At Home in Mitford (39 page)

“I renounce them.”

“Do you turn to Jesus Christ and accept Him as your Savior?”

“I do.”

“Do you put your whole trust in His grace and love?”

“I do.”

“Do you promise to follow and obey Him as your Lord?”

“I do.”

Father Tim turned to the police chief, Joe Joe Guthrie, and two other officers. “Will you who witness these vows do all in your power to support this person in his life in Christ?”

“We will!”

After the thanksgiving over the water, George dropped to his knees on a braided rug.

Father Tim cupped his left hand and filled it with water from a pitcher. “George Gaynor,” he said, spilling the water over the prisoner’s head, “I baptize you in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.”

“Amen!” chorused the Mitford police force.

Following the prayer, the rector came to the part of the service that, in all his years in the priesthood, had never failed to move him deeply.

Placing one hand on the prisoner’s head and, with the other, marking his forehead with the sign of the cross, he said, “George Gaynor, you are sealed by the Holy Spirit in baptism and marked as Christ’s own forever. Amen.”

Marked! Forever. He felt the certainty of it.

After baptism, the prisoner received the Eucharist. Then, he received Esther Bolick’s cake.

“Looky here,” said Rodney. “Miz Bolick done brought you her knockdown, drag-out cake.”

Joe Joe Guthrie stepped forward with a box from the Collar Button. “Me ’n the boys went in and got you a shirt and a pair of pants. Fifty percent off. We don’t want any thanks.”

Another officer pulled a pair of socks from his pants pocket. “Here,” he said, shyly, “they’re not new, but my wife washed ’em, seein’ as you needed ’em.”

George stood in the middle of floor, speechless, tears splashing down his cheeks.

“This feller,” Rodney said to the rector, “is bad to bawl. He’s about had me doin’ it a time or two.”

“The Holy Spirit tenderizes the heart.”

“You know I don’t want to mess with the work of the Holy Spirit,” said Rodney, “but we ought to get this cake cut.”

Before he left the jail, he placed a cross on a silver chain around the new communicant’s neck.

“I’m sorry about your dog,” said George.

My dog! He’d been able to forget this sorrow during the baptism service. He instantly felt the pain around his heart. “Pray for me,” he said simply.

Rodney met him in the hallway. “We’re doin’ everything we can. You cain’t lose a black dog th’ size of a Buick like you could one of them little bitty Chihuahuas. He’ll turn up, and you can mark my word.”

Barnabas missing! It was unthinkable. He still couldn’t believe it. It was a fact that simply would not take hold, except at night, when the foot of his bed felt empty as a tomb.

In recent months, it seemed that a lot of important things had ended up missing. But there was one comfort he clung to: Everything that had ended up missing—jewels, Bible, Dooley—all had come back, all had been restored. It was this thought, and this alone, that kept him going.

Joe Joe Guthrie ran ahead of him to open the door.

“We’re real sorry to hear about your dog, Father.”

“I appreciate that, Joe Joe.”

“My grandmother thinks th’ world of you.”

"And I think the world of the mayor. She’s the finest.”

“Yes, sir,” said Joe Joe, grinning.

J.C. Hogan caught up with him as he crossed the street at the Collar Button. “Find out anything?” J.C. asked. The editor’s briefcase came open suddenly, spilling papers onto the sidewalk.

“The prisoner has been baptized,” he said, kneeling down to help pick up the jumble of papers.

J.C. stuffed the papers back in the case and took out his handkerchief. “I cain’t go on that,” he said, wiping his face. “I got to have more.”

The two men walked on. “The only more is that Esther Bolick brought him a marmalade cake, and the men on the force gave him a new shirt and pants.”

“What else?” said J.C., keeping to the rector’s brisk pace.

“Not another crumb or scrap that I can think of.”

“I’d like to get out of th’ newspaper business,” snapped J.C.

They walked on in silence. “What about your dog?” J.C. asked, with sudden enthusiasm. “You want me to run a picture?”

“Excellent! Thank you for thinking of it, my friend.”

“Get a picture up to the office today and I’ll run it Monday.”

He realized he didn’t have a picture. He hadn’t owned a camera in years.

“I don’t have a picture. Could you describe him, instead? You know, you could create a wonderful description of Barnabas. You’re a fine writer when you put your mind to it.”

“My mind is currently elsewhere,” J.C. said, huffily, as he left Father Tim and crossed the street.

There, thought the rector, goes a man who’s standing in the need of prayer.

“And what are you still doing here, young lady?” he asked Puny when he came home at five o’clock.

“Fluffin’ up this place,” she said, grinning. “I never saw a place to need so much fluffin’ up.”

“What exactly do you call fluffing?”

“Air th’ pillows, wash th’ mattress covers, soak your seeds . . .”

“Soak my seeds?”

“If you want tomatoes th’ size of dinner plates, like you been sayin’, you have to soak th’ seeds an’ then plant ’em in indoor pots.”

“Is that right?”

“I hope you don’t think you just set them little seeds out in th’ ground to make it on their own.”

“I never thought about it. I never raised tomatoes before.”

“I’ve raised bushels!” she said happily.

The rector opened the refrigerator. “What’s this?”

“Cinnamon chicken salad, out of that diabetes book. I tasted it, and it’s delicious, has almonds in it and grapes.”

“What would I do without you, I wonder?”

She giggled. “I don’t wonder. I know!”

He shut the door. “Do I detect something . . . different about you? Anything like . . . oh, maybe there’s been a parade by here recently?”

“Ha!” she said, blushing.

He raised his eyebrows and smiled. “Well, well.”

“Well, well, yourself!”

“I don’t suppose you’d care to tell me what’s going on?” he asked casually, washing off a carrot at the sink.

“Not meanin’ any disrespect,” she said, “but that’s for me t’ know and you t’ find out.”

“What can I do?” asked Cynthia, who was standing on the other side of the screen door. “I know there must be something I can do.”

“About . . . ?”

“Why, about Barnabas, of course! Are you putting it in the paper?”

"J.C. said he would run a picture, but I don’t have a picture.”

“Why, you most certainly do!” she said, offended. “I gave you one in that pie plate, remember?”

Of course! A watercolor of Barnabas that was so realistic, so natural, that it might have barked.

“Cynthia, you are . . . ,” he searched for a word, “terrific.”

Her eyes seemed very blue as she laughed. “Whenever possible, I like to work ahead of the need,” she said.

“I need me some shoes,” said Dooley, coming in the door and slamming his books on the kitchen counter.

He looked up from the counter, where he was working on his sermon. “That,” he said evenly, “was no way to speak to me. At any time or in any place.”

Dooley met his gaze with defiance. “I still need me some damn shoes.”

He felt the wrenching impact of Dooley’s hostility, and it was a feeling he did not like. Boys, unfortunately, did not come with owner’s manuals, and to fairly address the issues this particular boy raised would be equal to rebuilding the motor of his Buick. In fact, though he had never done more than raise the hood and stare impotently underneath, he believed he could more easily rebuild a motor than instill respect and obedience in Dooley Barlowe.

“Dooley,” he said, “there’s something in your voice that makes me feel . . . indifferent to your need. Perhaps you could go out and come in again.”

Dooley stared at him blankly. In a family of five children, with no money and no stable center, there were a lot of ways to get attention, hostility being only one of them. That this strategy would not work here was a point he must drive home, at all costs.

There was a cold silence.

“Actually, I do recommend that very thing. Why don’t you go out the door and come in again? You might say something like ‘Hello’ or ‘What’s up?’ Anything civil.

“Then you might like to come and tell me all about the shoes you need. You can be assured,” he said, looking into the boy’s eyes, “that I will listen intently.”

Father Tim could feel the undercurrent in Dooley’s hesitation. He knew he was considering what he was hearing. And he knew he was also considering the alternative.

Dooley stepped back and cursed with such vehemence that the rector stared in disbelief. Then the boy ran up the stairs and slammed his bedroom door.

Good Lord! He felt his heart seized with a sudden, thundering fury. He forced himself to sit where he was, until the feeling passed.

He shut his sermon notebook, removed his glasses, and rubbed his eyes. There was Dooley’s own notebook, which had skidded across the counter. He saw that the boy had written his name many times on the cover, over and over. Trying to make himself real, thought the rector.

He picked up the notebook and held it next to his own. Two notebooks. Two people trying to make sense out of life.

An odd thought occurred to him. The boy had lived here for weeks without uttering such words. Given his background, wasn’t that, after all, an extraordinary accomplishment?

He spoke aloud to himself: “Think on the accomplishment, Timothy. Then act on what just happened.”

A Scripture from the Psalms came to him: “I will instruct you and teach you in the way which you shall go. I will guide you with my eye.”

He felt the peace of that promise and went upstairs.

He knocked, but there was no answer. “Dooley?”

Silence. Of course, there would be silence.

He opened the door.

Dooley sat on the side of the bed, sobbing. His whole body seemed given to grief, frustration, and rage.

My heart, thought the rector, feeling it wrench with sorrow. I have never had so many sensations of the heart in one short span of time.

He sat down beside Dooley Barlowe and held him. He held him tightly, as if to say, “Hang on, hang on. I won’t let go.”

“I want me some onions, don’t you?” asked Dooley, whose face, though red from weeping, was relieved. It was among the few times the rector had seen Dooley looking only eleven years old.

The hamburgers sizzled in the black iron skillet. “Indeed, I do. Mayonnaise?”

“Mayonnaise, ketchup, mustard, relish, pickles, th’ works.”

“The works, is it?” He didn’t know when he’d heard the boy call for the works on anything. “Somebody needs to tell you, by the way, that crying is a good thing. I hope you will never let anyone convince you otherwise.” He moved to the stove to turn over the hamburgers.

Dooley said nothing, but the rector knew he was listening.

“Gives you a fresh start, you might say. And speaking of fresh starts, I want you to know that I appreciate and accept your apology. That apology gives you and me a fresh start.”

Dooley was setting plates and silverware on the counter. “D’ you cry?”

“Sometimes.”

“Did you cry about y’r ol’ dog gittin’ stole?”

“Not yet, but I’ve felt like it.”

“I did. I cried about ’at ol’ dog. I miss ’at ol’ dog, even if he has got bad breath. I don’t care if ’e’s got bad breath. It don’t matter none t’ me, I wish ’e’d come back, I’d give ’im a big ol’ bone or . . . or my hamburger, even.”

The rector swallowed hard.

“Can I ask you somethin’ else?”

“Ask away.”

“If you’re a preacher, how can you git away with lyin’?”

“Well, first of all, no one ever really gets away with lying, preacher or no preacher. What have I lied about?”

“About me an’ Goosedown Owen. You said we was goin’ out there ever’ month, and Goosedown could be kind of like mine if I wouldn’t git in fights. You an’ me ain’t bin out there any, and I jis’ bin one time. So, that was a dern lie.”

It was and it wasn’t. Circumstances alter cases, his Uncle Chester always said.

“When I told you that, I meant it sincerely. Then, for weeks on end, the weather was bad on Saturday, and there was no use to go to the country to sit around in the house. Then Christmas came, and there was the baptizing, and then the Owens had company, and . . . well, and you ran away. So, you see, circumstances alter cases.”

Dooley furrowed his brow. He was wearing a red shirt and clean blue jeans, and his cowlick was lying down. “It seemed like a lie.”

“I understand. And so I won’t make any more promises. I’ll just take you when I can. How’s that?”

“This weekend?”

“If we can get your grandfather settled in with his nurse, that could be. Let me look at my calendar. But right now, let’s look at some hamburgers.”

“Cool,” said Dooley, as the rector set the hot platter on the counter.

“I’ve got to take Dooley out to the Shoe Barn at four o’clock.” He was putting the change from his pockets into the blue thanks-offering box.

“Now what?” demanded Emma. “You just got him shoes.”

“Boys are hard on shoes.”

“What kind are you gettin’?”

“Pumps,” said the rector, feeling foolish.

“Pumps!”

“That’s what they’re wearing these days.”

“Pumps?” Emma was astounded.

“Yes, and I’m thinking of getting a pair for myself while I’m at it.” There. It was done. Hadn’t the bishop said he should do something special for himself?