by Jan Karon
“Where’s Donny?” asked Father Tim.
“We don’ know where ’e’s at. Donny’s drinkin’.”
Preachers had the right, as it were, to drop by unannounced, but pressing to be invited in was another matter.
He and Cynthia looked at each other.
“Why don’t you ask Sammy to wait for us,” she said. “Perhaps he’d like to look for Indian pipes in the woods. And give me a few minutes with Dovey and Granny before you come in.”
“You got t’ eat, Mama.”
“I don’ want to, Sissie.”
“You got to! Granny says you’ll die if y’ don’t.”
“Nossir,” Granny argued. “I didn’ say nothin’ ‘bout dyin’. I said she cain’t live if she don’t eat.”
Sissie put her fists on her hips. “ ’At’s th’ same as dyin’! ”
Sissie stomped to the bed. “Looky here, Mama, I’m goin’ t’ dance f‘r you, OK? Turn y’r head an’ look over here, I’m dancin’ f‘r you in m’ yeller shoes. I’m dancin’ f’r you, Mama! Please eat!”
“Come, Sissie.” Father Tim held his arms out to her, and she came and sat on his lap, reluctant. “Dovey, there are some things we have to do whether we want to or not. You must take some nourishment.”
“Bring me m’ plate an’ all, then.”
“Hit’s green beans an’ mashed taters,” said Sissie. “An’ what else, Granny?”
“A little stew beef cooked plenty done, with some tasty broth.”
“What’s ’em red things?”
“Beets.”
“She don’ like beets.”
Granny looked firm. “Beets is got arn. She needs arn if she’s goin’ t’ git out of that bed.”
Sissie jumped off his lap and took the plate from Granny.
“Arn, Mama, you need arn,” she said, proffering the plate.
“Help me up, then.”
Cynthia helped Dovey sit up, and rearranged the pillows behind her. “After you eat, I’d like to brush your hair and help you change your pajamas. Would you like that?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“We’ll send Father Tim outside. Will you drink some water?”
“Yes, ma’am, thank you. An’ I need m’ medicine. You can put water in m’ pitcher if y’ don’t mind.”
Cynthia went to the sink with the transferware pitcher, Sissie following with instructions.
“You got t’ hold th’ bottom real good, th’ handle’s been broke off an’ pasted back two times. Mama’s had it since she was little, an’ all ’er pretty dishes, too. Her whole set’s got a castle on it, with cows in th’ yard an’ a river, but it’s near about all broke an’ pasted back. Mamaw Ruby give it to ’er, Mama said maybe I could have it when I’m big.”
“I wisht you’d take this young ‘un on y’r rounds sometime,” Granny told the vicar. “She never gits out t’ hardly do nothin’, stays pent up here like a bunny in a cage.”
“Sissie, how would you like to come with Agnes and me one day—on our rounds?”
“What’s y’r rounds?”
“We visit people. And talk.You like to talk.”
“Oh, Lord help,” said Granny. “She never hushes up!”
“Look!” said Sissie. “Mama took a bite! She’s chewin’!”
He stepped outside with Granny where they found Rooter examining a worm crawling on his pant leg. They thumped down in plastic chairs that had seen more than a little weather.
“Where was you at?” Granny asked Rooter.
“You said don’t come in, so I went up th’ road an’ found ’is worm.”
“Well, don’t set on it an’ mess up y’r britches.” Granny looked around at the small company, pleased with another chance to socialize. “We can watch th’ cars go by!”
Though unable to find Indian pipes, Sammy staggered from the woods with a more valuable find. He thunked a large rock into the truck bed. “Hit’ll catch th’ garden gate when it swings back.”
“Well done! Come and sit with us, buddy; we’ll be going soon.”
Sammy pulled up a chair next to Rooter, nodding to Granny.
“Did you‘uns know Donny’s mama shot ’is daddy?” Rooter asked the vicar. The worm traveled up his forearm.
“We know.”
“Kilt ‘im dead. An’ I reckon y’ know Robert kilt ’is granpaw? He was in jail a long time; Granny says longer’n I been alive.”
“Don’ talk about that awful mess,” said Granny.
“Did you see him do it?” Father Tim asked Rooter.
Rooter picked the worm off his arm and studied it in his palm. “I wadn’t alive when he done it.”
“How do you know he did it?”
“Ol’ Fred what lives in th’ school bus said Robert done it, sure as fire. Ol’ Fred’s got voices in ’is head; he talks t’ people that ain’t even there.”
“Have you been down to that school bus?” Granny looked fierce. “You know good ‘n’ well you ain’t s‘posed t’ go down t’ that school bus.”
“You cain’t whip me f‘r doin’ it, ’cause you cain’t catch me.”
“I’ll have th’ preacher here whip y’ f’r me.”
“No ma’am, I’m not in the whipping business. Let me ask you, Rooter, did Fred say he saw it happen?”
“He said he never seen it happen, but he was walkin’ by on th’ road an’ heerd Robert an’ ‘is granpaw fightin’, said he heered ’is granpaw holler out Robert’s name.”
“Did Fred testify in court, Granny? Do you know?”
“I don’t keep up with trash, hit’s hard enough keepin’ up with decent people.” Granny reached over and snatched Rooter by the hair of his head.
“Oww!” said Rooter.
“I’ll ow y’ worser’n this if y’ go down there ag‘in.” Granny continued to grip a handful of Rooter’s hair. “D’you hear me?”
Rooter looked at Sammy and Father Tim, abashed.
“Do you hear her, son?”
“I hear ye,” he said to Granny.
If he’d spent the morning on the mountaintop, he now found himself in the valley, both literally and figuratively. He was spent.
He leaned back in the library wing chair across from his wife and closed his eyes.
They should have Sammy’s little brother and sister out one weekend. He could pick them up in town, they’d relish seeing the lambs and chickens. Sammy needed the solace of blood kin. Try as he and Cynthia might, they couldn’t give him that.
“How many eggs today?” asked his wife, yawning hugely.
He yawned back. “Same. Fourteen.”
“They’ll be stacking up in the fridge again, please take some on your rounds this week,” she said. “Miss Martha must have used her full dozen in that German chocolate cake. And what a cake!”
“Don’t talk about it,” he said. He could have sworn Martha McKinney had baked a magnet into it, the way it had drawn him to the table time and again. By sheer grace alone, he’d managed to keep his distance, though he’d enjoyed a few crumbs of Lily’s, in case she asked for an opinion.
“I don’t think Dovey’s problem is depression,” she said.
“What do you think it is?” He’d walked through a deep vale of his own, and though he hadn’t stayed in bed, he had darn well wanted to.
“It’s a hunch, really. I feel her problem has its taproot in the physical or physiological. Perhaps the depression comes because her ailment isn’t healing.”
He pondered this, weary in every part. “How about a little nightcap?”
The dogs were snoring, Sammy was on the phone having his almost-nightly talk with Dooley ...
“That would be perfect,” she said. “Why don’t I read to us?”
He willingly forked over the book. “This is from ‘Michael,’ a wonderful poem by Wordsworth. It reminds me of the view from Holy Trinity. Now that I’ve rediscovered the poem, I’ll always imagine sheep among the rocks. Take it from where my thumb was.”
Violet leapt into Cynthia�
��s lap and settled herself, as her mistress adjusted her glasses and read:“The pastoral mountains front you, face to face,
But, courage! For around that boisterous brook
The mountains have all opened out themselves,
And made a hidden valley of their own.
No habitation can be seen; but they
Who journey thither find themselves alone
With a few sheep, with rocks and stones, and kites
That overhead are sailing in the sky.
It is in truth an utter solitude ... ”
She looked at the fireplace where the plywood had been removed, and a ladder inserted into the chimney. She noted the soot and cinders that had fallen onto the hearth since Lily vacuumed, and considered what Lloyd and his helper said they’d be doing first thing Monday morning.Then she looked at her husband, who had fallen asleep with his glasses pushed onto his head.
“Utter solitude, dearest!” She spoke as if he were wide awake. “Can you even imagine such a thing?”
He didn’t know what to make of the decidedly attractive woman standing at their back door. She was wearing a blond wig or his nickname wasn’t Slick Kavanagh—not to mention cowboy boots with pointed toes and an outfit with fringe that was definitely in motion.
“Hi! I’m Vi’let,” she said, giving him a huge smile.
“Violet! I was expecting Lily.”
“Oh, shoot, Lily’s ever’body’s fav’rite.”
All well and good, he wanted to say, except she rarely shows up. How does she get to be everybody’s favorite?
“She said she’ll roll in at nine-thirty, on the dot. Her van had a flat tire; she had to call th’ gas station ’cause her husband’s in Hick‘ry gettin’ ‘is heads ground. Since I was comin’ this way, she asked me t’ stop an’ tell you; she don’t carry a cell phone, you know. Can you imagine not carryin’ a cell phone in t’day’s fast-paced world?”
He could imagine it, actually.
“I’m on m’ cell phone day an’ night, seems like. How ’bout you?”
“I don’t have a cell phone.”
Her blue eyes appeared suddenly larger. “I ain’t b’lievin’ that!”
“But,” he said, grumpy, “I’m going to get a cell phone.”
“When?”
“In july.”
“I’ll help you program it when I do a fill-in for Lily. Well, got to fly; I’m on th’ radio at twelve o’clock.”
“On the radio?”
“Singin’.” So saying, she began to sing. “ ‘Delta Dawn, what’s that flower you have on? ...”
He heard an odd noise, something like a small trumpet played by a small person.
“Oops, m’ cell phone, there it goes! What’d I tell you?” She clattered down the steps. “High Country Lite, ten-forty on your dial! Have a great day! Hey, this is Vi’let, who’s this ... ?”
He noted that Lloyd and his helper stood transfixed, their mouths open.
“I always make up any time I miss!” Lily shouted as he came into the kitchen. Their erstwhile housekeeper trundled the vacuum cleaner across the wooden floor as his wife sat at her easel and appeared ready to jump out the window.
“Right,” he shouted back. “Glad you made it safely!”
He noted that someone was in the fireplace, he saw work boots on the rung of the ladder that disappeared into the throat of the firebox.
“I’m out of here, Kavanagh. Off to see Lottie Greer and Homeless Hobbes. It’s a visit way overdue. Need to pick up a couple of things for our hard-working gardener, and while I’m at it, Lloyd said he could use a trowel; his trusty blade just separated from its handle after twenty-five years. Think of that!”
“Got his money’s worth!” said his wife, looking stoic.
“Three of the kneelers came in with loose seams in the Naugahyde, and have to be returned ; thought I’d drop those at UPS. And Blake can’t leave today, he’s found foot rot in several ewes, which is bad business; I told him I’d pick up the treatment he needs at the vet in Wesley. And if there’s time, I might pop over to Mitford and see Gene and Uncle Billy. Of course, I’d also like to get up to Lambert and look in on Robert Prichard ...”
“Dearest.”
“Yes?”
“You’re in a lather.”
He knew he was out of breath but he hadn’t figured out why.
“Come with me,” she said, taking him by the arm.
They trooped onto the porch and down the steps.
“Where are we going?” he asked.
“Away! Away from the charming tap, tap, tap of the trowels now inside the chimney and beneath my very nose! Away from the tormenting thunder of the vacuum cleaner, and poor Lily’s thousand apologies for disappointing us yet again, and two laundry baskets piled to the ceiling with Sammy’s muddy gardening clothes ... ”
Conciliatory, he let himself be dragged along like a sack of potatoes.
“Away from mounds of dog hair,” she raved on, “and white cats who insist on running out of doors to be eaten by wild painters! Away from the commerce of calendars, and lambs that look like dogs in woolly pajamas and must be painted again and again, and most especially ...”
They were trekking toward the sheep pasture, lickety-split, as if on the lam from some criminal act.
“... away from a new deadline just foisted upon yours truly, which makes me furious with my obdurate, slave-driving, pinheaded editor! Away!”
“But away to where?”
“I have no idea. None. Furthermore, I don’t even want an idea.”
“Aha.”
“Then again,” she said, out of breath, “if I were to get an idea, it might be something like this. Away to peace. Away to solitude. Away to laughter!”
She stopped suddenly and sat in the grass.
He sat down beside her. “You’re beautiful when you’re angry” He’d read that line in a comic book when he was a boy. He’d always thought it a great line.
She burst into laughter and lay back in the grass.
“You’ve been going at a trot yourself, Timothy, just like you always did at Lord’s Chapel and Whitecap. Even when you don’t have a church, you go at a trot. It’s the way you’re wired, sweetheart. I’m not wired that way in the least, yet I find myself being swept along by the trot at which everyone else is going!”
He didn’t want to race away when his wife was venting a dash of exasperation; she never raced away when he vented his. However, Miss Lottie wouldn’t be around forever ...
“Ireland next year,” he said, patting her hand. “And Whitecap, for a long visit.”
She sat up. “But it all seems a century away. Besides, we need something sweet and simple right now. Something ... uncomplicated.”
“Like our clergy retreats of yore?”
“Exactly! I mean, look over there ... at that lovely little path leading into the woods. Wouldn’t it be fun to ‘journey thither,’ as Mr. Wordsworth said, and explore it to the end?”
“I remember seeing that path when Dooley was home.”
“I love the way the old fence is falling down on either side of the path, and vines are growing up the posts. There must have been a gate there—and think of the wonderful beds of moss we’d find along the creek. The creek does run into those woods, doesn’t it?”
“I don’t know.”
“Timothy, we’re living in the country like two bumps on a log. And I have no idea what to do about it!”
“I haven’t seen Miss Lottie in more than a year. She’s ninety, you know.”
“Of course you must go.” She stood up and brushed off her pants. “And I must call New York and thrash over this wrenching new production schedule, and get the drawing ready for FedEx by eleven o’clock, and decide what sort of pie Lily should bake today, and ... ”
“Cherry!” He creaked to a standing position. “Ask her to bake cherry and I’ll kiss your ring.”
“You big lug,” she said. “Consider it done.”
She kissed
his cheek, then drew back and looked at him, sobered. “Forgive me. We have so much to be thankful for, yet I allow the vagaries of this good life to overwhelm me. You never seem to be overwhelmed.”
“I can’t believe that you’ve lived with me for nearly eight years, and can say that with a straight face.”
“All right, then. But you handle it better.”
“You handle it just fine, Kavanagh. Our Lord, Himself, had to get away from the vagaries of life. We’ll explore the path next week. Let’s set aside some time just for that.”
“I’ll bring the picnic basket,” she said.
He felt his grin spreading. “And I’ll bring the blanket.”
After knocking on the door of her life-estate quarters at the back of the Greer general store, he inquired of the storekeeper.
“Miss Greer went out with a neighbor about an hour ago.”
“Then she’s still getting around! ”Thank God he hadn’t come too late.
“You bet.”
“Her cat?”
“Gone to glory, as she says. Eighteen years old, that cat was!”
“I’ll be darned. Well. Tim Kavanagh.”
“Judd Baker from California. Me an’ my wife, Cindy, bought this place a year ago, and decided to keep the Greer name. What do you think?”
He looked around. Definitely not the old store where he and Absalom had robbed the drink box and talked a blue streak; not the old store where he and Absalom had sat in the back rooms and eaten Miss Lottie’s mashed potatoes and lamb with homemade mint jelly; and certainly not the store where a young Absalom had seen the choir of angels ...
“Good! Oh, yes, very good. But ... ” He sighed without meaning to.
“But different,” said the storekeeper, nodding wisely.
Homeless Hobbes wasn’t at home, either.
His old confidant and one-man soup kitchen had relocated himself from a hut at the Creek to a small, white house by the side of a gravel road. A note of greeting was tacked on the wood surround of the screen door.
Dear Friend,
This is God’s house. In my absence, you are welcome to sit on the porch and rest a while and drink from the tap to the right of the steps. In any case, I shall return at four o’clock on the afternoon of the 23rd. God bless you.
