Somewhere Safe With Somebody Good (32 page)

Barnabas took it at once. Down the hatch. Two chomps.

‘He likes it!’ he said.

‘It’s what I give my girl at home; bake ’em myself. Daisy’s around four years old, looks forward to moving to Mitford.’

‘Her breed?’

‘Mongrel, like the rest of us.’ Father Brad powered to his feet like a jack-in-the-box.

‘Did you find a place?’

‘Not yet. I looked at a couple of rental houses yesterday, but I’m starting to think an apartment.’

‘We don’t have apartments in Mitford.’

They sat on stools at the coffee station.

‘Just as well, parishes don’t trust priests in apartments, even interims. Too fly-by-night. They prefer clergy strapped with a mortgage and a lawn to keep mowed. By the way, I hear you’re doing this gig pro bono.’

‘I feel I owe the owner for the experience. How did you find things down the street? I hear you’re good at damage control.’

‘I’m the guy with a shovel who follows the elephants.’

‘I don’t envy you.’

‘My vision for Lord’s Chapel goes beyond trying to help clean up the Talbot business. I’d like to put together a really strong Youth Group, but I haven’t seen any youth around.’

‘They’re definitely here. I have one over at my place, he’s trouble enough to be an entire group all by himself.’

‘What age?’

‘Seventeen.’

‘I was at my worst at seventeen. I went from punching out a cop and spending time in juvenile detention to stealing a car and selling dope. I was ballistic. Finally got my act together, made it through four years of college with pretty good grades, and joined the military—I was surprised they’d have me. It changed everything.’

Father Brad peeled out of his wool scarf.

‘I’ll be coming to Lord’s Chapel at an awkward time all around. In addition to the Talbot business, there’s January—party’s over, people can be a little edgy, depressed. Anyway, thought I’d make a quick reconnaissance to Mitford and get a few ducks in a row so everything doesn’t hit at once. Pray for me, if you will.’

‘Consider it done. And know that you can call on me at any hour.’

‘Thanks, that means a lot. My wife, Kate, would have loved it here. I lost her two years ago, she was my life. So I lost my life and had a hard time getting it back. The good news is, the trauma of losing her led me into a whole new relationship with Christ, a higher place than I’d gone before. Maybe we can only go as high as we can go deep. But enough!’

‘Marine Corps, the bishop says.’

‘
Semper fidelis
. Twenty-three years old, saw my first action in
Cambodia. Intelligence told us it would be a cakewalk—small weapons, a couple dozen enemy. We lost thirty-eight men—Marine, Navy, Air Force—in less than twenty-four hours. When I’m asked to give my testimony, I’ve been known to give it in two words: Koh Tang.

‘When I get back to Mitford and the dust settles, I’d like to tell you how I ended up in a collar. I hope you’ll give me the pleasure of hearing your story.’

‘I look forward to it. So what is your Rite Three?’

‘Skiing. Hiking. White-water rafting. Trout fishing.’ Father Brad’s smile would light up a room. ‘I’m a mountain guy all the way, with two beautiful daughters and four grandkids who love this stuff, too.’

‘We’ll be proud to have you and Daisy,’ he said.

‘And seven gardenia trees in containers. I’m haulin’ those babies out here personally. Tropical plants that love heat and humidity, and what do they get from me? Mountain winters.’

Father Brad rewound the scarf around his neck and gave him what was known as a bear hug. ‘I’m proud to be called into the good company of this parish. He has set my feet in a spacious place.’

A brother in the cloth, somebody to hammer things out with. The camel caravan from Gilead appeared on the horizon, saddlebags filled. Balm galore.

•   •   •

H
E
WAS
GOING
TO
CALL
H
OPE
when she rang the store.

‘Are you all right?’ he said.

‘A little bleeding, but Dr. Wilson isn’t worried. All appears to be well, though I’m not to be up and doing.’

‘What about your sister, Louise? Can she come for a visit?’

‘Her work schedule is frightful. Soon, she says. I miss her.’

‘Family can be good medicine.’

‘I’m thankful for my Mitford family. Avette Harris is knitting an
entire layette. With her left eye wandering as it does, she says she wouldn’t trouble herself with such vexation if she weren’t certain our baby will make it.’

‘Good on Avette.’

‘I must tell you that lying here has given me an awful burden of thinking.

‘The first thing, Father—will you pray for where I’ll stay during the month in Charlotte, before the baby comes? I’ve hesitated to ask because we ask so much of you already.’

‘Prayer is never too much to ask. Consider it done.’

‘Thank you from my heart. The other thing is . . . I’d like to do something for someone. People do so much for me that I can never repay their kindness. Scott has been given a wonderful raise at Hope House and I’d like to hire Coot. Three days a week, four hours a day.’

‘Ah!’ There was a beaming face if he ever saw it. ‘To do what, exactly?’

‘To do anything you wish . . . clean, carry out the trash, go to the store, take packages to the post office. And I’m sure the display windows could use a good washing. It would give a bit of relief to you and Marcie and Miss Pringle, but mostly, Father, it would give Coot the chance to be around books. He loves books.’

‘Very useful thinking!’ he said. ‘Yes, indeed. We should all take to bed for a dose of useful thinking!’

•   •   •

T
HE
SIDEWALKS
WERE
SHOVELED
, the town crew was on it. The snow, however, was still coming down. He arrived home with a box of organic popcorn, to find preparations under way in the study.

The DVD player had its own remote, a notion he didn’t take to.

‘See this button?’ said Puny. ‘It says On. Now, see this button? It says Play.’

‘One thing at a time, please.’

She rolled her eyes. ‘Okay, see this button? What does it say?’

The type was minuscule and on a black background, no less. Did the maker not consider the buying power of the senior citizen? Was this stuff produced chiefly for small children with 20/20?

‘My glasses,’ he said. ‘I’ve got to get my glasses.’

‘They’re on your head,’ she said. ‘Okay, what does it say?’

‘On.’

‘Great! Push it.’

He pushed it. A green light.

‘It works!’ said his wife.

‘Next, you’ll hit Play.’

‘Let’s see, where is Play?’

‘Right here, right next to On.’

No wonder he never did this stuff, it was humiliating.

‘And here’s Pause. If you want to, you know, let Barnabas out or anything.’

‘We’ll never use Pause,’ he said, decisive. ‘And maybe you should leave it on so all we have to do is hit Play?’

‘If you say so. Lord help!’

‘Where’s the movie?’

‘Here,’ she said, handing him the thing. ‘Put it in right there.’

‘Where?’

‘Hit Open.’

A tray slid out.

‘Now put the disc in.’

‘Which side up?’

Puny was ready to pack up and go home, possibly for good. His wife appeared to be taking a nap with Truman.

•   •   •

T
HIS
WAS
THE
COOLEST
THING
they’d done ‘in ever,’ as Sassy might say.

A forty-two-inch screen was a lot of real estate, and Kim Dorsay knew how to occupy it. They lounged on the sofa, mesmerized. How could they have just had dinner with this person who had shucked garlic like a pro?

The phone rang. He leaned to the end table and checked the caller ID. Georgia. But he didn’t know how to work the Pause thing.

‘Hit Pause,’ he told his wife.

‘Where is it?’

‘Somewhere around Off and On. Hey, buddy.’

‘Hey, Dad, I found your truck. Two years old, long bed, stick shift, leather seats, nineteen thousand miles, and you’re not going to believe this . . .’

‘Try me.’

‘It’s red.’

‘Man!’

‘Everything you wanted but crank windows. The windows are automatic.’ Dooley told him the price. ‘I checked that with the Blue Book. On the money.’

‘Where did you find it?’

‘The Internet. It’s about sixty miles from you, in Hendersonville. You could ride over with Harley. But you need to move fast—the price is right, it’s clean, it won’t last long. I’ll email photos, the owner’s contacts, everything.’

‘Good job,’ he said. ‘Maybe next week. First thing.’

The thought of buying a truck was a whole other feeling from that of buying a car. He was grinning like a mule eatin’ briars.

‘What did I miss?’ he said to his wife, who had obviously not located Pause.

S
aturday.

He remembered how fraught his Saturdays had been when he was a full-time priest. Wrestling his sermon into acceptable form, trying to get over the week and rest for the morrow, hammering at his personal stuff.

Then he retired, and he remembered how he dreaded trying to fill Saturdays with something worthy, up to snuff, accountable. And now here he was, maybe for the first time, really liking this day, feeling the liberty of it, the broad possibilities. Harley had said he could borrow the truck. The roads had been scraped, they could leave after lunch and be at the nursery by three o’clock.

He opened the Old Testament at random. Ecclesiastes, aka Solomon or Ezra, God only knows, chapter three.

To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under heaven . . . A time to weep and a time to laugh. A time to mourn and a time to dance . . . A time to be silent and a time to speak.

It was time to speak.

Would it be a waste of breath? That wasn’t for him to determine. He would speak from the heart. Let the chips fall where they may.

He looked out the study window. New snow was falling on the old, though nothing heavy.

He auto-dialed, made the sign of the cross.

‘Hey, Sam! I’ve got a little time this afternoon. Want to go buy a tree?’

•   •   •

H
E
ANSWERED
THE
DOORBELL
and there was Jena Ivey, nearly hidden from view by a great bower of hydrangeas in a color he’d never seen.

‘Holy smoke!’ he said to the owner of Mitford Blossoms. ‘Come in, come in.’ He moved the candlesticks, the Delft bowl on the console. ‘Right here.’

‘Hard to get this bronze color. They would look better on the coffee table in your study, Father. Not enough light in here.’

Their voluptuous amber radiance was breathtaking against the background of falling snow.

His wife was ecstatic and, he had to confess, so was he.

Cynthia took the card from the envelope.

With grateful affection from one

who was lost and is now found

Kim

Having told Lace the backstory of the hydrangeas, they sat at the kitchen counter, Lace in the middle. Though they asked that she keep the twins’ story quiet for now, it would later be one to pass down through any family.

‘So tell us again,’ said Cynthia, ‘what you said to that pompous professor.’

‘I said, If you’uns wadn’t s’ full of yourself, you’d be a whole lot better at gettin’ people t’ pay attention.’

‘And what did the poor man have to say about that?’

‘He was completely startled, then he laughed. He thought I was joking.’

Whooping with laughter, the three of them.

‘When I get excited or happy or really, really angry, I start talkin’ like I did growin’ up. You know that Olivia hired a tutor to help me get over my old speech pattern. But when I went off to school, I guess I was still talkin’ like a hillbilly. For a long time, nobody would be my friend; people were ashamed to be with me.

‘Even now, the way I speak is just a surface thing, I can do it, but the old way is still there and I’m always trying to hold it back. Sometimes I get really tense from holding it back; it’s like trying to hold back who I am.’

‘And who are you?’ said Cynthia.

‘That is so hard. Deep down, I guess I’m the girl who grew up livin’ sometimes under a house that was fallin’ down, with a sick mama who turned her head to whatever my daddy done . . . see there?’ Lace put a hand over her face. ‘Once in a while, it just pops out.’

‘We sure love that girl,’ said Cynthia. ‘If memory serves me, which it often doesn’t, she’s that amazing person who got a scholarship to one of the finest universities in the country.’

Cynthia put her arm around Lace. ‘Don’t ever be ashamed of that lovely girl under the house who educated herself from the bookmobile. She had grit and backbone if anyone ever had, and she’ll be there for you through thick and thin.’

‘Great good is written all over those hard times,’ he said. ‘God sent Absalom Greer to tell you about the one who loved us first; he sent
Harley to give you refuge when you needed it; he sent the Harpers to give you the home you wanted and never had . . .’

‘I know,’ she said. ‘I do know, and I’m really thankful.’

‘You and Dooley have much in common,’ he said.

‘Sometimes too much. But if we’re patient and talk things out, we can usually say, Okay, I get it, I understand why you did that. I think you know that Olivia arranged for us to see a counselor. Two whole years and we still go when we can, we even work with him on the phone. It helps, it really helps. Would you like to have your present now?’

‘Yes!’ said his wife. It was a day of presents.

Lace went to the outsized portfolio she’d brought along, and unzipped it. ‘Don’t look. Close your eyes.’

The clock ticking. ‘Okay, you can look!’

He and Cynthia drew in their breath at the same moment. A Greek chorus.

Every remaining freckle. Every red hair. The light in his eyes. The crooked grin. The works. Lace was holding a life-sized portrait in oil of Dooley Barlowe Kavanagh, from the waist up, wearing a T-shirt that read
LOVE IS AN ACT OF ENDLESS FORGIVENESS
.

A surge of feeling. ‘Well done,’ he said.

‘Remember the little Baptist church on the way to Meadowgate from Holy Trinity?’ said Lace. ‘The message on the shirt was on their wayside pulpit one morning; we all liked it.’

Cynthia embraced Lace, held her tight. ‘You’re so gifted, so gifted. Hard to find the words.’

‘I had the shirt made for him,’ she said. ‘And one for me, too. It reminds us both.’

Barnabas came over to look, wagged his tail. They inspected the brushstrokes, the candor of the eyes, the facial expression which Lace found ‘a little dubious.’

‘Let’s hang it as is, no frame to distract the eye,’ said Cynthia. ‘But where?’

‘Over the mantel!’ he said.

Agreed.

He toted in the ladder and removed the mirror.

‘I think of Harley,’ he said, handing the mirror down to Lace.

‘Never a jot of formal education, but he wanted more than anything for you to have it. He was proud of every step you took, every book you read, and then you turned around and started teaching
him
, and it was literally life-changing. He says learning American history from you was better than going west with Lewis and Clark.’

This amused her. She handed up the canvas.

‘I went to see him before I came over,’ she said. ‘He is so adorable. He had his teeth in; I hardly knew him. I said, Harley, who was the Indian woman who traveled with Lewis and Clark? That is really an unfair question because her name just drives people crazy trying to pronounce it and it’s been years since Harley studied the expedition. He didn’t hesitate a minute. Sock-ah-ja-
wee
-ah, he said. So I said, What is another name for the prairie hen? and he said, Grouse—an’ they got four toes on each foot!’

They sat at the kitchen island and admired the portrait ‘forty ways from Sunday,’ as his mother would have said, and split one of Winnie’s napoleons three ways.

•   •   •

‘H
E
DON
’
T
EVEN
TALK
LIKE
Dooley n’more. It’s like he’s somebody else, like that stupid dirtbag dean’s kid over at Bud’s. What’s Dooley tryin’ to prove, anyhow, always thinkin’ he knows it all? He thinks his money makes him some kind of big shot, some kind of god? He wants a truck, he gets a truck, he wants a cue stick, he gets a cue stick.’

The snow in these mountains was a lovely thing. The heater in Harley’s truck was another lovely thing.

‘I don’t care if I live or die, it don’t matter to me, I know I don’t
want to be like Dooley or you or Harley or nobody else, I want to be like myself.’

Come, Holy Spirit.

‘I believe you’re missing something here,’ he said. ‘You think all good things just fall into your brother’s lap and are there for the taking?

‘Let me tell you about Dooley. He helped raise four kids, remember? Walked you to school because there was no car to go in and no bus out that way, and nobody else to do it.

‘And how about putting food on the table? He was ten years old, but he saw it as his job, and he managed that scary responsibility as best he could. Nobody starved to death, you’re all still here.

‘And yes, Miss Sadie provided money for his education, but do you think Dooley went off to that fine, expensive school and got by on money?

‘Dooley didn’t know how he was going to get by. He wanted to run away from that school, he wanted to come home where the love was. But he toughed it out with all those guys with privileged backgrounds and fast cars, who laughed at him and called him a hillbilly. He dug down deep, where most of us have to go in this life, and he found gold. He found a way to do more than just get by, he found the guts to go against all the odds and, with God’s help, make something of himself.

‘And maybe you think school is a piece of cake for your hotshot brother, that he just breezes through and has a good time. You would be wrong. School is hard. That’s what makes it good. And because he has two more years, plus vet school, that makes it double hard—and double good. Because when he gets through, he’ll have a way to help ease some of the suffering in this world.

‘You brought us a kitten. You wanted it to have something to eat, a good home, a safe place. That’s what Dooley wants for the animals he’ll spend his life treating. A few years ago, a pony gashed
its belly on a barbed-wire fence. It was dying. Dooley helped save its life. Barnabas was struck by a car and would have died, no question. But Dooley and Lace knew what to do and that good dog is still with us.

‘You said that when Dooley wants a cue, he buys a cue. And he just bought a beautiful stick for you. Is this the hotshot brother who considers himself a god? Looks to me like it’s a brother who’s thoughtful of your needs, a brother who wants the best for you because he loves you. Actually, you’ve got two brothers who fit that description. Two!’

He pulled into the parking lot of the nursery and turned off the ignition.

‘I hope you’re listening to me, Sam. You’re about to lose your place at Miss Pringle’s because you’ve openly defied the few things asked of you. You’ll be on the street, and for what?

‘Most of your life, you’ve been up against it, and it looks like that’s where you want to stay. You didn’t have a choice when you were younger, but now you do.

‘Do you want to shoot great pool or would you rather be dead?

‘Do you want to build beautiful gardens or would you rather be dead?

‘Do you want people to love you, really love you and care about you, or would you rather be dead and miss all that?

‘You can’t have it both ways.

‘If you choose life, if you choose to honor yourself and others, too, I’ll help you get on with it. Harley will help, Kenny will help, Cynthia, Miss Pringle, a lot of people will help.

‘So you’ve got help—and you’ve got talent. And better than that, you’ve got God. God is on your side, Sam, because he loves you. Why does he love you, why does he love me? We can’t fully understand it, but that’s what God does, no matter how stupid or crazy we are, God loves us anyway. He wants the best for us, anyway. You steal my car and wreck it, I love you anyway. Do something like that again, I’ll
love you anyway, and I’ll also do this: I’ll press charges, and it won’t be good.

‘The party’s over, Sam.’

He laid his hand on the boy’s shoulder, felt the flinch.

‘But the fun is just beginning. Let’s go in and buy a tree.’

•   •   •

H
IS
MAMA
HAD
NOT
EATEN
a bite in three days.

‘You want a nanner?’ he’d say. ‘Hit’s ripe.’ Good as she loved ripe bananas, she’d shake her head no. ‘Read me out of that book,’ she’d say with the hoarse sound she’d picked up lately.

He’d got home before dark after going over town for a special treat. Maybe that would do the job. He stomped snow off his boots and hung up his jacket on a nail by the door.

Things was peaceful as water in a spoon. The oil heater was goin’ and the TV wadn’t blarin’ a’tall.

‘Miz Ivey sent you a jelly donut, hit’s blueberry, you want it?’

‘Nossir, you eat it y’rself. Read me out of that book.’

He took the book off the mantelpiece and showed her the cover. To keep things new every time, they played like they had not done this before.

‘C-A-T,’ he spelled out. ‘Cat! There’s th’ cat.’

‘In a hat,’ she said, beating him to it.

What he did was go by the pictures and make it up out of his head with what he remembered from his teacher Miss Mooney.

He sat down in his chair. ‘Th’ sun . . . did not . . .’ He hesitated, studied the word. ‘. . . sh-h-h . . .
shine
 . . .’

‘Oh, yes,’ she said. She crossed her arms over her sunken chest and closed her eyes. ‘Th’ sun don’t shine of a night.’

‘It was too wet . . . to plow. Wait a minute. To
play
!’

‘That’s right. Too wet.’

‘Hit was stormin’ pretty bad an’ we had to set in th’ house.’

‘Set in th’ house,’ she said. ‘That’s right.’

‘They won’t nothin’ to do but set.’

He held the book close so she could see the picture of two young ’uns settin’, but her eyes were shut tight as a henhouse door.

‘I remember back when Mama was livin’,’ she said.

The icy rain began.
Patpatpatpat . . .

‘We would set in th’ house an’ wait for th’ rag man, he’d come by hollerin’, Rag man, rag man! We was happy as a dog with two tails to see ’im, he was a little bitty man with a black mustache. He give us money for rags an’ with nine young ’uns in the’ house we had a-plenty to sell—thirty-cent, forty-cent worth ’bout near ever’ time.’

Look like all that talkin’ had wore her out. He hurried to a page where things was goin’ on, where them big letters bunched together to make a loud word.