‘Ah.’ This was head-spinning. ‘But I’ll be carrying flowers and holding Granpa Hoppy’s arm.’
He looked up, tears still shining in hazel eyes flecked with gold. ‘Only you can hold Roo,’ he said.
It was every hand on deck, save for Cynthia and the bride and her handmaiden.
Cynthia took Jack Tyler to join the work crew, but he was to stand out of the way at all times, did he understand that? He nodded yes.
The first order of business was to clean up the broken glass and china. Cynthia was to get on the phone to Marge and Olivia and the Flower Girls and ask them to bring whatever plates and glasses could be spared. As Harley was on the road to Charlotte to fetch Henry, there was no one to run to Mitford and divest the Kavanagh cupboards of china and glassware.
Mink Hershell arrived with his chainsaw and a newer-model tractor, using the rear entrance in order to avoid tracks in front of the barn. They heaved the old maple off the shed roof and dropped it on the ground to be sawed into firewood and seasoned under cover. It would warm thrice, similar to Thoreau’s observation, those who brought it down, cut it into logs, and took pleasure from the fire.
In the morning light, the astonishing shallowness of its root system was exposed for the first time to human view. Indeed, the root ball, so easily plucked up by wind, was a depository of artifacts.
Dooley hefted Jack Tyler onto his shoulders so he could see the Cheerwine bottle cap lodged in the dirt near a taproot.
Over here was a hand-wrought nail most likely used for shoeing a horse.
And there, a shard of blue and white pottery—all of it proclaiming those gone before us, the communion of saints.
Jack Tyler wanted the shard and was allowed to dig it out with his own hands. He would wash it and keep it, he said, and be careful not to cut himself on it.
A thorough exam of the shed structure discovered it stable enough for merrymaking. And though the tree removal had been a muddy piece of business, Willie put a shine on things. The rain had stopped around three-thirty, he said, and the forecast for today was seventy-two degrees with sunny skies. Meaning that by afternoon, the moisture would be wicked away with the same haste it had come, leaving them as dry as Ezekiel’s bones.
High five.
A storm in the middle of the night. Beth and I slept through it and so did Jack Tyler. Limbs all stacked in one spot in the yard and the tree taken off the shed roof. Thank you, God, for everything!
The wedding program we printed two weeks ago at the clinic does not have Jack Tyler’s name in it. He is willing to be the ring bearer but only under certain conditions! He cried this morning but is a truly brave boy~ so thoughtful and restrained. D says he will give JT a chance to ‘fly apart’ tomorrow in case he needs to. Just added JT’s name and Amanda will run off the copies. Bumps in the road! Glad we did not set the wedding time for morning as first planned ages ago.
Note: We decided to add five words to the vows, the words Dooley’s granpa used to say to him. And the processional hymn was Miss Sadie’s favorite. We love remembering them.
Our family motto, decided today:
A cord of three strands is not quickly broken. Ecclesiastes 4:12
Henry Winchester had never been to North Carolina. He had spent his adult life traveling the rails from New Orleans to Chicago and back again.
There had been no other world, nor had he ever wanted any other than the rocking and creaking and gliding of the train. It was a womb, a cradle, all that and more, and the years spent working his way along the corporate ladder had been infinitely pleasing and endlessly absorbing. He had managed to love all of it, perhaps especially those long-ago last days of the sleeping-car porters. During the few months he was a proud member of the brotherhood, he had never minded being called George a time or two; he was proud of a designation born out of ignorance but resonant with the imperial riches of men who had stood up and been counted and changed things forever.
On the train from Birmingham to Charlotte, he had traveled a pretty flat bed, and now this magnificent countryside with the world’s oldest mountains—hard to believe as that may seem—right outside the window of this truck. Compared with the upstart juveniles of, say, the Alps or Everest, the Blue Ridge mountains were worn to a nub. In these elders was some divine wisdom he might have picked out like a walnut from its shell if he had more time.
But here was this good driver with what’s called ‘a lead foot,’ this slightly built man with as strange a speech as any in Mississippi, albeit a far more rapid kind of speaking which his adoptive school-principal father would have enjoyed immensely. ‘It’s what they call hillbilly talk,’ Harley Welch said in good humor.
They were riding on something called the Parkway, a world that, but for Timothy, he would never have seen. He was astonished that such a land existed, though he knew in his head that it did; he’d seen it in the pages of National Geographic, his favorite reading material. This landscape spoke to him in a private and oddly familiar way—it was fearsome and consoling at the same time, like life itself.
Joy springs all radiant in my breast, he thought, limning a line of Dunbar. ’Tis wealth enough of joy for me / in summer time to simply be.
With his mother gaining on ninety-seven years and his own vigor unpredictable, he wasn’t likely to come this way again.
But he was glad he came this time, oh yes, and thank God and Brother Timothy for the good health to do it.
He managed a thirty-minute nap and rummaged through the contents of his sock drawer, now in a grocery bag to be loaded into Cynthia’s car. He needed a handkerchief and here it was, clean but unironed—this was not a household for ironing handkerchiefs.
It had been six or seven years since that long patch in Memphis by Henry’s hospital bed. The doctors had removed stem cells from his bloodstream and conducted them into Henry’s. The chances of a match between half brothers had been less than five percent. Yet he and Henry, his junior by a decade, had won the lottery, a triumph that dosed them and the medical staff with gratitude and astonishment.
He looked out the window of the bedroom and saw the truck pulling in. Harley had judged the drive time almost to the minute.
His heart hammered as he raced downstairs. ‘It’s Henry!’ he called to whoever was listening as he blew past the kitchen and out to the glider porch.
Henry was stepping down from the truck, looking the tall, refined gentleman that he assuredly was, and more like their father than he remembered.
My God. Henry. Here!
The tears came freely for both as he embraced the man whose heart pumped Kavanagh blood to the full extent of his own. There was the backslapping, the shy embarrassment of open feeling, and they stood away then and pulled out their handkerchiefs at precisely the same moment.
They looked with wonder at their similar white squares, one monogrammed with W, one with K, but nothing fancy.
‘Value pack,’ he told Henry, and they wiped their eyes and laughed. A good, deep, relieving laugh.
There was Lace’s dad wheeling into the driveway in his ancient Volvo, windows down as usual.
Dooley threw up his hand as he walked out to the car. ‘Hey, Doc!’
They did a high five through the open window.
His soon-to-be father-in-law grinned. ‘Hey, Doc yourself.’
‘DPAW,’ whispered the Clergy Spouse.
This was code for Don’t Pray Around the World, and short for Do Not Let This Hot Breakfast Get Cold.
Whenever he was headed into a big occasion with full vestments—and bless her heart, she couldn’t help it—his wife suddenly became higher and mightier than her usual self, dispensing directives of every stripe. But how could he not pray around the world, as it were? How could he not? Look at this bountiful table, at the people God had joined together out of the seeming blue. Look at the weather, the minor miracle of that.
He was somewhat breathless as he held the chair for Lace and for once was nearly speechless. He had not prepped for this giving of thanks and praise and felt oddly small, as if, in accordance with Absalom Greer’s old saying, he could crawl under a snake’s belly wearing a top hat.
He had prayed in cathedrals and at the bedsides of two or three bishops, but never with more to give thanks for than this day, in this generous place where they were celebrating a marriage, a child, a new home, family ties, a new business, the completion of academic studies, and of course all those further, though often unseen, blessings bestowed by Almighty God made known through Jesus Christ.
He sat and spread his napkin across his lap and looked down the kitchen table.
At the far end, Lace to Dooley’s left, Jack Tyler on the right—a family formed overnight.
And there was Sammy looking confident and sort of streamlined, you might say, what with his cable TV pool-shooting competitions, and Harley and Willie and Marge and Hal and Rebecca Jane and his amusing and upbeat Clergy Spouse and Jessie, Dooley’s teenage baby sister, next to her brother Pooh with the familial crop of red hair, and Beth, Lace’s college friend and financial guru, and her mother Mary Ellen, an attractive fiftysomething widow, and then Hoppy Harper, his former physician and parishioner who could have been a stand-in for Walter Pidgeon, next to the lovely Olivia Harper, and at his right, Henry. Olivia and Henry, each delivered from certain death—one with a new heart, the other with new stem cells.
And now everyone holding hands and forming the small but mighty link that was its own bread.
‘Almighty God.’ He cleared his throat, concerned that he may choke up. Then again, how could he not?
Violet Flower took the hanging clothes off the rod and folded them over her arm. Dooley was neat, which was a good thing. Counting the box of Jack Tyler’s new clothes, and his ragged jeans and T-shirt, which were now washed and folded, she could do this in three trips.
It had taken four trips for Lace’s pile. It would all go in the big master bedroom closet, which Father Tim and Cynthia just about emptied last night and loaded in their car. Boy, if this wadn’t musical chairs.
She liked deciding how to hang clothes. She did not do the military-type routine of all blue together, all green together, whatever. That was anal. She just did a basic all shirts, all jackets, all pants together for men, and all dresses, all skirts, all pants and blouses together for women. What wadn’t hangin’, she would fold and put on the shelf—Lace on th’ left, Dooley on th’ right.
She checked her watch: ten-fifteen on the dot. She needed to get this project done by eleven, when breakfast would wrap up and the house would be crawling with people. She knew what to leave behind for Dooley and Lace and Jack Tyler getting dressed for the Big Knot. During the dancing, she would haul the leftover stuff to their rooms, where it would all be ready for their new life. She would not charge her time for this; it would be her present to the bride and groom.
She made her way up the back stairs. It would be easy doin’ Jack Tyler’s little room, which was right next door to Lace and Dooley’s. She would cut off the tags and hang up the clothes from the big box, and that would be the end of it for now, bless his heart. He was a serious young’un an’ cute as a bug’s ear, she could eat him with a spoon.
The whole house smelled like ham and roast beef and cookies and cheese wafers and breakfast casserole. Her mama did not care for food odors, she would be pumpin’ that can of Lavender Field Supreme till she got corporal tunnel.
She liked the look of Dooley’s good denim jacket and jeans next to Lace’s red-print dress with th’ ruffled hem. Totally romantic. Hangin’ smack in the center of th’ rod, which would be th’ dividin’ line, the dress and jeans outfit looked like a couple dancin’.
She remembered starting a new life with her sweetie. Before she could hang one scrap of Lloyd Goodnight’s pitiful wardrobe in her closet, she had to wash it, starch it, iron it, sew on buttons, whatever. He was a brick mason, for heaven’s sake; he did not have clean, sporty clothes.
She remembered hanging his good plaid shirt and dress pants next to her best cowgirl outfit, which she wore for singing at parties. ‘What a good-lookin’ couple!’ she had said of the duo that looked almost as sexy as the real thing.
In the library, Sammy Barlowe was doing a demo, something like the stuff he did on cable TV. He was totally in the big time, but not the big big time. Not yet. He was working on it twenty-four/seven and found that he really liked teaching other people how to do it, though he was not teaching any of his private tricks, they would stay private.
It was best to start young, he thought, which was the way a lot of great shooters started. He’d made his first shot at the age of nine—or was it eight?—in the ball hall in Holding. He had heard the crack of cue tip against resin a million times, but when his own tip smacked the ball, he got a feeling he’d never forget and couldn’t explain but which he kept looking to have again. ‘It’s like your first time with a girl,’ a shooter in Illinois had said. ‘You ain’t ever goin’ that way again.’
He had swept out the place in Holding and emptied ashtrays and hauled out the stinking garbage in return for his table fees. He had been tall for his age but still too short to get good leverage, so he dragged a Cheerwine crate around the table and stood on it and had taken a lot of crap for doing it. But the crate got the job done, and eventually he totally hammered the goons who messed with him.
This little squeak, Jack Tyler, was smart. He had him kneeling in a kitchen chair and handling the smallest stick in the house, while Doc Owen worked the biggest stick in the house, given hands the size of a baseball mitt. He wished he had his Frank Paradise cue to show everybody, but no way did he ever travel with that; it was a museum piece and how he came to own it was like a miracle, if there was such a thing. He was reminded that Father Tim and Father Brad said miracles happen all the time.
Father Brad would be here today. He’d like seeing the guy who made him hang off the side of a cliff looking down two thousand feet with a nosebleed and climb a mountain that seemed like freaking Everest and sleep in a snow tent. No way would he ever do that stuff again, even though he had loved it and still talked about it a lot. It was the snow tent that did it. He didn’t just think he was going to freeze and die, he knew freaking well he was going to freeze and die. And then the thing with God happened . . .
He was at home around a pool table. Anchored. He could be coming apart, but let him walk into a room with a great table and he would, like, exhale, and breathe again. Not once since he got here had he wanted to be like Dooley or felt jealous of what Dooley had. That old stuff was over. Dooley was Dooley, he was Sammy. Being Sammy was enough. Sometimes it was too much. Like, Hey, God, can you drive, I am runnin’ this thing in th’ ditch.
He liked that a little crowd was buzzing around. His old buddy Harley was standing by with a big grin and Doc Harper with his Nikon was shooting everything that moved and there was ol’ Pooh with his mouth still hanging open from the last shot and Jessie stuck over in the corner—he didn’t have a clue about the nose rings—and people he didn’t know, like a woman with long gray hair who kept staring at him. They were all kind of quiet and respectful of the demo instead of blabbing the whole time.
The musicians were tuning up out there, the sound pumped in through the open window. Banjo, he liked th’ banjo, and a harmonica . . .
He thought the kid was cooler than Doc Owen, who was laughing and joking around and not being serious about it, but Jack Tyler was dead serious and wanted to learn whatever was going down.
‘Like this,’ said Sammy, hunkering over the table with his cue.
He saw that his brother was traveling like the pros—with a rolling one-suiter, now parked in the hall.
Henry removed an envelope from a zippered side pocket. ‘Mama sent you something.’
Peggy. The one he’d run
to with his skint knee, cut jaw, bashed nose, and broken heart—a second mother. Peggy had disappeared from the Kavanagh household when he was ten. Vanished. Somewhere in his soul he had searched for her for decades. And then he had found her—and Henry.
He opened the envelope and withdrew a sallow piece of paper, folded twice and hard-worn.
It was me
Who ate your pie.
I am sorry.
Timothy
Age 7
‘When Mama left, she carried that with her, it meant a lot. You had gone in her little house while she was working and ate her last piece of pie.’
‘Pumpkin!’ he said. Back it came from the vortex of memory that would scarcely disclose what he had for breakfast.
‘Your mother made you write it.’ Henry was smiling, a light in his eyes. ‘Mama said you were left-handed when you wrote it. They started training you to your right soon after, she said. That’s what they did back then.’
Words he’d written seven decades ago had come home. He shook his head, full of wonder: ‘Will the circle be unbroken?’
Henry smiled. ‘By an’ by. But not yet. Not yet.’
The woman with long gray hair was among the last to leave the library.
‘I enjoyed watching you work,’ she said.
He thought she seemed sort of nervous. ‘Thanks. You shoot pool?’
‘No,’ she said, ‘but my son does.’
‘Is he any good?’
‘The best.’
‘Great. It’s a good game. Winston Churchill shot pool.’ He was always trying to get people to understand that pool wasn’t all about loafing and drinking and gambling and spitting. Important people did it and he wouldn’t mind being important but mostly he hoped one day to be inducted into the Hall of Fame. That was his dream.
‘And Martin Luther King and Babe Ruth,’ said the woman.