by Jan Karon
“A price war?” asked Father Tim.
“Head to head, you might say. Fancy had this big sign painted and put in her window upstairs, said, Haircuts Twelve Dollars, All Welcome. First thing you know, Joe puts a sign downstairs, says, Haircuts Eleven Dollars.”
Joe Ivey’s one-chair barbershop was located in a former storage room behind the kitchen of his sister’s Sweet Stuff Bakery. The only other game in town was Fancy Skinner’s unisex hair salon, A Cut Above, which rented the upstairs area over the bakery. “Poetic irony,” is what one Grill customer called the arrangement.
“So Fancy cranks her price down to ten bucks and has her sign repainted. Then Joe drops his price, changes his sign, and gives me an ad that says, ‘Haircuts nine-fifty. Free chocolate chip cookie to every customer.’”
“Cutthroat,” said Percy.
“I don’t know where this’ll end,” said J.C., “but if you need a haircut, now’s the time.”
“Happy birthday!” Father Tim thought they should get to the point.
“Right. Happy birthday!” said Percy. “You can be one of th’ first to order offa my new menu.”
J.C. scowled. “I was used to the old menu.”
“This is my an’ Velma’s last year in this hole-in-th’-wall, I wanted to go out with a bang.” Percy stepped to the counter and proudly removed three menus on which the ink was scarcely dry and handed them around. He thought the Wesley printer had come up with a great idea for this new batch—the cover showed the Grill motto set in green letters that were sort of swirling up, like steam, from a coffee mug: Eat here once and you’ll be a regular.
“Where’s Mule at?” asked Percy.
“Beats me,” said Father Tim. “Probably getting a haircut.”
“So how old are you?” Percy wanted to know.
J.C. grinned. “Fourteen goin’ on fifteen is what Adele says.”
“Gag me with a forklift,” said Mule, skidding into the booth. “He’s fifty-six big ones, I know because I saw his driver’s license when he wrote a check at Shoe Barn.”
“OK, give me your order and hop to it, Velma’s havin’ a perm down at Fancy’s and I’m shorthanded. Free coffee in this booth, today only.”
“I don’t want coffee,” said Mule. “I was thinkin’ more like sweet ice tea.”
“Coffee’s free, tea’s another deal.” J.C. opened his menu, looking grim. “You spelled potato wrong!” he announced.
“Where at?” asked Percy.
“Right here where it says ‘tuna croissant with potatoe chips.’ There’s no e in potato.”
“Since when?”
“Since ever.”
Look who’s talking, thought Father Tim.
“I’ll be darned,” said Mule. “Taco salad! Can you sell taco salad in this town?”
“Taco salad,” muttered Percy, writing on his order pad.
“Wait a minute, I didn’t say I wanted taco salad, I was just discussin’ it.”
“I don’t have time for discussin’,” said Percy. “I got a lunch crowd comin’ in.”
Father Tim noticed Percy’s face was turning beet-red. Blood pressure, the stress of a new menu…
“So what is a taco salad, anyway?” asked Mule.
The Muse editor looked up in amazement. “Have you been livin’ under a rock? Taco salad is salad in a taco, for Pete’s sake.”
“No, it ain’t,” said Percy. “It’s salad in a bowl with taco chips scattered on top.”
Mule sank back in the booth, looking depressed. “I’ll have what I been havin’ before th’ new menu, a grilled pimiento cheese on white bread, hold th’ mayo.”
“Do you see anything on this menu sayin’ pimiento cheese? On this menu, we don’t have pimiento cheese, we ain’t goin’ to get pimiento cheese, and that’s th’ end of it.” The proprietor stomped away, looking disgusted.
“You made him mad,” said J.C., wiping his face with his handkerchief.
“How can a man make a livin’ without pimiento cheese on his menu?” Mule asked.
“’Less you want to run down to th’ tea shop and sit with th’ women, there’s nowhere else to eat lunch in this town…”—J.C. poked the menu—“so you better pick something offa here. How about a fish burger? Lookit, ‘four ounces breaded and deep-fried haddock filet served on a grilled bun with lettuce, tomato, and tartar sauce.’”
“I don’t like tartar sauce.”
Father Tim thought he might slide to the floor and lie prostrate. “I’m having the chef’s salad!” he announced, hoping to set an example.
Mule looked relieved. “Fine, that’s what I’ll have.” He drummed his fingers on the table. “On the other hand, you never know what’s in a chef’s salad when you deal with this chef.”
“I’m havin’ th’ tuna melt,” said J.C., “plus th’ fish burger and potato skins!”
“Help yourself,” said Mule. “Have whatever you want, it’s on us.” He peered intently at the menu. “‘Chili crowned with tortilla chips and cheese,’ that might be good.”
“Here he comes, make up your mind,” snapped J.C.
“I’ll have th’ chili deal,” said Mule, declining eye contact with Percy. “But only if it comes without beans.”
Percy gave him a stony look. “How can you have chili without beans? That’s like a cheeseburger without cheese.”
“Right,” said J.C. “Or a BLT without bacon.”
Father Tim closed his eyes as if in prayer, feeling his blood sugar plummet into his loafers.
So what are you doing these days?
It was a casual and altogether harmless question, the sort of thing anyone might inquire of the retired. But he hated it. And now, on the heels of the very same question asked only yesterday by a former parishioner…
“So what’n th’ dickens do you do all day?”
Mule had left to show a house, J.C. had trudged upstairs to work on Monday’s layout, and Percy stood beside the rear booth, squinting at him as if he were a beetle on a pin.
After nearly four years of retirement, why hadn’t he been able to formulate a pat answer? He usually reported that he supplied various churches here and there, which was true, of course, but it sounded lame. Indeed, he once said, without thinking, “Oh, nothing much.” Upon hearing such foolishness out of his mouth, he felt covered with shame.
In his opinion, God hadn’t put anyone on earth to do “nothing much.” Thus, in the first year following his interim at Whitecap, he’d given endless hours to the Wesley Children’s Hospital, second only to the church as his favorite charitable institution. He had even agreed to do something he roundly despised: raise funds. To his amazement, he had actually raised some.
He’d also worked on the lawns of the rectory and the yellow house until people had been known to slow their cars and stare. Occasionally, a total stranger would park at the curb and ask if they could take a picture.
During the second year, he’d given a hand to their new mayor, Andrew Gregory, and supplied pulpits in Wesley, Holding, Charlotte, Asheville, Morganton, Johnson City, and, for a span of several months, Hickory. Somehow, it had been enough. Almost.
He was never unaware that something was gnawing at him, he couldn’t say what. Perhaps it was nothing more or less than his masculine ego needing a good-size feeding; in any case, there was a certain restlessness in his spirit, something of feeling unworthy and not quite up to things anymore.
His wife suggested they go to the Dordogne, or even Africa, and he tried to get excited about traveling to faraway places, but couldn’t.
In the end, why beat around the bush? A church! That’s what he needed. He was homesick for his own flock to feed, to herd around. Occasionally he even missed typing a pew bulletin, though he would never have confided such a peculiarity to another living soul.
Why had he retired, anyway? He might have stayed on at Lord’s Chapel ’til the cows came home. When he finally severed that comfortable connection, he was hugely up for freedom and adventure, yet
now he wondered what he could have been thinking.
Sometime during the winter, a compelling thought had occurred to him, something for which he and Cynthia had since been seeking God’s wisdom. Not knowing exactly how to press forward with such a notion, he decided to discuss it with Stuart. That would help settle things.
In the meantime, he’d begun doing what any self-respecting retired clergyman ought to do: He was writing a book, notably a book of essays that he’d begun on the first day of the new year.
The only problem with this was, he couldn’t tell anyone about it.
Percy leaned into the booth and squinted down at him, knitting his brows. Father Tim could practically feel his hot breath. “So do you lay up in th’ bed of a mornin’—or what?”
Percy wouldn’t know an essay if he met it on the street; thus he found himself reporting a list of activities so monumental in length that Percy yawned in his face. Later, he wished he hadn’t included the part about cleaning mildew off his old shoes and organizing his socks by color. He also felt that his confession of cooking and washing up most evenings was a little over the top—in fact, certain to be fodder for idle gossip from one end of Main Street to the other.
Another thing that dogged him was the uneasy suspicion that writing essays was an indulgent and egocentric thing to do. For that reason, he considered changing horses in midstream and writing his memoirs.
Didn’t memoirs have a certain cachet these days? In some circles, they were a positive rage. However, he couldn’t imagine saying to anyone, I’m writing my memoirs. Writing about one’s life presumed that one had a life worth writing about. And, of course, he did, but only since marrying his next-door neighbor at the age of sixty-two. Now, that was memoir.
But no, he wasn’t a memoir man; when push came to shove, he was an essay man. He had longed, rather childishly, to reveal his secret to someone; after all, he was more than ninety pages along and very much liking the momentum he’d gained.
When Mule didn’t show up for breakfast the following morning due to a treadmill test at the hospital, Father Tim impulsively decided to reveal his personal tidbit to J. C. Hogan, who was as close to literati as Mitford was likely to produce in this lifetime.
“Say that again,” said J.C., cupping his ear as if he’d misunderstood.
“Essays!” he repeated, suddenly feeling like a perfect idiot.
“I’m…ah, writing a book of essays.”
The Muse editor had a blank look as he forked a sausage link. “I’ve read a couple of essays,” he said, shoving the sausage into his mouth and following it with half a buttered biscuit. “Doo fimmity glogalong. Doo muss ahtoo.”
Father Tim sighed. “That’s one way of looking at it.”
“So,” said J.C., “what kind of business do you think Edith Mallory will bring in here when Percy retires?”
“Heaven only knows. It’s anybody’s guess.”
“I could go for a shoe repair,” said J.C., coaxing the last of the grape jam from the container. “Or a dry cleaner. I’m over goin’ all th’ way to Wesley to get my pants pressed.”
“You wouldn’t have to get ’em pressed if you’d quit hangin’ ’em on th’ floor,” said Percy. Percy had visited the editor’s bachelor quarters prior to his marriage to Adele and had been thunderstruck.
No matter how hard he tried, Father Tim couldn’t imagine meeting J.C. and Mule at the tea shop. It just wouldn’t be the same. Besides, Percy had declared he wouldn’t be caught dead in the place, which was wallpapered in lavender forget-me-nots with matching ruffled curtains.
“Percy!” J.C. yelled in the direction of the grill, “who d’you think Godzilla will move in here when you retire?”
Percy looked disgusted. “A pet shop is what Ron Malcolm said was comin’.” The very thought of that smell blasting out onto Main Street was enough to make a man throw up his gizzard.
“No way!” said J.C. “People in Mitford don’t get pets at a pet shop. They wait ’til somethin’ shows up at their back door. Idn’t that right?” he asked Father Tim, who, after all, should know.
“‘O Lord, You are my portion and my cup…,’” he recited in unison with Cynthia and the other congregants at St. Paul’s in Wesley.
“‘It is You who uphold my lot. My boundaries enclose a pleasant land; indeed, I have a goodly heritage. I will bless the Lord Who gives me counsel; my heart teaches me, night after night. I have set the Lord always before me; because He is at my right hand I shall not fall.’”
Cynthia slipped her arm around him as they shared the Psalter. “‘My heart, therefore, is glad, and my spirit rejoices; my body also shall rest in hope. For You will not abandon me to the grave, nor let Your holy one see the Pit.’
“‘You will show me the path of life; in Your presence there is fullness of joy, and in Your right hand are pleasures for evermore.’”
His heart felt warmed by the familiar words, words he had memorized—when? How long ago? Had he been ten years old, or twelve?
He looked upon his wife and was moved by a great tenderness in his breast. The boy who had recited those words before a hushed Sunday School class in Holly Springs, Mississippi—what a miracle that he was standing now in this place in Wesley, North Carolina, more than half a century later, feeling the arm of his wife about his waist and knowing a fullness of joy he’d never believed he might experience.
Stuart Cullen didn’t appear to be a venerable and much-esteemed bishop. Indeed, at the age of seventy-one, he looked like a man who had just come in from tossing around a football on a back lot.
Father Tim felt oddly proud that his bishop and best friend from seminary looked young and vigorous and entirely without airs; it was a sight to make a man puff out his chest, hold in his stomach, and step smartly into the room where Stuart looked up from the antique walnut desk and smiled.
“My friend!” Stuart exclaimed.
They met in the middle of the room and embraced, the bishop feeling fond of his longtime favorite priest, the priest feeling glad he’d never had the ambition to rise to the top, though he knew perfectly well that’s where the cream resided in the jug. In truth, he was glad someone else was willing to shoulder the staggering weight of higher church life and leave him in peace.
“You look terrific!” said Father Tim, meaning it.
“And old,” Stuart said.
“Old? What is old? Old is a matter of—”
Stuart chuckled. “Now, Timothy, don’t preach me a sermon. Have a seat.”
He had one, amused to see that he and Stuart were dressed almost identically, both of them wearing khakis, a sport shirt, and a collar. “Gold Dust twins,” he said, indicating their gear.
“Except you’re not old, Timothy.”
“What is this business about being old? I’m creaking in the joints like a hay wagon.”
“I always liked your rustic imagery,” said Stuart.
“Too much Wordsworth at an early age,” replied Father Tim.
“Speaking of rustic, did you drop your moles off in the country?”
“A failed mission,” he admitted. “We never caught any to drop off.”
“I despise moles. Or is it voles? And what’s the difference, anyway?”
“You don’t need to know,” said Father Tim. “Now tell me what’s up. You’re looking quizzical. Or perhaps philosophical.”
Stuart sat in a leather wing chair opposite his retired priest and gazed out the window to the garden that his wife cultivated and he puttered in. A pink dogwood in early bloom trembled in a gusting wind. He turned his gaze on his visitor.
“I want to build a cathedral.”
“Ahhh.” Father Tim reflected a moment on this striking pronouncement. “Building cathedrals isn’t a job for the aged.”
“Thinking about it has made me face my mortality; it strikes me that I may never live to see it finished. In truth, considering the funds we’ll need to raise and the time it will take to raise them, I may not be around for the gr
oundbreaking, much less the dedication. We’re not going to borrow a cent, you see.”
“Well, then, we may both be dead and gone.”
“I’ll be seventy-two in eleven months, at which time, as you know, they’ll chase me off with a broom. I’ve always regretted our strict retirement policy. I’ve never felt better in my life. Why should I be forced to retire at seventy-two?”
“Beats me,” said Father Tim.
“In any case, I’m getting a very late start on a cathedral!”
“If you don’t mind the platitude, it’s never too late.”
“I also wonder whether this notion is merely a self-serving desire for immortality, some…strut of the flesh.”
They pondered this together, quietly. The clock on the mantel ticked. “Do you think,” asked Father Tim, “that the desire for immortality was the driving force behind Michelangelo’s David or da Vinci’s Mona Lisa?”
The bishop crossed his legs and appeared to gaze at the toe of his shoe.
“Or behind, shall we say, Handel’s Messiah?”
“I don’t pretend to know what’s behind much of anything we humans do. There are days when it seems that everything we do is for unutterably selfish reasons, then come the days on the mountaintop when we’re able to know the galvanizing truth all over again, which is that we earnestly seek to do it all to the glory of God.”
“What has God said to you about this thing?”
“Quite a lot. Actually, I think it’s His notion entirely. I’m clever enough, I suppose, but not quite so clever to drum up the…particulars of this idea. I must confess that when it all came to me, I wept.”
“Then it has nothing to do with seeing your name chiseled over the door? St. Stuart’s on the Hill?”
Stuart laughed. Ah, but Father Tim liked hearing his bishop laugh!
Stuart’s secretary opened the door and poked her head into the room. “I’m off to lunch. I don’t suppose the two of you need anything?”
“Only a bit of humility, seasoned with patience and fortitude,” said the bishop.
“On whole wheat or rye?” asked his secretary, closing the door.
