Out to Canaan

  “God was sending Abram, whom He would later call Abraham, on the greatest journey, the grandest mission, of his life. But what would Canaan be like? Some said giants inhabited the land, and I recall what Billy Sunday once said, ‘He said if you want milk and honey on your bread, you must be willing to go into the land of giants!’ ”

  Father Tim felt his hair standing up on his head.

  “What,” asked Stuart, looking resplendent in embroidered brocade, “did Abraham feel when he was called by God to go out into this unfamiliar land, hundreds of miles from home?”

  The rector believed he clearly heard the thoughts of half the crowd: Beats me!

  In fact, Abraham hadn’t even made an appearance in this morning’s Old Testament reading. Oh, well. Bishops could do whatever they darn well pleased.

  Stuart leaned over the pulpit and peered at the assembly, most of whom were admiring his satin mitre.

  “Did he, like your faithful friend and priest, feel fearful of this journey into the unknown? Of course! Did he feel sorrow for leaving the familiar behind? Almost certainly! But”—and here Stuart drew himself up to his full height of six feet plus—“given what God had in store for him, didn’t he also feel hope and excitement and expectation and joy?”

  None of the above, thought the rector. What he felt was sheer, holy terror.

  With no small amount of admiration, he observed Stuart Cullen getting exactly what he wanted from the congregation, rather like a conductor extracting a great symphony from an orchestra.

  Where Stuart wanted tears, he got unashamed tears.

  Where he wanted riotous laughter, there it came, pouring forth like a mighty ocean.

  By the end of the service, nearly everyone felt as if they’d been called out to a Canaan of their own; that life itself was a type of Canaan.

  The rector left the eleven o’clock on legs that felt like cooked macaroni, clinging to the arm of his wife, who was beaming.

  “There, now, dearest, this is not a lynching, after all! Cheer up!”

  He couldn’t believe that his congregation had kissed him, hugged him, pounded him on the back, congratulated him, and wished him well.

  Where he had expected faces streaming with tears, he saw only lively concern for his future. Where he had feared stern looks of indignation, he received smiles and laughter and the assurance they’d always love him.

  Didn’t they care?

  “Don’t kid yourself,” said Stuart, as he and Martha dove into the car after the parish hall brunch. “The backlash is yet to come.”

  As Stuart gunned the Toyota Camry away from the curb, the rector felt brighter. So, maybe his parishioners really would hate to see him go! Right now they were just having a good time—after all, the bishop’s visit was always a festive occasion.

  CHAPTER SIX

  A Small Boom

  Emma was right. The billboard of Mack Stroupe’s face seemed to loom over the highway. And whoever was responsible for the photo didn’t appear to think much of retouching.

  Zooming past it in his Buick, he wondered at his feelings about the new candidate, and determined, once and for all, to think the thing through and come to a conclusion he could live with. He was tired of the whole issue crawling around in the back of his mind like so many ants over a sugar bowl.

  Why did he feel queasy and uncomfortable about Mack Stroupe being his mayor? J.C. was right—the mayorship wasn’t Esther’s job, it was the job of anybody who qualified to make the most of the office. But—did Mack qualify?

  He couldn’t think of a single reason why he should. Was it mere gossip that Mack had carried on a long-term extramarital relationship with a woman in Wesley? People were notorious for giving clergy all manner of information, and apparently the affair wasn’t rumor at all, but fact.

  While that sort of behavior may be acceptable to some, for him, it wouldn’t fly. The whole business spoke of treachery and betrayal, however admissible it might be in the world’s view.

  He thought of Esther’s plank, so well known by everyone in Mitford that first graders could recite it: Mitford Takes Care of Its Own.

  Esther had carried out that philosophy in every particular, never wavering.

  Wasn’t it true that when you take care of what you have, healthy growth follows? Hadn’t his trilliums, planted under all the right conditions, spread until they formed a grove? And the lily of the valley, established in the rich, dark soil behind his study, had become a virtual kingdom from only three small plants.

  Actually, there had been growth in Mitford; it was no bucolic backwater. The little tea shop next to Mitford Blossoms was flourishing. They were still limited to cakes, cookies, tea, and coffee, but as everyone agreed, you have to crawl before you walk.

  Recently, Jena Ivey, their florist, had been forced to add a room to her shop. And take the Irish Woolen Shop. Now, there was a flexible endeavor. In late spring and summer, when temperatures soared, Minnie Lomax removed the word Woolen from the store sign, thereby assuring a brisk, year-round trade.

  Avis Packard was another example. Avis was a small-town grocer who had done such a terrific job of providing world-class provender that people came from surrounding counties to fill up his rear parking lot and jam the streets, especially when the Silver Queen corn rolled in.

  And Happy Endings. When he first came here, there was no such thing as a bookstore; he’d been forced to drive to Wesley and spend his money in another tax jurisdiction. Last summer, there had actually been a queue in front of Happy Endings—he had seen it with his own eyes—when the newest Grisham book arrived by UPS. The UPS man had been astounded when he pulled to the curb and everybody cheered.

  Mitford was making it, and without neon signs and factory smoke. So, yes, maybe some well-planned growth would be good, but face it, they were doing something right, and he didn’t want to see that mind-set replaced by a mind-set that was only for development and change, whatever the cost.

  Another thing. It boggled his mind that Mack Stroupe knew anyone outside the confines of Wesley and Holding. How had Mack engineered contact with what sounded like a large Florida development firm? And this thing about Mitford Woods, and Mack being the ringleader . . .

  In the end, what about Mack’s platform?

  Was Mack really for Mitford?

  Or was Mack for Mack?

  He found his breakfast cereal tasting exactly like oil-based latex.

  Every window was up, three fans were running wide open, and Violet sprawled as if drugged on the top of the refrigerator. Even the gloxinia seemed oppressed by the noxious fumes rising from the basement.

  “Let’s move!” said Cynthia, meaning it.

  “Where?” he asked, liking the idea.

  “The little yellow house! I don’t even know some of the people I’m meeting in my own hallway!”

  “You know Tommy,” he said. “He only spent three nights.”

  “Yes, but—”

  “And Harley’s friend Cotton, didn’t he tell great stories?”

  “Of course, but—”

  “And certainly Olivia was well meaning when she came down with the women from the hospital auxiliary to bring pots and pans and scatter rugs for Harley’s kitchen. I’m sure they didn’t mind that you still had curlers in your hair.”

  “I married a bachelor who led the quietest of lives, and now look!” she exclaimed, eyeing a kitchen sink that contained a roller pan, rollers, and a bevy of brushes.

  “The plumbing repairs in the basement,” he said lamely, “will be finished tomorrow, and they can wash the brushes down there.”

  “A likely story!”

  “You’re beautiful when you’re mad,” he said.

  “I read that line in a pulp novel thirty years ago!”

  “So sue me.”

  She came around the breakfast table and sat in his lap. “I love you, you big lug.”

  “I love you more,” he said, pulling her to him and kissing her hair. “Have you started your book?”
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  She laughed gaily. “Of course I’ve started my book! None of this would have happened if I hadn’t started my book!”

  These days, clergy seldom liked living in rectories. Because they generally preferred to own their own homes, and because the upkeep of the rectory had been considerable over the years, the vestry had long ago voted to sell the old house at the end of his tenure. What with the recent improvement below, the rector suspected they’d get a much better price for it.

  Who would have dreamed he’d ever see the grim downstairs hallway come alive under a coat of Peach Soufflé, or a kitchen transformed by Piña Colada and his wife’s bright curtains fluttering at the window?

  Harley Welch would be living high in this basement.

  Before the Miami contingent arrived the following day, he cleaned up some matters at his desk.

  Emil Kettner, head honcho of the construction company that built Hope House, regretted that Buck Leeper would be tied up for two years on a project in Virginia.

  Perhaps after that, Kettner said, they could send Buck to Mitford for six months, which ought to be enough time to overhaul the church attic. His company never sent Buck on small jobs, but in this case, they’d try to make an exception. Could they wait?

  Their Sunday School wasn’t yet overflowing, said the rector, but they were getting there.

  The conclusion was, Lord’s Chapel was willing to wait, as they really wanted Buck for the job.

  “He’s doing better, I thought you’d like to know that,” said Emil. “A few weekend benders here and there, but nothing daily like it was for years. What happened in Mitford, Father?”

  “Buck got rid of something old, so something new could come in.”

  “You have my personal thanks.”

  “No thanks to me,” said the rector. “Thanks be to God!”

  Lace Turner met him at the foot of the basement steps.

  “He’s done eat a whole bag of choc’late candy!” she said.

  Harley, who was a ghastly color, was sitting on the floor of the hallway, clutching his stomach. “Don’t be tattlin’ on me like I was some young ’un!”

  “You act like a young ’un!” said Lace. “That choc’late’ll git your ulcer goin’ again, just when you was gettin’ better!”

  “Rev’rend, hit was all that baby puddin’ that made me do it. A man needs somethin’ he can get ’is teeth into, you might say. But oh, law, I repent, I do, I’m sorry I ever bought that bag of candy, I’ll never take another bite long as I live! Nossir!”

  “Forty-two pieces, I counted ’em,” said Lace. “He wadded up th’ wrappers and stuck ever’ one under ’is mattress.”

  “You cain’t git by with a thing around this ’un, she’s th’ worst ol’ police I ever seen.” Harley stood up suddenly, looking distraught. “Oh, law! You ’uns better leave!”

  He headed for the bathroom at a trot.

  What timing. The basement plumbing had been completed barely an hour ago.

  He squirmed in his office chair and looked at his watch.

  In thirty minutes, he and Ron Malcolm and several others on the vestry were squiring strangers around Sadie Baxter’s homeplace. He hated the thought, but he despised himself more for his wishy-washy attitude about the whole situation.

  They needed desperately to sell it, get it off the shoulders of the parish; yet, here was a golden opportunity driving up the mountain in a rented car, and he wanted to run in the opposite direction.

  Surely it was as simple as his dread of letting Sadie Baxter go entirely. Surely he was trying to hold on to what was vanished and gone, to another way of life that had been vibrantly preserved in Miss Sadie’s engrossing stories.

  When Fernbank was sold, all that would be left of the old Mitford was three original storefronts on Main Street, Lord’s Chapel and the church office, the town library, and the Porter mansion-cum-town museum where Uncle Billy and Miss Rose lived in the little apartment.

  Blast! he exhorted himself. Stop being a hick and move on. This is today, this is now!

  He glanced at Emma, who was staring at her computer screen. What did people find to stare at on computer screens, anyway? Nothing moved on the screen, yet she was transfixed, as if hearing voices from a heavenly realm.

  “I’ll be darned,” she muttered, clicking her mouse.

  He sighed.

  “Look here,” she said, not taking her eyes off the screen.

  He got up and went to her desk and looked.

  “What? It looks like a list.”

  “It is a list. It’s a list of everybody in the whole United States, and their addresses. Our computer man sent it to us. See there?”

  She moved her pointer to a name. “Albert Wilcox!” he exclaimed. “Good heavens, do you suppose . . .”

  “We’ve been lookin’ for Albert Wilcox for how long?”

  “Ten years, anyway! Do you think it’s our Albert Wilcox?”

  “We heard he’d moved to Seattle,” she said, “and we tried to find him in the phone book, but we never did. This town is somewhere close to Seattle, it’s called Oak Harbor.”

  “Well done! Let’s write this Albert Wilcox and see if he’s the one whose grandmother’s hand-illuminated prayer book turned up in the parish hall storage closet.”

  “A miracle!” she said. “I remember the day we found it—right behind the plastic poinsettias that had been there a hundred years. How in th’ dickens it ended up there . . .”

  “That book could be worth a fortune. Every page is done in calligraphy and watercolor illustrations—by his own grandfather. When it disappeared out of the exhibition we did for a Bane and Blessing, it broke Albert’s heart.”

  “It was only Rite One, remember, not th’ whole thing!”

  “Nonetheless . . .”

  “And don’t forget he was goin’ to sue the church ’til Miss Sadie talked him out of it.”

  Well, that, too.

  Ingrid Swenson was fashionably thin, deeply tanned, and expensively dressed.

  “Arresting!” she said, as they drove along Fernbank’s proud but neglected driveway.

  Tendrils of grapevine leapt across the drive and entwined among a row of hemlocks on the other side. To their right, a gigantic mock orange faded from bloom in a tangled thicket of wisteria, star magnolia, and rhododendron.

  The house didn’t reveal its dilapidation at once, and for that he was relieved. In fact, it stood more grandly than he remembered from his caretaker’s visit in March.

  He was touched to recall that exactly two years ago there had been the finest of fetes at this house.

  On the lawn, young people in tuxedos had served champagne and cups of punch on silver trays, as lively strains of Mozart poured through the tall windows. Inside, the ballroom had been filled with heartfelt joy for Olivia and Hoppy Harper, the glamorous bride and groom, and with awe for the hand-painted ceiling above their heads, which was newly restored to its former glory.

  Roberto had flown from Italy to surprise Miss Sadie, and Esther Bolick’s orange marmalade cake had stood three tiers high, each tier supported by Corinthian columns of marzipan bedecked with imported calla lilies. It had been, without doubt, the swellest affair since President Woodrow Wilson had attended a ball at Fernbank and given little Sadie Baxter a hard candy wrapped in silver paper.

  The man who came with Ingrid Swenson seemed interested only in biting his nails, speaking in monosyllables, and exploring Fernbank quite on his own. The rector saw him peering into the washhouse and wandering into the orchards, taking notes.

  “A little over twelve acres,” said Ron Malcolm, a longtime member of Lord’s Chapel who kept his broker’s license current.

  “Excellent,” said Ingrid, who took no notes at all. “Twelve acres translates to twenty-four cottages. Town water, I presume?”

  “On a well.”

  “Town sewer, of course . . . .”

  “Afraid not,” said Ron. “And I must tell you in all fairness that the cost to connect th
is property to town services will run well above a hundred thousand. The connection is a half mile down the hill and the right-of-ways pose some real problems.”

  Ingrid looked at him archly. “It could behoove you to make that investment and offer your buyer an upgraded property.”

  “It behooves us even more,” said Ron, “to avoid putting a burden of debt on the parish.”

  She smiled vaguely. “That is, in any case, a trifle, Mr. Malcolm. But let’s consider an issue which is the polar opposite of a trifle, and that’s the number of jobs such a facility would bring to your village. An upscale property of twenty-one rooms and twenty-four cottages, including a state-of-the-art health center, would employ well over a hundred people, many of them coming from Europe and the British Isles and requiring satisfactory housing. This, gentlemen, could create a small boom.” She paused for effect. “A small boom for a small town!” she said, laughing.

  “Yes ma’am,” said Ron Malcolm.

  “But we’ll get to all that later. Now I’d like to start in the attic and work down to the basement.”

  “Consider it done,” said the rector, wanting the whole thing behind them.

  She would talk it over with her associates, Ingrid told them in the church office. They wouldn’t buy an option—they’d take a risk on the property still being available when they returned with an offer in thirty to sixty days.

  “Risk,” she said, toying with the paperweight on his desk, “has a certain adrenaline, after all.”

  Their lawyer would begin the title search immediately, and a full topo would be done by a surveyor from Holding. No, they didn’t want the window treatments or furnishings, with the possible exception of Miss Sadie’s bed, which Ingrid concluded was French, a loveseat and secretary that were almost certainly George II, and a china cabinet that appeared to be made by a native craftsman.