A New Song (23 page)

He’d heard of not being allowed to smoke cigars at home, but he’d never heard of a ban on duck carving.

“Roger, my wife has bought me a chair on Captain Willie’s fishing boat. You ever go deep-sea fishing?”

“Does a hog love slop?” asked Ernie, who didn’t care to be out of the loop in any conversation.

“Captain Willie has taken me out to the Gulf Stream many times.”

“I don’t mind telling you I’m no fisherman. I’ve never spent much time around water.”

“That’s no liability. Sport fishing is all about relaxing and having fun. It’s an adventure.”

An adventure! He’d always wanted to have an adventure, but wasn’t good at figuring out how to get from A to B. Leave it to his wife to figure it out for him.

“I hear a lot about spending the day with your head over the side.”

Roger and Ernie laughed. “Don’t listen to that mess,” said Ernie. “You stay sober the night before and get a good night’s sleep and you’ll be fine.”

“And don’t eat a greasy breakfast,” said Roger. “Besides, if it’s any comfort, statistics say only twelve percent get seasick.”

He was encouraged.

“What’ll we see out there?”

“Out in the Gulf,” said Ernie, “you’ll see your blue marlin, your white marlin, your sailfish, your dolphin—”

“There’s wahoo,” said Roger, “and yellow tuna—”

“Plus your black tuna and albacore tuna. . . .”

“Man. Big stuff !” He was feeling twelve years old.

Roger whittled. “You can see everything from a thousand-pound blue marlin to a two-pound mahimahi.”

“No kidding? But what kind of fish can you actually
catch
?”

“Whatever God grants you that day,” said Roger. “Of course, we always release marlin.”

“Fair enough. What sort of boat would we go in?”

“Captain Willie runs a Carolina hull built over on Roanoke Island. About fifty-three feet long—”

“—an’ eight hundred and fifty horsepower!” Ernie appeared to take personal pride in this fact. “What you might call a glorified speedboat.”

“Eight hundred and fifty horsepower? Man!” He was losing his vocabulary, fast.

Roger adjusted his glasses and looked at Father Tim. “Just show up ready to have a good time. That’s what I’d recommend.”

“And be sure an’ take a bucket of fried chicken,” said Ernie.

 

He cooked the requisite bowl of spaghetti while Jonathan sat in the window seat and colored a batch of Cynthia’s hasty sketches. Something baking in the oven made his heart beat faster.

“Cassoulet!” said his creative wife. Though she’d never attempted such a thing, she had every confidence it would be sensational. “Fearless in the kitchen” was how she once described herself.

“It’s all in the crust, the way the crust forms on top,” she told him, allowing a peek into the oven. “I know it’s too hot to have the oven going, but I couldn’t resist.”

“Where on earth did you find duck?”

“At the little market. It was lying right by the mahimahi. Isn’t that wonderful?”

He certainly wouldn’t mention it to Roger.

Jonathan had clambered down from the window seat. “Watch a movie!” he said, giving a tug on Father Tim’s pants leg.

“Timothy, we’ve got to get a VCR. Could you possibly go across tomorrow, to whatever store carries these things? I don’t think I can make it ’til Monday without in-house entertainment!”

“Do we just plug it in?” He’d never been on friendly terms with high technology, which was always accompanied by manuals printed in Croatian.

“Beats me,” she said. “That’s your job. I’m the stay-at-home mommy.”

He put his arms around her and traced the line of her cheek with his nose. “Thank you for being the best deacon in the entire Anglican communion.”

 

Jonathan had wanted his mother tonight; his tears called up a few of Father Tim’s very own.

He thought it must be agony to be small and helpless, with no mother, no father, no brother or sister to be found. He held Jonathan against his chest, over his heart, and let the boy sob until he exhausted his tears.

He walked with him through the house in a five-room circle, crooning snatches of hymns, small prayers and benedictions, fragments of stories about Pooh and Toad and that pesky rabbit, Peter. He didn’t know what to do with a child who was crying out of bewilderment and loss, except to be with him in it.

 

He covered the sleeping boy with a light blanket, praying silently. Then he closed the door and tiptoed down the hall and out to the porch where Cynthia sat waiting, a rain-drugged Violet slumbering in her lap.

Barnabas followed and sprawled at his feet.

What peace to retire into the cool August evening, after a dinner that might have been served in the Languedoc.

For the first time today, he liked the rain, it was friend and shelter to him, enclosing the porch with a gossamer veil.

They watched the distant patch of gray Atlantic turn to platinum in the lingering dusk.

“Weary, darling?” she asked, taking his hand.

“I am. Don’t know why, though. Haven’t done much today.”

“You do more than you realize. Up at dawn, morning prayer, feed and bathe the boy, help the wife, write the pew bulletin, work on your sermon, hire an organist . . .”

He took her hand and kissed it. Of all the earthly consolations, he loved understanding best. Not sympathy, no, that could be deadly. But understanding. It was balm to him, and he had sucked it up like a toad, often denying it to her.

“Your book—how are you feeling about it?” he asked.

“I guess I don’t know why I’m doing another book when I might have the lovely freedom to do nothing. I suppose I got excited about being in a new place, the way the light changes, and the coming and going of the tide. It spoke to me and I couldn’t help myself.” She smiled at him. “I think I make books because I don’t know what else to do.”

“You know how to make a ravishing cassoulet.”

“Yes, but cassoulet has its limitations. Little books do not.”

He nodded.

“Do you think we’ll ever just loll about?” she asked.

“I don’t think we’re very good at lolling.”

She put her head back and closed her eyes. “Thank God for this peace.”

He heard it first, even through the loud whisper of rain. It was the organ music of their neighbor. He sat up, alert, and cupped his hand to his ear.

“What is it, Timothy?”

“It’s Morris Love, in the house behind the wall. Listen.”

They sat silent for long moments.

“Wondrous,” she said quietly.

The rain seemed to abate out of respect for the music, and they began to hear the notes more clearly.

“Name that tune,” she said.

“ ‘Jesus My Joy.’ A Bach chorale prelude.” He couldn’t help but hear the urgency—in truth, a kind of fury—underlying the music. He told her what he knew about Morris Love, leaving out the part about him shouting through the hedge.

“Is Mr. Love a concert organist?”

“Not unless you consider this a private concert for the Kavanaghs.”

“What a lovely thought,” she said, pleased.

 

When the phone rang, he fumbled for it. For a moment, he was at home in Mitford and expected to find it next to the bed. But blast, he was in Whitecap, and the phone was across the room.

It rang again; he bumped into the chair and tried to figure what time it was. The rain had stopped, and a stiff breeze blew through the windows.

As the phone continued to ring, he picked up his watch and glanced at the glowing dial. Twelve-forty. Not good.
Lord, have mercy
. . . .

“Hello!”

“I have a collect call from Harley Welch,” said an operator. “Will you pay for the call?”

“Yes!”

“Rev’rend?”

“Harley?” His heart hammered.

“Rev’rend, I hate t’ tell you this . . .”

CHAPTER NINE

“They got Dooley in jail.”

“But he’s all right, he ain’t hurt or nothin. . . .”

Cynthia sat up. “What is it, Timothy?”

He switched on the lamp. “Dooley.”

“Dear God!” she said.

“Tell me, Harley.” He once prayed he’d never live to hear what he was hearing now.

“Well, he was comin’ home on time, goin’ to be here right on th’ nickel....”

“And?” His mouth was dry, his stomach churning.
Christ, have mercy. . . .

“An’ he picked up Buster Austin standin’ out on th’ road. You remember Buster.”

Indeed, he did. Buster had called yours truly a “nerd,” for which Dooley had mopped the floor of the school cafeteria with him. The last run-in was when Buster stole a pack of cigarettes and talked Dooley into smoking on school grounds. School principal Myra Hayes had nearly eaten one hapless priest alive for “allowing” such a thing to happen, and suspended Dooley for ten days.

“Buster said he needed a ride to git ’is clothes at somebody’s house, would Dooley take ’im, an’ Dooley said he would but make it snappy. Dooley set in th’ truck while Buster took in a empty duffel bag and come out a good bit later. Seems like th’ boys was goin’ down th’ road when two officers drove up behind ’em in a squad car. Pulled ’em over, hauled ’em off to th’ station for breakin,’ enterin,’ an’ larceny.”

“Larceny?” This was a bad dream.

“You know that empty duffel bag Buster carried in? Hit was full when Buster come out of th’ house. Had jewelry, a CD player, money, liquor, I don’t know what all in there.”

“No!”

“Police said th’ house had a silent alarm on it, an’ they was on th’ boys before they got out of th’ driveway good. But Dooley didn’t do nothin’.”

“I believe that.”

“Nossir, he didn’t, he was doin’ th’ drivin’ is all, but the police says ’til they know better, he’s locked up.”

“What can I do?” His legs were turned to water; he sank into the chair by the lamp.

“If I was you, Rev’rend, I’d do what preachers do.”

“Pray.”

“That’s right. I’m down at th’ station, an’ soon as I hear somethin’, I’ll call you. I know Dooley don’t want you worried an’ all. He would of called, but he’s upset about worryin’ you.”

“How is he, Harley? Tell me straight.”

“Well, he’s scared. He’s innocent, but hit’s scary bein’ th’owed in a cell like that an’ locked up.”

“Is Rodney there?”

“Last I heard, th’ chief was puttin’ on ’is britches an’ bustin’ over here.”

“Thank God for you, Harley.”

“Now, don’t you worry, Rev’rend.”

He hung up, trembling, feeling the immutable reality of six hundred miles between Mitford and his racing heart.

 

At one-thirty, he could bear it no longer and called the Mitford police station.

Rodney Underwood was questioning Dooley and Buster. No, they didn’t know when the chief would be through, but he would call when he was.

Jonathan trotted in and clambered onto their bed.

“I think I read somewhere that children aren’t supposed to sleep with their parents,” he said.

“We’re not his parents,” explained his wife.

Jonathan bounced down beside Cynthia, looking hopeful. “Watch a movie!”

Cynthia was not amused. “Jonathan, if you so much as utter the M word again, I will jump in the ocean!”

He nodded his head vigorously. “I can swim!”

“Good! Go to sleep.”

He poked his chubby finger into Cynthia’s arm. “You go to sleep, too.”

Father Tim paced the floor, checking his watch.

“I’m hungry,” said Jonathan.

“People don’t eat during the night.”

Jonathan held out both hands. “Give me candy, then?”

Cynthia leaned toward him, shaking her head. “If you weren’t so utterly adorable . . .”

“You got bad breath,” said Jonathan, wrinkling his nose.

“When I go to the library tomorrow,” she told her husband, “I’ll see if they have a book on what to do with children.”

The phone rang at two o’clock.

“Buster Austin’s been askin’ for trouble for years,” said Rodney. “Now he’s gone and stepped in it.”

“What about Dooley?”

“Dooley says he rode Buster over to the house and sat in the truck, said he didn’t have nothin’ to do with it, but Buster says he did. Soon as th’ paperwork’s done, I’ll drive th’ boys over to Wesley and take ’em before th’ magistrate.”

“Good Lord, Rodney. What does that mean?”

“Th’ magistrate’s th’ one signs th’ arrest warrant, then I’ll serve it.

I’m goin’ to tell ’im I think Dooley’s innocent, he’s never been in any trouble, and we’ll see where we go from there. He’ll set bond, and you’ll have to talk to a bondsman if you want Dooley out of jail.”

“Right. I know the bondsman in Wesley. Call me the minute you know something. What kind of bond do you think we’re talking about?”