A New Song (57 page)

Sometime in April, a sign appeared in the window of Ernie’s Books, Bait & Tackle:

 

Hardly anyone going in and out of Mona’s had ever read Zane Grey, though several had heard of him, and a breakfast regular seemed to remember L’Amour as a prizefighter from Kansas City. Two days after the sign went up, a potato chip rep dropped a hundred and eighty-seven bucks on the special offer and posted Ernie’s phone number and address in a chat room devoted to the subject of Old West literature. In the space of eight working days, the book end of the business had blown the bait end in the ditch, and Ernie hired on a couple of high school kids to handle mail orders.

Roanoke Clark was painting one of the big summer houses, and had hired on a helper who, he was surprised to learn, stayed sober as a judge and worked like a horse. He pondered making this a permanent deal, if only for his partner’s nearly new pair of telescoping ladders, not to mention late-model Ford truck, an arrangement that would prevent the necessity of renting Chess Doyle’s rattletrap Chevy with a homemade flatbed, for which Chess dunned him a flat forty bucks a week.

In the Toe, Bragg’s was busy pumping diesel and dispatching tons of gravel and cement to construction sites as far away as Williamston, not to mention an industrial park in Tyrrell County.

At the north end of the small island shaped like a Christmas stocking, St. John’s in the Grove was at last divested of its scaffolding. The heavy equipment had vanished, the piles of scrap lumber and roofing had been hauled away, and the errant flapping of loose tarps was heard no more.

Behind this effort had come a parish-wide cleanup. Brooms, rakes, hoes, mattocks and shovels were toted in, along with fresh nursery stock to replace what had been damaged in the general upheaval.

During the windy, day-long workfest, someone discovered that the coreopsis was beginning to bloom, and Father Tim was heard to say that their little church looked ready to withstand another century with dignity and grace.

 

For months on end, winter weather had delayed work on the reconstruction. He was up to here with plaster dust, drilling, sanding, and sawing. No wonder some of his colleagues resisted the role of “building priest.” It probably wasn’t the fund-raising they detested, it was the actual putting up and hammering down.

Fortunately, they’d been able to save the old oak, and he was glad for the bonus of increased light that now shone on St. John’s.

On a bitterly cold, but bright May morning, he unlocked the front door and stepped across the threshold into a new nave, yet with its old spirit still intact. He sat midway on the gospel side and looked around paternally.

A church, like any other home, had its own singular and individual spirit, and he’d grown to love the unique spirit of St. John’s. At Lord’s Chapel, he’d felt the bulk and weight of the river stone as a mighty fortress, a sure defense. St. John’s, on the other hand, gave him the distinct sense of vulnerability and innocence; it seemed fragile, somehow, as indeed it had been.

Two Sundays hence, the parish would celebrate this glad rebirth with a dinner on the grounds and the first homecoming in more than thirty years. They wouldn’t take the long tearing out and putting back for granted, not at all; they would observe it for what it was—a benediction of a high and precious order.

 

“St. John’s in the Grove, Father Kavanagh here.”

“Hey, Dad.”

“Hey, yourself, buddy!”

“Me and Caroline broke up.”

“Ahh. Too bad.”

“I’m glad, though. You know what she did?”

“What?”

“Just ran up to me at th’ dance and grabbed th’ chain around my neck and yanked it so hard, it came apart, and she took her ring back.”

“Good grief !” That sounded exactly like something Peggy Cramer might have done.

“Next time, I’m goin’ out with somebody more like . . . like . . .”

“Like who?”
Lace Turner!

“Like, you know, maybe Cynthia.”

He could practically feel his chest expand. “Now you’re talking!” he said.

“I really liked it down there at Christmas.”

“It was great, and we’re looking forward to spending the summer together.”

“Me, too, and when are we goin’ to talk about my Wrangler?”

“I’ve got Harley checking around for the best deal. We’ll get back to you as soon as we find something.”

“Not too old,” said Dooley, meaning it.

“Right. Not too old. We’re looking for mint condition, low mileage, so don’t worry about it.”

He wasn’t going to worry about it, either. This summer, Dooley would be living at the beach with a sharp little ride and a job at Mona’s. Father Tim felt the excitement of it as his own.

“So, tell me, why did Caroline do . . . what she did?” Dooley Barlowe seemed to bring out mighty strong feelings in the opposite sex. He remembered the time Lace Turner had nearly knocked Dooley’s head off for stealing her hat.

“I don’t know, it was weird. Somebody said I was supposed to be dancin’ with Caroline, and that I forgot and talked the whole time to Lace, but that’s not true, I hardly talked to Lace more than five minutes—I don’t know, maybe fifteen.”

“Aha. Well.”
Well, well, well.

 

He sat in his office, mildly addled by the persistent smell of fresh paint and new carpet, and struggled without success to keep his mind on his sermon outline.

Finding Jessie Barlowe had been a fluke, but finding Sammy and Kenny would take a miracle.

There was no way he could trace Kenny via the clues of “thinning hair” and “headed for Oregon.”

As for Sammy, Buck had called to say that someone saw Sammy with the road crew who worked on the highway from Holding to New Hampton more than six years ago. The boy’s father had once worked on that road crew; maybe Sammy had been taken by his father. It disturbed him that he might one day have to confront Dooley’s father; it wasn’t a pleasant thought at all, yet he couldn’t shut it out of his mind.

When they returned to Mitford, he would have to pursue this fragile thread, this vapor upon the air.

Before lunch, he went down his list of calls.

“If I was going to pass from a broken hip, I’d already have passed,” said Ella Bridgewater.

“Absolutely!”

“I’m not ready to be carried down the road in a box just yet!”

“Amen!”

“I am going to the graveyard, though, to plant a little something on Mother’s grave. We’ll see how this hateful contraption works on gravel.”

Ella Bridgewater hobbling down an isolated gravel lane on an aluminum walker? Wearing a long, black dress and toting a spade and a bush?

“I’ll come up next week and go with you.”

“Now, Father,” she said, obviously pleased, “you don’t have to do that!”

“I know I don’t
have
to, which is another reason I’m happy to.”

“You beat all!”

“Worse has been said,” he told her.

 

“Louella!”

“Who that talkin’?”

“Father Kavanagh.”

“Honey, how you doin’?”

“I can’t complain. But how about you, how’s the hip?”

“That hip ain’t keepin’ me down. This mornin’ I rolled to th’ kitchen an’ made a pan of biscuits.”

“Buttermilk?”

“Thass all I use.”

“Wish I could have one.” He sounded positively wistful. “With plenty of butter and . . . what kind of jam, do you think?”

“Huckleberry!” said Louella.

“Bingo!”

“When you an’ Miss Cynthia comin’ home?”

“I don’t know. Maybe by the end of the year. Soon!”

“Not soon enough. We miss you aroun’ here. I go an’ pray with Miss Pattie, poor soul. Law, law, that Miss Pattie . . .”

“What’s Miss Pattie done now?”

Louella gave forth with her rich, mezzo laughter.

“Miss Pattie have eyes for Mr. Berman, you know he’s a mighty handsome man. Now she quit throwin’ ’is clothes out th’ window, she likes to wear ’is shoes.”

“How on earth does she get around in his shoes?”

“Oh, she in a chair, you know, like me; she can’t walk a step. She put those shoes on, climb up in that buggy, an’ off she go, pleased as punch.”

“Aha.”

“Mr. Berman is
sweet
, honey, he gave her a pair of alligator loafers, said to Nurse Lola, let ’er have ’em, a man can’t wear but one pair of shoes, anyway. Ain’t that nice?”

“I’ll say!”

She sighed. “Not a soul to sing with up here.”

He sighed. “Not a soul to sing with down here.”

“You hit one and I’ll join in,” she said, chuckling.

He didn’t think he’d ever sung four verses of anything over the phone before, but when he finished, he was definitely in improved spirits.

 

His wife set freshly made chicken salad before him, with a hot roll and steaming mug of tea. She stood holding his hand as he asked the blessing.

“What do you think of me coming home for lunch?” he asked. “I’ve known some who don’t take kindly to husbands falling in to be fed.” Might as well learn the truth, which his wife seemed generally enthusiastic to deliver.

“I love that you come home for lunch, Timothy, you’re my main social contact now that I’m working so hard to finish the book.” She set her own plate on the table and kissed the top of his head.

“How’s it coming?”

“Peaks, valleys, highs, lows,” she said, sitting down.

“Life,” he said.

“Oh, gosh, that reminds me, I need the car this afternoon. I’m running over to the Sound to sketch a blue heron.”

His wife needed live fodder, flesh and blood; no Polaroids for her, thank you—she was
plein air
all the way. Except for an occasional beach umbrella or background bush that might be lifted from memory, she went looking for the real thing. Violet, who was certainly the real thing, was the fourth or fifth white cat in an unbroken chain of actual Violets adopted by his wife over the years. He had, himself, been recruited to appear as a wise man in her book
The Mouse in the Manger
. He didn’t think he’d looked very wise in her watercolor—more idiotic, truth be told—but she’d been pleased.

They’d once gone to the woods together, where he tried to enter her world of absorption as she fixed her gaze on lichen—but his mind had wandered like a free-range chicken, and he ended up thinking through a sermon based on Philippians four-thirteen.

“Oh, and after the Sound, I’m running by Janette’s and taking the children out for ice cream.”

“Good deal.” He thought her eyes were as blue as wild chicory.

“By the way, just before you came in, Roger Templeton called. He said he didn’t reach you at church.”

“Aha.”

“Wants you to give him a ring.”

“Will do.”

They ate quietly, the clock ticking over the stove.

“Timothy ...”

“Yes?”

“Don’t ever leave me.”

Every so often, quite out of nowhere, she asked this plaintive thing, which shook and moved him. He put his fork down and took her hand. “I would never leave you. Never.”

“Even when I’m old and covered with crow’s-feet?”

“I love your crow’s-feet, Kavanagh.”

“I thought you once said I didn’t have any crow’s-feet.” He was relieved to see her veer away from the fleeting sadness, and laugh.

“You’ve nailed me,” he said, grinning.

He lifted her hand and kissed her palm and held it to his cheek. “You mean everything to me. How could I ever thank you for what you are, day and night, a gift, a gift. . . .”

She looked at him, smiling. “I love it when you talk like that, dearest. You may come home for lunch whenever you wish.”

 

Roger met him at the church office on Wednesday morning, carrying a paper bag closed with a twist-tie, and looking bashful.

“Face your desk and close your eyes,” said Roger.

Father Tim did as he was told, hearing the rustle of the paper bag being opened.

“Okay, you can turn around now.”

The green-winged teal in Roger’s outstretched hands looked him dead in the eye.

Newly painted in all its subtle and vibrant colors, he found it beautiful, breathtaking, alive. He opened his mouth to speak, but found no words.

“It’s yours,” said Roger.

“You can’t mean that.”

“It’s yours. It’s been yours all along. I saw the look on your face when you watched what I was doing. I know that look; it’s yours.”

He took it reverently, moved and amazed.

“Turn it over,” said Roger, flushing with pleasure.

He turned it over. On the flat bottom was burned the name of the island, today’s date, and a message:

 

Clutching the prized possession in his left hand, he embraced Roger Templeton and pounded him on the back.

“Thank you,” he said, just this side of croaking.

“I’ve only given away a few. Ernie has one, and my son and his wife, and . . .” Roger shrugged, awkward and self-conscious.

“I can’t thank you enough, my friend. I’ll treasure it more than you know.”

He set it on his desk and gazed at it again, marveling.

A few months ago, he’d relinquished an angel; today, he’d been given a duck. He’d come out on the long end of the stick, and no two ways about it.

 

He stood in the sacristy, vested and waiting with the anxious choir, and the eager procession that extended all the way down the steps to the basement.

There was new music this morning, composed by the organist, something wondrous and not so easy to sing, and choir adrenaline was pumping like an oil derrick. Adding voltage to the electricity bouncing off the walls was the fact that the music required congregational response, always capable of injecting an element of surprise, if not downright dismay.