by Jan Karon
“That’s just m’ warm-up, don’t you know, hit ain’t m’ main joke.”
The audience settled down and gazed at him raptly.
“Wellsir, Ol’ Adam, he was mopin’ ’round th’ Garden of Eden feelin’ lonesome, don’t you know. So, the Lord asked ’im, said, ‘Adam, what’s ailin’ you?’ Adam said he didn’t have nobody t’ talk to. Wellsir, th’ Lord tol’ ’im He’d make somebody t’ keep ’im comp’ny, said hit’d be a woman, said, ‘This woman’ll rustle up y’r grub an’ cook it f’r you, an’ when you go t’ wearin’ clothes, she’ll wash ’em f’r you, an’ when you make a decision on somethin’, she’ll agree to it.’ Said, ‘She’ll not nag n’r torment you a single time, an’ when you have a fuss, she’ll give you a big hug an’ say you was right all along.’
“Ol’ Adam, he was jist a-marvelin’ at this.
“The Lord went on, said, ‘She’ll never complain of a headache, an’ ’ll give you love an’ passion whenever you call for it, an’ when you have young’uns, she’ll not ask y’ to git up in th’ middle of th’ night.’ Adam’s eyes got real big, don’t you know, said ‘What’ll a woman like’at cost a feller?’ Th’ Lord said, ‘A arm an’ a leg!’
“Adam pondered a good bit, said, ‘What d’you reckon I could git f’r a rib?”’
Generous applause, ending with the whistle his wife learned as a ten-year-old marble player.
Crawling out the way they’d come in, they left the cabin before dusk and trekked to the lodge on an overgrown path.
During these jaunts, he faithfully looked for bear and stayed alert to protect his wife, though he saw nothing more suspicious than a raccoon seeking to purloin Wednesday’s chicken bones.
Today, Cynthia had hauled out sketch pads and pencils and abandoned any notion of leaving the porch. She vowed she’d seen a moose swimming in the lake and was not keen to miss further sightings. He, meanwhile, lay in a decrepit hammock and read G. K. Chesterton.
Peace covered them like a shawl; he couldn’t remember such a time of prolonged ease. There were, however, moments when Guilt snatched him by the scruff of the neck, determined to persuade him this was a gift he had no right to unwrap and enjoy, and he’d better watch his step or else....
“Listen to this,” he said. “ ‘An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered. An inconvenience is only an adventure wrongly considered.’ ”
She laughed. “I didn’t know G.K. had been to Cullen camp.”
“And this: ‘The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult, and left untried.’ Does that nail it on the head?” He fairly whooped.
“I love seeing you like this,” she said.
“Like what?”
“Happy . . . resting . . . at ease. No evening news, no phones, no one pulling you this way and that.”
“Stuart knew what he was doing, after all.”
“I have a whole new respect for your bishop,” she declared.
A loon called, a dragonfly zoomed by the porch rail.
“I heard something in our room last night,” she said. “Something skittering across the floor. What do you think it was?”
“Oh, I don’t know—maybe a chipmunk?” Right there was proof positive that his brain was still working.
“I love chipmunks!”
He put the Chesterton on the floor beside the hammock and lay dazed and dreaming, complete. “ ‘Blessed be the Lord . . . ,’ ” he murmured.
“ ‘. . . who daily loadeth us with benefits!’ ” she exclaimed, finishing the verse from Psalm Sixty-eight.
A wife who could read his mind and finish his Scripture verses. Amazing....
When he awoke, he heard only the faint whisper of her pencils on paper.
“Dearest, could you please zip to the store for us?”
“That car will not zip anywhere,” he said.
“Yes, but we can’t go on like two chicks in the nest, with poor Henry our mother hen. We must have supplies .”
“I suppose it would be a good thing to keep the battery charged.”
“A quart of two-percent milk,” she said, without looking up from her sketch pad, “whole wheat English muffins, brown eggs, an onion—we can’t make another meal without an onion—and three lemons—”
“Wait!” He hauled himself over the side of the creaking hammock and trotted into the house for a pen and paper.
She held up the sketch and squinted at it. “Oh, and some grapes!” she called after him. “And bacon! Wouldn’t it be lovely to smell bacon frying in the morning? I do love raisin bran, Timothy, but really. . . .”
Though the late afternoon temperature felt unseasonably warm when he left the car, it was refreshingly cool as he entered the darkened store.
A man in a green apron was dumping potatoes from a sack into a bin; he looked up and nodded.
The rector nodded back, wondering at his odd sense of liberty in being untethered, yet wondering still more about his desire to hurry back to his wife. This was, after all, the first time they’d been apart since the wedding; he felt . . . barren, somehow, bereft. Perhaps it was the sixtysomething years for which, without knowing it, his soul had waited for this inexpressible joy, and he didn’t want to miss a single moment of it. Then again, his joy might owe nothing to having waited, and everything to love, and love alone.
He didn’t understand these things, perhaps he never would; all he knew or understood was that he wanted to inhale her, to wear her under his very skin—God’s concept of “one flesh” had sprung to life for him in an extraordinary way, it was food, it was nectar; their love seemed the hope of the world, somehow. . . .
He chose a package of thick-sliced market bacon. This was living on the edge, and no two ways about it.
But perhaps he was happiest, in reflection, about the other waiting, the times when the temptation to have it all had been nearly unbearable, but they had drawn back, obeying God’s wisdom for their lives. The drawing back had shaken him, yes, and shaken her, for their love had exposed their desire in a way they’d never known before. Yet, His grace had made them able to wait, to concentrate on the approaching feast instead of the present hunger.
He set his basket on the counter.
“You over on the lake?” the man asked.
“We are.”
“Looks like you’ll have a fine sunset this evenin’.”
He peered through the store windows toward the tree line. Holy smoke! If he hurried, he could make it back to the lodge in time. . . .
“Anything else I can round up for you?”
“This will do it.”
“You sure, now?”
As he took out his wallet, he realized he couldn’t stop smiling.
“Thank you, this is all,” he said. “I have absolutely everything.”
