Light From Heaven (6 page)

“It’s Marge,” she whispered as he came in from the library. “Yes, Marge, I’m sorry, too. The doctor said she mustn’t even think of coming back for several months....

“Oh, no, I’m sure Timothy and I can keep the place straightened up, certainly nothing like Joyce has always done, but . . .

“Really, no, you mustn’t . . .

“But we couldn’t . . .

“The Flower Girls? They clean and wash windows and cook—the whole nine yards?

“I’m sure we won’t need any help, though. It’s just the two of us.

“Of course, yes, everything is lovely here. Lots and lots of snow since you left, but today should be bright, and warmer. Dooley’s here, I know he’d want me to send his love. How is Rebecca Jane? Speaking French? Yes, static on our end, too, very hard to hear . . .

“The Flower Girls, yes. The number is in your little red book? But only if things get desperate, which I can’t imagine . . .

“Love to Hal and Rebecca Jane, I think I’m losing you....

As he took his jacket off the peg, he heard Dooley’s size twelves on the stairs.

“Taking the dogs for a walk; how about coming along?”

“Sure. Then I’m checking the clinic to see what Blake has goin’ on.”

Dooley and Blake Eddistoe, Hal’s junior vet, had differing ideas about the practice of veterinary medicine. While Dooley preferred using more natural, noninvasive methods whenever possible, Blake inclined toward aggressive programs of drug treatment. No doubt Blake’s philosophy had worked, as he was well liked by Hal, whose four decades of experience wasn’t exactly chopped liver. In any case, Dooley and Blake would be working together this summer, and Father Tim prayed that the old, sore issues between the two would be resolved.

They huffed to the driveway and hooked a right toward the barn, passing Willie Mullis’s little house. From the kennel, Willie’s beagles loosed a fervent hue and cry as the two men and the farm dogs trooped north into a stinging wind.

“Let’s cut by the tractor shed into that little field by the sheep,” said Father Tim. “I haven’t explored over there.”

Hoary pasture grass crackled under their feet; their breath formed clouds upon the air.

“I really like this place,” said Dooley.

“It’s your second home. Remember the first time we came out here, and Goosedown Owen bucked you off in the hog slop?”

Dooley laughed as they headed toward the woods, crunching through random patches of lingering snow. Beyond the fence, fourteen Dorset sheep lay under the run-in shed, chewing their cud.

“Do you and Cynthia like it?” asked Dooley.

“We feel like we’re on vacation, actually. But that can be ... sort of a problem....”

“What kind of problem?”

He felt a certain joy that Dooley was interested.

“I suppose I feel trifling sometimes. I’m used to being
out there,
doing what God called me to do.”

“Can’t you be out there ... out here?”

“I suppose I can, but ...”

Dooley looked at him, his blue eyes piercing.

“But I’ve been waiting for my marching orders, you might say. Bishop Cullen has something for me, but I haven’t heard anything yet.”

“You will,” said Dooley. He threw a stick for Bodacious. “Yo, Bo!”

“I will?”

“Yessir. People really need what you have to give.”

Father Tim pulled his knit cap over his ears. “Which is what?”

“God,” said Dooley. “You give people God.”

He felt moved by this, and genuinely contrite. Why had he been whining? He could get out there without the bishop’s seal of approval. What was he waiting for? His heart suddenly lifted up.

“Thanks, son, for your encouragement.” He grinned at the handsome, freckled boy who had come into his life—and changed it utterly.

Dooley studied him for a moment. “Umm, your hair is really long.”

“Yes, true.” And he didn’t have a clue what to do about it. He’d been barbered by everybody from an erstwhile house painter to a former Graceland security guard to a crazy woman in capri pants, and nothing ever seemed to work out for the long haul.

“Can Sammy come up and stay awhile this summer?”

“Of course! Absolutely” Dooley’s younger brother Sammy had disappeared with his father years ago. And though Sammy had at last been found, he refused to leave the unemployed, alcoholic Clyde Barlowe, alias Jaybird Johnson, with whom he lived in a trailer that had no phone or postal delivery. To make things more complex, Sammy was forced to visit Dooley and his Mitford siblings on the sly—never a good thing.

Dooley walked with his head down. “I think a lot about Kenny.”

“God knows exactly where he is, and one day, I believe He’ll send him to us.”

“Do you really believe that, or ...”

“Or what?”

“Or is it something you think you’re supposed to say because you’re a priest?”

“I really believe it. Have you forgotten our deal? The one we made before Christmas last year?”

“I guess I forgot.”

“We’ll keep thanking God for His providence in giving us Poo and Jessie and Sammy, and praying and
expecting
Him to lead us to Kenny.”

A small light returned to Dooley’s eyes.

“High five,” said Father Tim. The smack of their palms was crisp and clear on the frozen air.

“So! What kind of vehicle would you like to have?”
Lord, have mercy ...

“A pickup.”

“Ah!” His breath released like air from a tire.

“Short bed. Crew cab. CD player. Leather seats. Tilt wheel. Cruise control ...” Dooley shot a sidelong glance at Father Tim to see how this was going down.

“No MG? No Mercedes?”

“For old people.”

“No BMW?”

“Too hot.”

He laughed, relieved, as they walked on. “I didn’t know there was such a thing as too hot for a college student.”

“It’s not cool to be too hot,” said Dooley.

Over there, between the oaks, a path leading into the woods ... a grand possibility for a springtime walk, thought Father Tim.

“What do you suppose this truck would cost?”

“Maybe thirty thousand.”

That’s what he’d paid for his two-bedroom house in Alabama when he was a curate all those years ago.

Dooley shoved his hands deeper into the fleece-lined pockets of his school jacket. “Six cylinders. Sliding rear window. Electronic shifter ...”

“Sounds like you’ve done your homework. Anything else?”

“Red.”

Father Tim laughed. “Color of your head,” he said, voicing their old joke.

They rounded the bend by a copse of trees, where the dogs burrowed their noses into the pungent leaf mold beneath the snow.

“Are you planning to, like, buy me one?”

“We definitely need to get you a good, safe vehicle. So ...” His voice trailed off as they walked.

He had memorized most of the letter Miss Sadie’s attorney had delivered to him after she died.

Miss Sadie’s letter was mildly confusing—though the money was legally Dooley’s at the age of twenty-one, he was not to know about it until he could bear the responsibility with dignity.

They stopped to unlatch the gate.

“So?” asked Dooley. “You said ‘so.’ You’re starin’ a hole through me.”

“So, yes! We need to do something. But why a truck? What are you planning to haul around?”

“I’ll just be breakin’ it in for when I get out of vet school. By then, it’ll be totally right for haulin’ around a bunch of mangy ol’ mutts like this crowd.” Dooley threw another stick. “Git it, girl!”

Son, I have something important to tell you. When the time comes, yon’ll be able to buy your own building, have your own practice, and drive around in a brand-new truck, or even two ... Why didn’t he
tell him right now, as they stood in the stinging cold by the gate? Holding this enormous secret inside felt as if he’d swallowed a watermelon.

“I don’t like riding in Lace’s car all the time.”

“Is that her idea?”

Dooley shrugged. “She likes my Jeep. But her car is warm in th’ winter and cool in th’ summer, and since th’ passenger door won’t open in th’ Jeep, she has to go in my side or ... crawl through th’ window.”

Dooley flushed to the very roots of his red hair. This was definitely an embarrassment to him, and Father Tim was beginning to feel a shame of his own.

“OK.” He gave his boy a clap on the shoulder. “We’ll deal with it.”

“Soon?”

“Soon. Before you go back to school.”

Dooley beamed. But Father Tim saw in his eyes the faintest flicker of doubt and suspicion; it was a glimpse of the old Dooley who had been betrayed again and again.

“Tracy? Tim Kavanagh here,” he said to the trustee handling Dooley’s account. “Just wondering what our bottom line is these days—the after—tax value.

“I’ll hold. Sure. Thanks.”

He was taking a swig of tea when Tracy came back to the phone and gave him the numbers.

“Holy smoke!” He nearly spit the tea across the kitchen.

“Well done!” he said, meaning it.

A strong wind keened around the farmhouse; they might have been crossing the Atlantic in a gale for all the rattling and groaning of hundred—year—old rafters and floorboards.

His wife lay next to him, peaceful as any lamb, while he tossed and turned and tried to settle his wayward imagination.

Winding mountain roads in both Georgia
and
North Carolina, the volume on the CD player cranked to the max, the cab and even the bed filled with his friends, six cylinders of torque under the hood; worst case scenario, Dooley, with little or no sleep, headed down the mountain on cruise control ...