Home to Harmony (2 page)

T
he first time I met Dr. Neely was the day he pulled me into the world.

Though I've tried hard to recall that meeting, it has escaped me. So my first memory of him is when I was five years old and needed my polio shot for first grade. I remember sitting in his waiting room smelling the antiseptic, while my mother read to me from
Highlights
magazine about the Timbertoes family—Ma and Pa, the Timbertoes' children, Tommy and Mabel, and the Timbertoes' goat, Butter.

Butter had eaten Tommy's report card, to Tommy's great relief. He had flunked spelling and with his report card gone was now free to embellish his academic record. Except that Ma and Pa found out, gave Tommy a spanking, and sent him to his room. It made me leery of education: First you get jabbed with a needle, then you get spanked.

I was meditating on the perils of education when the nurse called out, “Sam Gardner.” My mother said
“That's you,” and lifted me off her lap. We followed the nurse down the hallway to Dr. Neely's office. He was sitting on a round stool. He patted the table next to him and said, “Hop up here, Tiger,” which thrilled me.

Tiger! I had often thought myself as tigerlike. Strong and sleek and primed for the kill. I liked hiding in the forsythia bush next to the porch and yelling out my brother's name, then pouncing on him as he walked past. Yes, a tiger. I marveled at Dr. Neely's perception. Which is why I remember that day and have thought fondly of him ever since. Even when I dropped my britches and he stuck me with a needle, I still liked him.

He's still my doctor, though he's nearly eighty and no longer keeps abreast of the latest medical breakthroughs. Dr. Neely doesn't like pills. He likes to give shots, right in the rear, where the good Lord put the padding. Pills are too easy. If all people have to do is take a pill, they'll bother him with the least little ailment. But if they have to get a shot, they'll think twice about bothering him. Dr. Neely's theory is that if you're not willing to get poked with a needle, then you're probably not sick enough to see a doctor.

He's been the only doctor in Harmony for fifty years and knows every bottom in town. He maintains that bottoms are like fingerprints—no two are alike. In 1973, when Roger Morgan died in a car wreck down in the city, Dr. Neely identified him at the morgue by his buttocks. He told about it at the Coffee Cup afterwards. The coroner pulled back the sheet and Dr. Neely said
“Yep, that's Roger Morgan. I'd know those cheeks anywhere. That's the Morgan dimple.”

 

D
r. Neely and his wife moved to our town after the Big War back in 1946. They bought a house on Washington Street, three blocks south of the Grant Hardware Emporium. They had three children—two daughters and a little boy named Jack, who died of leukemia at the age of seven. They buried little Jack in the Mill Creek Cemetery west of town. Every Sunday since, they have driven to the cemetery and placed a little toy car on Jack's grave. Their little boy loved toy cars. Even when he was sick, he'd lie in the hospital and pretend his legs were mountains and the blanket wrinkles were the roads; he'd push the car up the mountains and down the roads while he made engine noises.

It was horrible to be a doctor and not be able to heal your own child. Dr. Neely sat next to his son's bed and watched his skin turn yellow and listened to his gasping breath, then saw Jack's tiny body shudder and his hand let loose of the toy car. He tries not to think of it. Except every now and then, late at night, when the house is quiet and sleep won't come, he sits at his desk, holds that very toy car, and thinks back.

Every Saturday, Dr. Neely stops by Kivett's Five and Dime on his way home and buys a toy car. The cashiers thought he was giving them to the children at his office. He has a drawer of toys. If you don't cry when he gives you a shot, he'll pull open the drawer and let you
reach in and pick out a toy. The cashiers at the Five and Dime thought that's why he bought a toy car every Saturday. But if they had passed by Mill Creek Cemetery on Sundays after dinner, they'd have known otherwise.

Shortly after I was hired as the pastor of Harmony Friends, my wife and I were walking past the Neely home one Saturday afternoon. Our boys were tagging behind us. Dr. Neely's garage door was open, and we could see him at his workbench painting a For Sale sign. We stopped to visit.

The Neelys were selling their house. It was too big, and they were too old. They were selling it themselves, having worn out three realtors. The Neelys were only willing to sell their house to someone who would agree not to paint the wall behind the dining room draperies. It was the wall where their children's heights had been recorded as they had grown.

Back when the Neely kids were little, their names were written in Mrs. Neely's careful printing. As soon as they learned to write their own names, she'd have them do it. The first day of every year, they'd mark their heights and write their names.

The Neelys hadn't given it much thought, until a lady wanting to buy the house talked about wallpapering the dining room and they pulled back the draperies to show her the names.

“You can't wallpaper in here. It'll cover the names,” Mrs. Neely had told her. Jack's name was there, to the right of the forty-two-inch mark. A capital
J
leaning to the left. A small
a.
A backwards
c
and a capital
K.
Now there was a stranger in their dining room talking about covering it over.

Dr. Neely took the lady gently by the arm, led her to the door, and thanked her for her interest. No sale. Now they were looking for someone to buy the house who wouldn't cover their children's names.

“Some people don't respect things like that,” Dr. Neely told us as he sat at his workbench. “They think buying a house gives them the right to do with it as they please, with no regard for anything.”

My wife told him she'd never cover over a child's name.

Dr. Neely continued, “It's just that every now and then if I were walking past, I'd want to be able to sit on the porch or maybe come inside and see Jack's name. Just knowing I could do that would help a lot.”

We told him we understood.

 

I
t was a wonderful house. When my brother and I were little and would trick-or-treat there, Mrs. Neely would usher us into the entryway. As she dropped a popcorn ball in my sack, I'd marvel at their house. It had a front porch and a sleeping porch on the second floor and oak trees and ivy up the chimney and stone sidewalks with moss between the stones. It had a kitchen, dining room, two parlors, a den with a fireplace, two bathrooms plus a shower in the basement, four bedrooms, an attic, and a basement. And a garage with a workbench.

The Neely house was built back when house plans were rough ideas in a carpenter's head. There were the usual rooms, with a few extra rooms added for good measure. What you did with those rooms was your
own business. If you wanted to put books in the dining room and call it a study, the architect didn't throw a fit because there was no architect. There was just a carpenter and the man he hired to help him.

 

A
few weeks later I took my oldest son, Levi, to Dr. Neely for his first-grade shots. Levi and I sat in the waiting room reading about the Timbertoes family. Tommy had forgotten to do his homework, so he told his teacher that Butter the goat had eaten his computer disk. She didn't believe him, but didn't say so for fear of hurting Tommy's self-esteem. She did call Pa Timbertoes to tell him. Thirty-some years later, Pa is a reformed spanker. No more spankings. Instead, he sent Tommy to a therapist. Modern education seems a far safer prospect than when I was a child.

Then the nurse called out “Levi Gardner.” I said, “That's you,” and we walked down the hallway to Dr. Neely's office where he called Levi “Tiger,” poked his bottom with a needle, then opened the drawer and let him pick a toy.

I asked Dr. Neely if he'd sold his house yet.

“Nope. Some fella come to look at it. He talked about ripping out the wall between the kitchen and dining room to make a culinary suite. What in the world is a culinary suite? He kept waving his arms around, talking about opening the space up and letting it breathe.”

I told Dr. Neely I'd never knock down a wall in a house as grand as his.

He asked me where we were living. I told him we
were staying with my folks but looking for a place to buy.

He said, “Sam, why don't you and Barbara buy our house?”

I told him we couldn't afford it on a Quaker pastor's salary.

He peered over his glasses at me. “Too bad the Lord didn't call you to the Episcopalian ministry,” he said.

That night after supper the phone rang. It was Dr. Neely calling to see if Barbara and I could come over; he and Mrs. Neely had something to ask us.

When we walked up their sidewalk, the Neelys were sitting on their front porch drinking iced tea. Mrs. Neely offered us a glass. We sat in the swing, a gentle swaying back and forth, the glasses sweating in our hands.

Dr. Neely cleared his throat. “Sam and Barbara, we think a great deal of you. We'd like to sell you our house.”

I started to tell Dr. Neely we couldn't afford it, but he raised his hand. “Hear me out,” he said.

“The house is worth a hundred and fifty thousand. We'll sell it to you for a hundred thousand if you agree not to cover over the names in the dining room or tear down any walls. And every now and then, we might want to come visit. Plus, on Saturday mornings, I'd like to bring my newspaper and read it on the porch. Would that be all right with you?”

It was.

 

S
o they moved out and we moved in. Every Saturday morning, weather permitting, Dr. Neely brings
his paper and sits reading it in his old porch rocker. And every now and again, they stop in to visit and pull aside the dining room curtain and remember. Mrs. Neely will reach out and trace her finger along Jack's name. Over the left-leaning
J
and the small
a
and the backward
c
and the capital
K.

Our first week in the house, I took my boys and stood them along the wall on the other side of the dining room window and marked their heights. Levi wrote his name in crooked kindergarten letters. Six inches underneath it, I wrote Addison's name and the date.

People ask us where we live. We tell them the old Neely house three blocks south of the Grant Hardware Emporium. I don't know how long it will take before it becomes the old Gardner place, but I'm in no hurry. In Harmony, having a house named for you is not a privilege conferred by mere ownership. Status isn't for sale in this town; it is earned.

Our first night in the house, my wife and I were lying in bed. I was thanking God for my blessings. Thanking God for not having to pull aside a dining room curtain to have my children near—that they were right down the hall, asleep in their Superman underwear, their little chests rising and falling to the pulse of their dreams.

I thought how some blessings are fickle guests. Just when we think they're here to stay, they pack their bags and move. When we're in the midst of blessing, we think it's our due—that blessing lasts forever. Next thing you know we're sitting helpless beside a hospital bed. All we're left with is a name on a wall, a toy in a desk, and memories that haunt our sleep.

Sometimes we come to gratitude too late. It's only after blessing has passed on that we realize what we had.

When Mrs. Neely stands in our dining room, tracing her finger along the names, I bet that's what she's thinking—that the time to delight in blessing is when blessing is close at hand.

T
he summer of my eighteenth year, my grandfather died and I inherited his chest of drawers. I wanted to inherit his gentle disposition, but had to settle for his chest of drawers. When I left for college I took it with me. After college I hauled it from one apartment to another, then to a parsonage. Now it is back in the town from whence it came, settled in between the windows of our bedroom. I hope never to move it again.

When I open it to pull out clean underwear, I think back to when I was little and would visit my grandparents. I'd walk the three blocks to their house and through the wood screen door and there would be my grandparents, waiting for me. We'd eat lunch at the table my grandfather had built, then my grandfather and I would go to his workshop and build birdhouses.

Three o'clock was the time for our naps. I would lie on the couch and my grandparents would doze on their twin beds. When I could hear my grandfather snore and knew he was asleep, I would pull a chair up to his chest
of drawers and rummage through it, searching for treasure—old letters, cuff links, a pocketknife from the 1939 World's Fair in New York City, and a picture of a woman wearing a swimsuit. The picture was in a little box with
Private
written on it, which was the only encouragement I needed to open the box for inspection.

In the bottom drawer, underneath his long underwear, were brittle clippings from the
Harmony Herald
chronicling our family history. There was an article describing my grandparents' wedding and their honeymoon plans: an overnight trip to the Statler Hotel in the city. One room, breakfast included, for $9.50. My grandfather paper-clipped the receipt to the newspaper article.

Uncle Addison was born nine months and one day later. He was the first of four children and the most popular boy in town. He was captain of the football team and voted most likely to move away. At his high school graduation, the principal prophesied that Uncle Addison would be a senator someday, maybe even president. He won a scholarship to college, then a month before he was to go he died in a car wreck. His obituary was also in the bottom drawer, folded inside his first report card.

My grandparents rarely spoke of him, for the pain of it. But when I was born, my mother named me for her brother—Samuel Addison. It was a dreadful burden to be named for a dead man, for the longer he was dead the greater he became. It limited my freedom. There was pressure to be like him. I was five years old and people asked what I wanted to be when I grew up. I told them I wanted to be a cowboy and they looked
away in grim disappointment. Except for my grandfather, who told me the world could always use a good cowboy.

My grandfather also kept newspaper pictures of me and my brother Roger, photos published the weeks we were born—a
Herald
tradition which continues to this day. Children born to a Harmony family get their pictures in the paper. Each week, Bob Miles Jr., editor of the
Herald,
fills the paper with pictures and articles of people in our town in the hope they'll buy extra copies and mail them to relatives. Human pride being what it is, we do just that.

 

T
he
Harmony Herald
is delivered free on Friday afternoons to every house and business in town. People read it, but not for the news, which we already know. We read the
Herald
to see if our names are in it. We scan the society column written by Bob's wife, Arvella, to see if we're mentioned. We thumb over to the school news to see whose children made the honor roll. Then we turn to the church news to see what the pastor of the Baptist church is going to preach about that Sunday.

If our names are in the paper, we buy extra copies to send to our relatives. This is how Bob Jr. makes his living, selling extra copies. That, and out-of-town subscriptions. People who grew up here and moved to the city pay thirty dollars a year to remember why they left town in the first place.

Like any town, there are those who can't wait to move from here.

“To heck with them,” Dale Hinshaw says. “We're better off without them. Let 'em move to the city and forget their heritage. They'll be sorry.”

When they come back to town to visit, they don't seem sorry. They look like they're having a good time in the city. They come home for Thanksgiving and stay only as long as etiquette requires. This town isn't for everyone. Just because we like it doesn't mean it's the only place worth living. Being grateful for what you have doesn't give you the right to tear down the choices other people have made. If the city makes them happy, I'm glad for them.

We live in Harmony because we want to be here. Except for Bob Jr., who wishes he had moved away.

 

W
hen Bob Miles Jr. was a child and the phone rang, his mother would hurry to the kitchen to answer it. She'd stand on her tiptoes and speak into the mouthpiece mounted on the wall, holding the receiver to her ear.

She'd shout hello into the black box. The caller would ask for Bob.

“Bob senior or Bob junior?” she'd clarify. That is how Bob Jr. got his name.

Bob is the fourth Bob in a row in his family. He didn't want to be a Bob, and he didn't want to run the
Harmony Herald.
Bob Jr. wanted to be a foreign correspondent. He has a map of the world on his office wall and a shortwave radio tuned to the BBC. Every evening at eight o'clock he sits in front of the map, puts on his headphones, and listens to the BBC. He
dreams of living in Paris. He dreams of war breaking out and the news anchor saying, “Now let's go to Bob Miles, our foreign correspondent, for a firsthand look at this crisis.”

Sometimes, when he's all alone, Bob Jr. practices speaking with a British accent, just like the man on the radio.

He stayed home to take over the
Herald
from his father. Bob Jr. writes about the county fair and church news, eats lunch at the Coffee Cup, and is treasurer for the Optimist Club. But underneath that ordinary existence is fixed that remarkable dream.

 

N
ot many people know Bob Jr.'s dream. It's not the kind of thing you talk about in this town, lest people think you're uppity for wanting more than Harmony has to offer. If you have aspirations of greatness, you keep them to yourself. The only reason I know Bob's dream is that when I was asked to be the pastor of Harmony Friends, he was the only one to discourage me.

He told me there was a whole world out there, and advised me not to make the mistake he'd made. “There's so much more than this little town,” he said. “Don't get stuck here, Sam. You'll shrivel up.”

Bob Jr. said it with some bitterness. He's a disillusioned man, and it's partly our fault. We are too sensitive and are too easily offended when he writes the truth about us. The truth is stifled in this town. The right to say what we want, work where we want, live where we want, and worship where we want are not in
alienable rights in Harmony. We are chained by expectations. Bob Jr. runs the paper because his father, Bob Sr., ran the paper. Bob Sr. inherited the job from his father, Bob Two, who inherited it from the man who started it all, Bob One. This ruled out Bob Jr. becoming a foreign correspondent and living in a flat in Paris.

Bob Jr.'s father is eighty-two years old and a member of the John Birch Society. He phones every week to complain about Bob Jr.'s editorials. Bob Sr.'s editorials used to routinely call for the summary execution of Communists, foreign spies, and certain Democrats. Bob Jr. writes editorials about recycling and the proliferation of billboards. He is a grim disappointment to his father, who wants him to warn against Chinese aggression, Mexican immigration, and certain Harmony town board members who have sold out to the Mafia. Instead, Bob Jr. writes about the high-school graduation and Corn and Sausage Days and three surefire ways to increase your tomato yield.

 

W
hen Bob Jr. was new to the trade, he took the job seriously. He once attended a town board meeting, tape-recorded the proceedings, and published it word for word in the
Herald.
This stirred up considerable wrath. It was then he discovered that people weren't interested in truth as much as they were interested in having their prejudices confirmed. So Bob decided to get out of the news business and confine his reporting to weddings, graduations, church happenings, and gardening. A doomsday cult could poison the New York City water supply and kill a million people,
and Bob would write about Bea Majors having Sunday dinner at her sister Opal's house.

It's a matter of knowing your readership. Bea Majors visiting her sister's house was big news since they hadn't spoken in twenty years after Opal laid claim to their mother's dining room furniture the day after their mother was buried. But now they've forgiven each other and are back to talking. We don't know anyone in New York City, but we do know Bea and Opal, which makes their reconciliation newsworthy.

It requires a good memory to live in a small town. You have to remember who isn't talking to whom and why, and who's on whose side. If you publish the newspaper and make a favorable comment about Opal Majors's cucumbers, you need to balance it by mentioning Bea's work in the church. Otherwise there'll be letters to the editor condemning your blatant bias and ending with the declaration, “Your newspaper no longer speaks for the majority of right-minded citizens. It is therefore with great sadness that I must cancel my subscription.” The fact that the paper is free seems to escape these people.

The most controversial column in the
Herald
is “The Bobservation Post.” The
Herald
office sits on the town square. Bob Jr.'s great-grandfather's desk is stationed at the front window. Bob Jr. thought it might interest his readers to learn what he sees from his window, so every Tuesday he sits at that desk, gazes out the office window, and writes his on-the-scene report, “The Bobservation Post.”

The first Tuesday he looked out his window to see Fern Hampton walking into the bank during school
hours. Fern had left her students with a student teacher for the few minutes it would take to go to the bank. She thought she could get away with it, and probably would have if Bob Jr. hadn't noticed her and mentioned it in his column. Fern almost lost her job and didn't speak to Bob Jr. for two years, which, according to Bob, was not altogether unpleasant.

You learn over the years that if you have any private business to conduct on the town square, you don't do it on Tuesday. If you're a married couple and you visit the attorney, Owen Stout, to draw up a will, you don't go on Tuesday. Otherwise, Bob Jr. will write in “The Bobservation Post” that he saw you visiting Owen's office and people will suspect the worse—that your marriage of thirty years has come to an end, or you've been sued, or you've been arrested for selling drugs and are seeking legal assistance.

When “The Bobservation Post” first came out, it caused much concern and several sharply worded letters to the editor.

“What is happening in this country, when a man can't even walk down Main Street without being spied on?”

“Big Brother is alive and well in Harmony!”

“Your newspaper no longer speaks for the majority of right-minded citizens. It is therefore with great sadness that I must cancel my subscription.”

Bob Jr. didn't blink. He printed the First Amendment on the front page of the
Herald.
In capital letters.

Then Bob Jr. wrote an editorial in which he declared, “This town is full of people who stand up on Sunday morning to thank God for their freedom, then get upset when anyone exercises it.”

Bob Sr. called him on the phone and accused him of being a mouthpiece for the Communists. He asked where he'd learned such nonsense.

“The Constitution,” Bob Jr. said. “You ought to read it. There's all kinds of good ideas in there.” Then he hung up the phone, something he'd always wanted to do.

 

T
here's anger in Bob Jr. and deep cynicism. I can sense it. I'm a little worried about him. It is a burden to spend your life in one place, thinking you'd be happier somewhere else. I pass by his office in the evening and see him in there, staring at his map, listening to the BBC, and feeling trapped. He wants to get away but suspects he never will, that the time for escape has passed.

Once I was hiking through the woods and came upon a fox seized in a trap. The fox had struggled to escape, then had given up and settled in to die. That's the feeling I have about Bob Jr.

I wish he could see the marvel of this place. I wish Harmony brought him the joy it brings me. But there
he sits, night after night, pining for Paris. There's danger in thinking joy is a matter of location. If we can't find joy where we are, we probably won't find it anywhere.

My grandfather taught me that. He didn't mean to. It just happened. I was a little boy and amid the symphony of his snores, I'd pull a chair up to his chest of drawers and rummage through it. I'd read the
Herald
clippings and finger the pictures and know I was holding onto happiness.

The leaves of our blessed lives fall to the ground and if we're wise like my grandfather, we gather them in a pile and keep them safe lest the winds of forgetfulness blow them away.