Out to Canaan

by Jan Karon

  Meadowgate.

  The very name soothed him, and was, in fact, an apt description.

  A broad, green meadow ran for nearly a mile along the front of the Owens’ property, sliced in half by a country lane that led through an open farm gate.

  He had found solace in this place time and time again over the years, first as a new priest with a brand-new parish.

  It had taken months, perhaps even a couple of years, to come to terms with the fact that he’d followed in the footsteps of a canonized saint. Father Townsend had been tall, dynamic, handsome, and at Lord’s Chapel for nearly twenty years. Though the parish had called Timothy Kavanagh after a tough and discriminating search, it had taken all his resources to wean them, at last, from the charismatic Henry Townsend.

  He thought back on the pain he’d felt through much of that time, glad, indeed, that he could now laugh about it.

  “Dearest, you’re laughing!”

  “Darn right!” he said, feeling the happiness of driving along a beckoning lane with a comfortable wife, a happy boy, and a dog the size of a haymow.

  “Let me drive the rest of the way.” Dooley was suddenly breathing on the back of his neck.

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Tommy’s dad lets him drive. Jack, this guy at school, his dad lets him drive his four-wheel all the time—”

  “You can drive when you’re sixteen—and believe me, you won’t have long to wait.”

  “You could just let me drive to the house. I know how.”

  “Since when?”

  “Since I went home with Jack and his dad let me drive.”

  “Aha.”

  The house came into view and, failing any more intelligent response, he stepped on the accelerator. He’d completely forgotten about the torrid romance between boys and cars.

  Marge Owen’s French grandmother’s chicken pie recipe was a study in contrasts. Its forthright and honest filling, which combined large chunks of white and dark meat, coarsely cut carrots, green peas, celery, and whole shallots, was laced with a dollop of sauterne and crowned by a pastry so light and flaky, it might have won the favor of Louis XIV.

  “Bravo!” exclaimed the rector.

  “Man!” said Dooley.

  “I unashamedly beg you for this recipe,” crowed Cynthia.

  The new assistant, Blake Eddistoe, scraped his plate with his spoon. “Wonderful, ma’am!”

  Hardly anyone ever cooked for diabetes, thought the rector as they trooped out to eat cake in the shade of the pin oak. Apparently it was a disease so innocuous, so bland, and so boring to anyone other than its unwilling victims that it was blithely dismissed by the cooks of the land.

  He eyed the chocolate mocha cake that Marge was slicing at the table under the tree. Wasn’t that her well-known raspberry filling? From here, it certainly looked like it . . . .

  Ah, well. The whole awful business of saying no, which he roundly despised, was left to him. Maybe just a thin slice, however . . . something you could see through . . . .

  “He can’t have any,” said Cynthia.

  “I can’t believe I forgot!” said Marge, looking stricken. “I’m sorry, Tim! Of course, we have homemade gingersnaps, I know you like those. Rebecca Jane, please fetch the gingersnaps for Father Tim, they’re on the bottom shelf.”

  The four-year-old toddled off, happy with her mission.

  Chocolate mocha cake with raspberry filling versus gingersnaps from the bottom shelf . . . .

  Clearly, the much-discussed and controversial affliction from which St. Paul had prayed thrice to be delivered had been diabetes.

  They were sitting on the porch, working up the energy to pile into the Buick and head back to Mitford.

  When in Mitford, it seemed only the small, unhurried village that one loved it for being, with a populace of barely more than a thousand. From out here, however, Mitford seemed a regular metropolis, with traffic, political billboards, and barbecue events staged on slabs of asphalt.

  Dooley had been to his room and silently carried out a box of his things.

  Thump, thump, thump, thump . . . One of the farm dogs scratched himself vigorously, then licked the irritated flesh.

  “Oh, dear,” said Marge. “Here we go! It’s skin allergy season for Bonemeal.”

  Hal took his pipe from his pocket. “Every year, he has a hot spot on his right rear flank, where he chews and scratches the skin.”

  “I can give him a shot of Depo-Medrol,” said Blake. He turned to the Kavanaghs. “A long-acting steroid. Goes into the system and lasts up to three months. He’ll stop scratching in a couple of hours.”

  Dooley looked up from the box he was holding between his legs. “I wouldn’t do that.”

  There was a brief silence.

  Blake looked awkward. “What would you do?”

  “Use a short-acting cortisone, which is easier on his system, and follow it up with tablets and a change of diet . . . medicate his shampoos.”

  “This is a country practice,” said Hal Owen, tamping the tobacco in his pipe. “Not much time to fool with new diets and fancy shampoos.”

  Dooley stood up with his box. “Right,” he said.

  They were silent on the way home to Mitford. Maybe it was because of the late afternoon meal and the fresh country air.

  “Is Dooley home from school yet?”

  It was Jenny, the girl who lived down the street in the house with the red roof. She had shown up at their door, off and on, for the last couple of years, and he knew for a fact that Dooley had once spent hard-earned money on a coffee-table horse book for this girl.

  “He is! Won’t you come in?”

  She came in, looking only slightly less shy than last year.

  Barnabas skidded up, wagging his tail and barking. But there was no need to shout a Scripture verse. Jenny looked his dog in the eye and began scratching behind his ears.

  He dashed upstairs to Dooley’s bedroom, feeling some odd excitement in the air. “There’s someone here to see you.”

  “Who?”

  “Jenny.”

  Aha. He couldn’t help but see Dooley’s face turning red.

  “You missed it,” she said archly.

  Why did he ever part with fifty cents for a newspaper, when all the news that was fit to print poured unhindered from his secretary?

  “Say on.”

  “You know th’ big wooded area behind the Shoe Barn?”

  “I do.”

  “When Mack is elected, that whole sorry-looking scrub pine deal will be a fancy new development called Mitford Woods.”

  “Mitford Woods?”

  “Plus, he said he personally knows of big-money interest in Miss Sadie’s old house, which will be revealed shortly.”

  “Aha.” If there was nothing to worry about as far as Mack Stroupe’s mayoral win was concerned, why did he feel as if someone had punched him in the solar plexus? “So how was the barbecue?”

  “Great. None of that vinegary stuff you sometimes get with politics. Plus, he had a whole raft of country musicians that got half th’ crowd to clogging.”

  He looked at her, but she avoided his eyes. “Hmmm. So what do you think about Mack?”

  “Oh . . . time will tell,” she said, clicking on her menu. Was this the woman who, barely forty-eight hours ago, had labeled the candidate low-down scum?

  “Esther Cunningham has been a great mayor for this town,” she said, “but . . .”

  He hated to hear it.

  “ . . . but there’s always room for improvement.”

  At the light on Main Street, Rodney Underwood yelled from his patrol car.

  “What do you think this is? Talladega?”

  Could he help it if Harley’s truck blew past Rodney like he was standing still? Besides, what business did Rodney have being on Main Street every time he tried to do somebody a favor and take care of their vehicle?

  Rodney winked at him. “Don’t let it happen ag’in, buddyroe.”

  He fel
t the heat above his collar as the truck lunged away from the light and roared south on Main Street.

  “What have you got under the hood of that ’72 Ford? You nearly got me nailed twice in a row.”

  The rector thought Harley’s toothless grin might meet at the back of his head.

  “Lord, I was hopin’ you’d ask. Here’s what I done. I got rid of th’ Ford engine and transmission, took out th’ drive train an’ rear end, an’ dropped a ’64 Jagwar XKE engine and transmission in there. Then I bolted in a Jagwar rear end and hooked it up to a new drive shaft. Three hundred and twenty horses! Course, that’s all a man needs on a public highway.”

  He didn’t understand a word Harley said, but he knew one thing: He was leaving that truck alone.

  “I messed with flathead V-8s most of my life, ’til one day I looked under th’ hood of a Jag and seen a steel crank case, twin alumium valve covers, an’ a alumium head. Now, you take Junior, he didn’t like nothin’ foreign, but t’ me, hit was th’ prettiest thing I ever seen. Well, Rev’rend, when I left th’ business, I fell away from flatheads an’ ain’t never looked back.”

  “Aha.”

  “You got t’ handle it gentle or it’ll jump over th’ moon.”

  Father Tim laid the keys on the dresser. “Tell me about it. I sucked the awnings off every storefront on Main Street.”

  Harley hooted and cackled ’til the tears streamed from his eyes. If laughter was the medicine the Bible claimed it to be, Harley Welch was a well man.

  The patient wiped his eyes on his pajama sleeve. “I thank you ag’in f’r all you an’ th’ missus do f’r me. Ain’t nobody ever treated me s’ good, an’ I’m goin’ t’ make it up to you. Doc Harper lets me up tomorrow, said take it easy a day or two an’ first thing you know, I’ll be ol’ Harley ag’in. I’ll git me some new dogs an’ go back t’ my little setup on th’ Creek. But not before I do somethin’ t’ repay y’uns.”

  “Don’t think about it, my friend. Do you have a job to go back to?”

  “I had one, but it give out th’ same time as I did. I ain’t worked in a good while, what with my stomach s’ bad off. But I’ll git back, I ain’t lazy—I like a good job of work.”

  “We’ll see how it goes,” said Father Tim. “Has our boy been around this afternoon’

  “Heard ’im come in, heard ’im go out is all.”

  “This was his first day at the store. Where’s Lace?”

  “After her school lets out tomorrow, she’ll be here t’ he’p me git up, take me out in th’ fresh air an’ all.”

  “Good! I want you to take it easy.”

  “Yessir, Rev’rend, I will. I want t’ be feelin’ strong when I go t’ work on y’r car engine.”

  The rector laughed. “You leave my car engine alone,” he said, meaning it.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Out to Canaan

  He peered into the vegetable crisper and took out three zucchini, a yellow onion, two red potatoes, and a few stalks of celery.

  Somewhere in here was a beef bone he’d picked up at The Local. Aha. Wrapped in foil, behind the low-fat mayonnaise which he wouldn’t touch with a ten-foot pole . . .

  He put it all in a brown paper bag with a can of beef broth and a pound of coffee, and set out to Scott Murphy’s house next to the bridge over Little Mitford Creek.

  They walked along the path by the creek, with Luke and Lizzie straining ahead on their leashes.

  It was hot for a June afternoon in the mountains, and he and Scott Murphy were going at a trot. The rector moved the grocery bag to his other arm and took out his handkerchief and wiped his face.

  “Father, about your concern for having a Creek ministry . . .”

  “Yes?”

  “It occurs to me that you have one.”

  The rector looked at him, puzzled.

  “You brought Dooley’s kid brother out of there, who’s living in the first real home he ever had. You’re also providing a home for their mother . . . .”

  “But—”

  “And look at Lace Turner—last year she was living in the dirt under her house, trying to keep away from an abusive father. Now she’s living with one of the most privileged families in town and making straight A’s in school.”

  “Aha.”

  “And Harley Welch, your race car mechanic . . . you and Mrs. Kavanagh have taken him in, nursed him, maybe even saved his life.”

  “Yes, well . . .”

  Luke stopped to lift his leg at a tree.

  “I think we’re always looking for the big things,” Scott mused. “The big calling, the big challenge. Seems like Bonhoeffer had something to say about that.”

  “He did,” said the rector. “Something like, ‘We think we dare not be satisfied with the small measure of spiritual knowledge, experience and love that has been given to us, and that we must constantly be looking forward eagerly for the highest good.’ ”

  “Yes, and I like that he talks about being grateful even where there’s no great experience and no discoverable riches, but much weakness, small faith, and difficulty.”

  The two men pondered this as they walked. It was good to talk shop on a spring day, on a wooded path beside a bold creek.

  “Before I came here,” said Scott, “I told you I’d go in there and see what can be done. I’m sticking to it.”

  “Good fellow.”

  “I’ve been meaning to tell you we got the garden in at Hope House, fourteen of the residents are able to plant and hoe a little, we have peas coming up.”

  “You’re everything Miss Sadie wanted,” said the rector. “You’re making Hope House live up to its name.”

  “Thank you, sir. Mitford is definitely home to me. Maybe I can buy Miss Ivey’s little cottage when she sells the bakery and moves to Tennessee—I don’t know, I’m praying about it.”

  They rounded the bend in the footpath and saw Homeless Hobbes sitting on the front step of his small, tidy house, a colorful wash hanging on the line.

  “Lord have mercy, if it ain’t town people!” Homeless got up and limped toward them on his crutch, laughing his rasping laugh. His mute, brown-and-white spotted dog crouched by the step and snapped its jaws, but no sound escaped. Luke and Lizzie barked furiously.

  “Homeless!” The rector was thrilled to see his old friend, the man who’d given up a fast-lane advertising career, returned to his boyhood home, and gone back to “talkin’ like he was raised.”

  “I’m about half wore out lookin’ for company! I told Barkless a while ago, I said somebody’s comin’, my nose is itchin’, so I put somethin’ extra in th’ soup pot!”

  The rector embraced Homeless and handed over the bag. “For the pot. And this is Scott Murphy, the chaplain at Hope House. He works sixteen hours a day and still has time to meddle in Creek business.”

  Homeless looked at the tall, lanky chaplain approvingly. “We need meddlin’ in here,” he said.

  “I’d like to see th’ dozers push th’ whole caboodle off th’ bank, and good riddance!”

  Homeless had brought out two aluminum folding chairs that had seen better days, and set them up for his guests. He sat on the step, and the dogs lay panting in a patch of grass.

  “They say th’ whole thing’ll be a shoppin’ center in a couple of years. Where all them trailers is parked—Wal-Mart! Where all them burned-out houses is settin’—Lowe’s Hardware! Where you could once go in and get shot in th’ head, you’ll be able t’ go in an’ get you a flush toilet.

  “Still an’ all, two years is a good bit of time, and you could do a good bit of work on the Creek, if you handle it right. Now, you take ol’ Absalom Greer, he come in here and preached up a storm and some folks got saved and a good many lives were turned around, but Absalom was native and he was old, and they let him be.

  “They won’t take kindly to a young feller like yourself if you don’t give ’em plenty of time to warm up.

  “What I think you ought to do is come to my place on Wednesday night whe
n I make soup for whoever shows up, and just set an’ talk an’ be patient, an’ let th’ good Lord do a work.”

  “I’ll be here,” said Scott.

  Homeless grinned. “I wouldn’t bring them dogs if I was you. Jack Russells are a mite fancy for my crowd.”

  “We lost our dining room manager last week,” Scott said on the walk back home. “A family problem. Everybody’s been pitching in, it’s kind of a scramble.”

  “I like scrambles,” said the rector, who was currently living in one.

  Sometimes, a thought lodged somewhere in the back of his mind and he couldn’t get it out, like a sesame seed stuck between his teeth.

  Walking down Old Church Lane the following day, his jacket slung over his shoulder, he tried to focus on the place—was it in his brain?—that had something to tell him, some hidden thing to reveal.

  Blast! He hated this. It was like Emma’s aggravating game, Three Guesses. He couldn’t even begin to guess . . . .

  A job. Why did he think it had to do with a job?

  We lost our dining room manager last week, Scott had said.

  Yes!

  Pauline!

  Hanging on to his jacket, he started running. He could go to the office and call from there, but no, he’d run across Baxter Park, through his own backyard, and then up the hill and over to Betty Craig’s house. Why waste a minute? Jobs were scarce.

  He was panting and streaked with sweat when he hit the sidewalk in front of Betty’s trim cottage. He stopped for a moment to wipe his face with a handkerchief when Dooley blew by him on his red bicycle.

  “Hey!” shouted Dooley.

  “Hey, yourself!” he shouted back.

  He saw the boy throw the bicycle down by Betty’s front steps, fling his helmet in the grass, and race to the door.

  “Mama! Mama!” he called through the screen door.