Out to Canaan (160 page)

“Low-fat meat loaf, hot from the oven!” he announced, setting the sizzling platter on the table.

Louella wrinkled her nose. “Low-fat? Pass it on by, honey, you can
skip
this chile!”

“Don't skip this 'un,” said Harley.

“He was only kidding,” Cynthia declared. “In truth, it contains everything our doctors ever warned us about.”

He saw the light in Pauline's face, the softness of expression as she looked upon her scrubbed and freckled children. Thanks be to God! Three out of five . . . .

He sat down, feeling expansive, and shook out one of the linen napkins left behind, he was amused to recall, by an old bishop who once lived here.

He waited until all hands were clasped, linking them together in a circle.

“Our God and our Father, we thank You!” he began.

“Thank You, Jesus!” boomed Louella in happy accord.

“We thank You with full hearts for this family gathered here tonight, and ask Your mercy and blessings upon all those who hunger, not only for sustenance, but for the joy, the peace, and the one true salvation which You, through Your Son, freely offer . . . .”

They had just said “Amen!” when the doorbell rang.

“I'll get it! And for heaven's sake, don't wait for me. Who on earth . . .” Cynthia trotted down the hall to the door.

Father Tim passed the platter to Louella and was starting the potatoes around when he heard Cynthia coming back to the kitchen, a heavy tread in her wake.

“You'll never guess who's here!” said his wife.

Buck Leeper stepped awkwardly into the doorway. In the small, close kitchen, his considerable presence was arresting.

Good Lord! Finding Buck a place to stay had gone completely out
of his head. It hadn't entered his mind again since he called Mule. He was mortified.

He stood up, nearly knocking his chair to the floor.

“Good timing, Buck! We'll set another plate, there's more than plenty. Good to see you!” He pumped Buck's large, callused hand. “You remember Louella, Miss Sadie's friend and companion. And Dooley, you remember Dooley.”

Buck nodded. “Dooley . . .”

“Hey.”

“And this is Harley Welch, Harley lives with us, and there's Pauline, Dooley's mother—as I recall, you brought her a rose when she was in the hospital.”

Buck flushed and glanced at the floor.

Rats. He shouldn't have said that. “This is Dooley's brother Poo, and this is Jessie, his sister.”

Poobaw grinned at Buck.

“I'm hungry!” said Jessie.

“This is Buck Leeper, everybody, the man who did such a splendid job at Hope House. Can you believe he was born just up the road from me in Mississippi? Keep the potatoes passing, Dooley, there's the gravy. Ah, I see we forgot to set out the butter for the rolls! Buck, I hope you're hungry, we've got enough for an army. Here, take this chair, we're glad to have you back in Mitford! Louella, have you got room over there? Dooley, scoot closer to your sister . . . .”

What a workout. He was exhausted.

“Please sit down, Mr. Leeper,” said his smiling wife, taking over.

Dooley had taken Poo and Jessie to his room; Cynthia, Louella, and Pauline were making tea and coffee; and the men had gone into the study.

“What it was,” said Harley, “Junior liked t' run on dirt better'n asphalt, which is why they called 'im th' Mud Dobber. One ol' boy said how th' law was tryin' t' jump Junior, said Junior cut out th'ough a cornfield in a '58 Pontiac with th' winders down, said he plowed th'ough about a ten-acre stand of corn 'til he come out th' other
side an' looked around an' 'is whole backseat was full of roastin' ears.”

Buck laughed the laugh that sounded, to the rector, like a kettle boiling.

“Harley, you ought to tell Buck about your services as a mechanic. There'll be a lot of vehicles on the Lord's Chapel job.”

“Yes, sir, I work on most anything with wheels, but I don't touch earth-movin' equipment. Course, I'm goin' t' be tied up pretty good, I'm cleanin' out 'is missus's basement and garage, then startin' on th' attic up yonder.” Harley pointed to the ceiling. “Hit ain't been touched since one of them old bishops lived here.”

Pauline came to the door of the study. Jessie was right, thought the rector, she's pretty.

“Excuse me . . .”

“Are you ready for us?” he asked.

She smiled. “Yes, sir. Cynthia said please come in.”

Buck stood up from the wing chair, gazing at Pauline.

Father Tim saw that he appeared, for a moment, as eager and expectant as a boy.

“I couldn't do that,” said Buck.

“Well, you see . . . the truth is, you have to. I looked for a place for you to live and ran into a dead end, and, well, first thing you know, I forgot to keep looking, and there you have it, you're stuck with us—the sheets are clean and the toilet flushes.”

Buck laughed. At least he was laughing . . . .

He showed Buck to the guest room at the top of the stairs, where the superintendent's size somehow made the space much smaller. Buck chewed a toothpick, and carefully scanned the room and its adjoining bath.

“I believe you'll be comfortable, and don't worry about a thing. We'll have you out of here in no time, into a place of your own.”

“If you're sure . . .”

“More than sure! Oh. By the way—do you play softball?”

Buck took the toothpick out of his mouth. “I've kicked more tail on a softball field than I ever kicked on a construction site. Before I
hired on with Emil, I coached softball for a construction outfit in Tucson. The last couple of years I was there, we won every game, two seasons in a row.”

Dooley suddenly appeared at the guest room door.

“I'm on his team,” he said.

Buck offered to deliver Pauline and the children, while he took Louella to Hope House.

“I had a big time,” said Louella, looking misty-eyed. “You and Miss Cynthia, you're family.”

“Always will be,” he said, meaning it.

At the door of Room Number One, he kissed her goodnight, loving the vaguely cinnamon smell of her cheek that had something of home in it.

Emma looked at him over her half-glasses.

“I guess you're hot about Snickers runnin' you off the other day.”

“You might say that.”

“How did I know you'd bring Barnabas to work? You never do, anymore. And besides, Snickers has never been here but twice, it seems like he
deserved
a turn . . . .”

“Ummm.”

“Emily Hastings called, she said she has an axe to pick with you.”

An axe to grind, a bone to pick, what difference did it make?

“Esther Bolick called, said things are looking up, Hessie Mayhew's th' biggest help since Santa's elves.”

“Good.”

“Hal Owen called, said it's time for Barnabas to get his shots.”

“Right.”

“Evie Adams called, guess what Miss Pattie's done now?”

“Can't guess,” he said curtly, taking the cover off his Royal manual.

“She goes up and down the halls at Hope House, stealing the Jell-O off everybody's trays.”

“That's a lot of Jell-O.”

“Don't you care?”

“About what?”

“Stealing from old people.”

“Miss Pattie is old people.”

“So?”

He would like nothing better than to knock his secretary in the head. “So they have a staff of forty-plus at Hope House, I'm sure they can come up with some kind of curtailment of her behavior.”

“Some kind of what?”

He didn't answer.

“How can you
use
that old thing?” she asked, glaring at his Royal manual.

He refused to respond.

There was a long silence as she peered at her computer monitor, and he rolled a sheet of paper into the carriage of his machine.

“So when are you going to give me some more names to find?” she inquired at last, trying to make up.

“Will you do it?” he asked his wife.

“Of course I won't do it! It's not my job to do it.”

“Deacons,” he reminded her, “are supposed to do the dirty work.”

“You amaze me, Timothy. You bury the dead, counsel the raving, and heedlessly pry into people's souls, yet when it comes to this . . .”

“I can't do it,” he said.

“You have to do it.”

Of course he had to do it. He knew that all along. He was only seeing how far he could get her to bend.

Not far.

“Dooley . . .”

He picked a piece of lint from his trousers. He stared at his right loafer, which appeared to have been licked by his dog, or possibly the twins, and after he had polished it only yesterday . . . .

“Yessir?”

Barnabas collapsed at his feet and yawned hugely, indicating his extreme boredom. Not a good sign.

“Well, Dooley . . .”

Dooley looked him squarely in the eye.

“It's about Jenny. I mean, it's not about Jenny,
exactly.
It's more indirectly than directly about Jenny, although we could leave her out of it altogether, actually . . . .”

“What about Jenny?”

“Like I said, it's not exactly about Jenny. It's more about . . .”

“About what?”

Had he seen this scenario in a movie? In a cartoon? He was old, he was retiring, he was out of here. He rose from the chair, then forced himself to sit again.

“It's about sex!” Good Lord, had he shouted?

“Sex?” Dooley's eyes were perfectly innocent. They might have been discussing Egyptology.

“Sex. Yes. You know.” Hal Owen would have done this for him, Hal had raised a boy, why hadn't he thought of that before?

Dooley looked as if he might go to sleep on the footstool where he was sitting. “What about sex?”

“Well, for openers, what do you
know
about it? If you know anything at all, do you know what you
need
to know? And how do you
know
if you know what you need to know, that is to say, you can never be too
sure
that you know what you need to know, until—”

He actually felt a light spray as Dooley erupted with laughter in his very face. The boy grabbed his sides and threw back his head and hooted. Following that, he fell from the footstool onto the floor, where he rolled around in the fetal position, still clutching his sides and cackling like a hyena.

Father Tim had prayed for years to see Dooley Barlowe break down and really laugh. But this was ridiculous.

“When you're over your hysteria,” he said, “we'll continue our discussion.”

Not knowing what else to do, he examined his fingernails and tried to retain whatever dignity he'd come in here with.

“Good heavens, Timothy. You look awful! Is it done?”

“It's done.”

“What did you tell him?”

“It's more like . . . what he told me.”

“Really?” she said, amused. “And what did he tell you?”

“He knows it all.”

“Most teenagers do. Figuratively speaking.”

“And there's nothing to worry about, he's not even interested in
kissing
a girl.”

Cynthia smiled patiently. “Right, darling,” she said.

He wouldn't say a word to anybody about the two-thousand-dollar check Mack Stroupe had put in the collection plate on Sunday. He only hoped Emma would keep quiet about it.

On that score, at least, she was pretty dependable, though she'd been the one to tell him about the check. From the beginning, his instructions were, “Don't talk to me about the money, I don't need to know.” As he'd often said, he didn't want to look into the faces of his parishioners and see dollar signs.

“Harley, ever played any softball?”

“No, sir, Rev'rend, I ain't been one t' play sports.”

“Ah, well.”

“I can run as good as th' next 'un, but hittin' and catchin' ain't my call.”

The rector was peering into the tank of Harley's toilet, which had lately developed a tendency to run.

“I thank you f'r lookin' into my toilet, hit's bad t' keep me awake at night, settin' on th' other side of th' wall from m' head.”

“It's old as Methuselah, but I think I can fix it.”

“I want you t' let me fix somethin' f'r you, now, Rev'rend, I'm runnin' behind on that.”

“Can't think of anything that needs it,” he said, taking a wrench out of his tool kit.

“Maybe it's somethin' that don't need fixin', jis' tendin' to.”

“Well, now.” Wouldn't Dooley rather get his driving lesson from a bona fide race car mechanic than a preacher? He was sure Harley could make the lesson far more interesting, and even teach Dooley some professional safety tips from the track. Besides, even with the new torque in the Buick, Harley's truck would be a much more compelling vehicle to a fourteen-year-old boy.

“There is something you could do,” he said, “if you're going to be around Saturday afternoon.”

He could feel the bat in his hands. How many years had it been since he'd slammed a ball over the fence? Too many! He'd better get in shape, he thought, huffing up Old Church Lane in his running gear. Barnabas bounded along in front on the red leash.

Cooler today, but humid. Overcast skies, rain predicted. And didn't the garden need it? He'd worn a hood, just in case.

He wished he could get his wife to run with him, but no way. She was a slave to her drawing board, and lately looking the worse for it. The unofficial job of deacon, the job of organizing their jam-packed household, and the job of children's author/illustrator were wearing on her. And hadn't he helped put another portion on her already full plate by stowing Buck in the guest room?

He was frankly stumped about how to find housing for the superintendent, and with the attic job gearing up, Buck hardly had time to look around for himself. Maybe Scott Murphy would take in a boarder . . . .

He ran up to the low stone wall overlooking what he called the Land of Counterpane, and thumped down with Barnabas, panting.

There was the view that Louella and all the other residents farther along the hill could wake up and see every day of their lives. A feast for the eyes! He didn't get up here much, but when he did . . .

It was here, sitting on this wall, that he had known, at last, he
could
marry her,
must
marry her, and experienced the terrible anxiety of what it could mean to lose her. And it was here that he and Cynthia decided they both wanted to stay in Mitford when he retired.

Was he on time for the train? He looked at his watch. Another few minutes. Perhaps he would wait. Was life so all-fired urgent that he
couldn't find five minutes to see a sight that always blessed and delighted him?

He was utterly alone in this place where, for all its singular beauty, few people ever came. It was set steeply above the village, it was off the beaten path, it was . . .

He heard the car below him, on the gravel road that ran along the side of the gorge and was seldom used except by a few local families.

He peered down and saw the black car pull to the shoulder of the road and stop. A man opened the driver's door and leaned out, looking around, then closed the door again. He was wearing a hat, a cap of some kind.