These High, Green Hills

by Jan Karon

  “Rats!” said Cynthia Kavanagh, who had left a wet scatter rug hanging over the rectory porch rail. Lifting it off the rail, she found it frozen as a Popsicle and able to stand perfectly upright.

  Father Timothy Kavanagh, the local rector, had never heard such moaning and groaning about spring’s tedious delay, and encountered it even in Happy Endings bookstore, where, on yet another cold, overcast morning, he picked up a volume entitled Hummingbirds in the Garden.

  “Hummingbirds?” wailed young Hope Winchester, ringing the sale. “What hummingbirds? I suppose you think a hummingbird would dare stick its beak into this arctic tundra, this endless twilight, this ... this villatic barbican?”

  Villatic barbican was a phrase she had learned just yesterday from a book, and wanted to use it before she forgot it. She knew the rector from Lord’s Chapel was somebody she could use such words with—he hadn’t flinched when she said “empiric” only last week, and seemed to know exactly what she was talking about.

  While everyone else offered lamentations exceeding those of the prophet Jeremiah, the rector felt smugly indifferent to complaints that spring would never come. Turning up his collar, he leaned into a driving wind and headed toward the office.

  Hadn’t winter dumped ice, snow, sleet, hail, and rain storms on the village since late October? Hadn’t they been blanketed by fog so thick you could cut it with a dull knife, time and time again? With all that moisture seeping into the ground for so many long months, didn’t it foretell the most glorious springtime in years? And wouldn’t that be, after all, worth the endless assault?

  “Absolutely!” he proclaimed aloud, trucking past the Irish Woolen Shop. “No doubt about it!”

  “See there?” said Hessie Mayhew, peering out the store window. “It’s got Father Tim talking to himself, it’s that bad.” She sighed. “They say if sunlight doesn’t get to your pineal glands for months on end, your sex drive quits.”

  Minnie Lomax, who was writing sale tags for boiled wool sweaters, looked up and blinked. “What do you know about pineal glands?” She was afraid to ask what Hessie might know about sex drive.

  “What does anybody know about pineal glands?” asked Hessie, looking gloomy.

  Uncle Billy Watson opened his back door and, without leaving the threshold, lifted the hanging basket off the nail and hauled it inside.

  “Look what you’ve gone and done to that geranium!” snapped his wife of nearly fifty years. “I’ve petted that thing the winter long, and now it’s dead as a doornail.”

  The old man looked guilt stricken. “B‘fore I hung it out there, hit was already gone south!”

  “Shut my mouth? Did you say shut my mouth?” Miss Rose, who refused to wear hearing aids, glared at him.

  “I said gone south! Dead! Yeller leaves!”

  He went to the kitchen radiator and thumped the hanging basket on top. “There,” he said, disgusted with trying to have a garden in a climate like this, “that’ll fire it up again.”

  The rector noted the spears of hosta that had congregated in beds outside the office door. Now, there, as far as spring was concerned, was something you could count on. Hosta was as sturdy a plant as you could put in the ground. Like the postman, neither sleet nor snow could drive it back. Once it emerged from the dirt, up it came, fiercely denant—only, of course, to have its broad leaves shredded like so much Swiss cheese by Mitford’s summer hail.

  “It’s a jungle out there,” he sighed, unlocking his office door.

  After the snow flurry and freeze came a day of rain, followed by a sudden storm of sleet that pecked against the windows like a flock of house sparrows.

  His wife, he noted, looked pale. She was sitting at the study window, staring at the infernal weather and chewing her bottom lip. She was also biting the cuticle of her thumb, wrapping a strand of hair around one finger, tapping her foot, and generally amusing herself. He, meanwhile, was reading his new book, and doing something productive.

  A low fire crackled on the hearth.

  “Amazing!” he said. “You’d never guess one of the things that attracts butterflies.”

  “I don’t have a clue,” said Cynthia, appearing not to want one, either. The sleet gusted against the window panes.

  “Birdbaths!” he exclaimed. No response. “Thinking about the Primrose Tea, are you?”

  The second edition of his wife’s famous parish-wide tea was coming in less than two weeks. Last year at this time, she was living on a stepladder, frantically repainting the kitchen and dining room, removing his octogenarian drapes, and knocking holes in the plaster to affect an “old Italian villa look.” Now here she was, staring out the window without any visible concern for the countless lemon squares, miniature quiches, vegetable sandwiches, and other items she’d need to feed a hundred and twenty-five women, nearly all of whom would look upon the tea as lunch.

  His dog, Barnabas, ambled in and crashed by the hearth, as if drugged.

  Cynthia tapped her foot and drummed her fingers on the chair arm. “Hmmm,” she said.

  “Hmmm what?”

  She looked at him. “T. D. A.”

  “T. D. A.?”

  “The Dreaded Armoire, dearest.”

  His heart pounded. Please, no. Not the armoire. “What about it?” he asked, fearing the answer.

  “It’s time to move it into our bedroom from the guest room. Remember? We said we were going to do it in the spring!” She smiled at him suddenly, as she was wont to do, and her sapphire-colored eyes gleamed. After a year and a half of marriage, how was it that a certain look from her still made him weak in the knees?

  “Aha.”

  “So!” she said, lifting her hands and looking earnest.

  “So? So, it’s not spring!” He got up from the sofa and pointed toward the window. “See that? You call that spring? This, Kavanagh, is as far from spring as ... as ...”

  “As Trieste is from Wesley,” she said, helping out, “or the Red Sea from Mitford Creek.” He could never get over the way her mind worked. “But do not look at the weather, Timothy, look at the calendar! May third!”

  Last fall, they had hauled the enormous armoire down her stairs, down her back steps, through the hedge, up his back steps, along the hall, and finally, up the staircase to the guest room, where he had wanted nothing more than to fall prostrate on the rug.

  Had she liked it in the guest room, after all that? No, indeed. She had despised the very sight of it sitting there, and instantly came up with a further plan, to be executed in the spring; all of which meant more unloading of drawers and shelves, more lashing the doors closed with a rope, and more hauling—this time across the landing to their bedroom, where, he was convinced, it would tower over them in the night like a five-story parking garage.

  “What are you going to do about the tea?” he asked, hoping to distract her.

  “Not much at all ‘til we get the armoire moved. You know how they are, Timothy, they want to poke into every nook and cranny. Last year, Hessie Mayhew was down on her very hands and knees, peering into the laundry chute, I saw her with my own eyes. And Georgia Moore opened every cabinet door in the kitchen, she said she was looking for a water glass, when I know for a fact she was seeing if the dishes were stacked to her liking. So, I certainly can’t have the armoire standing on that wall in the guest room where it is clearly”—she paused and looked at him—“clearly out of place.”

  He was in for it.

  He had managed to hold off the move for a full week, but, in return for the delay, was required to make four pans of brownies (a specialty since seminary), clean out the fireplace, black the andirons, and prune the overgrown forsythia at the dining room windows.

  Not bad, considering.

  On Saturday morning before the big event the following Friday, he rose early, prayed, studied Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians, and sat with his sermon notes; then he ran two miles with Barnabas on his red leash, and returned home fit for anything.

  His heart still
pounding from the final sprint across Baxter Park, he burst into the kitchen, which smelled of lemons, cinnamon, and freshly brewed coffee. “Let’s do it!” he cried. And get it over with, he thought.

  The drawers were out, the shelves were emptied, the doors were lashed shut with a rope. This time, they were dragging it across the floor on a chenille bedspread, left behind by a former rector.

  “... a better way of life!”

  Cynthia looked up. “What did you say, dearest?”

  “I didn’t say anything.”

  “Mack Stroupe will bring improvement, not change ... ”

  They stepped to the open window of the stair landing and looked down to the street. A new blue pickup truck with a public address system was slowly cruising along Wisteria Lane, hauling a sign in the bed. Mack for Mitford, it read; Mitford for Mack.

  “... improvement, not change. So, think about it, friends and neighbors. And remember—here in Mitford, we already have the good life. With Mack as mayor, we’ll all have a better life!” A loud blast of country music followed: “If you don’t stand for something, you’ll fall for anything ...”

  She looked at him. “Mack Stroupe! Please, no.”

  He wrinkled his brow and frowned. “This is May. Elections aren’t ‘til November.”

  “Starting a mite early.”

  “I’ll say,” he agreed, feeling distinctly uneasy.

  “He’s done broke th‘ noise ordinance,” said Chief Rodney Underwood, hitching up his gun belt.

  Rodney had stepped to the back of the Main Street Grill to say hello to the early morning regulars in the rear booth. “Chapter five, section five-two in the Mitford Code of Ordinance lays it out. No PA systems for such a thing as political campaigns.”

  “Startin‘ off his public career as a pure criminal,” said Mule Skinner.

  “Which is th‘ dadgum law of the land for politicians!” The Mitford Muse editor, J. C. Hogan, mopped his brow with a handkerchief.

  “Well, no harm done. I slapped a warning on ‘im, that ordinance is kind of new. Used to, politicians was haulin’ a PA up and down th‘ street, ever’ whichaway.”

  “What about that truck with the sign?” asked Father Tim.

  “He can haul th‘ sign around all he wants to, but th’ truck has to keep movin.‘ If he parks it on town property, I got ’im. I can run ‘im in and he can go to readin’ Soutbern Livin‘.” The local jail was the only detention center the rector ever heard of that kept neat stacks of Southern Living magazine in the cells.

  “I hate to see a feller make a fool of hisself,” said Rodney. “Ain’t nobody can whip Esther Cunningham—an‘ if you say I said that, I’ll say you lied.”

  “Right,” agreed Mule.

  “ ‘Course, she has told it around that one of these days, her an’ Ray are takin‘ off in th’ RV and leave th‘ mayorin’ to somebody else.”

  Mule shook his head. “Fifteen years is a long time to be hog-tied to a thankless job, all right.”

  “Is that Mack’s new truck?” asked Father Tim. As far he knew, Mack never had two cents to rub together, as his hot-dog stand by the Exxon station never seemed to rake in much business.

  “I don’t know whose truck it is, it sure couldn’t be Mack’s. Well, I ain’t got all day to loaf, like you boys.” Rodney headed for the register to pick up his breakfast order. “See you in th‘ funny papers.”

  J.C. scowled. “I don’t know that I’d say nobody can whip Esther. Mack’s for improvement, and we’re due for a little improvement around here, if you ask me.”

  “Nobody asked you,” said Mule.

  He dialed the number from his office. “Mayor!”

  “So it’s the preacher, is it? I’ve been lookin‘ for you.”

  “What’s going on?”

  “If that low-down scum thinks he can run me out of office, he’s got another think coming.”

  “Does this mean you’re not going to quit and take off with Ray in the RV?”

  “Shoot! That’s what I say just to hear my head roar. Listen—you don’t think the bum has a chance, do you?”

  “To tell the truth, Esther, I believe he does have a chance....”

  Esther’s voice lowered. “You do?”

  “About the same chance as a snowball in July.”

  She laughed uproariously, and then sobered. “Of course, there is one way that Mack Stroupe could come in here and sit behind th‘ mayor’s desk.”

  He was alarmed. “Really?”

  “But only one. And that’s over my dead body.”

  Something new was going on at home nearly every day.

  On Tuesday evening, he found a large, framed watercolor hanging in the rectory’s once-gloomy hallway. It was of Violet, Cynthia’s white cat and the heroine of the award-winning children’s books created by his unstoppable wife. Violet sat on a brocade cloth, peering into a vase filled with nasturtiums and a single, wide-eyed goldfish.

  “Stunning!” he said. “Quite a change.”

  “Call it an improvement,” she said, pleased.

  On Wednesday, he found new chintz draperies in the dining room and parlor, which gave the place a dazzling elegance that fairly bowled him over. But—hadn’t they agreed that neither would spend more than a hundred bucks without the other’s consent?

  She read his mind. “So, the draperies cost five hundred, but since the watercolor is worth that and more on the current market, it’s a wash.”

  “Aha.”

  “I’m also doing one of Barnabas, for your study. Which means,” she said, “that the family coffers will respond by allotting new draperies for our bedroom.”

  “You’re a bookkeeping whiz, Kavanagh. But why new draperies when we’re retiring in eighteen months?”

  “I’ve had them made so they can go anywhere, and fit any kind of windows. If worse comes to worst, I’ll remake them into summer dresses, and vestments for my clergyman.”

  “That’s the spirit!”

  Why did he feel his wife could get away with anything where he was concerned? Was it because he’d waited sixty-two years, like a stalled ox, to fall in love and marry?

  If he and Cynthia had written a detailed petition on a piece of paper and sent it heavenward, the weather couldn’t have been more glorious on the day of the talked-about tea.

  Much to everyone’s relief, the primroses actually bloomed. However, no sooner had the eager blossoms appeared than Hessie Mayhew bore down on them with a vengeance, in yards and hidden nooks everywhere. She knew precisely the location of every cluster of primroses in the village, not to mention the exact whereabouts of each woods violet, lilac bush, and pussy willow.

  “It’s Hessie!” warned an innocent bystander on Hessie’s early morning run the day of the tea. “Stand back!”

  Furnished with a collection of baskets, which she wore on her arms like so many bracelets, Hessie did not allow help from the Episcopal Church Women, or any of her own presbyters. She worked alone, she worked fast, and she worked smart.

  After going at a trot through neighborhood gardens, huffing up Old Church Lane to a secluded bower of early-blooming shrubs, and combing four miles of country roadside, she showed up at the back door of the rectory at precisely eleven a.m., looking triumphant.

  Sodden with morning dew and black dirt, she delivered a vast quantity of flowers, moss, and grapevine into the hands of the rector’s househelp, Puny Guthrie, then flew home to bathe, dress, and put antibiotic cream on her knees, which were skinned when she leaned over to pick a wild trillium and fell sprawling.

  The Episcopal Church Women, who had arrived as one body at ten-thirty, flew into the business of arranging “Hessie’s truck,” as they called it, while Barnabas snored in the garage and Violet paced in her carrier.

  “Are you off?” asked Cynthia, as the rector came at a trot through the hectic kitchen.

  “Off and running. I finished polishing the mail slot, tidying the slipcover on the sofa, and trimming the lavender by the front walk.
I also beat the sofa pillows for any incipient dust, and coughed for a full five minutes.”

  “Well done!” she said, cheerily, giving him a hug.

  “I’ll be home at one-thirty to help the husbands park cars.”

  Help the husbands park cars? he thought as he sprinted toward the office. He was a husband! After all these months, the thought still occasionally slammed him in the solar plexus and took his breath away.

  Nine elderly guests, including the Kavanaghs’ friend, Louella, arrived in the van from Hope House and were personally escorted up the steps of the rectory and into the hands of the Altar Guild.

  Up and down Wisteria Lane, men with armbands stitched with primroses and a cross directed traffic, which quickly grew snarled. At one point, the rector leaped into a stalled Chevrolet and managed to roll it to the curb. Women came in car pools, husbands dropped off spouses, daughters delivered mothers, and all in all, the narrow street was as congested as a carnival in Rio.

  “This is th‘ biggest thing to hit Mitford since th’ blizzard two years ago,” said Mule Skinner, who was a Baptist, but offered to help out, anyway.

  The rector laughed. “That’s one way to look at it.” Didn’t anybody ever walk in this town?

  “Look here!”

  It was Mack Stroupe in that blasted pickup truck, carting his sign around in their tea traffic. Mack rolled by, chewing on a toothpick and looking straight ahead.

  “You comin‘ to the Primrose Tea?” snapped Mule. “If not, get this vehicle out of here, we’re tryin’ to conduct a church function!”

  Four choir members, consisting of a lyric soprano, a mezzo-soprano, and two altos, arrived in a convertible, looking windblown and holding on to their hats.

  “Hats is a big thing this year,” observed Uncle Billy Watson, who stood at the curb with Miss Rose and watched the proceedings. Uncle Billy was the only man who showed up at last year’s tea, and now considered his presence at the event to be a tradition.