by Jan Karon
He soldiered on.
It turns out that Ms McGraw was actually in Georgia watching her grandson being born!! Michael Jason Holbrook!! Seven pounds eight ounces!!
“As for why Ms McGraw would leave her front door wide open while she went off to a whole other state, she said in a phone interview “My brain was rattled.” Well now isn’t that true of all of us at some time or other??
The point is, the Kavanaughs were taking care of their own.
This made us think about our former mayor, Esther Cunningham, who invented the famous slogan, Mitford Takes Care of Its Own, and used it as her campaign platform for many years!
Generally speaking do you believe Mitford still takes care of its own??
Here is what several townspeople said in a sidewalk survey:
“As for myself I try to take care of my friends and neighbors by offering fresh local meat and produce at a fair price. As for running around town doing good, no.” Avis Packard, The Local
“I do not see the same eagerness to address the needs of those less fortunate. That is all I have to say and don’t quote me.” Former Mayor Esther Cunningham
‘Ask the press not to quote you,’ he said, ‘and what do they do?’
‘When Esther was mayor, heads rolled for less than that.’
Oh, his wife was amused; she was over the moon about every jot and tittle of this farce.
“We are taking care of our own when we work to share our beautiful village with others, when we seek to expand our economy and quality of life by bringing in businesses that enhance the lives—and the livelihood—of all. We are taking care of our own when we raise taxes only when critical to the welfare of our community, and when we elect to have the finest fire and police departments in this county or any other.” Mayor Andrew Gregory
‘Well put,’ he said.
“Come to think of it the Girl Scouts have not tried to sell us cookies for three years, so it is hard to take care of our own if the opportunity is removed.” Lois Burton, The Woollen Shop
“I always thought Father Time was the real mayor of Mitford if you don’t mind me saying so. It seems like he takes care of everybody.”
‘That’s it,’ he said. ‘I’m done.’ He would cancel their subscription immediately, buy an iPad, read the New York Times online, and never look back. He tossed the newspaper on the coffee table. She snatched it up, found the editorial, read on.
“Remember how he was so good to Uncle Billy and Miss Rose and how he goes to the hospital every day and visits Hope House and keeps his yard looking so nice? In my opinion, he should be officially named Mitford’s Leading Citizen and the embodyment of what we should all be doing if we weren’t so busy.” Jena Ivey, Mitford Blossoms
He felt the heat in his face. He no longer went to the hospital every day, nor did he make regular calls at Hope House. Plus it had been a while since he’d done anything at all in his yard, now that Harley had the job. Blast J. C. Hogan to the moon and heaven help Vanita Bentley.
‘Listen up,’ she said.
“Father Time brings us a plate from the All-Church nearly every year and Mrs Bolick brings us a cake with orange slices on it every Christmas which is the best my mama and me has ever tasted.” Coot Hendrik
‘Where does this bloody Father Time business come from?’ he said.
‘When you type Tim it’s easy to hit the e key, I’ve done it a lot, actually. You’ll love this one.’
“Look for example at Father Time Kavanuagh who makes us all feel like his own! He retired but he didn’t quit. Maybe he’s no longer talking the talk in the pulpit, but he’s still walking the walk on the street.
“The point is, any of us can take care of our own. I am going today to deliver a hot meal to somebody old and downtrodden and so what if it’s KFC. If I can do it, anybody can do it. Get off your butts, people!!”
‘Who authored that literary gem?’
‘Anonymous,’ she said. ‘Vanita closes the piece thus.’
Are we still taking care of our own/ Who do you think is our leading citizen??? If you would like to way in on these crucial topics, please write to Vanita Vanita Bentley at the Muse or look for me on Main Street and thank you.
His wife patted him on the knee. ‘Father Time,’ she said.
He could see it coming, and oh, yes, there it came, in spades.
His wife could hurt herself laughing like this.
• • •
HE TOOK HIS COFFEE to the desk in the study, glanced at the calendar.
A good time to call and cancel their subscription. But no—the self-styled feature writer of all mankind would herself answer the phone, which wouldn’t be a good thing.
He chose instead to pore over the agenda he’d pored over on Tuesday. The Rotary meeting, the Kiwanis Club dinner, the cleanup day at Children’s Hospital; the call from Andrew Gregory, the subject of which he was certain; the talk to the clergy group in Holding, which meant a full day and evening down the mountain. As for the church in Hendersonville that wanted him to supply for a month next January, and the letter from the bishop which he hadn’t yet opened . . .
It was fish or cut bait.
She answered on the first ring; Snickers barked in the background.
‘Hello, Emma?’
• • •
DEAREST CYNTHIA was to the point—nothing wrong with that.
Darling Girl had a nice tone, she liked such terms of affection.
Ha.
He uncapped the pen and wrote.
Dear Bookend.
Good. That was it.
He had rather take a whipping than do this. Didn’t she know he loved her? What was she looking for in this exercise? It seemed a waste of time—he could be sanding the basement steps, which needed two coats and a sealer.
Nothing more came forth. He laid the pen down and sat as if turned to stone. His mind was Arctic tundra—hither a scrap of stunted moss, yon a dwarf tree.
His ankles had begun to swell when a beguiling thought pushed through, something like blood forcing passage in a heavily blocked artery, but he resisted such thinking.
Then again, why resist? And so what if it had been done before? She would love nothing better than being told the answer in scrupulous detail.
He took up the pen, ritually shook down the ink, and wrote.
How do I love thee? Let me count . . .
There was more than one way to skin a cat.
• • •
‘I CAME RIGHT OVER.’ Emma had let herself in through the garage, and stood at his desk looking flushed.
He glanced at his watch.
‘I know, I know.’ She thumped her purse into his out-box; he hated it when she did that. ‘It’s nine o’clock, and you said ten, I’m runnin’ early. Better an hour early than a minute late, you always said.’
‘Have a seat.’ He shuffled papers to conceal the letter. ‘How are you?’
‘I thought I’d never hear from you, I had to find out at the post office that you’d actually gotten home.’ The arched eyebrow.
‘Takes a while to get back in the swing,’ he said, dry as crust.
She removed something from her purse, took it over to Barnabas. Down the hatch it went. ‘Peanut-butter dog cookie with glucosamine,’ she said, giving his dog a perfunctory scratch behind the ear. ‘Tried one myself. Not bad.’
She sat down in front of his desk. ‘So you fainted. Dead away or just partially?’
‘Partially.’ He drummed the desktop with his fingers.
She had herself a good laugh. His relationship with Emma Newland personified what he’d heard about childbirth—one forgot the agony ’til the next time around.
‘How’s Harold?’
‘Depressed. Retirement coming up next year.’
‘Oh, that.’ That can of worms, that hoisting by one’s o
wn petard. ‘I’d like you to make some calls for me, write a letter or two, if you’d be so kind.’
‘Excellent. I have Tuesdays free.’
‘I was thinking a couple of hours today.’
‘I could use something more permanent,’ she said. She slid her glasses down her nose, gave him a look. ‘Like we used to have.’
He opened his mouth to speak, but produced only the odd gasp.
‘Remember who rescheduled you with the airline and bailed you out of Ireland for a measly five-hundred-dollar penalty. And remember who got you into that fancy Dublin hotel at the last minute, in the middle of high season.’ She crossed her arms, satisfied, complete.
If he lost this round, he was toast. ‘And perhaps you remember,’ he said, ‘who sent you a large . . . Waterford . . . vase.’ He let the words suspend in the air.
She grinned. ‘Thanks.’
‘You’re welcome.’
‘Okay,’ she said, ‘I’m good for a couple of hours.’
‘So make my apologies to the Rotary president for what he calls an important meeting.’ He handed her the jumble of notes he’d made; she scanned them.
‘Why do you want to skip the Rotary meeting? Rotarians do great things for people. Harold is a Rotarian.’
‘True. Great things. I need a break.’
‘Ireland wasn’t a break?’
‘I need another break.’
‘How long have you been a Rotarian?’
‘Thirty-five years and twice a club president.’
‘Okay,’ she said, ‘you can have a break. I’ll call.’
‘What will you say?’
‘That you’re taking a break.’
‘Okay, but say nothing more.’ Emma relished the elaborate excuse. ‘That will do.’
‘Same for the Kiwanis?’ she said, ticking off the list. ‘You’re taking a break?’
‘Just decline. No need to say why.’
‘Cleanup day?’
‘I’ll do it, I always do it. Ask for Jane Moreland, tell her I’ll prune and mulch the hedge.’
‘Do they have more than one hedge? They might get confused if there are several hedges. Take the old Fernbank place, for instance, there are three different hedges up there—hemlock, boxwood—’
‘The privet hedge.’ He’d worked on the Children’s Hospital hedge for eight years, but privet was privet and it still looked bedraggled.
‘So about this call from Andrew Gregory,’ she said. ‘Do you think he wants you to run for mayor next time?’
‘He seems perfectly happy doing the mayoring himself. He’ll ask me to run for council, I’m certain, but don’t say I said it.’
‘You should run for mayor.’
‘Why on earth do you think that?’
‘You’d be perfect.’
‘I would be no such thing. I have no patience for budgets and five-year plans and whatever else goes on in that office.’
‘Then you should definitely run for council. It’s your town.’
‘So? It’s your town, as well. I don’t see you serving on the council.’
‘They haven’t asked me.’
‘Call the mayor’s office, please, and say I’ll get back to him next week.’
‘Got it. What do clergy down th’ mountain want with you?’
‘They want me to tell them everything’s going to be all right.’
‘Is it?’
‘All I know is that the gates of hell shall not prevail against the church. I can’t be more specific, thus I’m not the man for the job.’
‘So I’ll tell them you’re taking a break,’ she said.
She was hitting her stride; her chest heaved with the joys of power and purpose. Not one among the many would know what hit them.
‘Hendersonville,’ she said.
‘Father Buster Baldwin, Priest in Charge,’ he dictated, handing over the address. ‘Dear Father Buster, I must decline your invitation to supply St. John for the month of January upcoming, while you and Mary are in the Keys. Thank you for your prayerful consideration and for the very generous offer of your home during that time. I will pray for the right soul to provide the needs of your growing parish. In his grace.’
‘Hendersonville in January,’ she said. ‘You dodged a bullet. So what’s with this letter from the bishop?’
‘Open it and tell me what it says.’
She slid her glasses down her nose. ‘You can’t open it and read it yourself?’
‘Read it and give me the gist of it.’ He had avoided the thing like the plague. Maybe he was still holding on to Stuart Cullen, his former bishop and oldest friend. In any case, Bishop Martin wanted something, he was sure of it. In his early days as a priest, he developed a nose, an instinct about people who wanted something. He could see it in the way they looked when approaching him, even sense it by glancing at the envelope containing a request. As for this missive, they would be after him to raise funds, he could smell it.
‘It’s dated September third. How long have you had it?’
‘Eons,’ he said.
‘“Dear Father Cavanaugh.”’ She was silent for a moment, glanced up. ‘He misspelled your name big-time.’
‘With a u, I suppose.’
‘With a c and a u.’
Call him prideful, call him contrary, he disliked it very much—very much—when someone misspelled, and in this case totally botched, his surname. What was the matter with people?
‘So much for your new bishop,’ she said.
‘Read it and tell me what he says.’
She adjusted her glasses, bent to the task, read silently, shook her head, squinted, looked up, and met his gaze.
‘He’s leaving for the airport in thirty minutes and has just been advised of a grave issue in the diocese. He tried to call but your mailbox was full. Um, he wants you to come to Asheville.’
‘And do what?’
‘Meet with him about something private.’
He felt his brow furrowing, quite of its own accord. ‘What else does it say?’
‘It says you were beloved by your former parish.’
‘That’s nice. What else?’ He did not want to go to Asheville, however appealing the land of the sky may be.
‘He says he’s going to the Bahamas . . .’
‘Bishops always go to the Bahamas.’
‘. . . to a remote property with no cell phone service, and he’d like to see you when he returns in two weeks, he’ll call as soon as he gets back—which, if it was written on the third and this is what, the seventeenth? He should be calling any minute.’
‘What else?’
‘He asks you to pray.’
‘For what, exactly?’
‘He doesn’t say.’
‘He doesn’t say?’
‘Right.’
‘Let me see the letter,’ he said.
‘It’s about time—you acted like a snake would bite you if you touched th’ thing.’
I will covet your prayers in this desperate matter which must remain unspoken until we meet.
‘You haven’t drunk a drop of water since I’ve been here,’ she said. ‘You’re supposed to drink a lot of water. You may forget, but I remember these things.’
‘How’s Snickers?’ he said.
• • •
‘THREE HOURS EVERY TUESDAY MORNING, at the old rate, for somebody who knows how to dot every t and cross every i.’ She collected her handbag from his out-box. ‘You won’t get an offer like that every day. Think about it.’
He had already thought about it.
• • •
SHE HAD GONE THROUGH the garage and out to the sidewalk when he remembered and ran after her. ‘And call Vanita Bentley at the Muse,’ he shouted, ‘and give her the correct spelling of my
name. Both names, for future reference.’
‘Both?’ she yelled back. ‘She can’t spell either one?’
He walked out to her at the curb. ‘Didn’t you read today’s Muse?’
‘Are you kidding me? I don’t read that rag.’
‘Who told you what you said when you came in?’
‘Ruby Greene. She called me the day after it happened.’
‘Isn’t it against the law to tell things known only to police officers?’
‘It was on the board down at th’ police station, they post reports of all their calls, don’t you remember? Anybody can go in an’ read th’ police reports.’
He walked back to the house, wondering where he and Cynthia might move. Possibly to Linville, where they had no newspaper, a loss more than generously repaid by the Thursday night seafood buffet at the lodge.
• • •
COOT HENDRICK WAS LATE getting home, as three people had stopped him on the street and talked his head off about the question going around town.
He heard the Wheel as soon as he walked in the house, and went to his mama’s room, hollering. ‘I got m’ name in th’ paper! I got m’ name in th’ paper!’
He had folded the Muse to show off the article just right, and held it close to her face so she could see it good.
‘What’d ye git it in there f’r?’
‘F’r answerin’ a question.’
‘What was th’ question?’ She was deaf as a doorknob, and talked loud enough to bust a man’s eardrums.
He sat in the chair with the broke seat and one arm missing, and leaned in to her good ear. He said what people on the street said the question was, and said it slow so he wouldn’t have to say it again.
‘Does . . . Mitford . . . still . . . take . . . care . . . of . . . its . . . own?’
‘What kind of question is that?’
He honestly didn’t know.
‘What did ye answer, then?’
He wasn’t sure what he answered, he’d been so rattled by the woman on the street poking a thingamajig in his face. ‘Talk right in this,’ she said.
He would give most anything to find out what he’d answered, but he couldn’t read nothing but his name. ‘Look there,’ he said, pointing to his name, which he had tirelessly searched for after picking up the paper from the street rack. ‘Can you see that?’
