These High, Green Hills

by Jan Karon

  They felt relieved.

  Getting a marriage off on the right foot was no small matter.

  “I reckon you’re gone with th‘ wind,” said Percy Mosely, who rang up his lunch tab at the Main Street Grill.

  “How’s that?” asked the rector.

  “Married an‘ all, you’ll not be comin’ in regular, I take it.” The proprietor of the Grill felt hurt and betrayed, he could tell.

  “You’ve got that wrong, my friend.”

  “I do?” said Percy, brightening.

  “I’ll be coming in as regular as any man could. My wife has a working life of her own, being a well-known children’s book writer and illustrator. She will not be trotting out hot vittles for my lunch every day—not by a long shot.”

  Percy looked suspicious. “What about breakfast?”

  “That,” said the rector, pocketing the change, “is another matter entirely.”

  Percy frowned. He liked his regulars to be married to his place of business.

  He looked up from his chair in the study. Curlers, again.

  “I have to wear curlers,” she said, as if reading his mind. “I’m going to Lowell tomorrow.”

  “Lowell? Whatever for?”

  “A school thing. They want me to read Violet Goes to France to their French class, and then do a program in the auditorium.”

  “Must you?”

  “Must I what? Read Violet Goes to France? That’s what they asked me to read.”

  “No, must you go to Lowell?”

  “Well, yes.”

  He didn’t want to say anything so idiotic, but he would miss her, as if she were being dropped off the end of the earth.

  A long silence ensued as she curled up on the sofa and opened a magazine. He tried to read, but couldn’t concentrate.

  He hadn’t once thought of her traveling with her work. Uneasy, he tried to let the news sink in. Lowell. Somebody there had been shot on the street in broad daylight.

  And another thing—Lowell was a full hundred miles away. Did she have good brakes? Plenty of gas? When had she changed her oil?

  “How’s your oil?” he asked soberly.

  She laughed as if he’d said something hilariously funny. Then she left the sofa and came to him and kissed him on the forehead. He was instantly zapped by the scent of wisteria, and went weak in the knees.

  She looked him in the eye. “I love it when you talk like that. My oil is fine, how’s yours?”

  “Cynthia, Cynthia,” he said, pulling her into his lap.

  “Guess what?” said Emma, who was taping a photo of her new grandchild on the wall next to her desk.

  This was his secretary’s favorite game, and one he frankly despised. “What?”

  “Guess!”

  “Let’s see. You’re going to quit working for the Episcopalians and go to work for the Baptists.” He wished.

  “I wish,” she said, rolling her eyes. “Try again.”

  “Blast, Emma, I hate this game.”

  “It’s good for you, it exercises the brain.”

  “Esther Bolick’s orange marmalade cake recipe is coming out in the New York Times food section.”

  “See? You don’t even try. You’re just talking to hear your head roar. One more guess.”

  “Give me a clue.”

  “It has to do with somebody being mad.”

  “The vestry. It must have something to do with the vestry.”

  “Wrong. Do you want me to tell you?”

  “I beg you.”

  “Marge Wheeler left her best basket in the kitchen after the bishop’s brunch last June, and Flora Lou Wilcox put it in the Bane and Blessing sale. Somebody walked off with it for a hundred dollars! Can you believe a hundred dollars for a basket with a loose handle? Marge is mad as a wet hen, she threatened to sue. But Flora Lou said she doesn’t have a leg to stand on, since you’re always running notices in the pew bulletin to pick up stuff left in th‘ kitchen.”

  “Ummm. Keep me posted.”

  “It’s been four months since the brunch, so I can see Flora Lou’s point that Marge should have picked it up and carted it home. Anyway, how could Flora Lou know it was handmade by Navajo Indians in 1920?” Emma sighed. “Of course, I can see Marge’s point, too, can’t you?”

  He could, but he knew better than to intervene unless asked. His job, after all, was Sales and Service.

  He rifled through the mail. A note from his cousin, Walter, and wife, Katherine, who had done the Ireland jaunt with him last year.

  Dear Timothy,

  Since Ireland is now old stomping grounds, why don’t you and Cynthia plan to go with us next summer? Thought we’d plant the seed, so it can sprout over the winter.

  We shall never forget how handsome you looked on the other side of the pulpit, standing with your beautiful bride. We love her as much as we love you, which is pecks and bushels, as ever, Karherine

  PS, Pls advise if canna and lily bulbs should be separated in the fall, I’m trying to find a hobby that has nothing to do with a pasta machine Yrs, Walter

  He rummaged toward the bottom of the mail stack.

  Aha!

  A note from Dooley Barlowe, in that fancy prep school for which his eldest parishioner, Miss Sadie Baxter, was shelling out serious bucks.

  Hey. I don’t like it here. That brain in a jar that we saw is from a medical school. I still don’t know whose brain it is. When are you coming back? Bring Barnbus and granpaw and Cynthia. I culd probly use a twenty. Dooley

  There! Not one ‘ain’t,’ and complete sentences throughout. Hallelujah!

  Who could have imagined that this boy, once barely able to speak the King’s English, would end up in a prestigious school in Virginia?

  He gazed at the note, shaking his head.

  Scarcely more than two years ago, Dooley Barlowe had arrived at the church office, dirty, ragged, and barefoot, looking for a place to “take a dump.” His grandfather had been too ill to care for the boy, who was abandoned by a runaway father and alcoholic mother, and Dooley had ended up at the rectory. By grace alone, he and Dooley had managed to live through those perilous times.

  “I’ve been wondering,” said Emma, peering at him over her glasses. “Is Cynthia goin‘ to pitch in and help around the church?”

  “She’s free to do as much or as little as she pleases.”

  “I’ve always thought a preacher’s wife should pitch in.” She set her mouth in that way he deplored. “If you ask me, which you didn’t, the parish will expect it.”

  Yes, indeed, if he could get the Baptists to take Emma Newland off his hands, he would be a happy man.

  “Miss Sadie,” he said when she answered the phone at Fernbank, “I’ve had a note from Dooley. He says he doesn’t like it in that fancy school.”

  “He can like it or lump it,” she said pleasantly.

  “When you’re dishing out twenty thousand a year, you sure can be tough, Miss Sadie.”

  “If I couldn’t be tough, Father, I wouldn’t have twenty thousand to dish out.”

  “You’ll be glad to know the headmaster says he’s doing all right. A little slow on the uptake, but holding his own with those rich kids. In fact, they’re not all rich. Several are there on scholarship, with no more assets than our Dooley.”

  “Good! You mark my words, he’ll be better for it. And don’t you. go soft on me, Father, and let him talk you into bailing him out in the middle of the night.”

  “You can count on it,” he said.

  “Louella and I have nearly recovered from all the doings in June....”

  “June was a whopper, all right.”

  “We’re no spring chickens, you know.”

  “You could have fooled me.”

  “I’ll be ninety my next birthday, but Louella doesn’t tell her age. Anyway, we’re going to have you and Cynthia up for supper. What did we say we’d have, Louella?”

  He heard Louella’s mezzo voice boom from a corner of the big kitchen, “Fried chick
en, mashed potatoes, gravy, an‘ cole slaw!”

  “Man!” he exclaimed, quoting Dooley.

  The announcement rolled on. “Hot biscuits, cooked apples, deviled eggs, bread and butter pickles ...”

  Good Lord! The flare-up from his diabetes would have him in the emergency room before the rest of them pushed back from the table.

  “And what did we say for dessert?” Miss Sadie warbled into the distance.

  “Homemade coconut cake!”

  Ah, well, that was a full coma right there. Hardly any of his parishioners could remember he had this blasted disease. The information seemed to go in one ear and out the other.

  “Ask Louella if she’ll marry me,” he said.

  “Louella, the Father wants to know if you’ll marry him.”

  “Tell ‘im he got a short mem’ry, he done married Miss Cynthia.”

  He laughed, contented with the sweetness of this old friendship. “Just name the time,” he said. “We’ll be there.”

  Autumn drew on in the mountains.

  Here, it set red maples on fire; there, it turned oaks russet and yellow. Fat persimmons became the color of melted gold, waiting for frost to turn their bitter flesh to honey. Sassafras, dogwoods, poplars, redbud—all were torched by autumn’s brazen fire, displaying their colorful tapestry along every ridge and hogback, in every cove and gorge.

  The line of maples that marched by First Baptist to Winnie Ivey’s cottage on Little Mitford Creek was fully ablaze by the eleventh of October.

  “The best ever!” said several villagers, who ran with their cameras to document the show.

  The local newspaper editor, J. C. Hogan, shot an extravagant total of six rolls of film. For the first time since the nation’s bicentennial, readers saw a four-color photograph on the front page of the Mitford Muse.

  Everywhere, the pace was quickened by the dazzling light that now slanted from the direction of Gabriel Mountain, and the sounds of football practice in the schoolyard.

  Avis Packard put a banner over the green awning of The Local: Fresh Volley Hams Now, Collards Coming.

  Dora Pugh laid on a new window at the hardware store featuring leaf rakes, bicycle pumps, live rabbits, and iron skillets. “What’s th‘ theme of your window?” someone asked. “Life,” replied Dora.

  The library introduced its fall reading program and invited the author of the Violet books to talk about where she got her ideas. “I have no idea where I get my ideas,” she told Avette Harris, the librarian. “They just come.” “Well, then,” said Avette, “do you have any ideas for another topic?”

  The village churches agreed to have this year’s All-Church Thanksgiving Feast with the Episcopalians, and to get their youth choirs together for a Christmas performance at First Presbyterian.

  At Lord’s Chapel, the arrangements on the altar became gourds and pumpkins, accented by branches of the fiery red maple. At this time of year, the rector himself liked doing the floral offerings. He admitted it was a favorite season, and his preaching, someone remarked, grew as electrified as the sharp, clean air.

  “Take them,” he said one Sunday morning, lifting the cup and the Host toward the people, “in remembrance that Christ died for you, and feed on Him in your hearts by faith, with thanksgiving.”

  Giving his own wife the Host was an act that might never cease to move and amaze him. More than sixty years a bachelor, and now this—seeing her face looking up expectantly, and feeling the warmth of her hand as he placed the bread in her palm. “The body of our Lord Jesus Christ, which was given for you, Cynthia.”

  He couldn’t help but see the patch of colored light that fell on her hair through the stained-glass window by the rail, as if she were being appointed to something divine. Surely there could be no divinity in having to live the rest of her life with him, with his set-in-concrete ways and infernal diabetes.

  They walked home together after church, hand in hand, his sermon notebook tucked under his arm. He felt as free as a schoolboy, as light as air. How could he ever have earned God’s love, and hers into the bargain?

  The point was, he couldn’t. It was all grace, and grace alone.

  He was sitting in his armchair by the fireplace, reading the newspaper. Barnabas ambled in from the kitchen and sprawled at his feet.

  Cynthia, barefoot and in her favorite robe, sat on the sofa and scribbled in a notebook. One of his antiquated towels was wrapped around her damp hair. He still couldn’t get over the sight of her on his sofa, looking as comfortable as if she lived here—which, he was often amazed to realize, she did.

  “Wasn’t it wonderful?” she asked.

  “Wasn’t what wonderful?”

  “Our wedding.”

  “It was!” She brought the subject up fairly often, and he realized he’d run out of anything new to say about it.

  “I love thinking about it,” she said, plumping up a needlepoint pillow and putting it behind her head. “A tuxedo and a tab collar are a terrific combination.”

  “No kidding?” He would remember that.

  “I think you should dress that way again at the first possible opportunity.

  He laughed. “It doesn’t take much for you.”

  “That’s true, dearest, except in the area of my new husband. There, it took quite a lot.”

  He felt that ridiculous, uncontrollable grin spreading across his face.

  “It was a wonderful idea to ask Dooley to sing. He was absolutely masterful. And thank goodness for Ray Cunningham’s video camera. I love the frames of you and Stuart in his bishop’s regalia, standing in the churchyard ... and the part where Miss Sadie and Preacher Greer are laughing together.”

  “Another case of two hearts beating as one.”

  “Would you like to see it again? I’ll make popcorn.”

  “Maybe in a day or two.” Hadn’t they watched it only last week?

  “It was very sweet and charming, the way you insisted on baking a ham for our reception.”

  “I always bake a ham for wedding receptions at Lord’s Chapel,” he said. “I’m stuck in that mode.”

  “Tell me something ... ?”

  “Anything!” Would he really tell her anything?

  “How did you unstick your mode long enough to propose to me? What happened?”

  “I realized ... that is, I ...” He paused thoughtfully and rubbed his chin. “To tell the truth, I couldn’t help myself.”

  “Ummm,” she said, smiling at him across the room. “You know I love that you knelt on one knee.”

  “Actually, I was prepared to go down on both knees. As soon as I dropped to one, however, you saw what was coming, and seemed so happy about it, I didn’t bother to advance to the full kneel.”

  She laughed uproariously, and held her arms out to him. “Please come over here, dearest. You’re so far away over there!”

  The evening news was just coming on when the phone rang. It was his doctor and friend, Hoppy Harper, calling from the hospital.

  “How fast can you get here?”

  “Well ...”

  “I’ll explain later. Just get here.”

  He was out the door in thirty seconds.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Bread of Angels

  “DR. HARPER’S in the operating room, Father, he can’t come out. He said put you in his office.”

  Nurse Kennedy opened a door and firmly pushed him inside.

  “He said for you to pray and pray hard, and don’t stop till he comes in here. Pray for Angie Burton, she’s seven. Dr. Harper says it’s a ruptured appendix, septic shock. We’re all praying—except Dr. Wilson.”

  Nurse Kennedy, who generally looked cheerful, looked strained as she closed the door.

  In Hoppy’s cluttered office, only a lamp burned.

  Angie Burton. That would be Sophia Burton’s youngest. He thought of Sophia, who was well known for taking her two girls to First Baptist every Sunday morning, rain or shine, and for teaching them the Twenty-third Psalm as soon as they could
talk. Working in the canning plant in Wesley, she kept bravely on in the wake of a husband who had totaled their car, tried to burn down their house, and disappeared into Tennessee only yards ahead of the law.

  He phoned home and asked Cynthia to pray, then fell to his knees by Hoppy’s desk.

  “God of all comfort, our only help in time of need, be present in Your goodness with Angie....”

  It was nearly midnight when Hoppy opened the door. “I owe you an apology,” he said. “I could have asked you to pray at home, but all I could think of was having you here—on the premises.”

  The rector had seen that look on his friend’s face before. It was utter exhaustion. “How did it go?”

  There was a long pause. Hoppy looked up and shook his head. “We did everything we could.”

  He sank wearily into the chair at his desk. “Ever since we prayed for Olivia’s transplant and I saw the miracles that happened, I’ve been praying for my patients. One day, I asked Kennedy if she would pray. Then she told Baker, and soon we discovered that the whole operating room was praying.

  “I never talked to you about it, I kept thinking I would.... Anyway, we’ve seen some turnarounds. No miracles, maybe, but turnarounds. We felt something powerful was going on here, something we wanted to explore.”

  Hoppy took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. “The bottom line is, we prayed, you prayed, and Angie Burton didn’t make it.”

  What could he say, after all?

  Angie Burton’s death was something the village could hardly bear.

  Winnie Ivey was grief-stricken—Angle and her sister, Liza, often visited the Sweet Stuff Bakery after school. To them, she was Granny Ivey, who hung their school drawings on the wall in the Sweet Stuff kitchen.

  The editor of the Mitford Muse, who scarcely ever spoke to or acknowledged a child, was moved to sudden tears over breakfast at the Grill and excused himself from the booth.

  Coot Hendrick went to Sophia’s house with a pie his elderly mother had baked, but, not knowing what to say, ran before anyone answered the door.