Light From Heaven (53 page)
Authors: Jan Karon
“Stay!” he said in his pulpit voice.
The moment his foot hit the porch, Jubal’s door opened.
“I been a-lookin’ f’r ye.”
“I expect so.”
“What’re ye totin’?”
He thought Jubal had a very expectant look on his face.
“Well, you see, Miss Martha wasn’t home. I stopped by twice, and don’t have a clue where she might be. Your squirrels have been on ice and in Miss Agnes’s freezer, so I’m sure they’re just fine.” He handed off the bag, thankful to his very depths to be rid of the blasted thing.
Jubal opened the bag and eyed the contents suspiciously. “This ain’t squirrel.”
“It ain’t? I mean ...”
“Hit’s ... Lord he’p a monkey; what
is
it?”
is
it?”
The vicar peered into the bag. “You’ve got me.”
“I send ye out with two fine squirrel an’ back ye come with a pig in a poke!”
“Wait right there, Jubal.”
He dashed to the truck and pulled the other bag from behind the driver’s seat. The idea was, if Miss Martha had been home and wasn’t prepared to send her own offering today, Jubal would still get a return on his investment.
Back he trotted to Jubal’s porch. Lord help a monkey, indeed, seeing as how Timothy Kavanagh was the monkey. Sometimes, he’d like to just lie down and go
morte,
as Lew Boyd would say.
morte,
as Lew Boyd would say.
Lloyd and Buster were pulling out as he pulled in at four o’clock. Thanks be to God, their kitchen was free; he was weary in every bone.
“You’re not going to believe this!” said his wife. She was beaming; she was glowing; she was electric.
“Come with me.”
She grabbed him by the arm and away they went along the hall and up the stairs and past Sammy’s bedroom and around the corner to the green door. He was panting like a farm dog after a rabbit.
“Do you know where this door leads?” she asked.
“The attic, I seem to recall, though I’ve never been up there.”
She opened the door and they ascended the narrow stairs until they came to a spacious, light-filled room with three north-facing windows and a smaller window to the west.
Silent, she took his hand as they wound themselves through the jumble of old furniture and dust-covered boxes, and stood at the large center window.
They looked down upon the mossy roof of the smokehouse and Sammy’s emerging garden, then out to the barn with its red tin roof and away to green pastures dotted with cows, and up to blue mountains beyond.
Wordless, she drew him to the west window, to the view of ewes and lambs and Meadowgate’s recalcitrant ram, and the great outcrop of rocks pushing forth from emerald grass.
“Beautiful beyond telling!” he said, moved.
“It needs only one thing more.”
“Del!”
“Yes! Otherwise”—her eyes were bright with feeling—“it’s heaven.”
“Speaking of heaven,” he said, “why am I too often surprised when God answers prayer?”
“How’s May coming?” he asked, grating cabbage.
“My favorite. Want to see?”
She dried her hands and fetched the watercolor sketch. A lamb lay by the side of a ewe, smiling—as lambs are wont to do. Violet perched on a nearby rock, her green eyes wide with curiosity.
“Aha! My favorite, as well. Blast, but I’m proud of you! And Violet, also. A charmer, that girl.”
“Thanks, sweetheart. Only seven more to go, and three months to finish.”
“Sammy and I can take your things up to heaven after supper.”
“Supper?” she said, grinning.
In some way he couldn’t understand,
dinner
was becoming
supper
since they’d moved to the sticks.
dinner
was becoming
supper
since they’d moved to the sticks.
After grating enough cabbage for a small regiment, he sat in the war zone, aka the kitchen, and stared unseeing at the blue tent. His diligent wife was going about the business of getting their meal up and running.
She came to his chair and touched his shoulder. “What is it, sweetheart?”
“I’m feeling my age.”
“Well, then, go and do something about it!”
“Like what?”
“Walk in the pasture with the dogs, zip down to the mailbox ... get your heart racing.”
“I’ve spent nearly seven decades getting my heart racing.”
“How’s your sugar?”
“Fine. I really want to just sit here and feel my age. Instead of, you know, denying the feeling.”
His wife gave him an odd, but undeniably tolerant, look, and went back to the business at hand.
He guessed his own nose, like Lloyd’s, was pretty sensitive. As he walked toward the garden to call Sammy in for supper, he smelled tobacco smoke on the spring air.
Sammy was sitting with his back against the picket fence, and was startled when Father Tim opened the gate. Sammy flicked the cigarette into the fence corner, where it landed among the rakes and shovels.
“Supper time,” he said.
They were silent as they walked to the house. Did he talk with Sammy now and spoil Cynthia’s dinner? No. But if he didn’t talk with Sammy, the dinner was spoiled anyway—he felt his stomach in a veritable knot. Perhaps what was needed was time.
“We’ll talk after we eat,” said Father Tim. If nothing else, they’d have time to think about what they wanted to say to each other.
As he bowed his head to ask the blessing, he noted that Sammy’s scar was aflame.
If he had such a scar, his would be aflame, also.
He decided to talk on what could loosely be called his own turf the library. The leather chairs lent a certain authority that he might find lacking in himself when push came to shove.
“The day after you arrived, we talked about the rules.”
“Yeah, but you said th’ g-garden was all m-mine.”
“I also said no smoking, and thought that should cover it.”
“Yeah, but if it’s all m-mine, then I ought t’ be able t’ do what I want t’ d-do in there, I’m th’ one w-workin’ it.”
“You’re being paid to work, the rules come from the household that’s taken you in.”
“You t-tell me somethin’, then it ain’t t-true n’more.”
The clock ticked on the mantle. A lamb bleated in the paddock. “You lived as an orphan for many years, Sammy. No mother, and a father who couldn’t be a true father to you. In truth, you were father to him.
“Now you’re living in a family. There’s a oneness to family life—what one person does affects all the others. I know it’s frustrating for you, you’ve been making your own rules for a long time.”
“No smokin’, no hustlin’, no c-cussin’, k-keep m’ room clean. I can’t d-do all that b-b-bull.”
“Here’s the deal about rules. They aren’t meant to put you in a box; they’re meant to give you freedom. Doesn’t pool have rules? Can you ignore the rules and win the game?”
Sammy didn’t respond. He jiggled his leg, anxious to be away from the inquisition.
“You have a secure roof over your head, three meals a day, a job you say you like, a paycheck, your own room, people who care about you. Does that mean anything to you?”
Sammy’s jaw flexed; Father Tim sensed he was ready to bolt. He didn’t want to push Sammy too far—he had money in his pocket, and shoe leather for the road.
“Think on these things, son. And let’s go up and get some rest.We can talk again tomorrow; we can always talk. One thing you can count on is that we can talk.”
Sammy shot to his feet and headed for the library door. He stood for a moment with his hand on the knob, his eyes defiant. “I hate this p-place.”
He opened the door and vanished down the hall and up the stairs.
Father Tim listened to the sound of Sammy’s feet on the treads, as he’d often listened to Dooley’s all those years ago.
It was painful to do what was right. There were times when he’d like to let things slide, go with the flow, call it a day, whatever.
His heart was a stone as he poked his own way upstairs.
He had no idea how he’d lived so many years without someone to talk with in bed. In his somewhat unsophisticated opinion, it was the apex of the common life.
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