A New Song

by Jan Karon

  “Law, where’d this cake come from?”

  “I don’t know, plus, who could bake a cake without electricity? Does anybody know who brought it?”

  “I heard it was flown in special.”

  “I declare, this is th’ best cake I ever put in my mouth.”

  “I’d give an arm an’ a leg for th’ recipe, wouldn’t you?”

  “If nobody minds, I’m goin’ to just scrape off these crumbs that’re left and give ’em to Mama—then somebody, meanin’ me, can lick th’ plate it came on.”

  He had reserved a piece of the cake, which he wrapped in foil.

  He also retrieved a large chunk of lasagna, the drumstick of a baked chicken, four slices of ham, and two biscuits, which he loaded onto a heavy-duty paper plate with a border of irises. He went to the cupboards and found a deluxe-size plastic cup, and stuffed it with potato salad.

  Morris Love had been on his mind, and he couldn’t shake the thought. He was alone in that dark, rambling house with only candles to light his way, and apparently no clue how to feed himself, unless Mamie was there to do it for him. Even so, she wouldn’t have power for cooking, and no Stinson Voyager hauling in victuals.

  Aha. A maverick deviled egg. He was tempted to eat it himself, being inordinately fond of deviled eggs, but popped it into a Ziploc sandwich bag. Oh, the infinite resources of a church kitchen . . .

  He rummaged around until he found a large, empty jar, took the lid off, and sniffed it. Pickles. He rinsed it out with water from a plastic jug, and filled it with sweet tea.

  “I’ll be right back,” he told his wife. “Looks like this will go on for at least another hour.”

  “Where on earth . . . ?” she asked, wondering at the bulging plastic grocery bag.

  “I’ll tell you later.” He gave her a jovial kiss, square on the mouth.

  Things were different now that the weather had turned cooler. There was no open window to shout to.

  At the door, he stood on one foot and then the other, and scratched his head.

  Why not ring the bell? That was an original thought!

  He pressed the bell, but heard no results from inside. Maybe the bell had a quirk, like most doorbells, and had to be pressed in a certain way. He pressed again. Nothing. What Morris Love needed was a dog, for Pete’s sake.

  When he carved out the chunk of lasagna at church, it was still warm. If he kept standing here, it would be cold.

  Hardly believing his audacity, he opened the door and stuck his head into the dim foyer.

  “Morris!” he yelled, loudly enough to be heard upstairs. “Morris, it’s me, Tim Kavanagh! I’ve brought your supper!”

  There, that ought to get a rise out of a man who was, for all he knew, subsisting on Fig Newtons.

  “Father ...”

  He nearly jumped out of his skin. Morris Love appeared from behind the stairwell, a ghostly apparition if he’d ever seen one.

  “Holy smoke, Morris, sorry I was yelling when you were standing right there.”

  “Come in,” Morris said, not appearing to mean it.

  He followed Morris into the cold and cavernous kitchen, illumined only by two small windows above the sink, and set the bag on the table.

  “The lasagna is still warm,” he said. “I hope you’ll eat it soon.”

  He felt like a mother coaxing a child, and stood back from the table, suddenly awkward.

  “Thank you,” said Morris, standing with his hands in the pockets of a burgundy bathrobe.

  Thank you? A mere thank you? He wanted to see the man tear open the bag and dive in!

  Father Tim opened the bag and pulled out the heavy plate and set it on the table. “It’s on a plate,” he said, feeling progressively uneasy. “You can just peel off the aluminum foil. And here’s some tea, I put lemon in it. . . .”

  Somewhere in the house, a clock chimed three o’clock. “Well . . . ,” he said, not knowing what else to say.

  “Your neighborly kindness will, I’m sure, guarantee your place in heaven,” said Morris.

  Father Tim found his scowling countenance formidable in the dusky light. “Ah, well, it’s not kindness that gets us into heaven,” he said, feeling himself in quagmire to his knees.

  Morris narrowed his eyes. “I would ask you to consider that I have lived alone without the sap of neighborly interaction for most of my life. And yet, over and over again, you would intrude upon the privacy and solitude I find agreeable. This behavior, which I fail entirely to understand, exhibits the most careless disrespect.”

  “But ...”

  “I am not a novelty, Father, some bizarre experiment to satisfy your prejudices about the essential spirituality of the human heart. I do not need your kindness, nor do I want your salvation.”

  “It is not my salvation.”

  “In addition, I do not desire your friendship, nor do I crave your admiration of my pathetic musical skills.”

  Father Tim felt an alarming weakness in his legs.

  “One further thing. Save your breath, Father, and stop praying for me.”

  He found his ground, and stood it. “Save your own breath, Morris. I shall pray for you until . . .” His mind raced. Until the Lord comes with his hosts? Until it suits me to stop?

  “. . . until the cows come home!” He delivered this fervent declamation straight up and straight out, meaning it from the depths of his being.

  He turned from the kitchen and walked quickly across the foyer, hearing the chilling and inevitable words that cut like knives.

  “Out! Out!”

  Closing the front door behind him, he trotted up the driveway in the late afternoon light that slanted through the canopy of trees.

  They were crammed into Room Fourteen like sardines in a tin, seven of them, including Violet and Barnabas.

  He thought the least they could do was give the Fieldwalkers and Lambs a break. Not only had their good friends pulled off a feast for more than forty people, they’d come in behind the work crew’s cleanup and readied the altar and nave for the wedding.

  Though a small and certainly impromptu wedding, he noted it was kicking up a considerable swirl of activity.

  Buck had reserved a couple of additional rooms, which were in the process of being cleaned, for Omer and the kids, all of which occasioned the hauling of various sacks, pokes, and grips from Room Fourteen into adjacent quarters, with much trailing of vagrant socks and sweaters, and leaving open of the door—a feature his dog particularly relished.

  As Omer rambled in the village, and the newlyweds inspected the island in one of Otis’s pickup trucks, he and Cynthia put their heads together about dinner. Should they even have dinner, since they’d eaten at two-thirty? Children were always hungry, weren’t they? Of course.

  But then, Mona’s was shut tight as a clam on Sunday, which occasioned searching the yellow pages for what was open across, reminding them of Cap’n Willie’s, which seemed the perfect solution; further, he learned that Pauline, Buck, and Jessie were flying home first thing in the morning with Omer, and Harley was arriving this evening to fetch Dooley and Poo back to Mitford early tomorrow, as Omer couldn’t do another double airlift, given his need to attend a huge going-away party for his sister-in-law and outgoing mayor, Esther Cunningham, imminently headed west with her husband in the RV.

  Breathless, Father Tim reserved a room for Harley, whose reason for an early departure tomorrow morning, according to Dooley, was the emergency overhaul he was doing on the motor in Lew Boyd’s wrecker.

  The crowd from next door returned, vibrating with energy.

  He hated to bring up the unwelcome subject. “I thought you had to be in court tomorrow morning.”

  “Oh,” said Dooley. “I forgot.”

  “Forgot what?”

  “Buster Austin went bawlin’ to Chief Underwood and said he was th’ one that done it . . . did it . . . not me. He was scared out of his mind about goin’ in front of a judge, so they ain’t . . . isn’t . . . any court. Not for
me, anyway. Sorry I forgot to tell you. There was so much goin’ on. . . .”

  Father Tim sank onto the foot of the bed, feeling as if a great weight had rolled off his shoulders.

  “Oh, somethin’ else I forgot. Harley said your cousin Walter called, said he couldn’t get in touch with you down here, said he had somethin’ to tell you about a lawsuit, somethin’ really important, said to call him.”

  The lawsuit!

  The weight that had just rolled off, rolled back on and dug in.

  “Ahh,” he said, wanting nothing more than to seek the opiate of sleep, to put the lawsuit, the storm, the sickening confrontation with Morris Love, out of his mind.

  He stood and put on his jacket. “Let’s go for a ride,” he said to Dooley. “I’ll show you around the island.”

  “Cool,” said Dooley. “I’ll drive!”

  “We want to go, too!” shouted Jessie.

  Barnabas trotted to the door and sat, looking hopeful.

  Poo raced from the bathroom. “Can we go see the lighthouse?”

  “I could, I could go, too,” said Jonathan, pulling on his hat and grabbing his coat.

  Father Tim turned to his wife, who looked decidedly pale around the gills. “Hallelujah,” she murmured.

  “When we get back to that place we’re stayin’ at, you can be it,” said Jessie.

  “It what?” asked Poo.

  “Th’ husband.”

  “I don’t want to be no husband.”

  “See, you can marry Jonathan, and I’ll say th’ words, ’cause I like them words.”

  “I ain’t marryin’ no baby,” said Poo.

  “I’m not a baby!” exclaimed Jonathan.

  “Well, so Jonathan can be Buck, I can be Mama, and you can say th’ words, then.”

  “Say what words?” asked Poo.

  “Dearly belove-ud.”

  “I ain’t sayin’ that.”

  Dooley looked into the rearview mirror. “Don’t say ain’t!” he told his brother.

  He lay curled in the fetal position, his back to his wife and Jonathan, feeling a kind of numb pain he couldn’t explain or understand. Life was a roller coaster, that simple. Joy and healing here, desperation and demolition there.

  With all his heart, he’d desired healing for Morris Love’s brokenness, and who was he to think he might give a leg up to such a miracle? There were times when he didn’t like being a priest, always on the front line for justice and mercy and forgiveness and redemption; trying to figure out the mind of God; giving the Lord his personal agenda, then standing around waiting for it to be fulfilled. He didn’t have an agenda for Morris Love, anymore; he was giving up the entire self-seeking, willful notion. His desperate neighbor belonged to God; it was His responsibility to get the job done. He had schlepped in a paltry sack of victuals when what the man needed was the awesome, thunderstriking power of the Almighty to move in his heart and soul and spirit like a great and consuming fire. . . .

  He wiped his eyes on his pajama sleeve.

  “So, Lord,” he whispered, “just do it.”

  Though he managed to spend a full half hour with Buck, he had almost no time with Dooley. On Monday morning, he insisted on making the breakfast run to Mona’s, and let Dooley drive. They arrived at Mona’s as she opened the doors, and waited in the front booth while the kitchen pulled together sacks of sausage biscuits, ham biscuits, fries, Danish, coffee, milk, and Coke for the crowd at Mid-Way.

  “How are things with Caroline?” He already knew about Dooley’s grades, which were excellent and worthy of all praise. Now he was going for the nitty-gritty.

  Dooley reached into the neck of his sweatshirt. Grinning, he pulled forth a small gold ring, set with a single pearl and attached to a chain he was wearing around his neck.

  “What does that mean . . . umm, exactly?”

  Dooley shrugged. “Just . . . you know.”

  “Right. Ever see Lace?”

  “I ran into her at the drugstore one Saturday. She was in White Chapel with a bunch of girls.”

  “Did you talk?”

  Dooley shrugged again. “Not exactly.”

  Oh, well. Time would tell.

  The boy was becoming handsome, that simple. Father Tim observed sinew gathering on his bones, and noted that his long, slender fingers would be well suited, indeed, to his calling. “Any more thoughts on whether to vet small animals or large?”

  “Both,” Dooley said with feeling. “I want to vet both.”

  “Good!” he said. “Good.”

  “Harley, thanks for making such a long trip. Sorry Omer’s plane won’t hold but four.”

  “Don’t even think about it, Rev’rend. Hit was good t’ git on th’ road.”

  “What do you see of our tenant?”

  “Seen ’er twice. She looked kind of hunkered down, like she’s scared of ’er own shadow. Somebody said she was lettin’ ’er piana students go, an’ headin’ back up north. She ain’t tryin’ to run out on th’ rent, is she?”

  “Oh, no, she’s paid up. Well, God be with you, Harley, Poo, Dooley.”

  “ ’Bye, Dad.”

  “ ’Bye, Buddy. See you down here for Christmas, OK?”

  “OK!”

  “Harley, we want you to come, too.”

  “Yes, sir, Rev’rend, we’ll be here.”

  “All right, hold her between the ditches.”

  Feeling a kind of emptiness, he watched the red truck pull out of the motel parking lot and head left on the highway toward Mitford.

  “Fella down th’ beach said he was sittin’ on his deck, said he’d just pulled out his glasses to read th’ paper when a book fell in his lap, whop.”

  “No kidding.” He had to get out of here fast; he’d only popped by to see how Ernie’s reconstruction was coming.

  “I’m tellin’ you!” said Ernie, who appeared to be more like his old self. “Th’ Mustangs by Frank Dobie is what it was. That book come right offa my shelf.”

  “Amazing,” he said, wanting to be respectful.

  “Bull,” said Roanoke.

  “Th’ storm was Thursday, th’ book dropped in ’is lap Sunday. Must’ve blowed somewhere to dry off, then was picked up by a stiff wind and sent south.”

  Roanoke fired a match head under the tabletop and lit a Marlboro. “I ain’t believin’ that.”

  “Told me he liked th’ book all right, but wouldn’t give two cents for th’ endin’.”

  “That’s gratitude for you,” said Roanoke.

  He didn’t want to do this, not at all.

  “Walter Kavanagh here.”

  “Walter ...”

  “Timothy! What in blazes happened down there?”

  “Storm. Bad. Busy.” Sheer dread had reduced his speech to primitive monosyllables.

  “Well,” said Walter, “I’m afraid you’re not going to like this.”

  “It never once occurred to me that I might like it.”

  “D’Anjou says a love letter accompanies the holographic will, which makes the old man’s personal feelings and legal intentions perfectly clear and in accordance with the will.”

  “How do we know it’s Josiah’s Baxter’s handwriting and not some forgery?”

  “D’Anjou seems to believe that matter is sufficiently demonstrable in court, he didn’t say how. Frankly, I think d’Anjou is behind this thing and pushing hard. He’s been minding the family’s affairs for years. I get a sense of personal greed here. If it were my case, I wouldn’t feel so confident—I mean, no one coming forward for fifty years? But he thinks he can convince the jury.”

  “What about the money Miss Sadie left to Dooley?” Walter and Cynthia were the only other living souls who knew that Miss Sadie had left Dooley more than a million dollars in trust. “That was her mother’s money. Surely this legal action couldn’t—”

  “No, I don’t think so. Don’t get ahead of things, Timothy. In any case, it looks like we have to go through with this. I’ll work with you on the response to the court
; we’ve got three weeks to pull it together. Can you call me Wednesday night? I have some ideas.”

  Though he knew full well there was no sorrow in heaven, he hoped, nonetheless, that Miss Sadie wouldn’t get wind of this deplorable mess. Shortly before her death, she’d learned of an illegitimate half-sister, born to her mother before she married Josiah Baxter. This dark secret, however, had an exceedingly bright side—Miss Sadie ended up with Olivia Harper as her beloved grandniece, which had been, of course, an inarguable benediction.

  But another illegitimate half-sister? It seemed like pure fiction; he hated to think what this lawsuit might have done to his old friend and parishioner if she were still living.

  In ways he couldn’t yet fully understand, he sensed his life would be entwined with Sadie Baxter for the rest of his days.

  At one o’clock on Tuesday, he drove to the Mid-Way from a couple of home visits, and helped Cynthia load Jonathan’s things into the car. Jonathan talked endlessly.

  “I’m goin’ home, Cyn’dy.”

  “I know, dear.”

  “Will you come an’ see me?”

  “Of course.”

  “An’ you can see Babette an’ Jason, too.”

  “Will you come and see us?”

  “Maybe I could sometime.” Jonathan put on his hat.

  “We’ll bring your movies later. They’re at our house that fell down in the front.”

  “You could, you could watch ’em again before you bring ’em to my house. That would be OK if you want to.”

  He glanced at his wife as they piled into the car, and felt her suffering as his own.

  He was fairly stunned when he saw Martha Talbot’s house, sitting quite alone at the end of an oyster-shell lane. A million smackers rising off the undeveloped bank of the Sound was a pretty impressive sight.