"I say, old man, you're taking this too seriously. Why don't you loosen up and smudge the windows I've just washed or lean over here and fog my glasses? No, no. Erase that! Too simple. Why not give the collar of my clean shirt a good licking or drool on my jacket?"
Barnabas continued to stare ahead, but one ear flickered.
The rector reached over and put his hand on the dog's neck. Right here was as solid a friend as he'd ever had, with the possible exceptions of Tommy Noles and Stuart Cullen, with Walter thrown in for good measure.
Why didn't he do this more often? Go driving in the country and talk to his dog? It was the simplest of refreshments and didn't cost a dime.
Indian summer was a glad fifth season that didn't come every year. It stepped in without warning, as an inexpressibly welcome bonus, a gift that made limbs lighter, minds clearer, steps quicker.
Absalom Greer bounded from behind the counter of his country store as if all the bonuses of the season resided in him.
They shook hands warmly and embraced. "Preacher Greer has sent his son to greet me," said the rector.
The old man laughed. "You're a fine one to talk, seein' as Ireland knocked a decade or two off your own years."
"What's that wondrous smell? Wait! Don't tell me. Fried chicken!"
"Sure as you're born. Crisp and brown, with a mess of green beans and a bowl of mashed potatoes and gravy. We won't even talk about the biscuits stacked up on our best china platter, already buttered."
"Hallelujah and four amens," said the rector, who refused to consider the lethal consequences of that particular menu on his diabetes.
"Lottie has cooked all morning, and don't be sayin' you wish she hadn't gone to any trouble. It's my sister's joy to go to trouble when the town priest is comin'. Did you bring your dog?"
"I did. In the car."
"Our cat's off on a toot, so bring him in. We'll give him a homecooked dinner."
Absalom put the handwritten Closed sign on the knob of the front door, and all three of them walked the length of the creaking floor to the back rooms. Though the rector had been here but once before, he felt instantly at home.
After the meal the Greers called dinner and the rector called lunch, Lottie went to the garden to clean out the vegetable beds, and Barnabas lay with his head on Absalom's foot.
The rector sipped the strong, black coffee that had been brewed on the stove. "Have they let you retire yet?"
"Law, it's like weanin' babies. They don't want to let me go, but it's got to be done. Next Sunday, I'll be preaching to my last little handful at Sandy Creek, and then it's over—I'll be just a twig broom standin' in the corner."
"I may have a pulpit for you, if the Lord so moves."
Absalom Greer threw back his head and laughed. "You're always looking to put me in the traces! A poor grayheaded country preacher can't get a mite of rest and peace."
"This is a special congregation."
"They're all special."
"This one meets on Wednesday evening, leaving Sunday free to supply one of your little handfuls, if the need arises."
The old man took an apple out of the basket on the table and began to peel it,
"It would be a summer pulpit," the rector said. "You'd be preaching from a hickory stump. Winter along the creek is too hard. You wouldn't be able to get around in there."
"Eightynine years old this November, and they won't let me be..."
"Of course, the little band at Mitford Creek is very different from the one at Sandy Creek."
"How's that?" He cut a slice of the apple and passed it to the rector on the point of his knife.
"They're not seasoned in the Word of God, They're unchurched. Once a week, they come together to eat a pot of soup made with scraps, but you could give them a banquet, my brother."
"I thought you drove down here in a Buick," said Absalom Greer, "but it looks like you've come drivin' a hard bargain."
"Tasty apple," said the rector.
"I'll talk to th' Lord about it," said the country preacher.
His mail was stacked on the desk in his study.
Dear Father,
They've moved me from the laundry to the mess hall, where I set up and clean up. The boiling temperatures in the laundry took some weight off, so I've been looking like a display in anatomy class. Prison life is not for the fainthearted...
He would never forget the look on the faces of his congregation when, just as he was beginning his sermon last spring, the pulldown stairs behind the pulpit lowered. His heart had thundered like a jack hammer when the jewel thief who had hidden for months behind the bells in the church attic came down and confessed his crime.
George Gaynor had been little more than a skeleton even then, living as he had on pilfered coffee hour provender, Sunday school juice, canned vegetables from the basement, and an occasional carton of half and half. Not to mention, of course, Esther Bolick's marmalade cake, which he had snatched out of its container during a lay readers' meeting.
...Thank you for My Utmost for His Highest, which also is not for the fainthearted. I find it as compelling as anything I've read, apart from the Bible.
Chambers talks about substituting credal belief for personal belief. He says that's why so many are devoted to causes and so few devoted to Christ. This struck a deep chord with me, and I wish we could sit and talk about it. I grew up on credal belief, and it never worked. It's a dangerous masquerade that's seldom found out until it's too late.
Pete came twice while you were away. A visit with him always has a bonus—it's like a visit with you...
He looked up from the letter and realized he was smiling. No, beaming would be a better word for it. While he had prayed that day in the nave with Pete Jamison, George Gaynor had, quite unknown to them, joined them in prayer in his hiding place in the attic.
Two for one, George had called the simple prayer of salvation that had set the lives of both men on vastly different courses.
...Please tell Mrs. Bolick that I have dreamed about her marmalade cake on several occasions...
He laughed. Esther Bolick's legendary cake had become a warm memory for a convicted criminal, had been devoured at a baptism ceremony in a police station, and had sent him into a diabetic coma that almost took him out. "To die for!" Emma had once said, and hadn't he nearly proved it?
A postcard from Pete Jamison:
My territory has been expanded to six states. I'm praying and it's working. Saw George. Call you soon. God bless.
He didn't recognize the handwriting on the mauve envelope. There was no return address, but the stamps and postmark were Irish. Before opening it, he grudgingly used the microwave to heat a cup of cocoa, then sat at the kitchen counter.
Dear Cousin Timothy,
It was lovely to meet you at Erin Donovan's tea. I had heard for years of the Cousin Tim who was a priest in America and never dreamed we might tip a glass together. I found you terribly dever and charming and so like Greataunt Fiona that I could scarcely tell the difference except for your trousers.
My scheme is to see your country, as you have seen mine, and to settle for a bit among the people.
It was sweet of you to suggest that I come 'round whenever I'm in America.
Yours very truly,
Meg Patrick
There had been dozens of cousins at Erin Donovan's tea, and he couldn't say that he remembered anyone named Meg Patrick.
There had been Patricks on his grandmother's side, but if there were any left, he didn't know of it. Good of her to write, although he was frankly puzzled by her comparison of his likeness to the famed Greataunt Fiona, whom he'd always found to be astonishingly attractive in the old photographs in his father's desk.
He glanced up from the letter and studied his reflection in the glass panel of the cabinet door. Perhaps he did have his ancestor's broad forehead and large eyes.
It seemed odd to consider such a connection after so many years of feeling those family connections severed. His fat
her's lifelong reticence about ancestry had caused his paternal side to appear like a nearly blank sheet of paper, with only Walter occupying a space.
The trip, however, had stirred something in him, rather like yeast beginning to work in dough.
He knew little, except for the photographs in his father's desk and a bundle of letters he had read as a child with great avidity in secret. He knew that his grandfather had come over from Ireland at the age of fourteen and went on to make a small fortune as the owner of a box factory. Some rift between his father and grandfather, and later between his father and uncle, had served to slam the door on Ireland.
No wonder he had burrowed so deeply into his mother's small, closelyknit family with their strong Baptist traditions. It had been warm in that burrow, and one always got the straight of things, full force, yet tempered with love.
His mother's family had been shocked at the worst and saddened at the least when he announced his plans to become an Episcopal priest. Perhaps to this day he had never completely understood that decision himself. Though it made no rational sense, he felt it was a way to minister to his Episcopalian father, to his frozen spirit and aloof disdain, though his father would die even before he left seminary.
He had also felt, without being able to express it, that this course could somehow heal their lifelong rift. But more than that, more than anything, he had wanted to serve God and His people—and he had never looked back.
Clearly, Ireland had given him a sense of wholeness he'd longed for, and the mass gathering at Erin's of near and distant cousins had been a high point. The Irish were known to grumble about the hordes of Americans who stumbled through parish graveyards, rubbing stones, trampling flowers, looking for their roots. But once connected, it was a different story—one was taken in and cosseted like the biblical prodigal.
Yet, if the cousins had been a high point, one event had been higher still—the day he'd taken the rented car with Katherine and Walter and the picnic basket with the rhubarb tart. The landlady had wrapped the tart, hot from the oven, and for miles they salivated as the aroma crept out of the basket and filled the car.
With a sudden screech of tires, Katherine had pulled off the narrow road and looked them dead in the eye. "I can't wait another minute," she said. Excited as children, they peeled the tea towel from around the stillwarm delicacy and devoured every crumb.
"There!" Katherine had said, recklessly wiping her mouth on the hem of her dress. "That's how I want to live for the rest of my life!"
He remembered that Katherine had gone up the steep knoll ahead of him, pushing along with the aid of a walking stick. Walter was farther ahead, at the crest of the hill, when they heard his voice echoing off the endless green hills and ancient stone walls, "Look! We've found it! You won't believe it!"
He nearly killed himself climbing to the top to stand there panting with his companions in utter astonishment. "By George!" he had said hoarsely.
The remains of the family castle lay along the top of the facing hill, a shattered toy abandoned to solitude and mist.
Without speaking, he and Walter gazed in wonder at the ruin that bound them together as one blood, until heaven.
Leaning into the wind, he walked to Fembank for tea, wearing his down jacket for the first time, a muffler, and gloves.
Boom. He could feel the ground shake beneath his feet. According to Ron, the explosions would end today, and he thought how he'd grown accustomed to them.
Much against Miss Sadie's will, Louella had made an effort to remove the crusts from their sandwiches.
"Waste not, want not!" Miss Sadie reminded her friend for the thousandth time in their long life together.
"Miss Sadie, if it's jus' you an' me, don't matter 'bout leavin' on th' crust, but this is comp'ny."
Miss Sadie looked unconvinced.
"This is a preacher!" said Louella.
Miss Sadie furrowed her brow.
Louella pulled out her last stop. "Would yo' mama want you servin' san'wiches with crusts?" She said the word with such loathing she might have been discussing snakes.
Miss Sadie sniffed and dropped the tea bags into the pot. That was the end of that discussion, thought Louella, who garnished her crustless sandwiches with a stem of parsley.
They sat in Miss Sadie's yellow bedroom, which had lately become a favorite spot to entertain. "It's so she don' have to look at them rain buckets in th' parlor," Louella had told him. "We jus' let 'em get full, then pour it down th' toilet. Miss Sadie call it a free flush."
Louella removed her apron and sat on the vanity bench, as they took their accustomed places in the wing chairs.
His hostess sighed. "I've gone through all Papa's money, you know."
"Yes, I know." She had freely given five million dollars to build Hope House, an ambitious nursingcare facility that promised to be state-of-the-art. Would its benefactor be among its poorest residents? Perhaps he should offer something out of the Lord's Chapel discretionary funds.
"So," she said, brightening, "now we'll start on Mama's money. It's not nearly as much as Papa's, I hate to admit. I could have done so much better, been a much better steward. But when I did so well with Papa's by staying tight as a corset all those years, I decided I'd experiment with Mama's."
"Aha."
She looked at her hands in her lap. "That was a mistake. I conducted a very unfortunate experiment in 1954 and again in 1977." She shook her head, then looked up, smiling again. "But I forgave myself and asked the Lord to do the same. Let bygones be bygones!"
"That's the spirit."
"I'm ashamed to say I'm nearly cleaned out..."
"I'm sorry." What a sad irony!
"...I've got just a little over a million left."
He hoped his face didn't register his shock and amusement, but only the admiration he felt.
"So," she said, "what we need to do is start spending it...and I think we should start with Dooley."
"With Dooley?"
"That boy needs to go away to school, Father, to get the kind of education that will make the most of what the good Lord put in him. Mitford School is a fine school, but at best, it can only try to make up for his deprivations. We need something that will overcome them! Don't you see?"
"Yes. I do see. And you've put it very well."
"Louella and I agree on this a hundred percent."
"Aha."
"He'll be in the eighth grade next year, and if we want to get him in the right school, something needs to be done right away. He may even need tutoring, especially for his English! Now, how do we get started?" There it was again—something he'd seen before; it was the girl in Sadie Baxter.
"I...don't exactly know how to start."
"Father," she said a bit sharply, "if I'm going to do my part, you must do yours. It's up to you to find out how to start!"
Boom went the last of the dynamite, rattling the cups on their saucers.
He was sitting at his desk in the study when he happened to glance up and look out the window. There, perched on the window box with her nose glued to the other side of the glass, was Violet. He froze.
Violet studied him like a fish in a tank.
He studied her in return.
He had never noticed that her eyes were so green or that they perfectly matched her collar. She sat like a statue, white against the approaching dusk, unblinking.
Or was it Violet?
Absolutely, he decided. There was something about Violet, after all. And why shouldn't there be? She had been to visit the queen, for Pete's sake, not to mention learned to play the piano.
He didn't want his neighbor's straying cat to be startled and leave. He wanted her to sit right there until he could get his hands on her. Because what he wanted to do, he realized, was find her.
Yes! Violet had run away, but he had found her, and he would return her to her distraught owner, safe and sound, and gain the opening he had hoped for. Perfect.
He moved like a cat, himself, easing out of
the chair and gliding across the creaking floor. Violet's eyes followed him as if he were a minnow in a pool.
When he reached the kitchen, he bounded to the back door, threw it open, and looked out at the window box. Violet had vanished.
Blast!
Then he felt something at his ankles.
As he dashed through the hedge with the squirming cat, he saw a red welt on his hand, with blood oozing through. Even better, he thought with satisfaction.
Cynthia opened the door and glared. Somehow, he knew exactly what she was going to say. "Violet, you wretch!"
She grabbed the errant cat from his arms. "I found her!" he exclaimed, displaying his bleeding hand as evidence.
But she closed the door abruptly, and he heard footsteps retreating down the hall.
He was trembling when he reached his back stoop and opened the kitchen door. He was feeling something he didn't like to acknowledge, something he had run from feeling most of his life. It was fury.
How could she close the door in his face without even a thank you or a byyourleave? What had he done, after all, to deserve her ingratitude and hostility? Nothing!
Hadn't he tried and tried to call her, and pounded on her door in a driving rain, and brought her a Waterford goblet from Ireland even if she hadn't seen it yet, thinking of her always during the entire two months?
Hadn't he written her twice from Sligo?
Hadn't he been perfectly innocent in the Edith Mallory escapade?
Hadn't he rung that blasted publisher's phone off the hook trying to reach her and composed endless letters of contrition in his mind?
He was sick of Dear Cynthia this and Dearest Cynthia that and the whole mess of feelings that erupted in him like a volcano every time he so much as thought of her and which lately had been settling like ash on everyone in his vicinity.
No, he would not write and he would not call. He would not swing this way and that until he was fairly churned to butter over his Pecksniff neighbor. He would march over there right now and pound on her door and demand to be heard. And let the chips fall where they may.
Ulcers! he thought, feeling the wrench in his stomach. He knew that if he backed off for one moment, he would be done for—he would wimp along with her until the cows came home. It was now or never, and the sweat that broke out on his forehead proved it.