A New Song

by Jan Karon

  Before he dragged himself upstairs to take a shower, he’d just lie down and put his head on the arm of the sofa, but only for a moment, of course.

  If there was ever a birthday when he had no time or energy to read St. Paul’s letters to Timothy, this was it. Ever since seminary, he’d made a point of reading the letters on, or adjacent to, the date of his nativity. Perhaps his yearly pondering of these Scriptures was one way of taking stock.

  “‘To Timothy, my dearly beloved son,’” he murmured, quoting at random from the familiar Second Epistle. “‘Grace, mercy, and peace, from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Lord . . . watch thou in all things, endure afflictions, do the work of an evangelist, make full proof of thy ministry.’”

  He was sinking into the sofa. “‘The cloke that I left at Troas with Carpus,’” he whispered—this was a favorite part—“‘when thou comest, bring with thee, and the books, but especially the parchments—’”

  “Timothy!”

  It was his wife, calling from the front hall.

  “Can you come here a moment?”

  He forced himself off the sofa and trotted along the hall, obedient as any pup.

  “You rang?” he asked, rubbing his eyes.

  She smiled. “Walk out to the porch with me.”

  “Why?” he asked, peevish.

  “Why not?” she said, taking his hand. It occurred to him that she looked unusually . . . expectant, somehow, on the verge of something.

  When they stepped to the porch, he noticed it at once. A slick-looking red convertible was parked at the curb, with the top down. Hardly anybody ever parked in front of their house. . . .

  “I wonder who that belongs to.”

  “I’m looking at him,” said Cynthia.

  His wife was lit up like a Christmas tree.

  “What do you mean you’re—”

  “Happy birthday, dearest!” She was suddenly kissing his face—both cheeks, his nose, his mouth.

  “But you can’t possibly—”

  “It’s yours! To you from me, for our trip to Whitecap, for zooming around like feckless youths in the rain, in the sunshine, in the snow, what the heck!”

  “But ...”

  Without meaning to, exactly, he sat down hard on the top step.

  She laughed and sat with him. “What do you think?”

  He stared at it, aghast, unable to think. “But,” he said lamely, “it’s red.”

  “So? Red is good!”

  “But I’m a priest!”

  “All the better!” she crowed. “Now, darling, don’t get stuffy on me.”

  He saw that he might easily wound her to the very depths.

  “But the Buick . . .”

  “What about it?”

  “It’s . . . it’s still perfectly good.”

  She raised one eyebrow.

  He suddenly had another thought, this one worse than the others. “The new priest rolling into town like a rock star . . . what will people think?”

  “I never mind what people think—ever! We didn’t sleep together ’til we were married, and yet, imagine how the tongues wagged when we were seen sneaking back and forth through the hedge.”

  “I never sneaked,” he said, indignant.

  “Timothy. How quickly you forget.”

  But surely she hadn’t bought it. “It’s a rental! Right?”

  “Darling, remember me? I’m Cynthia, I don’t do rentals. It’s yours. Here’s the key.” She shoved it into his hand.

  She was tired of fooling around, he could tell. He started to stand up, but sat again, weak-kneed.

  “I can’t believe it,” he said, feeling contrite. “Please forgive me. God knows, I thank you. But I mean, the expense . . .” Why couldn’t he quit babbling about the negatives? What did these things cost, anyway? It was horrifying to contemplate. . . .

  She patted him on the knee. “It’s not nice to talk about the cost of a gift. Besides, if you really must know, it’s three years old and the radio isn’t working.”

  “It looks brand-new!”

  “Yet bought with old money. Royalties from Violet Goes to the Country and Violet Goes to School, tucked into a money market fund long ago. I’ve worked very hard, Timothy, and been conservative as a church mouse—I wanted to do this.”

  He was ashamed to ask what make it was. He’d never been able to identify cars, unlike Tommy Noles, who knew Packards from Oldsmobiles and Fords from Chevrolets. Actually, a Studebaker was the only car he’d ever been able to guess, dead-on.

  Maybe a Jaguar. . . .

  “It’s a Mustang GT,” said his wife, looking mischievous.

  He put his arm around her and drew her close and nuzzled his face into her hair. “You astound me, you have always astounded me, I need to sit here and just look at it for a minute. Thank you for being patient.” He felt wild laughter rising in him, as he’d felt the tears earlier. What kind of roller coaster was he on, anyway?

  “I don’t deserve it,” he said. There. He’d finally gotten down to the bottom line.

  She lifted her hand to his cheek. “Deserve? Since when is love about deserving?”

  “Right,” he said. He felt his heart beginning to hammer at the sight of it sitting there so coolly parked at the curb, as if it owned the house and the people in it.

  He realized he’d come within a hair of hurting her by persisting in his fogy ways. No, he’d never have believed he’d be driving a red convertible, not in a million years, but he knew it was absolutely crucial that he begin believing it—at once.

  He felt the grin spreading across his face, and didn’t think he could stop the laughter that was lurking in him.

  “Wait’ll Dooley sees this!” he said, as they trotted toward the curb.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Going, Going, Gone

  “Timothy!”

  His wife was calling him constantly these days. From the top of the stairs, from the depths of the basement, from the far reaches of the new garage.

  It was Timothy here, Timothy there, Timothy everywhere.

  “Yes?” he bellowed from the study.

  “Do we really need this cast-iron Dutch oven?” she yelled from the hallway, where the items to be packed in the car were being severely thinned.

  “How else can I make a pork roast?” he shouted.

  “I don’t think people at the beach eat pork roast!” she shouted back.

  He hated shouting.

  Cynthia appeared in the study, her hair in a bandanna, wearing shorts and a T-shirt. She might have been a twelfth-grade student from Mitford School. Why was his wife looking increasingly younger as he grew increasingly older? It wasn’t fair.

  “I think,” she said, wiping perspiration from her face, “that beach people eat ocean perch or broiled tuna or . . .” She shrugged. “You know.”

  He took the heavy pot from her, feeling grumpy. “Leave it,” he said, toting it to the kitchen.

  “And do you really think,” she hooted from the study, “that we need those Wellington boots you garden in?”

  He stepped back to the study. “What did you say?”

  “Those huge green boots. Those Wellingtons.”

  “What about them?”

  “I mean, there’s no mud at the beach!”

  He sighed.

  “Besides, we can’t lash anything on top of the car. . .”—she grinned, bouncing on the balls of her feet like a kid—“because we’ll have the top down.”

  “Axe the boots.”

  “And the Coleman stove. Why would we need a Coleman stove? We won’t be camping out, you know.”

  If he didn’t watch her every minute, they would be roaring down the highway with nothing but a change of underwear and a box of watercolors. Besides, he had thought of maybe cooking out one night on the beach, under the stars, with a blanket. . . .

  He blushed, just thinking about it.

  “We’re taking the stove,” he said.

  He made a quick sweep of the rectory, l
ooking once more in the kitchen drawers, feeling along the top shelves of the study bookcases, peering into the medicine cabinets.

  Clean as a whistle.

  Their tenant was moving in tomorrow with what she called “light furnishings,” a grand piano, and a cat, and he didn’t want any of his jumble lying around to welcome her. Ever since he moved in behind Father Bellwether in Alabama, he was careful to clean up any rectory he was vacating.

  Father Bellwether had left behind a 1956 Ford on blocks, several leaf bags filled with old shirts and sweaters, a set of mangled golf clubs, three room-size rugs chewed by dogs, an assortment of cooking gear, several doors without knobs, a vast collection of paperback mysteries, and other litter that couldn’t be completely identified. Determined not to whine to the vestry who had called him, Father Tim remembered using a shovel and a hired truck to clean the place out while the movers huffed his own things in.

  His footsteps echoed along the hallway to the basement door. He opened it and called down the stairs.

  “Harley, are you there?”

  Lace Turner appeared at the bottom of the steps, her blond hair in French braids.

  “Harley’s taking a test,” she said.

  He thought that each time he saw the fifteen-year-old Lace Turner, she had grown more beautiful, more confident. The hard look he’d once seen on her face had softened.

  “But you can come down,” she said. “He’s almost through.”

  “What’s the test on?” he inquired, trotting to meet her in the basement hallway.

  “History. It’s his favorite subject.”

  “Hit ain’t no such of a thing!” Harley called from the parlor.

  Harley was sitting on the sofa with a sheaf of papers in his lap, using a hardcover book as a writing surface. A fan moved slowly left, then right, on a table next to the sofa.

  “It was your favorite last week,” she said patiently, as they came into the room.

  “Rev’rend, she’s got me studyin’ Lewis ’n’ Clark, how they explored th’ Missouri River and found half a dadblame nation. . . .”

  “Sounds interesting.”

  “Oh, hit’s in’erestin’, all right, but this question she’s wrote down here is how many falls is in th’ Great Falls of th’ Missouri. They won’t a soul ever ask me that, I don’t need t’ know it, hit won’t pay t’ know it—”

  “Harley . . . ,” said Lace, looking stern.

  “Two falls!” said Harley.

  “No. We talked about it yesterday.”

  “Six!”

  Lace shook her head. “Think about it,” she advised. “You don’t like to think, Harley.”

  “Didn’t I make eighty-nine on my numbers test you give me?” Harley grinned, displaying pink gums perfectly lacking in teeth.

  “Yes, and you can make a hundred on this one if you’ll just think back to what you read yesterday.”

  Father Tim quietly hunkered into a chair.

  “I don’t give a katy how many falls make up th’ Great Falls. I quit, by jing.” Harley laid his pencil on the arm of the sofa and put his papers to one side. “I’m goin’ to pour th’ rev’rend a glass of tea. You can mark up m’ score on what I done.”

  Harley marched to the kitchen, looking as determined as his instructor. He turned at the kitchen door. “An’ say some of y’r big words for th’ rev’rend.”

  Lace gazed at Father Tim, her amber eyes luminous and intense. “He’s learned an awful lot,” she said, defending her practice of coming regularly to educate the man who protected her as she was growing up. It had been Harley who often fed Lace, and hid her from a violent, abusive father. To Lace, it was no small matter that Harley had sometimes risked his life for her well-being.

  Lace was now living with Hoppy and Olivia Harper, and adoption procedures were under way. Father Tim considered that her privileged life with the Harpers might have turned the girl’s affinities in other directions. But, no. Lace visited Harley often, frequently cooked to encourage his finicky appetite, and protected him fiercely. As for her desire that Harley become a learned man, the Education of Harley Welch was entering its third year.

  Lace picked up the test papers and examined them. Her eyes glanced quickly over the pages, and she alternately sighed or nodded.

  Father Tim gazed at her, profoundly moved. When he had first met Lace Turner, she was living in the dirt under her ramschackle house on the Creek, foraging for food like a dog. Her transformation was a miracle he’d been privileged to witness with his own eyes.

  “Ninety,” she pronounced, making a mark with the pencil.

  “Why, that’s terrific!”

  “He spelled the Willamette River correctly.”

  “Good! I hope you’ll give him a couple of extra points for that.”

  Lace smiled one of her rare smiles. He was dazzled, and no help for it.

  “Ninety-two, then!” she said, looking pleased.

  “So, how many falls?” he asked.

  “Five.”

  “Aha.”

  “I’m sorry you’re leaving,” she said.

  “Thank you, Lace. Of course, we won’t be gone forever, it’s an interim situation.”

  “What’s a interim situation?” asked Harley, coming in with two glasses of tea. “This ’uns your’n,” he said to Father Tim, “no sugar.”

  “It means a time between,” said Lace.

  “Between what?” Harley wondered.

  “Between what I’ve been doing and what I’m going to do later,” said Father Tim, laughing.

  Lace held up the test paper. “Harley, you made ninety-two on your test.”

  Harley’s eyes widened. “How’d I git two odd points in there?”

  “You spelled Willamette right.”

  “I got it wrote on m’ hand. Naw, I’m jis’ kiddin’, I ain’t.” He handed her the tea. “Here’s your’n.”

  “Yours,” she said. “And thank you.”

  Harley grinned. “She’s like th’ po’ lice, on you at ever’ turn.” Harley’s days in liquor hauling, not to mention car racing, had taught him about police. “Boys, she can go like whiz readin’ a book, says words you never heerd of. Did you say one of them big words for th’ rev’rend?”

  “Omnipresent,” said Lace quietly.

  “What’n th’ nation does that mean?”

  “Everywhere at one time.”

  “That describes my wife’s mama near perfect. She had eyes in th’ back of ’er head. That woman was a chicken hawk if I ever seen one. Say another’n.”

  She flushed and lowered her eyes. “No, Harley.”

  “Look what I done f ’r you.”

  “You didn’t do it for me, you did it for you.”

  Harley nodded, sober. “Jis tell th’ rev’rend one more, an’ I’ll not ask ag’in.”

  “Mussitation.”

  “Aha.”

  Lace hurriedly drank the tea, then collected her books. “It’s nice to see you, sir. Harley, eat your supper tonight, and thank you for a good job on your test.”

  “Thank you f’r teachin’ me.”

  “Well done, Lace!” Father Tim called, as she left by the door to the driveway.

  Harley glowed with unashamed pride. “Ain’t she somethin’? I’ve knowed ’er since she was knee-high to a duck. She agg’avates me near t’ death, but I think th’ world of that young ’un.”

  Father Tim wished his dictionary weren’t packed, as he didn’t have a clue as to the meaning of “mussitation.”

  He sat with Harley next to the fan that turned left, then right. “Lord, at th’ rust they’ve got down there,” sighed Harley, shaking his head. “I don’t know but what I’d park your new ride in th’ garage and drive th’ Buick.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  In the escalating temperature of an official heat wave, the two men spoke as if in a dream. Harley leaned toward Father Tim, to better catch the stream of air on the left; Father Tim leaned closer to Harley to catch the right stream.
<
br />   Both had their elbows on their knees, their heads nearly touching, gazing at the floor.

  “Think you can keep up with our boy?”

  “Rev’rend, don’t you worry ’bout a thing. Y’r boy’ll be workin’, I’ll be watchin,’ an’ th’ Lord ’n’ Master’ll be in charge of th’ whole deal.”

  “I don’t know, Harley. . . .”

  “Well, if you don’t, who does?”

  “Seems like I can trust Him with everything but a teenager.”

  “That’s what you got t’ trust ’im with th’ most, if you ask me.”

  Father Tim felt a trickle of sweat between his shoulder blades.

  “Don’t let Dooley forget to take the livermush to his granpaw.”

  “Nossir.”

  “Every other week is how Russell likes to get it.”

  Harley nodded. “I’ll git them hornets’ nestes off th’ garage come Friday.”

  “Good. I thank you.”

  “I ain’t goin’ t’ rake y’r leaves b’fore winter, if you don’t mind, hit’ll be good f ’r th’ grass.”

  “Fine.”

  “I’ll mulch ’em so they’ll rot easy. An’ I’ll mulch up around y’r plants come October.”

  “And the roses . . .”

  “I’ll prune ’em back, jis’ like you said.”

  “I wrote the numbers down by your phone in the kitchen; I gave you the church office and home. Call us any time of the day or night, I don’t care how late it is or how early.”

  “I’ll do it. And I’ll have Cynthia’s little scooter runnin’ like a top when you come home f ’r the’ weddin’. In case she gits wore out ridin’ that bicycle, she can drive it back.”

  “Good. But don’t soup it up.”

  “Ain’t nothin’ t’ soup in a Mazda.”

  He remembered that Harley had once fiddled around with his Buick so it ran like a scalded dog; he had shot by the local police chief in a blur—twice. Not good.

  They sat quiet for a time, Father Tim cupping his chin in his hands.

  “And don’t let Dooley play loud music down here, or we’ll run our tenant off.”