In This Mountain Read online

  “Warming up!” he said of the weather, and was glad to hear such words from his mouth.

  “Oui! J’adore le printemps! Oh, excuse me, Father, I always speak French when I’m excited!”

  “I saw Françoise yesterday, she looks strong and happy.” Hélène had managed to bring her mother from Boston and install her at Hope House, where, though plagued by several complications of heart disease, she was flourishing.

  “Mother loves your visits, Father, thank you for all you and Cynthia do for us. One day, I promise I shall repay you in some important way. Absolument!”

  “Don’t even think it! Merely observing your happiness here gives us a double portion.”

  “Three new students, Father! That’s fifteen, now, and I think I mustn’t accept more. I never thought I’d be able to say such a thing.” Hélène consulted her watch. “Ça, par exemple! It’s nearly time for Sophie Hawthorne’s eleven o’clock.”

  Hélène’s piano teaching had introduced a pleasing new dimension to Mitford. He felt personally proud of her success, though he’d had nothing at all to do with it.

  “Please help yourself to your roses when they bloom, Father, I must tell you I’m grateful to live in the home of a gardener! Well, à bientôt!”

  “Au revoir, Hélène! Oh, and merci!” He estimated that his French vocabulary now included a whopping ten or twelve words.

  She gave a fluttering wave, then darted across the driveway and over the lawn of the rectory and up the steps. He smiled. Precisely like a hare!

  As he walked into the hall from the front door, he observed his wife standing by the living room window.

  “I saw you talking with Hélène, I thought she might eat you with a spoon on the very spot where you stood!”

  “Spying on me!” he said.

  “It’s true, darling, but only while washing a smudge off the windowpane. I think she’s mad for you, but in an altogether decent way, of course.”

  He judged Cynthia’s eyes to be precisely the color of chicory blossoms, soon to appear in the fields around Mitford. He set the bread in a chair and bounded to her and took her in his arms. “Why would you be jealous of me, for goodness’ sake?”

  He was laughing as he said it, but he really wanted to know, needed to know; he suddenly craved to hear her say something that would knock his socks off. She was good at that…

  “But I’m not jealous of you at all!”

  “You’re not?”

  “Of course not! Hélène is a lovely woman who’s scarcely ever known a decent man until she met her neighbor. Which is exactly the way I felt when I started popping through the hedge.”

  Ah. Popping through the hedge. That had been the modus operandi of their courtship; he felt positively nostalgic just hearing her mention the hedge.

  “Besides, Timothy, I know you’ll love me ’til death do us part, and then forever.”

  She put her arms around his neck and he kissed her tenderly, inhaling her warm scent.

  But since she’d brought it up, he would have liked her to be jealous—if only a little.

  He broke the news as they sat at the kitchen table.

  “Not again!” wailed Puny. “Y’all jis’ went off a little bit ago, I cain’t even think about you goin’ off ag’in!”

  “Just for a year,” he said, feeling like a traitor.

  “Yessir, Rev’ren’, seems like we ain’t hardly got settled down from th’ last time you went off,” said Harley. Harley Welch was his friend, his handyman, his brother in the Lord, his neighbor who lived in Hélène Pringle’s basement.

  “We’re going to work with children who’ve been terribly hurt by their circumstances,” Cynthia explained. “It’s a wonderful program that will help families find healing.”

  “But you got children right here,” said Puny, struggling to understand. “I mean, they’re not really hurt or anything, even if I did spank Sassy somethin’ awful for playin’ with matches.”

  Puny’s red-haired twins, Sissy and Sassy, had been part of the Kavanagh household since birth. Now they usually came home each day to the yellow house, from Mitford School’s second grade.

  Father Tim glanced at Cynthia, who was clearly sobered by the gloomy response to their news. Didn’t they have a perfect right to do whatever they pleased? Didn’t they deserve the freedom to pursue God’s plan for their lives? And here were two lower lips positively hanging to the floor.

  Harley shook his head and sighed.

  “Now, listen!” Father Tim said in his pulpit voice.

  Aha! That was the ticket, that got their attention. From now on, it would be tell, don’t ask!

  “We’re going to Tennessee, but we can’t do it without you. No, indeed, we’d be in a pickle. In truth, if the Lord hadn’t provided the two of you to care for things around here, I doubt if we’d be able to answer this call.

  “Harley, you’re to keep the two yards mowed, pruned up, and fertilized.

  “Puny, you’re to do the outstanding job you did while we were in Whitecap! We’ll come home on frequent weekends as hungry as bears, so load up the refrigerator and don’t spare the tomato aspic!

  “Harley…”

  “Yessir?” Harley had snapped to.

  “Be sure and take Dooley’s granpaw his livermush, as Dooley will be at Meadowgate with the Owens this summer. Further, I’d like you to go out to the farm now and again and let Marge Owen feed you some chicken pie, she said she’d look forward to it.”

  Harley stood bolt upright from the chair. “Yessir, Rev’rend!” He thought Harley might give a salute.

  “Puny! You can handle the job?”

  “Oh, yessir, I can, and be glad to!” Color was back in her cheeks and adrenaline was pumping; the place was humming again, as if power had been restored after a blackout.

  “Well, then, go to it, and thank God for both of you!”

  His wife turned and looked at him, smiling. “Darling,” she murmured with evident admiration, “you could have been a Marine!”

  “For you,” said Cynthia, going about her daily task of mail call.

  He eagerly opened the envelope postmarked from a federal prison.

  Dear Father:

  Thanks for your letter of last month. I haven’t responded as quickly as usual, for a great deal is going on here. God is working in very unexpected ways.

  The short of it is this:

  After eight years, I am being released on good behavior. My hand is trembling as I write this, as I didn’t know whether I would ever be able to share such glorious good news.

  It is my hope that I might be welcome in Mitford. If you could help me find a place there, I will be always grateful and will work hard to earn your trust, and the trust of everyone in Mitford. As I have said many times, I never felt so at home anywhere else. I will need employment and will appreciate it if you will keep your eyes open, though I know there’s not much of a job market for convicted felons.

  Pray for me, Father, as I go through these next few weeks, I should be arriving in Mitford, if that is all right with you, the middle of June.

  I don’t know what to tell you about my job skills, as I would never again be accepted within the university system. My main interests are living this merciful new life for Christ, and reading. I can play a little softball and restore antique cars, which, as I look at what I just wrote, is a pretty pathetic resume. I would be eager and willing to learn a trade, anything short of breaking wild horses…well, even that.

  Enclosed is the monthly check for the Children’s Hospital. I have saved nearly all the rest of my income from working in the prison laundry, and so will have some means, however limited, to make a go of things.

  Please note the new address they’ve assigned me until my release. I look forward with hope to your letter.

  Yours in the One Who is our faithful shield and buckler,

  George Gaynor

  “You’re beaming,” she said.

  “George Gaynor is being released from prison
.”

  “Thanks be to God!”

  “He’s coming to live in Mitford. We must find him a job.”

  “Yes! Terrific! And a place to live,” she said, her wheels already turning.

  He snapped the red leash on Barnabas and walked up the street, whistling. He hadn’t surprised himself by whistling in a very long time, probably not since his jaunts on the beach at Whitecap.

  He was in a visiting mood. If Homeless Hobbes hadn’t moved to the country when the Creek community was uprooted by the shopping center, he’d trot over there for a chinwag. He often missed Homeless’s comfortable companionship and hard-won wisdom. In truth, his visits to the shack on the creek had once been a great getaway….

  He hailed Avis Packard, who was smoking a cigarette in front of The Local; he stuck his head in the door of the Collar Button and spoke to the Collar Button man, who was taking inventory and looking grumpy; he veered into the Sweet Stuff Bakery and said hello to Winnie Kendall, averting his eyes from the bake case and trying not to inhale too deeply as her husband, Thomas, removed a tray of chocolate chip cookies from the oven.

  Walking on, he hooked the leash around the iron leg of the bench outside the Grill and went in for a large order of fries and chicken tenders, plus a Little Debbie snack cake. Then, clutching the bag, he trotted to the old Porter place, a.k.a. the town museum, to visit Uncle Billy and Miss Rose.

  Uncle Billy Watson hoisted himself from the chair with his cane, shuffled to the back door, and looked out, grinning. “Law, if hit ain’t th’ preacher! Rose, come an’ look, hit’s th’ preacher!”

  He called to his schizophrenic wife of more than fifty years, who was nearly stone deaf but refused to wear hearing aids. “There’s aids enough in this world!” was her common reply.

  Miss Rose appeared behind her husband, wearing a chenille bathrobe and a turban adorned with…maybe a mashed-flat silk tiger lily…or was it a gladiolus?

  “You leave that dog outside,” she shouted. The gladiolus bobbed as she spoke.

  “Yes ma’am,” he said, “I was going to do that.”

  “And don’t strap him to my lawn chairs, he’ll haul them off every whichaway.”

  “Yes ma’am.”

  He attached his patient dog to the post on the porch stoop and went in with the sack from the Grill. “A little something to add to your supper menu,” he said. He loved to bring fries to Uncle Billy, though he had to monitor Miss Rose or she would eat the whole caboodle and leave her husband holding the bag.

  “What is it?” asked the old woman, looking especially fierce.

  “Chicken, fries—”

  “Bill Watson won’t eat chicken thighs!” She snatched the bag from Father Tim’s hand and bolted down the hallway. “He likes white meat!”

  “I be dadgum,” said her husband, sounding plaintive. “Rose! You come back!”

  They heard the bedroom door slam and the lock click.

  “Eh, law,” sighed Uncle Billy.

  “Well, well,” said Father Tim, not knowing what else to say.

  “Some days is worse than others, don’t you know.”

  Father Tim thought Uncle Billy looked exceedingly fragile, like a dry leaf blown on the wind.

  “You feel like going down to the Grill before they close? We’ll sit there in peace and you can have whatever you like. I’ll tip in a chocolate milkshake.”

  Uncle Billy’s filmy eyes appeared to sparkle. “I’d be beholden to you, yessir, I would.”

  “And I’d be beholden to you,” said Father Tim, eager for his old friend’s company.

  Walking down the street with Bill Watson was slow going, but he didn’t mind. After all, he had nowhere to hurry to, and Barnabas seemed happy enough.

  “We’un’s’ll be a whole lot older when we git there,” said Uncle Billy.

  He was helping Uncle Billy negotiate the curb when he looked up and saw her getting out of the Lincoln, several buildings away. It never failed; no matter how often he’d seen her over the years, it was always the same: His heart hammered, his mouth went dry, and he wanted to run for his life.

  She glanced his way and appeared to stare for a moment as he helped Uncle Billy along the pavement. He turned his head at once, and when he looked again, Edith Mallory had disappeared into the Sweet Stuff Bakery.

  On his way home from Uncle Billy’s, where Miss Rose was still cloistered in the bedroom, he dodged into Happy Endings.

  Margaret Ann, the orange cat, was sprawled on the counter by the register; Hope Winchester sat on a stool reading…he couldn’t see what.

  “What’s new?” he asked, thinking that Hope looked unusually attractive today, rather like a youthful Jane Austen character dressed in jeans.

  “Something old,” she said, holding up the book for his view. “Angela Thirkell!”

  “Anything on the rare books shelf that I haven’t seen?”

  “I have something coming next week, you’ll find it uncommonly egregious.”

  “Give me a clue.”

  “Oh, I’d like it to be…”—she thought for a moment—“a peripeteia.”

  “Aha,” he said. “Call me when it comes in. And by the way, a friend of ours is moving to town in June, he’ll be needing a job. If you hear of anything…”

  “What are his skills?” Hope adjusted her tortoiseshell-rim glasses.

  The truth about George Gaynor would be out the moment he hit town, so Father Tim might as well start the ball rolling.

  “Do you remember the Man in the Attic?”

  “Why, yes! Who could forget? And he’s coming to live in Mitford?” Her eyes fairly shone.

  If she was this excited about a convicted jewel thief living among them, he thought, maybe the rest of the village would feel the same way. In truth, the whole town had taken to George Gaynor for the way he’d turned himself in to authorities during a Sunday morning service at Lord’s Chapel. He recalled that Mitford School’s first grade had sent drawings for George’s jail cell, and his unusual confession of wrongdoing had been lauded in several local sermons.

  He took Hope’s bright countenance as a good sign.

  Why go for a medical checkup now? Why not a day or two before their trip to Tennessee? That way, everything would be up-to-the-minute. He trotted to the downstairs powder room where he stashed his glucometer, opened the kit, shot the lance into the tip of his left forefinger, and spilled the drop of blood onto a test strip.

  Barnabas came in and sat at his feet, curious.

  “Hello, buddy.”

  He slid the strip into the glucometer and waited for the readout: 180.

  Not good. But not terribly bad, either. He could bring it back into line.

  He went to the study, called Hoppy’s office, and rescheduled.

  “Mail call! Mail call!”

  Cynthia came down the hall and into the study, trailed by Violet, and dumped the pile onto the sofa. Her letter opener, in permanent residence by the potted gardenia on the coffee table, was snatched up and held at the ready.

  “OK, darling. Bill, bill, fan letter, fan letter, junk mail, junk mail, junk mail, ugh, junk mail, fan letter, Southern Living, fan letter…oh, my.”

  “Oh, my, what?” he asked, taking a sip of tea.

  “This is from the awards commission.” Violet leaped onto the sofa and settled in Cynthia’s lap.

  “Awards commission…”

  “Yes, of the Davant Medal. No one in New York has said anything to me. Surely they would have said something….”

  She opened the letter slowly and began to read.

  “‘Dear Ms. Coppersmith:

  “‘We are delighted, indeed, to inform you that your most recent Violet book, Violet Goes to the Beach, is being awarded the prestigious Davant Medal, which will be presented at a formal dinner on July 14, at the Plaza Hotel in New York.

  “‘Congratulations!

  “‘We are thrilled that this will be your second Davant Medal, and though this acknowledgment of your outstanding work
is no surprise at all to a distinguished awards committee of your peers, we do hope it will be a most pleasant surprise to you.’”

  His wife looked faint.

  “Oh, Timothy…”

  He reached out to her as she burst into tears.

  Local Pastor’s Wife

  Grabs Big Award

  He rolled up the latest editon of the Muse, put on his cap, and, ignoring his dog, went at a pace down Wisteria Lane and hooked a right on Main Street.

  He blew past the bakery, made the front windows rattle in the two-story office building, and charged into the Grill, where he marched to the rear booth, opened the door to the back stairs, and bolted up them two at a time.

  “J.C.,” he said, speaking through clenched teeth.

  The editor looked up from his layout table. “What?”

  He shook the rolled-up newspaper. “My wife is not a pastor’s wife….” He regretted that he was puffing and blowing.

  “You could’ve fooled me,” said J.C., looking bewildered.

  “She is her own person, she has a name, and I would greatly appreciate seeing you use it henceforth. She has just been given one of the most distinguished awards in publishing, and you have demeaned this high honor by removing her name from the headline and casting her as my wife!”

  “Are you drinkin’? She is your wife!”

  Father Tim lowered his voice. “This award was not won as a pastor’s wife, it was won as a hardworking writer and illustrator who has slaved over a drawing board for more than twenty years and has earned the right to be called by her own name.”

  “I called her by her name, dadblame it.”

  “In the headline.” J.C. glared at him. “You’re goin’ to fall down with a stroke if you don’t watch out.”

  He saw that his hands were trembling, put them behind his back, and drew a deep breath.

  “I just wanted you to know,” he said, and turned around and went down the stairs and through the Grill and out to the street, where he stopped and wiped his forehead and wondered what, exactly, had just happened to him.

  “Hey, Granpaw!”

  “Hey, Granpaw!”