Shepherds Abiding (12 page)

At last, it would be enough.

F
ather Tim opened the fifteenth door of their Advent calendar and read aloud a brief exegesis of verses from Luke’s second chapter.

“ ‘And Joseph went up from Nazareth to Bethlehem, to be enrolled with Mary, who was with child.’ ”

Cynthia thumbed the pages of her Bible to a map of the region that extended south from the Sea of Galilee. “From Galilee in the north to Judea in the south seems a long way, Timothy.”

“Maybe ninety to a hundred miles. On a donkey, that’s roughly a week’s travel. It could have taken longer, of course, because of the pregnancy.”

“I wonder what they ate.”

“Whatever it was, they probably bought it from camel trains. They couldn’t have carried many supplies.”

“Isn’t a lot of this terrain open desert?”

“It is.”

“What would the weather have been like?”

“Cold. Very cold,” he said. “Some say too cold for the shepherds around Bethlehem to be in the fields. They would have had their flocks under cover by October or November.”

“So the birth may have occurred earlier, before they left the fields?”

“Very likely. However, the tradition of a late-December Nativity is eighteen centuries old, and I’m not messing with that.”

“Still, if they were traveling in December, nighttime temperatures would have been freezing.” His wife pondered this, shaking her head. “Just think! All that misery over
taxes!
”

“Some things,” he said, “never change.”

Harold Newland, the postman, bolted through the door at Happy Endings with a bundle of mail secured by a rubber band.

“That’s a load off!” he said, thumping it on the counter next to Margaret Ann.

“How about a cup of hot cider?” Hope thought Harold looked worn, to say the least. Probably all the
catalogs, plus the fact that his wife, Emma, was in Atlanta with her pregnant daughter until after Christmas. . . .

“No time to lollygag!” he said, hitching up his belt. “Have a good day!”

“ ‘Thanks, and thanks, and ever thanks!’ ” Hope exclaimed, quoting Shakespeare.

The postcard was on top. She saw it at once.

Margaret Ann eyed Harold’s departure as Hope withdrew the card from beneath the rubber band and turned it over. It was from George Gaynor, known to Mitford as the Man in the Attic. After eight years in prison and a brief job assignment at Happy Endings, he had returned to the prison system as a chaplain.

Inscribed in a bold hand, the card read:

Dear Hope,

Keep living up to your name.

Your brother in Christ,

George

She blinked to hold back the tears. She was trying to live up to her name, but it was growing harder each day.

It was now December 15, and still she’d had no word from Mrs. Mallory. Helen had phoned the Mallory attorneys on her behalf, but they claimed to know nothing about their client’s plans for this particular property, which was one of many in Mitford, Florida, and Spain.

She walked to the window facing Main Street. Though the future seemed as dark as the lowering sky above the town, she would try to hold fast to what was positive and bright.

Holiday sales had been wonderful, she couldn’t complain, and Helen was hoping with her that Happy Endings might remain in Mitford.

Father Tim now knew her secret, which was a source of great relief. He had prayed with her and agreed to compose a letter of reference to Edith Mallory, so it would be ready when needed. She was touched that he said “when” and not “if.”

Though many circumstances were positive, she was, nonetheless, exhausted. The rare-book business on the Internet, coupled with “running the floor,” as Helen would say, had taken a toll. She was bitterly tired at the end of the day, and often slept fitfully. Helen had
sharply reminded her that things wouldn’t get better if the shop became hers. “Quite the contrary,” Helen had said. And when would she be able to afford help?

Indeed, she had never wanted to be “management” until the day God had given her the amazing idea of actually owning the shop.

She found herself wringing her hands pitiably, and dropped them to her sides at once. How quickly she went from high to low! She must think of the lovely aspects, the glad outcome, as she’d learned from her reading in Philippians last night.

“. . . whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely . . . think on these things.”

Best of all, best of anything, she would see Scott this evening. He would come directly from work, and in the empty room above the bookstore, they were going to put up a tree and decorate it with strings of colored lights.

Afterward, they’d cross the street together and look up to the middle window where it would stand, luminous and shining, for all the village to see.

Uncle Billy Watson shuffled from one end of the kitchen to the other, holding on to the stove, then to the countertop, then the table.

Here he was pacin’ th’ floor, and him a man hardly able t’ walk in th’ first dadjing place! An’ where was ’is cane? How could he lose ’is cane if he hadn’t left th’ house?

He had two weeks t’ come up with Rose’s present, an’ not one blessed notion had passed through his wore-out brain. Nary a one!

Over th’ years, he’d growed plenty tired of hearin’ what Rose’s brother, Willard, had give ’er.

Before Willard died in th’ war in France, he’d give ’er a dolly, he’d give ’er dresses with lace an’ smockin’, he’d give ’er a coat with a rabbit-fur collar, he’d give ’er a little cart an’ a goat t’ pull it, on an’ on ’til a man could heave ’is dinner, an’ then, don’t you know, Willard had give ’er this
house
they was a-livin’ in, an’ ever’ stick of furnishin’.

If he was t’ miss givin’ Rose a present this Christmas, hit’d be th’ first time in more’n fifty years. Nossir,
b’fore he’d let that happen, he’d go down th’ street and buy somethin’ off of a store shelf.

He remembered th’ one year he’d store-bought Rose’s present; th’ Preacher Kavanagh had gone with ’im an’ helped buy ’er a winter coat f’r half off, an’ a pair of red high-heel shoes. Rose had took a fit over them shoes, but she never put ’em on ’er feet. They was still settin’ out on th’ mantel in their bedroom, as decoration.

He didn’t recall if he had any twenties still hid in th’ stacks of newspaper in th’ dinin’ room. Maybe one or two, he didn’t rightly know. . . .

“Bill Watson! Why are you wearing out our good linoleum?” His wife stood at the kitchen door in her chenille robe, with a headful of curlers. He hadn’t seen ’er in them things in a hundred years. She looked like a porkypine.

“I’m tryin’ to figure out somethin’ in m’
brain!
” He hollered good ’n’ loud, so she’d be sure an’ hear.

“You say I’m a
pain?
”

“Yessir, you are, but
that ain’t what I said!
”

“Speak up, Bill Watson!
What’d you say?
”

“I said I’m tryin’ t’
figure out y’r Santy Claus!
”

“My Santy Claus? Did you say my
Santy Claus?
” His wife’s face lit up like a Christmas tree—she was grinnin’ like a young ’un, which was a wonder he hadn’t seen in a coon’s age.

“Them was my words, all right!”

“Why, Bill Watson!” She trotted over an’ kissed ’im on th’ cheek s’ hard he near about tumbled over back’ards. “That’s the best news in this whole wide world!”

He was throwing caution to the winds, he was picking up speed, he was flying.

I can do this! he thought, astonished. I can do this! He was no Rembrandt, but he could turn a lurid, sallow skin into something believable, and while his donkey ear was nothing to write home about, it had a certain . . . élan.

The start-up had been slow and time-consuming, boggled by everything from five days of flu to complete ignorance about what to do and how to do it. Now, by George, he had momentum!

Not only was it a liberating thing to have, it had come in the nick of time. With less than five days remaining before Dooley’s visit, and less than ten until
Christmas, he and his erstwhile helpers had many a mile to go.

He found he was taking the work to bed with him, so to speak, and having trouble sleeping. Then, after hours of staring at the ceiling and planning his next move, he could hardly wait to roll into the Oxford next morning.

Some of his excitement came, perhaps, from working with his hands. Aside from gardening and cooking, it was a completely fresh experience for someone who’d always gone at life with his head. Whatever it was, he hadn’t felt so energized in years.

Truth be told, while he passionately loved celebrating the liturgy, he’d nearly always dreaded coming up with a fit and useful sermon—he seemed to invest a disproportionate amount of time in woolgathering, pacing the floor, beseeching God, and laboring to have his words expound the Scriptures. Then, on the days the Holy Spirit seemed to abandon him to his own devices, there was the delivering of said words to expectant souls who needed, and deserved, more nourishment than he felt capable of giving.

He wondered if he should feel a little guilty these days about—to put it plainly—having so much fun.

His wife was in bed, pretending to read but surveying him oddly as he sat in the wing chair pretending to do the same.

He was pretending because he couldn’t keep his mind on the book; he was thinking about the angel with the missing wing. He’d taken the color of her outer robe from a painting by Adolphe-William Bouguereau; he’d mixed and mixed the paints until he got something that gained a consensus in the back room.