These High, Green Hills (33 page)

“I hope y‘uns didn’t drink no water while you was in there.”

“Why’s that?”

“Oh, law, that cave water can send you high-steppin‘, don’t you know. It don’t hit you right off, might take a while, but let them cave germs git t’ workin‘, and first thing you know ...” The old man shook his head, grinning.

“Uncle Billy, would you do us a favor?” Cynthia asked through the screen door.

“If they was anybody I’d do a favor, hit’d be you ‘uns.”

“Would you take the nice, fresh chocolate cake Esther brought today? We can’t touch a bite. We’d just have to throw it out.”

“Oh, law!” said Uncle Billy, stricken at the thought. “Me an‘ Rose’ll be glad to take it off y’r hands if hit’ll help y‘uns out.”

“Thanks be to God!” she said when Uncle Billy left with his foil-wrapped parcel. “If he hadn’t taken it, I would have eaten the whole thing! I would have absolutely stuffed it in my ears.”

“Dodged a bullet,” he said, feeling his stomach wrench.

She sat down suddenly in a kitchen chair.

“What is it? You’re white as a bed sheet.”

“I don’t know. Oh, dear. Oh, no!” She bounded from the chair and sprinted down the hall to the guest bathroom, clutching her stomach.

His own stomach gave a loud, empathetic gurgle, signaling what he recognized as a dire emergency.

“Cave germs!” he shouted, racing upstairs.

He peered at the latest edition of the Muse.

That Cynthia Kavanagh looked terrific, even when smeared with mud from head to toe, was no surprise.

As for himself, his face looked oddly like a turnip that had just been yanked from the ground. Worse yet, the photo of them staggering out of the cave was shot at such close range, he could see the whites of his own eyes. Not a pretty sight.

The photo of Barnabas, on the other hand, was snapped from such a great distance that it appeared to be a ground squirrel that had led the rescue team.

He fogged his glasses, wiped them on the lapel of his old burgundy bathrobe, and scanned the story.

He had
not
said they found the fossil remains of a dinosaur, much less discovered a
vase
in a vault.

And he certainly didn’t care for J.C.’s insinuation that all they’d done was sit around eating candy, waiting to be rescued.

In any case, he made a mental note to pick up extra copies of the paper for Walter and Katherine, and one for Father Roland in Canada, all of whom were patently wrong to believe he led a rustic and uneventful life.

The mayor called at five a.m. and asked him to hotfoot it to the hospital, where Puny’s labor was intense, and they were worried.

He had barely skidded into the deserted hallway when Nurse Herman found him and steered him toward the delivery room.

“I can’t go in there,” he said.

“Why not?” demanded Nurse Herman. “Everybody else does. It’s the latest thing to watch the birth.”

What could people be thinking, to stand around and watch babies being born, as if the whole affair were some daytime TV show? Didn’t they have anything else to do, like mow their lawns or work for a living?

“Besides, th‘ mayor wants you to pray,” said Nurse Herman.

He ran a finger around his collar, which suddenly seemed constricting. “I can do that standing in the hall!”

Esther Cunningham opened the door and poked her head into the hallway. “There you are!” she snapped, as if he had taken hours to arrive. “One just popped out, it’s a girl, we’re on a roll.”

Nurse Herman shoved him into the room, where he saw Joe Joe sitting by Puny, her sweat-drenched red hair spread over the pillow. Joe Joe’s mother, Marcie Guthrie, stood across the room covering her face with her hands, but observing the proceedings through her fingers. At the sink, a nurse cleaned up a red-haired infant, who was crying lustily.

“Bear down!” said Joe Joe.

“Pray!” said the mayor.

“Breathe!” said Dr. Wilson.

“Oh,
Lord
!” said Marcie Guthrie.

The mayor’s husband, Ray, leaned unsteadily on a chair, wearing a look of mortified horror.

“Ray’s not up to this,” said the mayor, “but it’s the latest thing to do, and he likes to keep current.”

The rector thought the whole event was closely akin to a political barbecue.

“Here it comes!” shouted Esther.

“Hallelujah!” whooped Marcie.

“It’s a girl!” announced the doctor.

“Catch him!” cried Nurse Herman, as the rector toppled toward the floor.

“Sissy and Sassy?” he inquired.

“It’s really Kaitlin and Kirsten,” said Puny, smiling hugely. “But we decided to call ‘em Sissy and Sassy.” She was holding one infant on either side. The whole lot had mops of red hair like he’d never seen before in his life.

“Which is, ah, Sissy and which is ... ?”

“This,” said Puny, shrugging her right shoulder, “is Sissy. And this,” she said, shrugging her left shoulder, “is Sassy. You’ll get to know ‘em apart when they come to work with me.”

“Take your time on that,” he said, meaning it. “No hurry. Why not take a month? Or take two—we can manage!”

Puny looked at him, wide-eyed. “We’d never pay our bills if I laid out for a month or two! You know that bathroom we added on, our
own
self? It cost four thousand dollars, and that’s without a toilet! Lord only knows when we can git a toilet!”

“Aha.”

“They say you fainted when Sassy popped out!”

“Went black,” he said, grinning. If Nurse Herman hadn’t snatched him up, he might have cracked his skull on the tile floor.

“Don’t y‘all worry about a thing,” Puny assured him. “I’ll be back in two weeks, good as new.”

He gazed at the new mother and her little brood, feeling a glad delight for the young woman who had taken over his home and his heart, all to his very great relief.

“You’re the best, Puny Guthrie.”

“I’ll bake you a cake of cornbread first thing,” she said, smiling happily.

He had never bought a toilet before, but after some discussion about a wooden, plastic, or soft seat, and the new, economical tank capacity, he decided on a standard model and, to save the delivery fee, had it put in his trunk in two boxes and drove it to the Guthries’ little cottage, where, with no small difficulty, he wrestled the boxes out of the car and onto the porch, and assembled the thing on the spot with the aid of his auto repair kit.

He couldn’t help but observe, as he drove away, that it had a certain panache sitting there.

He sat up in bed and listened. Was it the wind? The shadows on the ceiling weren’t moving.

In the hall, Barnabas growled.

“What is it?” Cynthia asked.

“I heard something.”

She sat up with him.

Someone was knocking at the door. Barnabas raced down the stairs and stood barking in the foyer.

When he reached the foyer, he turned on the porch light, grabbed his dog by the collar, and opened the door.

As long as he lived, he would never forget what he saw.

It was a girl, he knew that from the long blond hair that fell over her shoulders, but she had been beaten so brutally that her face made little sense to him.

“Good God!” he said.

She fell toward him, and he saw the smear of blood in her hair.

“Lace Turner,” she murmured.

It was the girl who had jumped from the tree and landed at Absalom’s feet, the girl who had stolen the ferns and run.

CHAPTER TWELVE

BARNABAS BARKED wildly as the girl leaned against Father Tim to steady herself. “I got t‘ lay down som’ers.”

He gripped her arms and drew her into the hallway. “You’re OK,” he said, his heart thundering. “I’ve got you.”

“Git that dog away from me.”

Cynthia appeared on the stairs. “Who is it?”