These High, Green Hills (3 page)

“I reckon you’re gone with th‘ wind,” said Percy Mosely, who rang up his lunch tab at the Main Street Grill.

“How’s that?” asked the rector.

“Married an‘ all, you’ll not be comin’ in regular, I take it.” The proprietor of the Grill felt hurt and betrayed, he could tell.

“You’ve got that wrong, my friend.”

“I do?” said Percy, brightening.

“I’ll be coming in as regular as any man could. My wife has a working life of her own, being a well-known children’s book writer and illustrator. She will not be trotting out hot vittles for my lunch every day—not by a long shot.”

Percy looked suspicious. “What about breakfast?”

“That,” said the rector, pocketing the change, “is another matter entirely.”

Percy frowned. He liked his regulars to be married to his place of business.

He looked up from his chair in the study. Curlers, again.

“I have to wear curlers,” she said, as if reading his mind. “I’m going to Lowell tomorrow.”

“Lowell? Whatever for?”

“A school thing. They want me to read
Violet Goes to France
to their French class, and then do a program in the auditorium.”

“Must you?”

“Must I what? Read
Violet Goes to France?
That’s what they asked me to read.”

“No, must you go to Lowell?”

“Well, yes.”

He didn’t want to say anything so idiotic, but he would miss her, as if she were being dropped off the end of the earth.

A long silence ensued as she curled up on the sofa and opened a magazine. He tried to read, but couldn’t concentrate.

He hadn’t once thought of her traveling with her work. Uneasy, he tried to let the news sink in. Lowell. Somebody there had been shot on the street in broad daylight.

And another thing—Lowell was a full hundred miles away. Did she have good brakes? Plenty of gas? When had she changed her oil?

“How’s your oil?” he asked soberly.

She laughed as if he’d said something hilariously funny. Then she left the sofa and came to him and kissed him on the forehead. He was instantly zapped by the scent of wisteria, and went weak in the knees.

She looked him in the eye. “I love it when you talk like that. My oil is fine, how’s yours?”

“Cynthia, Cynthia,” he said, pulling her into his lap.

“Guess what?” said Emma, who was taping a photo of her new grandchild on the wall next to her desk.

This was his secretary’s favorite game, and one he frankly despised. “What?”

“Let’s see. You’re going to quit working for the Episcopalians and go to work for the Baptists.” He wished.

“I wish,” she said, rolling her eyes. “Try again.”

“Blast, Emma, I hate this game.”

“It’s good for you, it exercises the brain.”

“Esther Bolick’s orange marmalade cake recipe is coming out in the
New York Times
food section.”

“See? You don’t even try. You’re just talking to hear your head roar. One more guess.”

“Give me a clue.”

“It has to do with somebody being mad.”

“The vestry. It must have something to do with the vestry.”

“Wrong. Do you want me to tell you?”

“I beg you.”

“Marge Wheeler left her best basket in the kitchen after the bishop’s brunch last June, and Flora Lou Wilcox put it in the Bane and Blessing sale. Somebody walked off with it for a hundred dollars! Can you believe a hundred dollars for a basket with a loose handle? Marge is mad as a wet hen, she threatened to sue. But Flora Lou said she doesn’t have a leg to stand on, since you’re always running notices in the pew bulletin to pick up stuff left in th‘ kitchen.”

“Ummm. Keep me posted.”

“It’s been four months since the brunch, so I can see Flora Lou’s point that Marge should have picked it up and carted it home. Anyway, how could Flora Lou know it was handmade by Navajo Indians in 1920?” Emma sighed. “Of course, I can see Marge’s point, too, can’t you?”

He could, but he knew better than to intervene unless asked. His job, after all, was Sales and Service.

He rifled through the mail. A note from his cousin, Walter, and wife, Katherine, who had done the Ireland jaunt with him last year.

He rummaged toward the bottom of the mail stack.

Aha!

A note from Dooley Barlowe, in that fancy prep school for which his eldest parishioner, Miss Sadie Baxter, was shelling out serious bucks.

There! Not one ‘ain’t,’ and complete sentences throughout. Hallelujah!

Who could have imagined that this boy, once barely able to speak the King’s English, would end up in a prestigious school in Virginia?

He gazed at the note, shaking his head.

Scarcely more than two years ago, Dooley Barlowe had arrived at the church office, dirty, ragged, and barefoot, looking for a place to “take a dump.” His grandfather had been too ill to care for the boy, who was abandoned by a runaway father and alcoholic mother, and Dooley had ended up at the rectory. By grace alone, he and Dooley had managed to live through those perilous times.

“I’ve been wondering,” said Emma, peering at him over her glasses. “Is Cynthia goin‘ to pitch in and help around the church?”

“She’s free to do as much or as little as she pleases.”

“I’ve always thought a preacher’s wife should pitch in.” She set her mouth in that way he deplored. “If you ask me, which you didn’t, the parish will expect it.”

Yes, indeed, if he could get the Baptists to take Emma Newland off his hands, he would be a happy man.

“Miss Sadie,” he said when she answered the phone at Fernbank, “I’ve had a note from Dooley. He says he doesn’t like it in that fancy school.”

“He can like it or lump it,” she said pleasantly.

“When you’re dishing out twenty thousand a year, you sure can be tough, Miss Sadie.”

“If I couldn’t be tough, Father, I wouldn’t have twenty thousand to dish out.”

“You’ll be glad to know the headmaster says he’s doing all right. A little slow on the uptake, but holding his own with those rich kids. In fact, they’re not all rich. Several are there on scholarship, with no more assets than our Dooley.”

“Good! You mark my words, he’ll be better for it. And don’t you. go soft on me, Father, and let him talk you into bailing him out in the middle of the night.”

“You can count on it,” he said.

“Louella and I have nearly recovered from all the doings in June....”

“June was a whopper, all right.”

“We’re no spring chickens, you know.”

“You could have fooled me.”

“I’ll be ninety my next birthday, but Louella doesn’t tell her age. Anyway, we’re going to have you and Cynthia up for supper. What did we say we’d have, Louella?”

He heard Louella’s mezzo voice boom from a corner of the big kitchen, “Fried chicken, mashed potatoes, gravy, an‘ cole slaw!”

“Man!” he exclaimed, quoting Dooley.

The announcement rolled on. “Hot biscuits, cooked apples, deviled eggs, bread and butter pickles ...”

Good Lord! The flare-up from his diabetes would have him in the emergency room before the rest of them pushed back from the table.

“And what did we say for dessert?” Miss Sadie warbled into the distance.

“Homemade coconut cake!”

Ah, well, that was a full coma right there. Hardly any of his parishioners could remember he had this blasted disease. The information seemed to go in one ear and out the other.

“Ask Louella if she’ll marry me,” he said.

“Louella, the Father wants to know if you’ll marry him.”

“Tell ‘im he got a short mem’ry, he done married Miss Cynthia.”

He laughed, contented with the sweetness of this old friendship. “Just name the time,” he said. “We’ll be there.”

Autumn drew on in the mountains.

Here, it set red maples on fire; there, it turned oaks russet and yellow. Fat persimmons became the color of melted gold, waiting for frost to turn their bitter flesh to honey. Sassafras, dogwoods, poplars, redbud—all were torched by autumn’s brazen fire, displaying their colorful tapestry along every ridge and hogback, in every cove and gorge.