Out to Canaan

  “ . . . but it seems to me that people who can’t stand shouldn’t have to.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean all those people you get in th’ summer who don’t know an Episcopal service from a hole in the ground, and think they have to do all th’ stuff th’ pew bulletin tells ’em to do. I mean, some of those people are old as the hills, and what does th’ bulletin say? Stand, kneel, sit, stand, bow, stand, kneel, whatever! It’s a workout.”

  “True.”

  “So why don’t we do what they do at this Presbyterian church I heard about?”

  “And what’s that?” He noticed that his teeth were clenched.

  “Put a little line at the bottom of the bulletin that says, ‘Those who are able, please stand.’ ”

  Who needed the assistance of a curate or a deacon when they had Emma Newland to think through the gritty issues facing the church today?

  As he left the office for Mitford Blossoms, Andrew Gregory hailed him from his shop across the street.

  “We go three months without laying eyes on each other,” said the genteel Andrew, “and now—twice in a row!”

  “I prefer this arrangement!”

  “Before pushing off to Italy, I have something for your Bane and Blessing. I’ll be back in only a month, but what with making room for the Fernbank pieces, I find I’ve got to move other pieces out. Would you mind having my contribution a dash early?”

  “Mind? I should say not. Thrilled would be more like it.” He could imagine Esther Bolick’s face when she heard she was getting antiques from Andrew Gregory.

  Talk about an answer to prayer . . . .

  He climbed the hill, slightly out of breath, carrying the purple gloxinia, and stood for a moment gazing at the impressive structure they had named Hope House.

  But for Sadie Baxter’s generosity, this would be little more than the forlorn site of the original Lord’s Chapel, which had long ago burned to the ground. Now that Miss Sadie was gone, he was the only living soul who knew what had happened the night of that terrible fire.

  Ah, well. He could muddle on about the fire, or he could look at what had risen from the ashes. Wasn’t that the gist of life, after all, making the everyday choice between fire and phoenix?

  Louella sat by her sunny window, with its broad sill filled with gloxinias, begonias, philodendron, ivy, and a dozen other plants, including a bewildered amaryllis from Christmas.

  Dressed to the nines, she opened her brown arms wide as he came in. “Law, honey! You lookin’ like somebody on TV in that blue coat.”

  He leaned eagerly into her warm hug and returned it with one of his own.

  “Have you got room for another gloxinia?”

  “This make three gloxinias you done brought me!”

  That’s what he always took people; he couldn’t help it.

  “But I ain’t never had purple, an’ ain’t it beautiful! You’re good as gold an’ that’s th’ truth!”

  He set it on the windowsill and thumped down on the footstool by her chair. “How are you? Are they still treating you right?”

  “Treatin’ me right? They like to worry me to death treatin’ me right. Have a stick of candy, eat a little ice cream wit’ yo’ apple pie, let me turn yo’ bed down, slip on these socks to keep yo’ feet toasty . . .” She shook her head and laughed in the dark chocolate voice that always made a difference in the singing at Lord’s Chapel.

  “You’re rotten, then,” he said, grinning.

  “Rotten, honey, and no way ’round it. That little chaplain, too, ain’t he a case with them dogs runnin’ behind ’im ever’ whichaway?”

  “Are you still getting Taco every week?”

  “Taco done got mange on ’is hip and they tryin’ to fix it.”

  “You could have a cat or something ’til Taco gets fixed.”

  “A cat? You ain’t never seen Louella messin’ wit’ a cat.”

  “Are you working in the new garden?”

  “You ain’t seen me messin’ wit’ a hoe, neither. Nossir, I done my duty, I sets right here, watches TV, and acts like somebody.”

  “Well, I’ve got a question,” he said.

  Louella, whose salt-and-pepper hair had turned snow-white in the past year, peered at him.

  “Will you come to dinner at the rectory next Thursday? Say yes!”

  “You talkin’ ’bout dinner or supper?”

  “Dinner!” he said. “Like in the evening.” Louella, he remembered, called lunch “dinner,” and the evening meal “supper.”

  “I doan hardly know ’bout goin’ out at night,” she said, looking perplexed. “What wit’ my other knee needin’ t’ be operated on . . .”

  “I’ll hold on to you good and tight,” he said, eager for her to accept.

  “I doan know, honey . . . .”

  “Please,” he said.

  “Let ‘Amazin’ Grace’ be one of th’ hymns this Sunday and I’ll do it,” she said, grinning. “We ain’t sung that in a month of Sundays, an’ a ’piscopal preacher wrote it!”

  “Done!” he said, relieved and happy. He had always felt ten years old around Miss Sadie and Louella.

  He took the stairs to the second floor to see Lida Willis.

  He didn’t have to tell her why he’d come.

  Lida tapped her desk with a ballpoint pen, still looking stern. “She’s doing well. Very well. We couldn’t ask for better.”

  “Glad to hear it,” he said, meaning it.

  He found Pauline in the dining room, setting tables with the dishes Miss Sadie had paid to have monogrammed with HH . A lifelong miser where her own needs were concerned, she had spared no expense on Hope House.

  “Pauline, you look . . . wonderful,” he said.

  “It’s a new apron.”

  “I believe it’s a new Pauline.”

  She laughed. He didn’t think he’d heard her laugh before.

  “I have a proposal.”

  She smiled at him, listening.

  “Will you come to dinner next Thursday night and bring Poo? Dooley will be with us, and Harley and Louella.”

  He could see her pleasure in being asked and her hesitation in accepting.

  “Please say yes,” he requested. “It’s just family, no airs to put on, and we’ll all be wearing something comfortable.”

  “Yes, then. Yes! Thank you . . . .”

  “Great!” he said. “Terrific!”

  He’d heard people ask, “If you could have anyone, living or dead, come to dinner, who would it be?” Shakespeare’s name usually came up at once; he’d also heard Mother Teresa, the Pope, St. Augustine, Thomas Jefferson, Pavarotti, Bach, Charles Schultz . . .

  For his money, he couldn’t think of anyone he’d rather be having for dinner than the very ones who were coming.

  He found Scott Murphy at the kennels.

  “That’s Harry,” said Scott, pointing to a doleful beagle. “He’s new.”

  “Looks like an old bishop I once had.”

  “That’s Taco over there.”

  “How’s his mange?”

  “You know everything!”

  “I wish.”

  “I’ve been thinking,” said the chaplain. “I’d like to get my crowd out of here, take them to—I don’t know, a baseball game, a softball game, something out in the fresh air where they can hoot and holler and—”

  “Eat hotdogs!”

  “Right!”

  “Great idea. I don’t know who’s playing around town these days . . . .”

  “Maybe you and I could get up our own game? Sometime in August?”

  “Well, sure! Before Dooley goes back to school.”

  “I’ll start looking for players.”

  “Me, too,” said the rector.

  A softball game!

  He felt like tossing his hat in the air. If he had a hat.

  “Bingo!” said Emma, handing him the computer printout of names and addresses.

  The vestry had said what he thought th
ey’d say, virtually in unison: “Let’s get on with it!”

  Yes, they wanted Ingrid Swenson and her crew to come on the fifteenth. It was unspoken, but the message was clear—let’s unload that white elephant before the roof caves in and we have to get a bank loan to pick up the tab.

  He asked Ron Malcolm to call her immediately after the meeting.

  There were quite a few R. Davises in the state of Florida, according to the printout, but Lakeland was the only town or city with a Rhody Davis. “Starts with a L,” Russell Jacks had said of Rhody’s dimly recalled whereabouts in Florida.

  He was disappointed, but not surprised, that Rhody Davis had an unlisted phone number.

  He called Stuart Cullen.

  “Who do you know in Lakeland, Florida? Clergy, preferably.”

  “Let me get back to you.”

  By noon, he was talking to the rector at a church in Lakeland’s inner city. It was an odd request, granted, but the rector said he’d find someone to do it.

  The next morning, he got the report.

  “Our junior warden drove by at nine o’clock in the morning, and a car was parked by the house. Same at three in the afternoon, and again at eight in the evening. Lights were on in the evening, but no other signs of anyone being around. Maybe this will help—there was a tricycle in the front yard. I used what clout my collar can summon, but no way to get the phone number.”

  “Ever make it up to our mountains?” asked Father Tim.

  “No, but my wife and I have been wanting to. A few of my parish go every summer.”

  “We’ve got a guest room. Consider it yours when you come this way.”

  It was a long shot, but he knew what had to be done.

  “I don’t want t’ worry you, Rev’rend, that’s th’ last thing I’d want t’ do, but th’ boy ragged me nearly t’ death, an’ I done like you’d want me to and told ’im no, then dern if I didn’t leave m’ key in th’ ignition, an’ since all he done was back it out and pull it in, I hope you won’t lick ’im f’r it, hit’s th’ way a boy does at his age, hit’s natural . . . .”

  Harley looked devastated; the rector felt like a heel.

  “Maybe you ought t’ let me take ’im out to th’ country an’ put ’im behind th’ wheel. In two years, he’s goin’ t’ be runnin’ up an’ down th’ road, anyhow, hit’d be good trainin’. I’d watch ’im like a hawk, Rev’rend, you couldn’t git a better trainer than this ol’ liquor hauler.”

  “I don’t know, Harley. Let me think on it.”

  “What’s it all about?” he asked his wife, sighing.

  “Hormones!” she exclaimed.

  Mitford, he noted, was becoming a veritable chatterbox of words and slogans wherever the eye landed.

  The mayoral incumbent and her opponent had certainly done their part to litter the front lawns and telephone poles with signage, while the ECW had plastered hand-lettered signs in the churchyard and posters in every shop window.

  Even the Library Ladies were putting in their two cents’ worth.

  14th annual Library Sale

  10-4, July 28

  Book It!

  You Don’t Want It? We Do!

  34th Annual Bane and Blessing

  MACK STROUPE:

  Mack For Mitford,

  Mack For Mayor

  Esther Cunningham:

  Right For Mitford

  Right For Mayor

  Clean Out Attics In Mitford

  Help Dig Wells

  In Africa!

  Cunningham Cares.

  Vote Esther Cunningham

  For Mayor

  YOUR BANE IS OUR BLESSING .

  Lord’s Chapel, October 4

  Mack Stroupe:

  I’ll Make What’s

  Good Even Better

  He thought he’d seen enough of Mack Stroupe’s face to last a lifetime, since it was plastered nearly everywhere he looked. Worse than that, he was struggling with how he felt about seeing Mack’s face in his congregation every Sunday morning.

  When he dropped by her office at seven o’clock, the mayor was eating her customary sausage biscuit. It wasn’t a pretty sight.

  Three bites, max, and that sausage biscuit was out of here. But who was he to preach or pontificate? Hadn’t he wolfed down a slab of cheesecake last night, looking over his shoulder like a chicken poacher lest his wife catch him in the act?

  Oh, well, die young and make a good-looking corpse, his friend Tommy Noles always said.

  “If Mack Stroupe’s getting money under the table,” he said, “isn’t there some way—”

  “What do you mean if? He is gettin’ money under the table. I checked what it would cost to put up those billboards and—get this—four thousand bucks. I called th’ barbecue place in Wesley that helps him commit his little Saturday afternoon crimes—six hundred smackers to run over here and set up and cook from eleven to three. Pitch in a new truck at twenty-five thousand, considering it’s got a CD player and leather seats, and what do you think’s goin’ on?”

  “Isn’t he supposed to fill out a form that tells where his contributions come from? Somebody said that even the media can take a look at that form.”

  She wadded up the biscuit wrapper and lobbed it into the wastebasket. “You know what I always tell Ray? Preachers are the most innocent critters I’ve ever known! Do you think th’ triflin’ scum is goin’ to report the money he’s gettin’ under th’ table?”

  “Maybe he’s actually getting enough thousand-dollar contributions legally to pull all this together. It wouldn’t hurt to ask.”

  She scratched a splotch on her neck and leaned toward him. “Who’s going to ask?”

  “Not me,” he said, meaning it.

  The screen door of the Grill slapped behind him. “What’s going on?” the rector asked Percy.

  “All I lack of bein’ dead is th’ news gettin’ out.”

  “What’s the trouble?”

  “Velma.”

  “Aha.”

  “Wants to drag me off on another cruise. I said we done been on a cruise, and if you’ve seen one, you’ve seen ’em all—drink somethin’ with a little umbrella in it, dance th’ hula, make a fool of yourself, and come home. I ain’t goin’ again. But she’s nagged me ’til I’m blue in th’ face.”

  “ ’Til she’s blue in the face.”

  “Whatever.”

  Velma, who had heard everything, walked over, looking disgusted.

  “I hope you’ve told th’ Father that th’ cruise you took me on was paid for by our children, and I hope you mentioned that it’s the only vacation I’ve had since I married you forty-three years ago, except for that run over to Wilkes County in th’ car durin’ which I threw up the entire time, bein’ pregnant.”

  Velma took a deep breath and launched another volley. “And did you tell him about th’ varicose veins I’ve got from stompin’ around in this Grill since Teddy Roosevelt was president? Now you take the Father here, I’m sure he’s carried his wife on several nice trips since he got married.”

  Velma tossed her order pad on the counter, stomped off to the toilet, and slammed the door.

  Percy looked pained.

  The rector looked pained.

  If Velma only knew.

  She would be let down, he thought, maybe even ticked off—and for good reason. After all, she had worked hard to plan something special.

  “Listen to me, please,” he said. “I can’t go on our retreat.”

  She gazed at him, unwavering, knowing that he meant it.

  “I’ve got to go and look for Jessie Barlowe.”

  “I’ll go with you,” she said.

  He sat heavily on the side of the bed where she was propped against the pillows with a book. “It’s in Florida, a long drive, and I don’t know what we’ll run into. I also need Pauline to come along. Since she’s the birth mother and no papers were signed for Jessie to live with Rhody Davis, Pauline has custody. She can take Jessie legally.”

  “Would
you need . . . police to go in with you? A social worker?”

  “It’s not required. Only if it looks like a bad situation.”

  “Does it look bad?”

  “I don’t know. There’s no way to know.”

  “Do you think you should investigate further, I mean . . .”

  “I feel we need to act on this now.”

  “Will we be back for our dinner next Thursday?”

  “Yes,” he said.

  She leaned against him, and they sat together, silent for a time. “We need to pray the prayer that never fails.”

  “Yes,” he said again.

  He pled Pauline’s case with Lida Willis, who gave her dining room manager two days off.

  “She’ll make it up over Thanksgiving,” said Lida. That was when families of Hope House residents would pour into Mitford, straining the reserves of the dining room.

  He was vague with Dooley about what was going on and said nothing at all to Emma. He didn’t want anyone getting their hopes up. As far as everyone was concerned, he was taking his wife on a small excursion, and Pauline was riding with them to South Carolina and visiting a great aunt. He regretted saying anything to anybody about Florida.

  “Florida in July?” asked his secretary, aghast.

  “Lord at th’ salt they got down there!” said Harley. “Hit’ll rust y’r fenders plumb off. Let me git m’ stuff together and I’ll give you a good wax job.”

  “You don’t have to do that, Harley. Besides, we’re leaving early in the morning.”

  “I’ll git to it right now, Rev’rend, don’t you worry ’bout a thing. And I’ll sweep you out good, too.”

  It was all coming together so fast, it made his head swim.

  “Look after Dooley,” he told his resident mechanic as they loaded the car, “and hide your truck keys. Dooley will walk and feed Barnabas, Puny will be in tomorrow, help yourself to the pasta salad in the refrigerator, the car looks terrific, a thousand thanks, we’ll bring you something.”