A Light in the Window Read online

  He had prayed for years to find the spiritual gall, the faith, to let go completely of his notes. That prayer had been answered, he knew it. He felt some oppressive weight fly off him.

  Tommy's mother said, "Nobody's perfect."

  "But if I had come down on Dooley, reinforced the rules..."

  "It might have worked—we can't be sure. What's done is done, Father. It's hard being a parent."

  Truer words were never spoken.

  He stood by the bed of the stillunconscious boy and held hands with his parents and prayed. Dooley sat in the waiting room and stared out the window.

  "Let him go in for a moment," he implored the nurse. "They're best friends."

  When Dooley left Tommy's room, the rector searched the boy's face for information. A place the boy had long and fiercely guarded in himself had somehow been broken into. A process that might have taken years had instead taken minutes.

  He sat on Dooley's bed. "There's something you need to know."

  Dooley looked up from the veterinary book. "What's 'at?"

  "I love you," he said.

  He laid it all out, exactly as it was, and told him why going away to school was important and that he believed in him and in his special skills and abilities and so did Miss Sadie and his teachers.

  "It's going to be a busy summer. You'll need some tutoring, we'll make a couple of trips to visit schools—and you'll want to spend time with Tommy. He's going to have a tough time adjusting."

  He spoke his heart to the boy and waited for the script he had worked out in his mind to be executed: Dooley would say he wasn't going to do it, and a battle of wills would ensue.

  Dooley stared at the book in his lap.

  Perhaps he might do a little more selling, treat it as a real campaign, but no, he had made it plain and simple and he rested his case.

  He leaned over and gave the boy a hug. He didn't flinch or move away.

  He went to the house in the woods, finding it at the end of a rough iane, and saw Buck Leeper's truck sitting in the yard.

  Except for trips along the creekbank to see Homeless Hobbes, he seldom ventured off the beaten path. He stood for a moment in the yard, looking into the woods and hearing bird song.

  The smell of sour ashes in a cold fireplace carried through the screened door as he stepped onto the porch and knocked.

  Buck came down the hallway carrying a glass in his hand. He didn't walk to the door but stopped in the middle of the room. He swayed slightly on his feet. "What do you want?"

  "I want to talk to you."

  He stood, blocking the light from the other end of the hall, a dark, featureless apparition whose face the rector couldn't read. He swirled the liquid in his glass and swallowed it down. "It's open."

  Father Tim opened the door and stepped inside. He still couldn't see Buck's face. "I'd like to apologize."

  There was a pause. "Help yourself."

  "You asked me to keep the boy off the job site, and I didn't speak to him about it. I meant to, but I didn't. I'm sorry for the turmoil it brought to all concerned. I regret it deeply."

  "The road to hell is paved with good intentions. Isn't that the saying? You ought to know."

  Buck flicked his cigarette into the fireplace. "Sit down," he said, moving into the light from the windows.

  He might have sat in the chair near the door but instinctively walked to the sofa, going deeper into the private territory of a private man. Buck left the room and came back with a bottle, then took a chair opposite him and poured a glass of vodka. He sat hunched over, his elbows on his knees, holding the bottle. "You came to talk? Talk."

  He hadn't come to talk; he had come to apologize, "I looked for you at the hospital this afternoon."

  Buck drank from the glass. "I was there this morning."

  "Right."

  There was a long silence. The sour smell of the fireplace ashes permeated the room.

  "Drink?" said Buck, tipping the neck of the bottle toward him.

  "No, thanks."

  "Put hair on your chest." When Buck Leeper laughed, it growled up from him like something boiling on a stove. "Why don't preachers give a crap when it gets down to where the rubber hits the road?"

  "What do you mean?"

  "You preach eternal life but don't give a crap about this life."

  "I do care about this life," he said.

  "Not enough to watch out for a couple of stupid kids who're lookin' to get killed." His eyes narrowed. "You should have been all over their butts about it."

  "Have you ever meant to do something right and failed?"

  Buck drained the glass and cursed.

  "Have you? You talk to me."

  Buck got up and walked to the windows. Keeping his back to the rector, he looked out into the woods. The silence lasted a long time, then he said, "I got a kid killed."

  Through the windows, the rector saw a squirrel leap from one branch to another. He didn't speak.

  "It was my first construction job. I was seventeen. I was crazy about those machines. The power in them, even the colors, excited me. My old man turned me loose with a back hoe. He said if I didn't do good, he'd kick my butt all the way to the Mississippi." Buck set his glass on the windowsill and lit a cigarette, cursing his father.

  "Then I took th' kid out on the job one night and put him in th' cab, and showed him the hole I'd been digging, and let him dig a bucketful. It had rained for a week, and the ground was mush. I'd pulled the hoe too close to the edge of the hole and when we raised the boom with the dirt on it, the dirt caved away under the stabilizer."

  He took a long drag on the cigarette.

  "The machine pitched into the hole, and I jumped out. But it...knocked the kid off and pinned him under. When we got the hoe off, he was..."

  Buck wheeled around from the window and slung the bottle at the fireplace chimney, where it smashed against the rock. Shards of glass rained to the floor and rattled across the hardwood.

  Tears coursed down his face. "That kid," Buck said hoarsely, "was my brother."

  The violent storm of weeping and cursing went on around him for hours, as he sat it out with the man who had nowhere left to go with his pain.

  At one point, Buck picked up a wooden chair and hurled that, too, at the stone of the fireplace, smashing it apart. The rector flinched as a leg careened over the floor and landed at his feet. Any fool, he thought, would run from this violent place, but he could not run.

  The bile of bitterness and suffering and impotence and hatred poured from a man who was fighting for his life, as he cursed God, his father, and then, himself.

  Yet, as the venom spewed out of Leeper, a deep peace entered into the rector. He didn't try to understand what was happening, and he didn't try to speak. He only sat, praying silently, and went through it with him.

  It was ten o'clock when he left Buck Leeper sleeping on the sofa where he had fallen, and went out the door and down the steps to his car.

  "You won't believe this," said Emma. "Three guesses what Velma and Percy are goin' to do."

  Emma had two infernally favorite games: Three Guesses and Last Go Trade. He despised both.

  "Do I have to?"

  "Yes," she said, sounding final.

  "They're ah..." He had never been good at this sort of thing. "They're going to Hawaii!" he said with abandon.

  She looked shocked. "How did you guess?"

  "You mean they are? Good heavens! I simply picked the most farfetched thing I could think of."

  "That's exactly where they're goin'. You must have ESP Their kids passed th' hat and collected enough money for a cruise. Velma called me last night. Does that beat all? Velma Mosely has never been outside the county, as far as I know, except to visit her cousin—and then she got carsick."

  Percy and Velma in Hawaii? That did, indeed, beat all.

  Emma answered the phone.

  "Hold on a minute, Evie."

  Emma held the receiver against her bosom. "Do you want to talk to
Evie?" she whispered.

  No, he didn't want to talk to Evie. What could he possibly do? Go by after lunch and watch Miss Pattie stare out the window? Hold Evie's hand and pray, once again? He didn't think he could bear to see any more suffering. No, he didn't want to talk to Evie.

  He reached for the phone. "Hello, Evie."

  "Hello, Father! For a change, I'm not calling to ask you for anything..."

  "That's all right," he said, hearing an odd lightness in her voice. "Ask me for something."

  "I just wanted to say that Mother had a lucid moment this morning and wanted me to call and give you a message."

  "She did?"

  "She wanted me to call," said Evie, choking up, "and say that she loves you."

  He felt as if he were punched in the chest. "Please tell her I love her, too." He did, of course. He'd merely forgotten it for a moment. "Tell her I'll come by after lunch and give her a hug."

  He hung up the phone, beaming.

  "What's Miss Pattie done now?" asked Emma.

  Percy called to report how lease negotiations had gone with Edith's lawyer. Apparently, the town inspector hadn't found much to be concerned about, outside the rotten joists and flooring. Minor repair was needed to correct the roof leak, and the washroom plumbing would have to be replaced. Bottom line, the Grill was set to reoccupy the premises on August 15.

  "I'll bring you one of them wild shirts," said Percy.

  "Father?" It was Tommy's mother. "Tommy is trying to talk."

  He ran with Barnabas from the office and met Dooley coming out of school alone with his book bag. He thought he had never seen him look so desolate.

  "Tommy's trying to talk," he said, swallowing hard.

  Dooley's face was transformed. If the rector had never witnessed pure joy, he had now.

  With Barnabas straining ahead of them on the leash, they ran all the way home.

  •CHAPTER EIGHTEEN •

  ON A SCALE OF ONE TO TEN, his energy level was hovering around twoandahalf.

  Age, blast it, and diabetes. And no chocolate cake when a man would give his eyeteeth for a slice.

  He thought of taking Cynthia to Wesley for a decent dinner in that place with the green tablecloths, but recalled Edith Mallory's brown cigarette smoldering in the ashtray and didn't think he could stomach it.

  Every day after school, he was driving Dooley to the hospital, where Tommy's recovery was brutally slow.

  Tommy was stringing words together now, but when he arrived at the end of a sentence, he had forgotten what he said. Blinding headaches accompanied all the repercussions of his accident and the surgery.

  The rector sat at his desk in the office, staring through the high windows at the trees. Maybe he should take vitamins.

  "Miss Sadie," he said when she answered the phone, "I'm feeling an old, wornout clergyman. May I walk up and hear the story of the ballroom ceiling? I'll bring lunch."

  "Don't bring pizza," she said, "it gives me heartburn!" Apparently, even Miss Sadie had tried the new drivethrough pizza franchise on the highway. "Let's have something plain, like sandwiches on white bread— you bring the filling."

  An hour later, carrying a sack from The Local, he climbed the hill to Fernbank and delivered a bag containing sliced turkey, sliced ham, and a jar of honey mustard into the hands of his hostess.

  "We forgot to tell you, Father—we don't like olive loaf." She peered into the bag suspiciously. "Is this olive loaf?"

  "No, indeed."

  "Good! I said, 'What if he brings olive loaf?' And Louella said, 'We'll eat it anyway. It's the right thing to do!'"

  Throughout lunch, they clinked the ice in their tea glasses, laughed over nothing at all, and Louella called him "honey."

  During dessert, which was a plate of Fig Newtons, he told them how well they were looking, and they, in turn, commented on his jacket and his good color and his trim size, and before he knew it, he wasn't feeling like an old clergyman anymore; he was feeling like a boy.

  Miss Sadie pushed open the door to the ballroom with her cane.

  "It's the first day I haven't had workmen in here, and I can't tell you how glad I am for the peace.

  "I don't know how we're making it through all the uproar, except by the grace of God. Have you ever had your house torn up, Father?"

  "I've had a washing machine flood the kitchen."

  "Poshtosh! You've led a sheltered life."

  She took his arm as they stood and surveyed the scene.

  "Sadie Baxter's folly, that's what it is. But it's going to be more beautiful than it was the evening President Wilson danced right over there with my lovely mother."

  He felt the sense of new life, of renovation, that permeated the vast room. There was freshness to it, and hope. "Has Olivia seen what's going on?"

  "Oh, no! And she won't, until the day of the reception. I pray she'll think she's stepped into heaven itself. Oh, Father, in all my life, I've never wanted something to be so perfect! What do you think?"

  "I think your prayers are being answered," he said, looking at the freshly restored windows that ran from ceiling to floor and the scaffolding built to lift workmen to the water damage on the ceiling and walls.

  A film of sanding dust clung to everything, including the white canvas over the floor and the furniture, so that the whole room was a dreamlike shade of ivory in the earlyafternoon light. The only color was on the ceiling, where robed angels burst from clouds and swept among the cherubim with blazing authority.

  "Tell me what I can do to help," he said. Somehow, offering to bake a ham didn't seem right.

  "Not one thing. The caterer from Charlotte is doing it all—food, flowers, music, chairs. And the cost? Through the ceiling, no pun intended. I just closed my eyes and jumped in."

  "I suppose you'll be having a splendid new gown?"

  "Certainly not! I'm too old for new gowns. There's not enough time left to wear them out, you see."

  He put his arm around her shoulder.

  "Let's go to my bedroom, so we can relax while we talk. But first, I want you to take a look at something."

  "Yes, ma'am," he said.

  She pointed her cane toward the ceiling. "See the angel just over there? That one with the smile—not all angels smile, you know."

  "On the far right...with the rose in her hand?"

  "It's the only single rose on the ceiling. All the other roses are in garlands or swags. Now look how her robe flows behind her—and see her feet peeping out? Aren't they beautiful?"

  "Exquisite! In fact, she's my handsdown favorite."

  "What do you think of the wings?" she asked.

  "One might feel the very air moving through them."

  "Carry that in your mind's eye," she said, taking his arm.

  Pleased at the prospect of a good story, they went up the stairs as contented as children.

  "See down there, Father?"

  They peered through her bedroom window, into grounds leading to the orchard.

  "That's the old wash house. Our home wasn't even near to being finished when we came to this hill, so we all moved into the wash house like a troop of gypsies.

  "China Mae had the room on the back, about the size of the hall cupboard at Lord's Chapel—and not one floorboard was there in any square inch of that little place! Just bare dirt, swept clean and hard as tile.

  "It was close living, Father, like sardines in a can, but it was the happiest time I ever knew. After a long day at the lumberyard, Papa would draw up to that big fireplace, and Mama would sit and do her sewing, and I would be making doll clothes as hard as I could go."

  She laughed gently and took his arm. "Let's sit down before we fall down."

  They sat in the old wing chairs, facing each other, where she had confided so many painful secrets.

  "Oh, the smell of cooking that China Mae could stir up in that wash house! If anything ever smelled better than chicken and dumplings, I don't know what it is—unless it's cornbread baked in an iron skillet—or
a deepdish apple pie!"

  "Don't even start, Miss Sadie..."

  "China Mae's little room didn't have a thing but a wood stove and our pots and pans and her cot—there was a Bible, too, even though she couldn't read—and a peg for her clothes and a tin washtub hanging on the wall. We all used the same outhouse—at different times, of course!

  "I think living that way got on Mama's nerves something awful, but when our house was finished and we moved in, I cried. I did. I could have gone right on living in the wash house for the rest of my life.

  "I remember Papa started talking about his master plan.

  "He said the first thing to do was get the orchards planted.

  "The second thing to do was get the ballroom ceiling painted.

  "And the third thing was have Mr. Woodrow Wilson come for a visit. He didn't want any cabinet members or senators, and nobody from Congress—he wanted the president!"

  "Good thinking!"

  "When the orchards were under way, Papa started sending letters to Italy. He was writing off for someone to come and paint the ballroom ceiling, you see.

  "A man in Asheville wanted to paint it, but Papa saw his drawings and didn't like them at all. He kept saying, 'The artist must be Italian.'

  "In case someone really came from Italy, I learned three words out of a book. I had no idea what they meant, but I was very proud and made China Mae say them too. Tempo i denaro!' Do you know what that means, Father?"

  "I don't have a clue," he said, smiling.

  "Good! You'll find out later. Well, now, to make a long story short..."

  "Don't do that," he said.

  She laughed. "All this was a long time ago, and I was too young to pay attention to details. I just know that Papa wrote a lot of letters and got a lot of sample drawings in envelopes with strange stamps. Then he had scaffolding built in the ballroom—just like what's down there now, except it was wood.

  "One day two strangers showed up on the porch—a short, dark man with a happy face, and a thin, dark boy with a sad face.