Somewhere Safe With Somebody Good (9 page)

‘Hendersonville,’ she said.

‘Father Buster Baldwin, Priest in Charge,’ he dictated, handing over the address. ‘Dear Father Buster, I must decline your invitation to supply St. John for the month of January upcoming, while you and Mary are in the Keys. Thank you for your prayerful consideration and for the very generous offer of your home during that time. I will pray for the right soul to provide the needs of your growing parish. In his grace.’

‘Hendersonville in January,’ she said. ‘You dodged a bullet. So what’s with this letter from the bishop?’

‘Open it and tell me what it says.’

She slid her glasses down her nose. ‘You can’t open it and read it yourself?’

‘Read it and give me the gist of it.’ He had avoided the thing like the plague. Maybe he was still holding on to Stuart Cullen, his former bishop and oldest friend. In any case, Bishop Martin wanted something, he was sure of it. In his early days as a priest, he developed a nose, an instinct about people who wanted something. He could see it in the way they looked when approaching him, even sense it by glancing at the envelope containing a request. As for this missive, they would be after him to raise funds, he could smell it.

‘It’s dated September third. How long have you had it?’

‘Eons,’ he said.

‘“Dear Father Cavanaugh.”’ She was silent for a moment, glanced up. ‘He misspelled your name big-time.’

‘With a
u
, I suppose.’

‘With a
c
and a
u
.’

Call him prideful, call him contrary, he disliked it very much—very much—when someone misspelled, and in this case totally botched, his surname. What was the matter with people?

‘So much for your new bishop,’ she said.

‘Read it and tell me what he says.’

She adjusted her glasses, bent to the task, read silently, shook her head, squinted, looked up, and met his gaze.

‘He’s leaving for the airport in thirty minutes and has just been advised of a grave issue in the diocese. He tried to call but your mailbox was full. Um, he wants you to come to Asheville.’

‘And do what?’

‘Meet with him about something private.’

He felt his brow furrowing, quite of its own accord. ‘What else does it say?’

‘It says you were beloved by your former parish.’

‘That’s nice. What else?’ He did not want to go to Asheville, however appealing the land of the sky may be.

‘He says he’s going to the Bahamas . . .’

‘Bishops always go to the Bahamas.’

‘. . . to a remote property with no cell phone service, and he’d like to see you when he returns in two weeks, he’ll call as soon as he gets back—which, if it was written on the third and this is what, the seventeenth? He should be calling any minute.’

‘What else?’

‘He asks you to pray.’

‘For what, exactly?’

‘He doesn’t say.’

‘He doesn’t say?’

‘Right.’

‘Let me see the letter,’ he said.

‘It’s about time—you acted like a snake would bite you if you touched th’ thing.’

I will covet your prayers in this desperate matter which must remain unspoken until we meet.

‘You haven’t drunk a drop of water since I’ve been here,’ she said. ‘You’re supposed to drink a lot of water. You may forget, but I remember these things.’

‘How’s Snickers?’ he said.

•   •   •

‘T
HREE
HOURS
EVERY
T
UESDAY
MORNING
, at the old rate, for somebody who knows how to dot every
t
and cross every
i
.’ She collected her handbag from his out-box. ‘You won’t get an offer like that every day. Think about it.’

He had already thought about it.

•   •   •

S
HE
HAD
GONE
THROUGH
the garage and out to the sidewalk when he remembered and ran after her. ‘And call Vanita Bentley at the
Muse
,’ he shouted, ‘and give her the correct spelling of my name. Both names, for future reference.’

‘
Both?
’ she yelled back. ‘She can’t spell either one?’

He walked out to her at the curb. ‘Didn’t you read today’s
Muse
?’

‘Are you kidding me? I don’t read that rag.’

‘Who told you what you said when you came in?’

‘Ruby Greene. She called me the day after it happened.’

‘Isn’t it against the law to tell things known only to police officers?’

‘It was on the board down at th’ police station, they post reports of all their calls, don’t you remember? Anybody can go in an’ read th’ police reports.’

He walked back to the house, wondering where he and Cynthia might move. Possibly to Linville, where they had no newspaper, a loss more than generously repaid by the Thursday night seafood buffet at the lodge.

•   •   •

C
OOT
H
ENDRICK
WAS
LATE
getting home, as three people had stopped him on the street and talked his head off about the question going around town.

He heard the
Wheel
as soon as he walked in the house, and went to his mama’s room, hollering. ‘I got m’ name in th’ paper! I got m’ name in th’ paper!’

He had folded the
Muse
to show off the article just right, and held it close to her face so she could see it good.

‘What’d ye git it in there f’r?’

‘F’r answerin’ a question.’

‘What was th’ question?’ She was deaf as a doorknob, and talked loud enough to bust a man’s eardrums.

He sat in the chair with the broke seat and one arm missing, and leaned in to her good ear. He said what people on the street said the question was, and said it slow so he wouldn’t have to say it again.

‘Does . . . Mitford . . . still . . . take . . . care . . . of . . . its . . . own?’

‘What kind of question is that?’

He honestly didn’t know.

‘What did ye answer, then?’

He wasn’t sure what he answered, he’d been so rattled by the woman on the street poking a thingamajig in his face. ‘Talk right in this,’ she said.

He would give most anything to find out what he’d answered, but he couldn’t read nothing but his name. ‘Look there,’ he said, pointing to his name, which he had tirelessly searched for after picking up the paper from the street rack. ‘Can you see that?’

She lifted her head off the pillow and squinted at the two long columns of printed words. ‘What’s it sayin’? Read it out.’

She knew he couldn’t read, it was hateful to ask him to do such a thing. His daddy had run off when he was four years old and never come back, and if he’d knowed how hard it was to live with this old woman, he’d of run off with him.

‘I cain’t read over th’ dadblame TV!’ He hated her TV, it went ’til way up in the night, he had to get in bed and cover his head to keep from seein’ the light flickering on his walls from her room next to his. He would set it on the road one day, and let the town crew get out of it whatever torment they could.

‘Shut it off, then, f’r th’ Lord’s sake.’

The room seemed to tremble in the silence. He sat down again by the bed.

‘It
says
 . . .’ He was going to make this up out of his head. ‘It says Coot Hendrick of Rural Route Four says Mitford has been good to me and my mama.’

‘That’s right,’ she said. ‘Keep goin’.’

‘We have many friends and family here and th’ weather is good except in winter when water freezes in th’ sink and we have to bust it with a hammer.’

‘That’s dead right,’ she said. ‘A good answer.’

He felt warm all over. She hardly ever spoke kindly of anything he said or did.

She turned her head on the pillow to give him a look. ‘Who’s th’ family we got here? We don’t have no family here, why’d ye say a thing like that?’

He made out like he didn’t hear, and plowed on and went to
conjuring again. ‘At Christmas, Miz Bolick brings us a orange marmalade cake. It is the best cake me and my mama ever et.’

‘It is that, all right.’ Her hair was gray as fog against the pillow.

He remembered the first time Miz Bolick ever showed up at their door. It was snowing, and she was about covered up with it, as she wasn’t wearing a hat, but she was wearing red gloves and she was holding out that cake with the orange slice on top. He had busted out crying and been mighty embarrassed because her husband was standing right behind her. He hadn’t known what to do, if he should take the cake and leave them out in the snow or invite them to come in the house. He had never invited anybody to come in the house, the neighbor woman just came in whenever she took a notion, and the nurse sent by the county done the same. But Mr. and Miz Bolick had gone on home, saying Merry Christmas and waving bye-bye, and he remembered Miz Bolick’s red glove shooting up in the dark night.

It was hard to keep his eyes glued to the paper and make something up at the same time. ‘At Thanksgiving, th’ church people bring us a plate from down at th’ All-Church Feast, one f’r me and one f’r Beulah Mae Hendrick.’

She sat up and glared at him. ‘You mean to say I got
my
name in th’ paper?’

He hadn’t meant to say her name because she didn’t deserve to get her name in the paper. But the mule was out of the barn.

She was wagging her bony old finger like a hickory switch. ‘How come you didn’t say nothin’ ’bout my name bein’ in there?’

‘It’s a . . .’ He almost said a bad word. ‘. . .
surprise
!’ He’d be runnin’ for the county line if he’d of said that word.

She snatched the paper. ‘I’ll be et f’r a tater,’ she said. ‘Let me see my name. Where’s it at?’

Lord help. She could read a little bit. His finger trembled as he poked at a jumble of words in the middle of the page.

‘Well, I’ll be,’ she said, sinking back on the pillow. ‘You tear that
out where my name is and put it in th’ Bible. An’ go on and keep readin’, this is mighty good.’

He felt a terrible need to pass water, but wanted to stick with this and see where it was headed; he never knowed before that he could make out like he was reading.

‘Sometimes it is a Baptist that brings our plates from th’ All-Church, and sometimes it is th’ Methodists, an’ one time it was th’ Presbyterians, but most of th’ time it’s Father Tim who used to preach down at Lord’s Chapel.’

‘That’s right,’ said Beulah Mae. ‘Most of th’ time, that’s who it is. What else did ye say?’

His mind was empty as a gourd. ‘Let me think a minute.’

He didn’t know when they dropped off to sleep, but they woke up at the same time as a clap of thunder broke directly over the house.

She sat up, hollering. ‘Let me die, I’m too old to live!’

‘Stop that now, dadgummit!’ He was sick of hearing it. His mama was going on a hundred, maybe already was a hundred, since she won’t too sure when she was born.

‘Let me die!’ she hollered again.

‘Stop eatin, then!’ he hollered as he went into the kitchen.

‘Go to meetin’ men? Are ye crazy as a bedbug?’

You’re a mama’s boy, they said in school—whenever he went to school. But he didn’t even like his mama, whose people come over from Ireland—she was mean as a wet cat.

‘What d’ye want for supper?’ he shouted.

‘Warm milk and buttered toast and you could boil me a egg if we got any.’

‘We ain’t got any eggs n’r any milk. Our checks don’t come ’til day after next.’

‘Why’d you ask, then?’

‘To hear m’ head roar!’ he hollered.

He would bake her an onion, right in the skin, then take the skin off when he put it out in the bowl and salt it a little but not much, given she had high blood pressure and fluid around her heart and he didn’t know what all. And he’d put a piece of buttered toast with that and a cup of hot tea with a spoon of sugar. Don’t say that wouldn’t be good, and he’d fix the same for hisself.

He heard the rain on the roof, coming down hard; he liked rain and snow and weather of all kinds except high wind. He fairly hummed as he took two yellow onions out of the basket and set about doing what had to be done in this life.

•   •   •

‘I
LOVE
THEE
WITH
the breath, smiles, tears, of all my life,’ he read aloud from the Browning model. Hard to beat. Impossible, actually. He would give cash money to be released from this torment.

He picked up the pen, wrote.

I love thee for the way you look in the morning, like the girl next door which you once were and ever shall be to me . . . for the way you forgive me even before I commit the unforgivable . . . for believing that I am all the things I thought myself never to be—

How she occasionally raved on, his heedless, imaginative wife, and how he loved her with everything in him.

. . . for being brave when I am not, for being cheerful when I am sour, for putting up with me.

Somehow, it wasn’t coming together as he hoped. Though each sentiment was supremely true, the words lacked something visceral—bells needed to chime, bands needed to march.

The rain had stopped; he had enjoyed the sound of it pecking at the window. He looked to the kitchen, to the wall clock. Nine p.m. Cynthia had gone up to bed with a book; his crowd snored by the last embers of the fire.

He removed his glasses, rubbed his eyes
. A desperate matter
, the bishop had said.

He stood and stretched, feeling newfound muscles in his back, in his legs, as headlights flashed into the rectory drive next door. Sammy, Kenny, and Harley were home from the hills of Kentucky, safe and sound as he’d prayed them to be.

He pulled on his cardigan and walked out to the stoop. He’d get a breath of air, maybe go over and welcome them home.

Truck doors slamming, the crunching of pea gravel beyond the hedge, voices.

‘Tote my grip in, somebody.’ Harley, his old buddy. ‘I got t’ find th’ door key. Leave th’ truck lights on, hit’s dark as a dungeon out here.’

‘I ain’t g-goin’ back to school, I don’t c-care what you say.’ Ah, Sammy.

‘I just said Dooley wants to talk about it when he comes home.’ Kenny’s deep baritone. ‘Talk about it, that’s all.’