by Jan Karon
“How about a little Wordsworth?” he asked his dog, who, in the passenger seat, rode belted in and looking straight ahead.
No response. He supposed Barnabas had heard enough of Wordsworth over the years.
“Longfellow, then!”
Barnabas flicked his left ear.
“Let’s see.” He’d have to dig deep for Longfellow, it had been a while….
“I’m noodling my noggin,” he explained to his companion.
Ah, but it was good to be off and away, with no one to mind what a country priest might say to his best friend.
He pulled the steep grade to Kinloch, listening to a country music station. “What’s made Milwaukee famous has made a fool out of me….”
Feeling expansive, he considered a few things he’d like to do now that the weight seemed to have lifted off his chest, off his heart.
First, he’d like to visit Homeless Hobbes in his new digs. Also, he wanted to build a latticework fence around their garbage cans, take the twins to a movie in Wesley, and…definitely!…make Mississippi barbecue for George and Harley.
What else? He was going to finish the book of essays if it killed him.
Driving up the side of a mountain on a dazzling afternoon made life’s possibilities seem bright and endless.
A car was waiting for him in the parking lot, the sort of car that suggested Kinloch was a comfortable parish. Settled by Scots in the late eighteenth century, Kinloch was now known as a venerable stronghold of ample cottages built in the twenties by Florida money and passed down through succeeding generations. Given its lush and manicured banks, even the lake appeared well-heeled.
“Father Kavanagh! Welcome!”
Stout, gray-haired, and lively, Mary Fisher gave him a bone-crushing handshake, then snatched the hanging vestments from his hand and hung them in the car. As Barnabas relieved himself at the water’s edge, she opened the passenger door and all but lifted him onto the seat. “I was told to take good care of you!” she shouted, obviously a dash hard-of-hearing.
“Wait! My dog…”
“Dog? What dog?” Mary Fisher turned to look as Barnabas galloped up to the astonished woman and thumped down at her feet, panting.
“Good Lord!” she gasped, crashing backward against the car.
“It’s a bit out of the ordinary, I admit, but I hoped that someone might—”
“Nobody said anything about a dog!”
“True, true. I failed to mention it. But he’ll be no trouble. And look! I washed him! He’s clean as a pin!” He maneuvered his dog onto the backseat as Mary Fisher grumbled her way to the driver’s side, where she leaped behind the wheel, put the car in reverse, and backed up at dizzying speed.
“The lake…,” he muttered.
“What about it?” she bawled.
She had nearly backed into it, that’s what about it. He figured this experience would make riding with Hélène Pringle look like a Lord’s Chapel coffee hour.
He turned and peered at his dog, clinging to the leather for dear life as Mary Fisher floored the accelerator and they lurched ahead.
“So what are you preachin’ on today?”
“Ah…” He gripped the handle above the passenger door as his driver made a sudden right-hand turn and hauled up a narrow lane carved into the side of a steep hill. His sermon topic fled all conscious memory.
“How many are we expecting?” he asked.
“What’s that?”
“How many are we expecting?” he boomed in his pulpit voice.
“God only knows!”
Flying around a curve, it appeared likely they would meet the panel truck head-on, but Mary Fisher deftly whipped around it. He would have considered leaping out, but it was a considerable drop into the gorge, with no guardrails in sight. Weren’t there laws about guardrails? Perhaps he’d walk back to the parking lot after the service.
He looked at his watch. Seven minutes after five. His visit to Kinloch felt protracted before it had hardly begun.
“See over there?” His driver slung her arm in front of his face and pointed toward a large house topping a mountain ridge. “That’s where we’re headed.”
“Good to know,” he said, as she rounded a curve.
Seeing a straight stretch before them, Mary Fisher hammered down on the accelerator. Clearly she had driven professionally. The Grand Prix, perhaps, or maybe only Talladega.
“Here you go!” she said, wheeling at last into a gravel drive and jumping out.
“Is the chapel nearby?” he asked as she opened his door.
“What’s that?”
“The chapel. Is it nearby?”
“Right, this is goodbye! You won’t see me ’til I haul you down after the service.” She opened the rear door and Barnabas spilled out like so much molasses. “Nobody said anything about a dog!” she reminded him.
“Right. Sorry. Really.” He snatched his vestments himself.
Mary Fisher had ushered him into a bedroom where he might change before going on to the chapel. Though it was clearly a home, and an unusually handsome one at that, no one was around. Everyone was at the chapel, he supposed, setting things up.
Barnabas sprawled in a corner, definitely out of sorts from the winding drive up the mountain. In truth, the priest wasn’t feeling so well, either. Robed and wearing his stole, he walked up the hall, looking for a kitchen. He’d left the dog bowl and water in his car, and they could both use a good, long drink. Why wasn’t someone around to see to things? It was a little…he searched for a word…eerie, somehow.
He found a bowl, and hoping nobody would mind—it was only stoneware, not porcelain, he reassured himself—filled it at the kitchen sink. As he did so, he noticed a familiar but indefinable smell in the room. He stood motionless for a moment, trying to name it, but found he couldn’t.
After drinking a glass of water, he hurried to the bedroom with the water bowl.
He supposed he should set the bowl on a towel, Barnabas’s water-lapping style had a way of distributing heavy precip over a large area; better still, he’d set it on the tiled floor of a small sitting room adjoining the bedroom, and mop up afterward with his handkerchief.
Of course he shouldn’t have brought Barnabas, it had been a foolish, last-minute notion and a desire for company. Now here he was, dirtying people’s bowls. He was mildly disgusted with himself. Retirement, of course, was the culprit. Unless one kept one’s hand in, things seemed to slide downhill.
Barnabas drank with great thirst and crashed onto the sitting room floor for a nap.
Five-thirty. Why didn’t someone come for him? And there was the smell again. What was it about that smell? Though faint, it repulsed him. He flexed his right hand, feeling the stiffness from gripping the car handle.
He paced the room, anxious, before realizing what he needed.
He needed prayer.
Dropping to his knees by a striped wing chair, he crossed himself. “Almighty and eternal God,” he prayed aloud, “so draw our hearts to Thee, so guide our minds, so fill our imaginations, so control our wills, that we may be wholly Thine, utterly dedicated unto Thee; and then use us, we pray Thee, as Thou wilt, and always to Thy glory and the welfare of Thy people, through our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.”
There. Better! Much better. He rose and peered through the window, where he saw only a bank covered with rhododendron. Where was the lake for this so-called lakeside service? Five thirty-two.
He turned, startled by his dog’s deep growl.
“Good afternoon, Father.”
Ed Coffey closed the door to the sitting room and looked at him, unsmiling. “Making yourself at home, I see.”
His heart pounded into his throat. “What are you doing here?”
“I’m just checking this door,” said Ed. He heard the lock click, and Barnabas barking on the other side.
“No!” he shouted, racing across the room. “Wait!”
Ed Coffey stepped quickly through an adjoining door as Edith
Mallory stepped in.
“Timothy!” she said, closing the door behind her. “How good of you to come.”
He stood rooted to the spot, his breath short. “What do you mean by this?”
She smiled. “I paid a generous sum for you to come here. Therefore, I’m entitled to your company.” She shrugged. “That’s all.”
She walked across the room and sat on the love seat by the window. “Do sit down, Timothy.”
“I will do no such thing.” He went to the sitting room door and jiggled the knob.
“Barnabas! Are you there?” Silence. He turned quickly to the other door, frantic.
“It’s locked, Timothy.” Edith lifted the lid of a box next to the love seat and withdrew one of the long, dark Tiparillos she was known to smoke. She held it between her fingers before lighting it. “Ed will open it just after six-thirty. I’ve bought an hour of your time and I expect to have an hour of your time.”
She smiled in a manner he’d always thought ghastly.
“Consider me your congregation,” she said.
“Is Barnabas still in the other room?”
“Of course not. You’re far too courteous to disturb your congregation with the barking of a dog.”
“Edith, believe me, believe me…” He would throttle her with his own hands, he would.
“Believe you in what way?” She flicked a silver lighter. The end of her Tiparillo glowed; she inhaled deeply.
There! That was the sickly sweet smell he hadn’t been able to identify.
“If anything at all happens to my dog, I shall take every measure under heaven to see you brought down.”
“Umm,” she said, smiling again. “You’re far more attractive when you’re angry; I always thought so.”
“You are a wicked and unkind woman, Edith.”
“You’ve said worse about me in the past.”
“Everything I’ve ever said about you I’ve said to your face.”
“Speaking of my face, you may notice that I’ve had a little…touch-up here and there. Do you like it?”
“No cosmetic procedure is capable of disguising a cruel spirit.”
“Oh, please. You’re in your usual high-and-mighty clerical mode, I see. Look around you, Timothy. Do you like this house? I bought it recently, already furnished with exquisite antiques. And what do you think of this rug? It’s Aubusson, of course, early Federal period. I know how you love beautiful things, it’s a shame you’ve never been able to afford them. All this might have been yours, once, along with many other comforts I’m able to offer. But you fancied yourself too proud. You know what is said about pride, of course.”
She patted the cushion beside her. “Come, Timothy. Come preach to me and save my soul.”
“I cannot save your soul. That is strictly the business of the Holy Spirit.”
“Then come and pray for me, dear Timothy.”
“Don’t taunt me, Edith. And don’t blaspheme God with your insincere remarks.”
“But I’m not at all insincere, I mean it truly. You’ve never prayed for me, just the two of us. I’ve always had to share you with hordes of people. You went ’round to everyone but me, Timothy, for more than sixteen years.” She made a pout and looked at him with the large, gold eyes he’d always likened to those of a lynx painted on velvet.
Since Pat Mallory died, she had done everything in her power to seduce and harass him; he would never have dreamed of praying with her alone. “I’ve often prayed for you, Edith. And often I had no desire at all to do it.”
“Do you think God answers prayer that isn’t prayed sincerely?”
“It was prayed sincerely. For years I’ve prayed you might turn from your coldness of heart and hurtful indiscretions, and surrender your life to Him. I don’t have to feel warm and fuzzy to pray that prayer for you, I pray it with my will alone, in accordance with the will of God that you abandon your soul to the One Who created you, the One Who died for you, and the only One Who is capable of truly loving you.”
She inhaled and let the smoke out slowly. “I’ve always found it hard to believe that God would love someone who doesn’t love Him.”
“That’s the way humans think. God is different. He loves us no matter what.”
“Timothy, there’s no way you’ll get me to believe that. Ever.”
“You’re right. There’s no way I can get you to believe that. The Holy Spirit, however, can get you to believe that, if He so chooses.”
He walked across the room to her. “Now tell me. What exactly is the nature of this charade?” He stood at the love seat, cold with anger. “Why are you holding me in a locked room? What are your intentions?” He swallowed down the fear. He could always break through a window….
“My intentions? I was forced to give away an additional twenty-five thousand dollars to keep the U.S. Treasury from being miffed with me. I called you in hopes we could come up with a plan, but you hung up on me.
“When you did that, I thought, how delicious to give money away and have some fun doing it! It’s quite a compliment, Timothy. I could have offered the hospital a piddling five thousand and given the remainder elsewhere. You would have come, of course, for a piddling five thousand. Shame on you, that’s why you’ll never amount to anything when it comes down to it. You should thank heaven for your wife, who amounts to so much more in the world’s view.” She looked at him through narrowed eyes and inhaled again.
“By the way,” she said, “if you tell anyone the room was locked, I shall deny it and say you made improper advances toward me.”
“What would you have me do, Edith?” He could not commit murder. He could not and would not. But he relished the thought for the briefest moment. His mouth tasted of bile.
“I’d have you deliver what you were paid to deliver.”
“A sermon? A full liturgy?”
“For twenty-five thousand dollars, Timothy, I should think a full liturgy would be in order. Wouldn’t you?”
“There are two problems with that. One is that I have no communion set with which to administer the Holy Eucharist. The other is that something crucial is required of the soul who presents himself to the Host. You must be earnestly willing to repent of your sins.”
She threw up her hands in mock helplessness. “Then it’s simple. We skip the communion! I must say, you look charming in that stole. Isn’t it the one Pat and I gave you years ago?”
“It is not.”
“Well, then, do begin.” She drew another Tiparillo from the box and flicked the lighter. The tip glowed as she inhaled.
He stood dumbstruck, praying the prayer that never failed. What did God want of him in this thing? What could He possibly have intended by bringing him face-to-face with Edith Mallory in a locked room? It was a dream, a nightmare.
His knees, he realized, had begun to shake. He sat down at once in the armchair next to the love seat.
“I’ll give you your hour, Edith. Happily. There’s a little girl at the hospital right now, four years old, I think—her leg was broken by her uncle because she tried to run away from his abuse. Another child was born with a hole in his heart and is facing his third medical procedure. I could go on. The point is, if such an hour as this can spare these children even a moment of suffering—”
“You gag me, Timothy, with your preacher talk. Will you never weary of such pap?”
“Never.”
“You’re not alone, you know, in wanting to serve God. I want to serve God, too.”
“Yes, of course, but only in an advisory capacity.”
She furrowed her brow. “What do you mean?”
“Never mind.”
“You’re rude. You were always rude to me, Timothy. I find no excuse for it. Nor would God.” She pouted again, drawing her mouth down at the corners.
“Would you care to put your cigarette out?”
“I wouldn’t care to.”
He stood. “Let us begin.” His knees trembled, still. “Blessed be God; Father, Son, an
d Holy Spirit.”
He waited for her response. “Will you respond?”
“And blessed be His kingdom,” she said, snappish, “now and forever. Amen.”
“Almighty God, to You all hearts are open, all desires known, and from you no secrets are hid….” He didn’t know how he could get through this; it was a travesty. All he wanted was for God to get him out of this preposterous mess. He sat down again, humbled and desperate, without any poise left in him.
“Give me a moment,” he said. The message of the morning service, which seemed days in the past, suddenly came to him with the complete conviction with which he’d preached it. In everything…
“Oh, forget that stuff you learned from a book! I never wanted you to do a full liturgy, anyway, I could never remember all those tiresome responses. All I wanted is for you to talk to me, Timothy, to…to hold me.”
She leaned forward on the love seat. “You’re a human being, you have feeling and passion like everyone else. Are you so frightened of your passion, Timothy?”
As she placed her hand on his knee, he recoiled visibly, but didn’t get up and move away. Instead, fighting down the nausea, he thanked God for putting him in this room, at this time, for whatever reason He might have.
Be with me, Lord, forsake me not. I’m going to fly into the face of this thing.
He removed her hand from his knee and took it in his. He was trembling inside as he did it, but his hand was steady, without the palsy of fear.
“Let’s begin by doing what you asked. Let me pray for you, Edith.” Her hand felt small and cold in his, like the claw of a bird, the palm surprisingly callous. He felt her flinch, but she didn’t withdraw her hand—the beating of her pulse throbbed against his own.
He bowed his head. “Father.”
But he could do no more than call His name. “Abba!” he whispered. Help me!
Christ went up into the mountain; He opened His mouth and taught them…But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you….
“Bless your child Edith with the reality of your Presence,” he prayed, and was suddenly mute again.
