A New Song

by Jan Karon

  Dooley turned around, laughing, and for a crisp, quick moment, he saw the way the sun glinted on the boy’s red hair, and the look in his blue eyes. It was a look of triumph, of exultation, a look he had never, even once, seen before on Dooley Barlowe’s face.

  He didn’t know whether to whoop, which he felt like doing, or weep, which he dismissed at once. Instead, he lunged ahead, closing the gap between them, and threw his arm around the boy’s shoulder and told him what must be spoken now, immediately, and not a moment later.

  “I love you, buddy,” he said, panting and laughing at once. “Blast if I don’t.”

  They sat on the cool stone wall, looking into the valley, into the Land of Counterpane. There beyond the trees was the church spire, and over there, the tiniest glint of railroad tracks . . . and just there, the pond next to the apple orchard where he knew ducks were swimming. Above it all, ranging along the other side of the valley, the high, green hills outlined themselves against a blue and cloudless sky. It was his favorite view in the whole of the earth, he thought.

  “There’s something I’d like you to know,” he told Dooley. “I believe we’ll find Sammy and Kenny.”

  Father Tim had gone into the Creek with Lace Turner and retrieved Dooley’s younger brother, Poobaw. Later, he’d driven to Florida on little more than a hunch, and located Dooley’s little sister, Jessie. Now two of the five Barlowe children were still missing. Their mother, Pauline, recovering from years of hard drinking, had no idea where they might be. As far as he could discover, there were no clues, no trail, no nothing. But he had hope—the kind that comes from a higher place than reason or common sense.

  “Will you believe that with me?” he asked Dooley.

  A muscle moved in Dooley’s jaw. “You did pretty good with Poo and Jessie.”

  Barnabas crashed into the grass at Dooley’s feet.

  “I believe we’re closer to deciding on some colleges to start thinking about.”

  “Yep. Maybe Cornell.”

  “You’ve got a while before you have to make any decisions.”

  “Maybe University of Georgia.”

  “Maybe. Their specialty is large animals; that’s what interests you. Anyway, that’s all down the road. For now, just check things out, think about it, pray about it.”

  “Right.”

  “We’re mighty proud of you, son. You’ll make a fine vet. You’ve come—we’ve all come—a long way together.”

  There was an awkward silence between them.

  “What’s on your mind?” asked Father Tim.

  “Nothing.”

  “Let’s talk about it.”

  Dooley turned to him, glad for the invitation. “It looks like you could let me borrow the money and I’ll pay you back. Working six days a week at five dollars an hour, I’ll have sixteen hundred dollars. Plus I figure three yards a week at an average of twenty apiece, I’m countin’ it seven hundred bucks because some people will give me a tip. Last year, I saved five hundred, so that’s two thousand eight hundred.”

  He had the sudden sense of being squeezed between a rock and a hard place. . . .

  “Nearly three thousand,” said Dooley, enunciating clearly. “I could prob’ly make it an even three if I cleaned out people’s attics and basements.”

  Aha. He hadn’t counted on three thousand bucks being a factor in the car equation. He gazed out to the view, unseeing.

  “This just isn’t the summer for it. We can’t be here, and that’s a very crucial factor. Besides, you know we agreed you’d have a car next summer. If we’re still at Whitecap, you’ll come there, and everything will be fine.” He looked at Dooley. “Call me hard if you like, but it’s not going to happen.”

  Dooley turned away and said something under his breath.

  “Tell you what we’ll do. Cynthia and I will match everything you make this summer.” It was a rash decision, but why not? He still had more than sixty thousand dollars of his mother’s money, and was a homeowner with no mortgage. It was the right thing to do.

  Dooley stared straight ahead, kicking the stone wall with his heels. If Dooley Barlowe only knew what he knew—that Sadie Baxter had left the boy a cool million-and-a-quarter bucks in her will, to be his when he turned twenty-one. He knew that part of Miss Sadie’s letter by heart: I am depending on you never to mention this to him until he is old enough to bear it with dignity.

  “Look. We gave you a choice between staying in Mitford and a summer at the beach. That’s a pretty important liberty. We didn’t force you to do anything you didn’t want to do. Give us credit for that. The car is a different matter. We’re not going to be around to—”

  “Harley’s going to be around all the time, he’s going to let me drive his truck, what’s the difference if I have my own car?”

  Well, blast it, what was the difference? “But only once a week, as you well know, with a curfew of eleven o’clock.”

  Father Tim stood up, agitated. He never dreamed he’d be raising a teenager. When he was Dooley’s age in Holly Springs, Mississippi, nobody he knew had a car when they were sixteen. Today, boys were given cars as casually as they were handed a burger through a fast-food window. And in fact, a vast number of them ended up decorating the grille of an eighteen-wheeler, not critically injured, but dead. He was too old to have a teenager, too old to figure this out the way other people, other parents, seemed to do.

  “Look,” he said, pacing alongside the stone wall, “we talked about this before, starting a few months ago. You were perfectly fine with no car this summer; we agreed on it. You even asked me to hunt down your bicycle pump so you could put air in the tires.”

  He knew exactly what had happened. It was that dadblamed Wrangler. “Is Tommy getting a car this summer?”

  “No. He’s working to raise money so he can have one next year. He’s only saved eight hundred dollars.”

  This was definitely an encouragement. “So, look here. Harley was going to mow our two yards once a week, but why don’t I give you the job? I’ll pay twenty bucks a shot for both houses.”

  “If Buster Austin did it, he’d charge fifteen apiece, that’s thirty. I’ll do both for twenty-five.”

  “Deal!”

  He looked at the boy he loved, the boy he’d do anything for.

  Almost.

  It rained throughout the night, a slow, pattering rain that spoke more eloquently of summer to him than any sunshine. He listened through the open bedroom window until well after midnight, sleepless but not discontented. They would make it through all this upheaval, all this tearing up and nailing down, and life would go on.

  He found his wife’s light, whiffling snore a kind of anchor in a sea of change.

  Bolting down Main Street the next morning at seven o’clock, he saw Evie Adams in her rain-soaked yard, dressed in a terry robe and armed with a salt shaker.

  “Forty two!” she shouted in greeting.

  He knew she meant snail casualties. Evie had been at war with snails ever since they gnawed her entire stand of blue hostas down to nubs. Some years had passed since this unusually aggressive assault, but Evie had not forgotten. He pumped his fist into the air in a salute of brotherhood.

  After all, he had hostas, too. . . .

  “If I have to say goodbye to you one more time, I’ll puke,” said Mule.

  Actually, Mule was moved nearly to bawling that his old buddy had come by the Grill at all. Father Tim could have been loading his car, or turning off the water at the street, or changing his address at the post office—whatever people did who were leaving for God knows how long.

  “Livermush straight up,” Father Tim told Percy as he slid into the booth. “And make it a double.”

  “Livermush? You ain’t ordered livermush in ten, maybe twelve years.”

  “Right. But that’s what I’m having.” He grinned at the dumfounded Percy. “And make it snappy.”

  It was reckless to eat livermush, especially a double order, but he was feeling reckless.
/>   Percy set his mouth in a fine line as he cut two slices from the loaf of livermush. He did not approve of long-term Grill customers moving elsewhere. Number one, the Father had been coming to the Grill for sixteen, seventeen years; he was established. To just up and run off, flinging his lunch and breakfast trade to total strangers, was . . . he couldn’t even find a word for what it was.

  Number two, why anybody would want to leave Mitford in the first place was beyond him. He had personally left it only twice—when Velma was pregnant and they went to see cousins in Avery County, and when he and Velma went on that bloomin’ cruise to Hawaii, which his children had sent them on whether he wanted to go or not.

  But worse than the Father leaving Mitford, he was leaving it for a location that had once broken off from the mainland, for Pete’s sake, and could not be trusted as ground you’d want under your feet. So here was somebody he’d thought to be sensible and wise, clearly proving himself to be otherwise.

  As he laid two thick slices on the sizzling grill, Percy shook his head. Every time he thought he’d gained a little understanding of human nature, something like this came up and he had to start over.

  J. C. Hogan thumped into the booth. “Man!” he said, mopping his face with a rumpled handkerchief. “It’s hot as a depot stove today. I hope you know how hot it gets down there.”

  Father Tim put his hands over his ears and shut his eyes.

  “Lookit,” said J.C. He tossed the Muse, still smelling of ink, on the table. “You made today’s front page.”

  “What for?”

  Mule snatched the eight-page edition to his side of the table and adjusted his glasses. “Let me read it. Let’s see. Here we go.” The realtor cleared his throat and read aloud.

  “‘Around Town by Vanita Bentley . . .’

  “Blah, blah, blah, OK, here’s th’ meat of it. ‘Father Kavanagh treated everybody as if equal in intelligence and accomplishment, making his real church the homes, sidewalks and businesses of Mitford. . . .

  “‘Whether we had faith or not, he loved us all.’”

  Father Tim felt his face grow hot. “Give me that,” he said, snatching the newspaper.

  “What’s the matter?” said J.C. “Don’t you like it?”

  He didn’t know if he liked it. What he knew was that it sounded like . . . an obituary.

  He was hunkering down now, trying to cover all the bases.

  Thanks be to God, it was nearly over, they were nearly on their way. He’d been going at this thing of leaving as if it were life or death, when in fact it was more like a year to sixteen months, and then he’d be back in Mitford, with half the population not realizing he’d left.

  He screeched into Louella’s room at Hope House, breathing hard. Miss Sadie’s will had provided her lifelong companion with Room Number One, which was the finest room in the entire place.

  Louella plucked the remote from her capacious lap and muted All My Children.

  “You look like you been yanked up by th’ roots!” she said, concerned.

  “Ah . . . ,” he replied, unable to muster anything else.

  “An’ it yo’ birthday!” she scolded.

  “It is?”

  “You sixty-six today!”

  “Louella, do I remind you of your age?”

  “Honey,” she said, looking smug, “you don’ know my age.”

  He’d been coming to see Louella every day since Miss Sadie died. Sometimes they played checkers, but more often they sang hymns. The thought of leaving her made him feel like a common criminal. . . .

  “How’s your knee?” he asked, kissing her warm, chocolate-colored cheek. “How’s your bladder infection? Have you started the potting class yet?”

  “Set down on yo’ stool,” she said. He always sat on her footstool, which made him feel nine years old. A feeling, by the way, he rather liked.

  “Now,” she said, beaming, “we ain’ goan talk about knees an’ bladders, an’ far as pottin’ classes goes, I decided I ain’t messin’ wit’ no clay. What I’m wantin’ to do is sing, and ain’t hardly anybody roun’ here can carry a tune in a bucket.”

  “I’ll go a round or two with you,” he said, feeling better at once.

  “I take th’ first verse, you take th’ second, an’ we’ll chime in together on number three.”

  Louella closed her eyes and raised her hands and began to lift her rich, mezzo voice in song. She rocked a little in her chair.

  “ The King of love my shepherd is,

  Whose goodness faileth never;

  I nothing lack if I am his,

  And he is mine forever.”

  He waited two beats and picked up the second verse, not caring if they heard him all the way to the monument.

  “Where streams of living water flow,

  My ransomed soul he leadeth,

  And where the verdant pastures grow,

  With food celestial feedeth.”

  Two nurses stuck their heads in the door, grinning, as he joined his voice with Louella’s on the third verse.

  “Perverse and foolish oft I strayed,

  But yet in love he sought me,

  And on his shoulder gently laid,

  And home, rejoicing, brought me.”

  They were silent for a moment. “Now,” said Louella, “that feels better, don’t it?”

  He nodded, sensing the tears lurking in him, some kind of sorrow that he’d noticed for a week or more.

  “You pushin’ too hard,” she said.

  “You have to push, Louella.” Out there in the world, he wanted to say, it was all about push.

  “Maybe you done stepped aroun’ th’ Lord an’ tryin’ to lead th’ way.”

  He stood up and looked out the window, into the green valley he called the Land of Counterpane. Maybe she was right.

  Louella didn’t often get out of her chair these days, but now she rose and stood by him, and put her hand on his shoulder.

  “You know I pray for you and Miss Cynthia every mornin’ an’ every night, and I ain’ goin’ to stop. Anytime you get in a tight place down yonder, you just think, Louella’s prayin’ for me, and go on ’bout your business.”

  As he left Room Number One, he found himself humming. He couldn’t remember doing that in a very long time.

  “Where streams of living water flow, my ransomed soul he leadeth. . . .”

  Maybe the real issue wasn’t how Louella would manage without him, but how would he manage without Louella?

  He cantered down the hall and found Pauline finishing up in the dining room.

  “Pauline?”

  “Father!”

  He gave her a hug. “What do you hear from Buck?”

  “He’ll be home the fifteenth of October.”

  “And we’ll roar in on the twenty-fifth, after which I’ll personally see to it that you become Mrs. Buck Leeper.”

  She smiled and looked at her hands. He’d never seen her more beautiful. In fact, the miracle of watching Pauline Barlowe become whole wasn’t unlike watching the slow unfolding of the petals on his Souvenir de la Malmaison.

  “That is what you want, isn’t it?”

  “More’n anything. Yes, sir, I do.”

  “You’ve waited, and I admire that. How’s his job in Alaska?”

  “Real good. He says he’ll bring it in on time.”

  “He always does,” he said, feeling proud with her. “And Jessie and Poo? How’re they feeling about all that’s ahead?”

  “Excited.” She hesitated, then dared to use a word she had never trusted in her life. “Happy!”

  He nodded, pleased. “Dooley will be in safe hands with Harley, and I know he’ll be coming around to your place often. You might want to . . .” Watch over him, he wanted to say.

  “I will,” she replied, knowing.

  He was halfway along the hall when she called after him. “Father!”

  He turned around. “Yes?”

  “We hate to see you go.”

  “I’ll be
back before you know I’m gone.”

  She smiled and waved, and he saw Dooley in her for a fleeting moment, something about the way she held her head, and the thrust of her chin. . . .

  “Law, help!” said Puny, looking exhausted. “I’ll be glad to see y’all go!”

  There! The truth from somebody, at last.

  “You never seen th’ like of mess Dooley’d squirreled away in his room that we had to drag to th’ basement. Harley said if we kept on haulin’ stuff down there, he’d have to go to livin’ out of his truck.” The freckled Puny hooted with laughter.

  “Where are my grandbabies?” he wondered. Puny sometimes fetched the twins from church school a little early. Sissy and Sassy even kept a stash of toys at the yellow house, consisting of a red wagon, several dolls, stuffed monkeys, crayons, and other paraphernalia.

  “They’re dead asleep in th’ front room, Miz Hart said they fussed all day.”

  “Uh-oh.”

  “But they’ll be glad to see their granpaw.” Puny smiled hugely. The poor soul standing in front of her would never have had the joy of grandchildren if it hadn’t been for her generosity. She’d given him her babies as free-handed as you please, and he’d taken to them like a duck to water. The truth was, Sissy was crazy about her granpaw and often kissed a framed picture of him that Puny had proudly placed in her home.

  He patted his pocket. “I’m ready when they are.”

  “You’ll make their little teeth fall out with that candy.”

  “Once a week, two small pieces? I hardly think so. Besides,” he said, “they’re going to fall out, anyway.”

  She shook her head, tsking, happy that someone she loved also loved her twin three-year-olds. It would be different around here with the Father gone, and Cynthia, who was always so bright and helpful. . . .

  Every last scrap of Dooley’s tack had made it to Harley’s basement apartment, and Father Tim had helped Dooley clean his room at the rectory, top to bottom. In addition, all the books for Whitecap were packed, sealed, and ready for the shipper to pick up tomorrow.