“Puny,” he said, “I faithfully pray for you each day. But I believe I’m going to add something to that prayer. I’m going ask the Lord to start the parade!”
Puny blushed and lowered her eyes. He was astounded to see a tear creep down her freckled cheek.
Without knowing why, it touched him so deeply that he turned away. He heard her blow her nose.
“Cornbread!” she suddenly said, with great feeling.
“Cornbread?”
She flew to the stove drawer. “I’m goin’ to make you a cake of cornbread, I don’t care what your doctor says! And I’m puttin’ salt in it, and bacon drippin’s, and fryin’ it in Crisco, ’cause I’m tired of holdin’ back on my good cornbread.”
“Well, then!” he said, with admiration. “Just do it!”
The weather on Thursday morning was grim. He’d been aware of rain all night long, and sometime around four o’clock, Dooley crept into his bedroom. On hearing a noise, he and Barnabas sat straight up, seeing only a silhouette in the doorway. Barnabas growled darkly.
“Oh, shut up!” said Dooley, “I ain’t no burglar. I come t’ say I’m freezin’ m’ tailbone in there.”
He got up and turned the thermostat to sixty, and Dooley stomped back to bed. The floor was like ice, and the rain beat against the windows in sheets.
At five, just before he was to get up for morning prayer and study, the wind began. It lashed the trees outside his bedroom window, groaned around the rectory, and made him recall the ominous forecast that ice would coat the streets like glass by midmorning. He remembered, too, that this was the day Louella was to arrive in Mitford and begin life again at Fernbank.
He went to the window and looked down at the little house next door. A lamp burned in an upstairs window, a pool of warm light in the dark and pouring rain.
“Well, then, Lord,” he said aloud as he stood there. “Is this another memo from you about taking my car to Lew Boyd, so I can start driving again? How will the boy get to school in all this? And how can I make it to the hospital in this downpour?”
He heard a sound behind him.
“Is that you talkin’ in here?”
“It is.”
“Well, it sounds creepy with this ol’ storm a blowin’ and you settin’ in here in th’ dark, yammerin’ to yourself.”
“Yammerin’, is it?”
“It jis’ kind of sounds like yammer, yammer, yammer, yammer.”
He looked down at the boy’s anxious face and put his arm around his shoulders.
“Dooley?”
Dooley hesitated. Then he said it. “Yes, sir?”
“What if we do something different today?”
“What’s ’at?”
“What if we stay home and play with that train my cousin sent?”
Dooley hollered so loud that Barnabas leaped off the bed and ran into the hallway, barking at his shadow on the wall.
" ’at’s a great idea! Boy, ’at’s a great idea!”
“Would you be willing to admit, then, that preachers can occasionally have a great idea?”
“Yeah! Yes, sir! Boys howdy!”
“And while we’re at it, why don’t we have some of our favorite things, like hot chocolate with three marshmallows, and chili, and—”
“Popcorn, an’ apple pie with ice cream—”
“And a bit of Wordsworth . . .”
“Yuck!”
“And stay in our robes and pajamas.”
“Cool!”
“At eight-thirty, I am going to call your school and say, ‘Dooley Barlowe is not sick today, but if he came out in this weather, he would surely get sick, so look for him tomorrow.’ ”
Without a word, Dooley took the rector’s hand and shook it vigorously.
Early the following morning, the leaden skies cleared, the sun came out, and the village stirred briskly. After his hospital visit, he made a phone call to Lew Boyd, who agreed to do whatever it took to get his car running.
Then, he drove to Wesley on his motor scooter, took the driver’s license test, and, by grace alone, he later said, passed it.
Lew Boyd was looking out the window when he saw the rector walking past the war monument, toward the station. “Here ’e comes, boys,” he said, cutting himself a plug of tobacco.
“Been twenty year since he’s drove a car,” announced Coot Hendrick.
“No, it hain’t,” said Bailey Coffey. “Hit’s been fourteen, maybe fifteen.”
“Ain’t none of you got it right,” said Lew. “Th’ last time he drove that Buick was eight years ago. I looked up where I drained th’ fluids.”
“Time flies,” said Coot, dumping a pack of peanuts in his bottled Coke.
“Boys,” said Father Tim, coming in the front door, “she looks good.”
Lew went down his list. “We washed ’er, waxed ’er, put on y’r radials, put in y’r fluids, give you a batt’ry, vacuumed ’er out, spot cleaned y’r front seat, warshed y’r mats, filled ’er up, run ’er around th’ block, honked th’ horn, and tried out th’ radio.”
“I heard my fav’rite song,” said Coot, “ ‘If You Don’t Stand F’r Somethin’, You’ll Fall F’r Anything.’ ”
“We just all piled in and rode around, if you want to know th’ truth,” Bailey Coffey confessed.
“Here’s th’ bill,” said Lew, “and I don’t mind tellin’ you it’s a whopper.”
Coot patted the dinette chair next to his. “You better set down, is all I can say.”
“Four hundred eighty-six dollars and seventy-eight cents?” the rector asked.
“That includes y’r Peaches an’ Cream deod’rant spray.”
“A bargain!” he declared, and shook Lew’s hand with enthusiasm.
They followed him to the car. “Boys,” said Lew, as the rector started the ignition, “since he ain’t drove in a good while, I’d step back if I was you.”
They stood watching as the car cruised around the monument and disappeared down Main Street, where several people turned and stared in complete disbelief at the sight of the local priest driving a car, apparently absorbed in his own thoughts, but actually listening intently to the country-and-western station on his radio, which was playing a number called “I Bought the Shoes That Just Walked Out on Me.”
During the service the following Sunday, he asked the congregation if anyone had seen his Bible, which he described in minute detail.
Black. Embossed with his name in gold. Leather. Worn. Small. Red-letter edition. Marked in the margins.
Not a soul raised a hand, stood up, confessed, or otherwise gave any indication of its whereabouts.
He didn’t know why such a thought occurred to him, but he felt he should search the church. The basement, the attic, that sort of thing. Too many things were missing; something felt oddly out of place, like a picture hanging crooked on the wall.
It was after dark when he walked to Lord’s Chapel, noticing the sign on the front door of the Oxford as he passed. “Away,” it read, which was Andrew’s unique language for “Closed.” He’d heard that Andrew had left last week on his biannual trip to England to buy antiques and meet with a society that collected Churchill memorabilia. The gray Mercedes would not be parked at the curb for a while, which gave him a puzzling sense of relief.
Arriving at the church, he turned on all the lights and went first to the basement. He searched the sprawling, unfinished room thoroughly, even looking into the surplus food cabinets where they stored canned goods for church suppers. On the few occasions he’d looked in this cabinet, he’d seen it full, as Esther Bolick was the majordomo of all kitchen activities and a real crackerjack at keeping supplies on hand.
This time, it was nearly empty; they were even low on toilet paper. “Have you ever tried to go to the johnny over at the Baptists’?” Esther once said. “They never have any toilet paper. You have to use the Kleenex in your pocketbook, if you’re lucky enough to have any!” It had been a particular ambition of Esther’s never to r
un out of this commodity at Lord’s Chapel.
On entering the parish hall, he was surprised to smell the unmistakable odor of chicken noodle soup. He would know that smell anywhere, having lived off that particular soup during his early years in the priesthood.
There was no indication that anyone had been in the church. No meetings were scheduled. Altar Guild never worked on Sunday, having a tradition of cleaning up on Monday. And Russell lay sick in the hospital.
He felt a sudden foreboding. Something was wrong, very wrong. He could sense it, and he didn’t like it.
At the left of the altar, he reached up and pulled the chain that brought down the attic stairs.
Why in heaven’s name anyone would have put attic stairs near the altar was beyond him. However, the chain did make a fine place to attach a flower basket during spring and summer services.
Chicken noodle soup! As he turned on the attic lights and climbed the creaking steps, he smelled it more distinctly than before.
In his twelve years at Lord’s Chapel, he had been in the attic only once, and found it as large as the loft of a New England barn. According to Miss Sadie, they had built the church with room for growth of the Sunday school. As his eyes came level with the floor of the loft, he saw nothing but a vast, empty space filled with shadows.
It was strangely restful to stand in this place, without the fret and clutter of “things.”
He noticed something lying near the window in the corner. But when he walked over to it, he saw that it was only a candy wrapper. Almond Joy. One of his favorites.
He picked it up. He could smell the tiniest scent of chocolate on the wrapper.
He put the wrapper in his pants pocket and walked to the door that opened into the nearly empty belfry. Three of the enormous bells were gone from their oak mountings. The fourth, the great and solemn “death bell,” as it was called, stood silent in the corner of the Norman tower.
What was he looking for, anyway? he asked himself. Perhaps he hoped the jewels would turn up again somewhere on the premises, and Rodney Underwood would take them away, and the whole incident would be off his mind and out of his hands. After all, wasn’t it possible that whoever put them in the urn might have moved them to another hiding place in the church?
If nothing else, he was able to see the pristine condition of the old building, even in the poor light from naked bulbs.
He closed the door to the belfry and walked to the stairs.
Very likely, he thought, the theft of Esther Bolick’s marmalade cake had been an inside job, a practical joke by one of the many fervent admirers of that famous cake. And his Bible would turn up in some unexpected place that, after all, would make perfect sense.
The jewels, however, were another matter. He had hoped to come up from the basement or down from the attic feeling some sort of peace. But the matter of the jewels would give him no peace at all.
When he went home from the office on Monday, Puny was standing at the door, waiting. He could see the fire in her eyes before he opened the screen.
“This is a pleasant surprise,” he said, seeing that it wasn’t going to be pleasant at all. “You’re usually gone when I get home.”
“Are you still prayin’ that parade prayer?” she demanded, as he came in with a quart of milk and a loaf of bread.
“Parade prayer?”
“You know, th’ one that asks th’ Lord to let th’ parade begin?”
“Aha! Well, yes. Yes, I am.”
She glowered at him. “If you don’t mind, I’d appreciate it if you’d tell th’ Lord to stop th’ parade!”
“Well, now,” he said, putting the grocery bag down and sitting on his counter stool. “What’s going on?”
“Th’ very day we talked, I went to Th’ Local to get those nectarines Avis was ravin’ about, and I’m standin’ there by the produce, and this ol’ coot walks up t’ me an’ goes, ‘Well, little lady, where you bin at all my life?’
“He had his jaw stuck s’ full of tobacco, it would’ve gagged a billy goat. He follered me around till I had to nearly smack ’im to get ’im to leave me alone.
“Th’ very next day,” Puny continued, quite red in the face, “I was mindin’ my own business at th’ mall, tryin’ to buy you some washrags, and this big galoot slithers up t’ me like a snake and says, ‘Want t’ go git some chicken fingers at th’ arcade?’
“Chicken fingers! I showed ’im chicken fingers!”
“Puny,” he said, “when you go to a parade, do you like every float that passes?”
“I like some better’n others,” she said grudgingly.
“Well, then.”
“I don’t know. I think you should pray some other prayer. This’n scares me t’ death.”
“You wait,” he said, mildly. “This is only the start-up. We haven’t got to the drum and bugle corps yet, much less to the marching bands!”
“Whatever that’s supposed to mean,” she said, thoroughly disgusted.
That evening before dinner, he built a fire. Dooley made popcorn, and Barnabas did his business at the hedge with great expediency. He was as glad as a child for the comfort of home, and rest, and peace.
For what he estimated to be the fourth or fifth time, he picked up the Mitford Muse, which by now was four days old, and tried to read Esther Cunningham’s editorial on the July Festival of Roses. J.C. had done it again. “Festival of Ropes Will Transform Main Street,” said the headline.
Dooley answered the ringing phone in the kitchen. “Rec’try. Yep, he’s here, but he don’t want t’ talk t’ nobody.”
Dooley put his hand over the receiver and yelled, “It’s y’r doctor!”
“Hang up,” he said, and lifted the cordless by the sofa. “Got anything for exhaustion, sleeplessness, and general aggravation?” he asked.
“I was calling to ask you the same thing.”
“The blind leading the blind. How are you, my friend?”
“This place is eating me alive. I’ve got to get out of here for a while, and the kitchen said they’d make me a plate. I wondered if I could bring it to your place. Dining out, it’s called.”
“Of course!” he said, trying to conceal the weariness in his voice.
“I’ll bring you a plate, too.”
“I don’t know,” said the rector, with some caution. “What do you . . . ah, think it might be?”
“God only knows.”
“I’ve had that a few times. Bring it on, then. I need more surprises in my life.”
“Yuck,” said Dooley, “don’t give me any of that stuff. I eat somethin’ off granpaw’s plate th’ other day at th’ hospital, an’ it like t’ gagged me.”
“Thanks for reminding me.”
“I’ll jis’ have me some popcorn, peanut butter an’ jelly, an’ fried baloney.”
“Yuck,” said the rector.
“When in heaven’s name are you going to get some help?” he asked his doctor. They were sitting by the fire with trays on their laps.
“Soon.”
“That’s what you always say. And soon never comes. Here you are, a Harvard medical school graduate who could practice anywhere in the country, and you’ve chosen our obscure little village and the work of three men.”
“A man from Wesley will be spending a couple of afternoons with me, starting soon. Good doctor. Wilson. You’ll like him. Young.”
“A lamb to the slaughter.”
Hoppy grinned. “So, what do you think of the cuisine?”
“Well, now . . . words fail me.”
“Come on. We’re talking Chicken Cordon Bleu here.”
He laughed. “If that’s what you’re talking, my friend, we are clearly speaking two different languages.”
Hoppy gulped down his food, a habit encouraged by overwork and understaffing, and leaned back in the wing chair. “I need you to check me on something,” he said, looking into the fire.
“Proceed.”
“I don’t know where I’m going with
this. Maybe nowhere.” He was silent for some time, as the fire crackled. Barnabas got up from his master’s feet and went and lay next to Hoppy’s. This act of simple consolation was only one of the reasons Father Tim admired his dog’s character.
“When Carol was dying, there was nothing I could do. All I could do was control the pain. It was . . . hopeless.”
“Yes. It was. It was hopeless.”
Hoppy turned from the fire. “Severe myocarditis isn’t hopeless!” he said, with feeling.
“Keep going.”
“Which means I’m not helpless!”
“I hear you.”
Hoppy stood up and paced the floor. “I’m scared out of my mind. I hardly know this woman. We spent some time at the art show, I see her at church, we’ve had coffee in the staff room. And of course, I see what she’s doing for my patients. She’s the best medicine we’ve got up there.”
Father Tim heard Dooley running his bath water upstairs.
“Track me here, and see if I’m making sense.”
“I’m with you.”
“Severe myocarditis is not hopeless for one reason only—transplants. But this option is complicated by her blood type. Who knows whether we could find a compatible donor in a hundred years? And when we found one, would she be in stable enough condition to receive the heart? Another thing, it can’t be just anybody with her blood type, it will take someone who’s about her same weight. It’s scary business, but what I’m saying is this . . .”
He stood in front of the fire, his tall, lanky frame cast into shadow. “I hardly know this woman, but . . . I feel something for her that’s so strong, so . . . compelling . . . that I want to help her. I want to stick my neck out and help her. I want her to have a heart that works. I want . . .”
“What do you want?”
“I want her to live,” Hoppy said softly.
“I want that with you.”
“Get behind me in prayer, will you?”
“I will.”
“You’ll think I’m crazy, but I’ve been running down all the scenarios. I’ve got a friend in Wesley who’s a pilot. He’s not always easy to find, but we’re twenty minutes to his plane. And if I can’t find Millard, there’s a little charter service at the same strip, with a couple of Cessnas.