Out to Canaan (189 page)

“Kidneys.”

Velma appeared with her order pad. “We don't have kidneys n'more. We tried kidneys last year and nobody ordered 'em.”

“Meat loaf sandwich, then,” said Mule. “Wait a minute. What's the Father having?”

“Chicken salad.”

“I pass. Make it a BLT on whole wheat.”

“Kidneys?” asked the rector as Velma left.

“I don't have to tell you Joe likes a little shooter now and again.”

“Umm.”

“Lately, he's been drinkin' peach brandy, made fresh weekly in Knox County. The other thing is, varicose veins. Forty-five years of standing on his feet barbering, his legs look like a Georgia road map.” Mule blew on his coffee. “He showed 'em to me.”

Except for a couple of visits to Fancy Skinner's Hair House, Joe Ivey had been his barber since he came to Mitford. “I hate to hear this.”

“We all hate to hear it.”

There was a long silence. The rector buttered his roll.

“I despise change,” said Mule, looking grim.

“You and me both.”

“That's why Mack won't call it change, he calls it improvement. But you and I know exactly what it is . . . .”

“Change,” said Father Tim.

“Right. And if Mack has anything to do with it, it won't be change for the better.”

What the heck, he opened the container of blackberry jam left from the breakfast crowd and spread that on, too. With diabetes, life
may not be long, he thought, but the diet they put you on sure makes it seem that way.

“Have you thought of the bright side of Joe getting out of the business?” asked Father Tim.

“The bright side?”

“All Joe's customers will be running to your wife.”

Mule's face lit up. “I'll be dadgum. That's right.”

“That ought to amount to, oh, forty people, easy. With haircuts at ten bucks a head these days, you and Fancy can go on that cruise you've been talking about, no problem.”

Mule looked grim again. “Yeah, but then Fancy'll be gettin' varicose veins.”

“Every calling has an occupational hazard,” said the rector. “Look at yours—a real estate market that's traditionally volatile, you never know how much bread you can put on the table, or when.”

J.C. threw his bulging briefcase onto the bench and slid into the booth.

“Did you hear what Adele did last night?”

“What?” the realtor and the rector asked in unison.

The editor looked like he'd just won the lottery. “She busted a guy for attempted robbery and probably saved Dot Hamby's life.” Adele was not only a Mitford police officer, but J.C.'s wife.

“Your buttons are poppin' off in my coffee,” said Mule.

“Where did it happen?”

“Down at the Shoe Barn. She parked her patrol car in back, went in the side door, and was over behind one of the shoe racks, tryin' to find a pair of pumps. Meanwhile, this idiot walks in the front door and asks Dot to change a ten, and when Dot opens the cash register, he whips out a gun and shoves it in her face. Adele heard what was going on, so she slipped up behind the sucker, barefooted, and buried a nine-millimeter in his ribs.”

“What did she say?” asked Mule.

“She said what you're supposed to say in a case like that. She said, ‘Drop it.' ”

Mule raised his eyebrows. “Man!”

J.C. wiped his face with a handkerchief. “His butt is in jail as we speak.”

“Readin' casserole recipes out of
Southern Living,
” said Mule. “It's too good for th' low-down snake.”

“It's nice to see where my recyclin' is ending up,” said the editor, staring at Mule.

“What's that supposed to mean?”

“I just read it takes twenty-six plastic soda bottles to make a polyester suit like that.”

“Waste not, want not,” said Mule.

J.C. looked for Velma. “You see what Mack's doing up the street?”

“We did.”

“A real improvement, he says he's throwing a barbecue soon as the parking lot hardens off. Live music, the whole nine yards. I might give that a front page.”

Mule appeared frozen.

“What's the deal with you not liking Mack Stroupe?” asked J.C. “The least you can do is listen to what he has to say.”

“I don't listen to double-dealin' cheats,” snapped Mule. “They don't have anything to say that I want to hear.”

“Come on, that incident was years ago.”

“He won't get my vote, let me put it that way.”

J.C.'s face flushed. “You want to stick your head in the sand like half the people in this town, go ahead. For my money, it's time we had something new and different around here, a few new businesses, a decent housing development.

“When they staffed Hope House, they hired twenty-seven people from outside Mitford, and where do you think they're living? Wesley! Holding! Working here, but pumping up somebody else's economy, building somebody else's town parks, paying somebody else's taxes.”

The rector noticed that Mule's hand was shaking when he picked up his coffee cup. “I'd rather see Mitford throw tax money down a rat hole than put a mealymouthed lowlife in Esther's job.”

“For one thing,” growled J.C., “you'd better get over the idea it's
Esther's
job.”

The regulars in the back booth had disagreed before, but this was disturbingly different.

The roll the rector had eaten suddenly became a rock.

“Just a little off the sides,” he said.

“Sides? What sides? Since you slipped off and let Fancy Skinner do your barberin', you ain't got any sides.”

What could he say? “We'll miss you around here, Joe. I hate like the dickens to see you go.”

“I hate like the dickens to go. But I'm too old to be doin' this.”

“How old?”

“Sixty-four.”

Good Lord! He was hovering around that age himself. He instantly felt depressed. “That's not old!” he said.

“For this callin', it is. I've tore my legs up over it, and that's enough for me.”

“Where are you moving in Tennessee?”

“Memphis. Might do a little part-time security at Graceland, with my cousin. I'll be stayin' with my baby sister—Winnie's th' oldest, you know, we want her to move up, too.”

Winnie gone from the Sweet Stuff Bakery? Two familiar faces missing from Mitford, all at once? He didn't like the sound of it, not a bit.

“Here,” said Joe, handing him a bottle with an aftershave label. “Take you a little pull on this. It might be your last chance.”

“What is it?”

“Homemade peach brandy, you'll never taste better. Go on and take you a snort, I won't tell nobody.”

For fifteen years, his barber had offered him a nip of this, a shooter of that, and he had always refused. The rector had preached him a sermon a time or two, years ago, but Joe had told him to mind his own business. Without even thinking, he unscrewed the cap, turned the bottle up, and took a swig.
Holy smoke.

He passed it back, nearly unable to speak. “That'll do it for me.”

“I might have a little taste myself.” Joe upended the bottle and polished off half the contents.

“Are you sure you poured out the aftershave before you poured in the brandy?”

Joe cackled. “Listen here,” he said, brushing his customer's neck, “don't be lettin' Mack Stroupe run Esther off.”

“I'll do my best.”

“Look after Winnie 'til she can sell her bake shop and get up to Memphis.”

“I will. She's a good one.”

“And take good care of that boy, keep him in a straight line. I never had nobody to keep me in a straight line.”

“You've done all right, Joe. You've been a good friend to us, and you'll be missed.” He might have been trying to swallow down a golf ball. He hated goodbyes.

He got out of the chair and reached for his wallet. “I want you to take care of yourself, and let us hear from you.”

Tears stood in Joe's eyes. “Put that back in your pocket. I've barbered you for fifteen years, and this one's on me.”

He'd never noticed that Joe Ivey seemed so frail-looking and pallid—defenseless, somehow. The rector threw his arms around him in a wordless hug. Then he walked down the stairs to Main Street, his breath smelling like lighter fluid, bawling like a baby.

The date for the Bane and Blessing sale was official, and the annual moaning began.

No show of lilacs, no breathtaking display of dogwoods could alleviate the woe.

Three ECW members suddenly developed chronic back trouble, and an Altar Guild member made reservations to visit her sister in Toledo during the week of the sale. Two Sunday School teachers who had, in a weak moment, volunteered to help trooped up the aisle after Wednesday Eucharist to pray at the altar.

After Esther Bolick agreed to chair the historic church event, she went home and asked her husband, Gene, to have her committed. The Bane and Blessing was known, over the years, for having put two women flat on their backs in bed, nearly broken up a marriage, and chased three families to the Lutherans in Wesley.

Besides, hadn't she virtually retired from years and years of
churchwork, trying to focus, instead, on cake baking? Wasn't baking a ministry in its own right? And didn't she bake an orange marmalade cake at least twice a week for some poor soul who was down and out?

In the first place, she couldn't remember saying she'd
do
the Bane. She had been totally dumbfounded when the meeting ended and everybody rushed over to hug and thank her and tell her how wonderful she was.

In the end, she sighed, determined that it should be done “as unto the Lord and not unto men.”

“That's the spirit!” said her rector, doling out a much-needed hug.

He wouldn't have traded places with Esther Bolick for all the tea in China. Esther, however, would do an outstanding job, and no doubt put an unprecedented amount of money in the missions till.

Because it was the most successful fund-raising event in the entire diocese, the women who pulled it off usually got enough local recognition to last a lifetime, or, at the very least, a couple of months.

“October fourth,” Esther told Gene.

“Eat your Wheaties,” Gene told Esther.