by Jan Karon
Theirs would be a simple ministry and, as far as he was concerned, that was among its attractions. Along with Father Roland and a zealous young Kentucky priest and his wife, they would live in the remote community much like other mountain families; except that, each afternoon, they would open the doors of their homes to whatever young people might come. There would be art classes and singing, Bible stories and books, food and games—a safe place, a good place; and on Sunday, he and the other two priests would celebrate and preach in the several widely scattered mission churches formed in the last century by ardent Anglican bishops.
The move itself would be the soul of simplicity: They would load the Mustang with kitchen gadgetry, a bolt of mosquito netting, five suitcases, four pillows, and a heap of blankets. They would ship thirty-six pounds of art supplies and two hundred books by truck. On arrival, they would set up housekeeping in a sparsely furnished metal building with a cement floor.
His wife had paled when told about the metal building, and had nearly reneged on the whole deal when the subject of cement floors arose.
“But,” she had said, “it’s not about cement floors.”
He patted her hand that held the letter. I’m sorry, he wanted to say, but didn’t. And he really was sorry, for he liked nothing more than to see his wife able to give something back in her own way, in a way not connected to being a priest’s wife.
He looked into her earnest face and was shamed by his feelings. He was unutterably selfish; deep down inside he knew it, and no, he could never confess it to her, not in a thousand years.
At Mitford Blossoms, he asked Jena Ivey for a dozen roses; long-stemmed, without wires, ferns, or gypsophilia, please, in a box lined with green paper and tied with a pink satin ribbon.
“Oh, I remember how she likes her roses!” Jena looked him in the eye, smiling. “And it’s been ages since you’ve done this.”
He blushed. He was still smarting from the dark recognition that he desperately feared being separated from his wife. It had made him feel suddenly weak and frail, like a child. All those years alone, a bachelor who seldom yearned for the hearthstone of a wife’s love, and now…he was a man beset with a dreadful mixture of anxiety and humiliation over the depth of his attachment.
“Make that…” The words lodged in his throat. “Make that two dozen!”
Jena blinked, unbelieving. She had never known but one other man in Mitford to buy two dozen roses at a whack, and that was Andrew Gregory, the mayor. Every time he and his Italian wife had an anniversary, Mr. Gregory hotfooted it to Mitford Blossoms and laid out cash money, no matter what the going rate.
“Why, Father! Cynthia will think…she’ll think you’ve gone ’round the bend!”
He forced a grin. “And she would be right,” he said.
“Tim?”
It was John Brewster, director of the Children’s Hospital in Wesley.
“Yes, John, how are you, good fellow?”
“Couldn’t be better, I have some great news.”
“I’m eternally interested in great news!”
“We’ve finally got the funds to hire someone, someone strong, savvy, good at encouraging our donors—the kind of person who can really make a difference around here.”
“Terrific! This has been a long time coming.”
“A long time coming, and I’m asking you to consider the position.”
There was a brief silence.
“We can talk about the particulars later. You’re the absolutely perfect person for the job, Tim—heaven-sent, if you ask me. I hope you’ll say yes.” “Ah.” He was oddly shaken. Yes, it was something he would like doing and would, in fact, be pretty good at doing. But…
“It’s too late,” he told the director. “I’ve recently made a commitment, Cynthia and I will be going up to Tennessee to work with a children’s program, we’ll come back to Mitford most weekends, but…”
“I hate to hear this.” He thought John sounded as if he might burst into tears. “I’m terribly disappointed, everyone agreed that I should call you at once. Is there any chance the other thing…could fall through, not work out?”
“I don’t think so. I’m sorry, too, I would have liked…”
John sighed. “Well, then, we’ve got to dig deep over here and reset our thinking. Ah. Well, then. Darn.”
He thought the director seemed fairly stricken. It’s not the end of the world, he wanted to say. “It’s gracious of you to ask, John, I’m flattered, really.”
And he was. He felt a spring in his step as he went down the hall to Cynthia’s studio and sat on her small love seat and told her what they’d just turned down.
She came and sat in his lap and kissed the top of his head and hugged him, wordless.
Dear Stuart:
I’ve just recalled that Mahatma Gandhi said, “First they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.”
In His brotherhood,
Timothy
“Father!”
Hélène Pringle dashed across the driveway and into the yard of the yellow house. He observed with some fondness that she bobbed when she dashed, rather like a small hare across an open field.
She clutched a parcel in her hands, which she transferred to his. “Bread!” she exclaimed, huffing a bit. “Just baked. I hope you and Cynthia will enjoy it.”
“Thank you, Hélène!” The seductive warmth of the loaf seeped through the brown bag. “I just might eat the whole thing standing right here!”
His neighbor laughed with childlike merriment. What a transformation had occurred in this small, once-faint-hearted Frenchwoman who had moved next door from Boston two or three years ago. He hardly ever thought of it now, but they’d gotten off to an exceedingly rough start—Hélène had not only stolen a valuable bronze off his mantel, she’d sued him for big bucks—and all the while living in and renting his house. Thank heaven he’d dropped his charges, she’d withdrawn the lawsuit, and he and Cynthia now had the finest neighbor on God’s green earth. In truth, Hélène Pringle had grown in grace and stretched her wings considerably.
“Warming up!” he said of the weather, and was glad to hear such words from his mouth.
“Oui! J’adore le printemps! Oh, excuse me, Father, I always speak French when I’m excited!”
“I saw Françoise yesterday, she looks strong and happy.” Hélène had managed to bring her mother from Boston and install her at Hope House, where, though plagued by several complications of heart disease, she was flourishing.
“Mother loves your visits, Father, thank you for all you and Cynthia do for us. One day, I promise I shall repay you in some important way. Absolument!”
“Don’t even think it! Merely observing your happiness here gives us a double portion.”
“Three new students, Father! That’s fifteen, now, and I think I mustn’t accept more. I never thought I’d be able to say such a thing.” Hélène consulted her watch. “Ça, par exemple! It’s nearly time for Sophie Hawthorne’s eleven o’clock.”
Hélène’s piano teaching had introduced a pleasing new dimension to Mitford. He felt personally proud of her success, though he’d had nothing at all to do with it.
“Please help yourself to your roses when they bloom, Father, I must tell you I’m grateful to live in the home of a gardener! Well, à bientôt!”
“Au revoir, Hélène! Oh, and merci!” He estimated that his French vocabulary now included a whopping ten or twelve words.
She gave a fluttering wave, then darted across the driveway and over the lawn of the rectory and up the steps. He smiled. Precisely like a hare!
As he walked into the hall from the front door, he observed his wife standing by the living room window.
“I saw you talking with Hélène, I thought she might eat you with a spoon on the very spot where you stood!”
“Spying on me!” he said.
“It’s true, darling, but only while washing a smudge off the windowpane. I think she’s mad for you, but in an altoge
ther decent way, of course.”
He judged Cynthia’s eyes to be precisely the color of chicory blossoms, soon to appear in the fields around Mitford. He set the bread in a chair and bounded to her and took her in his arms. “Why would you be jealous of me, for goodness’ sake?”
He was laughing as he said it, but he really wanted to know, needed to know; he suddenly craved to hear her say something that would knock his socks off. She was good at that…
“But I’m not jealous of you at all!”
“You’re not?”
“Of course not! Hélène is a lovely woman who’s scarcely ever known a decent man until she met her neighbor. Which is exactly the way I felt when I started popping through the hedge.”
Ah. Popping through the hedge. That had been the modus operandi of their courtship; he felt positively nostalgic just hearing her mention the hedge.
“Besides, Timothy, I know you’ll love me ’til death do us part, and then forever.”
She put her arms around his neck and he kissed her tenderly, inhaling her warm scent.
But since she’d brought it up, he would have liked her to be jealous—if only a little.
He broke the news as they sat at the kitchen table.
“Not again!” wailed Puny. “Y’all jis’ went off a little bit ago, I cain’t even think about you goin’ off ag’in!”
“Just for a year,” he said, feeling like a traitor.
“Yessir, Rev’ren’, seems like we ain’t hardly got settled down from th’ last time you went off,” said Harley. Harley Welch was his friend, his handyman, his brother in the Lord, his neighbor who lived in Hélène Pringle’s basement.
“We’re going to work with children who’ve been terribly hurt by their circumstances,” Cynthia explained. “It’s a wonderful program that will help families find healing.”
“But you got children right here,” said Puny, struggling to understand. “I mean, they’re not really hurt or anything, even if I did spank Sassy somethin’ awful for playin’ with matches.”
Puny’s red-haired twins, Sissy and Sassy, had been part of the Kavanagh household since birth. Now they usually came home each day to the yellow house, from Mitford School’s second grade.
Father Tim glanced at Cynthia, who was clearly sobered by the gloomy response to their news. Didn’t they have a perfect right to do whatever they pleased? Didn’t they deserve the freedom to pursue God’s plan for their lives? And here were two lower lips positively hanging to the floor.
Harley shook his head and sighed.
“Now, listen!” Father Tim said in his pulpit voice.
Aha! That was the ticket, that got their attention. From now on, it would be tell, don’t ask!
“We’re going to Tennessee, but we can’t do it without you. No, indeed, we’d be in a pickle. In truth, if the Lord hadn’t provided the two of you to care for things around here, I doubt if we’d be able to answer this call.
“Harley, you’re to keep the two yards mowed, pruned up, and fertilized.
“Puny, you’re to do the outstanding job you did while we were in Whitecap! We’ll come home on frequent weekends as hungry as bears, so load up the refrigerator and don’t spare the tomato aspic!
“Harley…”
“Yessir?” Harley had snapped to.
“Be sure and take Dooley’s granpaw his livermush, as Dooley will be at Meadowgate with the Owens this summer. Further, I’d like you to go out to the farm now and again and let Marge Owen feed you some chicken pie, she said she’d look forward to it.”
Harley stood bolt upright from the chair. “Yessir, Rev’rend!” He thought Harley might give a salute.
“Puny! You can handle the job?”
“Oh, yessir, I can, and be glad to!” Color was back in her cheeks and adrenaline was pumping; the place was humming again, as if power had been restored after a blackout.
“Well, then, go to it, and thank God for both of you!”
His wife turned and looked at him, smiling. “Darling,” she murmured with evident admiration, “you could have been a Marine!”
“For you,” said Cynthia, going about her daily task of mail call.
He eagerly opened the envelope postmarked from a federal prison.
Dear Father:
Thanks for your letter of last month. I haven’t responded as quickly as usual, for a great deal is going on here. God is working in very unexpected ways.
The short of it is this:
After eight years, I am being released on good behavior. My hand is trembling as I write this, as I didn’t know whether I would ever be able to share such glorious good news.
It is my hope that I might be welcome in Mitford. If you could help me find a place there, I will be always grateful and will work hard to earn your trust, and the trust of everyone in Mitford. As I have said many times, I never felt so at home anywhere else. I will need employment and will appreciate it if you will keep your eyes open, though I know there’s not much of a job market for convicted felons.
Pray for me, Father, as I go through these next few weeks, I should be arriving in Mitford, if that is all right with you, the middle of June.
I don’t know what to tell you about my job skills, as I would never again be accepted within the university system. My main interests are living this merciful new life for Christ, and reading. I can play a little softball and restore antique cars, which, as I look at what I just wrote, is a pretty pathetic resume. I would be eager and willing to learn a trade, anything short of breaking wild horses…well, even that.
Enclosed is the monthly check for the Children’s Hospital. I have saved nearly all the rest of my income from working in the prison laundry, and so will have some means, however limited, to make a go of things.
Please note the new address they’ve assigned me until my release. I look forward with hope to your letter.
Yours in the One Who is our faithful shield and buckler,
George Gaynor
“You’re beaming,” she said.
“George Gaynor is being released from prison.”
“Thanks be to God!”
“He’s coming to live in Mitford. We must find him a job.”
“Yes! Terrific! And a place to live,” she said, her wheels already turning.
He snapped the red leash on Barnabas and walked up the street, whistling. He hadn’t surprised himself by whistling in a very long time, probably not since his jaunts on the beach at Whitecap.
He was in a visiting mood. If Homeless Hobbes hadn’t moved to the country when the Creek community was uprooted by the shopping center, he’d trot over there for a chinwag. He often missed Homeless’s comfortable companionship and hard-won wisdom. In truth, his visits to the shack on the creek had once been a great getaway….
He hailed Avis Packard, who was smoking a cigarette in front of The Local; he stuck his head in the door of the Collar Button and spoke to the Collar Button man, who was taking inventory and looking grumpy; he veered into the Sweet Stuff Bakery and said hello to Winnie Kendall, averting his eyes from the bake case and trying not to inhale too deeply as her husband, Thomas, removed a tray of chocolate chip cookies from the oven.
Walking on, he hooked the leash around the iron leg of the bench outside the Grill and went in for a large order of fries and chicken tenders, plus a Little Debbie snack cake. Then, clutching the bag, he trotted to the old Porter place, a.k.a. the town museum, to visit Uncle Billy and Miss Rose.
Uncle Billy Watson hoisted himself from the chair with his cane, shuffled to the back door, and looked out, grinning. “Law, if hit ain’t th’ preacher! Rose, come an’ look, hit’s th’ preacher!”
He called to his schizophrenic wife of more than fifty years, who was nearly stone deaf but refused to wear hearing aids. “There’s aids enough in this world!” was her common reply.
Miss Rose appeared behind her husband, wearing a chenille bathrobe and a turban adorned with…maybe a mashed-flat silk tiger lily…or was it a glad
iolus?
“You leave that dog outside,” she shouted. The gladiolus bobbed as she spoke.
“Yes ma’am,” he said, “I was going to do that.”
“And don’t strap him to my lawn chairs, he’ll haul them off every whichaway.”
“Yes ma’am.”
He attached his patient dog to the post on the porch stoop and went in with the sack from the Grill. “A little something to add to your supper menu,” he said. He loved to bring fries to Uncle Billy, though he had to monitor Miss Rose or she would eat the whole caboodle and leave her husband holding the bag.
“What is it?” asked the old woman, looking especially fierce.
“Chicken, fries—”
“Bill Watson won’t eat chicken thighs!” She snatched the bag from Father Tim’s hand and bolted down the hallway. “He likes white meat!”
“I be dadgum,” said her husband, sounding plaintive. “Rose! You come back!”
They heard the bedroom door slam and the lock click.
“Eh, law,” sighed Uncle Billy.
“Well, well,” said Father Tim, not knowing what else to say.
“Some days is worse than others, don’t you know.”
Father Tim thought Uncle Billy looked exceedingly fragile, like a dry leaf blown on the wind.
“You feel like going down to the Grill before they close? We’ll sit there in peace and you can have whatever you like. I’ll tip in a chocolate milkshake.”
Uncle Billy’s filmy eyes appeared to sparkle. “I’d be beholden to you, yessir, I would.”
“And I’d be beholden to you,” said Father Tim, eager for his old friend’s company.
Walking down the street with Bill Watson was slow going, but he didn’t mind. After all, he had nowhere to hurry to, and Barnabas seemed happy enough.
“We’un’s’ll be a whole lot older when we git there,” said Uncle Billy.
He was helping Uncle Billy negotiate the curb when he looked up and saw her getting out of the Lincoln, several buildings away. It never failed; no matter how often he’d seen her over the years, it was always the same: His heart hammered, his mouth went dry, and he wanted to run for his life.
