These High, Green Hills

by Jan Karon

  “I was combing your house and trying to keep myself calm,” he said.

  “I’m so sorry, darling, but I did tell you I was going. I did! I was very specific. We were sitting at the kitchen table when I told you just the other morning ... but Timothy, you must not have been listening.”

  So that was the penalty for not listening—mortal terror.

  Actually, he seemed to recall that she’d mentioned Trent School, but beyond that, he drew a blank. “Must you do this again, these school visits?”

  “Yes.” There was a note of finality in her voice, and he didn’t press the issue.

  But even if she had told him, she owed him one, he could say that. Tomorrow, he would ask her to talk to Sadie Baxter.

  “No way,” said Cynthia.

  “Please.”

  “You’re the priest, Timothy, I’m merely the deacon. This is a job for the top dog.”

  You owe me, he wanted to say, but didn’t. “I can’t do it,” he said flatly.

  “You’re scared.”

  “You’re right.”

  “So who can we get to do it?”

  “If I had an answer to that, I wouldn’t be here practically begging on my knees.”

  “You’re cute when you’re desperate.”

  “You’re so good at this sort of thing ... ”

  “At what? Asking people to change their ways, give up familiar habits?”

  “Habits maintained at the possible expense of human life?”

  Cynthia frowned. He had her there, he could tell.

  “Oh, poop,” she said. “I’ll do it.”

  He sat down, immeasurably relieved.

  “But you owe me,” she said, narrowing her blue eyes in that way he’d come to know as meaning business.

  It happened on the fourteenth day of Advent, the date marked on the calendar to take his Buick to Lew Boyd for a tune-up and muffler. Nor was it a day to be walking around without a car. He might have stopped by the house and borrowed Cynthia’s, but no, he had pressed toward the office from the service station, his head bent into the first falling snow of the season.

  Ron Malcolm slowed down, pulled to the curb, and lowered his window. “Father! Good morning. Been wanting to ask when our computer system’s going in.”

  “After Christmas!” he snapped.

  Ron blanched. “Want a ride?”

  No, he did not want a ride. If he had wanted a ride, he would have a ride.

  He looked into the face of one of the most loyal parishioners on earth, suddenly feeling like two cents with a hole in it. “Sorry, my friend. The very mention of that computer system is like gall in a wound. I need to grow up, get with it.”

  “I understand. We hooked one up in my construction company right before I retired. Actually, that’s why I retired.”

  “That bad, huh?”

  “Something like getting gored by a bull, in slow motion.”

  The snow was melting on his hatless head. “Got time for a cup of coffee at the Grill?” He went around the car and opened the door, and slid in with his Hope House building committee chairman.

  “Speaking of retiring,” said Ron, as he pulled away from the curb, “I guess that’s something you’re thinking about.”

  “It certainly isn’t. I never think about it.” The unbidden coldness came into his voice again. If he couldn’t control his peevish tongue, who could?

  They drove in silence until Ron found a parking place across the street from the Grill.

  “Thinking about it isn’t so bad ...” said Ron, turning off the ignition, “once you get the habit of doing it.”

  “Maybe.” Why should his retirement be anyone’s concern? If Lord’s Chapel wanted him to leave, that was one thing. But retiring was his own blasted business.

  Hadn’t Churchill begun writing A History of the English-Speaking Peoples while in his eighties? Hadn’t Eamon de Valera served as Ireland’s president when he was ninety-one? It was a litany he often recited to himself. And George Abbott, the Broadway legend—Good Lord, the man had married again at the age of ninety-six! What was all the blather about retirement? He despised the very word.

  “Coffee straight up,” said Ron to Percy, “and make his a double.”

  Just before noon, the phone rang. Emma handed him the receiver with patent distaste. It was the computer company.

  “Father, we’ve had some schedule changes. Would it be all right if we come at two o‘clock today and get you up and running?”

  He was sick of the whole affair. “Perfect!” he said, without consulting his secretary. “Come ahead!”

  Emma winced when he told her. “No use to fret,” he declared. “We might as well get it behind us and enjoy the Christmas season.”

  “And you might as well bring the dern thing in and have it ready when they get here.”

  There was only one problem. The dern thing was in the trunk of his car.

  He dialed Lew Boyd, but the line was busy. He was still getting a busy signal when Emma unwrapped her sandwich at the noon hour.

  “Why don’t you take my car and run up there?” she asked. “It’s still got hay in it, but at least you could go and tell Lew to bring those boxes over here in his truck.”

  Emma was a clear thinker, all right.

  The wall clock said twelve-thirty when he arrived at the station, where Lew and Bailey Coffey were playing checkers with the phone off the hook.

  “I’ve got to get something out of the trunk of my car,” he told Lew. “It’s three boxes, and I’d appreciate it if you could run them down to my office in your truck before two o‘clock. I’d take them in that big Olds out there, but it’s, ah, full of hay.”

  Lew looked sheepish. “I hate to tell you, but I just sent Coot t‘ Wesley to pick up your muffler—in your Buick. Th’ rear end’s been lockin‘ up in my truck, and I can’t drive it ’til it’s fixed. Sendin‘ Coot in your car was th’ only way to get your part in here today.”

  “Aha. What time will Coot be back?”

  “I’d give ‘im a half hour if I was you,” said Bailey Coffey. “He hain’t been gone more’n ten minutes. Take a load off your feet.”

  “Don’t mind if I do,” said the rector, perching on a vinyl-covered dinette chair and peering at the checkerboard.

  Beyond the unwashed windows of the service station, the flakes spiraled down as in a snow globe.

  He had given Coot thirty minutes, then forty-five. “Stopped off for a burrito, is my guess,” said Lew.

  It was nearly two o‘clock when the phone rang. Lew Boyd turned white as a sheet.

  “You’re lyin‘! You ain’t lyin’.... Call Bud and get ‘im to tow it in.”

  Lew stared at the rector, who was checking the wall clock with mounting aggravation. “It’s your Buick,” said Lew, looking stricken.

  “What about it?”

  “Somebody rear-ended Coot after he pulled out of the parts place. Plowed right into ‘im.”

  “Good grief!”

  “I don’t know how t‘ tell you this, but them boxes in the trunk of your car ...”

  He stood rooted to the spot.

  “ ... they’re tore up pretty bad. He looked in there, said he couldn’t tell from jig what it was in ‘em, but said whatever it was is history.”

  “Hallelujah!” He was shocked at what flew out of his mouth.

  “What’s that?” said Lew.

  “I said thank you!” He grabbed Lew’s hand and shook it. “Thank you, thank you!”

  “I’m awful sorry, I cain’t tell you how—”

  “No problem. Quite all right. Good. Fine. Excellent!” Knowing some insurance companies, it could take weeks on end, even months, to put things straight. His neck was out of the noose. Goodbye and good riddance!

  The two men watched the rector roar out of the station in the lavender Oldsmobile.

  Bailey Coffey shook his head. “Seem like he wanted to hug your neck for gettin‘ his car tore up.”

  “Th‘ man is a sain
t,” said Lew, meaning it.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Love Came Down

  HE WAS WITHOUT a car again, but so what?

  Hadn’t he once given up his car for Lent and, liking the idea, gone without it for eight years? He could always use Cynthia’s car, or, if push came to shove, haul his motor scooter out of mothballs.

  After all, their winter weather was nearly like spring. They’d been given a couple of snow flurries and a few bitter winds, but beyond that, temperatures had been unseasonably mild.

  He would think all of Mitford would leap for joy about this weather. But no.

  “You talk about a flea problem this summer!” Dora Pugh grumbled to him at the hardware. “With no cold weather to kill ‘em off, they’ll be swarmin’ over your dog like ants over jam. An‘ wait’ll you see th’ Japanese beetles. Your roses’ll look like Swiss cheese.”

  The Collar Button man was complaining that he couldn’t sell his winter topcoats and practically had to give them away, the Irish Woolen Shop was stuck with a load of boiled-wool sweaters from the British Isles, and Percy Mosely railed that his ice-cream business had cranked up again, which tended to overwork his wintertime “skeletal crew.”

  Those who slogged through last year’s blizzard, saying they never wanted to see snow again, grumbled about not having any. And Bud Bradley made it known that without rotten weather to send people crashing into ditches, his tow truck business was suffering.

  On the bright side, Father Tim called Dooley and learned the school had just gotten a fine snowfall.

  “Went sledding, did you?”

  “Yep. Me’n Harvey Upton crashed.”

  “Into a tree?” That’s what he’d always crashed into when he went sledding.

  “Into one another.”

  “Anybody hurt?”

  “Ol‘ Harvey busted his hands when he run in the back of me.”

  “You OK?”

  “He sent me windin‘, but I rolled down th’ hill.”

  “How’s your computer stuff coming along?”

  “I been on th‘ Internet.”

  “You what?”

  “You wouldn’t understand.”

  “Truer words were never spoken, thanks be to God. What did you learn on the, ah ...”

  “Internet.”

  “Right.”

  “Learned about Labrador retrievers. When I get out of this school, I want one.”

  “Fine. You got it.”

  “They eat th‘ furniture and rugs an’ all.”

  “Ummm.”

  “But they get over it.”

  “How long does it take them to get over it?”

  “ ‘Bout three years.”

  “Aha. Well, listen, son, we miss you.”

  Silence.

  “Christmas break will be here soon. We’re coming to get you, save up your laundry. You’ll see your granpaw, he’s been asking about you, and you’ll see Tommy. He can spend the night anytime you like.”

  Silence.

  “Shoot straight with me, buddy. Are you OK?”

  Dooley hesitated, but only for a moment. “Yeah.”

  He heard the ache in the boy’s voice. It was something no one else would hear, he supposed, but he had gotten to know Dooley Barlowe, gotten to love....

  Dooley was in his prayers throughout the day, and as he prayed with Cynthia in the evening, which gave him the confidence to watch and wait.

  He decided not to consult with the headmaster again until after the Christmas holy days.

  “It’s done,” said Cynthia, looking gloomy.

  “It is?”

  “But I didn’t do it.”

  “You didn’t?”

  “Miss Sadie did the thing herself.”

  “Aha.”

  “When Miss Sadie tried to raise one of Olivia’s silk shades, it flew up and wrapped itself around the roller, so Miss Sadie climbed on the divan, as she calls it, and tried to pull the shade down and lost her balance.”

  A broken hip! Ninety years old ... months in a wheelchair, or worse, in bed....

  “She fell off the sofa,” said Cynthia, “and broke her wrist.”

  “Thanks be to God!”

  “Timothy! How could you?”

  “I mean I’m thankful that it was only her wrist that was broken. Think what could have happened.”

  “I know. She was very brave about it ... wanted to set it herself to save a doctor bill. But Louella called Hoppy and they sent the ambulance, which made Miss Sadie furious because it cost a fortune. Of course, it went through town blasting the siren, which she really didn’t like, and now her arm is in a sling.”

  “I’m having what’s called mixed emotions.”

  “Me, too. Now Louella and Miss Sadie are both down for the count. But Olivia will visit every day and I’ll check on them faithfully, plus The Local delivers, and there’s a mail slot in their front door, so ...”

  “So, all’s well that ends well,” he said.

  “For now,” she replied, looking concerned.

  J. C. Hogan must be hitting the skim milk pretty hard, he thought, as he saw the editor hiking along the other side of the street, toting his briefcase in one hand and hitching up his pants with the other.

  They were hurtling toward Christmas, which left little time for lunch at the Grill.

  There were multiple meetings with the choir director, the Hope House building committee, the vestry, the new Evangelism Committee, and the Sunday School supervisor, not to mention his involvement in the mayor’s projects to repair and paint Sophia Burton’s house, and a Lord’s Chapel Christmas party at Children’s Hospital.

  He also felt led to attend an overnight with the youth group, during which they made tree ornaments, wolfed pizza, and listened to loud music until he went home at two a.m., wildly energized by teenage adrenaline.

  Woven into the fabric of this seasonal tapestry were his daily hospital visits and a desperate jog up Old Church Lane four afternoons a week.

  Seizing the moment on Wednesday, he dashed from the office to the Grill and slid into the rear booth on the stroke of noon, literally panting.

  “We thought you’d died and gone to heaven,” declared Mule.

  “I’m working on it.”

  “Still haven’t had your neck cleaned up.”

  “My neck has been in the noose,” he said testily. “Where’s J.C.?”

  “Probably blown away by a strong wind. Have you seen him? He’s droppin‘ off to a stick.”

  “Yeah,” said Percy, pouring coffee, “if he don’t watch it, he’ll walk out of his britches right on Main Street.”

  “That,” said the Realtor, “would be a sight for sore eyes. What’ll it be?”

  “Soup du jour!‘ said Father Tim. ”A bowl and a roll.“

  “You’ll like the soup,” Percy announced. “It’s got fresh broccoli in it.”

  “I don’t like broccoli,” said the rector.

  “I don’t have time t‘ argue about it. Have th’ soup,” said Percy.

  “Fine,” he sighed, too exhausted to care.

  Mule leaned toward his lunch companion. “So, what do you think is goin‘ on with J.C.?”

  “Beats me. I guess we finally talked some sense into his hard head before he fell out with a stroke.”

  “I don’t think it’s got anything to do with health. Do you think he’s interviewin‘ for a job and wants to look sharp?”

  “What kind of job would he interview for? The Wesley paper is against his politics.”

  J.C. slammed his briefcase onto the bench and slid into the booth, “Been hangin‘ around the hospital for three dern hours.”

  Mule eyed him suspiciously. “You’re not gettin‘ shots for smelly feet, are you?”

  “I got a dadgum physical to the tune of two hundred bucks,” snapped the Muse editor.

  “It didn’t improve your disposition any,” said Mule.

  “Turns out I’ve lowered my cholesterol, brought my blood pressure down, and passed t
he treadmill test—”

  “That’s worth two hundred right there,” said the rector.

  “You did all that with yogurt?” asked Mule.

  “Lookit,” said J.C., grabbing the waistband of his pants and pulling it away from his stomach a full two inches.

  After lunch, the rector stood and talked with the Realtor in front of the Grill.

  Mule furrowed his brow. “Did you notice his shoes were shined?”

  “Did you notice he was carrying a handkerchief instead of a paper towel?”

  They eyed each other.

  “And the handkerchief was clean.”

  They went their separate ways, deep in thought.

  “Puce,” said Cynthia, staring at the walls of the rectory dining room.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Puce. Your dining room color. I just figured it out.”

  “Spell it,” he said.

  “P-u-c-e. I loathe puce. Besides, who wants a brown dining room?”

  Nobody, if her wrinkled nose was any indication.

  “Dearest, I’ve been thinking. We’ve set the date of the parish-wide tea for May fifreenth. It should be a happy time, definitely not a time for brown—especially not ancient brown. This paper must have been on these walls since Lord’s Chapel was a mission church!”

  “The turn of the century, then.”

  “Look at this stuff!” She waved her hand at the walls he’d never fully seen, somehow, until now. They were brown, all right. With a tint of muddy purple.

  “I agree.”

  “Agree with what?”

  “That you can have it repapered.”

  “That’s not what I had in mind, exactly.”

  “Aha.”

  “Close your eyes and imagine this. We steam off the paper. Put on a coat of primer. Paint over that with a wonderfully soft, rich pumpkin. And then use a creamy bisque color to rag it.”

  “What it?”

  “Rag it. Go over it with a rag and make it look like the walls of an old Italian villa. What do you think?”

  “But it’s not an old Italian villa.”

  “Timothy.”

  “Well,” he said, “it isn’t.”