A Light in the Window (3 page)

Going to a town council meeting was decidedly not what he wanted to do with his evening. After two months away, he hardly knew what was going on. And he was still feeling oddly jet-lagged, shaking his head vigorously on occasion with some hope of clearing it. But he would go; it might put him back in the swing of things, and frankly, he was curious why the mayor, Esther Cunningham, had called an unofficial meeting and why it might concern him.

“Don’t eat,” Esther told him on the phone. “Ray’s bringin’ baked beans, cole slaw, and ribs from home. Been cookin’ all day.”

“Hallelujah,” he said with feeling.

There was a quickening in the air of the mayor’s office. Ray was setting out his home-cooked supper on the vast desktop, overlooked by pictures of their twenty-three grandchildren at the far end.

“Mayor,” said Leonard Bostick, “it’s a cryin’ shame you cain’t cook as good as Ray.”

“I’ve got better things to do,” she snapped. “I did the cookin’ for forty years. Now it’s his turn.”

Ray grinned. “You tell ’em, honey.”

“Whooee!” said Paul Hartley. “Baby backs! Get over here, Father, and give us a blessin’.”

“Come on!” shouted the mayor to the group lingering in the hall. “It’s blessin’ time!”

Esther Cunningham held out her hands, and the group eagerly formed a circle.

“Our Lord,” said the rector, “we’re grateful for the gift of friends and neighbors and those willing to lend their hand to the welfare of this place. We thank you for the peace of this village and for your grace to do the work that lies ahead. We thank you, too, for this food and ask a special blessing on the one who prepared it. In Jesus’ name.”

“Amen!” said the assembly.

The mayor was the first in line. “You’re goin’ t’ get a blessing, all right,” she told her husband. “Just look at this sauce! You’ve done it again, sweet face.”

Ray winked at the rector. There, thought the rector, is a happy man if I ever saw one.

“How’s your diabetes, Father?”

“It won’t tolerate the torque you’ve put under the hood of that pot, I regret to say.”

“Take doubles on m’ slaw, then,” said Ray, heaping the rector’s plate.

“You know what we’re here to talk about,” said the mayor.

Everybody nodded, except the rector.

“I don’t want it to come up in a town meetin’, and I don’t want it officially voted on, vetoed, or otherwise messed with. We’re just goin’ to seek agreement here tonight like a family and let it go at that.”

She looked at their faces and leaned forward. “Got it?”

Linder Hayes stood up slowly, thin as a strip of baling wire. He placed his hands carefully behind his back, peered at his shoes, and cleared his throat.

“Here goes,” said Joe Ivey, nudging the rector.

“Your honor,” said Linder.

“You don’t have t’ ‘your honor’ me. This is an unofficial meetin’.”

“Your honor,” said Linder, who was a lawyer and preferred the formalities, “I’d like to speak for the merchants of this town who have to make a livin’ out of the day-to-day run of things.

“Now, we know that an old woman dressed up in party hats and gumboots, directin’ traffic around the monument, is not a fit sight for tourists, especially with leaf season comin’ on.

“You say she’s harmless, but that, in fact, is not the point. With her infamous snaggle tooth and those old army decorations, think what she’d look like if she came flyin’ out of th’ fog wavin’ at cars. She’d clean th’ tourists out of here so fast it’d make your head swim.”

“And good riddance,” said the mayor testily.

“Madam Mayor, we’ve fought this tourist battle for years. We’ve all moved over to give you plenty of room to do your job, and you’ve done it. Your faithful defense of what is good and right and true to the character of this town has been a strong deterrent to the rape and plunder of senseless development and reckless growth.

“But ...” Linder gave a long pause and looked around the room. “Two Model Village awards will not suffice our merchants for cold, hard cash. That ol’ woman is enough to make babies squall and grown men tuck tail and run. Clearly, I don’t have to make a livin’ off tourists, but my wife does—and so, incidentally, do half your grandchildren.”

“We’re in for it,” muttered Joe Ivey. “I should’ve carried a bed roll and a blanket.”

“Linder,” said Esther Cunningham, “sit down and take a load off your feet.”

“Your honor ...”

“Thank you, Linder,” the mayor said, measuring each word.

Linder appeared to waver for a moment, like a leaf caught in a breeze. Then, he sat down.

“I’d like us to look at a couple of things before we open for a brief discussion,” said the mayor. “First, let’s look at my platform. There is no such thing in it as a middle plank, a left plank, or a right plank. It’s just one straight platform. Period. Joe, why don’t you remind us what it is?”

Joe stood up. “Mitford takes care of its own!” He sat down again, flushed with pride.

“Mitford ... takes ... care ... of ... its ... own. That’s been my platform for fourteen years, and as long as I’m mayor, it will continue to be th’ platform. Number one. Miss Rose Watson may be snaggle-toothed and she may be crazy, but she’s our own. Number two. Based on that, we’re goin’ to take care of ’er.

“Number three. Directin’ traffic around the monument is the best thing that’s happened to her since she was a little girl, as normal as you and me. Uncle Billy says she sleeps like a baby now, instead of ramblin’ through that old house all night, and she’s turned nice as you please to him. Directin’ traffic is a genuine responsibility to her. She takes pride in it.”

“She does a real good job,” said Ernestine Ivory, who colored beet red at the sound of her own voice.

“What’s that, Ernestine?” asked the mayor.

“Miss Rose does a real good job of directing traffic. ’Course that’s just me ...”

“That’s just you and a lot of other people who think the same thing. She’s very professional. I don’t know where in th’ world she learned it.

“Now, here’s what I propose, and I ask you to consider it in your hearts. Every day from noon to one o’clock, traffic drops off and Mitford eats lunch. My stomach starts growlin’ right on th’ button, like th’ rest of this crowd.

“I propose we let Miss Rose direct traffic five days a week, from noon ’til one, which’ll give her just enough cars to keep her happy.

“Now, Linder, I have to hand it to you about those cocktail hats and funny clothes, so I propose we give ’er a uniform. Navy hat, skirt, and jacket from my old days in th’ Waves. Be a perfect fit. I was skinny as a rail, wasn’t I, doll?”

Ray gave the mayor a thumbs-up.

“Ernestine, I want you to go with me to dress her in th’ mornin’ at ten o‘clock, and Joe, how about you givin’ her a nice haircut. We’ll bring ’er up to your shop about eleven.”

“Be glad to.”

“Father, I wish you’d make it your business to pray about this.”

“You have my word,” he said.

“And Linder, honey, I really appreciate the way you’re lookin’ after the merchants. God knows, somebody needs to. Any questions?”

Before anyone could respond, the mayor pounded her desk with a gavel. “Meeting adjourned. All in favor say aye.”

“I declare,” said the rector, walking home with Joe Ivey, “every time I go to a meeting with Esther Cunningham, I feel like somebody’s screwed my head around backwards.”

You’ll becoming home to a new Dooley,
Marge had written just before he left Ireland. When he read that, his heart sank. He had managed to grow fond of the old Dooley.

He’s actually learning to speak English,
his friend wrote from Meadowgate Farm.
Just wait; you’ll be thrilled.

He couldn’t say he had been thrilled, exactly, on seeing his twelve-year-old charge again. First, the cowlick had miraculously disappeared. When he left for Sligo in July, it had been shooting up like a geyser; now, it simply wasn’t there, and frankly, he missed it. Then, he noticed that Dooley’s freckles appeared to be fading, an upshot that he especially regretted.

He also found a new resoluteness in the boy that he’d only fleetingly glimpsed before, not to mention the fact that he was putting the top back on the catsup and the mayonnaise. How could so much change have taken place in two short months?

“I refuse to take credit,” Marge told him on the phone from Meadowgate the morning after his return. “It’s all that wonderful spade work you’d already done, laced with a strong dose of cow manure and fresh air. Last weekend, he helped Hal deliver a colt, which was like a shot of Miracle-Gro to his self-confidence. Furthermore, I’m crushed to tell you that Rebecca Jane took her first step to ... guess who? Uncle Dools!”

I have planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the increase,
the rector mused as he approached the rectory from the council meeting. Joe Ivey had offered him “a taste of brandy” if he cared to walk up the stairs to the barber shop, but he declined. He could hardly wait to get home and into the old burgundy bathrobe he’d sorely missed in Ireland.

After a quick trip with Barnabas to the Baxter Park hedge, he took a bottle of mineral water from the cabinet, and the two of them climbed the stairs.

“Dooley!”

“Yessir?”

Yessir? He walked down the hall to the boy’s room and found him sitting against the head of his bed, reading and absently scratching his big toe. The room seemed remarkably well-ordered.

“How’s it going?”

Dooley looked up. “Great.”

“Terrific.” He stood in the doorway, feeling an awkward joy. “What’s the book?”

“Dynamics of Veterinary Medicine.
”

“Aha.”

“See this?” Dooley held the book toward him. “It’s a picture of a colt being born. That’s jis’ the way it happened last weekend. It’s the neatest thing I ever done ... did. I want t’ be a vet. Doc Owen said I could be one.”

“Of course you can. You can be whatever you want to be.” He stepped into the room.

“I never wanted to be anything before.”

“Maybe you never saw any choices before.”

“I never wanted to be an astronaut or a rock star or anything, like Buster Austin wants t’ be.”

“That’s OK. Why rush into wanting to be something?” He sat down on the bed.

“That’s what I thought.” Dooley went back to his book, ignoring him but somehow comfortable with the fact that he was there.

“So, how’s Buster?” Only months ago, he and Buster Austin had been the darkest adversaries, with Dooley whipping the tar out of him twice.

“Cool. We swapped lunches today. He likes ‘at old meatloaf you make. I got ’is baloney.”

“Done your homework?”

“Yessir.”

Yessir. It rang in his ears like some foreign language. “How’s the science project coming? Are we finishing it up Sunday evening?”

“Yep. You’ll like it. It’s neat.”

Since he came home from Ireland, he’d been peering into Dooley’s face, searching it out. Something was different. A wound had healed, perhaps; he was looking more like a boy instead of someone who’d grown old before his time.

It had been nearly a year since Russell Jacks, the church sexton and Dooley’s grandfather, had come down with pneumonia and was rushed into emergency treatment. The boy had come home with him from the hospital, and he’d been here ever since.

One of the best things he had ever done was bring Dooley Barlowe, home. Yes, he’d been trouble and calamity and plenty of it—but worth it and then some.

“I hear you went to see your grandpa every week. Good medicine.”

“Yep.”

“How is he?”

“That woman that’s lookin’ after ’im, she says he’s doing good, but he ain’t had any livermush since you left ...”

“Uh-oh.”

“And he was riled about it.”

“We’ll take him some. And I’ll see you at breakfast. Has Jenny been around?”