Out to Canaan (235 page)

Martha has come in to tell me it is bedtime. I cannot express how wonderful it is to be sometimes told, rather than always doing the telling . . . . There she is again, my friend, and believe me, my wife does not enjoy reminding me twice. That she monitors my energy is a good thing. Otherwise, I would spill it all for Him and have nothing left with which to get out of bed in the mornings.
 . . .

He reached for her, and she turned to him, eagerly, smiling in the darkness.

An early October hurricane gathered its forces in the Caribbean, roared north along the eastern seaboard, and veered inland off Cape Hatteras. In a few short hours, it reached the mountains at the western end of the state, where it pounded Mitford with alarming force.

Rain lashed Lord's Chapel in gusting sheets, rattled the latched shutters of the bell tower, blew the tarps off lumber stacked on the construction site, and crashed a wheelbarrow into a rose bed.

The tin roof of Omer Cunningham's shed, formerly a hangar for his antique ragwing, was hurled toward Luther Green's pasture, where the sight of it, gleaming and rattling and banging through the air, made the cows bawl with trepidation.

Coot Hendrick's flock of three Rhode Island Reds took cover on the back porch after nearly drowning in a pothole in the yard, and Lew Boyd, who was pumping a tank of premium unleaded into an out-of-town Mustang, reported that his hat was whipped off his head and flung into a boxwood at the town monument, nearly a block away.

Phone lines went out; a mudslide slalomed down a deforested
ridge near Farmer, burying a Dodge van; and a metal Coca-Cola sign from Hattie Cloer's market on the highway landed in Hessie Mayhew's porch swing.

At the edge of the village, Old Man Mueller sat in his kitchen, trying to repair the mantel clock his wife asked him to fix several years before her death. He happened to glance out the window in time to see his ancient barn collapse to the ground. He noted that it swayed slightly before it fell, and when it fell, it went fast.

“Hot ding!” he muttered aloud, glad to be spared the aggravation of taking it down himself. “Now,” he said to the furious roar outside, “if you'd stack th' boards, I'd be much obliged.”

The villagers emerged into the sunshine that followed, dazzled by the spectacular beauty of the storm's aftermath, which seemed in direct proportion to its violence.

The mountain ridges appeared etched in glass, set against clear, perfectly blue skies from horizon to horizon.

At Fernbank, a bumper crop of crisp, tart cooking apples lay on the orchard floor, ready to be gathered into local sacks. The storm had done the picking, and not a single ladder would be needed for the job.

“You see,” said Jena Ivey, “there's always two sides to everything!” Jena had closed Mitford Blossoms to run up to Fernbank and gather apples, having promised to bake pies for the Bane just three days hence.

“But,” said another apple gatherer, “the autumn color won't be worth two cents. The storm took all the leaves!”

“Whatever,” sighed Jena, who thought some people were mighty hard to please.

Balmy. Like spring. It was that glad fifth season called Indian summer, which came only on the rarest occasions.

He was doing his duties, he was going his rounds, he was poking his nose into everybody's business. How else could a priest know what was happening?

He rang the Bolicks. “Esther? How's it going?”

“I'd kill Gene Bolick if I could catch him, that's how it's goin'!”

“What now?”

“Haven't I been bakin' since the bloomin' Boer War, tryin' to get ready for Friday? And didn't I tell him, I said, ‘Gene, don't you mess with these cookies, there's three hundred cookies I just baked, and I'm puttin' 'em in these two-gallon freezer bags this minute, so you'll keep your paws off.' Well, I zipped up those bags and stacked 'em in th' freezer and first thing you know, I came home last night and
who
was sittin' at the table with his head stuck in one of those two-gallon bags, goin' at it like a fox in a henhouse? I ask you!”

“You don't mean it!”

“Frozen hard as bricks and him hammerin' down on those cookies like they'd just come out of th' oven.”

“Aha.”

“It's a desperate man who'll do a trick like that.”

“I agree. But try to forgive him,” he said, knowing that Gene Bolick had not had a cookie to call his own since this whole event began brewing several months ago.

He rang off, assuring her that he'd do his part on Friday, down in the trenches with the rest of the troops.

He flipped quickly through the
Muse,
looking for another batch of
Stickin'
ads.

“Looks like Esther's pullin' ahead,” said J.C., totally convinced that his small-space ad idea had done the trick. It was generally agreed that the full page of Mack Stroupe's face had been a dire mistake by the other camp. It was one thing to look at Mack's mug on a billboard, but somehow seeing it right under your nose had been a definite turnoff, according to the buzz around town.

Along with a growing number of others, the rector was beginning to feel upbeat about the outcome of the election just one month away. The wife of a deacon at First Baptist had planned a preelection Stickin' With Esther tea, and the mayor would also be riding down Main Street in a fire truck during a parade for Fire Awareness Day.

Things were definitely looking up.

Coming into the kitchen to make a pot of tea, he noted that Violet had descended from her penthouse atop the refrigerator and was curled up on his dog's bed under the table.

Thank God Barnabas was coming home on Saturday, the day after the Bane. Hal had kept him at Meadowgate nearly a month, just in case.

He'd still have the splint on for a couple of weeks, but the chest wrap had come off. The job of healing could be finished up neatly by close confinement for five or six months, with no running, chasing, or stick-fetching.

“There's certainly a lot of hilarity going on in my house,” said Cynthia. She stood at the kitchen door, her head cocked to one side.

“What do you mean?”

She listened intently, as if to the music of the spheres. “Somebody's laughing!”

“What's wrong with laughter?”

She didn't answer, but came and stood by the stove, her brow furrowed, as he put the kettle on.

“Elton used six blocks t' build a model of a staircase that has three steps . . .” Harley's voice drifted up to the kitchen.

“Poor Harley,” said Cynthia. “I hope he makes an A this time.”

“That B-minus cut him to the quick.”

“I think Lace is too hard on him.”

“And you're too soft! Delivering his breakfast downstairs on a
tray,
for Pete's sake.”

“You're jealous because I don't deliver yours, much less on a tray, but then, dear fellow, you have never, ever once cleaned out and organized my attic so that it looks better than my studio!”

“True.”

“Nor have you ever hauled the detritus from said cleanup to the Bane, and brought me back a form which makes it all tax deductible.” She turned and went quickly to the door.

“Good Lord, Timothy! Listen!”

He heard a woman's hysterical laughter coming from the little house next door.

They went out to the back stoop. The high-pitched laughter continued, followed by a crash that sounded like breaking glass.

“What on earth?” she asked. Her alarm was evident.

“I'll go and see.” He didn't want to go and see; he didn't want anything out of the ordinary to be going on next door.

He darted through the hedge and up the dark steps to the screen door. He looked into Cynthia's kitchen and saw Pauline Barlowe standing at the sink. She was throwing up.

“Pauline,” he said.

She retched into the sink again, then turned and stared toward the door, her eyes swollen, wiping her mouth.

“What?” she said. Her voice was cold, coarse; the stench of warm bile and alcohol permeated the room.

He opened the door and went in. “What's going on?” He tried to keep his voice free of anger, tried to make it a simple question, but failed.

“Ask y'r big high an' mighty in there what's goin' on, and if you find out, let me know, that's what
I've
been tryin' to do, is figure out what's goin' on.”

She laughed suddenly and sank to the floor, leaning against the cabinets.

He walked down the hall and into the living room, where Buck Leeper sat in a Queen Anne chair, asleep and snoring, an empty vodka bottle on the lamp table and a glass on the floor at his feet.