Out to Canaan (74 page)

“A miracle, if I ever saw it,” said Cynthia, of the only dog anyone had ever known whose behavior could be controlled by Scripture recitation.

“Well, you've had your bath,” said the rector, putting his arms around the boy in the navy school blazer. “Welcome home!”

“Welcome home, you big lug!” said Cynthia, giving him a warm embrace. “Good heavens, you're tall! You're positively towering!”

“I'm the same as when you saw me the last time,” said Dooley.

“Then I guess I've gotten shorter!”

Father Tim hoisted two duffel bags. “I'll help carry your things up. There's someone we'd like you to meet. We have a guest in the guest room.”

“Who?”

“Harley Welch,” said Cynthia. “He hasn't been well, so he'll be recuperating with us. Put on some old clothes and get comfortable, Dinner will be ready soon. Are you hungry?”

“I'm starved!” said Dooley, meaning it.

Dooley came into the kitchen, glaring at them. “Some girl's stuff is in my room,” he said curtly.

Cynthia was taking a roast from the oven. “What kind of stuff?”

“A jacket. A hairbrush. Some . . . hair clips or somethin'.”

“Lace Turner has been staying in your room and helping nurse Harley.”

He glared at Cynthia. “That's what I thought. My room smells different. She better not come in there again . . . and I mean it!” he said, raising his voice.

Cynthia set the roast on the stove top and took a deep breath. “For the moment, this is a happy, busy, contented household. That is a precious thing for any household to be, and each of us must work to keep it that way.

“It was important for Lace to help with Harley, as I could not do
it all myself. She is now out of your room, and you are in it. I will expect you to treat her civilly when you see her, and I expect to be treated civilly, as well. Dinner is nearly ready, it is everything you like best. If your stomach is upset by this incident, which I expect it may be, go to your room and pray about it, then come down and eat like a horse.

“You have,” she said, looking at him steadily, “ten minutes.”

Dooley stood for a moment, then turned and stomped upstairs.

The rector placed forks, knives, and spoons on the table, trying to be quiet about it. With his wife and Lace Turner running things around here, he and Dooley might be heading for the piney woods, after all.

Dooley Barlowe was indeed taller and, if possible, thinner. For twenty thousand bucks a year, didn't those people at school put food on the table?

And where were his freckles?

“Waiting for the sun to get to them!” exclaimed Cynthia.

What about his cowlick, then? Would they never see that again?

“Not in this lifetime,” his wife said.

And his grades—how about those grades? Not bad! Not bad at all! He owed the boy a small fortune. A couple of twenties, at least.

“Would you tell him?” he asked her after dinner.

“What do you think?”

“I think you won't do it,” he said, striding into the study and trying to appear casual.

Dooley was waiting for Tommy to come over and fooling with the electric train they kept in the corner by the windows.

“Buddy, I've got good news!” He sounded as phony as a three-dollar bill. “You've got a job for the summer . . . which means, of course, that—”

“I know,” said Dooley, looking up.

“You do?”

“Avis told Tommy and Tommy called me up. Avis is hiring Tommy, too.”

“I thought Tommy was going to work for Lew Boyd.”

“He was, but Lew's nephew turned up for the job. We start Monday.”

“Really?”

“Eight o'clock sharp, Avis said.”

“Ah, well. We were going to take you to the beach for a few days with Tommy or Poobaw. Stay in a cottage. Swim. Like that.” Swim? He couldn't swim a stroke, but Cynthia was a fish. “Eat seafood.” Dooley was fooling with the train again. “Have . . . you know,
fun.
”

Dooley looked up and suddenly grinned at him. “That's OK. You do stuff for me all the time. It'll be fun working. Me'n Tommy will have a blast.”

“Right. Well. Congratulations! We can go out to Meadowgate on Saturday, then. For the day. How's that?”

“Great.”

“There!” Cynthia said when he came back to the kitchen. “See how easy it was?”

Easy? Except for the relief of Dooley's grin, he hadn't found it easy at all.

There was, of course, an unexpected compensation.

Now they wouldn't have to get in the car and drive five long hours to the beach. He could stay right here in Mitford like the stick-in-the-mud he was known to be.

Meadowgate.

The very name soothed him, and was, in fact, an apt description.

A broad, green meadow ran for nearly a mile along the front of the Owens' property, sliced in half by a country lane that led through an open farm gate.

He had found solace in this place time and time again over the years, first as a new priest with a brand-new parish.

It had taken months, perhaps even a couple of years, to come to terms with the fact that he'd followed in the footsteps of a canonized saint. Father Townsend had been tall, dynamic, handsome, and at Lord's Chapel for nearly twenty years. Though the parish had called
Timothy Kavanagh after a tough and discriminating search, it had taken all his resources to wean them, at last, from the charismatic Henry Townsend.

He thought back on the pain he'd felt through much of that time, glad, indeed, that he could now laugh about it.

“Dearest, you're laughing!”

“Darn right!” he said, feeling the happiness of driving along a beckoning lane with a comfortable wife, a happy boy, and a dog the size of a haymow.

“Let me drive the rest of the way.” Dooley was suddenly breathing on the back of his neck.

“I don't think so.”

“Tommy's dad lets him drive. Jack, this guy at school, his dad lets him drive his four-wheel all the time—”

“You can drive when you're sixteen—and believe me, you won't have long to wait.”

“You could just let me drive to the house. I know how.”

“Since when?”

“Since I went home with Jack and his dad let me drive.”

“Aha.”

The house came into view and, failing any more intelligent response, he stepped on the accelerator. He'd completely forgotten about the torrid romance between boys and cars.

Marge Owen's French grandmother's chicken pie recipe was a study in contrasts. Its forthright and honest filling, which combined large chunks of white and dark meat, coarsely cut carrots, green peas, celery, and whole shallots, was laced with a dollop of sauterne and crowned by a pastry so light and flaky, it might have won the favor of Louis XIV.

“Bravo!” exclaimed the rector.

“Man!” said Dooley.

“I unashamedly beg you for this recipe,” crowed Cynthia.

The new assistant, Blake Eddistoe, scraped his plate with his spoon. “Wonderful, ma'am!”

Hardly anyone ever cooked for diabetes, thought the rector as they trooped out to eat cake in the shade of the pin oak. Apparently
it was a disease so innocuous, so bland, and so boring to anyone other than its unwilling victims that it was blithely dismissed by the cooks of the land.

He eyed the chocolate mocha cake that Marge was slicing at the table under the tree. Wasn't that her well-known raspberry filling? From here, it certainly looked like it . . . .

Ah, well. The whole awful business of saying no, which he roundly despised, was left to him. Maybe just a thin slice, however . . . something you could see through . . . .

“He can't have any,” said Cynthia.

“I can't believe I forgot!” said Marge, looking stricken. “I'm sorry, Tim! Of course, we have homemade gingersnaps, I know you like those. Rebecca Jane, please fetch the gingersnaps for Father Tim, they're on the bottom shelf.”

The four-year-old toddled off, happy with her mission.

Chocolate mocha cake with raspberry filling versus gingersnaps from the bottom shelf . . . .

Clearly, the much-discussed and controversial affliction from which St. Paul had prayed thrice to be delivered had been diabetes.