In This Mountain

by Jan Karon

  “Let me pray for us,” he said, smoothing her hair from her forehead. The faintest scent of wisteria rose from her flesh, evanescent but consoling. He’d be able to locate his wife anywhere, even blindfolded in a crowded air terminal; her smell had become the smell of home to him, of peace and certainty.

  “Lord,” he said, “to You all hearts are open, all desires known, and from You no secrets are hid. We can hide nothing from You, yet something is hidden from us. Speak to us again, Father, help us discern Your direction for our lives. Are we on the path you’ve set for us? Have we missed the mark?”

  They lay still then, hearing the ticking of the clock, and Barnabas snoring on the hall landing.

  Buck Leeper dropped by the following morning on his way to the construction site in Holding. He stood at the front door holding a to-go cup of coffee, looking exhausted and apologetic.

  “I figured you’d be up.”

  “Since five-thirty,” said Father Tim. “What is it, my friend?”

  “Could we sit out here and talk?”

  They thumped onto the top step of the front porch.

  “I had a big runaround yesterday, I thought I’d found Kenny.

  “Somebody on my job said they’d seen a bunch of paintings on velvet up around Elizabethtown, said they were propped against a van in an empty lot, an’ signed Kenny Barlowe.”

  Though the mission had clearly failed, a bolt of adrenaline surged through Father Tim.

  Buck swigged the coffee. “I started to call you, but there was no time, I just jumped in th’ truck an’ went for it. I drove up there an’ found th’ van—my heart was pumpin’ like a jackhammer, and then this kid came out, probably around Sammy’s age. It was all I could do to keep from bustin’ out cryin’.”

  “But?”

  “But th’ boy’s name was Wayne, his daddy’s name was Kenny Barlow, no e. I met his daddy, a pretty decent guy down on his luck. I bought a painting of a deer head, it’s rolled up behind th’ seat in th’ truck.”

  “Well done.”

  “I don’t know about you, but I’m ready to quit on this.”

  Father Tim took a deep breath. Quit. That’s what he was about to do, as well. But it would do no good to quit, no good at all.

  “Let’s don’t quit,” he said. “Let’s don’t quit.”

  Buck set the cup on the step between his feet.

  “A few days ago I asked Pauline to tell me everything she could remember about the boys, like if they had any birthmarks, an’ th’ color of their eyes.”

  “Good thinking.”

  “She couldn’t remember th’ color of their eyes.”

  There was a long silence between them.

  “When she realized she couldn’t remember the color…” Buck hunched over, his head in his hands. “It was the alcohol, of course. All those years…”

  “Those years are behind you.”

  “Yeah, they are, thank God.” Buck looked at him. “But you pay the consequences.”

  “True. But now God is in the consequences with you. Otherwise, you’re in them alone, desperately alone.”

  Buck stood up. “Forgive me for makin’ a rough start to your day, Father. Findin’ a needle in a haystack ain’t ever been my long suit.”

  The men walked to the truck together.

  “I saw something on TV last night,” said Father Tim. “It happened right after the Second World War when nobody had any money. A sewing machine company held a contest…whoever found the needle hidden in a haystack would win a brand-new sewing machine. There were people swarming all over that haystack, hay was flying everywhere. And guess what?”

  “What?”

  “The chances were one in a million, but somebody found the needle.”

  Buck laughed his water-boiling-in-a-kettle laugh. “Oh, yeah?”

  “Yeah!” said Father Tim, beaming.

  Dear Timothy:

  We’re elated that you and Cynthia will be arriving only a few days hence. Have done as you asked and scraped up a rug. It appears that dogs have chewed one end of it, but you can pop that end under a piece of furniture. Be it ever so humble, I’m sure you’ll be pleased with your quonset hut (my lodge in the Canadian wilds wasn’t half so commodious). I hope you don’t mind that I mounted my moose head on your living room wall, as my own quarters (being humbler still) had no room for it. I’m living four miles away, and trust you’ll let me visit the old thing when the mood strikes? Jack Farrier, a Primitive Baptist who knows these coves and firths like the back of his hand, will be taking you around on Monday following, to visit your new parish. Some areas don’t have bridges, you’ll be driving through creek beds, so bring your waterproofs! Spaghetti supper on arrival, courtesy of yours truly. Be assured, Timothy, that God is working in Jessup, Tennessee!

  In His service, Fr Harry

  P.S. Could you possibly bring mosquito netting? Enough for two Kavanaghs and one Roland ought to do the trick, Richard and Trudy are bringing their own.

  He decided he wouldn’t bother his wife with this latest communication from the mission field.

  He opened the refrigerator and spied his lunch of freshly made chicken salad with hard-cooked eggs and celery, his favorite combination—no nuts and grapes for him, thank you. He peeled back the Saran Wrap and nabbed a carrot stick and shut the door—lunch would wait ’til he returned from Meadowgate—he wasn’t as ravenously hungry since he cut back on his insulin a few days ago. If his sugar started acting up, he’d do the ten extra units again. Which reminded him—he needed to stop at the drugstore and pick up a glucometer; it had been on his list for days. And his jogging…he needed to get back to it.

  He was due in five minutes to meet Dooley and follow the Wrangler to Meadowgate Farm. The boy could have driven out alone, he was nearly twenty years old, for heaven’s sake, but he wanted to go with him as he’d done all those years ago when he left Dooley at Meadowgate and traveled to Ireland to meet Walter and Katherine.

  They found Hal and his associate, Blake Eddistoe, in emergency surgery with a border collie. After a visit on the porch with Marge and seven-year-old Rebecca Jane, he and Dooley walked to the creek, to the very place they’d said goodbye before. Dooley had been only eleven then; he remembered sitting with him on the creek bank and talking, his heart heavy. Was it so different now?

  “Well, son…,” he said.

  “I’ll maybe write you or something.”

  “Would you? We’ll write you back. And we’ll call, of course. I believe it will be a good summer for both of us.”

  They sat on a large, smooth stone embedded in the creek bank. Dooley picked up a stick and slapped the water, precisely as Father Tim remembered him doing years ago.

  “How will you get on with Blake?” There had been more than a clash or two with Hal’s associate; while Dooley veered toward a more natural practice of veterinary medicine, Blake was staunchly committed to traditional treatments.

  “I’ll do my thing, he’ll do his.”

  “Seems fair enough.”

  “He needs to keep his nose out of what I do, that’s all.”

  “Still fair enough. But it might be good to swap ideas along the way.”

  Hal would keep the two in line; he was well aware of the friction between them. As Hal’s own medical theories were drawn from tradition, he often sided with Blake, but Dooley’s fresh perspectives intrigued the seasoned vet, and he gave the boy plenty of rein.

  Dooley slapped the water with the stick. “What do you think about Sammy and Kenny?”

  He would not, could not tell Dooley what he thought. He thought that finding them may be a closed chapter. “I don’t know. Buck and I will do everything we can. Just because I’m going away doesn’t mean I won’t think about it, pray about it, and try to come up with something.”

  Dooley gazed at the water. “What can I do?”

  Father Tim sighed. “I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t know.” Sammy and Kenny might be two grains of sand on a beach that stretc
hed to the horizon.

  Dooley raised his head and looked at Father Tim. “I’m goin’ to try and come up with something,” he said with finality.

  “Tim!”

  Hal Owen waved from the front door of his clinic. “Tim! Before you go…”

  “Yes?”

  Hal walked quickly toward Father Tim. “Sorry we didn’t get to visit.”

  “How’s the collie?”

  “He’ll make it. He was torn up pretty badly by some dogs across the creek, but he’ll be fine. Listen…something to think about…”

  He didn’t need another thing to think about.

  “Marge and I would like to go to France next year and take Rebecca Jane. We’d leave sometime after Christmas.” Hal removed his glasses and stuck them in the pocket of his blood-stained surgical smock. “We’ve been invited to run the practice of a college chum for a year while they take a similar post in Italy. We were talking last night—we wondered if you and Cynthia might care to farm-sit?”

  Farm-sit. He’d never sat a farm.

  “You’d be fifteen minutes from Mitford in your Mustang, twenty-five if you use the pickup. Might be interesting. I know how Cynthia likes to sketch out here. Joyce Havner comes every Monday and Friday to clean house, there are two churches right down the road…”

  “Aha.”

  “Dooley would be here for the summer, of course, and Blake would be around full-time to manage the practice. There wouldn’t be any farmwork involved. Lewis would do the bush hogging, Sam Rayner the milking, Bo Davis the odd jobs…business as usual. If the notion strikes, you might take a few eggs out of the nests every morning.”

  “Aha!” he said again; his mind was Jell-O.

  “Plus, Meadowgate would be a great place to work on those essays you mentioned!”

  “I don’t know, I’d have to…”

  “Pretty soft job, all things considered.”

  “Right. Well…”

  “No need to make a decision now. It’s just…something to think about.” Hal slapped him heartily on the shoulder and gave him a hug.

  “Take care, old friend. The Lord be with you.”

  “And also with you,” said Father Tim, hugging back.

  Though time was short, he took the long way home.

  He wanted to think. He’d been in a kind of funk the last few days; a gray fog seemed present in his brain.

  It came to him that he was terribly thirsty, as if something in his very soul had been deprived for a long time….

  Why wasn’t he taking his wife on a cruise instead of hauling her to Tennessee? He envisioned a ship’s passengers lined up in deck chairs, broiling like chops. No. No way. He could never do it. He and Cynthia did little to amuse themselves because there was so much he didn’t like—he didn’t like flying, he didn’t like the thought of lining up in deck chairs, he didn’t like Cynthia’s occasional enthusiasm to see Spain or France or even return to Maine, the scene of their honeymoon. What had she gotten herself into? A celebrated author tied to a man as dull as dishwater and entirely self-serving.

  In truth, he was too pathetic even to play golf. Didn’t retired clergy have a fondness for golf? He thought so; he seemed to recall he’d heard a lot of golf talk around diocesan meetings, about how terrific it was to keep the mind alert, the body strong. Look at Stuart Cullen, for example. A golfer, and fit as any boy. Yet, in the end…

  “Throw me in the briar patch,” he muttered aloud. “Anything but golf!”

  He mopped his brow with his handkerchief and cranked the air conditioner a notch higher.

  It was the same unbearably tiresome nonsense he’d wrestled with for years. He didn’t know how to do anything on the side of fun, didn’t have a clue how to instigate it. It was Cynthia who dragged him into fun like a sack of potatoes; hadn’t she come up with those famous clergy retreats, small treasuries of time to laugh, to unwind, to refresh themselves? Had he ever come up with a retreat for her benefit? Not that he could recall. One might question if he had a brain in his head.

  But wait. She was as much a part of this trek to Tennessee as he. They had both prayed for a ministry with children, something they could do as a couple, and Cynthia had been eager and willing. It was he, however, who’d gotten the adrenaline pumping about Father Roland’s deal, which, he now learned, came with a moose head in their living room, no bridges over their creeks, a rug chewed by dogs, and an infestation of mosquitoes.

  Down the road, maybe Hal’s idea was, indeed, something to think about. Meadowgate had always held a place in Cynthia’s heart, and certainly in his. It would give them something to look forward to while in Tennessee. He mused for a moment on picnics in the Owens’ meadows and long walks in the woods; on the background music of lowing cattle and crowing roosters. Best of all, they’d be with Dooley through the summer, they wouldn’t have to make this wrenching disconnect….

  The thirst was profound, dredging up some odd anxiety he couldn’t name. But right up the road was the little store he and Dooley had stopped at the other day. He wheeled into the parking area and heaved himself from the car and went inside.

  “Water,” he said.

  “Thirty-two, thirty-three…Around back.” Absorbed in counting money, the man at the cash register jerked his thumb toward the rear of the building.

  “Around back?”

  “Spigot out back. Forty, forty-five…Th’ drink box is over there.”

  Drink box. He walked to it as if through high water, his legs heavy.

  Coke. Pepsi. Sprite. Dr Pepper.

  He couldn’t drink this stuff.

  But he didn’t feel like going around back, either.

  He dropped the change in the slot, punched in his selection, and pulled the handle. The can thumped into the dispenser. His hand trembled as he popped the top and drank, feeling the icy liquid flow down his gullet like a river of life, a benediction.

  He sat on a stack of drink crates and checked his watch.

  He was within two miles of Lottie Greer, Absalom Greer’s elderly sister, who was still living in back of the country store built by her parents more than eighty-five years ago. He should go by and visit. It had been a long time.

  The fork in the road was coming up. He had thirty seconds to make a decision.

  He saw the marker, Mitford Seven Miles, Farmer Two Miles, and noticed how, in the well-mown V of the fork, the weeds had been left to grow up around the marker post. His father never liked to see weeds left growing around a post….

  He veered left; he wouldn’t go to Lottie Greer’s. Everything at home was now on a schedule that, if interrupted, could throw them off the mark for their early morning departure. God willing, he would visit Lottie when he came back in September. He made a vow to do it; Absalom would have wanted it.

  He missed the old preacher, who had loved Miss Sadie ’til death did them part, the preacher who’d hung on to what some called “old-time religion.” Indeed, there was nothing “old-time” about the truth of the gospel, it was instead a truth for all time—yesterday, today, tomorrow. Absalom Greer had never preached the fashion of the day, nor done whatever popular thing it took to fill his pews; he had preached the Word and let the chips fall where they may. He would visit Absalom’s sister for this reason alone.

  Speaking of visiting…blast! he hadn’t gotten by to see Louella at Hope House. That wouldn’t do, that wouldn’t do at all. He stepped on the accelerator, hoping the sheriff’s boys weren’t lurking in a bush somewhere.

  Louella sat by her window, gazing out to the rooftops of Mitford.

  “Knock, knock!” he said, standing at the open door of Room Number One.

  “Uh-oh! Look at my shameful self! I’m still in this ol’ housecoat!”

  “It’s all right, Louella, you look beautiful in that color.”

  “Lord knows, I get dressed ever’ day that rolls around; today I say, Louella, ain’t nobody comin’ that you got to impress!”

  “And you were right! You don’t have to impress
me, I’m already impressed.”

  “I don’ know by what!”

  He leaned down and kissed her cheek. “By your stamina, your positive attitude, your fine singing voice. Want to hit a couple of verses?” He sat on the footstool near her chair. He instantly felt eight, maybe ten years old. Miss Sadie and Louella had always done that for him, made the years roll away.

  “I cain’t praise th’ Lord in this ol’ housecoat, it’s nothin’ but rags and patches, Miss Sadie give it to me.”

  “We’ll just gab, then,” he said.

  Nurse Carter stuck her head into the room, grinning. “Y’all going to sing today?”

  “No,” he said. “We can’t. Louella’s in her housecoat.”

  “Oh,” said Nurse Carter.

  “Cynthia and I are leaving town tomorrow,” he said. “We’ll be home for a week in September.” For some reason, he found it difficult to put those two sentences together.

  He stood in the parking lot, trying to remember where he was and where he was going. He looked up to the roof of the front entrance and saw the angel weather vane. Of course! He was at Hope House and he was going home.

  He located the red Mustang on the other side of a Bronco and got in it and drove down the long driveway to Lilac Road, turned left on Church Hill, and passed Little Mitford Creek on his right. As he approached the stop sign, he noticed that weeds were growing up around the post, and there…

  …there was his father. His heart beat with a profound joy.

  As the image of Matthew Kavanagh appeared to him, an odd and severe explosion erupted in his head, and he felt his body violently jolted into a kind of limbo, a sudden darkness.

  CHAPTER SIX

  The Vale