These High, Green Hills (23 page)

He wasn’t seeing much of his wife.

What with working on her book, visiting schools, turning the rectory into a villa, and giving a tea for a hundred and twenty women, which, at the last minute, had numbered a hundred and thirty-one, she hardly had time to roll her hair, much less sit and talk at the breakfast table.

At the office, he uncovered his Royal manual, bent on giving a hundred percent to his sermon, which was largely inspired by a saintly challenge. “Preach the Gospel at all times,” St. Francis had said. “If necessary, use words.”

“Guess what?” asked his secretary.

“What?” he snapped.

“Oooh. Touchy.”

“Try again.”

“It’s something we just got. Three guesses.”

“Come on!” Emma said. “Be a sport, for Pete’s sake.”

“Would it be asking too much for you to give me a clue?”

“It’s brown.”

“Ah. That’s helpful. A new suit for Harold.”

“You know he hates to wear a suit.”

“Runoff from the Clark River.”

“Please.”

“I give up.”

“You always give up. OK, it’s a dog.”

He had never seen Emma Newland beam. Smile, maybe. Laugh, certainly. But not beam.

“You? Harold? A
dog
?”

“A brown poodle named Snickers.”

“A poodle! What does Harold think of that?”

“He thinks all dogs should live outside. He was raised in the country, you know, and that’s how country people think.”

“So, where’s Snickers going to live?” he inquired.

“Inside!” she said, looking determined.

He walked up to Fernbank after he left the office, to check on Miss Sadie’s house. He could sense the worry when he talked with her on the phone. Had that dead tree crashed onto the porch during a recent storm? And what about the old washhouse—could rain have come in where the handmade bricks had fallen out of the chimney, and ruined the pine table that belonged to her mother?

“I’ll go,” he said.

“Oh, Father, I promise I wasn’t asking you to run up there. I was just thinking out loud.”

“Glad to do it,” he said, meaning it.

He veered off Church Hill Road along a path through the ferns on the steeply pitched bank. The path, which led from the road to the orchard, had been worn by locals over the past few years, owing to Miss Sadie’s invitation to the town. “Come and get them!” she said annually, unable to have the apples picked.

He was halfway up the bank and had stopped to rest by a huge oak when he saw movement ahead, among the ferns. It looked like a young boy, who was facing away from him and digging.

He watched intently. The boy was digging ferns with their root balls, and putting them into a sack, looking constantly to the left and right, but not behind. Clearly, he thought he was well-protected from behind by the tree.

Certain people, he recalled, often dug ferns and rhododendron on someone else’s property and sold them to nurseries who looked the other way. He knew, too, about the flourishing traffic in galax leaves, and local moss, which was peeled off the ground or pulled from logs in large, unbroken sheets and sold to florists.

The ways and means of making a living in these mountains had never been easy, he knew that, but let an incident like this go by, and Fernbank could be stripped of the very resource that inspired its name.

As he started to move away from the tree, he saw the boy take off his hat. Long hair spilled down and fell over his shoulders. Actually, it appeared to be a girl, a girl wearing boy’s clothes, or even a man’s clothes, given the way they hung on her. She had sashed the oversized shirt with vines.

“Hello,” he called.

She whirled around, letting the mattock drop. He saw the fear in her eyes, then the anger.

“I ain’t done nothin‘,” she said harshly, standing her ground as he walked toward her. He saw that she noted his clerical collar.

The point was to speak kindly, he thought. She might have been a wild rabbit for the look in her eyes and the fierce way she glared at him. He knew a thing or two about rabbits, having raised them as a boy. They didn’t like sudden moves.

“These ferns are pretty special.”

“I don’t care nothin‘ about ’em.”

She backed away from him and put her foot on the mattock handle.

He stopped about a yard from her and glanced toward the sack.

“I’ll knock you in th‘ head if you lay hands on my sack. I don’t care if you are a preacher.”

“Miss Sadie Baxter’s ferns are a town treasure.” He spoke as if he had all the time in the world. If he had a stick, he would have whittled it with his pocket knife. “These banks have been covered with the wild cinnamon fern for many years—there’s not another stand like it anywhere, I hear.”

“Don’t mean nothin‘ t’ me,” she said, edging toward the sack.

“Ferns grow in families, like most other kinds of plants. Actually, there are four different fern families ... and look at this. See how the leaves curl at the tip of the stem and curve around? That’s called a fiddlehead.”

She was going to grab the mattock and sack and run for it, he could tell by the language of her movements.

“I’d personally appreciate if it you’d replant everything you just dug,” he said kindly. “In fact, I’ll help you do it. And I won’t say anything to anybody about it, unless I see you here again.”

She reached down and grabbed the mattock and dived toward the sack. Quick as lightning, she threw it over her shoulder and was away, racing down the bank like a hare.

He saw that she was barefoot and that she’d left her hat lying at his feet.

Had he done or said the right thing? He didn’t know. He had never liked the pressure to do and say the right thing because he was a preacher. He was also a human being, blast it, and he stumbled along like the rest of humankind.

He squinted his eyes and watched her disappear over the curve of the green bank.

She had not looked back.

What they needed, he thought, was an adventure, some recreation. Hadn’t they agreed on that very thing not long after their honeymoon? He had boldly declared they’d do something interesting every weekend, even in the dead of winter. In fact, they’d shaken hands on it.

But what were they doing? Why, working, of course. And falling into bed like two logs, with scarcely a fare-thee-well.

Once again, he’d let the puzzling mystery of recreation hold him back. What was fun, after all? And how did one go about having it?

He’d been so fired up the day they shook hands; the possibilities had seemed endless. Now, all he could think of was going out to dinner in Wesley. But they’d done that twice. Besides, anybody could go out to dinner. What was needed here was something fresh and new, something unexpected, to captivate the imagination of his highly imaginative wife.

Then again, if she was so highly imaginative, why not ask her to think of something?

He would not. It was his own bounden duty to come up with a solution.

He walked around his rosebushes. He pulled a wild burdock out of the daylilies. He sat on the stone bench and stared at a tree. Maybe he should ask somebody for an idea. But who?

Not Emma Newland, who thought fun was watching TV game shows and nagging Harold to eat his vegetables.

Not Mule Skinner, who thought fun was clipping cents-off coupons and going to yard sales.

Not Ron and Wilma Malcolm, who thought fun was packing their car to the roof and driving nonstop to Boca Raton, where the temperatures would roast a pork loin.

Come to think of it, he didn’t know anybody who was good at having fun, except, of course, Omer Cunningham, who clearly knew how to have a good time—and all for the price of a few gallons of gas.

Oh, well. He would think about it. He would make some notes. He might go to the library. In the meantime, he knew he couldn’t count on reading Wordsworth aloud forever. Somehow, that had been just dandy while they were going steady, but now it didn’t go over so well. Cynthia’s gaze wandered around the room, she fidgeted, she got up and made notes that had absolutely nothing to do with Wordsworth.

Even Barnabas, once so attracted to the romantic poets, went to sleep before the end of an opening stanza.

There was nothing for it but to come up with a whole new ball game in the area of recreation.

He stopped by the rectory for his checkbook, in transit to the Children’s Hospital in Wesley.

Puny Guthrie looked exceedingly plump, not to mention smug and self-satisfied. Everything about her had gained a certain largesse—her hair seemed redder and curlier, her freckles bigger, her eyes greener.

“Guess what?” she said, turning from the sink where she was peeling potatoes.

“I promise I can’t guess,” he said.

“Remember you said you’d play with it, an‘ all, when I brought it to work with me?”

“Now, Puny ...”

“Well, th‘ only thing is—it’s not an it.”

“It’s not?”

“It’s
twins
!”

“No!”

“Yes!” she exclaimed, looking joyful.

He thumped down into a chair at the kitchen table.

She rubbed her stomach, giggling. “You’ll have two t‘ play with! Don’t that beat all?”

“You can say that again,” he replied, loosening his collar.

“Dearest,” she said, before popping through the hedge to her drawing board, “why don’t you come with me to Hastings School tomorrow? You never take a real day off, and besides, it would be
fun
!”

Fun?
“Sure!” he said without hesitation.

Emma could cover for him. They also had an office answering machine, didn’t they? Besides, it was true—he hardly ever took a real day off.

“I’ll be reading
Violet Visits the Queen
. Oh—I just thought of something!—you could read the part of the palace guard!”

He looked dazed.