauline Barlowe get the job in your dining room.”
“I didn’t say a word.”
“You didn’t?”
“Not a peep out of me. That was our personnel director’s idea. She said she knew she might be taking a chance, but she wanted to do it and came to talk to me about it. Lida Willis is tough, she’ll watch Mrs. Barlowe like a hawk, but Lida has a soft center; she wants this to work.”
“We’re thrilled around our place. This means a lot to Dooley as well as his mother. When will you come for dinner? We’ve got a regular corn shucking going at the rectory; it’s just the thing to liven up a bachelor.”
“Name the time!” said the chaplain.
“I’ll call you,” said the rector.
“We’re giving a party,” announced his wife, flushed with excitement.
“We are?”
“Friday night. In the basement, a housewarming! I’m baking cookies and making a pudding cake for Harley, and Lace is doing the lemonade. I’ve invited Olivia, Hoppy has a meeting, and oh, I’ve asked Dooley, but he’s not keen on the idea. Who else?”
“Ummm. Scott Murphy!” he wondered
“Perfect. Who else?”
“Tommy. But wait, I think Dooley mentioned that Tommy has a family thing on Friday, and Dooley’s going over there later to watch a video.”
“OK, that’s seven. Terrific! They finished painting today, the place looks wonderful, and it’s all aired out and Harley is excited as anything. He raked tons of leaves from under the back hedge, and in the next couple of days he’s replacing my alternator.”
“Wonderful!” he said
“Harley’s so happy, he can’t stop grinning, and Lace—she doesn’t say so, but she’s thrilled by all this.”
“It was her idea, and she was bold enough to step forward and ask for it.”
“Let us come boldly to the throne of grace . . .” said his wife, quoting one of their favorite verses from Hebrews.
“ . . . that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need!” he replied.
“Amen!” they cried in unison, laughing.
He frankly relished it when they burst into a chorus of Scripture together. As a boy in his mother’s Baptist church, he’d been thumpingly drilled to memorize Scripture verses, which sprang more quickly to memory than something he’d studied yesterday.
“One of the finest exhortations ever delivered, in my opinion,” he said. “Well, now, what may I do to help out with the party?”
“Help me move that old sofa from the garage to Harley’s parlor, I don’t think he’s strong enough, then we’ll shift that maple wardrobe from the furnace room to his bedroom.”
Was there no balm in Gilead?
“Oh, and another thing,” she said, smiling innocently. “We need to haul that huge box of books from his parlor to the furnace room.”
For his wife’s birthday in July, she was getting a back brace whether she wanted it or not. In fact, he’d get one for himself while he was at it.
On his way to Hope House, he stopped at the Sweet Stuff Bakery to buy a treat for Louella.
Winnie Ivey looked at him and burst into tears.
“Winnie! What is it?”
“I heard you’re leaving,” she said, wiping her eyes with her apron.
“Yes, but not for a year and a half.”
“We’ll miss you somethin’ awful.”
“But you’ll probably be gone before I will.”
“Oh,” she said. “I keep forgetting I’m going.”
“Besides, we’ll still be living in Mitford, in the house next door to the rectory.”
“Good!” she said, sniffing. “That’s better. Here, have a napoleon, I know you’re not supposed to, but . . .”
What the heck, he thought, taking it. At least one person was sorry to hear he was retiring . . . .
When he left the bakery, he looked up the street and saw Uncle Billy sitting in a dinette chair on the grounds of the town museum, watching traffic flow around the monument.
He walked up and joined him. “Uncle Billy! I’m half starved for a joke.”
“I cain’t git a new joke t’ save m’ life,” said the old man, looking forlorn.
“If you can’t get a joke, nobody can.”
“My jokes ain’t workin’ too good. I cain’t git Rose t’ laugh f’r nothin’.”
“Aha.”
“See, I test m’ jokes on Rose, that’s how I know what t’ tell an’ what t’ leave off.”
“Try one on me and see what happens.”
“Well, sir, two ladies was talkin’ about what they’d wear to th’ Legion Hall dance, don’t you know, an’ one said, ‘We’re supposed t’ wear somethin’ t’ match our husband’s hair, so I’ll wear black, what’ll you wear?’ an’ th’ other one sorta turned pale, don’t you know, an’ said, ‘I don’t reckon I’ll go.’ ”
“Aha,” said Father Tim.
“See, th’ feller married t’ that woman that won’t goin’ was bald, don’t you know.”
The rector grinned.
“It don’t work too good, does it?” said Uncle Billy. “How about this ’un? Little Sonny’s mama hollered at ’im, said, ‘Sonny, did you fall down with y’r new pants on?’ An’ Sonny said, ‘Yes ’um, they won’t time t’ take ’em off.’ ”
The rector laughed heartily. “Not bad. Not half bad!”
“See, if I can hear a laugh or two, it gits me goin’.”
“About like preaching, if you ask me.”
“Speakin’ of preachin’, me ’n Rose ain’t a bit glad about th’ news on Sunday. We come home feelin’ s’ low, we could’ve crawled under a snake’s belly with a hat on. It don’t seem right f’r you t’ go off like that.”
“I’ll be living right down the street, same as always. We’ll be settling in the yellow house next door to the rectory.”
“Me ’n Rose’ll try t’ git over it, but . . .” Uncle Billy sighed.
Father Tim couldn’t remember seeing Bill Watson without a big smile on his face and his gold tooth gleaming.
“See, what Rose ’n me don’t like is, when you leave they’ll send us somebody we don’t know.”
“That’s the way it usually works.”
“I figure by th’ time we git t’ know th’ new man, we’ll be dead as doornails, so it ain’t no use to take th’ trouble, we’ll just go back to th’ Presbyterians.”
“Now, Uncle Billy . . .”
“I hate t’ say it, Preacher, but me ’n Rose think you could’ve waited on this.”
The rector made his way down Main Street, staring at the sidewalk. It was the only time in his life he hadn’t come away from Bill Watson feeling better than when he went.
At the corner of Main and Wisteria, he saw Gene Bolick coming toward him, and threw up his hand in greeting. It appeared that Gene saw him, but looked away and jaywalked to the other side.
June.
Something about June . . .
What else was happening this month? His birthday!
Dadgum it, he’d just had one.
In fact, the memory of his last birthday rushed back to him with dark force. His wife had b
rought him coffee in bed and wished him happy birthday, then the phone had rung and he’d raced to the hospital and discovered that a woman who would be irrevocably fixed in his life had been horribly burned by a madman.
He sat back in his swivel chair and closed his eyes. Wrenching, that whole saga of pain and desperation. And days afterward, only doors down the hall from Pauline, Miss Sadie had died.
No wonder he’d come close to forgetting his birthday. When was it, anyway? He looked at the calendar. Blast. Straight ahead.
How old would he be this year? He could never remember.
He called Cynthia at home. “How old will I be this year?”
“Let’s see. You’re six years older than I am, and I’m fifty-seven. No, fifty-six. So you’re sixty-two.”
“I can’t be sixty-two. I’ve already been sixty-two, I remember it distinctly.”
“Darn!” she said. “Then you’re sixty-three?”
“Well, surely I’m not sixty-five, because I’m retiring at sixty-five.”
“So you must be sixty-three. Which makes me fifty-seven. Rats.”
He realized as he hung up that they could have used their birth years to calculate the answer. What a pair they made! He hoped nobody had tapped his phone line and overheard such nonsense.
“I’ve been thinking,” said Emma.
Please, no.
“I might as well retire when you retire.”
“Well!” He was relieved. “Sounds good!”
She looked at him over her half-glasses. “But I wasn’t expecting you to give up so soon.”
“Give up?”
“I guess you can’t take it anymore, the pressure and all—two services every Sunday, the sick and dying . . .”
“It has nothing to do with pressure, and certainly not with the sick and dying. As you know, I’ve committed to supply pulpits from here to the Azores.”
“Yes, well, that’s vacation stuff, anybody can go supply somewhere and not get involved.”
He felt suddenly furious. Thank God he couldn’t speak; he couldn’t open his mouth. His face burning, he got up from his desk and left the office, closing the door behind him with some force.
There! he thought. Right there is reason enough to retire.
He deserved a medal for putting up with Emma Newland all these years—which, he realized only this morning, would be a full sixteen in September.
Sixteen years in an office the size of a cigar box, with a woman who made Attila the Hun look sensitive and nurturing?
“A medal!” he exclaimed aloud, going at full trot past the Irish Shop.
“There he goes again, talking to himself,” said Hessie Mayhew, who had dropped in to share a bag of caramels with Minnie Lomax.
“What do you think it is?” asked Minnie, who hoped the caramels wouldn’t stick to her upper plate.
“Age. Diabetes. And guilt,” she announced darkly.
“Guilt?”
“Yes, for leaving those poor people in the lurch who’ve looked after him all these years.”
“My goodness,” said Minnie, “we don’t look after our preacher at all. He looks after himself.”
“Yes, but you’ve got a Baptist preacher. They’ve been raised to look after themselves.”
“I declare,” said Minnie, who had never considered this possibility.
At The Local, he saw Sophia Burton, who wasn’t even a member of Lord’s Chapel, and was flabbergasted when she burst into tears by the butcher case.
“I’m sorry,” she told him.
“Don’t be sorry!” he implored, not knowing what else to say.
“It’s just that . . . it’s just that you’ve been so good to us, and . . . and we’re used to you!”
Didn’t he despise change? Didn’t he hate it? And here he was, inflicting it on everyone else. If his wife wasn’t so excited about the whole adventure of being free, he’d call Stuart up, and . . . no, he wouldn’t do any such thing. Actually, he was excited, himself.
“I’m . . . pretty excited, myself,” he muttered weakly.
“That’s easy for you to say!” Mona Gragg, a former Lord’s Chapel Sunday School teacher, strode up to him, clutching a sack of corn and tomatoes. For some reason, Mona looked ten feet tall; she was also mad as a wet hen.
“When I heard that mess on Sunday, I just boiled. Here we’ve all gotten along just fine all these years, plus . . . you’re still plenty young, and no reason in the world to retire. Did Grandma Moses quit when she was sixty-five? Certainly not! She hadn’t even gotten started! And Abraham, which Bishop Cullen was so quick to yammer about on Sunday . . . he moved to a whole new country when he was way up in his seventies and didn’t even have that kid ’til he was a hundred!”
Mona stomped away, furious.
“One of my ah, parishioners,” he said, flushing.
Sophia wiped her eyes and smiled. “Father, now I can see why you’re retiring.”
He checked out, liking the sight of Dooley bagging groceries at one of Avis’s two counters.
“How’s it going, buddy?”
Dooley grinned. “Great! Except for people raisin’ heck about you retiring.”
“Ah, well.” For some reason he didn’t completely understand, Dooley seemed to approve of his plans. It wasn’t the first time Dooley had stood up for him. A year or so ago, when Buster Austin had called the rector a nerd, Dooley had proceeded to beat the tar out of him.
As he left The Local, he saw Jenny parking her blue bicycle at the lamppost.
He left one end of Main Street feeling like a million bucks, and reached the other end feeling like two cents with a hole in it.
Up and down the street, he was besieged by people who had heard the news and didn’t like it, or, on the rarest of occasions, proffered him their sincere best wishes.
Rodney Underwood was shocked and, it seemed, personally insulted.
Lew Boyd shook his head and wouldn’t make eye contact. Why in heaven’s name his car mechanic was piqued was beyond him.
The owner of the Collar Button rushed into the street and extended his deepest regrets. “What a loss!” he muttered darkly, sounding like a delegate from a funeral parlor.
A vestry member called him at the rectory. “This,” she announced, “is the worst news since they found somethin’ in Lloyd’s limp nodes.”
He phoned Stuart Cullen.
“Gene Bolick crossed to the other side of the street!” he said, feeling like a ten-year-old whining to a parent.
“Denial! If he doesn’t have to talk to you, he doesn’t have to acknowledge the truth. He’ll get over it. It takes time.”
“And some people are mad because I’m retiring so early! I feel like a heel, like I’m running out on them.”
“Let them squawk!” Stuart exclaimed. “When people don’t express their anger, it turns into depression. So, better this than a parish riddled by resentment and low morale.”
“Then,” Father Tim said miserably, “there are those who feel it’s merely a blasted inconvenience.”
“They’re right about that,” said Stuart. “By the way, your Search Committee is already up and running, but it’ll be a long process. So hang in there.”
His bishop hadn’t been any help at all.
The hasty trim he’d gotten from his reluctant wife had carried him through Stuart’s visit, but wouldn’t carry him a step further. And blast if Fancy Skinner wasn’t booked. That was the way with those unisex shops, he thought, darkly. He made an appointment for a month away, and deceived himself that he could talk Cynthia into an interim deal.
“No, a thousand times no. I can’t cut hair! Go to Wesley, where they have the kind of barbershop you like, where men talk trout fishing and politics!”
“I know zero about trout fishing, and even less about politics,” he said. “Where did you get that idea?”
“Oh, phoo, darling!” she said, waving him away.
“I’ll trim you up!” said Harley, who was getting ready for the
party in his basement.
“Oh, I don’t—”
“Law, Rev’rend, I’ve cut hair from here t’ west Texas, they ain’t nothin’ to it, it jis’ takes a sharp pair of scissors. Now, th’ right scissors is ever’thing. I’ve cut with a razor, I’ve cut with a pocketknife, but I like scissors th’ best. I ain’t got a pair, but I got a good rock I use t’ sharpen m’ knife, so you git me some scissors, an’ we’re set. What’re you lookin’ for—mostly t’ git it off y’r collar, I reckon.”
“I don’t know about this, Harley.”
Harley looked at him soberly. “You ought t’ let me do it f’r you, Rev’rend. I don’t want th’ Lord sayin’ ‘What did you do f’r th’ Rev’rend?’ an’ me have t’ tell ’im, ‘Nothin’, he wouldn’t let me do nothin’!’ I know what th’ Lord’ll say, he’ll say, ‘Harley, that ain’t no excuse, you jis’ git on down them steps over yonder, I know hit’s burnin’ hot, but . . .’ ”
“Oh, for Pete’s sake,” said the rector. “I’ll get the scissors.”
There went Harley’s grin, meeting behind his head again.
“Ummm,” said Cynthia, looking at him as he dressed for Harley’s housewarming party.
“Ummm, what?”
“Your hair . . .”
“What about it?”
“It’s sort of scalloped in the back.”
“Scalloped?”
“Well, yes, up, down, up, down. What did Harley use—pinking shears?”
“Scissors!”
“Not those scissors I cut up chickens with, I fondly hope.”
“Absolutely not. He used the scissors from my chest of drawers, which I keep well sharpened.”
“You would,” she said, looking at him as if he were a beetle on a pin. “Why don’t you sit on the commode seat and let me sort of . . . shape it up? You know I hate doing this, but you can’t go around with that scalloped look.”
Certainly not. He sat on the commode seat, draped with a bath towel, glad he’d soon have the whole dismal business behind him.
