Light From Heaven (15 page)

“Adele’s been promoted,” said J.C. “You’ll read about it in th’
Muse
tomorrow.”

He thought J.C. looked oddly dejected.

“Promoted to what?” asked Mule.

“From corporal to sergeant.”

“Congratulations!” said Father Tim. “We’re proud with you.”

J.C. ducked his head and fumbled with his overstuffed briefcase, which sat beside him on a dinette chair salvaged from a Mitford dumpster.

“Are they promotin’ her nine millimeter, too?” In Mule’s opinion, women shouldn’t be allowed to become police officers, much less tote heavy metal around in a holster.

“She’s not carryin’ a nine millimeter anymore,” snapped J.C. “She’s carryin’ a forty-caliber H and K.”

“You don’t have t’ bite my head off.”

“So what else is new?” asked Percy.

“Gene Bolick’s not doing so hot,” said J.C. “Th’ tumor’s too deep in there to operate, and the medication’s not working like it should.”

Mule peered into his lunch sack. “Uh oh. What in th’ dickens ...”

“Don’t even start that mess,” said Percy. “I don’t want t’ hear it.” Percy unwrapped the foil from his wedge of lasagna, and removed a plastic fork from his shirt pocket.

“Lasagna!” marveled Mule, peering over the top of his glasses. “What’d you bring?” he asked Father Tim.

“Chicken sandwich on whole wheat with low-fat mayo and a couple of bread and butter pickles.”

Mule looked into the recesses of his paper bag and sighed deeply.

“We thank the Lord for this nourishment!” said Father Tim.

“Amen!” Percy forthwith hammered down on last night’s leftovers. “Lew needs to get ’im a microwave in this place. Hey, Lew, why don’t you put in a microwave?”

Lew walked in from the garage, wiping his hands on a rag.

“Put in your own bloomin’ microwave. I ain’t runnin’ a restaurant, in case you didn’t notice.”

“Lookit,” said Percy, “we buy drinks, we buy Nabs, we fill up with gas an’ whatnot—it’d be an investment in keepin’ us as reg’lars.”

“Yeah, well, these turkeys was all reg’lars up at your place, an’ look what happened, you went out of b’iness!”

Everybody had a good laugh, except J.C., who was staring at his unopened cup of yogurt.

“Thanks again for the Christmas pickles, Lew,” said Father Tim. “I believe this is the recipe that inspired Earlene to kiss you on the mouth when you won the blue ribbon.”

Lew blushed. “Yessir, that’s th’ recipe, all right.”

“When is Earlene moving down to Mitford?”

“September!” said Lew. “Lock, stock, and barrel.”

“An’ don’t forget Mama,” said Mule. “Lock, stock, barrel, and Mama.”

Lew ignored this reference to his mother-in-law, who was moving from Tennessee with his once-secret wife. “How’s your new church comin’ along, Father?”

“We had our first service yesterday, I’m happy to say.”

“Great!” said Mule. “How many?”

“Including yours truly? Eight.”

Mule removed a see-through plastic container from the bag. “Mighty low numbers.”

“Numbers aren’t everything,” said the vicar.

“Who give you that haircut?” asked Mule. “Pretty sporty lookin’.”

“A woman who lives above the clouds across a creek without a bridge.”

Percy stared at him blankly. “No wonder it gets s’ long between cuttin’s,” he said.

“So, J.C., any more news of Edith Mallory?”

“I hear she said God again and was tryin’ to add another word.”

“How’d you hear that?” asked Percy.

“Ed Coffey.”

Mule looked offended. “Why were you talkin’ to that low-life bum? You just talked to ’im th’ other day.”

“None of your business.”

“Thank you very much.” Mule snapped off the lid. “Oh,
law!”

Percy looked the other way. “Don’t tell us what it is, we don’t care what it is.”

“What is it?” asked Father Tim.

“I’ll be darned if I know. Lookit.” Mule displayed the item for all to inspect.

“That makes yogurt look like pheasant under glass,” said J.C.

“It’s brown,” said Percy. “Or is it dark green? My glasses ain’t doin’ too good.”

Father Tim peered closely. “Dark green.”

“Call ’er up and ask what it is,” said Percy. “I’d give a half-dollar to have it identified.”

Father Tim searched his pants pocket for a couple of quarters. “I’ll give the other half.”

“I usually don’t call Fancy at th’ shop, but for a dollar...”

J.C. pointed to the wall. “There’s th’ phone.”

“Yeah, but if I use th’ phone, which costs a quarter, I don’t get but seventy-five cents out of th’ deal.”

“It’s seventy-five cents you didn’t have,” counseled Father Tim.

“Right. OK.”

Mule dialed.

“Fancy, baby? Got a minute? What’s this you packed for my lunch?”

Long silence.

“You don’t mean it. I declare, that’s th’ way it goes, all right.”

More silence. The members of the Turkey Club sat forward on their chairs.

“What color was it before?”

Further silence.

“It’s not th’ first time somebody threatened to sue you over a hair deal. It ain’t goin’ to happen, so don’t worry about it. Right. Right. I love you, too.”

“You call your wife
baby?”
J.C. appeared mildly stricken by this revelation. “You tell ’er you love ’er in front of God and everybody?”

“Wait a minute, wait a minute,” said Percy. “We’re gettin’ off track here. What is that mess she packed you for lunch?”

“Dadgum,” said Mule. “She forgot to say, an’ I ain’t spendin’ another quarter.”

“You’re losing all around on this deal,” said Father Tim. “Canceled out your dollar, and invested a quarter of your own money.”

“Shoot,” said Mule. “I quit. I guess I ought t’ just eat th’ thing an’ get it over with, I’m half starved.”

“Who’s suing Fancy this time?” asked J.C.

“What do you mean, this time? There’s only been one other time,” said Mule, offended.

“So that was that time, and this is this time.”

“You said it like somebody’s suin’ ’er
all
th’ time.”

“Lord help us,” said Percy. “Your blood sugar’s shot, you need nourishment. Get you a pack of Nabs out of th’ machine, and hush
up,
for Pete’s sake.” If Velma Mosely was here, she’d knock Mule Skinner in the head once and for all. How they’d dealt with ornery, hard-to-please Grill customers for more than forty years was way, way more than he’d ever understand.

“Smell it,” said Mule, trying to hand off the plastic container to Father Tim.

“No, thanks.”

Mule gazed into the container. “I think it’s guacamole.” He fished around in his lunch bag for a plastic fork and gave the thing a poke. “
Ha!
You’ll be sorry you bad-mouthed this little number. It’s guacamole over roasted chicken!”

J.C. stood up and grabbed his briefcase. “I’m outta here.”

“Where you goin? You ain’t even touched your yogurt.”

“I’m headed down to th’ dadblame tea shop with th’ women.
Sayonara, hasta la vista,
and see you in th’ funny papers.”

“Man,” said Mule, as J.C. blew through the door.

“His aftershave nearly gassed me,” said Percy. “Prop th’ door open, get a little air circulatin’ in here. What’s ’is problem, anyway?”

Father Tim didn’t comment, but he thought he recognized J.C.’s problem as one he’d formerly had himself.

On the way to Hope House, he mused on Edith Mallory, for whom he often prayed, even when he didn’t want to.

He couldn’t imagine having all logical thought blasted to smithereens. The childhood memory of running his hand into the grain bin at the hardware store came to mind. Tens of thousands of grains of corn, all looking and feeling alike, and all silken to his touch—what if he’d been searching for one particular grain in the bin, as Edith was searching for a particular word in the great sea of random words turned loose in her mind?

Lord,
he prayed,
help her find the next word
.
And the next, and the next ...

“Louella?”

Louella sat in her chair by the window, the television on mute.

“Miss Louella is sleepin’,” whispered the nurse, who tiptoed in behind him. “She stayed up late last night watchin’ the beauty pageant.”

“Please tell her I stopped by and will stop again, will you?”

“Oh, yes, sir.”

“How is she?” It had somehow astonished him to find her sleeping; he’d thought for a moment...

“Oh, she’s well, very well. We had to get that little bladder infection treated, you know, that wasn’t a good thing, but other than that, she’s perky and has her appetite!”

After the nurse left, he stood by her chair and prayed for his friend and Miss Sadie’s much-loved companion; he did not want to lose Louella.

He drove the Mustang from Hope House to Old Church Lane and turned right onto Main Street, where he parked in front of Dora Pugh’s Hardware.

“Can you duplicate this?” he asked Dora.

“Now, Father, you know better than to ask me if I can do somethin’ .”

“Right, but can you?”

Dora cackled. “Of course I can. But where’d you find this thing? It looks like somethin’ that dropped out of our town founder’s saddlebag when he rode up th’ mountain in 1846. Or was it 1864?”

With the new key on the sterling ring given him by Walter and Katherine, he walked at a clip to the Sweet Stuff Bakery and made a purchase. Using Winnie’s phone, he also made a call to Esther Bolick, but there was no answer and no answering machine.

Afterward, he dashed to The Local and dropped off a shopping list that Avis would have ready for pickup before the trek home to Meadowgate.

With the still-warm paper bag sitting on the passenger seat, he drove north on Main, made a left onto Lilac Road, and a right into the rear entrance of the Porter place, aka Mitford town museum.

He rapped on the backdoor, hard by a green plastic hanging basket containing the remnants of last summer’s geranium, and heard a shuffling gait on the other side.

“Who is it?” squawked Miss Rose, throwing open the door.

She was barefoot, and wearing a chenille robe topped by a woolen Army jacket with several war medals displayed on the lapel.

“It’s the preacher. I’ve come to visit!” He spoke loudly, and tried to sound cheerful, but truth be told, Miss Rose had always scared him half to death.

“Bill’s laid up in bed.”

“Is he sick?”

“I don’t know; I haven’t asked him.”

“May I come in and sit with him?”

“We’re not able to entertain company.”

“I have a bag of doughnuts for the two of you, but I guess I’ll just...
take them home and eat them myself.”
He’d never said anything so contrary to Miss Rose.

“Come in, come in!”

He thought the old woman looked less, but only a little less, fierce.