In This Mountain (18 page)

Actually, he hadn’t thought he could have anything. But a sugar-free fruit tart was another matter entirely. He brightened.

Winnie blew through the curtains that separated the kitchen from the bake shop. “Father! I’m so glad to see you, I could hug your neck!”

“Come and do it, then!”

Dear, good-hearted Winnie, smelling literally of sugar, spice, and everything nice, trotted from behind the bake case. “How’s business?” he asked, relishing her vigorous hug.

“Booming, now that your crowd is here!”

After the girls piped their orders, he gave his. “Sugar-free fruit tart!” he said with immeasurable anticipation.

“Just one?”

“Just one.”

“Good! Because that’s all that’s left!”

He had no intention of making eye contact with Fancy Skinner. He devoutly hoped there would never again be a necessity so dire as to force him into her chair.

“For here or to go?” asked Winnie.

“For here!” he chorused with the twins.

On her way out with a low-fat doughnut, Fancy gave his hair a final look of professional scorn. Or was it downright disgust?

“Do you think Granpaw needs a haircut?” he inquired of his counsel.

“Yessir,” said Sassy. “You really do.”

Sissy nodded, her mouth full.

“Well, then,” he said, making short work of the tart, which had come fully loaded with kiwi.

They’d left the house less than an hour ago, and already his small spring of energy had run utterly dry. As the girls drank soda pop at Sweet Stuff, he sat in Joe Ivey’s barber chair feeling raw, exposed.

“I prob’ly oughtn’t t’ tell y’ this…”

Snip, snip.
Joe began his labors with the hair that had grown over his customer’s collar.

“So don’t,” suggested Father Tim.

“…but somebody said if you was goin’ to run over a preacher, you should’ve aimed for that clown over at Wesley Chapel.”

He stiffened.

“Wadn’t too funny, was it? I oughtn’t to have said that.”

Snip, snip.

“You’re lookin’ sort of down an’ out. I guess this has hit you pretty hard.”

Snip, snip, snip.
The sound of a car horn on Main Street, footsteps above their heads, Winnie’s shop door opening, his blood pressure rising.

“I don’t reckon you’d like a little shooter?”

“I thought you were keeping away from that stuff,” he snapped.

“I am keepin’ away from it, it’s settin’ there for my customers.”

Next time he needed a haircut, he was going to Wesley, or down to Holding…anywhere but here.

He glanced up to the eastern ridge above Mitford and was surprised to see the chimneys of Clear Day, Edith Mallory’s rambling stone house, which boasted roughly eight thousand square feet. Apparently, some serious tree work had just been done; he’d liked it better when nothing at all could be seen of her ninety-acre property.

When he’d been rector at Lord’s Chapel, she had often invited the vestry there for meetings. He was thankful to God that he was no longer forced to endure the whole miserable experience—stopping at the electronic gate box and punching in numbers that seemed to change with each meeting, then making the long, dark drive through the narrow tunnel of low-arching rhododendron. He remembered the smothered feeling he often got when coming through that tunnel, followed by a long evening of dodging her attempts to make eye contact, hang on to his arm, or remove nonexistent lint from his lapel.

Then there was the stormy night the vestry had convened about Hope House. After sending his ride home while he was in the bathroom, she’d trapped him in her library, where, after a harsh exchange, he’d spent most of the night in a club chair. Ed Coffey had claimed Edith’s Town Car wouldn’t start, though he’d gotten the blasted thing started well enough by daylight. Yours truly had been dropped off at the rectory just as his next-door neighbor had come out looking for her cat. He would never forget the look on Cynthia’s face as he slithered out of that black Lincoln feeling humiliated and furious.

As he entered the front door with the girls, he didn’t know if he could make it to the end of the hall and into the kitchen.

“Lord
help
!” cried Puny, looking shocked. “Go lay on th’ sofa this minute!”

He feebly obeyed; he had no choice.

When the phone rang, he sat up, confused. Why was he on the sofa? His head throbbed wildly. It was nearly dark, with no lamp burning. He fumbled for the phone and knocked the handset to the floor. “Hold on! I’m coming!” he shouted. He went to his knees, blindly searching the rug in front of the sofa. There.

“Hello, sweetheart,” he said, breathless.

“Why, Timothy!” Edith Mallory gave a husky laugh. “You must have been expecting…someone special.

“I won’t keep you. I’ve just come home to Mitford from Spain and heard the terrible thing that happened to you.”

“The terrible thing didn’t happen to me, it happened to Bill Sprouse,” he said coldly.

“Of course. Well, do let me say I hope you’ll soon be well and strong and that we’ll be seeing you back to normal very quickly.”

He heard her exhale smoke from a cigarette.

His impulse was to fling the handset across the room. Yet he sat speechless, enduring the pounding of his head.

“I must say, Timothy, that I hold no grudge against you, none at all. I ought to
thank
you. The people I might have rented the Grill to have gone bankrupt, while Mr. Mosely’s check arrives promptly every month.”

“I must go,” he said.

“Of
course
you must. I understand! Well, then, goodbye—”

He dropped the handset into his lap, feeling oddly alarmed, as if a viper now lay coiled in the darkened room.

Hessie Mayhew awoke at three in the morning to the sound of…what in the dickens was it, anyway?

Her vintage Sears box spring creaked as she sat up in bed and listened.

Hail!

The bedroom shimmered in a dazzling flash of light, and then came a crash of thunder that shook and rattled the windows.

She clapped her hands over her eyes as if to deny this could be happening. Hail meant that every rose in her garden would be shattered, she’d be lucky to have a fistful left for the wedding at Methodist Chapel tomorrow. She’d be forced to rogue roses in other people’s gardens from here to Wesley, and with a car that had tires so bald Lew Boyd said she should start writing her obituary.

Her mind was racing. Maybe Father Tim wouldn’t mind if she cut what was left of his antique Malmaisons; for Pete’s sake, he didn’t even
live
at the rectory anymore, it was just that little bitty Frenchwoman and that cat the size of a barn, she should be
glad
to get rid of some of those roses, how many roses could one little woman
use
anyway?

Father Tim!
Hessie gasped. His garden basket! Clad only in a faded toile pajama top she’d found at last year’s Bane and Blessing, she bolted to the kitchen, switched on the light to the deck, and looked through the glass doors.

Mashed flat! Killed!
Totaled!
The beautiful basket with twelve herbs and five pots of miniature roses, lavender, and sweet william, all so carefully nestled into living green moss, moss which she had pulled with her own hands from her own special section of her own backyard, a gesture she extended only to very special people—
ruined
!

Hail the size of marbles jumped around on the deck and bounced against the glass doors. A blaze of lightning illumined her yard.

She turned from the awful sight and stormed into the kitchen. She wouldn’t wait ’til she was sixty-five, thank you very much, she was getting out of the flower business
immediately.
Just as soon as she got new tires, which two big weddings and a bridal luncheon would pay for, she was out of this racket—she couldn’t bear another
day
of something as fragile, as frail, as
puny
as flowers! She would go to work at Wal-Mart, maybe in the housewares section, or even at the front door where she would give people a shopping cart and tell them to have a nice day.

Completely disgusted and close to tears, she threw open the refrigerator door, snatched out last night’s meatloaf, and gave herself permission to eat the whole thing.

The sound of a hailstorm woke him from a deep sleep.

He was lying on the sofa, with something like a rock digging into his left rib. The blasted handset. He slammed it on the hook and dragged himself upstairs, where he found Barnabas under the bed and Violet curled on Cynthia’s pillow. He looked at the clock. Three in the morning, and not a word from New York. Should he call the hotel? Of course not. He wouldn’t call anyone at such an hour.

He sat in the wing chair, spent though wakeful. He pulled the chain on the floor lamp next to him and took what he called his Upstairs Bible from the table. If he was going to find what he was seeking, he’d have to look, it was that simple. “Show me, Lord,” he prayed aloud. “Lead me there and open my heart to Your wisdom….”

The Bible lay in his lap for a long time. He had no strength to open it.

He climbed into bed and, lying on his back, listened to the clatter of hail on the roof and the baritone snore of his dog. He felt as if he’d gone back in time to his bachelor days when the place beside him was always empty. But no, he wasn’t that bachelor anymore, he’d been completely changed, altered clear to his taproot. He had a wife, and day after tomorrow, she was coming home—then they’d be up and doing, with a heart for any fate.

He rolled onto his right side and punched up his pillow. He should have given Dooley another twenty.

At seven
A.M.
, he snatched the ringing phone from the hook.

“Cynthia?”

“Timothy! Are you all right?”

“Are you all right? That’s the question!”

“We tried and tried to call, but the phone was busy for hours. Who on earth were you talking to?”

“Nobody. I went to sleep on the sofa and must have rolled over on the receiver.”

“Pathetic! I can’t leave you alone for five minutes!” He heard the relief in her laughter.

“I’m sorry, sweetheart, forgive me. Was it wonderful?”

“More than wonderful!”

“Keep talking.”

“I love the hard work, and the agony of hardly ever knowing if what I’m doing is any good, and then the joy of the book being published and the children and parents liking it, and now…
this.
”

“Are you ten feet tall? Will you tower over your rustic husband?”

“My humility has made me small enough to put in your pocket.”

“And how’s Dooley treating his famous consort?”

“He’s taking the tenderest care of me, opening doors, even giving me his arm when we cross the street. You should
see
this, Timothy, I can’t imagine who taught him such lovely, outmoded courtesy.”

“Heaven only knows.”

“And he tips twenty percent! They must have a
class
in that sort of thing at the university.”

“I imagine so.”

“And the flowers!
Armloads
of roses and tulips! But all from you, of course. Thank you, my darling, I can’t wait to see you. How are you feeling?”

“Went out yesterday. Took the girls to Sweet Stuff. Got a haircut.”

“Joe Ivey?”

“Brace yourself.”

“Oh, dear. How did you feel, being out and about? Was it…all right?”

“I felt like a chick newly hatched from the shell. What are you up to today?”

“I’m buying Dooley a suit.”

“A suit?”

“Italian!”

“Have mercy, Kavanagh, he’s only a youth.”

“And a silk tie! He’ll make the earth tremble when he walks.”

He grinned. Dooley Barlowe would never be the same….

“The girls here absolutely fall over themselves when they see him. I can’t think how Lace has held out so long!”

“Think how long I held out,” he said, “and look what happened.”

“I miss my husband,” she said, suddenly pensive.

“I miss my wife…my extravagant, generous, witty, and important wife.”

“I love it when you talk like that.”

“Ah, Kavanagh, what don’t you love?”

“Taxis that go ninety miles an hour in midtown traffic, pantyhose that are a size too small, which one can’t
know
’til dressing for the awards dinner, and then it’s too late, and, of course, age spots.”

He laughed. “That about covers it.”

“We’ll call you tonight and again in the morning, and before you know it, we’ll be home!”

“I count the hours.”

When he waked this morning at six, he’d felt leaden, old. Now that he’d heard her voice, he was fit for anything.

“Father?”

“George! Come in!”

“Is this a good time? I was praying for you next door, and felt a strong conviction to do my praying over here, instead.”

He opened the screen door to his tall, slender neighbor, known to all of Mitford as the Man in the Attic, and greeted him with a hug.

“Glad to see you, brother. Have a seat. Tell me how things are going in your new hometown.”

“If I could tell you another time, Father? I’ve got twenty minutes to get to the bookstore.”

“Whatever you say.” Though eight years in prison had added a few lines to George Gaynor’s face and his thinning hair had turned gray at the temples, Father Tim thought he’d never looked handsomer.

“Father, I understand a little of what you’ve been through. I’ve been hesitant to ask you to let me pray for you.”

“No need to hesitate with me, George. We all need prayer.” He wished he could confess just how much, indeed, he needed it….

After giving Barnabas a ramble around Baxter Park, he poked through the hedge to the old rectory. The hail would have made hash of his roses, and done a dandy job of hole-punching the hostas.

He wasn’t especially up for visiting the scene of the crime; he still felt fragile, like nearly transparent porcelain that might shatter if jostled. He knew only that he must get on with his life, which lately seemed to have passed him by. Thanks be to God, his blood sugar had been down this morning, things appeared nearly normal, he was right on the cusp of the prophesied six weeks. Soon, all would be well and very well.

“Father!
Bonjour
!” Hélène Pringle stood on the back stoop, waving. Her cat, Barbizon, sat by her feet, looking disgruntled.

“
Bonjour
, Hélène! I hope you don’t mind me lurking around your backyard?”

“Indeed not, Father. It’s your backyard, you may lurk whenever you please.”

“That was a terrific storm we had last night. I wanted to visit what was left of the roses. Oh, my.” He looked at the leaves lying about, and the rain of petals on the dark mulch. “Not much, I’m afraid.”

“My grandmother believed a bit of ill weather was good for the garden.” She came down the steps, tentative yet smiling with some delight. “It’s wonderful to see you out and about.” She wrung her hands as she spoke, as if greeting him gave her intense anxiety. He wondered if he might try to be more affable, in hopes of putting her at ease.

“Thank you, Hélène, I was beginning to ossify.”

“Ossify?” she said, perplexed.

He smiled. “Harden like bone.”

“Oh!” she said.
“Oui!”

He walked around the bed, trying to care about the devastation as fully as he might have cared a year or two ago. It took such energy to care….

“Are you…feeling all right, Father?”

“Oh, yes. Pushing along.” He sat on the bench. “If you don’t mind…”

“Certainly not! It’s your bench, after all!”

She stood on the opposite side of the bed, still wringing her hands. He realized there was nothing he could do.

“I was in Holding yesterday and saw your dear boy.”

“Dooley?”

“Yes, he was coming out of the drugstore as I was going in. I don’t go to Holding often, it seems such a journey.”

“Yes, it is a bit of a haul. But you couldn’t have seen Dooley. He’s in New York.”

“In New York?” She pondered this news, clearly befuddled. “But I spoke to him! Of course, he didn’t reply, he appeared to be in a great hurry…and awfully thin and pale.” She hesitated. “I wasn’t going to say anything to you, but he was…soiled and
mal habille
, quite unlike himself. I know he’s living on a farm this summer, perhaps that’s why.”

“Yes, well, Dooley is in New York.”

“Oh,
oui, bien sûr
, you did say that.” She shook her head. “I suppose this boy did look younger than Dooley, yet…how extraordinary.”

He rose from the bench. “I’ll push off, Hélène. Incidentally, the roast chicken you brought was very good, indeed.
Très…
”—he hesitated—
“bon! Oui, très bon!
” How hideous his French was. He had embarrassed himself and his neighbor into the bargain.

Her cheeks flushed. “It was nothing!”

“
Au revoir
, then!” he said, waving.

“
À bientôt
, Father! Thank you for coming, please come again!”

He shuffled home and sat on the sofa, panting. He should have the blasted sofa removed from the house, stored under lock and key, until things were a bit further along. His heart pounded.

“Water,” he said, as Puny came into the room.

“You’ll worry me t’ my
grave
!” she said, looking distraught. She dashed to the kitchen and brought him a glass of water, which he drank down at once.

“Good. Just what the doctor ordered.”

“Father…”

“Yes?”

“I couldn’t stand it if anything happened to you.” Tears rolled heedlessly down her freckled cheeks.

“Why, Puny, how amazing—I feel the very same way about you.”

She laughed and wiped her eyes on her apron. “Are you all right?”

“I’m perfectly fine. It’s true.”

“You ain’t been yourself.”

“Who have I been, do you think?”

She giggled. “Somebody sad an’ grouchy.”

“Aha.”

She looked at him, wrinkling her brow. “Cynthia loves you more’n anything, she’d do anything f’r you, an’ so would I, an’ so would th’ girls, they love their granpaw.”

“Their granpaw loves them back.”

“You cain’t die,” she said matter-of-factly.

“Certainly not!”

“Are you goin’ to git back to your ol’ self?”

“You bet.”

“Good!
” she said. “I hope you make it snappy!”

Dooley at the drugstore in Holding…

It dawned on him as slowly as a sunrise, when it should have hit him like a bolt of lightning.

He quickly punched the numbers on the handset and paced the floor.

“Bonjour!”

“Hélène, Tim Kavanagh. I hope I haven’t interrupted a lesson.”

“Not at all, Father. Two students are out today with summer colds. I don’t have a lesson until four-thirty.”

“Where is the drugstore in Holding?”

“There are two drugstores. I patronize the one on Main Street, it has a special hard candy Mother enjoys.”

He’d never been on Holding’s Main Street; he’d always gone to the mall on the bypass like the rest of the common horde. “Could you give me directions?”

“It’s awfully hard to get to just now, they’re restoring the monument to the town square and the streets are a bit…”—she searched for a word—“addled. In a jumble.”

“Aha.” He’d have to get someone to drive him; he knew he couldn’t make the trip alone. He’d call Buck. On second thought, he didn’t want to give false hope; and he certainly couldn’t ask George, who was just getting established at the bookstore, and part time work at Lew Boyd’s.

“I’m going down there if I can find someone to…I think it’s a bit soon to make the drive myself.”

“I’ll drive you!”

“Oh, heavens, no, that would be asking—”

“But you’re not asking,” she said, clearly excited. “I’m offering! It would be a great privilege to do something for you, Father, who has done so much for me.”

“Now, Hélène…”

“When would you wish to leave?”

He thought a moment. “Could we leave at once?”

“Je serai devant votre maison dans cinq minutes!”

“I beg your pardon?”

“I’ll be there in five minutes, Father. Five minutes!”

“Thank you!” he said. But Hélène had already hung up.

Uncle Billy Watson stood before the mirrored door of the bathroom medicine cabinet and spoke aloud to his image.

“Wellsir, this feller got a parrot f’r ’is birthday, don’t you know.”

He glanced at the almanac he was holding, but his trembling hand caused the words to dance a jig. It was enough to give a man a headache, trying to read words that bounced around like a monkey on a mule.

“Hold still!” he commanded. He was surprised to see that his hand obeyed him. He adjusted his glasses, held the almanac closer to the light above the cabinet, and squinted at the next line.

“Hit was a full-growed parrot an’ come with a mean attitude an’ a manner of talkin’ that was scand’lous. Seem like ever’ other word or two would near about kink a man’s hair.

“Course, th’ feller tried t’ change things, don’t you know, he was all th’ time sayin’ polite words, playin’ soft music on th’ radio, anything he could think of t’ try an’ set a good example, but they wouldn’t nothin’ work.”

Uncle Billy laid the almanac on the tank of the commode, squeezed his eyes shut, and repeated by memory what he’d just read aloud. He figured he’d done that part pretty good; he picked up the almanac and adjusted his glasses, which were taped across the nose bridge where, several months ago, they had broken in two.

“One day he got s’ mad, he took ’at ol’ bird an’ shook it ’til its beak rattled. Boys, ’at fired th’ parrot up, he went t’ cussin’ th’ feller ever’ whichaway, sayin’ worser things than he’d been a-sayin’.”

“Wellsir, th’ feller grabbed ‘at bird up an’ stuck it in th’ freezer an’
slammed th’ door.
Yessir! Heard it a-squawkin,’ a-kickin’, a-screamin’, an’ I don’ know what all. Then it got real still in there.

“Feller was scared he’d lost ’is parrot, so he opened th’ freezer door, and dadjing if th’ parrot didn’t step out nice as you please, said, ‘I’m mighty sorry if I offended you with my language an’ all, an’ I ask y’r forgiveness, don’t you know. I’ll sure try to correct my actions from here on out.’

“Th’ feller was about t’ ask what caused such a big change when th’ parrot said, ‘About that chicken in there—may I ask what’n th’ world
it
done?’”

By johnny, that ought to work if he practiced it enough times. He just hoped it would make the preacher laugh, that was the main thing. He’d never seen a man look so low, like he could crawl under a snake’s belly wearing a top hat. He’d give a dollar bill to say this joke to Rose Watson, to get somebody else’s opinion, but Rose never laughed at his jokes, nossir, never did.

He noted that his right hand had begun to tremble again. He stuck it in his pocket and walked into the hall with his cane in the other hand, singing under his breath. It was the song his mother had taught him as a boy; he often mumbled or sang a few words of “Redwing” when he was happy.

Driving with Hélène Pringle made flying with Omer Cunningham resemble an Altar Guild tea party.

He shut his eyes, unable to look. Hélène was proceeding down the winding mountain road like a ball from a cannon. If his blood had been as turgid as a river bottom these past weeks, it was now pumping like oil through a derrick. To make things worse, Hélène seemed incapable of driving and speaking English at the same time. Worse still, she was precisely the height of Sadie Baxter and could barely see over the steering wheel.

“I do love these mountain roads, they make me feel so free!
Je n’ai jamais de la vie été plus heureuse nulle part ailleurs que je ne le suis ici dans ces montagnes.
I presume that’s true for you, also, as you’ve chosen to live here so many years.
Ça par exemple! Regardez les nuages audessus de ce pic là!”