“I’ve picked up worse,” said J.C.
Mule stirred his coffee. “Just dry toast with mine.”
“No grits?” she asked, personally offended.
“Not today.”
“What’s the matter with Percy’s grits?”
“Oh, well, all right. But no butter.”
“Grits without butter?” What was wrong with these people?
“Lord, help,” sighed Mule. “Just bring me whatever.”
“I’ll have mine all the way,” said J.C., who had lately thrown caution to the wind. “Biscuits, grits, sausage, bacon, and give me a little mustard on the side.”
“I’ll have the usual,” said Father Tim.
Mule looked approving. “That’s what I need to do—figure out one thing and stick with it. Same thing every morning, and you don’t have to mess with it again.”
“Right,” said the rector.
“Have you seen Mack’s new boards?” asked J.C.
They hadn’t.
“They rhyme like those Burma-Shave signs. First one says, ‘If Mitford’s economy is going to move’ . . . th’ second one says, ‘we’ve got to improve.’ Last one says, ‘Mack for Mitford, Mack for Mayor.’”
“Gag me with a forklift,” said Mule.
“Esther Cunningham better get off her rear end, because like it or not, Mack Stroupe’s eatin’ her lunch. She’s been lollin’ around like this election was some kind of tea party. You’re so all-fired thick with the mayor,” J.C. said to the rector, “you ought to tell her the facts of life, and the fact is, she’s lookin’ dead in the water.”
“Aha. I thought we agreed not to talk politics.”
“Right,” said Mule, whose escalating blood pressure had suddenly turned his face beet red.
J.C. looked bored. “So what else is new? Let’s see, I was over at the town museum ’til midnight watchin’ those turkeys get ready for the festival. Omer Cunningham was draping th’ flag on Esther’s booth and fell off the ladder and busted his foot.”
“Busted his foot?” the rector blurted. “Good Lord! Can he fly?”
“Can he fly? I don’t know as he could, with a busted foot.”
Mule cackled. “He sure couldn’t fly any crazier than when his foot’s not busted.”
“Toast!” said Velma, sliding two orders onto the table.
The rector felt his stomach wrench.
“Biscuits!” said Velma, handing off a plate to J.C.
“May I use your phone?” asked Father Tim.
“You can, if you stay out of Percy’s way, you know where it’s at.”
He went to the red wall phone and dialed, knowing the number by heart. Hadn’t he called it two dozen times in the last few days?
No answer.
He hung up and stood by the grill, dazed, his mouth as dry as cotton.
“I just busted th’ yolk in one of y’r eggs,” said Percy, who despised poaching.
So? Busted feet, busted yolks, busted plans.
He might possibly be looking at the worst day of his life.
His palms were damp, something he’d never appreciated in clergy. Also, his collar felt tight, even though he’d snapped the Velcro at the loosest point.
When he and Cynthia arrived on the lawn of the town museum at 9:35, they had to elbow their way to the Lord’s Chapel booth, which was situated, this year, directly across from the llamas and the petting zoo.
“Excellent location!” said his wife, who was known to rely on animals as a drawing card.
They thumped down their cardboard box filled with the results of last night’s bake-a-thon in the rectory kitchen. Three Lord’s Chapel volunteers, dressed in aprons that said, Have you hugged an Episcopalian today? briskly set about unpacking the contents and displaying them in a case cooled by a generator humming at the rear of the tent.
Though the festival didn’t officially open until ten o’clock, the yard of the Porter mansion-cum-town museum was jammed with villagers, tourists, and the contents of three buses from neighboring communities. The rear end of a church van from Tennessee displayed a sign, Mitford or Bust.
The Presbyterian brass band was already in full throttle on the museum porch, and the sixth grade of Mitford School was marching around the statue of Willard Porter, builder of the impressive Victorian home, with tambourines, drums, and maracas painted in their school colors.
Why was he surprised to see posters on every pole and tree, promoting Mack Stroupe’s free barbecue at his campaign headquarters up the street?
His eyes searched the crowd for the mayor, who said she’d be under the elm tree this year, the one that had miraculously escaped the blight.
“I’ll be back,” he told Cynthia, who was giving him that concerned look. The way things were going, he’d need more than a domestic retreat, he’d need a set of pallbearers.
He saw Uncle Billy next to the lilac bushes, sitting in a hardback chair with a bottomless chair in front of him and a bucket of water at his feet.
“Stop in, Preacher! I’ll be a-canin’ chairs, don’t you know, hit’s a demonstration of th’ old ways, and I’ve set out a few of m’ birdhouses f’r sale.”
“How’s your arthur?” asked the rector, concerned.
“Well, sir, last night, I slapped it and said, ‘Git on out of there, I ain’t havin’ nothin’ t’ do with you!’ And m’ hands are feelin’ some better this mornin’, don’t you know.” He wiggled a couple of fingers to prove his point.
“Where’s Miss Rose?”
“She ain’t a-comin’ out this year, says she don’t like s’ many people ramblin’ around on ’er property.”
“Hold that green birdhouse for me, I’ll be back!”
He spotted Esther and her husband, Ray, shaking hands by a booth draped with an American flag and a banner hand-lettered with the mayor’s longtime political slogan.
“Mayor! Where’s Omer?”
“Where’s Omer? I thought you’d know where Omer is.”
“What about his foot?”
“Broken in two places.”
“Right, but what about . . . can he fly?”
She glared at him in a way that made Emma Newland look like a vestal virgin. “That’s your business,” she said, and turned back to the people she’d been shaking hands with.
He headed to the Lord’s Chapel booth, his heart hammering. He was afraid to let his wife see his face, since she could obviously read it like a book—but where else could he go?
Dooley! Of course! A Taste of America!
He hung a hard left in the direction of Avis Packard’s tent, cutting through the queue to the cotton candy truck, and ran slam into Omer Cunningham on a crutch.
“Good heavens! Omer!” He threw his arms around Esther Cunningham’s strapping brother-in-law and could easily have kissed his ring, or even his plaster cast.
Heads turned. People stared. He wished he weren’t wearing his collar.
Omer’s big grin displayed teeth the size of keys on a spinet piano. “We’re smokin’,” he said, giving a thumbs-up to the rector, who, overcome with joyful relief, thumped down on a folding chair at the Baptists’ display of tea towels, aprons, and oven mitts.
“Father!”
It was Andrew Gregory, the tall, handsome proprietor of Oxford Antiques, calling from his booth next to the statue of Willard Porter.
The rector could honestly say he felt a warm affection for the man who once courted Cynthia, escorting her hither and yon in his gray Mercedes, while Father Tim moped at the upstairs window of the rectory. Andrew might be six-four with a closetful of cashmere jackets, but hadn’t the five-nine, less stylish country parson won Cynthia?
By jing!
He felt positively lighthearted as he stepped up to the booth and shook hands with the antique dealer, who looked elegant in a linen shirt and trousers.
“Great to see you, my friend!”
“How is it,” asked Andrew, “that we seldom meet, though our doors are directly across t
he street from one another?”
“We’ve mused on that before,” said the rector, “and always to no avail. I’ve missed you. How are you?”
“Off next week to Italy, to my mother’s birthplace, a little town called Lucera.”
“I’ve often visited Italy . . . .”
“You have?”
“In my imagination,” confessed the rector.
Andrew smiled. “I’m afraid I’ve cultivated my paternal English side to the vast neglect of my Italian side. I’ll do like you did a couple of years ago—go searching for my roots, sample the local wines, visit cousins.”
“Good for the soul! You’re selling your fine lemon oil, I see.”
“Makes all the difference. Look at this eighteenth-century chest.” One side of the late-Georgian walnut chest appeared dark and sullen. The other side shone, revealing the life of the wood.
“I’ll take three bottles!” the rector announced.
“I’ve been wondering,” said Andrew, as he bagged the lemon oil, “whether I might give you a price on the contents of Fernbank. If you’re interested, I’d like to take a look before I chase off to the old country.”
“Well! That’s a thought. Let me run it by the vestry.” He had certainly dragged his feet on emptying Miss Sadie’s house in advance of the possible sale to Miami Development. Why had he tried to put the whole Fernbank issue out of his mind when it clearly needed to be handled—and pronto?
Walking away with his package under his arm, he also questioned why on earth he’d bought three bottles of lemon oil when he hardly had a stick of furniture to call his own. Living in partially furnished rectories since the age of twenty-eight had had its bright side, but it wasn’t all it was cracked up to be.
“Father Tim!”
It was Margaret Ann Larkin with five-year old Amy, waving at him from the petting zoo.
He pushed through the crowd.
“Father, we’ve been looking all over for you. Amy wants to pet the animals, but she’s afraid to do it. She wondered if . . . I know this is a strange request, but she wants you to do it for her.”
“Aha.”
Margaret Ann looked imploring. “She doesn’t want me to do it.”
Amy handed him a dollar. “You pet,” she said soberly.
He knelt beside her, clutching his package. “You could walk inside the fence with me.”
“You pet,” she said.
He turned his lemon oil over to Margaret Ann and went through the gate, relinquishing the dollar to Jake Greer, a farmer from the valley.
“Pet the goat first,” said Amy, looking through the fence.
“Please,” instructed Margaret Ann.
“Please!” urged Amy.
He petted the goat, which trotted to the other side of the pen, clearly disgusted.
“Now pet the lamb, please.”
He petted the lamb. What a black nose! What soulful eyes!
“Now pet the chickens.”
A Dominecker rooster and two Leghorn hens squawked and scattered.
He turned and smiled at Amy. “Now what?”
“Pet the pony!”
He petted the pony, who nuzzled his arm and bared its teeth and flared its nostrils, giving him his money’s worth. Having petted the entire assembly, including a small pig named Barney, he withdrew through the gate, laughing.
“That was . . . fun,” he said, meaning it.
“Was you afraid?” asked Amy.
“Not a bit. I liked it.”
“Was the lamb soft?”
“Very soft.”
“Amy, honey, what do you say?”
Amy broke into a dazzling smile. “Thank you!” she said, patting him on the leg.
His wife peered at him again in that odd way. “You look like you’re having a good time!”
“You mean you’re not?” he asked.
“Not since Gene stepped in Esther’s cake.”
“No!”
“She came in and set the box behind the table, and when Gene came in, he stumbled over it . . .”
“Uh-oh.”
“ . . . then fell on top of it.”
“Good grief.”
“Mashed flat,” she said.
“Orange marmalade?”
“You got it.”
“How’s Gene?” he inquired, sounding like an undertaker.
“Unhurt but terrified.”
“How’s Esther?”
“Three guesses.”
“That cake was worth some bucks for the Children’s Home.”
“I think we could still auction it.”
“Mashed flat, we could auction it?”
“There was a top on the box when he fell on it. I mean, it’s still Esther’s orange marmalade cake—some people would be thrilled to eat it out of the box with a spoon.”
“If you’ll auction it, I’ll start the bidding,” he said, feeling expansive.
He had stopped to pass the time of day with the llamas, who looked at him peaceably through veils of sweeping lashes.
He’d bought a tea towel from the Baptists, a sack of tattered volumes from the Library Ladies, a cookbook from the Presbyterians, and was on his way to see Dooley Barlowe in action.
He paused to check the sky. As he started to look at his watch, he spied them through the queue for popcorn and ducked across.
Olivia kissed him on the cheek. Lace stood looking into the crowd.
He put his arm around Lace’s shoulders and found them unyielding. “You ladies are looking lovely—a credit to the town!”
Lace nodded vaguely. “I got to go over yonder a minute.”
“Go,” said Olivia. “I’ll meet you at the llamas in half an hour.”
They sat on one of the town museum benches.
“Father, I’ve had time to think it through and I wanted to say I admire Dooley for the way he handled Lace’s outburst. He might have . . . knocked her head off when she attacked him.”
“He was asking for it.”
“He did a fine job of delivering his apologies. He has character, your boy.”
“So does Lace. But character often takes time to show itself. They’ve both come out of violence and neglect, a matched set. How are you holding up?”
“Better, I think. We’re still visiting her mother every week, but it’s never a happy visit—her mother is demanding and cold, and her health is deteriorating. Hoppy looked in on her; we’re not encouraged.”
“We keep you faithfully in our prayers. We’re all flying by the seat of our pants.” Who would have dreamed he’d be raising a boy? The challenge of it was breathtaking.
“I’ve read how Lindbergh often flew with the windshield iced over. It’s rather like that, don’t you think?”
“Indeed. Is she making any friends?”
“Mitford’s children have been warned all their lives to avoid anyone from the Creek, so that is very much against her. Then she’s smart and she’s pretty. Some don’t like that, either. They really don’t know what to make of her.”
“Lord bless you.”
“And you, Father.”
As they walked away from each other, he turned around and called, “Olivia! Philippians Four-thirteen, for Pete’s sake!”
She threw up her hand, smiling at this reminder of the Scripture verse she claimed as a pivot for her life.
It was good to have a comrade in arms, he thought, trotting off to A Taste of America.
Avis Packard’s booth was swamped with buyers, eager to tote home sacks of preserves, honey, pies, cakes, and bread from the valley kitchens, not to mention strawberries from California, corn from Georgia, and syrup from Vermont.
Avis stepped out of the booth for a break, while Tommy and Dooley bagged and made change. “I’ve about bit off more’n I can chew,” said Avis, lighting up a Salem. “I’ve still got a load of new potatoes comin’ from Georgia, and lookin’ for a crate of asparagus from Florida. Thing is, I don’t hardly see how a truck can get down th’ street.”
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“I didn’t know you smoked,” said the rector, checking his watch.
Avis inhaled deeply. “I don’t. I quit two or three years ago. I bummed this offa somebody.”
The imported strawberries were selling at a pace, and Avis stepped to the booth and brought back a handful.
“Try one,” he said, as proudly as if they’d come from his own patch. “You know how some taste more like straw than berry? Well, sir, these are the finest you’ll ever put in your mouth. Juicy, sweet, full of sunshine. What you’d want to do is eat ’em right off th’ stem, or slice ’em, marinate in a little sugar and brandy—you don’t want to use th’ cheap stuff—and serve with cream from the valley, whipped with a hint of fresh ginger.”
Avis Packard was a regular poet laureate of grocery fare.
“Is that legal?” asked the rector.
He watched as Dooley passed a bag over the table to a customer. “Hope you like those strawberries!”
He was thrilled to see Dooley Barlowe excited about his work. His freckles, which he and Cynthia had earlier reported missing, seemed to be back with a vengeance.
Avis laughed. “Ain’t he a deal?”
“Is he doing right by you?”
“That and then some!”
He noticed Jenny and her mother queuing up at A Taste of America, and saw Dooley glance up at them. Uh-oh. That look on Dooley’s face . . .
Was this something he ought to discuss with him, man to man? The very thought made his heart pound.
Ben Sawyer hauled past, carrying a sack of tasseled corn in each arm. “That’s a fine boy you got there, Preacher!”
He felt a foolish grin spread across his face, and didn’t try to hold it back.
He noticed the crowd was starting to thin out, following the aroma of political barbecue.
In his mind, he saw it on the plate, thickly sliced and served with a dollop of hot sauce, nestled beside a mound of cole slaw and a half dozen hot, crisp hushpuppies . . . .
He shook himself and ate four raisins that had rolled around in his coat pocket since the last committee meeting on evangelism.
At eleven forty-five, Ray and Esther Cunningham strode up to the Lord’s Chapel booth with all five of their beautiful daughters, who had populated half of Mitford with Sunday School teachers, deacons, police officers, garbage collectors, tax accountants, secretaries, retail clerks, and UPS drivers.