These High, Green Hills

by Jan Karon

  He spread his hands over the parchment seas and continents, as if some inner warmth were coming from inside. There was the seductive blue of the Gulf of Bothnia, and, as he twirled the globe, the vastness of Arabia, and the emerald masses of the Angola and Argentine Basins.

  “I love you, my dearest husband.”

  “And I love you,” he said, resting his cheek against the top of her head. Grace, and grace alone.

  The music was only a flute, and a clear, simple voice singing what Christina Rossetti had written.

  Love came down at Christmas

  Love all lovely, love divine

  Love was born at Christmas

  Star and angels gave the sign.

  Love shall be our token

  Love be yours and love be mine ...

  Love was born at Christmas ...

  Love incarnate, love divine ...

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Flying High

  Lady Spring’s Grand Surprise

  —by Mitford Muse reporter, Hessie Mayhew

  Lady Spring has surprised us yet again.

  Arriving in our lofty Citadel prematurely this year, she caught us looking to the mending of our winter mittens. As early as mid-April, the first bloom of the lilac peeked out, whilst in years past, not one of us had caught its virtuous scent until May. Last April at this time, you may recall, we were shivering in our coats as white icing lay upon the bosom of our Village as upon a wedding cake.

  In any case, Lady Spring has left her calling card in our expectant Garden—this little Niche where, upon the margin of a rushing streamlet, the woods violet first revealed its innocent face on yesterday morn.

  Those with an eye for fashion will wonder what fanciful attire our Lady is wearing this year. I have as yet glimpsed her only briefly, and cannot be certain of every detail, but she appears to have arrayed herself in lacy ferns from her maiden Breast to her unshod feet, and crowned her fickle head with trumpet vines and moss.

  At any moment, she will make her couch upon the banks of Miss Sadie Baxter’s hillside orchard, so that every rude Cottage and stately pile might have a view of Heaven come down to earth.

  Gentle Reader, may fragrant breezes fan thy brow this Spring, and whether you meet our Lady upon the wild summit or in the sylvan glade, please remember:

  DO NOT PLANT UNTIL MAY 15.

  He dropped the newspaper beside his wing chair, laughing.

  Hessie Mayhew had been reading Wordsworth, again, while combing the village environs with looking-glass and flower press.

  Rude cottages and stately piles, wild summits and sylvan glades! Only in the Mitford Muse, he thought, unashamedly proud of a newspaper whose most alarming headline in recent months had been “Man Convicted of Wreckless Driving.”

  Though Hessie had given him a good laugh, he realized he hadn’t been much amused lately.

  The rectory dining room and kitchen were upside down and backward, and the plunder from the two rooms had been scattered throughout the parlor and along the hallway, not to mention dumped on either side of the steps all the way to the landing.

  On Easter Monday, his dining chairs and china dresser had been hauled to the foyer, along with a stack of pots, pans, dishes, and nine boxes of oatmeal. As he hadn’t cooked oatmeal in two or three years, he had no idea where it came from, and was afraid to ask.

  He saw his wife on occasion, but hardly recognized her, smeared as she was with pumpkin-colored paint, and her hair tied back with a rag.

  “Cynthia?” he said, peering into the dining room. He might have stuck his head inside a cantaloupe, for all the brazen new color on his walls.

  She looked down from the top rung of a ladder. “H‘lo, dearest. What do you think?”

  He honestly didn’t know what he thought.

  What he wondered was how much longer they’d be dodging around paint buckets and ladders, not to mention that he’d stepped in a skillet last night as he went up to bed. His study was the only place on the ground floor that hadn’t been invaded by the haste to transform the rectory into an old Italian villa before May fifteenth.

  The kitchen, which certainly hadn’t been painted in his fourteen-year tenure, was becoming the color of “clotted Devon cream,” according to Cynthia. She was also doing something with a hammer and sponge that made the walls look positively ancient.

  If anything, shouldn’t they be trying to make the place look more up-to-date?

  As worthless as guilt was known to be, he couldn’t help feeling it, seeing his wife work herself to exhaustion for a parish tea that would last only two hours.

  “Yes,” said their friend Marge Owen, “but they’ll talk about it for two years!”

  He tried once to help her, but he’d never held a paintbrush in his life.

  “You bake,” she finally said, exasperated, “and I’ll paint. For starters, I need ten dozen lemon squares—they freeze beautifully. When you’re through with those, I need ten dozen raspberry tarts and fourteen dozen cookies, assorted ...”

  She rattled off a baking list that sounded like the quarterly output of Pepperidge Farm.

  Why couldn’t they just do vegetable sandwiches and strawberries dipped in chocolate ... or something?

  “We’re also doing those, but not until the last minute,” she said, peering down at him from a ladder. She was always on a ladder. Except, of course, for the times she popped through the hedge to work on her book, which had an ominous deadline.

  “I can’t even think about the deadline,” she wailed. “I can’t even think about it!”

  At night, she rolled over and expired, while he stared at dancing shadows on the ceiling and listened to Barnabas snore in the hall.

  “We’re thrilled,” said Esther Bolick. “I can’t remember when something this big has happened and I didn’t have to bake a cake for it!”

  “You’re not hurt that we didn’t ask you to bake?”

  “Hurt? I should say not!”

  He could tell, however, that Esther wouldn’t have minded doing a two-layer orange marmalade.

  He was relieved to see that Emma was softening toward the coming event. But she made it clear to him that Cynthia should at least get involved in Sunday School and chair the parish brunches.

  The ECW called to offer help in serving and pouring, and promised to line up four or five husbands to keep the tea traffic untangled on the street in front of the rectory.

  Hessie Mayhew stopped by, wanting an interview, just as Father Tim trekked home to pick up his sermon notebook.

  “Talk to my wife,” he said, “it’s all her doing.” He hoped that Hessie would not read any Coleridge before she wrote the story.

  Clutching her note pad, Hessie grilled Cynthia, who was painting dentil molding from the top rung of a ladder. “What are you serving? How many people? What time of day? Any special colors? Do you have a theme?”

  He ran from the room.

  Going out the back door five minutes later, he heard Cynthia announce that the event would be called the “First Annual Primrose Tea.”

  Hessie gave a squeal of delight, which was definitely a good sign.

  He had talked to local clergy over the winter, but wasn’t encouraged.

  Bottom line, Creek people were not known to welcome meddling preachers, and especially not meddling town preachers.

  When he reminded them that Absalom Greer had gone in there every week for an entire summer, they reminded him that not only was Greer elderly, which generally translates to nonthreatening, but he was a native—always an advantage.

  “From what I’ve heard,” said Bill Sprouse, “I wouldn’t mess around in there. I hear they’d as soon shoot you as look at you, and there’s no question that drugs and alcohol are serious problems.”

  “Isn’t something being done through social services?”

  “When it comes to the Creek, I don’t think much gets done one way or the other.”

  “Tell me what else you’ve heard.”

  “The usual
intermarrying, as you might guess. Used to be a nest of bootleggers in there, and before that the Creek was where they made corn whiskey. A lot of poverty. Houses where you can see through the walls, kerosene stoves in winter, a fair amount of families get burned out.”

  “Where do they go when that happens?”

  “They don’t usually come into Mitford or Wesley. They stay with their own. Of course, once in a while you’ll see some of the older kids hanging around town, but not often. The Creek buys its groceries and gets doctored over the county line, in Ipswich—that’s where they get their schooling, too, if they get any. I think the county line runs along the creek bank for several miles.”

  “Go in there with me,” he said. That was radical, but was anything worthwhile ever accomplished without radical action? Preaching the Gospel was radical, forming the church had been radical. Heaven knows, marrying Cynthia—at his age—had been radical.

  “Brother, I’ve got all the sick and hurting I can say grace over. I don’t have to go to the Creek to find suffering. My organist is dying of a brain tumor, and one of my finest deacons is too depressed to get out of bed in the mornings.” The usually jovial preacher looked solemn.

  “Yes, well ...”

  “Not to mention that Rachel’s old mother just passed and me and Sparky are on our own while she’s in Springfield cleaning out the home place.”

  “My condolences to Rachel.”

  “I keep on a tight string with what the Lord’s laid at my own back door,” said Bill.

  Yes, but if they didn’t do something, who would?

  “Tell you what,” said Bill, looking jovial again, “I’ll commit to pray about it.”

  Father Tim felt strangely restless and annoyed. Certainly he had prayed about it and would continue to pray about it, but he was moved to act, as well. Somehow, he could see the girl who had jumped out of the tree; he could see her as plainly as if she’d landed at his own feet.

  “Big doin’s comin‘ up at your place,” said J.C. “A real front-pager.” He slid into the rear booth, protecting a bandaged hand.

  “Why don’t you run your story after the fact?” queried the rector. “You know, one of those good-time-was-had-by-all deals.”

  “We’re running a story before and after,” said the editor, looking as if he owned the world.

  “Aha.”

  Mule stirred cream into his coffee. “Your wife’s tea party is sure rackin‘ up business for Fancy. She’s booked solid through the morning of the fifteenth for perms and color, not to mention acrylic nails.”

  He had never thought that a rectory tea might boost the local economy. “What happened to your hand?” he asked the editor.

  “Jabbed a knife in it.”

  “How come?”

  “Tryin‘ to punch another hole in my belt. The knife slipped and I punched a hole in myself.”

  “That’s a mighty neat-looking bandage. Did you do that?”

  “Not exactly,” said J.C.

  “You better get some nourishment. You look like you’ve been sent for and couldn’t go,” Mule told him.

  “Ten more pounds and I’m home free.”

  “You’ll need a whole new set of clothes. That’ll hit you up for a bundle.”

  J.C. mopped his face with his handkerchief. “I’ll shop yard sales like some people I know, and dress myself with pocket change.”

  “Who’s shakin‘ the sheets to find you of a mornin’?” Velma asked the editor as she poured coffee.

  J.C. grinned hugely. “That’s for me to know and you to find out. And by the way, I’ll take the check for this booth.”

  “My hearin‘ just went bad,” said Mule. “What’d you say?”

  “I said I’m pickin‘ up the check.”

  “Why?” asked the rector.

  “It’s spring!” said J.C., still grinning.

  “Miss Sadie’s sleepin‘,” Louella whispered, answering his knock on the door. “Come in an’ drink a glass of tea. I ain’t put th‘ sugar in yet.”

  Louella led him into the kitchen on tiptoe and closed the door. “Now!” she said. “You can talk yo‘ head off and Miss Sadie can’t hear nothin’!”

  “How’s your knee doing?”

  “Stiff, honey, but perkin‘.”

  “Are you cooking?”

  “One time a day. I said Miss Sadie, pick yo‘ time, she said lunch! So, I cooks lunch, then we put them dishes in th’ dishwasher and set back and listen to it go. It’s a treat an‘ a half to have a dishwasher!”

  “I wouldn’t know,” he said. “I’ve never had one.”

  “Father, you ought t‘ get more modern, now you’re a married man.”

  “Right. How’s Miss Sadie’s wrist?”

  “Oh, law. Law, law, law!” Louella shook her head. “Gittin‘ better.”

  “That’s not good?”

  “Soon’s that little bone git strong, Miss Sadie goan be drivin‘ that car hard as she can go! You see this pore ol’ gray head? Thass not ol‘ age, honey, thass Miss Sadie’s drivin’.”

  “Ummm.”

  “When she break her wrist, I said, ‘Thank you, Jesus, now we both goan live longer!’ I hate to cross over Jordan meetin‘ head-on with a truck. I’d ’preciate crossin‘ in my sleep with a smile on my face!”

  “She’ll be ninety in June. Won’t she have to take another test?”

  “She don’t have t‘ test again ’til she hit ninety-two. And Miss Sadie, she test good. She test real good.”

  They sat in silence for a moment, sipping their tea.

  “I don’t know what to do,” he said, meaning it. “But I’ll do something.”

  Why was he always offering to do something he had no earthly idea how to do? Was his ego so twisted that he had to seize control over outcomes? No, it was almost worse than that. He was driven to console people, to bind them up, to protect them from the worst—an ambition that often got in the way of the Holy Spirit’s ministrations.

  “This boy,” the old bishop of Mississippi had said to Tim’s mother, “will make the sort of priest God can use around His house. Timothy will pay attention to his flock in the small particulars, and most of all ... he’ll love them.”

  He didn’t know if it was so loving to protect people. Perhaps really loving meant not protecting them.

  He certainly hadn’t protected Dooley Barlowe. Sending him off to school with those fancy rich kids was like throwing red meat to wolves. But hadn’t the boy turned up in Paris, France, singing in a cathedral?

  “I never thought I’d live to see the day ...” said Cynthia, lying prostrate in bed.

  “Which day?”

  “The day I’d be in bed at eight-thirty.”

  “You’ve become a true Mitfordian. The mountain air has finally gotten the best of your big-city habits.”

  “Did I clean my face? I forgot. Could you look? I hope I did, because I can’t get up, I’m sore all over.”

  “I’ve been meaning to ask ... why are you giving one colossal, backbreaking tea when you might, say, give a couple of medium-size teas?”

  “Medium-size does not hack it in today’s world, dearest. Medium, tedium. The idea is to kill yourself once a year and keep them talking, and then I don’t have to be president or chairman of anything, and everybody still speaks to me and respects my husband.”

  “Aha.”

  “Do you really like the dining room?”

  “I really do. Very much. It’s wonderful. But I was wondering ...”

  “Ummm ...”

  “What happened to the drapes.”

  “I unhooked them from the rod and Puny wore a mask and caught them in a laundry basket and took them to the Dumpster. We would have burned them in the backyard, but there’s a law.”

  “That bad, huh?”

  “Historic.”

  He looked at the ceiling. No wind or breezes tonight. “Sorry I messed up that batch of lemon squares.”

  She yawned hugely. “It’s OK. Puny and I are baking all d
ay tomorrow. I know I could have accepted help or called on the ECW, but those women already work like slaves, and I want to give everyone a lovely break. I want them to feel honored and special.

  “I don’t mind all this work, really I don’t. It’s my own fault that I decided to redecorate, but it had to be done, you know, it was like a cave down there. Next year will be a breeze. Oh. Can you help me with the vegetable sandwiches Wednesday morning, and melt the chocolate and dip the strawberries?”

  “My pleasure,” he said, meaning it.

  “I need your moral support more than you imagine. To tell the truth, it will mean everything. It’s the first time out for the rector’s new wife, you know.”

  He took her hand. “Mark my words, it’s going to be the grandest event since the unveiling of the statue at the town museum.”

  “Just one more day to go,” she said, “and then boom, a hundred and twenty women all talking at once! I have a feeling Uncle Billy will come with Miss Rose, don’t you?”

  “I’d be surprised if he doesn’t.”

  “I hope he does. It will add an air of intrigue.”

  Uncle Billy? Intrigue?

  “Do you really like the kitchen, Timothy?”

  “Greatly. I think it’s ... interesting ... that you knocked the plaster off the wall in forty-seven places.”

  “It’s that wonderful ruined look. Are you laughing?”

  “I am not.”

  “I see your stomach jiggling.”

  “The kitchen might go over a few heads on Wednesday.”

  “When we leave, I’ll replaster,” she said.

  There was a long silence.

  She looked at him. “We never talk about when you—we—might ... leave.”

  “That’s because I don’t have the faintest idea,” he snapped.

  Why had he snapped at her? Because Stuart Cullen was always pushing him to consider his retirement—what he was going to do and when he was going to do it. He wouldn’t know until he did it, and that should be enough for anybody.

  The phone by the bed gave a sharp blast.

  “Father? Richard Fleming.”