Light From Heaven (42 page)

“Where is Donny today?” he asked Sissie as they drove along the road to the trailer.

“He’s loggin’.”

He didn’t want to ask if he was still drinking. If he was working, he assumed things had settled down. God knows, drinking and logging would be a lethal combination.

“I’d like to talk to your mother in private.”

“What’s in private?”

“Just the two of us. Agnes?”

“We’ll sit in the lawn chairs and work the puzzle,” said Agnes.

“I’ve been thinking,” he said. “I think forty-four across may be
heliotrope.
”

“Of course! Father, you’re a genius.”

“What’s a genius?” asked Sissie.

Wordless, Dovey offered her hand to him. He took it and held it in both of his. “Feeling any stronger?”

“I keep thinkin’ I will be, but I ain’t.”

“I’d like to take you to see my friend, Doctor Harper, in Mitford.”

“No, sir, I ain’t goin’ to another doctor.”

“Do you want to get well?”

“More’n anything.” Tears escaped along her cheeks. “I jis’ need time for th’ medicine t’ work.”

“You’ve been taking it a few months, Donny says.”

“I don’t want to go back ag‘in. They was pokin’ holes all over me an’ drawin’ blood. I one time fainted and would’ve fell out of th’ chair but th’ nurse grabbed ahold of me.”

“Sissie needs you.”

She withdrew her hand and stared at the ceiling.

“It may be hard to believe, Dovey, but God can use this time in your life.”

“I don’t see how.”

“We don’t need to see how, but to trust that He can, and will. Perhaps God is pruning you, Dovey. In the gospel of John, Jesus tells us He prunes every branch that bears fruit, that it might bear more fruit. Whatever His plan, God works in our lives for great good—if we ask Him to. Do you pray, Dovey?”

“All th’ time.”

“May I ask how you’re praying?”

“For God t’ let Mama come home.”

“I’m praying that God will reveal the mystery of your illness. But I don’t see how lying here can help Him do it.”

She burst into tears and turned toward the wall, her shoulders heaving with sobs.

“I have a plan,” he said, at last. “Will you trust God to help me carry it out?”

“I reckon,” she whispered.

“Will you?” he insisted.

She turned in the bed and faced him. “Yes,” she said. “Yes!”

There would be no viewing. Uncle Billy would be buried in the town cemetery next to the plot reserved long ago for Miss Rose Watson, nee Porter, by her long-deceased brother.

Betty Craig, God bless her, would care for Miss Rose until he figured out what else might be done, but Betty wouldn’t last long, he could tell by her voice.

He called Hope House again, pleading.

“We’re not miracle workers, Father.”

He was wasting his time, and theirs, too. He asked to be put through to the chaplain.

“Scott, Tim Kavanagh. I need a miracle.”

“Shoot.”

“Uncle Billy’s gone and Miss Rose can’t live alone. She has no relatives. Isn’t there a room ... ?”

“I hear we’re full up, Father.”

“But Miss Rose is the sister of Willard Porter, who built the town museum! Miss Sadie loved Willard Porter until her death, and I know she’d want Miss Rose to have a room at Hope House.” He was babbling like a brook.

“I hear you. I wish I could help. I’m really sorry, Father. I’ll commit to pray about this, and you can count on it.”

He was making people miserable, including himself.

He dialed Esther Cunningham, the tough, no-nonsense retired mayor who’d served the town for sixteen, maybe eighteen years. It was Esther who’d seen to it that Miss Rose and Uncle Billy had heating oil in their tank, and who’d negotiated a first-rate life-estate apartment in the Victorian-style mansion cum town museum across from the monument.

Esther Cunningham was an army tank, she was
Tyrannosaurus rex,
she was ...

Esther would help him out.

“This is Ray Cunnin‘ham, husband of Esther, father of four, gran’daddy of twenty-two, an’ great-gran’daddy of more’n I can count. We’re on th’ road again, prob’ly doin’ th’ Oregon Trail as we speak. Leave a message at th’ tone, an’ get out there an’ see America
youself.” Beep.

He thought Sammy’s eyes beautiful, and full of expression.

“Thanks for your hard work, buddy. We’re glad to have you as our chief gardener.”

Sammy studied his paycheck; a mockingbird sang from the top branches of a pear tree.

“We’re going to Mitford on Friday. I’m conducting a funeral and attending one.You could come along if there’s something you’d like to do in town.”

“I’d like t’ shoot some pool.”

“No pool in Mitford. You’ll have to wait ’til we go to Wesley.”

Sammy shrugged.

“That’s a fine wage you’ve earned, we’re proud of you.” He shook the boy’s calloused hand. “Well done!”

Sammy looked at the ground.

Father Tim realized again that he had no idea what to do with a boy who’d been held at gunpoint by his own father. He suddenly felt his heart as leaden as Sammy’s appeared to be. “I’ll be glad to hold your earnings for you, if you’d like. That’s how Dooley got his first bicycle, by saving up.You could buy a used car or truck ...”

“Maybe,” said Sammy. He folded the check and put it in his shirt pocket.

Father Tim indicated the tiller. “Remember to run it at half throttle, not wide open, and go over the beds twice. Call me if you need me, I’ll be in the library.”

He spoke to Lloyd, who was working today from the scaffolding.

“I’d appreciate it if you’d help keep an eye on our boy while you’re out here.”

“None too happy, looks like.”

Maybe, just maybe, things would be brighter for Sammy when he got his peas and potatoes in. And certainly things would change when Dooley came home.

Father Tim looked at the date on his watch. He was definitely counting the days.

The loss of Uncle Billy signaled the end of an era. But an era of what? Something like innocence, he thought, poring over the burial service.

Uncle Billy’s rich deposit of memory had included a time when kith and kin went barefoot in summer and, if money was short, even in winter; when pies and cobblers were always made from scratch and berries were picked from the fields; when young boys set forth with a gun or a trap or a fishing pole and toted home a meal, proud as any man to provision the family table; when the late-night whistle of a train still stirred the imagination and haunted the soul ...

He sat at the desk in the Meadowgate library and considered the jokes Uncle Billy had diligently rounded up over the years, and told to one and all. Of the legions, he remembered only the census taker and gas stove jokes, the latter worthy, in his personal opinion, of the Clean Joke Hall of Fame, if there was such a thing.

It would certainly be an unusual addition to the 1928 prayer book office for the burial of the dead, but he was following his heart on this one.

He called Miss Rose and asked permission, not an easy task right there. Then he leafed through the Mitford phone book, jotting down numbers.

He felt the moist, quick breath on his face. Good grief! He sat up and looked at the clock.

Two in the morning.

“OK, OK, I’m coming,” he whispered to Barnabas. Mighty unusual behavior ...

He rolled out of bed and put on his shoes and threw on his robe and trooped down the stairs behind his obviously frantic dog.

When he opened the backdoor, Barnabas shot from the kitchen like a ball from a cannon, and vanished into the moonless night. He heard the occupants of the henhouse squawking to high heaven, and Willie’s dogs baying from their kennel.

“Barnabas!” he shouted in his pulpit voice.

The farm dogs were awake and also wanting outside. So be it. He opened the door and let the pack loose.

More barking and baying as the whole caboodle vanished into the black ink of early morning.