A Light in the Window (61 page)

Authors: Jan Karon

BOOK: A Light in the Window

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He took a break and drove to the country to see Brother Greer.

They sat on the porch of the store that looked out to a pasture across the road and slugged down a couple of Cheerwines from the drink box.

Barnabas slept with his head on the old pastor’s foot.

“That little handful still needs a preacher,” he told Absalom.

“I laid it before the Lord and let it winter over.”

“And?”

“I’ll do it.”

“Splendid! Wonderful!” He felt invigorated by the cheerful light in his friend’s eyes.

“How do I get in there and all?”

“Rodney Underwood, our police chief. He said he’d have you picked up and escorted every Wednesday at six o’clock. It’s hard to find your way along the creek, and it’s rough territory into the bargain. Are you sure you want to do it?”

“The Lord spoke to my heart about what to preach, so I’m set on doing it. ‘Behold, now is the accepted time; behold, now is the day of salvation.’

“Lots of folks plan to get around to the Lord tomorrow, but tomorrow never comes. I’m to go on from there with something else Paul said to the Corinthians, ‘Therefore, if any man be in Christ, he is a new creation; old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.’ ”

“Amen!” said the rector.

“Will you drop in on us now and again?”

“Consider it done,” he said, warmed by the old man’s fire.

Buck Leeper shouted an oath into the phone and merely said, “Get up here. Now.”

He had driven to the office this morning, because it was Saturday and he needed to run errands, but it never occurred to him to drive to the job site. Leaving the office unlocked, he raced up Old Church Lane and headed right on Church Hill, glad for the running shoes he’d worn.

There was something in Buck Leeper’s voice that told him everything and nothing. Something was horribly wrong; he could feel it.

His heart pounded as he raced over the brow of the hill and onto the Hope House property. From the direction of the hospital, the shrill whine of the ambulance pierced the air.

He ran toward the group of men standing by a pile of lumber and saw what appeared to be a boy lying on the ground.

Dear God! he prayed, his heart bursting, don’t let it be Dooley!

It wasn’t Dooley.

“It’s Tommy,” said Dooley, his face a shocking mask of fear. He was shaking uncontrollably as the rector clasped him to his side.

Buck Leeper loomed over him, cursing so vehemently that he drew back. “Didn’t I tell you to keep these kids off my job? I hope to God you like what you see.”

What he saw was the boy, lying unconscious on his back. A terrible bruise colored his temple, and his bleeding right leg was gashed from the calf to the thigh, exposing the bone. He had seen this very sight before, in a dream about Buck Leeper. The strangeness of the coincidence was unspeakable.

He instinctively stepped toward Tommy.

“Don’t touch him,” growled Leeper.

Dooley was sobbing. “We was playin’ on that pile of lumber. It started rollin’ and Tommy fell down in it. He went on down and hit th’ ground. When it started rollin’, I jumped off.” A deep moan came from Dooley.

The men stood by, shaken, helpless. “We wasn’t workin’ today. We just drove up to check ... ,” somebody murmured. Then, the ambulance attendants were among them, and the quiet, wounded boy was laid on a gurney and the doors slammed shut and the ambulance was gone up the hill, and they were left there, stunned.

Buck Leeper’s presence seemed to consume the very air, so that the rector gasped for breath. He had seen the man angry, but this was something else, something more frightening than anger.

He instinctively looked around for his car, but of course, it wasn’t there, and Buck Leeper had turned and headed toward his red pickup.

He looked helplessly to the men.

“Let’s go!” They sprinted toward a truck parked at the trailer.

“It’s the head I’m worried about, not the leg,” said Hoppy.

“Wilson’s giving the leg a pressure dressing, and we’re taking him to Wesley immediately. Must have been a nail—as he fell, the nail kept ripping. It just missed the femoral artery. I could see the artery and the nerve right beside it. Another quarter of an inch and he could have bled to death before we got to him.

“They’ll do a CAT scan in Wesley. I’ve got a call in to Dr. Hadleigh. Good man. Neurosurgeon. There could be blood between the skull and the swelling, a hematoma. He’ll need watching.”

“Is he still unconscious?”

“Big time. What about his parents?”

“Can’t reach them. Got an answering machine.”

“Listen,” said Hoppy, his face troubled, “I’m praying about this—for whatever it’s worth.”

“It’s worth more than we know,” said the rector, who could not stop shaking inside.

They sped to Wesley, trying to keep the ambulance in sight.

He burned with shame and guilt. In all his life, he couldn’t remember feeling this terrible nausea of the spirit; he had wounded Tommy by his own hand, by an act of senseless, unforgivable neglect.

He glanced at Dooley, whose face remained a mask of white. The responsibility for Dooley was not only real, it was constant—twenty-four hours a day. He had failed, he had let down, he had only been pulling halftime, when overtime was clearly required.

Five miles out of Mitford, Buck Leeper’s truck passed them and held the lead.

He had never felt so worthless, so frightened, and so desperately out of control.

Tommy’s stricken parents arrived, responding to the rector’s answering-machine message to call him on the third floor at Wesley Hospital.

He wanted nothing more than to say, “I’m sorry, it’s all my fault,” but could not speak when they came in. A clergyman who couldn’t speak in someone’s time of need? He felt miserably impotent.

Buck Leeper paced in and out of the smoking room, hovering on the fringes.

“No hematoma,” said Dr. Hadleigh, who had just read the X rays. “We don’t know how long he’ll be unconscious. It could be hours or days. Actually, it could be weeks, but we’re hoping against that.”

Tommy’s mother looked at him and held out her hand. “Go in with us, Father.” It was something in her voice, perhaps, but he felt forgiven. He began to weep, unable to control it, and they walked into Tommy’s room together.

“I puked,” said Dooley, wiping his mouth and getting in the car.

“Good.”

“I been wantin’ to. Is he goin’ to die?”

“No.”

“It was my fault,” said Dooley, suffering.

“Why?”

“It was my idea. Tommy said we better not go up there n’more. Mr. Leeper told us not to.”

He drove in silence. It was nine p.m. They had stayed through the operation that mended the hideous gap in the boy’s leg. He felt exhausted, he felt angry, he felt unutterably sad, he felt too much at once.

“Are you mad?” asked Dooley quietly.

“Yes,” he said, meaning it.

There was a long pause. “I’m sorry,” Dooley whispered.

“Are you?”

“Yeah.”

“It seems to me you’re in a big hurry lately to mess up your life.”

Dooley stared ahead.

“You get thrown out of school and a friend nearly gets killed, all because of breaking the rules. You could have been killed yourself. What is it with you? Talk to me about this.”

“I just done it, is all.”

“Tell me why you did it.”

“It was fun.”

“What was fun?”

“Smokin‘, playin’ on ’at ol’ lumber pile, messin’ around.”

“I didn’t see you having fun when smoking got you stuck in the house for ten days. How much fun have you had today?”

“I don’t know.”

“The accident happened about eleven o’clock. How long had you been playing on the lumber?”

“We jis’ started. About ten minutes.”

“You swapped ten hours of agony for ten minutes of fun.”

Dooley was silent.