At Home in Mitford

  The only trouble was, there was no ladies’ shoe store in Mitford. That meant that Miss Rose might very well show up in her brother’s army boots with the heavy latches.

  The second snowfall had muffled the everyday sounds of the village, so that all he heard as they walked was the crunch of their footsteps in the untracked blanket that covered the sidewalk.

  Along the way, Barnabas felt compelled to melt the snow in several places, after which he dashed on eagerly, pleased with the accomplishment.

  “Recession-proof!” he muttered aloud, thinking of Homeless Hobbes’s comment about his bare-bones existence. If only the rest of Mitford could claim that privilege. In recent months, he had not had to turn on the news to learn the deepening impact of the recession—he could read it in the faces of the town merchants.

  As he came by the drugstore, he hoped to wave at Sparks through the window, but saw Hoppy Harper instead. Getting his green jelly bean fix, he thought. It pleased him immeasurably that Hoppy had done more than agree to be on the building committee. He said he’d be taking part, once again, in the life of the church.

  Passing the window, he saw Olivia Davenport, muffled in fur, approach Hoppy with a radiant smile.

  Like an image caught by the click of a camera shutter, the scene flashed upon his consciousness and was gone. Yet, he’d clearly seen something that troubled him. He’d seen a look of unmistakable happiness on his friend’s face, a look of tenderness as he gazed down upon Olivia Davenport, who was dying.

  At the church, he found the door unlocked and, coming inside in his snow-encrusted boots, was greeted by the lush, alluring fragrance of flowers. Their fresh scent spoke at once to his heart and lightened his sober thoughts.

  He looped the red leash around a chair leg and took off his boots as Barnabas lay down contentedly. Apparently, the Altar Guild had been in to arrange the flowers and had forgotten to lock the side door. He must speak to them about it, of course.

  Not that he didn’t like an unlocked church. No, indeed; he preferred it. If there was anything disheartening, it was to seek out a church for prayer and refreshment and find its doors barred.

  But the Mortlake tapestry, woven in 1675 and now hanging behind the altar, was of such extraordinary rarity that the insurance company not only demanded a darkened room and locked doors, it stipulated the type of locks.

  It was unusual for him to visit Lord’s Chapel on Saturday, but today he was seeking special refreshment of his own. Who was there, after all, to counsel the counselor? He crossed himself. “Revive me, O Lord,” he prayed, “according to thy word.”

  For days, he had felt weighted and heavy, but not from the holiday turkey and dressing. If anything, he had been more careful of his diet than ever. It was his spirit that was heavy, at a time when church events were in full force and Advent preparations were hurling him madly toward Christmas.

  Yet it wasn’t the escalating rush of daily life that concerned him. What concerned him were his sermons.

  In recent weeks, they had been tepid and controlled. Barren, somehow. It was as if the Holy Spirit had taken his hands off and was standing back, observing, watchful.

  He sighed as he opened the door into the nave, and noted that he must stop doing that. Sighing was not becoming to anyone, much less to a rector. Perhaps he could put the burden on Emma, saying, “Emma, I have this bothersome habit of sighing, as you no doubt have noticed. From now on, tell me when I do it, and I’ll put a dollar in the thanks-offering box.”

  A dollar! he thought. The very stiffness of the penalty should resolve the problem.

  Before he prayed, however, he wanted to complete a chore. It had always been his habit to do a chore when he came to the church on Saturday.

  Today he would pay some overdue attention to the columbarium, where six ash-filled urns were hidden away in a closet on the parish hall corridor.

  He located the key on the top of the door frame, unlocked, and turned on the light.

  It wasn’t much of a final resting place, he thought. His own wish was to be buried in the old-fashioned way, with birds singing and roses blooming over him.

  He moved the 1928 prayer books that someone had piled onto the shelf next to the urns, and partially filled a wastebasket with the glass ashtrays they’d used in the parish hall before the blessed relief of the smoking ban. Rummage sale!

  He dumped two arrangements of plastic poinsettias into the wastebasket, lest anyone should find them and use them again, and followed that with a stack of hymnals so badly worn that the covers were off. Recycling bin!

  Feeling warmly satisfied with the results of twenty minutes’ effort, he went to the kitchen for cleaning rags and returned to dust off the remains of Parkinson Hamrick.

  “Gone to Glory!” he said with a smile, remembering the kind man who had sung like an angel.

  Parkinson’s ashes rattled dully as he set the urn down. Though he had never looked into one of these morbid containers, he’d been told by Father Roland that bits of charred bone were mixed with the ashes, which caused the rattle.

  “Lydia Newton,” he murmured aloud, lifting her urn. Lydia Newton, herself widowed, had come with her widowed mother-in-law to Mitford, where the two had lived happily for years. “Where thou diest,” Ruth had said to Naomi in the Bible story, “will I die, and there will I be buried; the Lord do so to me, and more also, if anything but death part thee and me.” It was one of the loveliest passages in Scripture, mistakenly used, he thought, in Protestant weddings.

  The musty little closet was, in a sense, coming alive. And he was feeling better already. Then he picked up the next urn.

  While the other urns had rattled dully, he found that the remains of Parrish Guthrie rattled differently. Again, he held up the bronze urn and shook it.

  Odd. Not at all like the sound of the others. There was a brighter rattle, as of something small and hard, like pebbles.

  He was curious. After all, he’d never seen inside one of these things. He looked up at the dim, bare bulb and decided to move the urn into the kitchen by the big window over the sink.

  He took a tea towel from the rack by the sink and applied some pressure to the top of the urn. It wouldn’t budge. Need one of those rubber things that unscrews jars, he thought, trying again. The urn rattled brightly. Seashells, he thought, remembering his time as a child at the gulf shore. It sounds like a jar of small seashells.

  Then, the top of the urn gave way and unscrewed as if it had been oiled.

  He turned the open mouth of the urn toward the light and peered in. Something gleamed.

  “I hope that’s not the old boy’s gold tooth!” he said aloud.

  He spread the tea towel on the countertop, then turned the urn on its side and shook it gently. Something loosely wrapped in cloth appeared, and tumbled onto the towel.

  When he untied the string, the bright, faceted gems came rolling out like so many peas.

  “Good Lord!” he croaked, hearing his voice fail.

  The winter light coming through the window struck the stones at playful random. Some, shaped like tiny globes, radiated a scarlet glow that was utterly bewitching. Others, the shape of teardrops, seemed to burn with a green and living fire. Still others were as darkly blue as distant mountains.

  He stood by the sink, unaware that he was holding his breath. He could see that the jar contained more of the loosely wrapped parcels, and he was seized with such anxiety that he felt a heaviness in his chest.

  “Father, something is out of order here. I need your wisdom. Help me think this through . . .” He let out his breath, and sat down on the stool by the telephone. His knees were weak.

  Trouble! What he was looking at was trouble. Before he even began to think it through, he was convinced of that.

  He had personally attended these urns about three years ago; the date would be in his journal on the shelf at the office. At that time, Parrish Guthrie’s rattle had been no different from the rest. So, the jewels had been put into the urn
since then.

  Scarcely anyone ever went near that closet. Someone would occasionally open the door, throw in a bit of rubbish and depart. Once, a Sunday school class had been shown the closet, in a teaching about death. “Gross!” said a ten-year-old. If there was a neglected, seldom-used part of the church, the closet was it. A perfect place, then, for someone to hide what he’d just found.

  But had he found anything of real importance? Were these the genuine article? He knew nothing about jewels. As payment of a legal fee, his attorney father had once come into possession of some uncut diamonds, which he’d considered dull, gray, and uninteresting. But once they were cut, they flashed like fire. What a marvel!

  No, he had no knowledge of jewels. But something told him that these were the real thing. He had seen that same vibrant, indescribable fire in the cut diamonds.

  Now what? He moved off the stool and paced the kitchen.

  The proper thing, he thought, was to call Rodney Underwood, who would conduct endless questions, investigations, and fingerprinting, just like on TV.

  Rodney, always overzealous, would have his small force swarming—yes, swarming—over the place, and here it was nearly Christmas, with new music for the choir to practice, and the special musicale and concert reading coming up within the week, and the Festival of Lessons and Carols. Clearly, the beauty and holiness of a time already fractured by stress and distractions would be further eroded.

  Then there was J.C. Hogan to consider.

  J.C. would run a front-page story, colored by the usual inaccuracies. He’d very likely have an interview with Emma Garrett, Russell Jacks, the vestry, and whoever had an opinion at the Grill, which was everybody.

  Worse than that, J.C. would camp out at Lord’s Chapel and the rector’s office for days on end, looking for a “scoop” and eating countless bags of M&Ms, a great number of which would end up on the floor, smashed underfoot.

  The other course, then, was to let sleeping dogs lie, and wait until after Christmas to call Rodney Underwood.

  He didn’t think twice about what he did next.

  He put the jewels back into the cloth, tied the string and placed the parcel in the urn, screwed the top on, folded the tea towel and replaced it on the rack, walked down the hall and put the urn on the closet shelf exactly where it had been, dusted the other three urns, turned off the light, carried out the full wastebasket and the dust rags, locked the door, put the dust rags under the kitchen sink, stored the wastebasket in the rummage room, and checked on Barnabas before he went to the nave to do what he had, after all, come to do:

  Pray about his anemic sermons.

  As he paused to let his eyes adjust to the dimness of the nave, he heard a strange sound. Then, toward the front, on the gospel side, he saw a man kneeling in a pew. Suddenly, he leaned back and uttered such a desperate cry that the rector’s heart fairly thundered.

  Give me wisdom, he prayed for the second time that morning. Then he stood waiting. He didn’t know for what.

  “If you’re up there, prove it! Show me! If you’re God, you can prove it!” In the visitor’s voice was a combination of anger, despair, and odd hope.

  “I’ll never ask you this again,” the man said coldly, and then, with a fury that chilled his listener, he shouted again, “Are . . . you . . . up . . . there?”

  With what appeared to be utter exhaustion, he put his head in his hands as the question reverberated in the nave.

  Father Tim slid into the pew across the aisle and knelt on the worn cushion. “You may be asking the wrong question,” he said, quietly.

  Startled, the man raised his head.

  “I believe the question you may want to ask is not, ‘Are you up there?’ but, ‘Are you down here?’ ”

  “What kind of joke is that?”

  “It isn’t a joke.”

  The man took a handkerchief from his suit pocket and wiped his face. He was neatly dressed, the rector observed, and his suit and tie appeared to be expensive. A businessman, obviously. Successful, quite likely. Not from Mitford, certainly.

  “God wouldn’t be God if He were only up there. In fact, another name for Him is Immanuel, which means ‘God with us.’ ” He was amazed at the casual tone of his voice, as if they’d met here to chat for a while. “He’s with us right now, in this room.”

  The man looked at him. “I’d like to believe that, but I can’t. I can’t feel Him at all.”

  “There’s a reason . . .”

  “The things I’ve done,” the man said, flatly.

  “Have you asked Him to forgive the things you’ve done?”

  “I assure you that God would not want to do that.”

  “Believe it or not, I can promise that He would. In fact, He promises that He will.”

  The man looked at his watch. “I’ve got a meeting,” he said, yet he made no move to leave. He remained on his knees.

  “What business are you in?” It was one of those questions from a cocktail party or Rotary meeting, but out it came.

  “Shoes. We make men’s shoes. I was on my way to a sales meeting in Wesley when I saw this place and I came in. I didn’t mean to do it, I just couldn’t help it. I had to come in. And now I don’t know what I’m doing here. I need to get on the road.”

  Still, he made no move to rise from his knees.

  It was an odd thought, but the rector pursued it. “Let’s say you need to move into another factory building. Trouble is, it’s crowded with useless, out-of-date equipment. Until you clear out the rubbish and get the right equipment installed, you’re paralyzed, you can’t produce.”

  “How did you know we’re looking for a new factory?”

  “I didn’t know. A divine coincidence.”

  There was a long silence. A squirrel ran across the attic floor.

  “You can keep the factory shut down and unproductive, or you can clear it out and get to work. Is your life working?”

  “Not in years.”

  Somewhere in the dark church, the floor creaked. “There’s no other way I can think of to put it—but when you let Him move into your life, the garbage moves out. The anger starts to go, and the resentment, and the fear. That’s when He can help get your equipment up and running, you might say.”

  “Look, I don’t want to wallow around in this God stuff like a pig in slop. I just want some answers, that’s all.”

  “What are the questions you want answered?”

  “Bottom line, is He up there, is He real?”

  “Bottom line, He’s down here, He’s with us right now.”

  “Prove it.”

  “I can’t. I don’t even want to try.”

  “Jesus,” the man said, shaking his head.

  This was like flying blind, the rector thought, with the windshield iced over. “I get the feeling you really want God to be real, perhaps you even want to be close to Him, but . . . but you’re holding on to something, holding on to one of those sins you don’t think God can forgive, and you don’t want to let it go.”

  The man’s voice was cold. “I’d like to kill someone, I think of killing him all the time. I would never do it, but he deserves it, and thinking about it helps me. I like thinking about it.”

  The rector felt suddenly weakened, as if the anger had seeped into his own bones, his own spirit. He wanted the windshield to defrost; where was this going?

  “Do you like the fall of the year?”

  The man gave an odd laugh. “Why?”

  “One of the things that makes a dead leaf fall to the ground is the bud of the new leaf that pushes it off the limb. When you let God fill you with His love and forgiveness, the things you think you desperately want to hold on to start falling away . . . and we hardly notice their passing.”

  The man looked at his watch and made a move to rise from his knees. His agitation was palpable.

  “Let me ask you something,” said the rector. “Would you like to ask Christ into your life?”

  The stranger stared into the darkened s
anctuary. “I can’t do it, I’ve tried.”

  “It isn’t a test you have to pass. It doesn’t require discipline and intelligence . . . not even strength and perseverance. It only requires faith.”

  “I don’t think I’ve got that.” There was a long silence. “But I’d be willing to try it . . . one more time.”

  “Will you pray a simple prayer with me . . . on faith?”

  He looked up. “What do I have to lose?”

  “Nothing, actually.” Father Tim rose stiffly from the kneeler and took the short step across the aisle, where he laid his hands on the man’s head.

  “If you could repeat this,” he said. “Thank you, God, for loving me, and for sending your Son to die for my sins. I sincerely repent of my sins, and receive Christ as my personal savior. Now, as your child, I turn my entire life over to you. Amen.”

  The man repeated the prayer, and they were silent.

  “Is that all?” he asked finally.

  “That’s all.”

  “I don’t know . . . what I’m supposed to feel.”

  “Whatever you feel is exactly what you’re supposed to feel.”

  The man was suddenly embarrassed, awkward. “I’ve got to get out of here. I was on my way to a meeting in Wesley, and I saw this old church and I . . . things have been, I’ve been . . . I’ve got to get out of here. Look, thanks. Thank you,” he said, shaking the rector’s hand.

  “Please . . . stay in touch.”

  He stood at the door for a moment and watched him go. There was so much he hadn’t said, so much he’d left out. But the Holy Spirit would fill in the blanks.

  As they were leaving the church, Barnabas looked up, sniffed the air, and began to bark wildly at the ceiling. His booming voice filled the small nave like the bass of an organ.

  With some difficulty, he unglued his charge from the narthex floor and pulled him along on the leash.

  It seemed years ago that he’d come in this door, he thought. Yet his watch told him he’d been at Lord’s Chapel only a little more than two hours.