A New Song (27 page)

He dropped to his knees in the study and prayed silently. The early morning breeze pushed through open windows and puffed the curtains into the room.

There was a tap on his shoulder.

“What are you doin’?” asked Jonathan, standing next to him in rumpled blue pajamas.

He rose from his knees and picked the boy up. They thumped into the chair, Jonathan in his lap. “I was praying.”

“Why?” Jonathan snuggled against him.

“That I might find God’s grace to forgive someone.”

“Why?”

“Because if I don’t forgive this person, it will be unhealthy for me, and God won’t think much of it, either.”

He loved the chunky, vibrant feel of the boy on his lap, the warm, solid weight against his chest. Exactly the way God wants us to come to Him, he thought, his spirits suddenly brightening.

“I don’t want p’sketti no more. No p’sketti.”

“Good! Hallelujah! What do you want?”

Jonathan pondered this, then looked up at him. “I don’t know.”

“Well, if you don’t, who does?”

Jonathan poked him in the chest with a chubby finger. “You find somethin’.”

“Please.”

“Please.”

“Consider it done.”

 

He and Cynthia had been transplanted, that was all. He knew from years of digging around in the dirt and moving perennials from one corner of the yard to another what transplanting was about. First came the wilt, then the gradual settling in, then the growth spurt. That simple. What had Gertrude Jekyll said to the gardener squeamish about moving a plant or bush? “Hoick it!”

God had hoicked him and he’d better get over the wilt and get busy putting down roots.

He went out to the porch, whistling. Glorious day—his fair wife sitting contentedly in a rocker, Jonathan rigged with a straw hat and playing in the garden with his dog, and an afternoon romp in the ocean on the family agenda.

He sat in one of the white rockers and kicked off his loafers. “Ahhhh!” he sighed.

“Timothy, you have that wilderness look again.”

“What wilderness look?” he asked, as if he didn’t know.

“That John the Baptist look.”

He had been in denial about it for some time, now, until his hair had fanned out over his clerical collar like the tail of a turkey gobbler. He just didn’t seem to have what it took to break in a new barber.

“I hear there’s a little shop next to the post office, Linda’s or Libbie’s or Lola’s . . . something like that.”

“Aha.” No, indeed. He’d cut it himself with an oyster knife before he’d put his head in the hands of another Fancy Skinner.

“I’ll hold out for a barber, thank you,” he said, feeling imperious.

 

He checked the answering machine when they came in from the grocery store.

“Father? It’s me, Puny.”

Puny didn’t sound like herself.

“I don’t know how to tell you this.”

This was definitely his least favorite way for a phone call to begin.

“I just got to your house and realized I’d left th’ door unlocked for four days!”

“Speak to Ba!” one of the twins pleaded.

“How in th’ world I did a dumb thing like that, I don’t know, I’m jis’ so sorry. But I’ve looked and looked, and nothin’ seems missin’, so I think it’s all right, but I know how you count on me to take care of things, and I jis’ hate lettin’ you down on anything.”

“It’s OK!” he said aloud to the machine. He loved that girl like his own flesh. “Don’t worry about it!”

“I know you sometimes don’t lock your doors, but I always do because I’m responsible for things here, and I jis’ hope that . . . anyway, we’re real sorry you aren’t comin’, we all looked forward to it a lot, and I hope you’ll not think hard of me for leavin’ your door unlocked.”

“Speak to Ba, speak to Ba!”

“Oh, for Pete’s sake, Sissy, you’ll wake up Sassy,
here
!”

“Ba! Come home, we got puppies. Come home, Ba!”

“Say ’bye, now. Tell ’im you love ’im.”

“Love you, Ba.”

“Tell ’im you love Miss Cynthia.”

“Love Miss Cynthy.”

“That was Sissy. Sassy’s still asleep,” said his industrious house help. “We’ve got an awful mess of puppies in th’ garage, four little speckled things, I don’t know what they are, oh, mercy, I’m prob’ly usin’ up all your tape, now here’s th’ good news! Joe Joe’s been promoted to lieutenant! That’s right under th’ chief. How d’you like that?”

He liked it very much indeed.

“We thought you was goin’ home,” said Roanoke.

“Change of plans. Where’s Ernie this morning?”

“Him an’ Roger’s gone fishin’.”

“Captain Willie?”

“Nope. Over to th’ Sound.”

“You’re minding the store?”

“You got it,” said Roanoke. Father Tim thought he’d never seen so many wrinkles in one face. Roanoke Clark, it might be said, looked like he’d been hung out to dry and left on the line.

He didn’t exactly relish the idea of spending one-on-one time with a man who didn’t like preachers. Then again, it was only six-thirty in the morning, and not a darned thing to do at the church office, since he’d already done it all for the trip to Mitford.

What the heck. He thumped down at a table, unwrapped his egg biscuit, and took the lid off his coffee.

“So . . . how’s business?”

“We had a big run this mornin’, it slacked off just before you come in.”

He ate his biscuit while Roanoke read the paper and smoked.

“What about a good barber on the island? Know anybody?”

“Don’t have an official barber on th’ island. Have t’ go across.”

“Seems a waste of time to be running back and forth to the mainland just to get your hair trimmed.”

Roanoke appeared to be talking to the newspaper he was holding in front of him. “Lola up by th’ post office, she’ll give you a trim. You won’t need t’ go back ’til Christmas.”

“Who’s Lola?”

“Lola sells fish san’wiches, cuts hair, you name it.”

He shivered. “Is that where you get your hair cut?”

“Once every two months, whether I need it or not.”

He examined Roanoke’s haircut. No way.

“So, ah, where do Ernie and Roger get their hair cut?”

“I do it.”

“You do it?”

“Keep my barber tools in th’ book room over there.” Roanoke indicated the book room with a wave of his hand.

“Aha.”

“Six bucks a pop,” said Roanoke, laying the paper on the table. “Six bucks and fifteen minutes, that’s my motto.”

“Did you . . . ever cut hair for a living?”

“I cut hair for truckers. When I was haulin’ sheet metal, I had a stopover in Concord twice a month; I set up in th’ back room of a barbecue joint. They rolled in there from New York City, Des Moines, Iowa, Los Alamos, Calfornia, you name it, they lined up from here to yonder.” Roanoke looked proud of this fact, installing a fresh cigarette behind his ear.

“You might say I’ve cut hair from sea t’ shinin’ sea.”

“I’ll be darned.” Now what was he going to do? His egg biscuit began to petrify in his stomach.

“You’ll have t’ set out here, since I got t’ watch th’ register, but I’ll take care of it for you. I didn’t want t’ say nothin’, but I wondered when you was goin’ to get it off your collar. I thought maybe that was your religion.”

Father Tim laughed uneasily and clapped his hip. He’d paid for his biscuit with pocket change; maybe he’d left his wallet at home. Sometimes he did. He hoped he did.

“You can pay me anytime. I run a little tab for Roger ’n’ Ernie.”

Oh, well, how bad could it be? He didn’t recall that Ernie or Roger looked too butchered; pretty normal, to tell the truth.

“Fine,” he said. “Fifteen minutes?”

Roanoke dragged the battered stool from behind the cash register and set it by the front window.

“Couldn’t we, ah, move the stool back a little?” He didn’t want to be on display for every passing car and truck on the island.

“I need th’ light,” said Roanoke, squinting at his hair.

Though he’d spent considerable time at morning prayer in his study, he prayed again as he clambered onto the stool.

Roanoke brought a box from the book room, followed by Elmo the Book Cat. It was the first time he’d seen Elmo out in general society. The elderly, longhaired cat sat on the cement floor, flicked its tail, and stared at him, as Roanoke laid his barbering paraphernalia on the window seat.

“Here you go,” said Roanoke, throwing a torn sheet around Father Tim’s shoulders. The sheet smelled of fish. Maybe that was why the cat was staring at him.

“Back when I was drivin’,” said Roanoke, leaning into his work, “I run thirty-seven states and two provinces of Canada. One time I was caught in a tornada, it blowed me over an embankment and totaled my truck, but I walked away without a scratch, which was th’ closest I ever come to believin’ in God.”

Father Tim felt the scissors snipping away, saw the hair thump onto the cement. The cat watched, still flicking its tail.

“I hauled a lot of orange juice outa Florida in my time. If I was haulin’ fresh, a load would run around fifty-five hundred gallons. Concentrate, that’d weigh in around forty-seven hundred.”
Snip, snip.

Barbering certainly loosened the tongue of the usually taciturn Roanoke; he’d turned into a regular jabbermouth. Come to think of it, Father Tim had noticed the same phenomenon in Fancy Skinner and Joe Ivey. Clearly, nonstop discourse was very closely related to messing with hair.

“I even hauled chocolate syrup outa Pennsylvania, a lot of chocolate comes outa Pennsylvania, but I never hauled poultry or anything livin’, nossir, I wouldn’t haul anything livin’.”

“Good idea.”

“I never got pulled but one time. Now, there’s some drivers, they can be wild, they’ll run their rigs hard as they can run ’em to git up th’ next hill. Regulations say you cain’t drive but ten hours a day, but cowboys, that’s what we called ’em, they’ll go up t’ eighteen, twenty hours, drivin’ illegal.

“Cowboys is only about two percent of th’ drivers out there today, but they give th’ rest of us a bad name, you know what I mean?”

“I do!”

Snip, thump.
“I do a little roofin’ now, a little house paintin’, cut a little hair, a man can make a livin’ if he’s got ambition.”

“I agree!”

“Got rid of my car, ride a bicycle now, it’s amazin’ how much money you can put back when you shuck a car.”

“I’ll bet.”

“I was raised in a Christian home, but I fell away. See, my first wife run off with a travelin’ preacher, I brought ’im home, give ’im a good, warm bed an’ a hot meal, an’ first thing you know, they hightailed it.”

“Aha.” So that was why Roanoke was never especially thrilled to see him; he’d been tarred with the same brush. He had a sudden, vivid recall of van Gogh’s self-portrait in which he sported only one ear.
Please, Lord . . .

Elmo yawned and lay down, without removing his gaze from the customer on the stool.

“Now, you take me, I never run around on my second wife, an’ they was plenty of chances to do it. Lot lizards is what we called ’em, they’ll pester a man nearly to death. But I stayed true to my wife an’ I’m glad I did, because you never know what you’ll pick up on th’ road an’ bring home to innocent people.”

“Right.”

“I never did pills, neither, nossir, th’ strongest thing I ever done when I was drivin’ was Sun-drop, it’ll knock your block off if you ain’t used to much caffeine in your system. You want a Sun-drop, we got ’em in th’ cooler.”

“That’s OK, I don’t believe so. Maybe another time.” Boy howdy, this was an education and a half.

“But things is changed. It’d bring a tear to a glass eye to hear what a owner-operator pays these days to run a big rig.”

“How much?”

“More’n sixty cent a mile. You have to be tough to make a livin’ with truckin’.”

“I’ll bet so.”

“I’m goin’ to clean your neck up now. How’s our time runnin’?”

Father Tim looked at his watch. “You’ve got a little under one minute.”

“We’re goin’ to bring you in right on th’ dot,” said Roanoke, flipping the switch on his electric shaver.

 

Cynthia waved from the porch. Jonathan and Barnabas were waiting at the gate.

“Look at me!” said the boy, jumping up and down.

“I’m looking. That’s a new shirt!”

“And new pants!”

He opened the gate. “Where did those snappy new clothes come from, buddyroe?”

“UPS!”

“Dearest, where’s your hair?” called his wife from the porch.

“In a Dumpster behind Ernie’s! What do you think?”

“I love it!” she said, sitting down on the top step. “We’ve got a surprise for you!”

His wife was herself wearing something new and boggling. Red shorts, which were plenty short, a strapless white top, and espadrilles.

He scratched behind his dog’s ears and fairly bounded up the steps.

 

His sermon was finished and walked through, thought for thought, precept upon precept. In the study, Jonathan had paced to the bookcase at his heels, then to the wall with the painting of the Roman Colosseum. Exhausted at last, Jonathan fell asleep on the rug, where Father Tim stepped over him without missing a beat.

The rest of the day lay ahead, shimmering like silk. They would swim in the ocean, they would go out to dinner in their new duds, and tomorrow they’d hear the organ raising its mighty voice to the timbers.

He felt as young as a curate, as bold as a lion.

 

“Having a little boy is different,” said his wife, drying her hair after their frolic in the ocean. “We’re going out to dinner and it’s only five-thirty.”

“Like a bunch of farmhands,” he agreed, pulling on his brand-new shorts and golf shirt. One thing he could say about golf, which he’d never played and never would, he sure liked the shirts.