Light From Heaven (9 page)

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Authors: Jan Karon

BOOK: Light From Heaven

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But of course, he
was
standing on hallowed ground.

He turned and faced the church. Through open double doors and a shallow narthex, light gleamed in upon the pews.

“Barnabas! Is this a dream?”

He hurried up the three stone steps and entered the narthex.

The smell was incense to him, redolent of old wood and evergreen, of mist and stone and leaf mold, of the whole amphitheater of nature in which Holy Trinity had been set over a century ago.

He moved into the nave and bowed deeply toward the wooden cross above the altar, to the source of joy that had come upon him so unexpectedly.

And he’d expected the worst!

In truth, the pine floor was swept; no cobwebs draped themselves from the rafters; even the windows looked respectably clean.

He scratched Barnabas behind an ear, amazed and overcome.

So this is what God had for him.

He turned to the communion rail, and ran his hand along the wood. Oak. Golden and deeply grained. He rubbed the wood with his thumb, musing and solemn, then dropped to his knees on the bare floor and lowered his head against the rail. Barnabas sat down beside him.

Lord, thank You for preparing me in every way to be all thatYon desire for this mission, and for making good Your purpose for this call. Show me how to discern the needs here, and how to fulfill them to Your glory and honor.

He continued aloud, “Bless the memory of all those who have gathered in these pews, and the lives of those who will gather here again.”

Barnabas leaned against the vicar’s shoulder.

“I am Thine, O Lord. Show me Thy ways, teach me Thy paths, lead me in Thy truth and teach me.

“In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.”

He raised his head and looked at the play of sunlight flooding through the open doors behind him.Where was the one who had opened the church? And why was it prepared for a congregation that hadn’t yet been found?

He rose and gazed around him at the bead board walls, the ceiling supported by pine beams, the windows that welcomed trees and sky into the small room ...

“Hello!” he shouted.

He stood in the single aisle with his back to the altar, looking across the pews and out to the mountains, green upon blue upon purple in the shifting morning light ...

Shine, Preacher!
In
thy
place,
and be
content! His scalp prickled with anticipation and the honest cold of a spring morning at four thousand feet.

After glancing about for any evidence of prayer books or hymnals, which he didn’t spy, he trotted along the aisle and down the steps and cupped his hands to his mouth and shouted again, “Hello!”

But there was only an echo, and the call of a male cardinal on the bough of a pine near the open door.

He and Barnabas bounded into the kitchen where Cynthia had set up her watercolor paraphernalia at the north-facing windows.

“Timothy?” She seemed oddly surprised at the sight of him. “You look years younger! What is it?”

He thumped onto the window seat. “You’re not going to believe this,” he said.

He told Dooley where the truck was coming from—namely, the generosity of Miss Sadie Baxter’s heart and purse; he asked the trustee how to channel the funds to the dealer; and he had a final phone seminar on how to get off the lot without being scalped.

“Ask ’em to pick up th’ freight charges.”

“Aha.” He could do that.

“An’ don’t kick th’ tires; they don’t nobody do that n’more.”

So went Lew’s bottom-line summation of how to buy a truck.

But of course, there was no truck to buy. Dooley’s list of optional features required that such a vehicle be ordered from the factory, and the wait would be four months.

“How about three months?” he asked, hoping to appear no-nonsense.

“Four months,” said the salesman.

He expected Dooley to settle for fewer options and go for a truck they could drive off the lot.

No deal.

Dooley smoked over the available blue model that offered several options he was looking for and made his studied pronouncement. “I’ll wait for red.”

“Which red do you want?” asked the salesman, who was sporting considerably more aftershave than J. C. Hogan. “If I was you, I’d go for th’ Impulse Red Pearl, that’s your metallic an’ all, an’ a real nice low-key maroon.You take that Radiant Red, it’s a whole lot more noticeable to th’ police.”

“Definitely Impulse Red!” blurted Father Tim. “Sorry, son. That’s your call entirely.”

Dooley grinned. “Impulse Red.That’s what I was going to say”

He was proud of his boy. Dooley’s willingness to wait for what he really wanted was, in his opinion, a definite mark of character.

Miss Sadie would approve.

They trotted along the block of Holding’s Main Street where Sammy was best-known. Though Dooley had sent his brother a general delivery letter, saying he’d meet him at the drugstore this morning, the clerk said she hadn’t seen Sammy in a few weeks.

It must have been early February, she told them; she was putting valentines in the card rack when he came in and bought a Snickers bar.

“How did he look?” Dooley wanted to know. “Was he sick or anything?”

“Oh, no,” she said. “He was just his usual self, said he was going to get a haircut.”

Dooley and Father Tim glanced at each other. Sammy was proud of cutting his own hair.

“How much is a haircut in Holding?” asked Dooley.

“I think it’s eight dollars. My husband, Wayne, died two years ago and I don’t keep up anymore. ”

When they hit the sidewalk, Dooley frowned. “I wrote and told him I was coming home, an’ I wondered why I didn’t hear back.”

Dooley kicked at the post of the street sign with the toe of his sneaker. “Seems like if he had eight bucks, he wouldn’t spend it on a haircut.”

“Let’s hit the barber shop,” said Father Tim.

The barber looked up from one of his two chairs. “Sammy! You look like you’re preachin’ a funeral, boy. Where’d you get them duds?”

“My name is Dooley; Sammy’s my little brother. Has he been here lately?”

The barber blinked his eyes vigorously, as if to clear his vision. “Not since I cut his hair back in, oh, sometime in February, I believe it was. I’ve seen ‘im around town since he was a pup, but that was th’ first time I ever cut ’is hair.”

“What did you cut his hair for?”

The barber looked puzzled. “Because he asked me to.”

“I mean, was he going someplace special or . . . ?”

“Said he might be takin’ a bus somewhere. I don’t recall where. You sure are th’ spit-dang image of one another.” The barber squinted at Dooley. “Maybe he’s a hair taller.”

“Two inches,” said Dooley. “Who else in town would know about Sammy?”

“Don’t have a clue. He makes th’ rounds of th’ drugstore and th’ pool hall. I seen you already go in th’drugstore. I know he goes to th’ post office some; then once in a while he drops by here to see what’s goin’ on.”

They trekked to the pool hall and post office, then out to the river, where they tried to find Lon Burtie, the Vietnam vet who had taken a supportive interest in Sammy’s welfare. Lon would definitely know where Sammy was. But Lon wasn’t home.

They left a note stuck behind the metal grid of Lon’s screen door, asking Lon to have Sammy call Dooley at the farm.

ASAP. Collect.

No truck and no little brother.

They drove up the mountain, silent.

“I’m taking you to see a sunset.”

“I love sunsets!”

“... in the pickup truck.”

She pulled on her fleece jacket with the hood. “I love pickup trucks.”

He laughed. “What don’t you love, Kavanagh?”

“Twenty-five-watt bulbs in reading lamps, cats that throw up on the rug after devouring a mouse, age spots ...”

“The usual,” he said.

“Just look!” She showed him the backs of her hands.

“Freckles,” he said. “Trust me.”

He was positively light-headed at the thought of sitting on the stone wall with Cynthia, the one with whom he most wanted to share this extraordinary view. And next, of course, Dooley—he’ d bring Dooley up here on his long summer break. And Puny and the grans, the whole caboodle . . .

“I’ll help you in every way,” she said as they bumped across the creek and up the lane on the other side. “Just please don’t make me do spaghetti suppers.”

“Holy Trinity isn’t a spaghetti supper kind of place.”

“What kind of place is it?”

“You’ll see.”

They sat on the wall and held hands, marveling.

“And this is only a
spring
sunset,” she said. “Just wait ’til fall! How will we bear such beauty?”

He was glad the church door was locked; he wouldn’t wish to divide the joy of the spectacle before them.

They walked to the truck, hand in hand in the gathering dusk.