Shepherds Abiding (7 page)

“The same!”

“I have one copy.”

“Well done!” he said. “And remember: Worry about nothing, pray about everything.” He’d gotten this message from a wayside pulpit somewhere—a sermon and a half in a half dozen words, and a splendid exegesis of the Philippians passage.

When she left, he discovered a lighter feeling in the province of his heart.

He trotted to the lineup, set down the donkey, and snatched up a shepherd.

He walked from the garage, whistling.

Rolling up his sleeves and giving that crowd a bath
had helped endow him with the confidence he’d lacked. As he handled the figures, one by one, they seemed to grow familiar and less intimidating.

He quoted Horace aloud as he opened the door. “ ‘He who has begun is half done.’ ”

Risotto! He smelled it at once.

It was currently his favorite comfort food, though decidedly one notch below a cake of hot, golden-crusted cornbread with plenty of butter.

He could eat risotto only occasionally and, alas, only sparingly. As diabetics had learned the hard way, rice, pasta, or potatoes turned at once to sugar when they hit the bloodstream.

Barnabas followed him along the hall to the kitchen, where Cynthia looked up in mid-stir. “Timothy!”

Seeing his blond wife at the stove never failed to inspire him—not only was she a leading children’s book author and illustrator, she was a dab hand at cookery and plenty good-looking into the bargain. And to think that the urbane Andrew Gregory had pursued her while he, a country parson and rustic rube, had won her. . . .

“Marry me!” he said, standing behind her and nuzzling her hair.

She peered into the pot and, satisfied, replaced the
lid. “It’s lovely of you to ask, sir, but you’re entirely too late. I’m happily wed to a retired priest.”

“Must be dull as dishwater living with the old so-and-so.”

“Never dull,” she murmured, turning to kiss him on the cheek.

“What, then?”

“Peaceful! You see, he’s gone much of the time, or working away in his study. Always up to something, that fellow.”

“Speaking of being up to something, how’s the angel-tree project shaping up?”

“It’s Mitford’s first ecumenical angel tree, and the first to collect nothing but food for Christmas dinner. Families will each get two bags of groceries, including a turkey. Everything will be stockpiled at the fire station and distributed from there.”

“Good thinking.”

“Hundreds of families in this part of the county will be guaranteed a wonderful meal, but heaven knows . . .” She rolled her eyes.

“Heaven knows what?”

“It will take a monumental effort to scrape all our churches together in one accord.”
“Better you than me!”

“Besides, we should have started last year. We’ll be working like mad for weeks.”

“I’m proud of you,” he said, giving her his best hug.

Risotto!

“Ugh, you smell like some dreadful soap. What have you been
doing?
”

“A little of this and a little of that. The usual.”

She peered at him, raising an eyebrow. “The usual?”

She would nail him if he didn’t watch out. All right, then, he would give her a clue, but only one, and not a jot nor a tittle more.

“Christmas is coming, you know.”

She laughed. “Which, of course, explains everything!”

When the phone rang, he made an effort to get to it quickly—the caller could, after all, be his boy, who sometimes checked in between morning classes.

Good grief, it was eight o’clock; it wouldn’t be Dooley at all. And why in heaven’s name was he lolling about in bed at eight in the morning? And where was his wife?

“Hello!” he said, feeling unsteady on his feet.

“Father, it’s Andrew.”

“Andrew, what is it?” The mayor sounded as if he were speaking from a deep hole.

“I know you wanted to work at the shop today, and I certainly wanted to help you. But I’m down with what is indelicately referred to as . . .”

“Not the Mitford Crud?”

“One and the same. So let’s reschedule, shall we? I’ll give you a ring when I’m out and about; Fred will have his hands full.”

Andrew sneezed.

“Bless you,” said Father Tim.

He made straight for his wing chair, and thumped into it. He had only just noticed that his head felt clogged, rather like a drainpipe that had taken on a sock. There was also a sort of gurgling going on in his stomach.

No! Absolutely not.

He would have none of it,
none
of it! He shook a feeble fist into the air.

He leaned back to catch his breath from the rude awakening, then bolted suddenly from the chair and lurched toward their bathroom.
The door was locked.

“I can’t come out, Timothy, I’m feeling terrible!”

He raced downstairs and tilted into the powder room, and not a moment too soon.

“Hey, sugar!” said Lew.

“Oh, hey, baby, I’m glad it’s you, I was just takin’ Mama’s supper up. Let me call you back, I want her to have it while it’s hot—it’s Miz Paul’s fish sticks, her favorite, an’ a little applesauce, not too sweet.”

“Fine.”

He didn’t even say “I love you,” which is what he usually said to his wife before hanging up. He just hung up, period. He was shot from a day of pumping gas and jiving around with everybody and his brother, and coming home to nothing but a broken-down TV that only got three channels. And not that he was having a big pity party or anything, but her mama was getting hot fish sticks while he was firing up a can of Bush’s baked beans on a stove with only two working burners.

How long was he willing to live like this?

“Married an’ livin’ single!” he hollered down the dark hallway.

Nothing had changed since Juanita passed. The dining room was still full of everything from a fake Christmas tree to a Santa Claus that dropped his pants while a music box played, not to mention empty cartons stacked to the ceiling and enough tinsel to sink a trawler. His oven ran cold and his thermostat ran hot, and his wife lived with her mama, and every night of his life since Juanita died seven years ago, he’d come home to an empty kitchen and an empty bed, and what was the dadblame use of it all, anyhow?

He sighed and looked around at a room that had frozen in time, inside a house that had frozen with it.

It hit him then, like a bolt of lightning.

He was going out tonight.

Yessir, buddyroe, he was going to Wesley, like half the Mitford population on Friday night!

First, he’d head to Wendy’s for a Bacon Swiss Cheeseburger. . . .

All the way! Large fries! Large Coke! The works.

Then he was hitting the aisles at Wal-Mart for a TV and a VCR.

After Wal-Mart, he was stopping by the mall for two scoops of Rocky Road in a waffle cone. And on the way home, he’d pick up a couple of videos.
He felt his adrenaline pumping like an oil derrick.

On Monday, he was calling the cable company, trifling as they may be, and ordering the whole caboodle—whatever they had to offer, that’s what he was getting, the Disney Channel, the sports network, old movies, you name it.

He went to the coat rack by the back door and put on his fleece jacket, zipped it up, and popped a toboggan on his head.

Yessir, this was the ticket. It wasn’t so much that he was lacking a wife as he was lacking a
life.

When Earlene called back after feeding her mama, she would wonder where he was. He was always home when Earlene called. He felt in his pocket for his gloves.

“I’m goin’
out,
Earlene!” he shouted to the kitchen ceiling. “Out, out,
out!
Leave a message!”

Of the many and varied fruits of a good marriage, one of Father Tim’s sworn favorites was having someone to be sick with—misery, after all, loved company.

Sitting with her cat, Violet, in her lap, his wife blew her nose and looked at him with red eyes and drooping
lids. “I never heard of anything that was both viral
and
bacterial. I thought we got only one misery at a time.”

“I think it’s the double deal that earned the Crud its name.”

“Anyway, I’ve finally figured out how it feels to have this pernicious blight.”

“Speak,” he said, lying flat and drained on the sofa.

“It feels like you’ve just eaten a dish of Miss Rose’s week-old, unrefrigerated banana pudding and are on your way to the emergency room in the back of a van that’s been lived in through a long, hard winter by seven Russian wolfhounds, all of whom, poor dears, have mange. . . .”

He moaned. Right on the money.

“
Plus,
you have this horrendous headache—
pounding,
mind you—and eyes that feel like little sockets of ground glass, something akin to the lethal shards of a Coke bottle that’s been run over by a tractor trailer hurtling at great speed along I-95—”

“North or south?”

“South.”

He raised his head feebly from the sofa. “I’d never have thought of it that way,” he said.