Out to Canaan (22 page)

They had dined, they had danced, they had remarked upon the extraordinary fragrance of the roses. She had raved about his cooking, she had sung a rousing “Happy Birthday,” and she'd given him a book about himself and the parish of Mitford, which she had written and illustrated.

He was visibly moved and completely delighted. To have a book in which he saw himself walking down Main Street and standing on the church lawn in his vestments . . . Now he knew how Violet must feel.

He thought it immensely good of her not to comment on anything unusual in his appearance, though he was certain that he saw her staring a time or two, once with her mouth open.

He poured a final glass of champagne.

“This is like . . . like a date!” she said, flushed and happy.

“Which we never had, except for that movie where you ate all my Milk Duds.”

“I detest dating!” she said. “I think it should be reserved for marriage.”

“Amen!”

He served the poached pears he'd served the first time she came for dinner, drizzling hers with chocolate sauce.

“Dearest,” she said, as they lolled on the study sofa, “there's something I've been wanting to say . . . .”

Here it comes, he thought, his heart sinking.

“You aren't looking well at all. You seem . . . a little green around the gills. I'm worried about you, Timothy.”

“Aha.” He had paid good money to look fifteen years younger, and wound up looking sick and infirm. He would never step foot in
Fancy Skinner's place again, not as long as he lived, so what if the round-trip to Memphis would take eighteen hours' hard driving?

“All that business about your retirement and the worry over Fernbank, and whatever this new, urgent project is for the mayor . . . I think it's time for a retreat.”

His wife specialized, actually, in the domestic retreat. It was, to a worn-out clergyman, what retreads were to a tire. Once they'd had a picnic in Baxter Park, once a picnic overlooking the Land of Counterpane, and once she'd carried him off to the little yellow house where they had reclined on her king-size bed like two dissolute Romans, drinking lemonade and listening to the rain.

“Right,” he said. “A retreat.”

She peered at him again, her brow furrowed.

“Definitely!” she said, looking concerned.

While they partied in the study, Barnabas had stood up to the kitchen counter like a man and polished off what was left of the lamb. He also helped himself to two dinner rolls, half a stick of butter, a bowl of wild rice, and all the mint jelly he could lick off a spoon in the dishwasher.

At two in the morning, the rector felt a large paw on his shoulder. This was major, and no doubt about it.

He hastily pulled on his pants and a shirt, slipped his feet into his loafers, and thumped downstairs behind his desperate dog.

He barely got the leash on before Barnabas was out the back door and across to the hedge.

Barnabas sniffed his turf. Possums, raccoons, hedgehogs, squirrels, and cats had passed this way, not to mention the rector's least favorite of all creatures great and small, the mole. The place was a veritable smorgasbord of smells, apparently causing his dog to forget entirely why he had barreled outside in the middle of the night, dragging his master behind like a ball on a chain.

“Sometime in this century, pal?”

More sniffing.

Suddenly Barnabas had the urge to go around the house . . . then across the yard . . . then out to the sidewalk . . . then up the street.

“Not the monument!” he groaned.

Barnabas strained forward with the muscle and determination of a team of yoked oxen. They were going to the monument.

He trotted behind his dog, noting the peace of their village when no cars were on the street. There seemed an uncommon dignity in the glow of the streetlights tonight and the baskets brimming with flowers that hung from every lamppost.

They had a good life in Mitford, no doubt about it. Visitors were often amazed at its seeming charm and simplicity, wanting it for themselves, seeing in it, perhaps, the life they'd once had, or had missed entirely.

Yet there were Mitfords everywhere. He'd lived in them, preached in them, they were still out there, away from the fray, still containing something of innocence and dreaming, something of the past that other towns had freely let go, or allowed to be taken from them.

How much longer could the Esther Cunninghams of the world hold on? How much longer could common, decent, kind regard hold out against utter disregard?

Like the rest of us, he thought, the mayor may have her blind spots, but I'll take my chances with Esther any day.

He'd almost forgotten what he'd come out here for; he'd been walking as in a dream. Then, thanks be to God, his dog found a spot behind the hedge surrounding the monument.

He stood there as Barnabas did his business, and looked at the summer sky. Cassiopeia . . . the Three Sisters . . . the Bear . . .

He nearly missed seeing the car as it went around the monument and headed down Lilac Road.

Lincoln. New. Black. Quiet.

He felt alarmed, but couldn't figure why. The car seemed to remind him of something or someone . . . .

He had the strange thought that it didn't seem right for a car to be so quiet—it was oddly chilling.

“What's the scoop?” he asked Scott Murphy.

“Interesting. I can't figure it out exactly. When they come to see
Homeless on Wednesday night, they don't have much to say, but they seem to sense something special about being there, as if they're . . . waiting for something.”

They are, he thought, suddenly moved. They are.

“I hate to tell you this,” he said, glancing at his wife as they weeded the perennial bed next to her garage. The town festival was tomorrow, and all of Mitford was scurrying to look tidy and presentable. Certainly he was looking more presentable. The greenish cast to his skin had disappeared altogether.

A long silence ensued as he pulled knotgrass from among the foxgloves.

“Well? Spit it out, Timothy!”

“I did some simple arithmetic . . .”

“So?”

“ . . . and I was sixty-four yesterday.”

“No!”

“Yes.”

“I thought you were sixty-three! This means I'll be fifty-eight, not fifty-seven. Oh,
please
!”

Her moan might have ricocheted off the roof of the town museum two blocks away.

“The neighbors . . .” he said.

“We don't
have
any, remember? Since I moved to the rectory, we don't
have
any neighbors, which means I can wail as loud as I want to.”

“Good thinking, Kavanagh.”

Sixty-four! He felt like letting go with a lamentation of his own.

“Th' volts was down t' ten,” said Harley, wiping his hands on a rag. “Hit was runnin' off the battery. Why don't you take it out and spin it around, I tuned it up some while I was at it.”

“We thank you, Harley. This is terrific.”

“Hit ought t' go like a scalded dog.”

The rector opened the door and Barnabas jumped into the passenger seat, then he got in and backed his wife's Mazda out of the garage.

What a day! he thought as he drove up Main Street, glad to see the bustle of commerce. In a day of shopping malls on bypasses, not every town could boast of a lively business center.

He saw Dooley pedal out of The Local alleyway on his bicycle, wearing his helmet and hauling a full delivery basket. He honked the horn. Dooley grinned and waved.

There was Winnie, putting a tray of something sinful in the window of the Sweet Stuff, and he honked again but was gone before Winnie looked up.

As he approached the monument, he saw Uncle Billy and Miss Rose, stationed in their chrome dinette chairs on the lawn of the town museum, where everybody and his brother had gathered to put up tents, booths, flags, tables, umbrellas, hand-lettered signs, and the much-needed port-a-john, which this year, he observed, appeared to lean to the right instead of the left.

He honked and waved as Uncle Billy waved back and Miss Rose looked scornful.

How in the dickens he could have lived in this town for over fifteen years and still get a kick out of driving up Main Street was beyond him. He'd liked living in his little parish by the sea, too, but the main street hadn't been much to look at, and often, during the hurricane season, their few storefronts had stayed boarded up.

Count your blessings, his grandmother had told him. Count your blessings, his mother had often said.

He eased around the monument and headed west on Lilac Road.

Did anyone really count their blessings, anymore? There was, according to the world's dictum, no time to smell the roses, no time to count blessings. But how much time did it take to recognize that he was, in a sense, driving one around? Hadn't Harley Welch just saved them a hundred bucks, right in his own backyard?

Besides, if there were no time in Mitford, where would there ever be time?

“Ah, Barnabas,” he said, reaching over to scratch his dog's ear.
Barnabas stared straight ahead, a behavior he'd always considered appropriate to riding in a car.