Out to Canaan (226 page)

He parked behind a long line of cars and pickup trucks on the country road, and walked to Greer's Store.

Men were congregated on the porch, dressed in overalls and work clothes; many were smoking, and all talked in undertones.

They nodded to him as he came up the steps. He heard the faint singing inside.

“How is he?” he asked an elderly man sitting on a bench.

“Bad off, Preacher.”

He opened the fragile screen door that had slapped behind him on happier occasions, and entered the store that resembled a room in a Rembrandt canvas. The aged floors and burnished wood, the low wattage in the bulbs, the fading afternoon light through the windows—it was beautiful; saintly, somehow, more a church than a store. But then, hadn't Absalom Greer preached the gospel in this place for nearly seventy years?

Several women sat around the cold summer stove, talking in low voices. One sang softly with the chorus inside. “ . . . that calls me from a world of care, and bids me at my Father's throne, make all my wants and wishes known . . .”

Three men in ill-fitting dark suits met him at the door of the rooms where Absalom lived with his sister, Lottie. All were clutching Bibles, and all spoke or nodded as if they knew him.

Lottie Greer sat in the chair by the fireplace, where she always implored him to sit when he visited.

“Miss Lottie . . .”

She looked up, gaunt and shockingly frail, her cane across her knees. “He said yesterday he wanted to see you, Father. He asked to die at home, the old way.”

He put his hand on her shoulder.

“He's lingered on,” she murmured, lowering her head. “It's been hard.”

“Yes,” he said. “I understand.” And he did. His mother had lingered, fighting the good fight.

Seven or eight men were gathered outside Absalom's open bedroom door, and quietly, but forcefully, singing the old hymn the rector had known since a child.

“He wanted us to sing his favorites,” said one of the men with a Bible. “Join in, if you take a notion. Th' doctor's with 'im right now, looks like he's in an' out of knowin' where he's at.”

“Lena, get the Father something,” said Lottie.

“I've just poured him a glass of tea, Miss Lottie. I hope you like it sweet,” she said, placing the icy glass in his hand.

“Oh, I do. Thank you.”

“And some cake, you'll want some cake,” she said, eager to please.

“Thank you, not now.”

“You help yourself, then, anytime,” she said, pointing to the kitchen table, which was laden with food. “It's to eat, not throw out.” She colored slightly, and made a faint curtsy. “I hope you'll try my pineapple upside down, it's over by the sink.”

“Sing up!” said one of the chorus. “Brother Greer likes it loud.”

“Jesus, lover of my soul . . .” they began, limning the words of Charles Wesley.

He joined in.

 . . . Let me to Thy bosom fly,
While the nearer waters roll,
While the tempest still is high:
Hide me, O my Savior hide,
Till the storm of life is past;
Safe into the haven guide,
O receive my soul at last.

 

Other refuge have I none;
Hangs my helpless soul on Thee;
Leave, O leave me not alone,
Still support and comfort me . . .

He felt as if he were a child again, in his mother's Mississippi Baptist church, where his own grandfather once preached. A kind of joy was rising in him, but how could it not? Absalom Greer would soon pass safely into the haven . . . .

Someone who appeared to be the doctor stepped out of Absalom's room. “Go in, Father,” he said. “He's asked for you.”

The bed on the other side of the spartan room seemed far away. It was as if he treaded water to reach it.

He heard the dense rattle in Absalom's chest.

“Brother Timothy, is that you?” The old man kept his filmy blue eyes fixed on the ceiling.

“It is.”

“I've been lookin' for you.”

Over the years, he'd seen it—as death drew near, the skin had a way of connecting with the bones, of fusing into a kind of cold marble that was at once terrible and beautiful.

“The Lord's given me a truth for you,” said Absalom. It was as if each word were delicately formed, so it would move through the maze of the rattle and come forth whole and lucid.

Father Tim bent closer. “I'm listening, my Brother.”

“The fields are white . . . .”

Jesus had said it to the disciples . . . .

Then Absalom turned his head and looked past him, his face growing suffused with a kind of joy. “Glory, glory . . . there they are . . . I knew they'd come again . . . .”

The rector's heart raced with feeling—he knew instinctively that Absalom Greer was seeing the angels, the angels he'd once seen as a young boy, swarming around his mother and baby sister in the next room.

The old preacher lifted his trembling hands above the coverlet, issuing a last pastoral command.

The men stopped singing. The talking in the kitchen ceased.

Lottie came into the room, leaning on her cane. “Is it his angels?” she whispered.

“I believe so,” he said.

He took the back roads, wanting to see pastures and open fields, wanting a span of silence between dying and living.

Perhaps Sadie Baxter had been among the first to greet Absalom, to bestow some heavenly welcome upon one to whom God would surely say, “Well done, good and faithful servant.”

He would miss Absalom Greer. It had been a privilege to know him. He was the last of a breed, willing, like Saint Paul, to be “a fool for Christ.”

In the fields, Queen of the Meadow towered over goldenrod and
fleabane, over milkweed and wild blue aster. Beautiful, but dry. They needed rain. He wished he had his dog with him, licking up the windows to a fare-thee-well.

He made a turn onto the state highway and spoke it aloud: “The fields are white . . . .”

“Lift up your eyes, and look on the fields,” Jesus had said to his disciples, “for they are white already to harvest.”

The standing fields were the legions who hadn't filled their God-vacuum with the One who was born to fill it; the standing fields were those who waited for someone to reach out and speak the truth, and tell them how they might be saved.

He had received Absalom's message as a reminder, and did not take it lightly.

He glanced at the gas gauge. Nearly empty.

There was a little grocery store and service station up the road. He'd once stopped there for a pack of Nabs and a Cheerwine.

It came up sooner than he expected. He wheeled in and parked beside the building, then got the key from the store owner and walked around and unlocked the restroom. First things first.

Coming out of the restroom, he saw the black Lincoln pull off the road and ease past the gas pumps.

He stepped back instinctively, and watched Ed Coffey get out of the Lincoln and go into the station.

Ed Coffey. Edith Mallory's chauffeur. The one who was driving when he leaped from the moving car in the Shoe Barn parking lot, the one who'd driven him home after the gruesome, rain-drenched night at Clear Day.

Ed wasn't wearing his uniform. The rector didn't think he'd ever seen Ed out of uniform since Pat Mallory died.

He stood by the building, wondering why he didn't step forward and speak to the man, a Mitford native who had always seemed a decent fellow, though clearly snared by the lure of Mallory money. Hadn't Ed looked at him a couple of times as if to say, I don't want to do this, I know better, but it's too late?

Ed left the station with a bulging paper sack in his arm, which he put in the trunk. Then he got in the car and quietly pulled onto the road, headed south.

A new Lincoln, clearly, not the old model Edith had kept around after Pat's death. And this one had dark windows. He despised dark windows in a car . . . .

So Edith was back in Mitford. He could probably expect to see her at Lord's Chapel. Edith on the gospel side, Mack Stroupe on the epistle side.

What happened when clergy looked into their congregations, only to see a growing number of people whose motives they distrusted, and whose spirits made their own feel anxious and uneasy?

He noticed that a new battery of yard signs had gone up, along with the general clutter.

 

We're stickin' with Esther
BILL AND ARLENE

 

We're stickin' with Esther
Ralph And Fay Lewis

 

O
UR
B
ANE
W
ILL
B
E
Y
OUR
B
LESSING
Best Sale Ever!
Oct. 4, from 10 a.m.
After Work Supper
6:00 p.m.

 

MACK MEANS
MONEY IN
MITFORD POCKETS.
$Mack for Mayor$

 

VOTE YOUR VALUES
Esther for Mayor

 

Play Ball!
Come one, come all
Baxter Field, August 10
HOTDOGS
$1

“Seventy-five bucks from the glove factory, a thousand from Leeland Mining Company—which should be no surprise, that's his fourth cousin. Five hundred from the canning plant, who'd also like to see some more development in these parts, ten bucks from Lew Boyd's cousin, fifteen from Henry Watts, blah, blah, blah—exactly what you'd expect.” J.C. looked pleased with himself. “You can get off your high horse, buddyroe.”

Why pursue it? “So, tell me, have you seen Ed Coffey around lately?”

“Ed Coffey? If he's around, so's your old girlfriend.”

He felt as if he'd been dashed with cold water. “You might rephrase that,” he said.

“You're plenty touchy,” snapped the editor.

“I learned it from you,” he replied.