These High, Green Hills

by Jan Karon

  His heart was pounding—thundering, in fact. If somebody named Granny could negotiate this bank, so could he. However, somebody named Granny was not likely to have six pounds of red meat swinging in a sack lashed to her back.

  “Git m‘ hat!” said Lace; keeping her voice low. “That bush knocked it off.”

  “Keep going,” he said. “I’ve got it.”

  He jammed it on his head and hauled himself up by grabbing onto the exposed root of a tree.

  What was he doing out here in the dark of the night, scrambling up a bank like some chicken-poaching thief? He had put Lace Turner and himself at senseless risk, and in a foolish and impetuous way, to boot. What if her father saw her? What if Lester Marshall was hanging around Harley’s trailer? Not a living soul would be likely to forgive the local rector if anything happened.

  However, if God’s love had made Scott Murphy invincible, why wouldn’t it do the same for him and for her? When it came to loving His children, God didn’t pick favorites.

  “We’re gittin‘ there,” she said. “You OK?”

  “I’m hangin‘ in.” He was so out of breath, he might have run a 10k. If he could only rest a minute....

  “Don’t be settin‘ down,” she hissed. “I can see ol’ Harley’s TV shinin‘ th’ough th‘ winder.”

  The stench of garbage and mold had assaulted his nostrils all the way up the bank. In the moonlight, lining the trail to their left, he saw the pale, abandoned hulks of refrigerators and stoves, half-exposed in mounds of rain-soaked debris. That day in Omer’s plane, he had looked down on this very place, never dreaming—

  He heard skittering noises in the dump, and shivered.

  They reached the top of the bank, where the ground leveled off. “Set!” she whispered. “Git that sack out an‘ give it t’ me.”

  He did, noting that his hands shook.

  “They ain’t nothin‘ t’ be skeered of,” she said. “I done this a million times. When we git beyond here, th‘ dogs’ll start up. I’ll th’ow down th‘ meat and you hit Harley’s winder with these little rocks. Here.” She handed him two pieces of gravel she had picked up from the creek. “That’s m’ signal f‘r’im t‘ let me in.”

  “What if he’s sleeping?”

  “He don’t sleep ‘til ’way up in th‘ night.”

  “What if he can’t hear it hit the window?”

  “He’ll hear th‘ dogs start up an’ listen f‘r th’ rocks.”

  He hoped her plan worked as well as she seemed to think it would. Six pounds of meat wouldn’t last six minutes. If Barnabas Kavanagh was any indication, three seconds, maximum, was what they could count on.

  “What about the dogs when we leave?” he whispered urgently. The sack of meat might work up front, but what strategy would they use to protect the rear?

  “He’ll call ‘em off,” she said. “You ready?”

  “Ready.” An outright lie.

  “Lord, if it ain’t Lace,” said Harley Welch, grinning. They were in the trailer with the door slammed behind them and three dogs pounding on it like jackhammers. He was breathing hard.

  “You won’t have t‘ feed them dogs f’r a couple of days,” said Lace.

  Harley shook his hand, still grinning. If there was a tooth in Harley’s head, the rector didn’t see it. He instantly liked this whiskered man whose eyes revealed genuine kindness.

  “You ‘uns come in. Th’ boy’s sleepin‘ an’ I’m jis’ havin‘ me a little snack.” Harley held up a spoon.

  The rector saw a cracked green vinyl sofa with an open food can sitting on one of the cushions. A lamp with a bare light bulb illuminated the corner of the room, and newspapers were taped over the windows.

  “You ‘uns want a bite?”

  “I done eat,” said Lace.

  “Me, too,” said the rector.

  “I like y‘r hat.” Harley pointed to his head. “Ol’ Lace has a hat jis’ like it, ‘cept I think your’n’s in worser shape.”

  Lace sat on the arm of the sofa. “We come t‘ git Poobaw. Pauline’s still half burned up in th’ hospital.”

  “Yeah,” said Harley, “an‘ th’ law’s done got ‘er man.”

  There was some good news in this world, the rector thought.

  “Better wake ‘im up and git ’im started,” she said. “Are they any of ‘is clothes over here?”

  “Ain’t but what he had on,” said Harley, still grinning. He picked up the can and rattled the spoon around in it. “Boys, if them beans didn’t walk right out of there.” He looked at the rector and said mischievously, “OI‘ dump rat got ’em.”

  “Oh, hush, Harley, they ain’t any rats in here. Rats stay as far away from you as they can git.”

  He cackled. “Ain’t she a bird? I knowed ‘er since she was knee high to a duck. Lace, your pap’s done left, he raked ever’thing out and hauled it off.”

  Father Tim saw her face, and thought he could not bear to see another hurting soul in this world.

  “Took y‘r brother with ’im.” Harley laughed. “Good riddance t‘ bad rubbish.”

  “There’s ol‘ Poobaw,” she said. The boy came into the room, rubbing his eyes.

  “Hey,” he murmured sleepily, smiling up at her.

  Hey, yourself, he almost said, feeling his heart swell with a nameless joy.

  They were down the bank. They were across the creek. They were walking over the little bridge.

  There was Winnie Ivey’s small cottage, with the glow of a lamp in the window. And above them sailed a great orb of moon that washed the whole scene with a silvery light.

  He felt the boy’s hand in his and saw Lace walking ahead of them, her shoulders squared under the old coat she’d worn again for tonight.

  He felt touched by something that, in all his years as a priest, he had never known and, for the moment, didn’t even wish to understand or define.

  “Cynthia,” he said, coming through the back door, “there’s someone I’d like you to meet....”

  The boy walked in, blinking in the bright light of the kitchen.

  “Poobaw Barlowe!” the rector said.

  If he thought he was thrilled, it was nothing compared to what he saw expressed in the face of his jubilant wife.

  “Pauline, there’s someone here to see you.”

  He backed out the door as Poobaw went in.

  “Mama?” said the boy, and ran to her bed.

  He was closing the door as he saw Poobaw lift his hand and tenderly pat the right side of his mother’s beaming face.

  “Dooley,” he shouted, hailing him between the Meadowgate farmhouse and the barn, “there’s someone here to see you. They’re waiting on the porch!”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  These High, green Hills

  FIELDS OF BROOM SEDGE turned overnight into lakes of gold, and the scented vines of Lady’s Mantle crept into hedges everywhere, as the sun moved and the light changed, and the brisk, clean days grew shorter.

  “You always say this is the best fall we’ve ever had,” Dora Pugh scolded a customer at the hardware. “How can every year be the best?”

  Avis Packard put up a banner, Percy Mosely at last took his down, and the Collar Button was having its annual fall sale. The latter encouraged the rector to make a few purchases for Dooley Barlowe, now back at school, which included three pairs of khakis, four pairs of socks, and a couple of handkerchiefs that Dooley would never use for their intended purpose.

  Pauline Barlowe was two hours away in a burn therapy center, Lace Turner was enrolled in seventh grade at Mitford School, and Poobaw—living with his grandfather, Russell Jacks, at the home of practical nurse Betty Craig—was enrolled in fourth grade.

  Louella was pushing along with Winnie Ivey, Scott Murphy had moved into the cottage on the creek with Luke, Lizzie, a bed, three chairs, and a wok, and J. C. Hogan had, only days ago, announced his news.

  “I thought for a while there,” said Mule,“ that we’d have to do it for you—like that feller with t
h‘ big nose.”

  “Do what for me, and what big nose?” asked J.C.

  “You know ... ” Mule looked to the rector for help.

  “Cyrano de Bergerac. He proposed to Roxane as proxy for Christian de Neuvillette.”

  “Never heard of him. Anyway, I pulled it it off myself, thank you.”

  “How’d you feel about proposing?” Mule asked.

  “I threw up right after.”

  “I bet that was attractive. How’d you do it?”

  “Just bent over the toilet and up it came.”

  “That,” said Mule, “is not what I was askin‘. How did you propose? I hope you didn’t do one of those dumb tricks like put th’ ring in a piece of cake.”

  J.C. looked surprised. “How’d you know? I was over at her place and she’d baked a cake for my birthday and while she was in the kitchen, I mashed the ring down in her piece—in the icing part.”

  “What if she’d bitten into it?” asked the rector.

  “What if she’d swallowed it?” asked the Realtor.

  J.C. mopped his face with a handkerchief. “Bein‘ a working woman, she eats fast, and before you know it, she was bearin’ down on that ring pretty hard, so I looked over and said, ‘What in the dickens is that in your cake?’ and she said, ‘Well, I never, it’s a ring.’ ”

  “Then what did you say?” asked Mule.

  “Y‘all are worse’n a bunch of old women.”

  “It’s true,” admitted the rector.

  “I said, ‘Want to do it?’ and she said, ‘OK.’ ”

  Mule rolled his eyes. “Want to do it? You said that?”

  “If it was good enough for Officer Adele Lynwood,” snapped J.C., “it ought to be good enough for you, buddyroe.”

  Mule peered across the table. “Did you get down on your knees or anything?”

  “Are you kidding me?”

  “So you proposed on your birthday!” exclaimed the rector.

  “Right.”

  “That’s what I did, you know.”

  Mule cackled. “You don’t mean it. I didn’t know that. I declare.”

  “It’s a dadblame epidemic,” said the editor, grinning.

  Velma skidded up to the booth and glared at J.C. “OK, what’ll you have, and don’t take all day.”

  The rector and the Realtor looked expectantly at J.C. “Low-fat yogurt and grapefruit juice ... ”

  “Here we go again,” sighed Mule.

  “With a side of sausage and grits,” said the editor.

  “When it boots,” Emma told him, “I have the configuration file install all the device drivers I’ll need all day.”

  “Great!” he said, oiling the roller on his Royal manual.

  “Can you believe the object linking and embedding capabilities allow me to make all my applications interactive?”

  “I’ll be darned,” he said.

  “Not only that, I can append to th‘ database, paste from th’ clipboard, or drag and drop anywhere ...”

  “No kidding!”

  “ ... within seconds,” she said, looking triumphant.

  On what Emma called their now bimonthly “Tech Day,” she hauled in everything from roast beef and green beans to macaroni and cheese, which she fed Dave in huge quantities. Over lunch at the rector’s desk, which resembled a neighborhood cafeteria, they blithely spoke a language as foreign to him as Croatian.

  On Tech Day, one thing was for certain:

  He was out of there.

  Whenever he met Bill Sprouse, who always wanted to know how it was going, he answered from an assortment of enthusiastic responses, including “Terrific!” “Couldn’t be better!” and his increasing favorite, “No problem!” With Emma Newland having taken to advanced technology like a duck to water, wasn’t every word of that the everlasting truth?

  Never say you can’t teach an old dog new tricks, he thought, hoofing it to the Grill before Dave roared in at eleven-thirty.

  He had dropped the Fernbank key in his pocket when he dressed to go running, and was standing in the middle of Miss Sadie’s attic, trying to find the right thing. In a way, it was like shopping, without the blasted aggravation of a mall.

  Hat boxes, trunks, rocking chairs, a rolltop desk. Old newspapers, neatly piled and the stacks numbered. Dozens of umbrellas, both Chinese paper and crumbling silk, lamp bases, a magnificent chair with wheels, piles of folded draperies covered with sheets, a child’s rocker, a child’s table and chairs, headboards, footboards, rusting bedsprings.

  It was overwhelming, and only a little light fell in through the window.

  There. A large trunk with the initials JB. Josiah Baxter.

  A cracked leather chair, a floor lamp with a hand-painted parchment shade. Books, books, and more books. A series of boxes stacked on a Jacobean table.

  He looked at the boxes, one by one, until he came to the traveling case fitted with a comb and brushes, a shoehorn, talcum powder, and empty, cut-crystal bottles for cologne.

  He picked it up and brushed away the dust with his handkerchief. JB, read the dim monogram on the leather.

  “Something of Papa’s,” Miss Sadie had said.

  It was a little fancy for a man like Buck Leeper, but it would certainly do.

  “Retreat time!” she announced as he came in the back door, ready to do another few hours’ work at home.

  “Didn’t we just have one?” he asked, scratching his head.

  “Timothy, that was July! This is October.”

  “Oh,” he said.

  “I’m just packing up this hamper and we’ll be off. The sunset should be glorious tonight; there was a red sky this morning!”

  “Doesn’t red sky in morning mean sailor take warning?”

  “Whatever,” she said happily, stuffing in a wedge of cheese.

  Barnabas trudged with them up the hill, where, panting furiously, they all arrived at the stone wall.

  “Don’t really look at the view just yet, dearest. Let’s save it until we finish setting up our picnic, shall we?”

  He spread the old fringed cloth, which had belonged to a bishop’s wife in the late forties, over the wall, and Cynthia began unpacking what she’d just packed.

  Why was he up here on the hill, lolling about like some gigolo, when he had a nursing home to officially open one week hence, and a thousand details to be ironed out, only two of which had kept him up until one o‘clock in the morning? But no, let his wife finish a book and she went instantly into the lolling mode. Perhaps it was this very lolling mode of the last two months that had given her countenance the beatific look he’d lately noticed.

  “The domestic retreat,” she said, setting out a plate of crackers, “is an idea which could literally save the institution of marriage. Do you know that studies say husbands and wives speak to each other a total of only seventeen minutes a week?”

  “We’re so far over that quota, we’ve landed in another study.”

  “I’ll say. Roasted garlic. Ripe pears. Toasted pecans. Saga bleu.”

  She pulled out napkins and two glasses and poured a round of raspberry tea.

  “There!” she said. “Now we can look!”

  The Land of Counterpane stretched beneath their feet, a wide panorama of rich Flemish colors under a perfectly blue and cloudless sky.

  Church steeples poked up from groves of trees.

  Plowed farmland appeared like velveteen scraps on a quilt, feather-stitched with hedgerows.

  There, puffs of chimney smoke billowed heavenward, and over there, light gleamed on a pond that regularly supplied fresh trout to Avis Packard’s Local.

  “Look, dearest! Look at our high, green hills.”

  He gazed across the little valley and up, up to the green hills, where groves of blazing hardwoods topped the ridges, and fences laced the broad, uneven meadows.

  “Aren’t they beautiful in this light?”

  “They are!” he said, meaning it.

  “Where’s the train?”

  He p
eered at his watch. “Ten minutes!” The little train would come winding through the valley, over the trestle that spanned the gorge, and just as it broke through the trees by the red barn and the silo, they would see it. If providence were with them, they would also hear the long, mournful blast of its horn.

  Away to the east, he thought he saw a speck of some kind, a bird perhaps. But birds didn’t gleam. Aha! It was a little plane. It was a little yellow plane. By jing, it was Omer Cunningham. Dipping, rolling, gliding, soaring. Omer! He stood up on the wall and waved.

  “What in the world ... ?” asked his wife.

  “That’s Omer,” he said, gleeful.

  “Who is Omer?”

  He waved some more and thought he could see Omer waving back as the little plane dipped its right wing and roared into the blue.

  “Omer. I declare.” He felt a silly grin stretching all the way across his face.

  “You know absolutely everybody,” she said, impressed.

  He sat back down and gazed around and gulped his tea. “Ah, well, we won’t be doing this forever,” he said.

  “I know!” She raised her glass to his. “We’ll be living in some far-off land filled with adventure!”

  “Right.”

  She sighed.

  “Why are you sighing?”

  “Was I sighing? I didn’t know I was sighing.”

  “Sighing often goes unnoticed by the sigher,” he said.

  “Ummm. What did we agree we wanted in the place where we’ll retire?” she asked.

  “Oh, as I recall, four distinct seasons ... ”

  “Absolutely!” she said.

  “A small house and a big yard.”

  “Oh, yes. Now I remember. We plant, we mow.”

  “You got it. And nothing flat, we said.”

  “Flat is so ... ” She paused, looking for words.

  “Flat,” he remarked.

  “Right!” she agreed.

  “Didn’t we say something about liking winters that freeze our glasses to our noses?”

  “Definitely.”

  “Listen!” He cupped his hands to his ears. “Here it comes!”