These High, Green Hills (5 page)

He didn’t feel loving. He felt helpless and poured out.

“Upside down and backwards,” the new Baptist preacher had assured him yesterday.

The usually cheerful preacher looked as if he’d swallowed a dose of castor oil. “Plan to spend the first six months in misery and confusion, and the next six months merely in confusion.”

For someone who could barely heat coffee in a microwave, the thought of what lay ahead was mind-boggling. Yet, for all the gloom and doom he had heard on the subject, he knew his vestry was right—it had to be done. Death, taxes, and computer systems. This was the law of the land, and no getting around it.

“Emma, I don’t know how to tell you this. But the vestry wants us to go on computer.”

She looked at him over her glasses. “What? What did you say?”

“I said the vestry wants us to go on computer. The bishop thinks it will bring some consistency to the affairs of the diocese. And chances are, it will do as much for the affairs of Lord’s Chapel. You’ll think so, too, once we get the hang of it.”

“No way, José!”

She rose from her chair, doing that thing with her mouth that made her look like Genghis Khan with earrings.

“No one hates it more than I do,” he said. “But it’s going to happen.”

“I work here fourteen years, day in and day out, and this is the thanks I get? I labor over these books like a slave, watching every penny, checking every total, and how many mistakes have I made?”

“Well,” he said, “there was that pledge report five years ago ...”

“Big deal! As if a measly fourteen thousand dollars was something to get upset about.”

“... and the incident with Sam McGee ...”

“Sam McGee! That skinflint! Anybody can say they put a thousand dollars in the plate and the check was lost by the church secretary! I hope you’re not telling me a
computer
could have found that stupid check he probably never wrote in the first place!”

“Ah, well ...”

“So!” she said, inhaling deeply. “Go and find some young thing with her skirt up to here, and pay her out th‘ kazoo. Does the vestry take into consideration the kind of money they’ll be shellin’ out for her, while the money they save on
me
goes to Sunday School literature and soup kitchens? Ha! Never entered their minds, is my guess!”

He had expected Mount Vesuvius—and he was getting it.

They were in bed at the rectory, propped against the huge pillows she had carted from her house in leaf bags. He had to admit it was a comfort, all that goose down squashing around back there. He could hardly get past the first page of his book without nodding off.

“Timothy, do I snore?”

He liked the way her questions sometimes bolted in from the blue, contained within no particular context that he could see. Good practice for a clergyman.

He removed his glasses and looked at his wife. “Snore? My dear, I don’t know how to tell you this, but you positively rattle the windows. I think it could be overcome, however, if you would sleep with your mouth closed ... which might also eliminate the drooling problem.”

“Timothy!”

“See how it feels? You told me I mutter in my sleep and grind my teeth. So, tit for tat.”

“Please
tell me you’re kidding. I don’t really snore, do I?”

“To tell the truth, no. You never snore. Maybe a whiffle now and again, but nothing serious.”

“And no drooling?”

“Not that I’ve witnessed.”

She looked smug. “You really do mutter in your sleep, you know.”

“Worse has been said.”

He never failed to wonder how all this had come about. If he had known that being together was so consoling, he would have capitulated sooner. Why had he been so terrified of marriage, of intimacy, of loving?

He had read again this morning about the wilderness trek of the Israelites and the way God miraculously provided their needs. Manna every day, and all they had to do was gather it.

“Men ate the bread of angels,” was how the psalmist described it.

That appeared, somehow, to illustrate his marriage. Every day, with what seemed to be no effort at all on his part, he received God’s extraordinary provision of contentment—there it was, waiting for him at every dawn; all he had to do was gather it in.

“... bread of angels,” he mused under his breath.

“See! You mutter even when you’re not sleeping!”

“I hardly ever knew what I was doing ‘til you and Dooley Barlowe came along and started telling me.”

She leaned against him in her striped pajamas and yawned happily.

“You’re so comforting, Timothy. I never dreamed I would find anyone like you—sometimes, I hardly know where I end and you begin.”

It was true for him, as well, but he said nothing.

“I think our love fits into the miracle category,” she said.

“Right up there with the Red Sea incident, in my opinion.”

“Do you think the people who love you are happy about us? Isn’t some of the parish feeling a bit ... betrayed?”

“Never. They’re glad to have someone look after me, so they don’t have to. Of course, they never had to, but bachelor priests are thought to require extra attention.”

He put his arm around her shoulder and pulled her close.

She kissed his chin. “Dearest?”

“Ummm?”

“Shall we bring the armoire over this Saturday?”

Out of the blue, again! He had to be quick. “This Saturday, I’m taking you for a little ... recreation.”

“I love recreation! What are we going to do?”

In all his life, he had never been able to figure out what to do for recreation. As a bachelor, he was forever dumbfounded by the way people planned ahead for this very thing. “What are you doing this weekend?” someone might ask, and the respondent would roll off a daunting list of activities—a ball game, a movie, dinner out, a play, hiking, a picnic, and God knows what else. If he were asked such a question, he always wound up scratching his head, speechless. He never knew what he might do until he did it.

“It’ll be a surprise,” he announced.

“Good! I love surprises!”

“Cynthia, Cynthia. What don’t you love?”

“Exhaust fumes, movies made for TV, and cakes baked from mix.”

“I’m all for a woman who knows what she likes—and doesn’t like.” He cleared his throat. “As for me, I like this.”

“This what?”

“This ... living with you.”

“Then why did you fight me tooth and nail for longer than it took to build the Brooklyn Bridge?”

“No vision,” he admitted. “No imagination. No—”

“No earthly idea of heaven!”

“You said it.”

“Well, then ...”

He leaned over and kissed her mouth, lingering.

“Oh, my goodness,” she murmured at last. “Who would ever have thought ... ?”

. “Barnabas!” he called, coming in the kitchen door.

It was time for recreation, and he’d better hop to it. Otherwise, he’d have to leg it to the hardware to rent a back brace for the lugging over.

Barnabas raced from the study, skidded through the kitchen on a rag rug, and leaped up to give his master a lavish bath around the left ear.

“If we confess our sins,” the rector quoted hastily from First John, “He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness!”

Barnabas retreated on his hind legs, lay down, sighed, and gazed up at his master.

His was the only dog in creation who was unfailingly disciplined by the hearing of God’s Word. Now, if all of humankind would respond in the same vein ...

“I’m ready!” she said, appearing from the study. She was dressed in blue jeans and a sweatshirt, tennis shoes and a parka, looking like a girl.

“Ready for what?” he inquired, grinning.

“What you said....”

He was as excited as a boy, and no help for it.

“Here we go,” he announced, offering his arm.

Barnabas lay in the high grass, his tongue hanging out from the long climb uphill.

They had walked around Mitford Lake twice, their cheeks red with the sting in the air, eaten lunch from a paper bag, sat on a log and laughed, and then headed up Old Church Lane to rest on the stone wall overlooking what he called the Land of Counterpane.

In the valley, with its church steeples and croplands, tiny houses and gleaming river, they saw the retreat of autumn. Only the barest hint of color remained in the trees.

“I have a great idea,” he said.

“Shoot!”

“Why don’t we do something like this every week? Both of us can get bogged down with work, and maybe this would be a way around it. Even for a few hours, let’s plan to get away.” He was learning something new, he could just feel it. Who said you can’t teach an old dog new tricks?

“Lovely!”

He pressed on with mounting enthusiasm. “Even in the dead of winter!”

“Wonderful! I couldn’t agree more.”

There. Since all the stuff about checking accounts, where to sleep, and how much to spend without the other’s consent, this was their first important pact.

“Shake,” she said.

They sat on the wall until a stinging wind blew in from the north, then walked briskly down Old Church Lane and through Baxter Park.

“Look,” he said, “there’s our bench.”

“Where we were sitting when the rain came ... where you said you felt like thin soup, and invited me to go with you to see the bishop.”

He was impressed with his wife’s memory, as he didn’t recall saying anything about thin soup.

“By the way,” he wondered, “who’s supposed to cook dinner this evening?”

“I can’t remember,” she said, wrinkling her brow.