At Home in Mitford (31 page)

“Mine, if it’s OK with you. Everybody from here to Wesley and back has upper respiratory infections. I can’t leave.”

“Say when.”

“Around six.”

“I’ll be there.”

He put the phone down. It was the first time he’d had a moment to catch his breath, and the jewels came instantly to mind.

Why were they gone from the urn? Why would they have been moved? Did someone know he’d found them? He felt an odd chill, and he did not like the feeling.

“Viral myocarditis!” Hoppy looked as if he’d been struck. “Good God,” he said quietly, and sat back in his chair.

Father Tim looked at the notes he’d taken while Olivia told her story. The condition was complex, and he’d tried to assemble the facts accurately.

The doctor leaned forward. “Tell me everything she said.”

“It began with what she thought was flu, about two years ago.”

"No energy,” said Hoppy. "Shortness of breath, chest discomfort.”

“That’s right. She said she felt like she was falling apart. She went to the doctor, took antibiotics, accelerated her vitamins, got plenty of rest, but nothing worked. They gave her a battery of blood tests and didn’t find anything.”

“Typical.”

“Finally, they did an EKG and saw some abnormalities. Then an echocardiogram, which showed an enlarged heart.”

“Then the biopsy,” said Hoppy.

“Right. Viral myocarditis.”

The doctor looked ashen.

“The symptoms waxed and waned. She would have perfectly normal times, just like she’s had since coming to Mitford, then severe flare-ups when she could hardly breathe, and scarcely walk for the edema in her legs.”

“The flare-ups are totally unpredictable. Who’s her doctor?”

“A man from your old alma mater, Mass General.”

“Leo Baldwin, I hope.”

He checked his notes. “Exactly! Leo Baldwin.”

“The best. I know him. Stunning credentials. What happened when she had the tissue biopsy?”

“Coxsackie B, she said. They tried medication, but the side effects were gruesome. Affected her blood count.”

“You’ve seen termites in action?” Hoppy asked.

“Yes. Right under my back steps, more’s the pity.”

“Coxsackie eats away like that, at the heart muscle. Vile, insidious, incurable. Why hasn’t she had a transplant?”

“You understand the chances of finding a donor with a normal blood type.”

“Seventy-five, a hundred to one.”

“Add to that the chance of finding a donor with B blood type.”

“Thousands to one.”

“And then the chances of getting the heart to the patient with the right kind of timing.”

Hoppy removed his glasses and rubbed his eyes. “Crap,” he said softly.

He called Walter.

“Not there? You mean just . . . vanished?”

“The urn was empty.”

“Look, Timothy, you’ve been pressing hard. You haven’t had a vacation in years and—”

“No, I am not seeing things, and it was not my imagination. The jewels were there before Christmas. I only opened one little sack, there must have been fifteen or twenty stones in it, and I could see there were others, other little cheesecloth sacks just like it.” He sighed. “There is, however, one comfort in all this.”

“Which is . . . ?”

“I’m no longer in possession of stolen goods.”

“He’s hardly speaking to me,” said Olivia.

Percy came over to their booth, wiping his hands on the worn apron. “I don’t b’lieve I’ve had th’ pleasure,” he said to Olivia.

“Meet Olivia Davenport,” said Father Tim. “Olivia Davenport, Percy Mosely, the owner of this venerable establishment. When we were in for breakfast, he was out with the flu.”

She smiled and extended her hand. “I hear your calf’s liver with onions is four-star.”

“She didn’t hear it from me,” said the rector.

“Well, th’ Father here don’t like it, n’r Miss Rose, but th’ rest of us ain’t so hard to satisfy.”

“I look forward to deciding for myself.”

“For you,” said Percy, obviously enchanted, “we can have it back on th’ specials by Tuesday.”

“Well, then, look for me at noon on Tuesday!”

Percy went away in such ecstasy that the rector feared for his angina condition.

“Barely speaking?” asked her rector.

“I know what it is, of course. He’s afraid.”

“Yes, of course. And he’s ashamed.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that he wants very much to be brave, to let his feelings for you grow. But, as well as fearing the pain, I believe he’s ashamed of the fear.”

Olivia’s brow furrowed as she considered that. “Yes. Yes, I understand that.”

“Also, I feel that Hoppy is . . .”

“Is what?” she asked eagerly.

“Is thinking.”

“Thinking?”

“He knows your doctor.”

“No! Leo? He knows Leo?” She was obviously thrilled with this news.

“Hoppy interned at Mass General.”

Olivia laughed with unbridled warmth. The sparkle danced again in her eyes. “Mass General is like home! I’ve spent so much of my life there, why, just talking about it makes me suddenly . . . almost homesick. And Hoppy . . . he interned there and knows Leo.” She said this softly, as if it gave her great comfort.

“I believe Hoppy may be thinking of how you could . . . that is, what he might do if . . .”

“A transplant? No. It’s too much. I’ve given up. The chances, the risks . . . nothing is in my favor. Father, I promise you—I can’t do it.”

“Well, Olivia, all I can say to that is: Philippians four-thirteen.”

She laughed easily. “I love it when you talk like that!”

Emma handed him the phone, looking tentative. “Harold’s preacher,” she said.

“My good brother,” said the voice on the line, “this is Absalom Greer—orchard keeper, general-store operator, pastor of three little churches, and all-around worker in the vineyards of the Lord.”

“Pastor Greer!” said the rector, instantly attracted to the tone of his caller’s voice. “What can I do for you this morning?”

“Well, my friend, since we’re to perform a ceremony together, I’d be beholden to you if we could have a mite of fellowship!”

“Consider it done,” he said with warm anticipation. “Consider it done!”

“I declare,” he told Puny on Wednesday, “if Dooley and I don’t get out to Meadowgate soon, Rebecca Jane will be in college.”

“When’s the baptizin’?”

“Two weeks hence. The weather has been so variable, with rain or snow nearly every Sunday, that I’ve never laid eyes on her.”

“I’d like to hold a baby,” Puny said wistfully.

“Well, then, young lady, go find yourself a husband.”

“Ha! There’s not a soul out there I’d pick.”

“How can you know that when you’ve limited the picking to Mitford and Wesley?” That was a good question, he thought.

“Mama said you don’t go huntin’, you let ’em kind of go by you in a parade.”

“Yes, well, that may be. But have you seen any parades going by lately?”

She sighed. “What d’ you want for supper?”

“You’re asking me?”

“Well, for a change I thought I’d ask, instead of leavin’ a surprise.”

“Puny, please do not try to fix a thing that ain’t broke.”

She stared at him. “What kind of talk is that?” “I mean that I fervently beseech you to keep doing exactly what you’re doing. Your surprises are my unending delight.”

She smiled gratefully but a little weakly, he thought, as she paired his clean socks.

“Puny,” he said, “I faithfully pray for you each day. But I believe I’m going to add something to that prayer. I’m going ask the Lord to start the parade!”

Puny blushed and lowered her eyes. He was astounded to see a tear creep down her freckled cheek.

Without knowing why, it touched him so deeply that he turned away. He heard her blow her nose.

“Cornbread!” she suddenly said, with great feeling.

“Cornbread?”

She flew to the stove drawer. “I’m goin’ to make you a cake of cornbread, I don’t care what your doctor says! And I’m puttin’ salt in it, and bacon drippin’s, and fryin’ it in Crisco, ’cause I’m tired of holdin’ back on my good cornbread.”

“Well, then!” he said, with admiration. “Just do it!”

The weather on Thursday morning was grim. He’d been aware of rain all night long, and sometime around four o’clock, Dooley crept into his bedroom. On hearing a noise, he and Barnabas sat straight up, seeing only a silhouette in the doorway. Barnabas growled darkly.

“Oh, shut up!” said Dooley, “I ain’t no burglar. I come t’ say I’m freezin’ m’ tailbone in there.”

He got up and turned the thermostat to sixty, and Dooley stomped back to bed. The floor was like ice, and the rain beat against the windows in sheets.

At five, just before he was to get up for morning prayer and study, the wind began. It lashed the trees outside his bedroom window, groaned around the rectory, and made him recall the ominous forecast that ice would coat the streets like glass by midmorning. He remembered, too, that this was the day Louella was to arrive in Mitford and begin life again at Fernbank.

He went to the window and looked down at the little house next door. A lamp burned in an upstairs window, a pool of warm light in the dark and pouring rain.

“Well, then, Lord,” he said aloud as he stood there. “Is this another memo from you about taking my car to Lew Boyd, so I can start driving again? How will the boy get to school in all this? And how can I make it to the hospital in this downpour?”

He heard a sound behind him.

“Is that you talkin’ in here?”

“It is.”

“Well, it sounds creepy with this ol’ storm a blowin’ and you settin’ in here in th’ dark, yammerin’ to yourself.”

“Yammerin’, is it?”

“It jis’ kind of sounds like yammer, yammer, yammer, yammer.”

He looked down at the boy’s anxious face and put his arm around his shoulders.

“Dooley?”

Dooley hesitated. Then he said it. “Yes, sir?”

“What if we do something different today?”

“What’s ’at?”

“What if we stay home and play with that train my cousin sent?”

Dooley hollered so loud that Barnabas leaped off the bed and ran into the hallway, barking at his shadow on the wall.

" ’at’s a great idea! Boy, ’at’s a great idea!”

“Would you be willing to admit, then, that preachers can occasionally have a great idea?”

“Yeah! Yes, sir! Boys howdy!”

“And while we’re at it, why don’t we have some of our favorite things, like hot chocolate with three marshmallows, and chili, and—”

“Popcorn, an’ apple pie with ice cream—”

“And a bit of Wordsworth . . .”

“Yuck!”

“And stay in our robes and pajamas.”

“Cool!”

“At eight-thirty, I am going to call your school and say, ‘Dooley Barlowe is not sick today, but if he came out in this weather, he would surely get sick, so look for him tomorrow.’ ”

Without a word, Dooley took the rector’s hand and shook it vigorously.

Early the following morning, the leaden skies cleared, the sun came out, and the village stirred briskly. After his hospital visit, he made a phone call to Lew Boyd, who agreed to do whatever it took to get his car running.

Then, he drove to Wesley on his motor scooter, took the driver’s license test, and, by grace alone, he later said, passed it.

Lew Boyd was looking out the window when he saw the rector walking past the war monument, toward the station. “Here ’e comes, boys,” he said, cutting himself a plug of tobacco.

“Been twenty year since he’s drove a car,” announced Coot Hendrick.

“No, it hain’t,” said Bailey Coffey. “Hit’s been fourteen, maybe fifteen.”

“Ain’t none of you got it right,” said Lew. “Th’ last time he drove that Buick was eight years ago. I looked up where I drained th’ fluids.”

“Time flies,” said Coot, dumping a pack of peanuts in his bottled Coke.

“Boys,” said Father Tim, coming in the front door, “she looks good.”

Lew went down his list. “We washed ’er, waxed ’er, put on y’r radials, put in y’r fluids, give you a batt’ry, vacuumed ’er out, spot cleaned y’r front seat, warshed y’r mats, filled ’er up, run ’er around th’ block, honked th’ horn, and tried out th’ radio.”

“I heard my fav’rite song,” said Coot, “ ‘If You Don’t Stand F’r Somethin’, You’ll Fall F’r Anything.’ ”

“We just all piled in and rode around, if you want to know th’ truth,” Bailey Coffey confessed.

“Here’s th’ bill,” said Lew, “and I don’t mind tellin’ you it’s a whopper.”

Coot patted the dinette chair next to his. “You better set down, is all I can say.”

“Four hundred eighty-six dollars and seventy-eight cents?” the rector asked.