by Jan Karon
The rector grinned. “Whatever you say, buddy. You’re driving.”
Dooley turned left at the corner and made a right into the alley. Pauline’s small house, nestled into a grove of laurels, was a cheerful sight, with the lights of a tree sparkling behind its front windows and the snow swirling like moths around the porch light.
Dooley hammered on the horn, and the rector cranked his window down as Pauline, Poo, and Jessie appeared at the door.
“Look, Mama, I’m drivin’!”
“Dooley! Father! Can you come in?” She peered at the rear window, but was unable to see anyone in the darkened backseat.
“We’re on a mission to the store, but we’ll see you tomorrow. Merry Christmas! Stay warm!”
“Merry Christmas, Mama, Jessie, Poo! See you tomorrow!”
“Merry Christmas! We’re bakin’ the ham you sent, Father, be careful, Dooley!”
“Merry Christmas, Mr. Tim!”
Sammy and Kenny, thought the rector. He hoped he would live to see the day . . .
Dooley put the Buick in low gear and glided off.
“Burn rubber!” yelled Poo.
At the end of the alley, Buck leaned forward, urgent. “Father, I can’t . . . I’d like to go back and see Pauline and the kids. Do you think it would be all right?”
Dooley spoke at once. “I think it would.”
“Go,” said the rector.
In the side mirror, he saw Buck running along the alley, running toward the light that spilled onto the snow from the house in the laurels.
“The last time we had snow at Christmas, we burned the furniture, remember that?” he asked, as Dooley turned onto Main Street. It was, in fact, the blizzard the media had called the Storm of the Century.
Dooley cackled. “We were bustin’ up that ol’ chair and throwin’ it in th’ fireplace, and fryin’ baloney . . .”
“Those were the good old days,” sighed the rector, who certainly hadn’t thought so at the time.
Dashing through the snow . . .
He was losing track of time, happy out here in this strange and magical land where hardly a soul marred the snow with footprints, where Dooley sang along with the radio, and Harley looked as wide-eyed as a child . . . .
And there was Fernbank, ablaze with lights through the leafless winter trees, crowning the hill with some marvelous presence he’d never seen before. He wanted suddenly to see it up close, feel its warmth, discover whether it was real, after all, or a fanciful dream come to please him at Christmas.
“Want to run by Jenny’s?” he asked. “It’s on the way to the store.”
“Nope,” said Dooley. “Let’s go by Lace’s.”
“Excellent! Then we can run over to Fernbank while we’re at it.”
“And by Tommy’s! He’ll hate my guts.”
“Anywhere you want to run, Harley?”
“No, sir, I’ve done run to where I want t’ go, hit’s right here with you ’uns.”
They should have brought presents—fruitcakes, candy, tangerines! He was wanting to hand something out, give something away, make someone’s face light up . . .
Bells on bobtail ring, making spirits bright, what fun it is to ride and sing a sleighing song tonight! Hey! . . .
They honked the horn in the Harper driveway and shouted their season’s greetings, then drove up the long, winding lane to Fernbank, where he would have been contented merely to sit in the car and look at its lighted rooms with a candle in every window.
They circled around to the front steps and honked, as Andrew and Anna came to the door and opened it and waved, calling out felicitations of their own. “Don’t mention this to Rodney Underwood!” he said to the couple on the porch.
Andrew laughed. “Our lips are sealed! Joyeux noël!”
“Ciao!” cried Anna. “Come soon again!”
They eased down the Fernbank drive and saw the town lying at the foot of the steep hill like a make-believe village under a tree. There was the huge fir at Town Hall with its ropes of colored lights, and the glittering ribbon of Main Street, and the shining houses.
An English writer, coincidentally named Mitford, had said it so well, he could recite it like a schoolboy.
She had called her village “a world of our own, close-packed and insulated like . . . bees in a hive or sheep in a fold or nuns in a convent or sailors in a ship, where we know everyone, and are authorized to hope that everyone feels an interest in us.”
Go tell it on the mountain, over the hills and everywhere . . .
After a stop by Tommy’s and then by Hattie Cloer’s, they headed home.
“Harley, want to have a cup of tea with us before tonight’s service?”
“No, sir, Rev’rend, I’m tryin’ t’ fool with a batch of fudge brownies to bring upstairs tomorrow.”
Temptation on every side, and no hope for it.
“Say, Dad, want to watch a video before church? Tommy loaned me his VCR. It’s a baseball movie, you’ll like it.”
If there were a tax on joy on this night of nights, he’d be dead broke.
“Consider it done!” he said.
He sat clutching the pint of cream in a bag, feeling they’d gone forth and captured some valuable trophy or prize, as they rode slowly between the ranks of angels on high and turned onto their trackless street.
About the Author
Jan Karon, who lives in Blowing Rock, North Carolina, was an award-winning advertising executive before following her dream of writing books. She is the author of three previous Mitford novels, At Home in Mitford, A Light in the Window, and These High, Green Hills, all available from Penguin. At Home in Mitford was named an ABBY Honor Book by the American Booksellers Association.