Light From Heaven (21 page)

Had their unexpected visit forced their hosts to share their meal? Would accepting be the thing to do or should they run along? What was the social code in this matter? The cold spring wind keened around the corners of the house; he looked at Agnes for guidance.

“Miss Martha,” said Agnes, “we like anything that doesn’t go over the fence last.”

Chicken and dumplings in a mountain kitchen warmed by a zealous woodstove; the fragrance of strong coffee percolating on the back burner; Eastertide drawing nigh; and every grand possibility stretching ahead.

He was relishing the many wonders of his new parish, not the least of which were the sisters, one as round as the moon and shy, the other as tall as a corn shock and bold. Indeed, Martha McKinney appeared able to roof a house single-handedly, or possibly plow up forty acres with a mule.

“Mr. Adderholt,” said Agnes, “was making squirrel stew when we stopped by.”

Martha laughed. “Jubal Adderholt has helped himself to every squirrel in the county. They’ll be a lost species if that old so-and-so keeps livin’. Five years ago Christmas, he promised to shoot me a squirrel, but I haven’t seen hide nor hair of it!”

“I’ll remind him,” said Father Tim.

“Tell him to send two while he’s at it, they’re scant meat.You’ll not see me wastin’ a shell on a squirrel.”

“You have a gun?” he asked.

“Of course I have a gun!”

“She has a gun,” said Mary, wide-eyed.

“Oh, pshaw! Everybody on this ridge has a gun.”

“Johnny had a gun,” said Mary.

Having refused all offers of assistance, Martha was clearing dishes from the table as the orange and white cat devoured giblets from a saucer behind the stove.

“Miss Mary’s Johnny once brought us tenderloin of bear,” said Agnes. “Johnny was a lovely man who plowed our garden before Clarence was old enough to do it.”

The younger sister smiled broadly, revealing a set of new dentures. “Of a day, me an’ Johnny stayed out of one another’s way,” she confided to the vicar, “but of a e‘enin’, we come home an’ jis’ courted.” She put her hand over her mouth and giggled.

“A good plan,” he said, meaning it.

“We was married forty-two years.”

“See there? A
very
good plan!”

Martha threw up her hands. “Don’t mind her, she talks about Johnny all th’ time!”

“I talk about Johnny all th’ time,” said Mary. “Johnny was part Cherokee, his great-granddaddy was a medicine man. Did you know a Cherokee medicine man cain’t doctor his own self? It was a rule. I’m a Chiltosky, but ever’body calls us th’ McKinney sisters.”

“Where in th’ nation did I put my pot scrub?” asked Martha. “Sister, have you seen my pot scrub?”

“When he passed ten years ago, I left my place down th’ road an’ moved up with Sister.”

“Yet another good plan, if you ask me. Miss Martha, your chicken and dumplings are the finest I’ve enjoyed in many years. Are you sure you aren’t from Holly Springs, Mississippi?”

Martha scraped the remains of the pot into a bowl. “Born and raised on this ridge, and never left it except to go to college at Connelly Springs. Then I moved back to the home place and taught fifth grade for forty years in the valley.

“I had to go off this ridge every day of th’ school week, in every kind of weather you’d want to name. Walked a mile to th’ creek, then trotted across on a log, or pulled my shoes off and waded through—whatever it took. I did everything but swing over on a vine!”

Martha had a good laugh over this, as did the rest of the assembly.

“I’d meet Portman Henshaw who was a bank clerk in Holding, and ride as far as Granite Springs, where he dropped me at the school door. Every single year, I had to get permission from his wife, Miss Hettie, to ride with him. I had to ask her in a formal note the first of January, and the answer always came back in a note toted to me by her poor, hen-pecked husband.

“‘Dear Mrs. Henshaw,’ was my petition, ‘I would be beholden to you if I could ride to school and back with Mr. Henshaw this year. Thank you in advance.Yours sincerely.’ I would always send two quarts of string beans with that note and a jar of strawberry jam.

“In a flash, here’d come her little jot, added to the bottom of mine, and not a word in long-hand! She printed like a second grader! ‘Dear Miss McKinney, You may ride to school with Mr. Henshaw if you do not keep him waiting at the creek. Please don’t track mud on the floorboards. Yours sincerely.’ At the end of the year, I always sent a bushel of potatoes with four jars of butter beans and five one-dollar bills, which I thought was a gracious plenty since he was goin’ that way anyhow.”

Mary nodded in agreement. “He was goin’ that way anyhow.”

“Portman drove a Ford in the beginning; I always liked a Ford, but over the years, we went through five or six different buggies, one being a Pontiac.”

Martha shook her head, disapproving. “I don’t know what possessed Portman Henshaw to buy that Pontiac. Agnes, do you remember that Pontiac?”

“I do. Dark green, with slipcovers sewn by Miss Hettie.”

“I missed thirty-three days of school over that bloomin’ Pontiac. It was a lemon if I ever saw one, and I still had to send over a basket of rations and five hard-earned dollars.”

Martha poured Agnes a cup of coffee from the battered pot on the stove.

“Anyhow, I rode with Portman ‘til he retired, then I tried hitchin’ a ride with every Tom, Dick, and Harry who had a wheel, but it never worked, so I up an’ retired, too. It was either that or buy my own buggy, and I didn’t want to fool with it!”

“How do you ladies shop for food and get to church?” asked the vicar.

“Portman’s oldest boy, Thomas, took over where his daddy left off; he hauls us food shop-pin’ once a week. I’m goin’ to leave him that tractor in th’ yard when I pass, it’s an antique. He’ll get good money for that tractor.

“Then there’s Agnes’s boy, Clarence, he takes us around every chance he gets; I’m leavin’ him that waterin’ trough to soak his grapevine in. Course, I put in a big garden every year; it keeps us goin’ pretty strong if we miss a week or two down at Winn Dixie, and Sister and I still go blackberryin’ ...”

Martha opened the oven door, and a furnace of heat blasted the small kitchen. Father Tim realized he was on the edge of his chair with anticipation.

Wearing a pair of long-used oven mitts, Martha removed a cobbler, still bubbling in its crockery dish and, with evident pride, thumped it onto an overturned skillet on the table. “Picked the first week of August an’ all th’ chiggers removed free of charge.”

He had the impulse to cross himself.

“As for church ...” Martha dug into the steaming blackberry cobbler with a wooden spoon, “we walk if we have to. For goodness’ sakes, it’s only two miles.” Out of respect for clergy, Martha passed the first serving to Father Tim, who handed it off to Agnes.

“Two
miles
?” Hadn’t Agnes said that Miss Martha was Jubal’s senior by a decade?

“Keeps us hale!” declared Martha. “Besides, somebody always brings us home.”

Mary nodded. “Somebody always brings us home!”

Had he checked his sugar this morning? He couldn’t recall.
Lord
...

Agnes inhaled the fragrant steam rising from her coffee cup. “Miss Martha, won’t you take your apron off and sit down with us?”

“Oh, law, no, I never take my apron off!” said Martha.

“She never takes her apron off!” said Mary.

Father Tim noted that the woodstove had lent a rosy flush to every cheek.

“Miss Martha, Miss Mary, it’s time we told you why we came. We feel we have some very good news.”

“Well, now!” exclaimed Martha. “I like good news!”

“She likes good news!” said Mary, showing her dentures to good effect.

Thumb up, forefinger out, the remaining three fingers tucked into the palm.

“This,” said Agnes, “is
L
. And that—is Donny Luster’s trailer. You’ll notice I don’t tell you much about your new parishioners beforehand; it seems best to let you form your own impressions. I’ll just say that Donny is a most remarkable young man.”

“Spotless,” he said, peering around as he parked beside a pickup truck. “Someone is proud to live here.”

Agnes looked for a moment at her hands, lying palms up in her lap. “Father, I must say what I have to say ... now. It can’t wait any longer.”

She lifted her head and looked at him; he saw the firm resolve in her eyes.

“The longer I hesitate, the more I dread my confession.”

“You needn’t confess anything to me.”

“It’s important that it be done. Then I shall be free to tell you in peace the rest of my story, which is also Holy Trinity’s story”

Behind the trailer, early afternoon light sparkled on upland pasture where a small herd of cows grazed.

Agnes crossed herself as she told him what must be spoken.

“I never married,” she said.

“I’m five.”

Sissie Gleason held up as many fingers.

“Five!” exclaimed the vicar. “I remember being five!”

It was merely a flash of memory, like a sliver of celluloid carved from a lengthy documentary. His mother was pushing him on the tree swing behind their house in Holly Springs. It was the day before his fifth birthday, and she was singing the song he would never forget as long as he lived.

“I’m not a baby!” he shouted.

“Is that so? I did forget for a moment, but only a very tiny moment!”

He thought his mother the most beautiful woman in the world ...

“I’m five!” he shouted again, flying toward a perfectly blue sky. The soles of his bare feet pushed against silken summer air.

“You have a whole day left before you’re five! I want this day to go on and on and...”

“It’s good to be five,” he said, stooping down to look into the solemn eyes of the child with tangled hair. In the corner of the room, a TV hawked the wares of a shopping network.

“I was this many b’fore.” She held up four fingers. “How many are you?”

He raised both hands and extended his fingers seven times.

She observed this lengthy communication. “That’s too many.”

“Darn right,” he said, creaking upward on resistant legs.

“What’s ’at roun’ your neck?”

“My tab collar.”

“What’s it f’r?”

“It marks me as a preacher, a priest. It lets people know I’m someone they can come to, confide in, pray with.”

“And this,” Agnes told him, “is Dovey Gleason, Sissie’s mother and Donny’s sister.”

He bent over the bed where Dovey lay, and looked into another pair of brown and solemn eyes. “Dovey.” He took her hand and instinctively held it in both of his.

“Dovey,” he said again; the name seemed an odd comfort to him. “May I pray for you?” He knew nothing about her except what he saw in her eyes.