A New Song (7 page)

After all, he had hostas, too. . . .

 

“If I have to say goodbye to you one more time, I’ll puke,” said Mule.

Actually, Mule was moved nearly to bawling that his old buddy had come by the Grill at all. Father Tim could have been loading his car, or turning off the water at the street, or changing his address at the post office—whatever people did who were leaving for God knows how long.

“Livermush straight up,” Father Tim told Percy as he slid into the booth. “And make it a double.”

“Livermush? You ain’t ordered livermush in ten, maybe twelve years.”

“Right. But that’s what I’m having.” He grinned at the dumfounded Percy. “And make it snappy.”

It was reckless to eat livermush, especially a double order, but he was feeling reckless.

Percy set his mouth in a fine line as he cut two slices from the loaf of livermush. He did not approve of long-term Grill customers moving elsewhere. Number one, the Father had been coming to the Grill for sixteen, seventeen years; he was established. To just up and run off, flinging his lunch and breakfast trade to total strangers, was . . . he couldn’t even find a word for what it was.

Number two, why anybody would want to leave Mitford in the first place was beyond him. He had personally left it only twice—when Velma was pregnant and they went to see cousins in Avery County, and when he and Velma went on that bloomin’ cruise to Hawaii, which his children had sent them on whether he wanted to go or not.

But worse than the Father leaving Mitford, he was leaving it for a location that had once
broken off from the mainland
, for Pete’s sake, and could not be trusted as ground you’d want under your feet. So here was somebody he’d thought to be sensible and wise, clearly proving himself to be otherwise.

As he laid two thick slices on the sizzling grill, Percy shook his head. Every time he thought he’d gained a little understanding of human nature, something like this came up and he had to start over.

J. C. Hogan thumped into the booth. “Man!” he said, mopping his face with a rumpled handkerchief. “It’s hot as a depot stove today. I hope you know how hot it gets
down there.
”

Father Tim put his hands over his ears and shut his eyes.

“Lookit,” said J.C. He tossed the
Muse
, still smelling of ink, on the table. “You made today’s front page.”

“What for?”

Mule snatched the eight-page edition to his side of the table and adjusted his glasses. “Let me read it. Let’s see. Here we go.” The realtor cleared his throat and read aloud.

“Blah, blah, blah, OK, here’s th’ meat of it.
‘Father Kavanagh treated everybody as if equal in intelligence and accomplishment, making his real church the homes, sidewalks and businesses of Mitford. . . .

Father Tim felt his face grow hot. “Give me that,” he said, snatching the newspaper.

“What’s the matter?” said J.C. “Don’t you like it?”

He didn’t know if he liked it. What he knew was that it sounded like . . . an obituary.

 

He was hunkering down now, trying to cover all the bases.

Thanks be to God, it was nearly over, they were nearly on their way. He’d been going at this thing of leaving as if it were life or death, when in fact it was more like a year to sixteen months, and then he’d be back in Mitford, with half the population not realizing he’d left.

He screeched into Louella’s room at Hope House, breathing hard. Miss Sadie’s will had provided her lifelong companion with Room Number One, which was the finest room in the entire place.

Louella plucked the remote from her capacious lap and muted
All My Children
.

“You look like you been yanked up by th’ roots!” she said, concerned.

“Ah . . . ,” he replied, unable to muster anything else.

“An’ it yo’
birthday
!” she scolded.

“It is?”

“You sixty-six today!”

“Louella, do I remind you of your age?”

“Honey,” she said, looking smug, “you don’ know my age.”

He’d been coming to see Louella every day since Miss Sadie died. Sometimes they played checkers, but more often they sang hymns. The thought of leaving her made him feel like a common criminal. . . .

“How’s your knee?” he asked, kissing her warm, chocolate-colored cheek. “How’s your bladder infection? Have you started the potting class yet?”

“Set down on yo’ stool,” she said. He always sat on her footstool, which made him feel nine years old. A feeling, by the way, he rather liked.

“Now,” she said, beaming, “we ain’ goan talk about knees an’ bladders, an’ far as pottin’ classes goes, I decided I ain’t messin’ wit’ no clay. What I’m wantin’ to do is
sing,
and ain’t hardly anybody roun’ here can carry a tune in a bucket.”

“I’ll go a round or two with you,” he said, feeling better at once.

“I take th’ first verse, you take th’ second, an’ we’ll chime in together on number three.”

Louella closed her eyes and raised her hands and began to lift her rich, mezzo voice in song. She rocked a little in her chair.

 

He waited two beats and picked up the second verse, not caring if they heard him all the way to the monument.

 

Two nurses stuck their heads in the door, grinning, as he joined his voice with Louella’s on the third verse.

 

They were silent for a moment. “Now,” said Louella, “that feels better, don’t it?”

He nodded, sensing the tears lurking in him, some kind of sorrow that he’d noticed for a week or more.

“You pushin’ too hard,” she said.

“You have to push, Louella.” Out there in the world, he wanted to say, it was all about push.

“Maybe you done stepped aroun’ th’ Lord an’ tryin’ to lead th’ way.”

He stood up and looked out the window, into the green valley he called the Land of Counterpane. Maybe she was right.

Louella didn’t often get out of her chair these days, but now she rose and stood by him, and put her hand on his shoulder.

“You know I pray for you and Miss Cynthia every mornin’ an’ every night, and I ain’ goin’ to stop. Anytime you get in a tight place down yonder, you just think, Louella’s prayin’ for me, and go on ’bout your business.”

As he left Room Number One, he found himself humming. He couldn’t remember doing that in a very long time.

Maybe the real issue wasn’t how Louella would manage without him, but how would he manage without Louella?

 

He cantered down the hall and found Pauline finishing up in the dining room.

“Pauline?”

“Father!”

He gave her a hug. “What do you hear from Buck?”

“He’ll be home the fifteenth of October.”

“And we’ll roar in on the twenty-fifth, after which I’ll personally see to it that you become Mrs. Buck Leeper.”

She smiled and looked at her hands. He’d never seen her more beautiful. In fact, the miracle of watching Pauline Barlowe become whole wasn’t unlike watching the slow unfolding of the petals on his Souvenir de la Malmaison.

“That is what you want, isn’t it?”

“More’n anything. Yes, sir, I do.”

“You’ve waited, and I admire that. How’s his job in Alaska?”

“Real good. He says he’ll bring it in on time.”

“He always does,” he said, feeling proud with her. “And Jessie and Poo? How’re they feeling about all that’s ahead?”

“Excited.” She hesitated, then dared to use a word she had never trusted in her life. “Happy!”

He nodded, pleased. “Dooley will be in safe hands with Harley, and I know he’ll be coming around to your place often. You might want to . . .”
Watch over him,
he wanted to say.

“I will,” she replied, knowing.

He was halfway along the hall when she called after him. “Father!”

He turned around. “Yes?”

“We hate to see you go.”

“I’ll be back before you know I’m gone.”

She smiled and waved, and he saw Dooley in her for a fleeting moment, something about the way she held her head, and the thrust of her chin. . . .

 

“Law, help!” said Puny, looking exhausted. “I’ll be glad to see y’all
go
!”

There! The truth from somebody, at last.

“You never seen th’ like of mess Dooley’d squirreled away in his room that we had to drag to th’ basement. Harley said if we kept on haulin’ stuff down there, he’d have to go to livin’ out of his truck.” The freckled Puny hooted with laughter.

“Where are my grandbabies?” he wondered. Puny sometimes fetched the twins from church school a little early. Sissy and Sassy even kept a stash of toys at the yellow house, consisting of a red wagon, several dolls, stuffed monkeys, crayons, and other paraphernalia.

“They’re dead asleep in th’ front room, Miz Hart said they fussed all day.”

“Uh-oh.”

“But they’ll be glad to see their granpaw.” Puny smiled hugely. The poor soul standing in front of her would never have had the joy of grandchildren if it hadn’t been for her generosity. She’d given him her babies as free-handed as you please, and he’d taken to them like a duck to water. The truth was, Sissy was crazy about her granpaw and often kissed a framed picture of him that Puny had proudly placed in her home.

He patted his pocket. “I’m ready when they are.”

“You’ll make their little teeth fall out with that candy.”

“Once a week, two small pieces? I hardly think so. Besides,” he said, “they’re going to fall out, anyway.”

She shook her head, tsking, happy that someone she loved also loved her twin three-year-olds. It would be different around here with the Father gone, and Cynthia, who was always so bright and helpful. . . .

 

Every last scrap of Dooley’s tack had made it to Harley’s basement apartment, and Father Tim had helped Dooley clean his room at the rectory, top to bottom. In addition, all the books for Whitecap were packed, sealed, and ready for the shipper to pick up tomorrow.

Before he dragged himself upstairs to take a shower, he’d just lie down and put his head on the arm of the sofa, but only for a moment, of course.

If there was ever a birthday when he had no time or energy to read St. Paul’s letters to Timothy, this was it. Ever since seminary, he’d made a point of reading the letters on, or adjacent to, the date of his nativity. Perhaps his yearly pondering of these Scriptures was one way of taking stock.

“‘To Timothy, my dearly beloved son,’” he murmured, quoting at random from the familiar Second Epistle. “‘Grace, mercy, and peace, from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Lord . . . watch thou in all things, endure afflictions, do the work of an evangelist, make full proof of thy ministry.’”

He was sinking into the sofa. “‘The cloke that I left at Troas with Carpus,’” he whispered—this was a favorite part—“‘when thou comest, bring with thee, and the books, but especially the parchments—’”

“Timothy!”

It was his wife, calling from the front hall.

“Can you come here a moment?”

He forced himself off the sofa and trotted along the hall, obedient as any pup.

“You rang?” he asked, rubbing his eyes.

She smiled. “Walk out to the porch with me.”

“Why?” he asked, peevish.

“Why not?” she said, taking his hand. It occurred to him that she looked unusually . . . expectant, somehow, on the verge of something.

When they stepped to the porch, he noticed it at once. A slick-looking red convertible was parked at the curb, with the top down. Hardly anybody ever parked in front of their house. . . .

“I wonder who
that
belongs to.”

“I’m looking at him,” said Cynthia.

His wife was lit up like a Christmas tree.

“What do you mean you’re—”

“Happy birthday, dearest!” She was suddenly kissing his face—both cheeks, his nose, his mouth.

“But you can’t possibly—”

“It’s
yours
! To you from me, for our trip to Whitecap, for zooming around like feckless youths in the rain, in the sunshine, in the
snow
, what the heck!”

“But ...”

Without meaning to, exactly, he sat down hard on the top step.

She laughed and sat with him. “What do you think?”

He stared at it, aghast, unable to think. “But,” he said lamely, “it’s red.”

“So? Red is good!”

“But I’m a priest!”

“All the better!” she crowed. “Now, darling, don’t get stuffy on me.”

He saw that he might easily wound her to the very depths.

“But the Buick . . .”

“What about it?”

“It’s . . . it’s still perfectly
good.
”

She raised one eyebrow.

He suddenly had another thought, this one worse than the others. “The new priest rolling into town like a rock star . . . what will people think?”

“I never mind what people think—ever! We didn’t sleep together ’til we were married, and yet, imagine how the tongues wagged when we were seen sneaking back and forth through the hedge.”