A New Song (21 page)

“Jean Ballenger? I can’t imagine such a thing!” Jean, a fastidious spinster with crocheted antimacassars on her armchairs, would hardly be up for tending a strong-willed three-year-old.

“What are we going to do?” asked Cynthia. “I think he’s adorable, truly he is. But he’s running me ragged. I’m too
old
for this!”

“I’ll be here ’til one o’clock. Go to your drawing board, relax, everything is under control.”

So why did she peer at him like that, with one eyebrow up and one down?

 

“Eureka!” he shouted, running along the hall to her studio. “I’ve found it!”

“Found what?” she asked, not looking up from a watercolor of Violet under a yellow and blue beach umbrella.

“What he likes for breakfast!” He was positively triumphant; he might have located the very Grail.

“I’ll never guess, so tell me.” She couldn’t help grinning at her husband, who looked as if he’d been run through a food processor.

“Guess!”
he insisted, playing the mean trick Emma always played on him.

“M&M’s?”

“Not even close. Two more.”

“Reese’s peanut butter cups! That would certainly be
my
preference for breakfast every morning!”

“Cynthia . . .”

“All right, I’m not trying. Here goes, and I’m quite serious this time.” She looked out the window. She curled a strand of hair around one finger. She sighed.

“I don’t have a clue,” she said.

“Spaghetti.”

“No.”

“Yes!”

“Al dente, I presume.”

“A little respect, please. I’ve just made an important discovery here.”

“Yes, dear, and thank you. Plain or with marinara?”

“With butter. No fork, no spoon. Just dump it in a bowl and set it in front of him. Of course, you’ll have to bathe him after it’s all over.”

“Bathe him?” There went that eyebrow again.

“All right,
I’ll
bathe him. But just this once.”

Why did children keep turning up on his doorstep? Not that he was complaining, but wasn’t it odd that he’d lived a full six decades with hardly a youngster in his life except those he encountered in Sunday School? But then, look what it had gained him, after all—Dooley Barlowe. One of the greatest gifts, most of the time, that had ever “come down from the Father of lights,” as St. James had put it.

In any case, this was a picnic compared to Father Tracey, who, with his good wife, had adopted fourteen children. Fourteen! It boggled the mind. And then there was Father Moultrie, who had passed into legend, though still living as far he knew. This good fellow had collected twenty-one children of various ages and backgrounds and had managed, so it was said, to keep the lot in good order, though the addition he built to his suburban home had literally fallen down one night after a communal pillow fight; thanks be to God no one was badly hurt.

“And darling . . . ,” said his smiling wife as he turned to leave the room.

“Yes?”

“Thank you for mopping the floor under his chair when you’ve finished.”

“No problem,” he said, trying to mean it.

 

He looked out the study window at the incessant rain, then checked his watch.

A quarter ’til twelve.

Mule and J.C. would just be trooping into the rear booth.

He knew it was a busy time at the Grill, but he was missing those guys, and how much trouble could it be for Velma to call somebody to the phone?

He listened as the red phone on the wall beside the grill rang twice. Four times. Six. Seven . . .

He was ready to hang up when Velma answered.

“Velma, it’s Tim Kavanagh!”

“Tim Kavanagh.”

“What can I do for you, we’ve got a lunch trade here to take care of.”

“Right. Could you, ah, call Mule to the phone? Or J.C.?”

“Hold on.”

He heard the receiver being laid on top of the wall unit, then heard it fall, swinging on the cord and knocking against the wall,
blam . . . blam . . . blam.
He held his own receiver away from his ear.

The babble in the Grill sounded a continent away, all the clatter and uproar that had been so familiar for so long seemed so . . . distant. His heart sank.

“I don’t serve grits after nine o’clock!” That was Percy.

“Dagummit!” Percy again. Must have dropped his spatula.

“Lord help! Lookit what th’ President’s done now.” Sounded like Leonard Stanley, who always sat at the counter opposite the phone. “Oh, boy!
Un
believable.”

“I don’t read th’ paper, makes my stomach wrench. Except for th’ funnies, I’ve plumb quit.” Coot Hendrick. “But I like those fliers that come with th’ paper—you know, Wal-Mart, Ken’s Auto Parts, discount coupons for Domino’s Pizza, like that.”

“We ain’t got a special today!” yelled Percy. “I’m over offerin’ specials, have t’ take it straight off th’ menu!”

“So, what’d th’ President do?”

“Trust me, you don’t want to know. I wonder if there’s any Alka-Seltzer in this place.”
Rustle, crackle.
Leonard must have sprung for a big newspaper like the
Atlanta Constitution,
considering the racket it made as he turned the pages.

“Can you
believe
it?” He heard Velma stomp by the phone. “Th’ front booth wants a ‘BLT without lettuce or tomato!’ I said right to ’is face, ‘How can you have a BLT without
L
an’
T ?’
an’ he said,
‘What?’
That’s th’ same fool ordered a cheeseburger th’ other day an’ asked me to hold th’
cheese.
”

“I’d take early retirement if I was you,” said Coot.

It was clear that in the lunch-hour rush, Velma had forgotten his phone call.

He yelled into the mouthpiece. “Velma! Percy!
Hello!
”

He heard the front door open and slam, the hiss of a pop-top soda being opened.

“Hello! Somebody!
Anybody!
”

“What’s this phone doin’ hangin’ by th’ cord?” asked Percy. “Must have got knocked off th’ hook.”

 

Jonathan poked a chubby finger at the television screen in the guest room. “I want to watch a movie,” he said.

“Ah. A movie.”

“In a box,” said the three-year-old.

He looked at his watch. “In a box.” Fifty-seven minutes to go.

“Peter Pan.”

“Peter Pan. Right.”

“You like Peter Pan?”

“Oh, yes. Very much!”

Jonathan poked his finger at Father Tim’s leg. “So, let’s watch it then!”

“We could tell a story. I could read to you, how’s that?”

“Watch a movie in a box!”

In a box, in a box. He had a box left over from the books. He dashed to the back porch and hauled it in.

“I one time had a
Li’n King
movie,” said Jonathan, “an’ my daddy, my daddy, my daddy wouldn’t let me watch it.” Jonathan furrowed his brow.

He set the boy in the cardboard box and turned on the TV. Good grief! He couldn’t believe his eyes, and in broad daylight, too. He surfed. Fifty minutes to go.

“Peter Pan!” yelled Jonathan. “In a
box
!”

He trucked to the studio. “For Pete’s sake, Kavanagh, what is a movie in a box?”

“A video, dear. We don’t have any.”

“Why not?”

“We don’t have a VCR.”

“We don’t even have a microwave,” he said, perplexed.

He dashed back to the guest room and pulled Jonathan out of the box. “We’re going for a walk.”

“I don’t want to walk!”

“In this life, my boy, you’ll be forced to do many things you’d rather not do, so consider this a rehearsal.”

He marched Jonathan into the kitchen and dragged Barnabas from under the table. He snapped the red leash on his dog’s collar as the phone rang.

He glanced out the kitchen window as he snatched up the cordless from the window seat. Blast! They couldn’t go for a walk, he’d forgotten it was raining cats and dogs.

“Hello!” he barked.

“Father? Is that
you
?”

“Esther!”

“You didn’t sound like yourself,” said Esther, who didn’t sound like herself, either. “I’ve got to talk to you about Gene.”

“Shoot!” he said, cantering down the hall after Jonathan, who was making a beeline for the front door.

“He’s actin’ so strange, I hardly know him. I’m tellin’ you, he’s just not my Gene, he could be somebody named Hubert or Pete or Lord knows who, he’s actin’ so peculiar.”

“What’s he doing?” he asked, grabbing the boy before he dove off the porch.

He carried him back into the house under one arm. “Down!” yelled the boy, squirming and kicking.

“Who in the world is that?” asked Esther.

“That’s Jonathan. Tell me what Gene’s doing.”

“He’s counting things. He stares at me and says, ‘Seven.’ And I say,

‘Seven what?’ And he says, ‘That’s seven times you opened the cabinet door over the stove.’ ”

“Down!”
said Jonathan, wriggling out of Father Tim’s grasp.

“Aha. I’m listening, Esther, keep talking. You opened the cabinet door seven times . . .”

Johnathan had dropped to all fours and was drinking water from the dog bowl. He transferred the cordless to his left hand and removed the red leash from Barnabas’s collar with his right. He snapped the leash to the boy’s romper strap and looped the other end over the back of a kitchen chair.

“He looked at me last night, said, ‘Eighteen.’ I said, ‘Eighteen what?’ He said, ‘Curlers.’ We’re goin’ up to bed, he said, ‘Fourteen.’ Lord knows, my nerves are shot by this time, he’d been doin’ it all day, I didn’t even ask fourteen what, an’ he said, ‘Steps.’ I can tell you right now I do not like it, he has been pullin’ this dumb trick for months, but it’s gettin’ worse by th’ minute.

“To tell th’ gospel truth, I could knock him in th’ head. Can you imagine livin’ with somebody who walks around goin’ ‘
Sixty-six!
That’s sixty-six window panes.’ Or, ‘
Nineteen!
That’s nineteen knobs on th’ cabinet doors.’ The other day I thought, wonder why there’s just nineteen knobs and not twenty, and th’ first thing you know, I was countin’ knobs
myself.
”

“I’ll be darned.”

“I’m on th’ hall phone, but I can hear him, he’s countin’ squares in th’ kitchen linoleum as we speak!”

“Oh, boy.”

“For the umpteenth time!” Esther lowered her voice. “Father, do you reckon he’s . . . crazy? It scares th’ daylights out of me to even think a word like that.”

“Does Hoppy know what’s going on?”

“We had all those tests run, you’d think somethin’ mental would show up in th’ blood work.”

“I feel you should talk to Hoppy. When are you seeing him again?”

“Two weeks.”

“You may want to give him a ring.”

“I can’t, he’s on vacation. You know he never took one for years, so I reckon he deserves it.”

“Talk to his associate, talk to Dr. Wilson.”

“Are you kiddin’ me? He’s green as tasselin’ corn.”

“I’d talk to Dr. Wilson, Esther.”

Esther had started to cry and was trying to hide it. “Only one thing hasn’t changed.”

“What’s that?”

Jonathan was dragging the chair across the kitchen, as Barnabas sat under the table, bewildered.

“He still pats me on the cheek and says, ‘Goodnight, Dollface,’ just like he’s done for forty-two years.”

“Horsie!” shouted Jonathan.

“I wish you were here,” sobbed Esther.

“I wish I were, too,” he said, meaning it.

 

He put socks on the kitchen chair legs and let Jonathan pull the darned thing all over the house. Cynthia shut her door—in fact, it sounded like she locked it—and Barnabas hid in the corner of the study by the bookshelves. As for himself, he sat in the living room like a country squire, and perused the
Whitecap Reader
.

 

He sighed. The
Reader
was the only newspaper he’d ever seen that made the
Muse
look like the
Philadelphia Inquirer
.

He allowed the boy to exhaust himself until, on the dot of one, he went down for a nap without a whimper. “Hallelujah!” Father Tim whispered to his dog as he tiptoed from the guest room and closed the door.

 

He got into his car at the rear gate and drew the dripping umbrella in with him. As he turned the key in the ignition, he noticed a panel truck parked at Morris Love’s entrance. He adjusted his glasses.

A driver got out of the truck and went to the iron gate, swung it open, came back to the truck, and drove through.

He sat for a moment, curious at the first sign of coming and going he’d seen across the road. He watched the driver trot back and lock the gate behind him.