Out to Canaan

by Jan Karon

  “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.

  Cynthia had done the deed and dashed downstairs. He was putting on a clean shirt when Dooley wandered into the bedroom.

  He looked at the boy, fresh from a day’s work, and now fresh from the shower. Clean T-shirt, clean jeans; hair combed, shoe laces tied. Upstanding! Getting to look more like a millionaire every day!

  The rector might have been a statue in a park, the way Dooley walked around him, staring.

  “Man . . .” said Dooley.

  “What are you looking at?”

  “Your hair.”

  “What about my hair?” He was beginning to feel positively churlish at any mention of his hair.

  “It’s cut in a kind of V in the back. I’ve never seen that before.”

  “A V? What do you mean, a V?”

  He stomped to his dresser and, with his wife’s hand mirror, looked at the back of his neck in the trifold mirror. It wasn’t a V, exactly, it was more like a U. What was the matter with people around here, anyway?

  “I’ll trim it up for you,” said Dooley, “if you’ll let me drive your car Saturday.”

  “Dooley . . .”

  “You can drive as far as Farmer, and I can take over at the cutoff.”

  “This is no time—”

  “Anyway, you better let me fix your hair. I know how to do it.”

  “You’re kidding me.”

  “I’m not kidding you. I’ve cut Tommy’s hair bunches of times.”

  “A likely story.”

  “I swear on a stack of Bibles.”

  “I wouldn’t do that. The Bibles you so casually stacked up ask us not to swear.”

  “That V is hanging down over your collar.”

  He would drive to Memphis next week, it was only nine or ten hours one way, and see Joe. While he was there, maybe Joe would give him a tour of Graceland . . . .

  He sighed deeply. For the third time that day, he got his scissors out of his dresser drawer and handed the
m over. This time, however, he had the good sense to pray about it.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Housewarming

  The showy pudding cake had been reduced to crumbs, the fruit bowl ransacked, the cookies demolished. All that remained in the glass pitcher were two circles of lemon and a few seeds.

  In the freshly painted sitting room, Harley opened the last of his housewarming presents.

  “Oh, law!” he said, holding up the framed picture of Jesus carrying a sheep. “Hit’s th’ Lord an’ Master, ain’t it?”

  “Bingo!” said Cynthia, who had given him the print to go over his bed.

  “That sheep was lost,” Dooley announced. “Tell about it,” he said, looking at the rector.

  “Why don’t you tell about it?”

  Dooley scratched his head. “Well, see, it’s like . . . if you had a hundred sheep and one of ’em ran off and got lost, you’d go after it, you’d go to the mountains and all, looking for it. And like, when you found it, it would make you feel really good, I mean better than you even feel about the ninety-nine that didn’t run off.”

  “By jing!” said Harley.

  Lace sat forward in the chair. “What th’ story’s about,” she said, “is when somebody’s lost and Jesus finds ’em an’ they give their heart to ’im, it makes ’im feel happier than He feels about all them other’ns that wadn’t lost.”

  Dooley looked at her coldly.

  “I reckon that’s what th’ Lord done with me,” said Harley. “Searched through th’ mountains lookin’ t’ find me, an’ brought me here.” He grinned. “And I ain’t lost n’more.”

  The rector was captivated by an odd confidence—a new maturity, perhaps—in Lace Turner.

  “Well, now, I want t’ thank ever’ one of you’ns,” said Harley, tears coming to his eyes. “I ain’t never had a Bible with m’ name on it, I ain’t never had a ’lectric fan that moves to th’ left an’ right . . .”

  He took a paper napkin from his pocket and blew his nose.

  “ . . . I ain’t never had a picture t’ hang on m’ wall ’cept of m’ mama as a little young ’un . . . an’ Lord knows, I ain’t never had a . . .” Harley patted Scott’s gift, which lay beside him on the sofa. “What d’you call this what you give me?”

  “That’s an afghan,” said the chaplain, grinning. “One of our residents crochets those. They’re a big hit on the hill.”

  “What exactly is it f’r, did you say?”

  “It’s to keep you warm in winter when you lie on the sofa and watch TV.”

  “I’ll use it, yes, sir, I will, and I thank you, but I ain’t goin’ t’ be layin’ on no sofa watchin’ TV, I’m goin’ t’ be workin’.”

  “Harley’s going to change my alternator!” announced Cynthia.

  “I’d sure appreciate it if you’d take a look at my brakes,” said Scott. “They’re sticking.”

  “Might be y’r calibers.”

  “I’ll pay the going rate.”

  “Th’ only rate goin’ for you ’uns is no rate,” Harley declared.

  Scott Murphy glanced at his watch and stood. “I’ve got to look in on my folks before they get to sleep. Thanks for inviting me, sir . . . Mrs. Kavanagh—”

  “Cynthia!” said Mrs. Kavanagh.

  “Cynthia! I had a really good time. Harley, come up and see me at Hope House. And let me know when you can look at my brakes.”

  Scott left by the basement door, as the rest of the party said their goodbyes to Harley, then trooped up the stairs to the rectory kitchen and along the hall to the front stoop.

  “Soon as I get my stuff, I’m going to Tommy’s house!” Dooley raced up the steps to his room, Barnabas at his heels. “His dad’s waitin’ for me, we’re going to Wesley to rent a video.”

  The rector stood on the front walk and talked with Cynthia and Olivia as Lace searched under the bench on the stoop. Then she came down the steps to the yard and peered into the boxwoods near the steps.

  “Lace—what is it?” asked Olivia.

  “Somebody’s stoled my hat,” she said. “My hat ain’t where I left it at.”

  “Where did you leave it?” wondered Cynthia.

  “I asked her to leave it on the bench,” Olivia confessed, looking concerned.

  “I’ll have a look with you,” said the rector, going to the boxwoods. “It probably fell . . .”

  “It didn’t fall nowhere!” Lace shouted. “It’s gone!”

  The screen door slammed and Dooley ran down the steps.

  “It was you that stoled my hat, won’t it? I ought t’ bash y’r head in!”

  She lunged toward Dooley, and Olivia moved almost as quickly, catching Lace’s jumper. There was a ripping sound as the skirt tore from part of the bodice.

  “Look what you done t’ my new outfit!” Lace struggled to free herself from Olivia. “Let me go, I’m goin’ t’ knock his head off—”

  “Lace! Don’t.” Cynthia caught her wrist.

  “I ought t’ kill you, you sorry, redheaded son of a—”

  Dooley’s face was crimson. “Why would I steal your dirty, stinking, stupid, beat-up hat?”

  The rector put his hand on the boy’s shoulder. “Easy, son.”

  “Well, why would I?” he yelled.

  “You better give it back and give it back now!” Lace trembled with rage, her own face ashen.

  “What would anybody want with your dumb, stupid hat that makes you look so stupid everybody laughs behind your back? Who would even touch your stupid, snotty, dirty hat?”

  Lace wrenched away from Cynthia and Olivia and flew at Dooley, who threw his arm in front of his face. She slammed her fist into his left rib, which sent him reeling backward toward the stoop.

  Barnabas barked furiously as the rector grabbed Lace by the shoulders. “Stop it now,” he said.

  Dooley regained his balance and stood without a word. He straightened his shirt. “I’ve got to go,” he said, tight-lipped. “Tommy’s dad is waiting for me.”

  “Go,” the rector said quietly.

  “If you done it,” Lace shouted after Dooley, “I’ll stomp your butt ’til you’re flatter’n a cow dab.”

  Cynthia and Olivia walked with Lace to the blue Volvo at the curb, as the rector sat wearily on the top step. Barnabas crashed beside him. He felt shaken by the intensity of Lace Turner’s sudden and virulent outburst.

  If Dooley Barlowe were, indeed, the culprit, he’d do well to hide in the piney woods ’til this thing blew over.

  He sat in the chair next to Dooley’s desk, reading the Thirty-seventh Psalm, the first two words of which he considered an entire sermon.

  He looked up as Dooley raced into the room on the stroke of his curfew.

  “Did you do it?”

  Dooley stood in the doorway, panting. He hesitated for a moment, peering at his shoes, then faced the rector and said, “Yes, sir.”

  “Why did you lie about it?”

  “I didn’t lie. I never told her I didn’t do it.”

  That was true. Dooley had responded to her questions with questions. “Where is it?”

  “In my closet.”

  “Take it to her in the morning and apologize. To Lace and Olivia.” He would also call Olivia in the morning.

  “Do I have to?”

  “What do you think?”

  Dooley went to the closet and opened the door. He lifted the hat off the floor as if it were something Barnabas had deposited in the backyard. “Man, I hate this stupid hat.”

  “So do I,” said the rector.

  “You do?”

  “I do. But that hat belongs to someone else, and you were wrong to steal it.”

  “Yeah.” Dooley looked at the hat for a moment, then looked the rector in the eye.

  “I’m sorry,” he said.

  A genuine apology! If this is what that fancy prep school had accomplished, he should be forking over an extra twenty thousand a year, out of the mere goodness of his heart.

  “You’ll al
so apologize to Cynthia.”

  “What for?”

  “Helping put a bitter end to Harley’s party.”

  “Lace Turner makes me puke. I could’ve knocked her stupid head off.”

  “But you didn’t, and I commend you for it.”

  Dooley sat on the bed, holding his left side. “She’ll kill me,” he said.

  “You might want to apologize to Lace while Olivia is in the room—then run for it.”

  There was a long silence. A moth beat around the lamp bulb.

  “Do something like this again,” the rector said, “and I’ll . . .” What he needed in closing was a good, hair-raising threat, something like taking the car keys away for a couple of weeks—but Dooley didn’t drive.

  “And I’ll . . .” he said.

  Blast. He realized he couldn’t come up with a decent threat if his life depended on it.

  The mayor asked him to trot to her office—and be quick about it, according to the tone in her voice.

  When Esther Cunningham pulled the string, he, like most people, jumped. He hated that about himself, but why not? Esther had kept an unflagging vigil over Mitford, sacrificing years of her time and even her health to keep things on the up and up. They hadn’t even had a tax hike in her long tenure. So yes, he came when she called, and glad to do it.

  She leaned across the desk, the splotches on her face and neck looking redder than ever.

  “Guess what th’ low-down jackleg has done now.”

  “I can’t guess.”

  “He’s throwin’ one of his free barbecues next Friday—th’ very day of the town festival.” She looked at him darkly. “See th’ strategy?”

  He didn’t.

  “That’ll siphon th’ crowd down to his place and leave us sittin’ under those shade trees at th’ town museum like a bunch of flour sacks.”

  “Aha.” The cheese was getting binding.

  “Here’s what I want you to do,” she said, looking at the door and lowering her voice.