“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.”
“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.
“Well?” said Esther. The rector thought she would have made an excellent Mafia don.
“Coming right up!” he exclaimed, checking his watch and looking pale.
Cynthia eyed him again. Mood swings, she thought. That seemed to be the key! Definitely a domestic retreat, and definitely soon.
And since the entire town seemed so demanding of her husband, definitely not in Mitford.
Nobody paid much attention to the airplane until it started smoking.
“Look!” somebody yelled. “That plane’s on f’ar!”
He was sitting on the rock wall when Omer thumped down beside him. “Right on time!” said the mayor’s brother-in-law. “All my flyin’ buddies from here t’ yonder have jumped on this.” The rector thought somebody could have played “Moonlight Sonata” on Omer’s ear-to-ear grin.
“OK, that’s y’r basic Steerman, got a four-fifty horsepower engine in there. Luke Teeter’s flyin’ ’er, he’s about as good as you can get, now watch this . . .”
The blue and orange airplane roared straight up into the fathomless blue sky, leaving a plume of smoke in its wake. Then it turned sharply and pitched downward at an angle.
“Wow!” somebody said, forgetting to close his mouth.
The plane did another climb into the blue.
Omer punched him in the ribs with an elbow. “She’s got a tank in there pumpin’ Corvis oil th’ough ’er exhaust system . . . ain’t she a sight?”
“Looks like an N!” said a boy whose chocolate popsicle was melting down his arm.
The plane plummeted toward the rooftops again, smoke billowing from its exhaust.
“M!” shouted half the festivalgoers, as one.
Esther and Ray and their daughters were joined by assorted grandchildren, great-grandchildren, and in-laws, who formed an impenetrable mass in front of the church booth.
Gene Bolick limped over from the llamas as the perfect I appeared above them.
“M . . . I!” shouted the crowd.
“Lookit this!” said Omer, propping his crutch against the stone wall. “Man, oh, man!”
The bolt of blue and orange gunned straight up, leaving a vertical trail, then shut off the exhaust, veered right, and thundered across the top of the trail, forming a straight and unwavering line of smoke.
“M . . . I . . . T!”
The M was fading, the I was lingering, the T was perfect against the sapphire sky.
The crowd thickened again, racing back from Mack Stroupe’s campaign headquarters, which was largely overhung by trees, racing back to the grounds of the town museum where the view was open, unobscured, and breathtaking, where something more than barbecue was going on.
“They won’t be goin’ back to Mack’s place anytime soon,” said Omer. “Ol’ Mack’s crowd has done eat an’ run!”
“F!” they spelled in unison, and then, “ . . . O . . . R . . . D!”
Even the tourists were cheering.
J. C. Hogan sank to the ground, rolled over on his back, pointed his Nikon at the sky, and fired off a roll of Tri-X. The M and the I were fading fast.
Uncle Billy hobbled up and spit into the bushes. “I bet them boys is glad this town ain’t called Minneapolis.”
“Now, look,” said Omer, slapping his knee.
Slowly, but surely, the Steerman’s exhaust trail wrote the next word.
T . . . A . . . K . . . E . . . S . . ., the smoke said.
Cheers. Hoots. Whistles.
“Lord, my neck’s about give out,” said Uncle Billy.
“Mine’s about broke,” said a bystander.
C . . . A . . . R . . . E . . .
“Mitford takes care of its own!” shouted the villagers. The sixth grade trooped around the statue, beating on tambourines, shaking maracas, and chanting something they’d been taught since first grade.
Mitford takes care of its own, its own,
Mitford takes care of its own!
Over the village rooftops, the plane spelled out the rest of the message.
O . . . F . . . I . . . T . . . S . . . O . . . W . . . N . . .
TAKES soon faded into puffs of smoke that looked like stray summer clouds. CARE OF was on its way out, but ITS OWN stood proudly in the sky, seeming to linger.
“If that don’t beat all!” exclaimed a woman from Tennessee, who had stood in one spot the entire time, holding a sleep-drugged baby on her hip.
Dogs barked and chickens squawked as people clapped and started drifting away.
Just then, a few festivalgoers saw them coming, the sun glinting on their wings.
They roared in from the east, in
formation, two by two.
Red and yellow. Green and blue.
“Four little home-built Pitts specials,” said Omer, as proudly as if he’d built them himself. “Two of ’em’s from Fayetteville, got one out of Roanoke, and the other one’s from Albany, New York. Not much power in y’r little ragwings, they’re nice and light, about a hundred and eighty horses, and handle like a dream.”
He looked at the sky as if it contained the most beautiful sight he had ever seen, and so did the rector.
“I was goin’ to head th’ formation, but a man can’t fly with a busted foot.”
The crowd started lying on the grass. They lay down along the rock wall. They climbed up on the statue of Willard Porter, transfixed, and a young father set a toddler on Willard’s left knee.
People pulled chairs out of their booths and sat down, looking up. All commerce ceased.
The little yellow Pitts special rolled over and dived straight for the monument.
“Ahhhhhh!” said the crowd.
As the yellow plane straightened out and up, the blue plane nose-dived and rolled over.
“They’re like little young ’uns a-playin’,” said Uncle Billy, enthralled.
Miss Rose came out and stood on the back stoop in her frayed chenille robe and looked up, tears coursing down her cheeks for her long-dead brother, Captain Willard Porter, who had flown planes and been killed in the war in France and buried over there, with hardly anything sent home but his medals and a gold ring with the initials SEB and a few faded snapshots from his pockets.
The little planes romped and rolled and soared and glided, like so many bright crayons on a palette of blue, then vanished toward the west, the sun on their wings.
Here and there, a festivalgoer tried getting up from the grass or a chair or the wall, but couldn’t. They felt mesmerized, intoxicated. “Blowed away!” someone said.
“OK, buddy, here you go,” Omer whispered.
They heard a heavy-duty engine throbbing in the distance and knew at once this was serious business, this was what everyone had been waiting for without even knowing it.
The Cunningham daughters hugged their children, kissed their mother and daddy, wept unashamedly, and hooted and hollered like banshees, but not a soul looked their way, for the crowd was intent on not missing a lick, on seeing it all, and taking the whole thing, blow by blow, home to Johnson City and Elizabethton and Wesley and Holding and Aho and Farmer and Price and Todd and Hemingway and Morristown . . . .
“Got y’r high roller comin’ in, now,” said Omer. The rector could feel the mayor’s brother-in-law shaking like a leaf from pure excitement. “You’ve had y’r basic smoke writin’ and stunt flyin,’ now here comes y’r banner towin’!”
A red Piper Super Cub blasted over the treetops from the direction of the highway, shaking drifts of clouds from its path, trembling the heavens in its wake, and towing a banner that streamed across the open sky:
ESTHER . . . RIGHT FOR MITFORD, RIGHT FOR MAYOR.
The Presbyterian brass band hammered down on their horns until the windows of the Porter mansion rattled and shook.
As the plane passed over, a wave of adrenaline shot through the festival grounds like so much electricity and, almost to a man, the crowd scrambled to its feet and shouted and cheered and whistled and whooped and applauded.
A few also waved and jumped up and down, and nearly all of them remembered what Esther had done, after all, putting the roof on old man Mueller’s house, and turning the dilapidated wooden bridge over Mitford Creek into one that was safe and good to look at, and sending Ray in their RV to take old people to the grocery store, and jacking up Sophia’s house and helping her kids, and making sure they had decent school buses to haul their own kids around in bad weather, and creating that thing at the hospital where you went and held and loved a new baby if its mama from the Creek was on drugs, and never one time raising taxes, and always being there when they had a problem, and actually listening when they talked, and . . .
. . . and taking care of them.
Some who had planned to vote for Mack Stroupe changed their minds, and came over and shook Esther’s hand, and the brass band nearly busted a gut to be heard over the commotion.
Right! That was the ticket. Esther was right for Mitford. Mack Stroupe might be for change, but Esther would always be for the things that really counted.
Besides—and they’d tried to put it out of their minds time and time again—hadn’t Mack Stroupe been known to beat his wife, who was quiet as a mouse and didn’t deserve it, and hadn’t he slithered over to that woman in Wesley for years, like a common, low-down snake in the grass?
“Law, do y’all vote in th’ summer?” wondered a visitor. “We vote sometime in th’ fall. I can’t remember when, exactly, but I nearly always have to wear a coat to the polls.”
Omer looked at the rector. The rector looked at Omer.
They shook hands.
It was done.
CHAPTER NINE
Life in the Fast Lane
“What I done was give you thirty more horses under y’r hood.”
“Did I need thirty more horses?” He had to admit that stomping his gas pedal had been about as exciting as stepping on a fried pie. However . . .
Harley gave him a philosophical look, born from experience. “Rev’rend, I’d hate f’r you t’ need ’em and not have ’em.”
What could he say?
On Monday morning, he roared to the office, screeching to a halt at the intersection of Old Church Lane, where he let northbound traffic pass, then made a left turn, virtually catapulting into the parking lot.
Holy smoke! Had Harley dropped a Jag engine in his Buick?
Filled with curiosity, he got out and looked under the hood, but realized he wouldn’t know a Jag engine from a Mazda alternator.
“Can you believe it?” asked Emma, tight-lipped.
He knew exactly what she was talking about. “Not really.”
For a while, he thought they’d lost his secretary’s vote to Esther Cunningham’s competition. Last week, however, had turned the tide; she’d heard that Mack Stroupe had bought two little houses on the edge of town and jacked up the rent on a widow and a single mother.
“Sittin’ in church like he owned th’ place, is what I hear. Why th’ roof didn’t fall in on th’ lot of you is beyond me.”
“Umm.”
“Church!” she snorted. “Is that some kind of new campaign trick, goin’ to church?”
He believed that particular strategy had been used a time or two, but he didn’t comment.
“The next thing you know, he’ll be wantin’ to join. If I were you, I’d run his hide up th’ road to th’ Presbyterians.”
He laughed. “Emma, you’re beautiful when you’re mad.”
She beamed. “Really?”
“Well . . .”
“So, what did he do, anyway? Did he kneel? Did he stand? Did he sing? Can you imagine a peckerwood like Mack Stroupe singin’ those hymns from five hundred years ago, maybe a thousand? Lord, it was all I could do to sing th’ dern things, which is one reason I went back to bein’ a Baptist.”
She booted her computer, furious.
“I heard Lucy was with him, wouldn’t you know it, but that’s the way they do, they trot their family out for all the world to see. Was she still blond? What was she wearin’? Esther Bolick said it was a sight the way the crowd ganged up at the museum watchin’ the air show, and that barbecue sittin’ down the street like so much chicken mash.”
She peered intently at her screen.
“Well,” she said, clicking her mouse, “has the cat got your tongue? Tell me somethin’, anything! Were you floored when he showed up at Lord’s Chapel, or what?”
“I was. Of course, there’s always the possibility that he wants to turn over a new leaf . . . .”
“Right,” she said, arching an eyebrow, “and Elvis is livin’ at th’ Wesley hotel.”
As much as he liked m
ail, and the surprise it was capable of bringing, he let the pile sit on Emma’s desk until she came back from lunch.
“No way! I can’t believe it!” She held up an envelope, grinning proudly. “Albert Wilcox!”
She opened it. “Listen to this!
“ ‘Dear one and all, it was a real treat to hear from you after so many years. My grandmother’s prayer book that gave us such pain—and delight—sits on my desk as I write to you, waiting to be handed over to the museum in Seattle, which is near my home in Oak Harbor . . . .’ ”
She read the entire letter, which also contained a great deal of information about Albert’s knee replacement, and his felicitations to the rector for having married.
“Have you ever? And all because of modern technology! OK, as soon as I open this other envelope, I’ve got a little surprise for you. Close your eyes.”
He closed his eyes.
“Face the bookcase!” she said.
He faced the bookcase.
He heard fumbling and clicking. Then he heard Beethoven.
The opening strains of the Pastorale fairly lifted him out of his chair.
“OK! You can turn around!”
He didn’t see anything unusual, but was swept away by the music, which seemed to come from nowhere, transforming the room.
“CD-ROM!” announced his resident computer expert, as if she’d just hung the moon.
He went home and jiggled Sassy and burped Sissy, as Puny collected an ocean of infant paraphernalia into something the size of a leaf bag.
After a quick trot through the hedge to say hello to his hardworking wife, he and Dooley changed into their old clothes. They were going to tear down Betty Craig’s shed and stack the wood. He felt fit for anything.
“Let’s see those muscles,” he challenged Dooley, who flexed his arm. “Well done!” He wished he had some to show, himself, but thinking and preaching had never been ways to develop muscles.