These High, Green Hills (15 page)

“Cynthia ... ”

“I know you were frantic, and I don’t blame you. I should have told you again this morning, but you see, even
I
forgot! I didn’t remember my one o‘clock at Trent School until nine-thirty, and it’s a four-hour drive! I flew down the highway. I’m telling you, if they had nailed me for speeding, I would be on bread and water in solitary confinement in some little town that’s not even on the map!

“I screeched to the door practically on the dot of one, and you should have seen the children, Timothy! They brought flowers, they’d made posters, one little girl brought apple jelly from her grandmother’s tree and wrote a poem for the lady author. Nearly everyone had drawn pictures of Violet. I can’t wait for you to see them, some are better than mine!

“If I hadn’t shown up, it would have been terrible, they had looked forward to it so much. We sat on the floor and read and talked and had a wonderful time for two whole hours, and Violet was her best-behaved in years.

“And then I had to start home and I was famished because I’d gone without lunch, and when I stopped for a hamburger, I took a wrong turn and drove an hour in the opposite direction.

“It was horrible, horrid, I can’t tell you. I wanted to stop and call you, but I thought it would be best to spend time driving, because I
told
you I’d be late. Finally, I did stop and call—it was six-thirty-but there was no answer.”

“I was combing your house and trying to keep myself calm,” he said.

“I’m so sorry, darling, but I did tell you I was going. I did! I was very specific. We were sitting at the kitchen table when I told you just the other morning ... but Timothy, you must not have been listening.”

So that was the penalty for not listening—mortal terror.

Actually, he seemed to recall that she’d mentioned Trent School, but beyond that, he drew a blank. “Must you do this again, these school visits?”

“Yes.” There was a note of finality in her voice, and he didn’t press the issue.

But even if she
had
told him, she owed him one, he could say that. Tomorrow, he would ask her to talk to Sadie Baxter.

“No way,” said Cynthia.

“Please.”

“You’re the priest, Timothy, I’m merely the deacon. This is a job for the top dog.”

You owe me, he wanted to say, but didn’t. “I can’t do it,” he said flatly.

“You’re scared.”

“You’re right.”

“So who can we get to do it?”

“If I had an answer to that, I wouldn’t be here practically begging on my knees.”

“You’re cute when you’re desperate.”

“You’re so good at this sort of thing ... ”

“At what? Asking people to change their ways, give up familiar habits?”

“Habits maintained at the possible expense of human life?”

Cynthia frowned. He had her there, he could tell.

“Oh, poop,” she said. “I’ll do it.”

He sat down, immeasurably relieved.

“But you owe me,” she said, narrowing her blue eyes in that way he’d come to know as meaning business.

It happened on the fourteenth day of Advent, the date marked on the calendar to take his Buick to Lew Boyd for a tune-up and muffler. Nor was it a day to be walking around without a car. He might have stopped by the house and borrowed Cynthia’s, but no, he had pressed toward the office from the service station, his head bent into the first falling snow of the season.

Ron Malcolm slowed down, pulled to the curb, and lowered his window. “Father! Good morning. Been wanting to ask when our computer system’s going in.”

“After Christmas!” he snapped.

Ron blanched. “Want a ride?”

No, he did not want a ride. If he had wanted a ride, he would have a ride.

He looked into the face of one of the most loyal parishioners on earth, suddenly feeling like two cents with a hole in it. “Sorry, my friend. The very mention of that computer system is like gall in a wound. I need to grow up, get with it.”

“I understand. We hooked one up in my construction company right before I retired. Actually, that’s why I retired.”

“That bad, huh?”

“Something like getting gored by a bull, in slow motion.”

The snow was melting on his hatless head. “Got time for a cup of coffee at the Grill?” He went around the car and opened the door, and slid in with his Hope House building committee chairman.

“Speaking of retiring,” said Ron, as he pulled away from the curb, “I guess that’s something you’re thinking about.”

“It certainly isn’t. I never think about it.” The unbidden coldness came into his voice again. If he couldn’t control his peevish tongue, who could?

They drove in silence until Ron found a parking place across the street from the Grill.

“Thinking about it isn’t so bad ...” said Ron, turning off the ignition, “once you get the habit of doing it.”

“Maybe.” Why should his retirement be anyone’s concern? If Lord’s Chapel wanted him to leave, that was one thing. But retiring was his own blasted business.

Hadn’t Churchill begun writing
A History of the English-Speaking Peoples
while in his eighties? Hadn’t Eamon de Valera served as Ireland’s president when he was ninety-one? It was a litany he often recited to himself. And George Abbott, the Broadway legend—Good Lord, the man had married again at the age of ninety-six! What was all the blather about retirement? He despised the very word.

“Coffee straight up,” said Ron to Percy, “and make his a double.”

Just before noon, the phone rang. Emma handed him the receiver with patent distaste. It was the computer company.

“Father, we’ve had some schedule changes. Would it be all right if we come at two o‘clock today and get you up and running?”

He was sick of the whole affair. “Perfect!” he said, without consulting his secretary. “Come ahead!”

Emma winced when he told her. “No use to fret,” he declared. “We might as well get it behind us and enjoy the Christmas season.”

“And you might as well bring the dern thing in and have it ready when they get here.”

There was only one problem. The dern thing was in the trunk of his car.

He dialed Lew Boyd, but the line was busy. He was still getting a busy signal when Emma unwrapped her sandwich at the noon hour.

“Why don’t you take my car and run up there?” she asked. “It’s still got hay in it, but at least you could go and tell Lew to bring those boxes over here in his truck.”

Emma was a clear thinker, all right.

The wall clock said twelve-thirty when he arrived at the station, where Lew and Bailey Coffey were playing checkers with the phone off the hook.

“I’ve got to get something out of the trunk of my car,” he told Lew. “It’s three boxes, and I’d appreciate it if you could run them down to my office in your truck before two o‘clock. I’d take them in that big Olds out there, but it’s, ah, full of hay.”

Lew looked sheepish. “I hate to tell you, but I just sent Coot t‘ Wesley to pick up your muffler—in your Buick. Th’ rear end’s been lockin‘ up in my truck, and I can’t drive it ’til it’s fixed. Sendin‘ Coot in your car was th’ only way to get your part in here today.”

“Aha. What time will Coot be back?”

“I’d give ‘im a half hour if I was you,” said Bailey Coffey. “He hain’t been gone more’n ten minutes. Take a load off your feet.”

“Don’t mind if I do,” said the rector, perching on a vinyl-covered dinette chair and peering at the checkerboard.

Beyond the unwashed windows of the service station, the flakes spiraled down as in a snow globe.

He had given Coot thirty minutes, then forty-five. “Stopped off for a burrito, is my guess,” said Lew.

It was nearly two o‘clock when the phone rang. Lew Boyd turned white as a sheet.

“You’re lyin‘! You ain’t lyin’.... Call Bud and get ‘im to tow it in.”

Lew stared at the rector, who was checking the wall clock with mounting aggravation. “It’s your Buick,” said Lew, looking stricken.

“What about it?”

“Somebody rear-ended Coot after he pulled out of the parts place. Plowed right into ‘im.”

“Good grief!”

“I don’t know how t‘ tell you this, but them boxes in the trunk of your car ...”

He stood rooted to the spot.

“ ... they’re tore up pretty bad. He looked in there, said he couldn’t tell from jig what it was in ‘em, but said whatever it was is history.”

“Hallelujah!” He was shocked at what flew out of his mouth.

“What’s that?” said Lew.

“I said thank you!” He grabbed Lew’s hand and shook it. “Thank you, thank you!”

“I’m awful sorry, I cain’t tell you how—”

“No problem. Quite all right. Good. Fine. Excellent!” Knowing some insurance companies, it could take weeks on end, even months, to put things straight. His neck was out of the noose. Goodbye and good riddance!

The two men watched the rector roar out of the station in the lavender Oldsmobile.

Bailey Coffey shook his head. “Seem like he wanted to hug your neck for gettin‘ his car tore up.”

“Th‘ man is a saint,” said Lew, meaning it.

CHAPTER SIX