Light From Heaven

by Jan Karon

  Faithful Remnant

  He found Cynthia in the laundry room.

  “I’m so happy for you!” She planted a glad kiss on his cheek.

  “And I’m happy for you,” he said. “After all, this gets me out of your hair.”

  She laughed. “But I love having you in my hair. Speaking of hair ...”

  “Let’s don’t.”

  “So tell me, darling—what is a vicar? I come from the Presbyterian side, you know.” She stuffed their jeans and denim shirts into the washing machine.

  “A vicar is the priest of a church that isn’t a parish church.”

  “So you’re still a priest!” In went the laundry powder.

  “Absolutely!”

  “Do we still call you Father?”

  “You do! Only a couple of things change, really.... First, the money.”

  “There’s the rub.”

  “I’ll get a stipend, a mere dab. But not to worry, Kavanagh, I have big bucks set aside for our jaunt to Ireland next year.

  “Now, here’s the good part—I won’t have to mix it up with a vestry.”

  “Hallelujah!”

  “Let’s see what else we can stumble upon.” He went to the kitchen bookcase and thumbed through one of the many tomes he’d toted to the farm, and returned to the laundry room.

  “ ‘Vicar: A parish priest appointed by a bishop, to exercise limited jurisdiction in a particular town or district of a diocese.’ Here’s another: ‘A bishop’s assistant in charge of a church or mission.’

  “And finally,” he said, “ ‘A clergyman in charge of a chapel.’ ”

  She cranked the knob to “On.” “That’s quite enough to be in charge of, if you ask me.”

  “Especially as Holy Trinity has stood empty for nearly forty years.”

  His heart pounded as he contemplated such a thing. Empty for forty years! Why on earth would Stuart have been “patently envious” of such a prospect? Just getting the mice and squirrels out would be a job of vast proportion—and then, to fill it with people from Lord knows where ...

  “You look dubious,” she said, folding towels.

  “Not dubious. Dumbfounded!” He closed the book and put it under his arm. “And scared silly, to tell the plain truth.”

  “Remember, sweetheart, what James Hudson Taylor said; you’ve quoted it to me as I plunged into many a Violet book. ‘There are three stages in the work of God: impossible, difficult, done.’ ”

  Of all things! he thought. Of all things ...

  “Let me pray for you.”

  She took his hand in hers, and he had at once the sure and consoling knowledge that her touch was a lifeline, one thrown out to him by God as directly as if He were present in the room—which, of course, He was.

  They recited the Lenten devotion in unison.

  “ ‘... Now as we come to the setting of the sun, and our eyes behold the vesper light, we sing your praises, O God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit....”

  He asked the blessing then, and they looked at each other for a moment across the pine table.

  “I’m thankful for you,” he said, “beyond words.”

  The dogs snored, the fire crackled, the clock struck seven.

  She leaned her head to one side and smiled at him. “Here we sit, under the dome of a winter sky, two people facing the unknown, holding hands across the table in a room lighted by a single candle and a fire on the hearth. I find it all too wondrous, Timothy, and I feel the greatest peace about your new calling; He has called you to come up higher.”

  He knew she was right. No matter about mice and squirrels, or even, God forbid, snakes; he knew she was right.

  He breathed easily, then did something he couldn’t remember doing for a while. He leaned back in the chair and felt the tension release. “Ahhh,” he said.

  “Amen!” she replied with feeling.

  After conferring with Cynthia, he went to the library.

 
 
 
 
 
  Though he had no key to let himself in, he was off at dawn to see Holy Trinity, nicknamed Little Trinity due to its seating capacity of a mere forty souls.

  No matter what obstacles lay ahead, he would roll them over on God and let Him do the managing; as for himself, he would pitch in head first, give it his all, and let the Enemy take the hindmost.

  He would still wear his collar and vestments; he would still celebrate the liturgy and perform all other the offices of a priest. So indeed, hardly anything would change.

  He shifted the truck into second gear for the incline, heading west. And so what if things did change?

  The thought gave him a kind of buzz, as if something carbonated had been released into his system.

  He glanced at Barnabas, who sat on the passenger seat looking fixedly ahead. “Vicar!” he said, tasting the word. “What do you think?”

  Cynthia called him dearest; his cousin’s wife called him Teds; as a boy he’d been called Slick, more’s the pity; his mother had often called him Timmy; Dooley called him Dad; one and all called him Father; and now he’d collected yet another appellation, one derived, appropriately, from vicarious.

  He made the sharp curves neatly, sticking tight to the shoulder. Some people in these parts enjoyed driving in the middle of the road, a risky affinity explained to him at the Farmer post office. “We pay taxes on both sides,” said Merle Hoff, whose property bordered Meadowgate to the north.

  First thing to be done was call a locksmith, he’d take care of that when he got back to the farm. And who would he call to sweep out the place and patch the roof and mend the chimney and replace any rotten floorboards, and generally make things right? He’d cross that bridge when he got to it.

  Stuart said his coadjutor had planned to come and look over the situation at Holy Trinity, but circumstances had intervened, and they knew almost nothing of the details. In truth, the consecration of the cathedral, Stuart’s retirement ceremony, and the consecration of the new bishop were all scheduled to happen in a single day, a fact that had every soul at diocesan headquarters upside down and backward, not to mention beside themselves and altogether witless.

  Stuart had thus turned the entire Holy Trinity caboodle over to him. It was to be Tim Kavanagh’s baby, lock, stock, and barrel; in other words, check it out, go to work, and get it done. According to Stuart, someone who’d anonymously given a cool million to help build the new cathedral also had a special interest in seeing Holy Trinity revived, and had pitched in an extra twenty-five thousand toward that end.

  Further, Holy Trinity was to withhold all offerings from the diocesan assessment, to help fund physical improvements and local outreach programs.

  “You’re absolutely the one for the job,” Stuart told him. “The fact that you currently live within shouting distance of the church had nothing to do with my decision—though it makes things convenient for my new vicar, I should think!

  “You know my unbounded esteem for you, Timothy. I have no intention of prattling on about it and giving you the big head, except to say you’re among the single finest pastors—please read my meaning here—that I’ve had the privilege to serve with.”

  “You’re more than gracious,” he’d replied. “But I must tell you I’ve promised to take Cynthia to Ireland next year for two or three months. I’ve been a bump on a log far too long and I must keep my promise.”

  “Can you give our arrangement one year?”

  “Just that, I’m afraid.”

  “To quote you, Timothy, ‘Consider it done.’ You get Holy Trinity up and running, and we’ll send in a curate for the long haul.”

  He didn’t ask what, exactly, made his bishop feel so all-fired, patently envious.

  He estimated he’d climbed several hundred feet along the winding track, which was in fairly rough condition. Some of the ruts were as deep as watering troughs.

  Always a trick to keep a
steep dirt roadway from washing ...

  It was still a winter landscape, though the minutest of leaf buds were visible. Glancing left into the barren woods, he occasionally caught a glimpse of mountains, a sight that never failed to compel his spirit. On the right, endless upland meadows with vast outcroppings of stone ...

  The road leveled off for a mile or two, then ended abruptly at a bold stream. He was relieved to see that the track continued on the other side. “A ford!” he explained to Barnabas. He hadn’t seen a ford in years.

  He drove the truck carefully through the high waters created by snowmelt from the mountaintop and checked his watch. If the directions from Willie Mullis were right, he should be close. As he left the stream behind, the trees began to form an arch above the lane; light filtered through interlocking branches and danced on the hood of the truck.

  At an ancient white oak, the road curved sharply and he saw it—a white, shingled building with a bell tower, resting on a stone foundation and facing west.

  But this wasn’t what he’d expected, not at all.

  Though the church sat with its back to visitors, it was obvious that the building and grounds were tended, even tidy. Nothing about it spoke of decline or disrepair.

  His eyes searched the green tin roof and the tall window at the rear. Both appeared to be in decent order.

  Was it indeed Holy Trinity? The weathered, hand-painted sign in what he construed to have been the parking lot confirmed that it was.

  He turned off the ignition and reached over and opened the truck door for Barnabas, then jumped down himself. He felt at once the sharp sting of fresh mountain air in his lungs.

  From where he stood, he could see sunlight warming the mountaintops, but the larger view was obscured by a low stone wall that ran in front of the church.

  “Come on, buddy!”

  He trotted alongside the church with a surge of excitement, as if he’d never before seen a rising sun illumine the hills beneath.

  Good Lord!

  Beyond the wall, it appeared that the whole of Creation opened itself to him. An ocean of the world’s oldest mountains rolled away on their journey to the west, green upon green, and in the great distance, blue upon blue. Small lakes of mist collected in the hollows; a poker-red sun cast its light upon the ridges and hog-backs as it ascended above the trees behind him.

  He crossed himself, exultant.

  He might have been standing at the top of the world, with every fret and horror far beneath him; indeed, he might have been standing on hallowed ground ...

  But of course, he was standing on hallowed ground.

  He turned and faced the church. Through open double doors and a shallow narthex, light gleamed in upon the pews.

  “Barnabas! Is this a dream?”

  He hurried up the three stone steps and entered the narthex.

  The smell was incense to him, redolent of old wood and evergreen, of mist and stone and leaf mold, of the whole amphitheater of nature in which Holy Trinity had been set over a century ago.

  He moved into the nave and bowed deeply toward the wooden cross above the altar, to the source of joy that had come upon him so unexpectedly.

  And he’d expected the worst!

  In truth, the pine floor was swept; no cobwebs draped themselves from the rafters; even the windows looked respectably clean.

  He scratched Barnabas behind an ear, amazed and overcome.

  So this is what God had for him.

  He turned to the communion rail, and ran his hand along the wood. Oak. Golden and deeply grained. He rubbed the wood with his thumb, musing and solemn, then dropped to his knees on the bare floor and lowered his head against the rail. Barnabas sat down beside him.

  Lord, thank You for preparing me in every way to be all thatYon desire for this mission, and for making good Your purpose for this call. Show me how to discern the needs here, and how to fulfill them to Your glory and honor.

  He continued aloud, “Bless the memory of all those who have gathered in these pews, and the lives of those who will gather here again.”

  Barnabas leaned against the vicar’s shoulder.

  “I am Thine, O Lord. Show me Thy ways, teach me Thy paths, lead me in Thy truth and teach me.

  “In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.”

  He raised his head and looked at the play of sunlight flooding through the open doors behind him.Where was the one who had opened the church? And why was it prepared for a congregation that hadn’t yet been found?

  He rose and gazed around him at the bead board walls, the ceiling supported by pine beams, the windows that welcomed trees and sky into the small room ...

  “Hello!” he shouted.

  He stood in the single aisle with his back to the altar, looking across the pews and out to the mountains, green upon blue upon purple in the shifting morning light ...

  Shine, Preacher! In thy place, and be content! His scalp prickled with anticipation and the honest cold of a spring morning at four thousand feet.

  After glancing about for any evidence of prayer books or hymnals, which he didn’t spy, he trotted along the aisle and down the steps and cupped his hands to his mouth and shouted again, “Hello!”

  But there was only an echo, and the call of a male cardinal on the bough of a pine near the open door.

  He and Barnabas bounded into the kitchen where Cynthia had set up her watercolor paraphernalia at the north-facing windows.

  “Timothy?” She seemed oddly surprised at the sight of him. “You look years younger! What is it?”

  He thumped onto the window seat. “You’re not going to believe this,” he said.

  He told Dooley where the truck was coming from—namely, the generosity of Miss Sadie Baxter’s heart and purse; he asked the trustee how to channel the funds to the dealer; and he had a final phone seminar on how to get off the lot without being scalped.

  “Ask ’em to pick up th’ freight charges.”

  “Aha.” He could do that.

  “An’ don’t kick th’ tires; they don’t nobody do that n’more.”

  So went Lew’s bottom-line summation of how to buy a truck.

  But of course, there was no truck to buy. Dooley’s list of optional features required that such a vehicle be ordered from the factory, and the wait would be four months.

  “How about three months?” he asked, hoping to appear no-nonsense.

  “Four months,” said the salesman.

  He expected Dooley to settle for fewer options and go for a truck they could drive off the lot.

  No deal.

  Dooley smoked over the available blue model that offered several options he was looking for and made his studied pronouncement. “I’ll wait for red.”

  “Which red do you want?” asked the salesman, who was sporting considerably more aftershave than J. C. Hogan. “If I was you, I’d go for th’ Impulse Red Pearl, that’s your metallic an’ all, an’ a real nice low-key maroon.You take that Radiant Red, it’s a whole lot more noticeable to th’ police.”

  “Definitely Impulse Red!” blurted Father Tim. “Sorry, son. That’s your call entirely.”

  Dooley grinned. “Impulse Red.That’s what I was going to say”

  He was proud of his boy. Dooley’s willingness to wait for what he really wanted was, in his opinion, a definite mark of character.

  Miss Sadie would approve.

  They trotted along the block of Holding’s Main Street where Sammy was best-known. Though Dooley had sent his brother a general delivery letter, saying he’d meet him at the drugstore this morning, the clerk said she hadn’t seen Sammy in a few weeks.

  It must have been early February, she told them; she was putting valentines in the card rack when he came in and bought a Snickers bar.

  “How did he look?” Dooley wanted to know. “Was he sick or anything?”

  “Oh, no,” she said. “He was just his usual self, said he was going to get a haircut.”

  Dooley
and Father Tim glanced at each other. Sammy was proud of cutting his own hair.

  “How much is a haircut in Holding?” asked Dooley.

  “I think it’s eight dollars. My husband, Wayne, died two years ago and I don’t keep up anymore. ”

  When they hit the sidewalk, Dooley frowned. “I wrote and told him I was coming home, an’ I wondered why I didn’t hear back.”

  Dooley kicked at the post of the street sign with the toe of his sneaker. “Seems like if he had eight bucks, he wouldn’t spend it on a haircut.”

  “Let’s hit the barber shop,” said Father Tim.

  The barber looked up from one of his two chairs. “Sammy! You look like you’re preachin’ a funeral, boy. Where’d you get them duds?”

  “My name is Dooley; Sammy’s my little brother. Has he been here lately?”

  The barber blinked his eyes vigorously, as if to clear his vision. “Not since I cut his hair back in, oh, sometime in February, I believe it was. I’ve seen ‘im around town since he was a pup, but that was th’ first time I ever cut ’is hair.”

  “What did you cut his hair for?”

  The barber looked puzzled. “Because he asked me to.”

  “I mean, was he going someplace special or . . . ?”

  “Said he might be takin’ a bus somewhere. I don’t recall where. You sure are th’ spit-dang image of one another.” The barber squinted at Dooley. “Maybe he’s a hair taller.”

  “Two inches,” said Dooley. “Who else in town would know about Sammy?”

  “Don’t have a clue. He makes th’ rounds of th’ drugstore and th’ pool hall. I seen you already go in th’drugstore. I know he goes to th’ post office some; then once in a while he drops by here to see what’s goin’ on.”

  They trekked to the pool hall and post office, then out to the river, where they tried to find Lon Burtie, the Vietnam vet who had taken a supportive interest in Sammy’s welfare. Lon would definitely know where Sammy was. But Lon wasn’t home.

  They left a note stuck behind the metal grid of Lon’s screen door, asking Lon to have Sammy call Dooley at the farm.