by Jan Karon
“About time you showed up, buddyroe, my fish san’wich is goin’ south.” J.C. rooted around in his overstuffed briefcase and came up with something wrapped in recycled foil.
Mule sniffed the air. “How long has that thing been in there?”
“Seven o’clock this morning.”
“You’re not goin’ to eat it?”
“Why not? Th’ temperature’s just a couple degrees above freezin’.”
Father Tim noted that the editor’s aftershave should effectively mask any offensive odors within, loosely, a city block.
“What’d you bring?” Mule asked Percy.
“Last night’s honey-baked pork chop on a sesame-seed roll with lettuce, mayo, and a side of chips.”
“Man!” said Mule. He expected that anybody who’d owned the Grill for forty-odd years would show up with a great lunch, but nothing like this. He peered into his own paper sack.
“So, what is it?” asked J.C., hammering down on the fish sandwich.
“I can’t believe it.” Mule appeared disconsolate. “Fancy’s got me on some hoo-doo diet again.”
“Why is your wife packin’ your lunch?You’re a big boy, pack your own bloomin’ lunch.”
Mule examined the contents of the Ziploc bag. “A sweet potato,” he said, devastated. “With no butter.”
“A sweet potato?” Percy eyed the pathetic offering with disbelief. “What kind of diet is that?”
Mule slumped in his chair. “I can’t eat a sweet potato; no way can I eat a sweet potato. I feel trembly, I had breakfast at six-thirty and now it’s way past twelve.”
“What’d she give you for breakfast? A turnip?”
“Hard-boiled eggs. I hate hard-boiled eggs; they give me gas.”
“So, Percy,” said Father Tim, unwrapping a ham and cheese on white from the vending machine, “see what you did by going out of business? Left us all high and dry.”
“Yeah,” said Mule. “I was happy with things th’ way they were.”
J.C. gobbled the remaining half of his sandwich in one bite. “Ah guss nobar hurrbowwissonor . . .”
“Don’t talk with your mouth full,” snapped Mule, who was digging in his pockets for vending machine change.
J.C. swallowed the whole affair, and knocked back a half can of Sprite. “I guess you turkeys didn’t hear the latest about th’ Witch of th’ North.”
“Witch of th’ South,” said Percy, recognizing the nickname, albeit incorrect, for his much-despised former landlord.
“Turns out she said her first clearly understandable word since that big crack on th’ head in September.”
“Money!” exclaimed Percy.
“What about money?”
“Money had to be th’ first word out of that back-stabbin’, hardhearted, penny-pinchin’ ...”
“Now, Percy,” said Father Tim.
J.C. glared at the assembly. “Do you want to hear th’ dadgum story or not?”
“Say on,” commanded Father Tim.
“Ed Coffey was in town yesterday, haulin’ stuff out of her carriage house up at Clear Day to take down to her Florida place. He said that right before he left, she was sittin’ in her wheelchair at th’ window, lookin’ at birds, and she motioned him to come over. . . .”
Mule looked disgusted. “If brains were dynamite, Ed Coffey wouldn’t have enough to blow his nose!”
“Then, she motioned ’im to come closer. . . .”
The Turkey Club sat forward.
“Ed said instead of all that word salad she’d been talking, she spoke up as good as anybody. . . .”
“What’d she say, dadgummit?” Percy’s pork chop was stuck in his gullet; if there was anything he disliked, it was the way some people had to be th’ bride at every weddin’ and th’ corpse at every funeral.
“Yessir, he said he was standin’ right there when it rolled out, slick as grease.”
“You already told us that, you goofball. What was it she said?”
J.C. wiped his perspiring forehead with a wadded-up paper towel. “Get off my bumper,” he snapped at Percy.
The Muse editor sat back in the plastic chair and looked once more at the eager assembly. “She said God.”
“God?” Percy and Mule exclaimed in unison.
“No way!” Mule shook his head. “No way Edith Mallory would’ve said God, unless she was tryin’ to say th’ word that used to get my butt whipped when I was little.”
“Right,” said Percy. “No way.”
Yes, thought Father Tim. Yes!
He stopped by the grease pit where Harley Welch was lying on his back under a crew-cab truck.
“Harley!” He squatted down and peered at his old friend.
“Rev’ren’, is that you?”
“What’s left of me. How’s it going?”
“Goin’ good if I can git this U joint worked offa here. When’s our boy comin’ home?”
“Tomorrow We’ll catch up with you in a day or two. Did you hear about the twins?”
“Yessir, hit’s th’ big town news. Spittin’ image of th’ ol’ mayor, they say.”
He laughed. “I guess Lace is coming in?”
“Yessir, she’s wrote me a time or two lately; you know she got that big scholarship.”
“I heard. That’s wonderful! By the way, when is the last time you worked on Miss Sadie’s car?”
“Oh, law, that’s goin’ too far back f‘r m’ feeble mind. Let’s see, didn’t she pass in th’ spring?”
“She did.”
“I worked on it sometime before she passed, she was still drivin’. I remember she rolled in here one mornin’, I had to change out ’er clutch. Miss Sadie was bad t’ ride ’er clutch.”
“Do you know if it’s still parked in the garage up at Fernbank?”
“I don’t know if he’s sold it. They was some talk Mr. Gregory was goin’ to restore it.... George Gaynor worked on it a day or two, maybe. I cain’t hardly recall.”
“You pushing along all right with Miss Pringle?” Hélène Pringle was the piano teacher who rented his house in Mitford, and Harley was his old buddy who lived in the basement.
“Let’s jis’ say I’ve heered more piana music than I ever knowed was wrote.”
Father Tim laughed. “Come out to the sticks and see us, will you?”
“I will,” said Harley. “I’ll bring you’uns a pan of m’ brownies.”
“I’ll hold you to it.”
“How’s Miss Cynthy?”
“Couldn’t be better.” He stood, hearing the creaking of his knees. “Got to put the chairs in the wagon, as my grandmother used to say, and run to The Local. Regards to Miss Pringle!”
He walked to the truck, whistling a tune he’d heard on the radio.
There was nothing like a visit to Mitford to get a man’s spirits up and running.
He blew through the door of one of his favorite Mitford haunts, the bell jingling behind him.
“‘I love the smell of book ink in the morning! ’” he called out, quoting Umberto Eco.
“Father Tim!” Hope Winchester turned from the shelf where she was stocking biographies. “We’ve missed you!”
“And I, you. How are you, Hope?”
She lifted her left hand to his gaze.
“Man!” he said, quoting Dooley Barlowe.
“It was his grandmother Murphy’s. Scott is at a chaplain’s retreat this week, he gave it to me before he left.”
“One knee or two?”
“Two!”
“Good fellow!” He still felt a sap for having done a mere one knee with his then neighbor.
He gave Hope a heartfelt hug. “Felicitaciones! Mazel tov!”
“Muchas gracias. Umm. Obrigado!”
They laughed easily together. He thought he’d never seen the owner of Happy Endings Bookstore looking more radiant.
“I have a list,” he said, hauling it from the breast pocket of his jacket.
“Your lists have helped Happy Endings stay af
loat. Thank you a thousand times. Oh, my, that’s a long one.”
“It’s been a long time since I came in. Tell me, how is Louise liking Mitford?”
“I’ll be right back,” she said. She hurried to the foot of the stairs and called up for her sister, recently moved from their deceased mother’s home place.
Louise came down the stairs at once, fixing her eyes on her feet. Hope took her sister by the arm and trotted her over.
“Father Tim, this is my sister, Louise Winchester.”
With some difficulty, Louise raised her eyes and met his gaze. “So happy . . .” she said.
Hope smiled. “Louise is shy.”
“I find shyness a very attractive characteristic. It’s as scarce these days as hens’ teeth.”
He took Louise’s hand, finding her somehow prettier than her sister, with a mane of chestnut hair and inquisitive green eyes.
“Louise, we’re happy to have you among us, you’ll make a difference, I know. May God bless you to find your way here, and prosper you in all you do.”
He was delighted by her seemingly involuntary, albeit slight, curtsy.
“Father Tim wondered how you like living in Mitford.”
A slow flush came to her cheeks. “It feels like . . . home.”
“Louise is working wonders with our mail-order business and has organized everything from A to Z.”
“Well done, Louise!” He felt suddenly proud, as if she were one of his own.
“Here’s Father Tim’s list. We have only three of the nine. Could you order the others today?”
“Just regular shipping,” he said, noting that Margaret Ann, the bookstore cat, was giving his pant legs a good coating of fur. “I’m about to be covered up, and not much time to read.”
“Pleased to meet . . .” said Louise.
By George, she did it again! If push came to shove, Emma Newland could get a curtsy demo right here on Main Street.
“Any plans?” he asked Hope.
“We’d like to talk with you about that; we’re thinking October, when the leaves change. Would you marry us, Father?”
“I will!” he vowed.
“Though we attend Lord’s Chapel, we’re hoping to find a little mountain church somewhere. Something . . .” She hesitated, thoughtful.
“Something soulful and charming?”
“Why, yes!”
“Completely unpretentious, with a magnificent view?”
“That’s it!”
“I’ll put my mind to it,” he said.
He told her about the hospital staff that was blown away by its patient’s delivery of a second set of twins; how the boys looked strong, healthy, and uncommonly like their paternal great-grandmother and Mitford’s former mayor, Esther Cunningham; how Louella had apprised him of nine thousand dollars that she thought was hidden in Miss Sadie’s car, and that so far, he had no clue what to do about it.
He reported that the snow on the roads was freezing fast; that Edith Mallory had spoken an intelligible, not to mention extraordinary, word for the first time since her grave head injury seven months ago; that J.C. Hogan was wearing aftershave again, for whatever this piece of news was worth; that Avis had given him a considerable bit of advice about perfecting oven fries; that Hope Winchester had an engagement ring and wanted him to marry them; that Louise Winchester promised to be a fine addition to Mitford; and last but certainly not least, that he’d seen a crocus blooming in the snow, hallelujah.
He was positively exhausted from the whole deal, both the doing of it and the talking about it; he felt as if he’d trekked to another planet and back again.
“Good heavens,” said his wife, “I’m worn out just listening.”
And how had her day gone?
Joyce Havner had called in sick.
Violet, the aging model for the cat books his wife was famous for writing and illustrating, had brought a dead mouse into the kitchen.
A pot of soup had boiled over on the stove while she did the watercolor sketch of Violet gazing out the window.
She had handed off the sketch to the UPS driver at one o’clock sharp; it was on its way to her editor in New York.
Olivia Harper had called, and Lace was arriving from UVA tomorrow.
“That’s it?” he asked.
“Don’t get high and mighty with me, Reverend, just because you’ve gone to the big city and bagged all the news, and your wife stayed home, barefoot.”
He laughed. “Missed you.”
“Missed you back,” she said, laughing with him.
In the farmhouse library, an e-mail from Father Tim’s former secretary, Emma Newland, joined the queue.
They had prayed their Lenten prayer, eaten their modest supper, and made the pie—which would doubtless improve by an overnight repose in the refrigerator.
Now, they drew close by the fire, to the sound of a lashing March wind; she with Mrs. Miniver and he with The Choice of Books, a late-nineteenth-century volume he’d found in their bedroom. He was vastly relieved that she’d made no more mention of his hair, what was left of it.
“Listen to this, Timothy.”
Cynthia adjusted her glasses, squinting at the fine print. “ ‘It’s as important to marry the right life as it is the right person.’ ”
“Aha! Never thought of it that way.”
“I considered that very thing when I married you.”
“Whether I was the right person?”
“Whether it would be the right life,” she said.
“And?”
“And it is. It’s perfect for me.”
His wife, who preferred to read dead authors, put her head down again.
“How dead, exactly, must they be?” he had once asked.
“Not very dead; I usually draw the line at the thirties and forties, before the mayhem began setting in like a worm. So ... moderately dead, I would say.”
He tossed a small log onto the waning fire; it hissed and spit from the light powder of snow that had blown into the wood box by the door. A shutter on the pantry window made a rattling sound that was oddly consoling.
“And here’s something else,” she said.
“‘This was the cream of marriage, this nightly turning out of the day’s pocketful of memories, this deft, habitual sharing of two pairs of eyes, two pairs of ears. It gave you, in a sense, almost a double life: though never, on the other hand, quite a single one.’”
He nodded slowly, feeling a surge of happiness.
“Yes,” he said, meaning it. “Yes!”
CHAPTER TWO
The Vicar
He awoke from a dream in which he felt a frantic impulse to deliver Russell Jacks’s bimonthly treat of livermush.
Russell had watched for his visits at the door of Betty Craig’s little house, as eager as any boy for his two weeks’ worth of livermush sandwiches on white loaf bread with mayo. But Russell Jacks was dead and gone, never again to entertain a hankering for “poor man’s pate.”
Miss Sadie, about whom he often dreamed, was also gone. And then there was Absalom Greer: “Gone to glory!” as the old preacher might have said.
Gone . . .
The thought of loss gave him a hollow feeling.
He wasn’t, however, afraid of dying; he knew
where he was going. Of course, he wasn’t going there because he had been “good,” however nominally, but because he had long ago committed his heart to God, made known through the One who had died in order that he, Timothy Kavanagh, might have eternal life.
Strange. The anomaly of livermush seemed far odder than the extraordinary fact that Jesus Christ had chosen to sacrifice Himself for a small-town parson.
He would be seventy in June, a truth that he considered often these days. Seventy! He had no ability to effectively process this fact; it was beyond belief. But no, growing older hadn’t made him fearful of death—hadn’t Thomas Edison said, “It is very beautiful over there!” and Cotton Mather, he’d always liked Mather’s last words: “Is this dying? Is this all? Is this what I feared when I prayed against a hard death? Oh, I can bear this! I can bear it!”
What he feared, instead, was leaving some crucial work undone, thereby failing to complete his mortal mission. This fear had nagged him for much of his life as both an active and now-retired priest.
It brightened his spirit, then, to remember that Dooley was asleep in the next room, his own mortal mission to be hammered out.
What if God hadn’t sent Russell Jacks’s eleven-year-old grandson to his door, like some precious special delivery that must be opened quickly and handled carefully, lest it perish? Indeed, in the ten years since Dooley had become his charge, he’d learned to love him as his own flesh.
As might be expected, some said that he’d “saved” Dooley’s life. The truth was, Dooley more likely saved his. At the age of sixtysomething, he had gone from an inward-looking bachelor to an outward-striving father. And then, of course, Cynthia had moved in next door. A double miracle if ever there was one.
Lord, he prayed, thank You for Your continued grace. Help me fulfill Your plan for my life; give me a heart to hear Your voice.... And please, if You would do the same for Dooley . . .
