Out to Canaan (154 page)

“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 they'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

Y
OUR
B
ANE
I
S
O
UR
B
LESSING
.
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?