by Jan Karon
“Umm. Good, dearest. More to the right, there’s an awful crick on the right.”
“I need to adjust the chair at your drawing table again.”
“Would you, Timothy?”
“Of course. First thing tomorrow. Tell me about the book.”
“I’m dismayed, it won’t come right. I should have listened to myself when I said I wouldn’t do any more Violet books. I think I may put it aside ’til we come home from Tennessee.”
“No wonder you’re having a problem with it. That cat’s already done everything there is to do—been to see the Queen, learned to play the piano, gone to the beach, stayed in a hotel in New York, taken up French as a second language—”
“Right there! Ugh, it’s sore. What did you and Dooley talk about at lunch?”
“About finding his father, to see if we can learn something about the boys. Any involvement with his father frightens him, of course. It could be like stirring a nest of hornets.”
“I understand. But it’s a good idea, Timothy.”
“He remembered that his father had a best friend, a drinking buddy he hung out with, got in trouble with. The name came to Dooley very clearly—Shorty Justice. He lived in Holding, worked on the highway. I’m going to get Emma on it.” His erstwhile secretary, who had helped locate Jessie Barlowe, liked nothing better than to spread a dragnet in cyberspace.
“I’ll help you any way I can,” said Cynthia. “I’ll do anything.”
He leaned down and kissed her shoulders, loving the feel of her living flesh. She was balm to him, she was everything he might ever want or dream of having, she was his best friend, his encourager. How had he ever bumbled along in that odd dream state of bachelorhood, thinking himself sane?
“I love you,” he said.
“I love you back, sweetheart.” She yawned and rolled over and put her arms around his neck. “You are still my sweetheart?”
He grinned. “‘Until heaven and then forever!’” he said, quoting the inscription engraved on his wedding band.
CHAPTER FOUR
www.seek&find.com
Emma Newland thumped into his leather chair in the study, adjusted the needlepoint pillow behind her back, and opened her laptop.
It was her custom to arrive at the yellow house at eight-thirty every Tuesday morning, with the express purpose of inputting the latest portion of his current essay, sending various e-mails in her erstwhile employer’s stead, munching tortilla chips to maintain appropriate levels of blood sugar, and tidying his desk whether he wished it tidy or not.
She considered this stint, generally four hours in length, to be her “bounden duty,” having made a pact with God. She had committed to serve her helpless former priest ’til death did them part if only God would spare her the agony and aggravation of arthritis—which, at least in recorded history, had afflicted every female in her family. So far, she had suffered only a minor twinge in her right thumb, which she blamed on excessive use of the mouse.
Far be it from her former priest to mention such a thing, but he thought her eyebrows appeared singed this morning, or even missing, as if she’d failed to jump back when lighting an outdoor grill. He’d always thought her eyebrows incredibly similar to woolly worms that had grown extra-thick coats for winter. In truth, his secretary’s face looked so oddly denuded that he was embarrassed.
“What’re you lookin’ at?” she demanded, without glancing away from the screen.
He felt like a schoolboy, caught releasing a toad in the girls’ rest room. “Nothing!”
She fiddled with the thing in her lap. “So have you had your spring cold yet?”
“I don’t expect to have a spring cold,” he said.
“How on earth you’ll escape it, I don’t know…all that drinkin’ out of th’ cup with everybody and his brother and shakin’ a hundred hands at th’ Peace.”
He didn’t comment.
“Now that you don’t have to drink out of the cup every Sunday, you ought to start dippin’ your wafer, that’s what I did before I went back to bein’ a Baptist.”
He bit his tongue.
“I guess you heard the Methodists are gettin’ a woman preacher.”
He didn’t like it when Emma heard news before he did, especially news from the ecclesiastical realm. It was petty of him, but…“Well, well.”
“I’m goin’ to see if you’ve got e-mail,” she said, “then we’ll go lookin’ for Dooley’s daddy.”
He swiveled around to his desk and began final revisions to the essay on Wordsworth’s postulations, wondering whether he’d have to endure Emma Newland’s close company even in heaven. No, surely not, as that would somehow smack of the other place….
He tried to disclaim his excitement that she might indeed be able to trace Clyde Barlowe, right here in this room, today. He didn’t want to get excited about a shot in the dark, though his Alabama bishop had once chastised him about that very thing.
The Right Reverend Paul Jared Sotheby had wagged his finger like a schoolmarm. “Timothy, stop this nonsense of preparing for the worst and spend your time preparing for the best!” This counsel had never been forgotten, though he was seldom able to follow it.
Emma stared at the screen, making a light whistling noise between her teeth. Pop music wasn’t his strong point, but it sounded like the first two lines of “Delta Dawn,” repeated ad infinitum.
“Lookit,” she said, “you’ve got mail!”
“Really?” He leaped up and crouched over her shoulder. “Aha!” Marion Fieldwalker, his former parishioner and good friend in Whitecap Island.
“I gave her my e-mail address, bless ’er heart, so she could keep in touch.”
Dear Fr, will dash this off as well as am able, it is my first try at cyberspace.
Fr Conklin has not upset us too badly. He has a fondness for parish suppers and the old hymns and is organizing a trip to the Holy Land. Sam thinks he will work out.
Morris Love plays the organ each Sunday. We’ve never heard such a holy racket! People come from far and wide to enjoy the music & end up hearing about God’s grace which is a tidy arrangement.
Ella Bridgewater brings dear Captain Larkin to church most
Sundays and subs for Morris on fifth Sunday. Jeffrey Tolson is working across at the college three days and up
Dorchester at the big dock two days. He is in church with
Janette and the children every Sunday. Some think he will slip back into his old ways, but Sam thinks he will work out.
We miss you greatly. Otis and Marlene had a playground built behind the church and Jean Ballenger is writing a history of St. John’s with a list of all the gravestone inscriptions, including Maude Boatwright’s “Demure at last,” which I recall was your great favorite. I will dispatch a copy as soon as the ink is dry.
Sam has a kidney infection, we would covet your prayers. You are always in ours.
Best love to you and dear Cynthia. When you left it was as if a candle flame had been snuffed out, but we are soldiering on.
He straightened up, clutching his back.
“Wait!” she said. “There’s more.”
“My back…,” he said, feeling a creak in every joint.
“If you weren’t too cheap to buy a printer, you wouldn’t have to read your mail hangin’ over my shoulder!”
Blast and double blast today’s technology. He’d stood firm for years until just the other day when he’d finally sold out and let Puny teach him to work the microwave. It was a watershed moment, something he wasn’t proud of, but in the space of a few heartbeats his tepid tea was steaming. Maybe he did need to buy a printer.
“Look,” she said. “Your pal in Mitford, England.”
“Move it this way, there’s a glare on the screen.” He bent closer, battling the heavy scent of My Sin that rose from his secretary like a cloud off Mount Saint Helens. “The type is too small!”
“Your back hurts, there’s a glare on the screen, the type is too small. The answ
er is to get your own laptop, like a normal person!” She snorted. “Sit down, I’ll read it to you. ‘Dear Father…’”
She blinked and looked up. “You know, I can get you online in a heartbeat!”
“I don’t want to be online!”
“Anytime! Just let me know.”
“No way,” he said, meaning it.
“Stick your head in the sand, let life pass you by,” she muttered.
“‘Dear Father…’”
A sudden shower pecked at the windows. He heard his wife’s radio playing in her workroom.
“‘What a thumping good idea to have your Mitford and ours become sister villages. I’m sure the whole business wants a bit of pomp to make it official. I can’t think what sort but I’m certain my wife Judy can make it click. She’s known for pulling off the best jumble sales in the realm, and our vicar is clever at this sort of thing, as well. We’ll all of us put our heads together and come up with something splendid, I’m sure. Sincere best wishes on your mission work in Tennessee, I believe that’s where a considerable amount of your whisky comes from. Will keep in touch through your good sec’y. Yours sincerely, Cedric Hart, Esq.’”
“Terrific,” he said. “Anything else?”
“That’s it. Anything you want to send before I look for Clyde Barlowe?”
“This,” he said, handing her a piece of paper on which he’d scrawled a quote for Stuart Cullen.
“You could do it yourself,” she said.
“Blast it, Emma…”
Church architecture, she typed, ought to be an earthly and temporal fulfillment of the Savior’s own prophesy that though the voices of men be still, the rocks and stones themselves will cry out with the laud and praise and honor due unto the King of kings and the Lord of lords. Michel di Giovanni, medieval builder and designer.
“Who to?” she asked.
“The bishop.”
He watched her move the mouse around. “Done! Now. Ready if you are.”
“Excellent!” He was on the edge of his seat.
“But don’t get your hopes up,” she said, peering over her half-glasses.
“Oh, no,” he said.
“This will take a little time.”
“Right.”
She waved her hand at him. “So do what you have to do to your essay so I can input it before I leave.”
Trying to cast the search from his mind, he created two paragraphs from one and crossed out a line that he’d formerly thought stunning. He noted by the faded type that the ribbon on his Royal manual was wearing through, a circumstance that Emma wouldn’t favor in the least when transcribing.
The clock ticked, the rain pecked, the radio played Brahms. Couldn’t she somehow just go to the B’s and find it? What was taking so long?
He deleted a paragraph, transposed two lines, and capitalized Blake as in William. Thirty minutes to find one ordinary name?
“Lookit!” she exclaimed.
“What?”
“I’ll be darned.”
“What?”
“Well, well,” she said, paying him no attention at all.
There was nothing to do but get up and look over her shoulder.
“See there?” She jabbed her finger at a list of names.
“Where?”
“Right there. Cate Turner. Idn’t that Lace Turner’s daddy’s name?”
“Why, yes.”
“There’s only one Cate Turner on th’ list, and he’s livin’ in Hope Creek, that little town close to Holding.”
“Lace isn’t anxious to know where her father is. Far from it. Keep looking.” In truth, Lace had been legally adopted by the Harpers and had taken their surname, though most Mitfordians, out of habit, still referred to her as Lace Turner.
“Why are you in the T’s, anyway?” he asked, irritated. “You can’t find Barlowe in the T’s.”
“I was lookin’ for Caldecott Turner, my high school sweetheart, we called him Cal.”
“Emma, Emma…”
“I already looked in th’ Barlowes.”
“And?”
“And I hate to tell you, but there’s no Clyde Barlowe.”
“There’s got to be a Clyde Barlowe. Both names are common to this area.”
“I looked in all fifty states and everywhere in Canada, including Nova Scotia and the Yukon, plus—”
“But it’s such a simple name. Surely—”
“See for yourself.” She stood up, thrusting the laptop in his direction. “Just sit down right here and fool with it while I go to the johnny.”
He backed away, grinning in spite of himself. “Oh, no, you don’t! I’m not falling for your flimsy ploy to get me hooked on this miserable contraption.”
Emma chuckled, a rare thing to witness. “You’ll be hooked sooner or later. Might as well be sooner.”
“When you come back,” he said, ignoring her prediction, “I’d like you to look for a fellow named Shorty Justice.”
But there was no Shorty Justice, either.
As he walked Emma to the front door, he knew he’d ask, and he knew he’d regret it.
“Ummm. Your eyebrows…”
“What about my eyebrows?” she snapped.
“They just look…” He shrugged. “Different!” Didn’t he know that curiosity killed the cat?
“Do I ask about your eyebrows?”
“Well, no, but there’s nothing different about mine.”
“Oh, really? Have you looked in the mirror lately?”
She swept out the door, blowing him in the ditch.
He went at once to the downstairs powder room. Consulting the mirror, he saw there was absolutely nothing different about, much less wrong with, his eyebrows.
“Do my eyebrows look funny?” he asked Cynthia.
She studied him soberly. “No. Why?”
“Emma said I should look in the mirror at my eyebrows.”
“Why would she say that?”
“I don’t know. I guess because I asked about hers, they seemed…different.”
“Oh, that! Of course, they are different! Which is to say she doesn’t have any! Fancy Skinner talked Emma into thinning her eyebrows, and instead of plucking them, Fancy used a wax thing that pulled off the whole shebang.”
“Oh, boy.”
“When I croak, Timothy, remember my instruction. You do remember?”
He remembered. This instruction was handwritten and paper-clipped to his wife’s will, which specified burial instead of the increasingly popular cremation. TIMOTHY, Do not let Fancy Skinner touch my hair!!! Yours from above and beyond, C.
Dooley’s Wrangler was at Lew Boyd’s, where Harley was working on the stick shift, which was, in fact, living up to its name and sticking.
“I’ll drive you to your mom’s,” said Father Tim. He didn’t want Dooley to leave, not at all, but of course he wouldn’t mention it….
“Can I have your car tonight since mine won’t be ready ’til tomorrow?”
“Can you?”
“May I?”
Father Tim smiled, waiting.
“Please!”
“Yes, you may,” said Father Tim, tossing him the keys. “Thanks, Dad!”
“You’re welcome.”
He was touched that the boy gave him a good punch on the arm.
All the books they could possibly wish to read or refer to while in Tennessee were at last in boxes. He noticed they were virtually the same books they’d schlepped to Whitecap, with the addition of a crate of children’s books.
He stood back and scratched his head. What else? Ah! He’d want the Tozer and the complete works of George Macdonald, which were upstairs, he’d forgotten about those; then there was the business about the Galsworthy….
He recalled that his wife had preached him a sermon about popping into Happy Endings for any reason other than to say goodbye to Hope Winchester. The drill was that neither he nor Cynthia was permitted to add another ounce to their current shipping charges.
H
e hadn’t promised her he wouldn’t buy another book, though he did say he considered her counsel wise. That was, of course, before he realized how much he needed the Galsworthy volume. One little book! And a paperback, at that! How much could it weigh, after all? He wouldn’t put it in the book crates, anyhow, he’d stuff it in his duffel bag, he’d tote it in his rolled-up pajamas. Some men chased women, some were smitten with fast cars. Big deal, he liked books.
Before going on his mission, he opened the refrigerator door and spied the cache of Cokes they kept for Dooley’s comings and goings. He realized he’d been ignoring his pressing thirst, and though he shouldn’t do this, the can was already open…probably flat, but what the heck, just a sip. He drained the contents, rinsed the can, flattened it, and tossed it in the recycle bin in the garage.
He shelled out thirteen dollars and change.
“Don’t, ah, mention this,” he said, confident that Hope would get his meaning.
“Of course not!” said Hope, offended. “I’m asked to keep all sorts of things confidential!”
“Really? Like what?”
She peered at him through her tortoiseshell-rim glasses and smiled. “If I told you, Father, then it wouldn’t be—”
“Confidential!” he said. “Of course.”
She dropped the book into a bag and handed it to him. “I suppose you know that some people are making exceedingly captious remarks about the Man in the Attic.”
“I’m not surprised.”
“They say his flagitious behavior will almost certainly assert itself again.”
There was nothing he could say to that, nor could he help noticing that Hope looked oddly worried, a little pale. “I pray that all will be well and very well,” he said. “Perhaps you’ll pray about it, also.”
“I don’t pray.”
“Aha.” He tucked the bag under his arm.
“But I believe in God,” she said.
