At Home in Mitford (33 page)

“Probably not me, probably not you.”

“Who, then?”

“God,” he said, simply.

“Tell me more.”

“If we’re going to be a team, my friend, we must think like a team. And to do that, we need to agree in prayer.”

“Count me in.”

“Neither you nor I may be able to convince her about this transplant, but if God thinks it’s best for her, it’s just a matter of time.”

“Let’s go for it,” Hoppy said.

The two men bowed their heads, and Barnabas rested his on the doctor’s foot.

After his friend left, he sat for a while on the sofa. Then he went upstairs, said good night to Dooley, and took a hot shower. But an hour after getting into bed, the adrenaline was pumping so fast and furiously that he lay sleepless until three o’clock. At four, he awoke exhausted and lay staring at his moonlit window until dawn.

He wondered about his recent, creeping fatigue. His running had been sporadic, and he’d let a few taboo foods slip back into his diet. But his indiscretions had been minor in that regard, no more than a piece of cornbread, a sliver of chocolate.

Dear God, what a hideous feeling to go down for the count, when he’d spent most of his life in glowing good health. He wondered, as he lay there, about the helplessness of the elderly, about people who couldn’t move their limbs, or walk to the barbershop, or get up and go to the toilet.

He had devoted his life to intercessory prayer, asking little for himself, trusting in God’s provisions, and seeing that trust confirmed on every side. But he lay, now, feeling that his very essence was somehow draining away, and prayed fervently for his own strength, for wisdom, and renewal.

The baptism was truly a blessed event. When he held her in his arms and said, “Rebecca Jane, you are sealed by the Holy Spirit in baptism and marked as Christ’s own forever,” a great warmth flowed through him, and the infant stirred in his arms and looked into his eyes.

At the reception in the parish hall, they were standing in line to hold the amiable Rebecca Jane, whose green eyes, stand-up strawberry hair, and dimpled chin were melting hearts by the score.

Though Dooley didn’t attempt to hold her, he stayed by the side of anyone who did, looking at her intently, and marveling

“I like ’is baby,” he told Father Tim. “I like ’is baby better’n’ . . .”

“Better than snuff, I suppose?”

“Nope. Better’n Goosedown Owen!”

“That’s quite a compliment.”

“But ’er hair’s funny. It looks kind of like a stump full of gran’daddy spiders.”

“Every baby is special,” the rector told Marge, who had finally reclaimed her daughter from the eager parishioners. “But there’s something quite different about Rebecca Jane. I sense a spirit that’s very rich with God’s promise.”

“I sense that, too,” she said, kissing her baby’s downy head.

It was inspiring to see Louella’s broad, mahogany face smiling at him these days from the gospel side. Her presence brought something nourishing to the spirit of the congregation, like raisins added to bread.

She also made an addition with her fruity, mezzo voice, which she lifted with surprising strength in the Anglican hymns, learned as a girl in this very church.

“She makes me feel young,” said Miss Sadie, when Father Tim visited Fernbank for lunch. “When I’m around Louella, it’s like being close to Mama, all over again!”

“Did you know Miss Sadie rock’ me in her arms when I was a baby?” Louella said, proudly. “So, when I’m aroun’ Miss Sadie, I feel young myself!”

“We don’t know who raised who!” said the mistress of Fernbank.

A very nice kettle of fish, thought the pleased rector.

On Thursday evening, it occurred to him that he had never invited his neighbor to attend a service at Lord’s Chapel. What kind of hospitality was that, he asked himself, as he dialed her number.

“I don’t mind telling you,” he confessed, “that I’ve been wanting to invite you to a church service, but, well, I keep forgetting to do it. And I apologize!”

“Do you soak your beans?” asked Cynthia.

“Why, yes. Yes, I do,” he said, taken aback.

“I just love to cook a pot of beans. But you will never guess what I did a few days ago, speaking of forgetting.”

“I can’t imagine,” he said, which was the truth if he’d ever told it.

“I was soaking a big pot of beans, and I put the lid on the pot, and set them on the stove, and a week later, there was this horrible smell, I thought something had died in my kitchen, that Violet had, well, you know . . .”

“Killed a mouse?”

“Exactly! But guess what it was? It was those beans! I’d simply forgotten they were in the pot, and they’d just . . . well . . .”

“Spoiled.”

“Exactly! So, don’t feel bad if you can’t remember to ask me to church.”

“Well, then, I won’t feel a bit bad. But whenever you’d like to come, please know you’ll be welcomed by one and all.”

“I’ve been going to the Presbyterians,” she said, “but yes, I will come soon!”

After the invitation to his neighbor, he called the hospital to check on Russell.

Nurse Herman said he had sent his dinner back, barely touched, insisting that he could have cooked it better himself, so she figured he was improving, and could the rector please bring a pound of livermush the next time he came to the hospital, as it wasn’t something they ordinarily bought, and Russell said he would give a war pension for some.

“He also insisted,” reported Nurse Herman, “that he would go down to the kitchen and personally fry it himself, and Dr. Harper said fine, fry him some too. Can you imagine?”

“LIVERMUSH,” Father Tim wrote on his list of things to do.

After a useless and frustrating meeting on Friday afternoon, he decided to take Barnabas on a long walk. When Dooley left on his bicycle to do Fernbank chores, he headed toward Little Mitford Creek with Barnabas straining at the leash.

The wet winter promised a glorious spring, and here and there, pushing through sodden leaf mold, were furtive shoots of green that gladdened his heart. He loved the smell of the woods and the damp alluvial soil that covered these mountains like a blanket.

Smoke was boiling out of the chimney, the great aluminum tub that Homeless used for bathing was hanging on the side of the house, and a colorful wash was on the line. Homeless answered the door, leaning on his crutch and swaddled head to foot in a worn Indian blanket.

“Well, sir, if it ain’t the clergy! Come in, come in, make yourself at home!”

The rector and his dog discovered a roaring fire in the old stove, a soup pot simmering on top, and a book open on the little table where an oil lamp burned against the fading afternoon light. In the corner stood the neatly made cot, with two worn quilts folded at the foot.

“I declare, Homeless, I could move in here and be happy as a clam.”

“Happy as a hog in slop, is what I am. Set down right here,” he said, offering his only chair to the rector, who took it, knowing that it pleased his host to offer him the best seat in the house.

Homeless settled on the wood box between the table and the stove.

“My friend,” said the rector, “I’m feeling the ills of the world these days. I thought I’d come and visit a man with some plain sense.”

“You’re visitin’ a man s’ plain, he’s settin’ here with no britches on. One pair is hangin’ on th’ clothesline, and I give th’ other pair away. Fella lives up th’ creek yonder was too ragged t’ look for work, so I stepped out of m’ pants, an’ he put ’em on and headed to town. You prob’ly don’t want to get that plain, yourself.”

“No. No, I don’t. You’re right. That’s too plain for me.”

“Sometimes you have to gag on fancy before you can appreciate plain, th’ way I see it. For too many years, I ate fancy, I dressed fancy, I talked fancy. A while back, I decided to start talkin’ th’ way I was raised t’ talk, and for th’ first time in forty years, I can understand what I’m sayin’.”

They laughed easily.

“Right here is the way I talked for a lot of years,” said Homeless. “You might have thought I had a degree from some fine college. It was a real paste-up job, you might say.” He grinned. “Well, that’s the end of my demonstration on talking fancy . . .”

“I’d find it interesting to know what you did all those years in advertising.” Leaning against the wall in a straight-back chair gave the rector an odd sense of relief, as if he’d run away to the creek and left his worries behind.

“I was what you call an account man. Toothpaste, beer, and automotive was my categories, with a little stint on bankin’ and breakfast cereals. It was when I went on breakfast cereals that liquor got me. If I’d’ve been around when that oat bran thing hit, somethin’ worse than liquor might’ve got me.”

Homeless stood up and opened the stove door and poked the logs with a stick. The blanket shifted and slipped toward the floor, but he grabbed it, adjusted it, and sat back down, grinning broadly. “There’s every temptation in th’ world for me to get another pair of pants, but I’m fightin’ it.”

Father Tim laughed heartily.

“Th’ bottom line is, I was drunk for thirty years. Thirty years! It astounds me to this very day. I signed contracts, made presentations, drove cars, flew planes, directed meetin’s, and stayed half-shot th’ whole time.

“I lost three wives, nine jobs, four houses, two kids, and one foot. Th’ only thing I didn’t lose was m’ self-respect, and that’s because I didn’t have any.”

Barnabas listened intently.

“You might say I did everything I could to earn th’ name Homeless and live up to it. And now that things are diff’rent and I’ve been sober for nine years, I don’t try to dodge m’ name. It reminds me of what I was. Homeless! Sick! Slobberin’ in th’ gutter! God A’mighty.”

“What brought you back here?”

“I asked myself where I’d been th’ happiest, and it was right here, back home where I was raised. They were hard times when I was comin’ up, but they were good times. And I’d got to th’ place where I’d seen it all. I’d made the big money, had th’ big expense accounts, th’ whole nine yards. I turned myself in to dry out, and I stayed dry. I sold everything, paid my debts, and turned up in Wesley with sixty bucks in m’ pocket.”

“Did you ever look back?”

“I never looked back.”

The fire crackled in the stove.

“I don’t mind telling you I’m curious about the kind of terms you’re on with God.”

“We talk,” said Homeless. “We’re definitely on speakin’ terms. I’m no all-out pagan, by a long shot. I was raised in th’ church and baptized as a boy. But there’s somethin’ lackin’, and I don’t know what it is. It’s like somethin’s itchin’ me, won’t let me be. I cain’t name it, and t’ tell you th’ truth, I don’t want to think about it.

“You know how th’ town churches do, bringin’ me this t’ eat and that t’ eat, tryin’ to get me in a pew. You people come back in here to th’ creek, an’ make me feel like a frog you’re tryin’ to gig.”

The rector had fished a stick out of the wood basket. It was a comfort to turn it in his hand, to look at the knots and the grain. He felt the urge to whittle on it with a knife, but no urge to speak. Homeless was right.

“Now that’s a hateful thing for a man t’ say, but I can talk to you, I can level with you.”

“I appreciate that, my friend. Once in a while, I need to talk to somebody I can level with, myself.”

“You can level with me anytime. But right now,” said Homeless, picking up his crutch, “I’m goin’ to jump in here and lay on some supper, and give
you
somethin’ t’ eat, for a change!”

He lifted the lid on the soup pot, and out of it wafted a fragrance so heavenly that his guest was transfixed.

“I’m afraid I won’t be able to stay. I’ve got a boy who’ll be wanting his dinner.”

“I’ve got a nice, big ham bone down in here for ol’ Barnabas,” said their host, stirring the soup with a long-handled spoon.

Barnabas beat the floor with his tail.

“You don’t know how we’d like to stay, but the boy . . .”

“How old’s this boy?” asked Homeless, setting a cast-iron griddle on the stove top.

“Dooley’s eleven.”

“When I was eleven, my daddy had a big farm th’ other side of Wesley. From th’ time m’ mama died, I got up at four ever’ mornin’, made breakfast for three little young ’uns, milked th’ cows, cleaned up th’ kitchen, and walked t’ school. If that boy can’t make hisself a jam san’wich . . .”

“Set me a place,” said Father Tim.

“I got a deal with Avis,” Homeless confided, ladling a second helping into his guest’s bowl. “All he throws out, I go through. But don’t worry that y’r soup’s not sanitary. I brought th’ cabbage home and washed it good. I cleaned th’ potatoes with a scrub brush, cut the soft spots off th’ onion, gored a bad place out of th’ rutabaga, and put it all on t’ boil after I took m’ bath and done m’ washin’. I keep busy. I’m not one t’ lollygag.”

The rector thought this might be the best soup he’d ever put in his mouth, and he didn’t even like rutabagas.

Homeless waved his hand over their supper, which included mugs of steaming coffee, and the hot, day-old bread he’d toasted on the griddle and buttered. “I paid for th’ coffee and th’ butter, but not another morsel. There’s prob’ly less ’n twenty-five cents in this whole deal!”

“That’s a deal, all right.”

“Come spring, I won’t even be payin’ for th’ coffee. I’m goin’ t’ dig a mess of chick’ry, roast th’ roots, and grind ’em up. You boil that of a mornin’ and drink it, and it’ll set y’r feet on th’ floor.”

“All things considered, my friend, I count you among the richest folks in Mitford.”

Homeless winked and laughed his rasping laugh. “That man is th’ richest whose pleasures are th’ cheapest!”

“Thoreau,” said Father Tim.

“Dead right,” beamed his host.

When he and Barnabas came out into Lilac Road at Winnie Ivey’s cottage, he felt as if he’d been away on vacation.