In any case, nearly two million dollars would be an astounding reality to grapple with.
Lord, he prayed, pick the time and place for this important revelation, and thank You for so constructing his character that he might bear the responsibility with grace ...
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Hungry and Imperfect
By four-thirty in the afternoon, peas, potatoes, onions, lettuce, and chard had been planted in the fresh-turned loam. Several rows sprouted red twigs wrung from a dogwood tree by the henhouse to give new pea vines something to climb.
At ten twenty-five in the evening, the rain began. It was a soft, steady rain that pattered on the tin roof of the farmhouse, and chimed in the gutters.
Father Tim listened to the music, contented. Every gardener’s dream, he thought.
“Are you sleeping?” asked Cynthia.
“Listening to the rain.”
“I’ve been thinking.”
“That’s scary.”
“Very funny. I think we need Sunday School at Holy Trinity.”
“I agree. Just haven’t gotten there, yet.”
“I’m volunteering to teach Sissie and Rooter.”
“That’s wonderful!” He was always thrilled when his wife volunteered in a church he was serving. “You’ll be a great blessing to them, to all of us.”
“And surely others will come.”
“Surely. And even if they don’t...”
“But I wish there was something for Sammy,” she said. “He’d never stoop to attending Sunday School with a five- and a nine-year-old.”
“Unless ...” he said.
“Unless?”
“Unless he was your teaching assistant.”
“How do you mean?”
“If there was something he could do with gardening to illustrate your teaching... I don’t know ... a seed, growth, the story of new life ... new life in Jesus ...”
“I like it,” she said. “Give me a couple of weeks, let me think it all through.”
He took her warm hand and kissed it and held it to his cheek. “Lord, thank You for sending Your daughter into this white field. Thank You for showing her Your perfect way to teach the love, mercy, and grace of Your Son. And help us become children, ourselves, eager to receive Your instruction. Through Christ our Lord ...”
“Amen.”
“Thank you,” he said to his deacon.
“Thank you back.”
“For what?”
“For being willing to serve at Holy Trinity. It’s my favorite of all your churches.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s so hungry and imperfect.”
Hungry and imperfect. “Yes,” he said, smiling in the dark. “Yes!”
He’d been in a pool hall or two when he was a kid, and they didn’t look like places to cultivate desirable qualities of character. Then again, didn’t the venerable English country house always have a billiards table? It did. And wasn’t billiards a game for gentlemen? Generally speaking, it was.
Maybe if he just changed the terminology, and possibly his long-prejudiced attitude ...
“Would it be possible for me to, umm, hang with you at the pool hall?”
He saw Sammy glance at his offending tab collar. Like Dooley, Sammy wasn’t thrilled with the idea of a priest following him around.
“I don’t have anything else to do in Wesley and I thought...”
“OK I guess.”
Father Tim noticed that the scar on Sammy’s face reddened, as it often did when he was uneasy.
“We’ll drop over to Mitford; I need to check on a couple of people. Then we’ll head to Wesley. Need anything for the garden?”
Sammy took a list from his jeans pocket; it was heavily penciled in capital letters.
“Thinking ahead! And I just remembered—we need to find you a haircut, buddyroe.”
“I can c-cut it, m‘self, if th’ s-s-scissors are sharp. S-Saturday.”
He was feeling proud, very proud, of Sammy Barlowe. But why was he afraid to trust that? Though he didn’t want to admit it, he was waiting for the other shoe to drop.
He let Sammy out at the grease pit and parked the truck at the rear of Lew’s building. J.C. wheeled in beside him in a Subaru van.
“How’s it going?” he asked J. C.
Didn’t look like it was going so well; J.C. appeared sleepless and red-eyed, and his pants were definitely on the baggy side.
“How’s what goin’?”J.C. snapped.
“You and Adele, of course. Did you go to the station and turn yourself in?” That had been a great idea, even if he said so himself.
“No way would I do that dumb stunt.”
“So, did you take her flowers?”
“No.”
“Out to dinner?”
“No.”
“Anything?”
“I tried.”
“What happened when you tried?”
“I can’t do that stuff. There’s no way.” Tears brimmed suddenly in J.C.’s eyes.
“Let’s get in the truck and talk,” said the vicar.
“What for?”
Because you can’t stand out here bawling in the parking lot, he wanted to say.
J.C. caught onto the strap and hauled himself into the seat.
Father Tim closed his door and took a deep breath. “I’ve laid off you all these years, buddy, but I need to ask you something. Do you pray?”
J.C. gazed out the open window of the passenger side. “One time, a long time ago, a guy called you up and asked you to recite that prayer.You remember?”
He did remember, and had often wondered who the caller was. Andrew Gregory had dropped by the rectory that day; Puny had served them tea. “That was before caller ID, so I never knew...”
“It was me. Disguising my voice.”
Father Tim swallowed down the lump in his throat.
“I got to tell you...” J. C. drew out his battered handkerchief and blew his nose. “It made a difference, I felt ... different after I prayed that prayer.”
“Different better or ... ?”
“Yeah. Better. For a long time. But I lost it. Let it slip away. For a while there, I was prayin’ my head off, I was ... I was, you might say ... gettin’ to know God for the first time. Then I met Adele, and...” J. C. shrugged. “And things changed. I guess I thought that was all I needed.”
“Is it?”
“No offense to Adele, but... I guess not.”
They sat for a time in silence. “That’s all I’ve got to say.” J.C. stuffed the handkerchief in his pocket. “And don’t be preachin’ me a dadgum sermon about it.”
Father Tim grinned. “Good timing. This is my day off.”
J.C. put his hand on the door handle.
“I have an idea,” said Father Tim. “If you’re interested.”
“I might be.”
“Maybe you’ve been trying to hold on to Adele on your own terms. And you can’t do it; you said so yourself. You know what I think?”
“What?”
“Give it up. Let it go. Ask God to help you say the things you can’t say ... do the things you can’t do ... feel the emotions you can’t feel.”
J.C. gave him a cold look.
“That’s not a sermon, buddy. That’s not even a homily.”
“Why would He want to help me do stuff I ought to be doing on my own?”
“Because He loves you.”
“No way am I believin’ that.”
“I felt the same for years. Why would He want to do anything for me, a spiritual basket case? But here’s the deal.You can trust that He loves you, and trust that He wants to do good things for you ... because He promises that in His Word.”
J. C. stared out the window.
“What do you have to lose by trusting Him?”
The Muse editor toyed with the handle on his antiquated briefcase.
“Seriously. What?”
“Nothing.”
Twenty years of hang
ing with this sourpuss, twenty years of putting up with each other’s peculiarities, twenty years of digging down, at last, to bedrock ...
“Maybe it’s too late,” said J.C.
“It’s never too late,” said the vicar, meaning it.
As he entered the lobby of Hope House, he decided he wouldn’t mention the money, unless asked. Though Louella could be forgetful, she’d been stubbornly mindful about the ninety one-hundred-dollar bills presumably hidden in the Plymouth Belvedere.
As he recalled, the bills had been stacked and bound with a rubber band. What kind of bulk would ninety bills create?
“I’ll have to get back to you,” the bank manager told him. “Nobody’s ever asked me to measure money.”
Louella was sleeping in her chair. A female cardinal helped herself at the bird feeder beyond the window.
Though he had no time to waste, he didn’t want to wake her. But then, he didn’t want to leave and miss this visit, either. He’d left Sammy at Lew Boyd’s, where Harley had offered Sammy ten bucks to give him a hand with balancing the tires on a Dodge Dart.
He coughed. Louella dozed on. The TV, turned to mute, flashed images of a morning talk show.
He walked around the room with a heavy tread. Louella sighed in her sleep.
“Miss Louella,” he intoned in his pulpit voice, “that’s a mighty pretty dress you’re wearing. Have you had your neighbor down the hall ordering off the Internet again?”
Louella opened her eyes and furrowed her brow. She adjusted her glasses and leaned forward. “Who’s that?”
“It’s me, Father Tim!”
“Honey ...”
Having flatly refused to call him Father, Louella had long ago elected to call him honey.
“Yes, ma’am?”
“What you doin’ ’bout Miss Sadie’s money?”
He thumped onto the low stool that seemed his very own. “Everything I can, but we couldn’t find it.”
“Who’s we? Who you tellin’ ’bout this?”
“Andrew Gregory, who owns the car.”
“You can’t be talkin’ ’bout big money aroun’ folks!”
“We looked everywhere we could without tearing it apart. We looked in the glove department, umm, compartment; we lifted up the floor mats; we pulled out the seats ...”
“Pulled out th’ seats? Miss Sadie couldn’t’ve pulled out no seats; she was a little bitty thing!”
“True! But my point is, we looked everywhere it was possible to look.”
Louella appeared reflective. “Is money goin’ up or is it goin’ down?”
“Going down at the present moment,” he said, having just spoken with Dooley’s money man.
“Miss Sadie sure wouldn’t like it if it was goin’ up an’ her nine thousan’ was layin’ someplace hid.”
“Did Miss Sadie hide things ... normally?”
“Did Miss Sadie hide things? Honey, she couldn‘t’ve found her little gray head if it wadn’t screwed on tight! She hid her pocketbook ever’ single night in case a bu’glar broke in. We’d git up ever’day, eat a bite, an’ go huntin’ for that pocketbook.
“I’d say, ‘Miss Sadie, why don’t you hide it in th’ same place so we don’ have t’ go chasin’ after it ever’ mornin’?’ She say, ‘Then ever’ body’d know where t’ look for it!’
”An’ ’er car keys! Lord have mercy, if we didn’t run aroun’ like chickens wit’ their heads cut off lookin’ for them keys, she never knowed where she’d hid ’em.”
“She hid her keys?” Keys that weren’t hidden at all were hard enough to locate ...
“If a bu‘glar broke in, she say he’d want that high-dollar car, he’d be lookin’ for them keys first thing. Then there was them high-dollar pills she was takin’, she hide them in ’er shoes. Miss Sadie never th’owed away a pair of shoes, honey! She had forty, fifty pair of shoes in that big closet, an’ ol’ Louella never knowed which pair t’ look in.”
“Why did she hide her medicine?”
“Said th’ bug’lar could sell ’er pills on th’ street.”
“Aha.”
“She got that notion off a TV show. See this ol’ gray head?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“My hair was black as coal ‘til I come back t’ live wit’ Miss Sadie!”
Louella laughed heartily, and he joined in.
“I loved Miss Sadie better’n jam an’ bread; she help raise me! But let me tell you, she was a han’ ful t’ keep up wit’.
“One time Miss Olivia sent a big box of choc‘lates. Oohee, it was a nice box. I wanted to eat it up quick so it wouldn’ go to th’ bad, but Miss Sadie, she want to ration it out. A little dab here, a little dab there, and no secon’ helpin’s!
“I say, ‘Miss Sadie, what if Jesus come, an’ we ain’t eat up this candy—it would all go to waste!’
“She say, ‘Louella, if Jesus come, you won’t be studyin’ no candy, no way.’ ”
Louella closed her eyes and shook her head, chuckling.
“One night I was thinkin’ ’bout them choc‘lates, this was ’fore we moved to Miss Olivia’s house. We was still climbin’ them steps at Fernbank ever’ night; was it eighteen steps or twenty-two?”
“I believe it was twenty-two.”
“You know it took us half th’ night t’ get up there—that’s why we started sleepin’ in th’ kitchen!”
“I remember.” They’d all had sweet times in that kitchen.
“Honey, I got out of my bed in that little sewin’ room, an’ down I went, slow as m’lasses so’s not to make th’ steps creak. Got down there, went to huntin’ for that box an’ couldn’ find it. No, sir, that box was hid! That was th’ first time Miss Sadie hid somethin’ from me!
“Lord have mercy! Now I go t’ start back up, an’ I cain’t git up! That was b’fore my knee operation. I say to m’self, I say, Louella, you done for now, Lord, you got t’ help me!”
“Suspenseful!” he said.
“I was at th’ bottom of th’ steps, lookin’ up an’ prayin’ an’ these ol’ bad eyes seen a little angel way up on th’ landin’. A little angel, all in white!”
He scooted his stool closer.
“I say, ‘Thank You, Lord, for sendin’ a angel t’ he’p me!’ An’ Miss Sadie say, ‘You gon’ need a angel t’ he’p you if you been messin’ in them choc’lates!’ ”
Louella burst into laughter; the cardinal departed the feeder.
“She was comin’ down t’ git in ’em, ’erself!
“She went an’ got that box an’ we set on th’ steps an’ eat ever’ one. She say, ‘Louella, I been thinkin’. We ain’t goin’ t’ live forever, we best make tracks’; an’ I say, ‘Amen!’
“Whatever was in them choc‘lates, th’ good Lord used it t’ git us movin’. Up we went like two little chil’ren, an’ couldn’t sleep a wink th’ whole night! We lived upstairs two days, we was so wore out from bein’ bad!”
“Where had she hidden the box?”
“I don’ know, but she got out some little tool or other t’ do th’ job. Miss Sadie was handy with that ol’ green toolbox.”
“After she hid the money, did she come back to the house with the envelope?”
“Sure she did, Miss Sadie don’t throw nothin’ away! She use somethin’ ’til it fall apart!”
“We’ll keep looking, Louella. I promise we’ll do our best.”
“Th’ thing I don’ like is all this we b‘iness. Miss Sadie’s money is private b’iness!”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said, respectful.
“You be prayin’ what t’ do wit’ all that money when you find it.”
He stood and kissed her cheek. “I’m praying,” he said.
She patted his hand, and looked at him fondly. “Now see what you done, honey, you gone an’ made me miss my mornin’ show.”
Bud’s Billiards was empty except for someone who appeared to be the manager.
Sammy glanced at the sign on the wall, dug in his pocke
t for four ones, and laid the cash on the counter.
“Th’ table in th’ corner,” said the manager.
They watched Sammy as he walked to the table. Father Tim remembered his craving, during the early years with Dooley, to hear Dooley laugh. He craved now to see Sammy lose the defeated stoop in his shoulders.
“You want a beer or anything?”
“I’m fine, thanks.”
“I personally don’t drink. There’s some as drinks their b’iness down th’ toilet.”
“True enough.”
“You ’is daddy?”
“A family friend.” The vicar extended his hand. “His name is Sammy and I’m Father Kavanagh.”
They shook hands.
“You ain’t goin’ t’ b’lieve my name; nobody does.”
“Try me.”
“Bud Wyzer.”
“No way.”
“Some say I was named for that sign over th’ bar.”
“Truth is definitely stranger than fiction.”
“We don’t get many preachers in here.”
Father Tim watched Sammy take a cue stick from the rack and examine it.
“I always liked preachers.”
“You did?” Not everybody could say that, more’s the pity.
“My great uncle was a preacher. Every summer, me’n’ my brother went down to Uncle Amos’s little farm in th’ valley an’ stayed ‘til school started. Kep’ up with ‘is horses, fed ’is cows, done a little cookin’ for ’im when Aunt Bess passed.”
“What kind of cooking?”
“I took to cookin’ when I was ten or twelve. Mostly barbecue, cole slaw, fried chicken. Like that.”
“Your basics,” said the vicar.
“Right. Where d’you preach at?”
Father Tim watched Sammy hunker over the table and sight the cue ball. “A little church in the wildwood, you might say. Holy Trinity on Wilson’s Ridge. Episcopal.”
“I don’ know about nothin’ but Baptists. I guess th’ rest is all pretty different.”
“The key is relationship with Jesus Christ. If we get that right, the differences usually matter less than we like to think.”