A Light in the Window (10 page)

“Pshaw! We can get them all in my Plymouth. I have a trunk as big as a bathtub, and you’ll do the driving.”

“Deal!”

“I’m so glad to have a priest who minds me,” she said.

He turned left out of the Fernbank driveway and walked toward the construction site. Church Hill literally vibrated under his feet with the churn and tumult of heavy equipment, which at last had fair weather for operating.

It was a wonder to him that the street wasn’t thronged with onlookers, field trips from schools, and chartered buses from every point in the county. For there, under a perfectly blue and cloudless sky, lay an open wound in the earth, with more spectacular vehicles crawling upon it than one could count.

He felt light as air. And no wonder—it was the first time in his life that he’d worn tennis shoes with his tab collar, though that was all the rage with Father Roland and his crowd in New Orleans. He’d been accustomed to running a few years behind the rest of the world, but he was going to make an effort to change that. He was tired of bringing up the rear in the march of civilization.

The equipment crawled over the site like ants on a hill, except for two thundering yellow Cats, stationed at either end of a vast excavation. His attention was instantly riveted by their great maws that dipped into the earth and came up again, overfed with red clay. The arms of the machines swung around and dumped their loads onto a pile.

A man pulled onto the site in a truck, got out, and threw up his hand. It was Ron Malcolm’s boy, who had driven from Colorado to work on this job. Though Ed Malcolm was walking hurriedly toward the trailer, the rector caught up with him.

“Ed, how’s it going?” They shook hands.

“Great, Father, just great. We’re glad to have the good weather.”

“And we’re glad to have you on this job.”

“Thanks, I appreciate that.” Ed glanced anxiously at the trailer and then sprinted away. “See you around,” he called over his shoulder.

He’d take a look in the hole before he walked to the Grill for lunch. Recalling the plans, he knew the basement would house the kitchen, a composting drum, storage, a ten-bed infirmary, and a small pharmacy.

If he’d worn a hat, he would have removed it respectfully at the rim of the crater. The vast excavation appeared to penetrate Beijing, dug in clay that ranged in layers of color from blood red to purple to black to ochre. Were those layers like the rings of a tree, telling the age of this ancient hill?

“You sonofa ...” was all he heard as the arm of the machine thundered up from the hole, and he was jerked backward by his left shoulder.

He stumbled, but before he could fall, he was spun around and Buck Leeper grabbed him by his lapel. His face was so close that he could feel the man’s spittle when he shouted.

“Do that again, Mister, and you’ll
eat
my dirt. Got it? I got enough trouble without some fool lookin’ to fall in my excavation. Now, leave my men alone and stay off my site.”

Leeper cursed and shoved him roughly away, then stalked toward the trailer.

The rector had felt the man’s raw power, as if he were part of the heavy equipment, some extension of it in human form. He stood rooted to the spot, shaken.

“You look like you seen a ghost,” said Percy.

“I wish,” he muttered. It had been years since anyone had muscled him around like Buck Leeper had just done.

“They’s a paper in your booth. J.C. come early and left it for you, said look on page five.”

Percy peered intently at him. “Page ... five ...” He said this slowly, as if speaking to someone deaf as a stone.

Sitting in the booth, he stirred his unsweetened tea as if it were poison. He couldn’t think of anything he detested more than a glass of tea without a few spoonfuls of sugar.

He glanced at the paper on the table but couldn’t concentrate. He was remembering Louella’s face when she stopped him at the front door.

“We goan tell her ’bout Miss Olivia?”

He had thought for a moment. “No. Something tells me we ought to wait.”

“If she fin’ out I been knowin’ all my days ’bout Miss Olivia bein’ her kin, she goan be plenty mad and hurt. Law!” Louella had turned an odd, gray color.

“Let’s keep our peace,” he had said. “And whatever you do, don’t worry. It’s going to work out.”

Frankly, he wasn’t so sure.

He continued to stir his tea, as if there might be something in there to stir.

How would Miss Sadie feel toward Louella, knowing she had hidden that ancient secret about her mother? And what if they told Miss Sadie it was her own great-niece who’d be wearing those hats?

“You seen it yet?”

The
Muse
editor tossed his battered briefcase on the seat and sat down heavily.

“Seen what?”

“Page five. Dadgummit, I told Percy to tell you to look on page five.” He stared at the rector, disgruntled, until page five was located.

“You probably know this, already, bein’ her neighbor, but I wanted you to see how I wrote it up.”

The story appeared under a picture of Fancy Skinner’s new beauty shop, the Hair House.

J.C. tapped the headline with his stubby finger. “Right here,” he said, “Local Woman Wins Critical Acclaim.”

He read the article silently.

As the rector put the paper down, the editor leaned forward, obviously pleased. “I tried to give it a personal touch. What do you think?”

Think? He couldn’t think. His mind felt like it had been stirred with his teaspoon. “Great,” he said, feebly. “Terrific. What else did the story at the library say?”

“Said she liked to walk in the rain and eat peanut-butter-and-banana sandwiches. Said somethin’ else, too, ah ... let’s see, oh, she likes to dance the rhumba, I thought all that was a little weird, so I left it out. ”

“Good idea.” His heart felt leaden.

“I tried to call her for an interview, but th’ machine said she was in...”

“New York.”

“Right. Well, I gotta get outta here. The Presbyterians have a big story brewin’.”

The rector didn’t look up.

“Don’t you want to know what it is?” asked J.C. wiping his face with the ever-present handkerchief.

“Sure I do.”

“They’re givin’ away a Cadillac,” said J.C.

He was dumbfounded. “Doing what?”

“Adios,hasta la vista,
” said J.C. creaking out of the vinyl seat with his bulging briefcase. “See you in the funny papers.”

If there was anything J.C. loved, it was going around town telling half a story to make sure somebody bought his newspaper.

“Don’t that beat all?” said Percy, who had heard J.C.’s announcement. “I never knew the Lord was in the car business.”

He went at once to the library and gave an astonished Avette Harris two twenty-dollar bills.

“My!” she said, looking at him with admiration.

“This is to replace those
Mouse in the Manger
books,” he said.

“I declare, we have tried and tried to clean those book covers. It’s something just like jam, but it won’t come off. We don’t know what it is. You should see the things that happen to children’s books, sometimes. We found a dead cricket the other day in
Little Women,
and it looked like lasagna in
The Hungry Caterpillar.”

He nodded.

“Isn’t that Miss Coppersmith something? We’re so proud of her, we could just bust.”

He smiled.

“Of course, this is way too much money. Two little books don’t cost forty dollars! Not yet, anyway.”

“If there’s anything left,” he said, “buy a box of candy and pass it around to the volunteers.”

He was on the sidewalk, headed toward the post office, when Avette caught up with him.

“Oh, Father, when someone gives a book, we like to put a little book plate in the front that says who it’s given by. What would you like yours to say?”

He thought for a moment.

“Just say, ‘Given by Miss Coppersmith’s neighbor.’ ”

Peanut-butter-and-banana sandwiches? That had been Tommy Noles’s favorite food. Tommy had subsisted on that very fare from fourth grade through high school, with an occasional side of grape jelly. Tommy liked his on white bread, with the bananas mashed flat into the peanut butter. He wondered how she liked hers.

Barnabas stopped to sniff a rock.

The rhumba! What an extraordinary thought. He would have thought the fox trot, if he had ever thought about it at all.

He was struck by the endless number of things he hadn’t thought about concerning Cynthia. Why had he never been more curious about her life, about her work? Where had she gone to school, for heaven’s sake? And why hadn’t he found out why she nearly died in a hospital? He’d even lacked the courtesy to ask lately about her nephew, who was as cherished as a son. It seemed a small thing to wonder, but what was his last name? He didn’t even know what kind of work he did.