Who would stop this craziness? Why was he always the one to worry about things?
His wife looked up at him, puzzled. ‘But where in heaven’s name would she hoof in these mountains? I mean, really, honey. Think about it.’
‘Maybe she doesn’t live here, she’s just passing through.’ More reason to be concerned.
Getting no help from his wife, he went to see Lace in her attic studio. There had been zero chance to speak with her since his talk with Dooley yesterday morning, and now wouldn’t be a good time. People could not write sermons or paint paintings or accomplish much of anything with people knocking on the door, but this was life and so be it.
‘It’s you!’ said Lace, obviously pleased.
He made his apologies. ‘This Amber person is not a roofer, she’s a hoofer.’
‘I know.’ She wiped her knife with a rag. ‘He seems so happy about her. But of course he can’t go to Las Vegas and let her spend his money.’
Thanks be to God, there was someone in this household with a rational world view.
‘Praying for you,’ he said, awkward. ‘I’m sorry.’ Worse than sorry, he and Cynthia were grieved, but this wasn’t the time.
‘It’s okay,’ she said, hoping to make him feel better. It wasn’t really okay, but maybe it would be, could be . . .
‘Should we call Miss Pringle? Invite her out for . . . a little visit?’
Lace laid the knife in the easel tray. ‘I think it’s too late for Miss Pringle.’
Too late for Miss Pringle!
Down he went to the kitchen, where Lily was scrubbing the bare pine floor.
‘What did you hear from your roofers?’
‘Nothin’. They’re all workin’, is my guess. It’s good roofin’ weather.’
‘It’s just as well. This Amber person is not a roofer, she’s a hoofer.’
‘A what?’
‘A hoofer. A dancer.’
‘Oh, boy,’ said Lily. ‘This train is movin’. He’s got a date this evenin’. He asked me if I thought he was too old to call it a date.’
‘I was pretty old,’ he said, ‘and I called it a date.’
‘Well, there you go. You want a glass of tea?’
‘No, thanks.’
He looked at the current job list pushpinned to the corkboard beside the back door.
Weed ALL borders once weekly prior to 14th
Measure barn aisle to the inch TODAY
It was clear that this list had been written by his wife, who was fond of capital letters and telling people what to do.
Work ROTTED barn dirt into kitchen garden
Weed-eat chicken run TODAY and AGAIN June 13
Order SIX flats white impatiens at co-op for pickup May 14
Mark your calendar to plant impatiens either side barn door on May 15—remember to WATER after planting
Pick up signpost and green paint next Tuesday at co-op
Day before wedding, use pooper scooper around main house AND path to barn
Remember to CHECK FINISHED PROJECTS OFF THIS LIST
‘Are you okay?’ said Lily.
‘I am.’
‘You don’t look it.’
‘Thank you,’ he said.
‘It’s th’ red Agnes!’ She peered out the window to the pasture. ‘They are so cute.’
‘Angus,’ he said for the fourth or fifth time.
‘Right,’ she said.
Seven-thirty. Cloudy. Cool.
Before entangling himself in the day’s fray, he walked to the corncrib and turned right, glad to be wearing a warm jacket.
The cat Sammy brought home to them a few years ago followed like a pup. He and Cynthia missed Violet, who lived on in the numerous books Cynthia had written and illustrated about her white cat. Now here was this little guy, white with a black ear, and ever full of cheer and affection. Truman was up for country living, though oddly disdainful of mice and eager for his daily handout in the kitchen.
He opened the gate to a small cemetery plot overhung by the branches of two lindens and sat on the bench.
‘Lord.’ He crossed himself and spoke aloud to that place beyond the fence, the fields, the blue bowl of the April sky.
‘I’m here for the sundered nest, the families broken apart by anger, disappointment, violence, neglect. Thank you in advance for your mercy and grace upon Pauline, Dooley, Kenny, Sammy, Pooh, Jessie, and all those you have associated with their lives and with their suffering. You told the farmer Joel that you would restore unto him the days the locusts had eaten. For the Barlowes and for all such families, Lord, we thank you for restoring those days to each and every one.’
Truman leaped onto the bench, purred beneath the mortal warmth of his hand.
‘Through Christ our Lord,’ he said, looking across to the stone marker.
He had ordered the stone, highly deserving of the lapidary treatment, engraved with an epitaph written in 1808 by John Hobhouse.
BARNABAS
. . . WHO POSSESSED BEAUTY WITHOUT VANITY
STRENGTH WITHOUT INSOLENCE
COURAGE WITHOUT FEROCITY
AND ALL THE VIRTUES OF MAN WITHOUT HIS VICES
Four years ago, Barnabas had passed as he, Timothy, wished to pass—in his sleep.
Fourteen years of companionship, understanding, devotion, and a fine regard for Holy Scripture. There would never be another like Barnabas, nor would he ever have another of any breed or kind. His good dog, with all the virtues of man without his vices, had been dog enough for a lifetime.
The men were given bag lunches—‘to eat under a tree’ was Lace’s directive.
‘Which tree?’ said Harley.
Hal joined them while Blake wormed a litter of beagle pups and gave a health check to the Sweeneys’ goat.
They chose the maple tree at the head of the clinic driveway and settled down with four dogs, Truman, and the barn cats up for a handout.
They ate their BLTs and drank their tea with appetite. Thereby consoled for their labors, they fetched out the quarters.
‘Here’s your toss line,’ said Willie. He took a wad of string from his pocket and laid a length of it on the asphalt drive at a point roughly ten or twelve feet from the lunch crowd.
Harley had a pocketful of quarters. Willie confessed to having seven. As for himself, he was carrying ten or twelve. Hal preferred to take a quick nap. The player who tossed his coin closest to the line would win all the quarters.
He had a fleeting realization, a small epiphany, that every simple thing—a game of Toss to the Line, a bottle of tea after a morning’s labor, the laughter of Cynthia and Lace and Olivia and Marge and Lily from the kitchen—all seemed especially holy and good.
Weather for June fourteenth was a chewy, and occasionally sore, subject. In the blessing over dinner, for which they all traditionally held hands, he included yet another petition for good weather for the Big Knot.
Willie weighed in with a decidedly arcane morsel of information. ‘Up in Virginia, I hear they bury a bottle of bourbon a week before th’ weddin’.’
‘So?’ he said.
‘To make sure th’ weather’s nice for th’ big day.’
‘Who gits to bury it?’ said Harley.
‘Who gits to dig it up?’ said Lily. ‘That is th’ question.’
The notion of whether there would be enough food was another topic. Shouldn’t there be some kind of organization in this potluck deal? Shouldn’t somebody get on the phone and call the guest list? What if they ended up with too many deviled eggs?
‘There is no such thing as too many deviled eggs,’ said Cynthia.
Or what if they all came with fried chicken?
‘Fine by me,’ said Hal, who claimed that’s what he would order for his last meal on earth, given the opportunity.
&nbs
p; Potluck Paranoia had definitely set in. It rocketed past The Dress and rose quickly to number two in popularity after Weather Anxiety.
He helped Lily wash up.
‘Tim Bolick called me back,’ she said.
‘Who’s Tim Bolick?’
‘One of th’ roofers you asked me to call. He knows Amber di . . . let’s see . . . di Domenico.’
He sat down, still holding the dish towel. ‘What does she do for a living?’
‘He didn’t know. He patched her roof. It was leakin’ around th’ chimney. He said she’s got a good many cats.’
‘Cats?’
‘She takes in rescue cats. Maybe thirty or so, he said.’
He didn’t know where to go with this.
‘Nice?’ he said.
‘Th’ cats?’
‘Her. She.’
‘Tim says she’s real nice. A little old, he said.’
He knew about being nice and old.
He couldn’t sleep. Eleven p.m., and not a wink after a hard day at the list. Hammering away all morning, weed-eating in the afternoon. He was not a fan of weed-eating.
And no way was Harley’s Amber escapade keeping him awake. His antsy sleeplessness happened about twice a week, whether at home or abroad.
With his wife snoring like a teenager, he was up and moving around—opening a window, listening to the night, closing the window. He walked to the chest of drawers and turned on the lamp and looked at the cross propped against it. Sammy had given it to him the Christmas that Lace and Dooley were engaged. Made from twigs of the maple he and Sammy planted in the Lord’s Chapel rose garden, it was held together by rough twine and was perhaps his favorite of the many crosses in his life. Redemption, he thought, was everywhere if we’re awake to see it.
He roamed to the closet and checked his cardigan pocket for the receipt for today’s trip to the co-op and found the scrap of paper.
He had dropped by the Mitford library recently to return a book on Angus cattle, and knowing his predilection for quotes, Avette Harris had handed him this:
Men are worse than women in fretting over age.—Gabriel García Márquez
I’ve never known a woman who could weep about her age the way the men I know can.
Thurber had hatched the second acute observation.
Was Avette aware that he had a birthday coming up? Did she somehow know he was fretting about it? Did he look his age or even older? He hoped her overture was coincidental.
His seventies had certainly been a crossroads. He could choose to be old, he had the credentials, or he could choose to be ageless, whatever that meant.
He was vain, really, something he didn’t think most people suspected. How vain could a country parson be? And yet he was womanish in his alarm about wrinkles that appeared overnight. He would shave for decades over an untrammeled patch of skin and voilà!—suddenly there was a rut, a ditch, even several, never before seen. In his sixties, he had tried erasing such surprises with vitamin D oil, an act he practiced covertly, as if committing a sin of the flesh. But no, nothing would prevail against them.
‘Look,’ he said to his wife only a day or two ago. He had discovered a trench running south from the corner of his mouth to the lower realm of his chin. He hadn’t often gone to her about the aging business. He wanted to seem above that.
‘What?’
‘This wrinkle,’ he said. ‘It wasn’t there yesterday.’
‘Oh, please, Timothy! I have dozens of those.’
He might have insisted otherwise, but he couldn’t summon the wit for flattery.
‘There are no easy fixes,’ his primary care doc, Wilson, had said. ‘Unless . . .’
‘Unless . . . ?’
‘Unless you want to have work done.’
He looked at Wilson in disbelief. That he would even mention such a thing to him was inexplicable.
‘You’d be amazed how many men go for it. A lot, trust me.’
He leaned closer. ‘Like who?’ This should be rich. He had wondered a time or two about Mitford’s mayor, Andrew Gregory.
He was unable, however, to wrest even one name from the man.
On occasion he had tried a new tie, more expensive and a tad more flamboyant than the ties of his middle years. That worked, of course, especially with a pocket handkerchief, a style not often adopted by clergy. But it worked for only a day or two, as he almost always wore his collar.
‘I quit,’ he had said to Cynthia.
‘Quit what?’
‘Trying.’ That was all he was prepared to divulge, though he felt disappointed when she didn’t press him for details.
When he had the need to talk to someone who would actually listen, his dog had been his go-to. Had Barnabas dozed off? No. Had he gazed around the room as others sometimes did? Never. His dog had kept his gaze fixed steadily on his master, as if he were entranced by every word, even those unspoken.
He walked down the back stairs in pajamas and robe and was surprised to see a light hovering above the porch glider. Lace’s face was illumined by the glow of the iPad.
He had thought a bit of stargazing might be sedative, but no. At this hour, he should leave her to her privacy. He turned back to the stairs.
‘Is that you, Father?’
‘Sorry for the disturbance.’
‘No disturbance at all. Come sit.’
‘You’re sure?’
‘Please. I would love your company. I’m looking for my wedding dress. Cynthia offered to make one, but of course she can’t sew.’
They had a laugh as he sat down.
‘I’ve decided to look online for something totally gorgeous, that fits perfectly and makes my heart beat faster. For a hundred dollars.’
‘A hundred dollars!’ Having officiated at a few weddings in his time, he was savvy enough to be incredulous.
‘It’s a huge challenge,’ she said. ‘But I like challenges. The invitations went out today and we finally settled whether five o’clock is afternoon or evening and we’re six weeks away and I have got to have a dress.’
She caught her breath. Addressing the invitations had been a wake-up call. ‘I see it in my head. Very simple. Would like to have silk or a fabric like lawn or georgette.’
Lawn, georgette—these were words his mother, who sewed, had often used. ‘They may not make those fabrics anymore.’
‘Another reason it’s a challenge!’
‘You and Dooley are handling these life changes with great courage and humor. The farm, the cattle, the graduation, the wedding, the new clinic—all at once.’ Unimaginable, but he wouldn’t say that.
‘We’re completely nuts,’ she said. ‘We couldn’t do it without everybody helping us. Not at all.’
She shut down the iPad and there was the light of the waning gibbous moon. They didn’t talk for a while; crickets chattered, Bowser yipped in his sleep.
‘We wanted to tell you for a long time but knew it would be hurtful,’ she said. ‘Having children was the first really big thing we ever agreed on. A year later, we agreed on four. It was wonderful to dream like that, it helped us get through vet school. I felt so ashamed when I found out, ashamed that I couldn’t make that happen for him, for us. In many ways it was like a death, four deaths at once. So much loss—his siblings lost all those years, and now this. I thought he might want someone else, someone who could give him an unbroken family. I wanted to die, Father, I really did. Cynthia said she had wanted an escape route, too, when she learned she would never have children.’
Nearly a half century in the priesthood and he couldn’t find words. God will use this for good, he wanted to say. I promise.
There was a silence he felt responsible to break. ‘Is the diagnosis a closed book?’
‘That’s what the doctors tell us. Hoppy, too.’
Closed
books, either figuratively or literally, had no appeal. Indeed, he often kept a book lying open in his study so he could see the words or pictures as he walked by.
‘I watched Mama die a little every day,’ she said. ‘I always thought death came at an appointed hour, but it came on daily house calls to the Creek. I remember the county woman was there Tuesdays and Thursdays. She would sit in the swing my father rigged on the porch and hum tunes she heard on the radio. She always said, Your mama’s dyin’, we got to keep her comfortable.
‘But I thought if I tried hard enough, I could keep her alive. I was totally consumed by three things—keeping Mama alive, learning everything I could from books, and staying away from my father. I could not possibly have gone to school regularly and worn nice clothes and pretended.
‘He never did the terrible things that my roommate Laurel’s father did to her. You know I ran to Harley’s trailer whenever I could; he was my funny, generous, secret angel. And I made that little nest under the house, where I read and prayed and did endless pencil drawings, and later I used to sleep there. It wasn’t so bad, really, except for the spiders. Under the house with a flashlight, I went to Antarctica with Lord Shackleton, to Northanger Abbey with Miss Austen . . .’
‘I remember you talking about Jacques Cousteau.’
‘Yes, I loved following Monsieur Cousteau into the deep. I read everything the bookmobile lady chose for me, and then started choosing on my own. There were also books I didn’t love at all but I read anyway, hoping to find something hidden and accidental that would change things.’
‘Somewhere in there, you fell in love with Rilke, I believe.’
‘Not in love, really, he was a project—during my sophomore year, I tried to translate his poetry into art. Perhaps all the dragons in our lives, he said, are princesses who are only waiting to see us act, just once, with beauty and courage. Perhaps everything that frightens us, he said, is in its deepest essence something helpless that wants our love.
‘I realized how much I wanted to act with beauty and courage, and how hard it is to do this. I almost managed to love the spiders.’
She gave him a smile, suddenly shy. She always opened up like this with Father Tim; she didn’t know why and she couldn’t seem to stop. He brought that out in people.