Somewhere Safe With Somebody Good (24 page)

O
n Monday, several of the parish communicated their thoughts as they had when he’d served at Lord’s Chapel. Skipping the amenities of the USPS, they posted their envelopes directly into the mail slot of the front door.

Dear Father Tim.

It was so nice to cry in church yesterday. There is so much to cry about in this world, thank you for the opportunity.

Your friend,

Dottie Holzclaw

Father,

I have heard about the laughing thing that breaks out in churches but this is the first I ever knew of the crying thing. Wish I could have been there and wish we could have you back if only for the innovations! (What next, ha ha!)

Sincerely,

Zack Clemmons

(I played first base on our Mitford Reds team—those were the days)

GREEN FAMILY PLUMBING & ELECTRICAL

Dear Father Tim,

Maybe it’s because we used to be Baptists but we have never liked Fr Talbot AT ALL, though now we do because we cried for him and we forgive him and will try to stick with it.

God bless you.

Connie and Elton Green

Charles Dickens said, It opens the lungs, washes the countenance, exercises the eyes, and softens the temper—so cry away.

Love in Jesus

Beth and Jim Chandler

Father Tim

TEARS ARE OUR HOLY WATER

He stayed in his pajamas on Monday, occupying the hours by listing supplies for Tuesday, talking with Bishop Martin and Bill Swanson, praying, napping, and generally recovering his wits. He had called Harley and was assured that his neighbor was well enough to work tomorrow, if all he did was step and fetch for a couple of days.

After lunch, which was delivered by his wife, he mustered the courage to cut his own hair. Did he want help? No; there was no hair savvy in this house. Cynthia, Puny, Dooley—all had tried cutting his hair at one time or another and it was a worse disaster than he might foist upon himself.

Holding the hand mirror, he backed up to the bathroom mirror
and squinted at the job to be done. It drove him crazy trying to hold the mirror with one hand and manipulate the scissors with the other; it was a bloody logistical nightmare that deposited hair in the sink, on the floor, and, as he lacked foresight to use a towel around his neck, inside the collar of his bathrobe.

When he went to retrieve a book from the shelves along the hall, Puny was leaving Dooley’s room with an armload of sheets.

‘Lord
help
! What have you done to yourself?’

‘What do you mean,
done
to myself?’

‘Your
hair
.’

‘I
cut
it,’ he said, daring further comment.

‘You shouldn’t have messed with th’ sides, I can tell you that.’ And down the stairs she went.

He was fatigued in every part and clearly in denial. All that had happened was too distressing to think about; he held it away from himself.

In the late afternoon, his wife delivered her local gazette: she had been walking in the neighborhood when she saw the moving van headed north. Slowly plowing between the rows of low buildings on Main, the van appeared monstrous, out of place. She had crawled into bed with him, fully clothed, and gone to sleep in her own grieving.

As for the proposed car deal yesterday afternoon, there had been none, of course.

They had come home from church at twelve forty-five, turned off the ringer on the house phone, and after downing two bowls of chicken soup, he’d gone straight to bed. Dooley slept for three and a half hours and headed out with a truckload of clean laundry and a container of egg salad on ice. Three and a half hours’ sleep for a five-and-a-half-hour drive was clearly insufficient, but what could be done? He surrendered his parental concerns to an All-Sufficient God and waited for the marching band.

The woodwinds, brass, and percussion kicked in at ten-thirty p.m.—Dooley was safely in Athens.

On Monday evening, they turned on the ringer; the phone bleated at once. His wife lifted the receiver as if handling a snake.

‘That was Emma. All sorts of rumors have leaked out.’ His wife looked older, exhausted. ‘She says our voice-mail box is full.’

‘Good,’ he said.

The mailbox was full because people wanted answers. Just one more reason former clergy were exhorted to clear out, thereby avoiding involvement in sticky issues of the old parish.

Whatever the leaks may be, he would be hounded by questions—this one in particular:

Why didn’t he, Father Tim, go back to Lord’s Chapel and straighten things out down there?

After getting into bed on Monday night, he realized he had pulled the covers over his head.

•   •   •

F
IRST
LIGHT
. The sun would be up a little before seven-thirty.

He walked south on Main, dressed in layers—a scarf and cap to take off, a jacket to remove, a vest to be shed when the temperature rose to the predicted upper sixties.

Nobody would find him where he was going, not for a while, anyway. Their work would be uninterrupted, deprived of the gruesome details of Sunday afternoon’s meeting.

It was morning rush hour in Mitford, largely composed of pickup trucks at urgent speed. Some flying down the mountain to greener job pastures, others flying up the mountain to glean whatever pickings the southbound left behind.

He quickened his step. This was the week that fall color would be at its peak. And the week he was finally to become what he’d so long hankered to be:

Full-time.

‘Hallelujah!’ he exclaimed over the backfire of Ned Colby’s gravel truck.

•   •   •

S
HE
CAME
AWAKE
, but only enough to realize she had survived the night; that the kiss on her cheek acknowledged her as alive and sentient.

More than anything, she wanted to see the face of her husband, but she could not or would not open her eyes. There was something inside that needed to be tended first; something remote—she would have to travel to get there.

Scott was praying for her. His voice resonated in her blood as plucked strings in the sound box of a lute.

‘Amen,’ he said.

Still, she could not open her eyes; the membrane of her lids had come down like a shade, leaving the tears to find an exit on their own.

‘Everything is going to be all right,’ he said, sitting on the side of the bed. ‘Hold on to that, Hope. Everything is going to be all right. I promise.’

God had promised, her husband had promised, Father Tim had promised when they spoke on the phone yesterday. What more could she possibly want or need? ‘Live up to your name!’ her mother had liked to command.

She felt a type of shame. Her body was growing something she had no wish to grow. It could not be surgically removed, nor could she wish or pray it away. She was without power to do anything at all, though she knew with terrible urgency that something must be done.

•   •   •

‘Y
OU
AIN
’
T
TH
’
B
-
BOSS
OF
ME
.’

‘True. God is the boss of you, with Harley a close second.’

‘Ain’t nobody th’ b-boss of me.’

‘Here are your pruners. When Harley gets back with supplies, we need to be ready for new topsoil. You take that bed, I’ll take this bed, as previously explained. We must cut back the vines, pull ’em off the building, dig out the rootstock, and remove the old debris.’

‘Ain’t nobody gon’ mess around back here, so why’re we b-bustin’ ass to fix it?’

‘If we fix it, people will mess around back here.’

Church suppers. ECW events. Cake sales. And perfect for small weddings. A bench there, or perhaps under the old serviceberry, and maybe next spring a stone walkway from the side entrance of the church to the door of the moderately refurbished Sunday school. It was thrilling.

He shared this vision with Sammy, who stared into the middle distance throughout the dissertation.

‘I’m just going to love him,’ he had said to Cynthia. Famous last words.

•   •   •

T
HE
MORNING
WARMED
UP
QUICKLY
.

They had off-loaded the contents of Harley’s truck into the Sunday school building. Rakes, tarps, a mower, two ladders, and other tools of lawn care and home improvement. The supplies Harley was shopping for this morning would also be stored in the building. Good deal.

‘Looks like there might be a hole in th’ roof.’ Sammy spit into a bare bed. ‘I stood on that rock over yonder and seen it!’

‘Where’s the hole?’

‘Up by th’ bell on top.’

He followed Sammy inside, burrowing beyond the rakes and other gear, into the realm of disabled school furniture and musty banners.

Sammy was using Red Man, he saw the package sticking out of his
jeans pocket. A better thing, maybe, than the cigarette, but with its own calamities.

They moved about, looking up to the rafters. No light filtered through the roof decking.

‘No hole,’ he said.

‘There’s water c-comin’ in somewhere, I can tell y’ that.’

‘We can’t see light through the decking.’

‘It smells damp in here, ’at’s enough for me.’

‘First things first. Let’s get the job done outside and we’ll come back to this.’

In the dim light, Sammy turned to him, sneered. ‘You ain’t G-God, you know.’

•   •   •

H
E
LEANED
ON
THE
HANDLE
of his shovel, feeling decrepit. His upper body had enjoyed no useful benefit from running. He took the hat off his sweat-drenched head and hung it on the doorknob of the school.

Sammy looked at him with disdain. ‘Somebody must’ve used a r-rusty s-saw blade on you.’

It might be a bad haircut, but he felt the heat in his face. Sammy Barlowe was absolutely, totally committed to getting his goat. He would need to be careful where he stepped with this.

He stood his shovel against the wall. He had no idea what he would say. He gave Sammy a steady gaze, prayed, and opened his mouth. Out sailed a quote from Absalom Greer.

‘I’m not goin’ to preach long,’ he said in a remarkably even tone. ‘Just ’til we get done.’

‘Yo, Rev’rend!’

A grinning, toothless Harley flapped his arm out the window of the truck as he scratched into the drive behind the school building.

Harley Welch had saved Sammy Barlowe’s hide.

‘Where are your teeth?’ he asked Harley as they unloaded a bag of organic fertilizer.

‘I don’t wear ’em to work. I save ’em for dress-up.’

‘They’re history,’ said Sammy. ‘He lost ’em.’

‘They ain’t lost, I jis’ don’t know where they’re at.’

‘If they ain’t on th’ windowsill in th’ kitchen, they might be in th’ g-glove compartment with th’ ice scraper, an’ if they ain’t r-rollin’ around with th’ ice scraper, they might be in th’ m-mulch pile over at Miz Baker’s house—’

‘Whoa,’ said Harley. ‘Whoa, whoa, whoa, dadgummit.’

‘How ’bout on top of th’ toilet tank—’

‘I don’t care if they never turn up,’ said Harley. ‘They’s way too many of ’em, anyhow.’

‘So send them back to Kentucky and ask your dentist to remove a couple.’

‘They costed me too much to be givin’ any back.’

‘Lunch?’ he asked Harley. ‘Did you pick up lunch in Wesley?’

‘Lord help! I plumb forgot.’

‘Go up the street to Feel Good around eleven-thirty. We’ll buy local.’

‘Let me go,’ said Sammy.

‘I need you here.’

Sammy spit into the grass. ‘You don’t need me, you got Harley. I’ll go up th’ street.’

The punitive didn’t come naturally to him, but really—he could punch this kid in the mouth and not think twice about it.

•   •   •

T
HE
CAFTAN
OF
THE
DAY
was decorated with images of hot air balloons. Red, yellow, orange, green. A blue sky full. Definitely a stand-out in the produce section of the Local.

‘I levitate toward bright colors,’ said Shirlene, noting his interest in
her garb. ‘I’m in here buyin’ supper; I’m
way
too tired to cook anything fancy.’

‘I hear you. How’s business?’

‘Pickin’ up a teensy bit!’

‘Great! Glad to hear it.’

‘I’ve decided to give ten percent of all spray tan sales to th’ Children’s Hospital in Wesley. They say you’re a real good customer—or whatever you call it.’

‘We’ll be donors together. That’s wonderful, Shirlene. Thank you.’

‘Plus—I’ve decided to do it whether business is good or not.’

‘That’s the ticket! You’ll be richly blessed.’ He seldom encountered this especially insightful style of philanthropy.

‘An’ since y’all won’t give me any help to meet a nice man, I have taken on th’ job myself.’

‘It’s come to that!’

‘I went online.’

He put a gentle squeeze on an avocado.

‘They give you five free samples to lure you in, but listen to this—they all looked like my granpaw! Th’ first one could have been on th’ ground at Iwo Jima, but still very jaunty according to his bio, which I think his great-great-granddaughter wrote. I could pay respects for his service to our country, but as far as—’

The price of lemons these days . . . unbelievable. ‘How were the other four?’

‘You should have
seen
th’ next one, he was from Memphis. His guitar was in the shape of a crocodile plus all his fingers were tattooed and he had more wrinkles than a Georgia road map. Then one had this huge dog—in the picture he was bundled up with that thing, it was big as a house. His bio said it was
th’ light of his life
.’ She shivered. ‘Think about
that
.’

Oh, for a homegrown tomato, but their prime had come and gone. He squinted at the offering of beets.

‘Then there was one with facial hair, I cannot stand facial hair. For one thing, way too much upkeep.’