Light From Heaven (38 page)

“Have you been down to that school bus?” Granny looked fierce. “You know good ‘n’ well you ain’t s‘posed t’ go down t’ that school bus.”

“You cain’t whip me f‘r doin’ it, ’cause you cain’t catch me.”

“I’ll have th’ preacher here whip y’ f’r me.”

“No ma’am, I’m not in the whipping business. Let me ask you, Rooter, did Fred say he saw it happen?”

“He said he never seen it happen, but he was walkin’ by on th’ road an’ heerd Robert an’ ‘is granpaw fightin’, said he heered ’is granpaw holler out Robert’s name.”

“Did Fred testify in court, Granny? Do you know?”

“I don’t keep up with trash, hit’s hard enough keepin’ up with decent people.” Granny reached over and snatched Rooter by the hair of his head.

“Oww!” said Rooter.

“I’ll ow y’ worser’n this if y’ go down there ag‘in.” Granny continued to grip a handful of Rooter’s hair. “D’you hear me?”

Rooter looked at Sammy and Father Tim, abashed.

“Do you hear her, son?”

“I hear ye,” he said to Granny.

If he’d spent the morning on the mountaintop, he now found himself in the valley, both literally and figuratively. He was spent.

He leaned back in the library wing chair across from his wife and closed his eyes.

They should have Sammy’s little brother and sister out one weekend. He could pick them up in town, they’d relish seeing the lambs and chickens. Sammy needed the solace of blood kin. Try as he and Cynthia might, they couldn’t give him that.

“How many eggs today?” asked his wife, yawning hugely.

He yawned back. “Same. Fourteen.”

“They’ll be stacking up in the fridge again, please take some on your rounds this week,” she said. “Miss Martha must have used her full dozen in that German chocolate cake. And what a cake!”

“Don’t talk about it,” he said. He could have sworn Martha McKinney had baked a magnet into it, the way it had drawn him to the table time and again. By sheer grace alone, he’d managed to keep his distance, though he’d enjoyed a few crumbs of Lily’s, in case she asked for an opinion.

“I don’t think Dovey’s problem is depression,” she said.

“What do you think it is?” He’d walked through a deep vale of his own, and though he hadn’t stayed in bed, he had darn well wanted to.

“It’s a hunch, really. I feel her problem has its taproot in the physical or physiological. Perhaps the depression comes because her ailment isn’t healing.”

He pondered this, weary in every part. “How about a little nightcap?”

The dogs were snoring, Sammy was on the phone having his almost-nightly talk with Dooley ...

“That would be perfect,” she said. “Why don’t I read to us?”

He willingly forked over the book. “This is from ‘Michael,’ a wonderful poem by Wordsworth. It reminds me of the view from Holy Trinity. Now that I’ve rediscovered the poem, I’ll always imagine sheep among the rocks. Take it from where my thumb was.”

Violet leapt into Cynthia’s lap and settled herself, as her mistress adjusted her glasses and read:

She looked at the fireplace where the plywood had been removed, and a ladder inserted into the chimney. She noted the soot and cinders that had fallen onto the hearth since Lily vacuumed, and considered what Lloyd and his helper said they’d be doing first thing Monday morning.Then she looked at her husband, who had fallen asleep with his glasses pushed onto his head.

“Utter solitude, dearest!” She spoke as if he were wide awake. “Can you even imagine such a thing?”

He didn’t know what to make of the decidedly attractive woman standing at their back door. She was wearing a blond wig or his nickname wasn’t Slick Kavanagh—not to mention cowboy boots with pointed toes and an outfit with fringe that was definitely in motion.

“Hi! I’m Vi’let,” she said, giving him a huge smile.

“Violet! I was expecting Lily.”

“Oh, shoot, Lily’s
ever’body’s
fav’rite.”

All well and good, he wanted to say, except she rarely shows up. How does she get to be everybody’s favorite?

“She said she’ll roll in at nine-thirty, on the dot. Her van had a flat tire; she had to call th’ gas station ’cause her husband’s in Hick‘ry gettin’ ‘is heads ground. Since I was comin’ this way, she asked me t’ stop an’ tell you; she don’t carry a cell phone, you know. Can you imagine not carryin’ a cell phone in t’day’s fast-paced world?”

He could imagine it, actually.

“I’m on m’ cell phone day an’ night, seems like. How ’bout you?”

“I don’t have a cell phone.”

Her blue eyes appeared suddenly larger. “I ain’t b’lievin’ that!”

“But,” he said, grumpy, “I’m going to get a cell phone.”

“When?”

“In july.”

“I’ll help you program it when I do a fill-in for Lily. Well, got to fly; I’m on th’ radio at twelve o’clock.”

“On the radio?”

“Singin’.” So saying, she began to sing. “ ‘Delta Dawn, what’s that flower you have on? ...”

He heard an odd noise, something like a small trumpet played by a small person.

“Oops, m’ cell phone, there it goes! What’d I tell you?” She clattered down the steps. “High Country Lite, ten-forty on your dial! Have a great day! Hey, this is Vi’let, who’s this ... ?”

He noted that Lloyd and his helper stood transfixed, their mouths open.

“I always make up any time I miss!” Lily shouted as he came into the kitchen. Their erstwhile housekeeper trundled the vacuum cleaner across the wooden floor as his wife sat at her easel and appeared ready to jump out the window.

“Right,” he shouted back. “Glad you made it safely!”

He noted that someone was in the fireplace, he saw work boots on the rung of the ladder that disappeared into the throat of the firebox.

“I’m out of here, Kavanagh. Off to see Lottie Greer and Homeless Hobbes. It’s a visit way overdue. Need to pick up a couple of things for our hard-working gardener, and while I’m at it, Lloyd said he could use a trowel; his trusty blade just separated from its handle after twenty-five years. Think of that!”

“Got his money’s worth!” said his wife, looking stoic.

“Three of the kneelers came in with loose seams in the Naugahyde, and have to be returned ; thought I’d drop those at UPS. And Blake can’t leave today, he’s found foot rot in several ewes, which is bad business; I told him I’d pick up the treatment he needs at the vet in Wesley. And if there’s time, I might pop over to Mitford and see Gene and Uncle Billy. Of course, I’d also like to get up to Lambert and look in on Robert Prichard ...”

“Dearest.”

“Yes?”

“You’re in a lather.”

He knew he was out of breath but he hadn’t figured out why.

“Come with me,” she said, taking him by the arm.

They trooped onto the porch and down the steps.

“Where are we going?” he asked.

“Away!
Away from the charming
tap, tap, tap
of the trowels now
inside
the chimney and beneath my very nose!
Away
from the tormenting thunder of the vacuum cleaner, and poor Lily’s thousand apologies for disappointing us yet again, and two laundry baskets piled to the ceiling with Sammy’s muddy gardening clothes ... ”

Conciliatory, he let himself be dragged along like a sack of potatoes.

“
Away
from mounds of dog hair,” she raved on, “and white cats who insist on running out of doors to be eaten by wild painters!
Away
from the commerce of calendars, and lambs that look like dogs in woolly pajamas and must be painted again and again, and most
especially
...”

They were trekking toward the sheep pasture, lickety-split, as if on the lam from some criminal act.

“... away from a new deadline just foisted upon yours truly, which makes me furious with my obdurate, slave-driving, pinheaded editor!
Away!
”

“But away to where?”

“I have no idea.
None
. Furthermore, I don’t even
want
an idea.”

“Aha.”

“Then again,” she said, out of breath, “if I were to
get
an idea, it might be something like this. Away to peace. Away to solitude. Away to laughter!”

She stopped suddenly and sat in the grass.

He sat down beside her. “You’re beautiful when you’re angry” He’d read that line in a comic book when he was a boy. He’d always thought it a great line.

She burst into laughter and lay back in the grass.

“You’ve been going at a trot yourself, Timothy, just like you always did at Lord’s Chapel and Whitecap. Even when you don’t have a church, you go at a trot. It’s the way you’re wired, sweetheart. I’m not wired that way in the least, yet I find myself being swept along by the trot at which everyone else is going!”

He didn’t want to race away when his wife was venting a dash of exasperation; she never raced away when he vented his. However, Miss Lottie wouldn’t be around forever ...

“Ireland next year,” he said, patting her hand. “And Whitecap, for a long visit.”

She sat up. “But it all seems a century away. Besides, we need something sweet and simple right now. Something ... uncomplicated.”

“Like our clergy retreats of yore?”

“Exactly! I mean, look over there ... at that lovely little path leading into the woods. Wouldn’t it be fun to ‘journey thither,’ as Mr. Wordsworth said, and explore it to the end?”

“I remember seeing that path when Dooley was home.”

“I love the way the old fence is falling down on either side of the path, and vines are growing up the posts. There must have been a gate there—and think of the wonderful beds of moss we’d find along the creek. The creek does run into those woods, doesn’t it?”

“I don’t know.”

“Timothy, we’re living in the country like two bumps on a log. And I have no idea what to do about it!”

“I haven’t seen Miss Lottie in more than a year. She’s ninety, you know.”

“Of course you must go.” She stood up and brushed off her pants. “And I must call New York and thrash over this wrenching new production schedule, and get the drawing ready for FedEx by eleven o’clock, and decide what sort of pie Lily should bake today, and ... ”

“Cherry!” He creaked to a standing position. “Ask her to bake cherry and I’ll kiss your ring.”

“You big lug,” she said. “Consider it done.”

She kissed his cheek, then drew back and looked at him, sobered. “Forgive me. We have so much to be thankful for, yet I allow the vagaries of this good life to overwhelm me. You never seem to be overwhelmed.”