Out to Canaan (132 page)

He reached for his wife, and she took his hand. “Am I dead meat around here?” he asked.

She rolled toward him and kissed him softly on the nearly bare top of his head.

“I married a preacher,” she said. “Not a banker, not an exporter, not an industrialist. A preacher. This is what preachers do—if they do it right.”

Nobody on the vestry had heard a word from the real estate company that had made inquiries around town.

Oh, well, they'd thrown out the line and there would be another bite at another time. But had they made the bait attractive enough? They couldn't worry about that. They couldn't install additional bathrooms in the hope that Fernbank would lure a bed and breakfast. They couldn't cut up the ground floor into classrooms in the hope it would lure an academy. In the end, they couldn't even afford to paint and roof it, hoping to lure anyone at all.

At eight in the morning he dropped by Town Hall and sat in a Danish modern chair that once occupied the mayor's own family room. He declined the weak coffee in a Styrofoam cup.

“Barbecue?” growled the mayor. “Barbecue? Two can play that game. Ray Cunningham makes the best barbecue in the country—outside the state of Texas, of course.”

“I don't know if I'd fight barbecue with barbecue,” he said. “I hear Mack's planning to have these things right up 'til election day.”

The mayor was just finishing her fast-food sausage biscuit. “Why
do anything at all, is what I'd like to know! I don't see how that snake could oust me, even if I was the most triflin' mayor ever put in office.”

“Any town in the country would be thrilled to have you running things, Esther. Look at the merchant gardens up and down Main Street, look at our town festival that raised more money than any event in our history. Look at Rose Day, and how you put your shoulder to the wheel and helped turn the old Porter place into a town museum! Look how you rounded up a crew and painted and improved Sophia's little house . . . . The list is endless.”

“And look how I don't take any malarkey off the council. You know we've got at least two so-and-sos who'd as soon put a paper plant and a landfill in here as walk up th' street.”

“You've never taken your eyes off the target, I'll hand you that.”

“So what do you think?” asked Esther, leaning forward. The rector saw that she'd broken out in red splotches, which usually indicated her enthusiasm for a good fight.

“I think I'd wait a while and see how things go in the other camp.”

“That's what Ray said.”

“In the meantime, I hope you'll have a presence at the town festival. I hear Mack's setting up quite a booth.”

“You can count on it! Last year I kissed a pig, this year I'll be kissin' babies. And one of these days, I want to do somethin' for the town, thanking them for their support all these years. Lord, I hope talkin' to you doesn't infringe on any laws of church and state!”

He laughed. “I don't think so. By the way—how about laying off the sausage biscuits for a while? I'd like to see you make it through another couple of terms.”

She wadded up the biscuit wrapper and lobbed it into the wastebasket. “You're off duty,” she said. “So I'll thank you not to preach.”

School would be out in two weeks and Dooley would be home.

Where in the dickens would he find the boy a job, or where would Dooley find one for himself? It would have to be in Mitford, which was no employment capital. He'd talk to Lew Boyd when he filled up
his tank, or maybe the fellow who was looking after the church grounds could use a helper . . . .

Another thing. Maybe he and Cynthia could do something he'd never done in his life: take a week at the beach, rent a cottage—his wife would know how to do that. As for their mutual dislike of sand and too much sun, weren't there endless compensations—like time to read, the roar of the ocean, and seafood fresh from the boat?

Dooley would like that, and he could take Tommy. They'd load the car and head out right after Dooley's two weeks at Meadowgate Farm.

A vacation! For a man renowned for his stick-in-the-mudness, this was a great advance.

Whistling, he headed toward home.

Lace Turner was still wearing the battered hat. But her life with the Harpers had revealed a certain beauty. Her once-tangled hair was neatly pulled away from her face, dramatizing the burning determination in her eyes.

“He ain't doin' too good,” she said, indicating the pale, small man who lay in the guest room bed.

For someone devoid of a single tooth, Harley Welch's smile was infectious, the rector thought. “I am, too, Rev'rend, don't listen to 'er. She's makin' me walk a chalk line.”

“He ain't eat nothin' but baby puddin'.”

“Cain't have no black pepper, no red pepper, no coffee, and no choc'late candy,” said Harley. “They say it makes you gastric. Without a little taste of candy, I'd as soon be dead.”

“You nearly was dead!” said Lace.

“How's your setup?” asked the rector. “Do you have everything you need?”

“Everything a man could want, plus Lace an' your missus an' Puny to look after me. But I feel it's my bounden duty t' tell you I run liquor most of my early days, and I been worryin' whether th' Lord would want me layin' in this bed.”

“Seems to me the Lord put you in this bed,” said the rector.

Harley's birdlike hands clutched the blanket. “I've not always lived right,” he announced, looking the rector in the eye.

“Who has?” asked Father Tim, looking back.

“I pulled y'r shades down,” Lace said, “ 'cause he cain't have no sunshine, he's on this tetra . . . cyline stuff four times a day f'r three weeks. He's got t' take all that's in this other bottle, too, an' look here—Pepto-Bismol he's got t' swaller twice a day.”

“I ain't never lived as bad as all that,” said Harley.

Father Tim sat on the side of the bed. “Dr. Harper says you're going to be all right. I want you to know we're glad to have you and want you to get strong.”

“He has t' eat six times a day. It ain't easy f'r me'n Cynthia t' figure out six snacks f'r somebody with no teeth.”

“Teeth never give me nothin' but trouble,” said Harley, grinning weakly. “Some rotted out, some was pulled out, and th' rest was knocked out. I've got used t' things th' way they are. Teeth'd just take up a whole lot of room in there.”

“I'm comin' after school an' stayin' nights,” Lace announced. “Olivia and Cynthia said I could.”

“Good, Lace. Glad to have you around. You've got a fine friend, Harley.”

Harley grinned. “She's a good 'un, all right. But awful mean to sick people.”

“Well, you're lying on your money and your truck's over at Lew Boyd's getting the oil change you mentioned, so you can rest easy.”

“I hate that I've let my oil go, but here lately, I've had t' let ever'thing go. I didn't mean f'r you t' do that, Rev'rend, I'm goin' t' do somethin' for you an' th' missus, soon as I'm up an' about.”

“Oh, but I wasn't saying—”

“I know you wasn't, but I'm goin' t' do it, I'm layin' here thinkin' about it. Lace tol' me you got a Buick with some age on it, I might like t' overhaul your engine.”

Father Tim laughed heartily. “Overhaul my engine?”

“After my liquor days, I was in car racin'.”

Was he imagining that good color suddenly returned to Harley Welch's cheeks? “You were a driver?”

“Nossir, I was crew chief f'r Junior Watson.”

“Junior Watson! Well, I'll say!”

Harley's grin grew even broader. He didn't think preachers knew about such as that.

That explains it, mused the rector, going downstairs. Yesterday, he had headed Harley's old truck onto Main Street, thinking he'd have to nurse it to Lew Boyd's two blocks away. When he hammered down on the accelerator, he saw he had another think coming. He had roared by Rodney Underwood's patrol car in a blur, as if he'd been shot from a cannon.

He had never gone from Wisteria Lane to the town monument in such record time, except on those occasions when Barnabas felt partial to relieving himself on a favorite monument boxwood.

“Landscaping,” announced Emma, her mouth set like the closing on a Ziploc bag.

“Landscaping?” he asked.

“Mack Stroupe.”

“Mack Stroupe?”

“Hedges. Shrubs. Bushes.” In her fury, his secretary had resorted to telegraphic communications.
“Grass,”
she said with loathing.

He didn't recall ever seeing grass in Mack's yard. Dandelions, maybe . . .

“Plus . . .”

“Plus what?”

Emma looked at him over her half-glasses. “Lucy Stroupe is getting her hair dyed today!”

Manicures, landscaping, dyed hair. He didn't know when his mind had been so boggled by political events, local or otherwise.