Jan Karon's Mitford Years

by Jan Karon

  She walked to the window facing Main Street. Though the future seemed as dark as the lowering sky above the town, she would try to hold fast to what was positive and bright.

  Holiday sales had been wonderful, she couldn’t complain, and Helen was hoping with her that Happy Endings might remain in Mitford.

  Father Tim now knew her secret, which was a source of great relief. He had prayed with her and agreed to compose a letter of reference to Edith Mallory, so it would be ready when needed. She was touched that he said “when” and not “if.”

  Though many circumstances were positive, she was, nonetheless, exhausted. The rare-book business on the Internet, coupled with “running the floor,” as Helen would say, had taken a toll. She was bitterly tired at the end of the day, and often slept fitfully. Helen had sharply reminded her that things wouldn’t get better if the shop became hers. “Quite the contrary,” Helen had said. And when would she be able to afford help?

  Indeed, she had never wanted to be “management” until the day God had given her the amazing idea of actually owning the shop.

  She found herself wringing her hands pitiably, and dropped them to her sides at once. How quickly she went from high to low! She must think of the lovely aspects, the glad outcome, as she’d learned from her reading in Philippians last night.

  “. . . whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely . . . think on these things.”

  Best of all, best of anything, she would see Scott this evening. He would come directly from work, and in the empty room above the bookstore, they were going to put up a tree and decorate it with strings of colored lights.

  Afterward, they’d cross the street together and look up to the middle window where it would stand, luminous and shining, for all the village to see.

  Uncle Billy Watson shuffled from one end of the kitchen to the other, holding on to the stove, then to the countertop, then the table.

  Here he was pacin’ th’ floor, and him a man hardly able t’ walk in th’ first dadjing place! An’ where was ’is cane? How could he lose ’is cane if he hadn’t left th’ house?

  He had two weeks t’ come up with Rose’s present, an’ not one blessed notion had passed through his wore-out brain. Nary a one!

  Over th’ years, he’d growed plenty tired of hearin’ what Rose’s brother, Willard, had give ’er.

  Before Willard died in th’ war in France, he’d give ’er a dolly, he’d give ’er dresses with lace an’ smockin’, he’d give ’er a coat with a rabbit-fur collar, he’d give ’er a little cart an’ a goat t’ pull it, on an’ on ’til a man could heave ’is dinner, an’ then, don’t you know, Willard had give ’er this house they was a-livin’ in, an’ ever’ stick of furnishin’.

  If he was t’ miss givin’ Rose a present this Christmas, hit’d be th’ first time in more’n fifty years. Nossir, b’fore he’d let that happen, he’d go down th’ street and buy somethin’ off of a store shelf.

  He remembered th’ one year he’d store-bought Rose’s present; th’ Preacher Kavanagh had gone with ’im an’ helped buy ’er a winter coat f’r half off, an’ a pair of red high-heel shoes. Rose had took a fit over them shoes, but she never put ’em on ’er feet. They was still settin’ out on th’ mantel in their bedroom, as decoration.

  He didn’t recall if he had any twenties still hid in th’ stacks of newspaper in th’ dinin’ room. Maybe one or two, he didn’t rightly know. . . .

  “Bill Watson! Why are you wearing out our good linoleum?” His wife stood at the kitchen door in her chenille robe, with a headful of curlers. He hadn’t seen ’er in them things in a hundred years. She looked like a porkypine.

  “I’m tryin’ to figure out somethin’ in m’ brain!” He hollered good ’n’ loud, so she’d be sure an’ hear.

  “You say I’m a pain?”

  “Yessir, you are, but that ain’t what I said!”

  “Speak up, Bill Watson! What’d you say?”

  “I said I’m tryin’ t’ figure out y’r Santy Claus!”

  “My Santy Claus? Did you say my Santy Claus?” His wife’s face lit up like a Christmas tree—she was grinnin’ like a young ’un, which was a wonder he hadn’t seen in a coon’s age.

  “Them was my words, all right!”

  “Why, Bill Watson!” She trotted over an’ kissed ’im on th’ cheek s’ hard he near about tumbled over back’ards. “That’s the best news in this whole wide world!”

  He was throwing caution to the winds, he was picking up speed, he was flying.

  I can do this! he thought, astonished. I can do this! He was no Rembrandt, but he could turn a lurid, sallow skin into something believable, and while his donkey ear was nothing to write home about, it had a certain . . . élan.

  The start-up had been slow and time-consuming, boggled by everything from five days of flu to complete ignorance about what to do and how to do it. Now, by George, he had momentum!

  Not only was it a liberating thing to have, it had come in the nick of time. With less than five days remaining before Dooley’s visit, and less than ten until Christmas, he and his erstwhile helpers had many a mile to go.

  He found he was taking the work to bed with him, so to speak, and having trouble sleeping. Then, after hours of staring at the ceiling and planning his next move, he could hardly wait to roll into the Oxford next morning.

  Some of his excitement came, perhaps, from working with his hands. Aside from gardening and cooking, it was a completely fresh experience for someone who’d always gone at life with his head. Whatever it was, he hadn’t felt so energized in years.

  Truth be told, while he passionately loved celebrating the liturgy, he’d nearly always dreaded coming up with a fit and useful sermon—he seemed to invest a disproportionate amount of time in woolgathering, pacing the floor, beseeching God, and laboring to have his words expound the Scriptures. Then, on the days the Holy Spirit seemed to abandon him to his own devices, there was the delivering of said words to expectant souls who needed, and deserved, more nourishment than he felt capable of giving.

  He wondered if he should feel a little guilty these days about—to put it plainly—having so much fun.

  His wife was in bed, pretending to read but surveying him oddly as he sat in the wing chair pretending to do the same.

  He was pretending because he couldn’t keep his mind on the book; he was thinking about the angel with the missing wing. He’d taken the color of her outer robe from a painting by Adolphe-William Bouguereau; he’d mixed and mixed the paints until he got something that gained a consensus in the back room.

  “That’s it!” Andrew exclaimed.

  “Bull’s-eye!” said his chief stippler.

  Though white was definitely the color of choice for wings, he had found the white alone to be stark and cold, in need of subtlety. But he’d carried things too far; he had tried too hard to be subtle. He’d like to go back and glaze the wing again. . . .

  He’d relished working on this particular figure, liking the way the missing wing gave the piece a whole other balance in his hands. He also loved the exquisite serenity of her countenance—he thought the maker had done a thumping good job.

  The only thing was, he didn’t have time to turn back and fiddle with small details, he needed to keep moving forward. . . .

  “Sweetheart?”

  “Speak, Kavanagh!”

  “I’m about to bust.”

  He looked up. “Whatever for?”

  “To know what you’re up to.” She tilted her head to one side and gazed at him, smiling. “You know I love surprises, but really, Timothy, I don’t think I can make it ’til Christmas.”

  “Get over it, girl, you’ll gouge nothing out of me.”

  “All that paint on the pants you stuck behind the boiler in the basement . . .”

  “You’ve been snooping behind the boiler in the basement?”

  “Yes, Father, I confes
s.”

  “Aha.” He went back to his book. Blast!

  “And on your hands, of course.”

  “What about my hands?” Didn’t he scrub them diligently to remove all traces?

  “I can smell it, dear. Oil paint gets into the pores. You’re painting something!”

  What could he say? “Curiosity killed the cat!”

  When he walked Barnabas to the monument at nine o’clock, he saw the tree glittering in the window above the bookstore. Colored light spilled over the awning and reflected on the rain-wet pavement.

  In the face of losing everything one hoped for, lighting a tree was an act of faith. Well done! he thought, pulling his hat down and his collar up.

  He walked more briskly, glad to be alive on the hushed and lamplit street where every storefront gleamed with promise.

  “ ‘And there were in that same country. . . ,’ ” said his mother.

  “ ‘Shepherds abiding!’ ”

  “Very good, dear. And where were they abiding?”

  “ ‘In the field!’ ”

  “And what were they doing?”

  “ ‘Keeping watch o’er their flock by night!’ ”

  “Yes!” said his mother, pleased. He liked pleasing his mother, for he loved her more than anything, even more than Peggy. He also liked saying “o’er” instead of “over.”

  His mother had spent hours teaching him the story of Christ’s birth, and the images she instilled in him had been vivid and thrilling, like a kind of movie cast with a score of animals—the great camels plowing over the desert sands, the donkey on which the Virgin Mary probably rode with Joseph walking beside her, the sheep and cows and horses in the hay-scented stable. . . .

  And then, to top it all off, there was the heavenly host.

  When as a child he heard the passages from Luke read aloud, he had also, on two separate occasions, heard the proclamation delivered by a multitude of voices. Though Scripture said nothing about the proclamation being sung, he was convinced otherwise—in truth, the music had come to him in the region of his heart as well as his mind, and the sound of the great chorale had been beautiful beyond all imagining.

  Of course, he wouldn’t have told anyone that he’d heard—as if in his own sky, above his own house—Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men. . . .

  He’d resigned himself even then to a simple fact: there were things he could never share with another, granting the occasional exception of his mother, who, more than anyone, believed him to speak from a true heart.

  Indeed, there was no denying he’d been an often lonely and wildly imaginative child, but he was glad of it; for many things that deserved to be believed, he had believed with all his might.

  Here he was with his nose stuck in a book at six o’clock in the evening, under a bare bulb in the back room of the Oxford. He hadn’t meant this thing to devour his every waking moment. . . .

  It was all the robes and undergarments that had him out on a limb. Now that he had eyes to see, there seemed to be a thousand folds needing light and shadow. All along, he’d been painting the clothing without light and shadow, knowing that something was wrong, but what?

  Blast. What if he packed up the whole business and stored it in the attic until another time? But he knew the answer to that—there would never be another time.

  Possibly all that was needed was a kind of smudge that followed the line of a fold—something darker than the garment, yet something simple.

  With the book open beside him on the worktable, he mixed a daub of paint and, without thinking, put it on his thumb and worked the color along the left side of the fold of the angel’s robe, then retraced the line with his forefinger and gently smoothed away some of the color.

  Ahhhh . . .

  There!

  Thank you, Lord. . . .

  Done.

  The pain had moved into the region of her heart and seemed lodged there like a stickpin.

  In case the letter had gone astray, she had rewritten it from memory and sent it again, this time declaring it urgent that Mrs. Mallory respond as quickly as possible.

  Mrs. Havner had said she could take her time about the apartment.

  “You’ve been a fine tenant,” she said, “and for you, I’ll forget the two weeks’ notice. Just let me know when you know.” Mrs. Havner had given her a little pan of warm gingerbread and a hug. She wanted to cling there on her landlady’s broad and cushioned shoulder, and weep like a child.

  With the exception of what she would need until she moved, everything in the apartment was packed. After all, whether she moved only a few doors down the street or home to live with Louise, the packing must be done.

  In truth, she was beginning to know it would be her mother’s old home, that this was what God must want for her. Anyone could see that if Mrs. Mallory were going to let her have the building, she would have been notified by now.

  In the short months since she prayed that prayer with George Gaynor, she hadn’t yet found how to hold on to God’s peace. Sometimes, as she prayed, it would come to her like a bird flying in at the window; it would settle on her shoulder, and she would feel transported by relief and glad expectation. Then the anxiety would flood in, and the startled bird would fly away. . . .

  But no matter what happened, Christmas sales were booming. She’d had the biggest order ever, from Olivia Harper, and knew she could count on something sizable from Father Tim and Cynthia. . . .

  The bell on the door jangled as four Mitford schoolteachers tumbled in, laughing, their cheeks glowing from the sharp, bright cold. She had opened an hour and a half early so they could shop before the last day of school began.

  “Would you like a cup of hot cider?”

  “Oh, yes!” said Miss Griggs of first grade. “We’d like that better than anything!”

  Emily Townsend of third grade unwound the candy-striped muffler from her neck. “Your tree is really special. It kind of gives me . . . goose bumps when Charlie and I ride by at night. It seems so . . . consoling, somehow. . . . I don’t know how to express it—Sharon is the one who loves English! Oh, and here are some cookies I made. I hope you like pecans, we cracked them ourselves—can you believe it, they are so hard to pick out of the shell!”

  “Oh, my!” said Hope, admiring the large cookies.

  Miss Wilson, also of third grade, removed her red earmuffs. “We all love the tree in your upstairs window, it’s very cheering.”

  “Thank you!” Hope realized she felt considerably cheered herself.

  “Is it true you’re going to have story time all summer?”

  A heavy weight came upon her heart. What could she say? “That,” she managed, “is my fondest desire.” Please, God, she thought.

  He arrived at the Oxford a few minutes before Andrew or Fred and, having his own key, let himself into the darkened room that smelled of beeswax and old wood.

  He’d always loved the scent of the Oxford, but had grown fonder still of its rich and varied odors. Even the smell of the oil-based materials used for the figures had become welcome and familiar, quickening his senses as ink must do for someone in the printing trade.

  He switched on the light and looked at the long shelf above the sink. Next to the camel, which he was saving for Dooley’s expertise, he had lined up the finished figures.

  Nine ewes, a ram, two angels, a donkey!

  Three wise men, two shepherds . . .

  They were coming up on the Holy Family.

  He was pulling off his coat and scarf when he heard Fred unlock the front door and step inside, apparently with someone else.

  “I saw th’ Father turn in here about five minutes ago. I need to see ’im!”

  “I wouldn’t go back there,” said Fred.

  Father Tim hurried from the back room to find Mule charging his way.

  “There you are!” said Mule. “I got a predicament!”

  Father Tim stood firm by a Georgian dining table, blocking further passage
; Mule wasn’t much, after all, on keeping secrets.

  “J.C. wants you an’ me to have lunch at th’ tea shop today, but I been thinkin’. Ol’ Percy’s goin’ to be out of there in a few days, and seems like to eat at th’ tea shop right now would be really disrespectful.”

  “I think you’re dead right.”

  “I ate there two days last week, but I didn’t feel good about it.”

  “Tell J.C. we’ll catch him at the tea shop after the Grill closes.”

  “He’ll be sore.”

  “He’ll get over it.”

  “So what’re you hangin’ out down here for? Somebody said you come in here every day now.”

  “I’m working on a special project.”

  “Doin’ what?”

  “A little of this, a little of that. You know.”

  “Right,” said Mule.

  “So,” said Father Tim, “I’ve got to get cracking. See you at the Grill? The usual time?”

  Mule looked doleful. “I wish J.C. hadn’t blown up at Velma right before th’ holidays, what with Percy closin’ an’ all.”

  “Me, too.”

  When Mule was safely out the door, he trotted to the back room to grind the coffee. Fresh Antigua, six heaping scoops, four of decaf, two of the hard stuff.

  He dumped the ground coffee into the basket, ran seven cups of cold water into the pot, poured it into the coffeemaker, and turned the switch to “on.”

  At the front of the store, Fred was simultaneously cranking on the music.

  “Aha!” exclaimed Father Tim. “Vivaldi!”

  His spirits were up and running.

  He would glaze the wing, after all.

  “Here we are. . . .”

  Andrew was thumbing through a book he’d found at home. “Look at this. Vierge et enfant, it’s called . . . the Virgin Mother’s robe is black. Foreshadowing the cross, perhaps.”

  “No,” he said. “No black.” He held the angel carefully, glazing the wing with light, rapid brushstrokes. Before it dried, he’d use his little finger to insinuate the separation of the feathers.