A Light in the Window (5 page)

There was a red pickup truck parked in front of the office when he arrived on Monday. Someone inside appeared to be talking on a car phone.

The rector fished the key from his pocket as the man got out of the truck and slammed the door. He flipped a cigarette to the sidewalk and ground it out with a quick turn of his heel.

He was big, beefy, and heavy, wearing chinos stuffed into high boots, a flannel shirt under a quilted vest, and a hard hat.

“You the father?”

“Yes. What can I do for you?”

The man took a package of Lucky Strikes from his shirt pocket, shook a cigarette out, lit it, and inhaled deeply.

“Buck Leeper,” he said, walking to the rector and extending his hand. The handshake lasted only an instant, but in that instant, the rector felt an odd shock. The hand seemed hugely swollen and red, as if the flesh might burst suddenly from the skin.

“I’m glad to meet you,” he lied, hearing the words automatically form and speak themselves. Yet, in a way, he was glad to meet him; the deed was done. “Come in, Mr. Leeper, and have a cup of coffee.”

“No coffee,” he said, wedging through the door ahead of the rector. The rector hung his jacket on the peg, noticing how the man’s presence had made the room suddenly smaller.

“Malcolm said to ask you about the garden statues.”

“Garden statues?”

“Lyin’ up there on the site. We dozed ’em up. Maybe a dozen pieces, some broke, some not. I don’t have time to mess with it.” He exhaled a fume of smoke.

“How extraordinary. Of course. I’ll be right up. Give me an hour.”

The superintendent took a quick, deep drag off his cigarette. “At fifty smackers an hour for dozers, I don’t have an hour.”

“Well, then. What would you suggest I do?”

Leeper’s tone was insolent and hard. “Tell me I can doze that crap off the side of the mountain.”

The rector felt ice water in his veins. “I’d appreciate it,” he said evenly, “if you’d put your cigarette out. This small room doesn’t tolerate smoke.”

The superintendent looked at him for a long moment, dropped his cigarette on the floor, and ground it out with a turn of his heel.

He opened the door. “I don’t have time to run errands for your building committee. If you want th’ statues, come and get ’em,” he said and was gone.

“Good grief,” moaned Ron Malcolm, hanging his head.

“Well, I can’t say you didn’t warn me.”

“Yes, but I guess there’s no warning that really prepares you for Buck Leeper. I insisted he come down here, say hello, introduce himself, ask you about the statues. I thought you’d want to keep them, but I didn’t know. I guess I’m to blame. I should have handled it.”

“No. Stop right there. There’s no blame now and there’s not going to be. If this morning was any indication, we’re in for a rough ride. The man is clearly a walking time bomb. All I want to do is stay out of the way and let him get his job done.”

“Fine,” said Ron.

His building-committee chairman looked so despondent the rector put an arm around his shoulders. “Buck up,” he said, without thinking.

They were still laughing when Ron pulled away from the curb in his blue pickup, headed for Lord’s Chapel with the load of statuary.

“Whang-do,” said Emma sourly, handing him the phone.

“I’ve invited the building committee to meet here on Wednesday evening.” Edith Mallory sounded pleased with herself. “Of course, they loved the idea. Magdolen will do her famous spoonbread, but I’ll do the tenderloin.”

Tenderloin!

“I know how you enjoy a tenderloin. I’ve had it sent from New York.”

“That’s very generous of you. Of course, there’s really no need to impose for a dinner meeting ...”

“But life is so short,” she said, sniffing. “Why have a dull meeting when you can have a dinner party?”

He didn’t know why. Why, indeed?

“You can see the trump Iloyd I had painted in the study. It looks just like old books on a shelf.”

“Aha.”

“I’ll have Ed pick you up at a quarter ’til,” she said. He could hear the little sucking noise that came from dragging on that blasted cigarette.

“No!” he nearly shouted. His car was still sitting in the garage with a dead battery. “Ah, no thanks. I’ll come with Ron. We have a lot to discuss ...”

“Of course, but Ron is coming with Tad Sherrill, he said, because his pickup ... what did he say ... blew a gasket, I think.”

“Well, then, I’ll just squeeze in with them. And thank you, Edith. It’s more than good of you.” He hung up at once, not surprised to find his forehead slightly damp.

“June,” said Puny.

“No,” sighed the rector.

“The fourteenth.”

“But how will I get along without you? I’ve been dreading this.”

“You don’t have t’ git along without me,” she said. “After our honeymoon, I’m comin’ back. I told you I would.”

“Yes, but shouldn’t you and Joe Joe move ahead with having children or ... something?”

“Not right this minute, if you don’t mind,” she said archly, setting the mop bucket in the middle of the floor. He thought he had never seen his house help look more enchanting. Her red hair appeared suffused with a kind of glow; her very being radiated happiness. It was like having a wonderful lamp turned on around the place, and he certainly did not want the light to go out.

“Of course,” she said, dipping the scrub brush in the soapy water, “we won’t leave you hangin’. They’ll git somebody else to look after things while I’m gone.”

“I don’t want anybody else,” he said, feeling petulant.

“Oh, poop, eat your carrots. I made ‘em th’ way my grandpa liked ’em, with butter and a little brown sugar. And that’s all the sweets you can have today.”

“Thank you, Puny,” he said. He couldn’t help but notice that when she sassed him these days, she smiled. Looking at her on her hands and knees on the kitchen floor, in that earnest subjection he could hardly bear to see, he thought how he’d learned to love Puny Bradshaw like his own blood.

He wondered if she’d gotten the illustration finished, the one that had to be rushed to her publisher. When he called, he got only the last of her voice recording, “... the beep, thanks,” and a sort of static that sounded like a transfer truck rolling along the highway.

When he hung up, he sat for a moment, looking at the rain lashing the office windows. He realized he hadn’t wanted to talk with her, exactly. It was more like he had a longing to see her.

He skulked toward the rectory in a raincoat and rain hat, vowing to have Lew Boyd come and jump his battery tomorrow morning, first thing. Before going to his own door, he knocked on Cynthia’s.

The roof over the shallow back stoop was hardly any protection. The wind and rain gusted around him violently.

“Cynthia!” he called through the roar. She had locked the screen, he knew, to keep the wind from catching it and tearing it off its hinges.

He shouted her name again. Only a dim light glowed in the direction of the stairs.

He rattled the screen door and pounded as hard as he could. He saw Violet leap onto the kitchen counter and peer at him as if he were the garbage collector.

“Madness!” he muttered at last, fleeing through the drenched hedge to the warm kitchen next door.

Magdolen greeted them at Clear Day, the Mallorys’ vast contemporary house astride a ridge overlooking the valley. “Oh, good! Here’s the father!” she said happily, helping him out of his raincoat. “We’re so glad you’re back from Ireland. You can never be too sure of your life over there. It’s just tragic.”

Tad and Ron left their dripping slickers in the foyer and went toward the library, where their hostess was serving canapes.

“We sure missed you during all the ... well, you know,” Magdolen sighed. “Miss Edith took it so hard and no children to comfort her. I thought you might like to see where I found Mr. Pat.” She led him to the staircase.

“Right there,” she said, pointing to the third step from the bottom. “He had landed there, half sitting up with his back against the banister. When I came into the hall, his eyes were wide open, staring straight at me. I thought he looked kind of off-color. So I said, ‘Mr. Pat, I made you a nice, big dish of lasagna, so come and sit down before it gets cold.”’

She shuddered and held tight to his arm. “That’s when he ... rolled down the rest of the way.”

“Magdolen!” Edith Mallory said sharply, taking the rector by the other arm and drawing him toward the library. Five damp committee members huddled around a fire that snapped and crackled on the grate.

“Mud and more mud,” Ron Malcolm was saying. “Rivers of mud.”

Tad Sherrill grunted. “Oceans of mud.”

“And more mud coming, if the forecast holds,” announced Winona Presley, thumping her secretarial pad with her ballpoint pen.

Warmed by a cabernet from the Mallory cellar, the diners avidly discussed weather disasters they had known.

“I worked on a job in Kentucky one time,” said Ron, “where the rain didn’t stop for twenty-one days.” He was pleased to see he could cut the tenderloin with a fork. “Had four big Cats sittin’ in mud up to the cab doors when it was over.”