by Jan Karon
He nuzzled the two heads of tousled hair and thought that, all things considered, he was a very fortunate man. He needed challenges in his life . . . But wait a minute, did he need that warm, wet feeling spreading over his left knee?
He had showered, she had bathed in a tubful of scented bubbles; she had laid out his clean robe, he had plumped up the pillows behind her head; they had devoured their chicken with almonds, shrimp with lobster sauce, and two spring rolls.
“What’s your fortune?” she asked, looking discontented with her own.
“I will uncover a surprise and receive great recognition.”
“Poop, darling, you’re always receiving great recognition. Everyone loves you, it’s like being married to the Pope. Here’s mine. ‘Prepare for victory ahead!’ Who writes this stuff?”
“Now,” he urged.
“OK!”
“Close your eyes.”
“I love this part,” she said, putting her hands over her eyes. “Don’t you want me to guess?”
“Absolutely not. We’re going straight to the punch line.”
He trotted to the closet, retrieved the box which Marcie had wrapped in the signature brown paper of Oxford Antiques, and thumped it on the bed next to his wife.
“OK. You can look.”
“A box! I love boxes!”
“Heave to, Kavanagh.”
She tore the raffia bow off, and the paper, and pulled back the tape on top of the box.
He helped remove the writing desk and set it on her lap.
“Timothy!” she whispered, unbelieving.
“Happy birthday, my love.”
No two ways about it, he had hit a home run.
They lay in bed, holding each other, the room warmed by the glow of her bedside lamp.
“You’re wonderful,” he said, meaning it.
She smiled. “But I’m old!”
“Old? You? Never!”
“Just look at these crow’s feet . . . .”
“I don’t see any crow’s feet,” he said, kissing her crow’s feet.
“Father, this is Lottie Greer.”
Lottie Greer—the spinster sister of Absalom Greer, the elderly revival preacher who had loved Sadie Baxter . . .
“It’s Absalom.” He heard the fear in her voice.
“What is it?”
“It’s pneumonia. He wants you to pray.”
“I will, Miss Lottie, and others with me. Shall I come?”
“He said to just pray. There’s fluid in his lungs.”
He told her he was available anytime, that she should let him know what he could do. Then he called Cynthia and the all-church prayer chain.
He had come to love Absalom Greer. The eloquent, unschooled preacher had been a force in his life and those of countless others, including Pauline and Lace. He was among the last of the old warriors who fearlessly confronted the issue of sin, preached repentence and salvation, and pulled no punches when it came to the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
Bottom line, the old man was his brother. He would go out on Sunday.
What was he waiting for?
The question was unspoken, but every time he ran into a member of the vestry, he felt the weight of it. Thirty days? For what? Ingrid Swenson didn’t look like somebody who could be bluffed into coughing up two ninety-five after she offered one ninety-eight. But the point was, the property was fully worth two ninety-five, and in his opinion, Miami Development was trying to steal it. To be bluffed themselves was a humiliation not to be suffered lightly.
The answer was, he didn’t know what he was waiting for. He only knew that selling Fernbank to Miami Development was something that didn’t feel right. Maybe it would feel right later—then again, later could be too late.
He hated this, he hated it.
He tried to act nonchalant by puttering in the side garden as they backed out of the driveway. Dooley was lit up like downtown Holding at Christmas, and Harley was generating a few kilowatts himself.
He looked up and waved, and they waved back.
Four-thirty. Dooley had left work a half hour early, and they had promised to be back at the rectory around six.
He looked through the hedge to the little yellow house. A window box needed fixing, the bolt had come loose and the box was hanging whomper-jawed under the studio window.
Too bad that little house didn’t get more use. But one day . . .
He’d better get cracking and have Buck look it over, tell them what to do, help them get started with the additions and renovations. If there was ever a perfect opportunity to get top-drawer input, Buck Leeper was providing it.
He turned to go inside, then stopped and looked at the yellow house again.
By jing!
“But he’ll never be there when you’re there, because when you’re working, he’ll be working.”
“That great big man in work boots and chinos stomping around and picking his teeth? In my house? Goodness, Timothy . . .”
“His company will pay the rent.”
“Do you really think it would be all right?”
“Of course it would be all right. With Buck living there, he’d get to know exactly what we need and how to pull it off, and we wouldn’t have to hire an architect, he can draw it up—and hire the crew.”
She wrinkled her brow. “I don’t know . . . .”
“It’s a great opportunity.”
“Consider it done, then,” she said, quoting her priest.
At a quarter ’til six, he was standing at the front door, searching the street. Then he walked out and sat on the top step of the front porch.
“Come out with me,” he called to Cynthia.
She came and sat with him and took his hand.
“I’ve been thinking,” she said.
“Uh-oh.”
“I want to play in that softball game.”
“You do?”
“Yes. I can hit a ball. I can run. I can—”
“You can whistle.”
She put her fingers to her mouth and blew out the windows.
“You’re good, Kavanagh.”
“So hire me.”
“You’re the only female.”
“So far,” she said. “I hear Adele Hogan wants to play.”
“The police officer? J.C.’s wife?”
“She’s the baddest softball player you ever want to see. At least, that’s what she said.”
“J.C. didn’t mention that.”
“He probably thought it was a guy’s game.”
“Well,” he said, “it was . . . .”
At seven o’clock, he was ready to make a search of Farmer, which he and Harley had judged a perfect location for the driving lesson.
But maybe he should call the hospital first. He went to the study to find his cordless.
Cynthia wasn’t worried at all. “Give them another fifteen minutes. It’s a beautiful summer evening . . . .”
“Yes, but Harley knew the curfew, he wouldn’t do this. I’m calling the police.”
Barnabas let out a loud series of barks. As the rector raced up the front hall, he saw Harley standing on the porch. He looked like he’d gone a few rounds with a grizzly.
“Now, Rev’rend, I wouldn’t want you t’ worry . . . .”
He pushed open the screen door. “Where’s Dooley? What happened?”
“Th’ last thing I’d want t’ do is cause you an’ th’ missus t’ worry . . . .”
“Tell me, Harley.”
“No, sir, worry’s not what I’d ever want to’ bring in y’r house . . . .”
“Dadgum it, Harley, I am worried, and will be ’til you tell me what the dickens went on.”
“Well, sir, y’r boy’s fine.”
“Thank God.”
“We crashed m’ truck.”
“No!”
“We did.”
“Who did?”
“Now, I don’t want you t’ worry . . . .”
“Harley . . .”
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�Y’r boy did.”
“Good Lord!”
“But hit ’us my fault.”
“You’re sure he wasn’t hurt? Where is he?”
“No, sir, he won’t hurt, but m’ truck was.”
“How bad?”
“Tore up th’ front an’ all.”
“Any damage to your engine?”
“Good as new.”
“How’d you get home?”
“You mean after we hauled it out’n th’ ditch?”
“Yes.”
“You mean after we hauled it out’n th’ ditch an’ had t’ help th’ farmer chase ’is cow back to th’ pasture?”
“What about a cow?”
“That’s what come high-tailin’ ’cross th’ road an’ made th’ boy hit ’is brakes an’ land in th’ ditch.”
“I see.”
The rector glanced toward the driveway and saw Dooley peering at him around a bush.
“I’d sure hate f’r you t’ worry . . . .”
Ha. Worry had just become his middle name—at least until Dooley Barlowe went back to school where somebody else could do the worrying.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The Fields Are White
He unlocked the office and went in, feeling an odd foreboding as he raised the windows and turned on the fan. Today’s temperature was nearly what they’d had in Florida.
He heard the bathroom door creak on its hinges and wheeled around. Edith Mallory was standing there in something like a bathrobe.
“Edith . . .”
She smiled and moved toward him, smelling of the dark cigarettes she smoked, untying the sash . . . .
“Timothy!”
He opened his eyes and looked into the face of his anxious wife. “Thank God!” he said, sitting up.
“These dreams you’ve been having . . . it’s scary. What was it this time?”
“I can’t remember,” he lied. Bathed with perspiration, he reached to the bedside table and turned the fan on high.
“That’s better,” she said. “Are you all right?”
“Yes. Sorry I woke you.”
“Don’t be. I remember the times I used to wake in the night with bad dreams and there was no one to turn to.”
She switched off her bedside lamp and rolled over to him and held his hand.
Soon she was sleeping again, but he was not.
This wasn’t the first dream he’d had of Edith Mallory. He distinctly remembered the one in which he was locked with her in the parish hall coat closet, pounding on the door for help.
While he was in Ireland a couple of years ago, her husband, Pat, had died of a heart attack. When the rector returned home, she had tried every strategy imaginable to seduce and dominate him. Always seeking to entice, always looking at him in a way that made him want to run for the hills, once detaining him overnight at Clear Day, her house on the highest ridge above Mitford.
He recalled the visit to Children’s Hospital, where she gave $15,000 as imperiously as if it were a quarter million, and afterward being trapped in the backseat of her car while she stroked his leg. He had demanded that Ed Coffey, her chauffeur, stop the car, and had jumped from the Lincoln while it was still rolling.
After the miserable wrestling match over the Grill, which she had thumpingly lost, she had gone to Spain and, as far as he knew, hadn’t returned—nor had she sent her annual contribution to Lord’s Chapel. Fine. So be it. It was money he didn’t want, though the finance chairman was certainly anxious about it.
He’d been able to put her out of his mind until someone at the Grill had brought up her name.
Suddenly he was feeling the old contamination he’d felt for years as her eyes roved over him in the pulpit . . . .
Blast.
He rolled on his side and tried to imagine the breeze from the fan was an island trade wind somewhere in the Indian Ocean.
“My wife’s house is nonsmoking. Will that be a problem?” Buck Leeper was known for sucking down two packs of unfiltered Lucky Strikes a day.
“No problem. I’ve cut back, anyhow.”
They walked into Cynthia’s kitchen, where a faint breeze stirred through the open windows.
“The house is small, but—”
“There’s something I’ve been wanting to tell you,” said the superintendent.
There was a brief silence while Buck looked at his work boots, then directly at Father Tim.
“I appreciate what you did for me.”
The rector nodded, silent.
“I could have killed you, slingin’ th’ furniture around like that.”
He remembered Buck’s drunken violence at Tanner Cottage during the construction of Hope House. Unable to flee, he had sat, praying, as Buck’s torrential anger poured forth for hours.
“Sorry,” Buck said, hoarse with feeling.
“Don’t even think about it.” He hadn’t expected an apology for that long-ago night, but it felt better to have it, somehow. He knew instinctively that Buck didn’t want to say anything more.
“Well . . . you can see how cramped the house is. Built for one, really.”
“What are you lookin’ to do?”
“We’d like to knock out this rear wall and add a large studio with a bank of windows, maybe French doors leading to a patio, perhaps connecting with a two-car garage and extra storage. I know you can help us figure it out.
“Also, we thought it would be good to have a fireplace at that end, possibly of native stone, with bookshelves on either side. Oh, and hardwood floors, of course, with another bathroom adjoining the studio. The only bathroom is upstairs, which reminds me . . .”
This was exciting. His blood was up for it.
“ . . . we’re thinking of widening the stairway, if possible, and building storage closets on the landing, but I’m getting ahead of myself. Since we’re in the kitchen, what would you think about a cooking island, and bay windows looking out to the hedge?”
Buck took the toothpick from his mouth and stared around the small room. “You want to live in it a year from now?”
“Right!”
“You’ll have to haul ass,” he said.
Mack Struope
Already Working For
Improved Economy
“I’m not going to wait til I’m elected to work hard for Mitford,” says mahoral candidate MackStrouope at his downtown campaign headquarters. “I’m already working hard to bring in new growth and development.
“For example, I recommended the fine property of Sweet Stuff Bakery to one real estate company, and was able to get another realtor to look at Fernbank. When the Fernbank deal goes through, it will put big dollars in everybody’s pockets.
“I’m not one to say if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. I say let’s make a good thing better.”
Strouple is running against mayoral incumbent, Esther Cunninghanm, who has seen eight terms in local office, with three of those terms unopposed.
Stroupe’s free Saturday barbecues will be held until election week at his campaign headquarters on Main Street.
ThisSaturdzy will feature the live country music of everybody’s favorit, the Wesley Washtub Band. All are invited.
He hadn’t missed Mack’s terminology, “when the Fernbank deal goes through . . .”
Part of Miss Sadie’s letter had been running through his mind like a chanted refrain.
“I leave Fernbank to supply any requirements of Hope House,” she had written. “Do with it what you will, but please treat it kindly.”
Treat it kindly.
Was selling it for half its worth treating it kindly? All her adult life, Sadie Baxter had done without, so that her mother’s and father’s money could be invested wisely. Hadn’t her penury and smart management provided a five-million-dollar budget for Hope House, and a home for forty people who needed one?
Who was he to swallow down an arrogant offer that robbed the coffers of a deserving institution?
But then, what was the alternative?
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Back and forth, back and forth—always the same questions, and never any answers. At least, not as far as he was concerned.
He couldn’t deal with this any longer.
He got up from the sofa and knelt by his desk in the quiet study.
“Lord, Miss Sadie’s house belongs to You, she told me that several times. You know I’ve got a real problem here.”
He paused. “Actually, You’ve got it, because I’m giving it to You right now, free and clear. I’ll do my part, just show me what it is. In Jesus’ name, amen.”
“Poached, whole wheat, no grits,” he told Velma, as he walked to the rear booth and slid in.
“J.C., I’ve got a story idea for you.”
“Don’t give me any small-town, feel-good stuff,” snapped the editor. “I’ve had enough of that to choke a horse.”
“I hear political candidates have to fill out a form that discloses the amount of a campaign contribution and who made it. I’m also told that anyone, including media, can ask to see that form.”
He could tell J.C. was getting the message, and didn’t particularly like it, either. “So why don’t you get Mack to show it to you?” asked the editor.
“So why don’t you?” asked the rector.
“Father?”
It was Lottie Greer. Years of experience told him all he needed to know.
“I’m on my way,” he said.
He parked behind a long line of cars and pickup trucks on the country road, and walked to Greer’s Store.
Men were congregated on the porch, dressed in overalls and work clothes; many were smoking, and all talked in undertones.
They nodded to him as he came up the steps. He heard the faint singing inside.
“How is he?” he asked an elderly man sitting on a bench.
“Bad off, Preacher.”
He opened the fragile screen door that had slapped behind him on happier occasions, and entered the store that resembled a room in a Rembrandt canvas. The aged floors and burnished wood, the low wattage in the bulbs, the fading afternoon light through the windows—it was beautiful; saintly, somehow, more a church than a store. But then, hadn’t Absalom Greer preached the gospel in this place for nearly seventy years?
