A New Song (22 page)

Fort Knox! he thought, driving away.

 

 

He sat in the church office, hearing rain peck the windowpanes like chickens after corn, and read from a sermon of Charles Spurgeon, delivered at Newington on March 9, 1873.

 

He jotted in his sermon notebook:
Not that He
will
not turn a deaf ear, but that He c
annot
. Press this truth.
Spurgeon had put into a nutshell what he wanted to preach on Sunday to the body at St. John’s.

 

Bottom line, he would tell his congregation what Nike had told the world:

Just do it.

 

He finished typing up the pew bulletin and rang the hospital. Janette was down the hall. “Tell her I’ll be there tomorrow,” he said to the nurse. “Tell her Jonathan’s having a wonderful time.”

He fished the umbrella from the stand by the downstairs door and prepared to head into the downpour.

“Father Kavanagh, is that you?”

He spun around. “Good heavens!”

“I frightened you, Father, I’m sorry as can be!”

“Mercy!” he said, not knowing what else to say. A tall, thin, stooped woman in a dripping hat and raincoat stood before him, her glasses sliding off her wet nose.

“I came in through the front door and couldn’t find a soul, so I helped myself to these stairs. I’m Ella Bridgewater, come to audition!”

He was addled. “But I thought tomorrow . . .”

“I wrote down today in my appointment book, Father, I am very precise about such things, and besides, I couldn’t have done it tomorrow, for I’m going across to my niece. I always do that on Saturday, so I would never have—”

“Of course. My mistake, I’m sure.” He was very precise about such things, as well. But why quibble?

“Well, Miss Bridgewater, glad to see you!” He took her wet hand and shook it heartily, noting that she appeared considerably older than her letter had stated.

She patted her chest. “I have the music under my coat!”

“Excellent. We’ll just pop upstairs and have at it. Thanks for coming out in the deluge.”

He followed her up the stairs to the sacristy. She was certainly agile, he thought.

“I’ve always loved this church, Father. I think I wrote in my letter to you that I played for yoked parishes for many years in these islands.”

“Yes. Wonderful!”

“So I certainly know the churches in these parts, though I never stepped foot in St. John’s ’til this day.” She looked around the sanctuary and nave with some wonder.

“You don’t mean it!”

“Not once. Too busy playing elsewhere!”

“I wish you could see it in the sunlight, the way the stained glass pours color into the nave.”

Wiry gray curls sprung up as she removed her rain hat. “I believe I
will
see it in the sunlight!”

Mighty perky lady, he thought. And seventy if she was a day. Her letter, however, had said sixty-two, and added “in vibrant good health.”

“There’s the choir loft, as you can see. I believe you’ll find our old Hammond in fine working order. Well, then, let me help you off with your coat, and you can pop up the stairs there. Would you like a cup of coffee? Or tea? Won’t take but a moment.”

“No, thank you, Father, I’m ready to get on with it. I’ve been practicing like all get-out for days—you know they say if you fail to prepare, you prepare to fail.”

“Perfect line for a wayside pulpit!”

“That’s where I got it,” she said, with a burst of laughter. “Well, here goes.”

She walked briskly up the aisle, clutching her manila envelope, and made short work of the stairs to the loft.

There was a moment’s rustling in the loft and, he thought, a mite of hard breathing.

“Great day in the morning!” she shouted down. “This organ is old as Methuselah.”

“Manufactured the year of my fourth birthday!”

“Which was a good year, I’m sure. Now . . .”—he heard her clear her throat and heave a sigh—“sit and close your eyes. I’ll give you a prelude and fugue, followed by a hymn. Then you’re allowed to make one personal request.”

“Thank you, Miss Bridgewater.” He was glad he didn’t mind being told what to do by women; he’d never lacked for direction in that department.

“My, my,” he heard her say. “Oh, yes.” She fiddled with the stops, pressed the pedals, hummed a little. “Well, then!”

The old organ nearly blasted him out of the pew. Aha! It was Bach’s Little Prelude and Fugue in C Major, and she was giving it everything she had. This woman had eaten her Wheaties, and no doubt about it.

At the end, she called in a loud voice, “How was that, Father?”

“Why . . . play on!” he said. Very perky.

“For All the Saints” boomed up to the rafters. Ah. Good to have the organ going in this place, a benediction.

He listened carefully, unable to restrain himself from whispering the words under his breath.

“ ‘For all the saints, who from their labors rest, who thee by faith before the world confessed, thy Name O Jesus, be forever blessed. Alleluia, alleluia . . .’ ”

Not especially thrilling, as the rendition of it certainly could be, but better than he might have expected, to tell the truth. He patted his foot and attended each note, keeping an open mind to the very end.

Agreeably workmanlike, he concluded.

“How was that?” she trumpeted.

“Well done!”

“Thank you, Father, honesty is the best policy, and I don’t mind saying that all my priests have liked my playing.”

Rain blew against the windows,
peck, peck, peck.

“Miss Bridgewater, is it time for my personal request?”

“It is, and I must say I’m filled with curiosity.”

“What about ‘Strengthen for Service, Lord’?” A communion hymn worth its salt and then some!

“Excellent, Father! Two-oh-one in the old hymnal, three-twelve in the new. Here we go.”

He chuckled. He hadn’t encountered such bravado since the last meeting of the youth group.

“ ‘Strengthen for service, Lord,’ ” he whispered as she played, “ ‘the hands that holy things have taken; let ears that now have heard thy songs, to clamor never waken . . .’ ”
To clamor never waken.
His favorite line.

He looked around the walls and up to the ceiling as if the music were painting the very timbers, bathing them, somehow, and making them stand more firmly.

He was drinking it all in as if starved, and then the audition was over.

He stood and faced the loft and clapped with some enthusiasm.

Huffing slightly and clutching her envelope, she was down the stairs, along the aisle, and standing by his pew in a trice. Her long nose and stooped shoulders gave her the appearance, he thought, of an Oriental crane.

“Well done!” he said again.

“Thank you, Father. I have a confession.” She held her envelope like a shield against her chest, looking pained but confident.

“Shall we . . . go to the altar?” he asked.

“Don’t trouble yourself, I’ll just spit it out right here.”

“Sit down,” he said. He sat, himself, and scooted over.

She thumped into the oak pew. “I lied about my age.”

“Oh?”

“I turned seventy-four last month. I didn’t think you’d hire me if I told the truth, and I want you to know I’m sorry. As I was playing your request, the Lord convicted my heart and I asked Him to forgive me. Perhaps you’ll do the same.”

She looked exceedingly pained.

“Why, certainly, Miss Bridgewater. Of course. And may I say you don’t look seventy-four.”

She brightened considerably. “Why, thank you, Father. You see, I believe the Lord called me to St. John’s. When I heard you had a need, I asked Him about it at once, and He said, ‘Ella Jean’—the Lord always uses my middle name—‘march over there and ask for that job, they need you.’ ”

“Aha.”

“He doesn’t speak to me in an audible voice.”

“I understand.”

“He puts it in my mind, you might say. As you well know, Father, you have to be quiet before the Lord and keep your trap shut for Him to get a word in edgewise, that’s my experience.”

“Miss Bridgewater—”

“Call me Ella,” she said.

“Ella, if we can agree on your compensation, I think you may be just the ticket for St. John’s.”

Tears sprang to her eyes. “Do you really think so?”

“I do.”

“But,” she said, regaining her composure, “you’ll have to run it by the vestry.”

“Right. I intend to.”

“When might that be?”

“Wednesday. I’ll get back to you right after the meeting. Shouldn’t be any problem. Do you have family?”

“I lived with my mother for many years, she went to heaven last March.”

“I’m sorry to hear it. Or glad, as the case may be.” Heaven! The ultimate place to escape the clamor . . .

“I’m an old maid,” she said, bobbing her head and smiling. “But not the sort of dried-up old maid you see in cartoons.”

“Oh?” A priest never knew what he might be told. He shifted uneasily on the pew.

“No, indeed. I fell head over heels in love when I was forty-seven, and truth be told, have never gotten over it. They say you came late to love, yourself.”

“Late, yes,” he said, smiling. “But not too late.”

“Minor was a young explorer with Admiral Byrd, and spent his last years as a maker of hot-air balloons.”

“You don’t say!”

“Oh, yes. And I went up in one!” Her eyes were bright with feeling. “We sailed up the coast and across Virginia and landed in a cow pasture, where we picnicked on cheese and figs. It was the single grandest thing I ever did.”

“I’m happy to hear it,” he said. And he was.

Miss Bridgewater adjusted her glasses and peered at him. “And when would I begin if . . . if . . .”

“Sunday after next, I should think.”

“Well!” she said, sitting back and beaming. “Well!”

 

The everlasting rain was still going strong at four-thirty, when he pulled into Ernie’s for a gallon of milk.

Roger Templeton sat in the corner by a small pile of wood shavings, and looked up when he came in.

“Tim! Glad to see you! How’s your weather?”

“You mean my own, apart from the elements? I’d say . . . sunny!” Hadn’t God just delivered an organist to St. John’s?

He scratched Lucas behind the ears, then pulled up a chair next to Roger, peering into Roger’s lap at what had been a block of wood. The rough form of a duck, though headless, had emerged, its right wing beginning to assume feathers.

“Amazing! May I have a look?”

“Help yourself,” said Roger, pleased to be asked.

He took the duck and examined it closely. In principle, at least, this was how David had escaped from Michelangelo’s block of marble.

“That’s tupelo wood,” said Roger. “I get it from up around Albemarle Sound. With tupelo, you can cut across the grain, with the grain, or against the grain.”

“It’s beautiful!” he said. How had Roger known the wood contained a duck just waiting to get out?

“That’s a green-winged teal. It’s not much to look at yet; I’ve rough-edged it with a band saw and now I’m carving in the feather groupings.”

“How did you know you could do this?”

Roger took a knife from an old cigar box next to his chair. “I didn’t. I’d never done anything with my hands.”

“Except make money,” said Ernie, walking in from the book room. He thumped down at the table.

“I used to go on hunting trips with my colleagues . . . Alaska, Canada, the eastern shore of Maryland around St. Michael’s and Easton. I recall the day I dropped a green-winged teal into the river. When the Lab brought it to me, I saw for the first time the great beauty of it. My eyes were opened in a new way, and I wondered how I’d managed to . . . do what I’d been doing.”

“Aha.”

“Oh, I’m not preaching a sermon against hunting, Tim. Let a man hunt! I also have a special fondness for a boy learning to hunt. But I quit right there at the river, I said if God Almighty could make just one feather, not to mention a whole duck, as intricate and beautiful as that, who am I to bring it down?”

“He still fishes,” said Ernie.

“Why did you start carving?”

Roger shrugged. “I wanted to see how close I could come to the real thing. I thought I’d try to make just one and then quit.”

“I see.”

“But I never seem to come very close to the real thing, so I keep trying.”

Father Tim had never done much with his hands, either, except turn the pages of a book or plant a rosebush. “How long does it take to make one?”

“Oh, five or six weeks, sometimes longer.”

“He works on ’is ducks in my place, exclusive,” said Ernie, as if that lent a special distinction to Ernie’s Books, Bait & Tackle.

“Do you also work at home?”

Roger colored slightly. “I paint at home, but my wife doesn’t allow carving.”