A Light in the Window Read online

  As he opened the back door, a marvelous aroma greeted him. There was a pot on the stove, a casserole in the oven, and a note on the counter.

  Turn the oven off at 5 30, not a minit after. I hope you like it. plese share 1/2 the stew with your neighbor, yours sincerely, Puny.

  There it was. A perfect excuse to call and say he was coming over with hot, homemade stew.

  "Hello," her answering machine said brightly, "I'm sorry I can't talk to you in person, but Violet and I are in New York for awhile. Please leave a message and I'll get back to you. Thanks!"

  His heart pounded as he hung up the receiver.

  In New York?

  Not right next door, where he might have gone and had a talk with her and arranged a time for them to do the simple thing she asked.

  In New York.

  He felt an awful emptiness. Even the quality of the afternoon light seemed suddenly flat and dull.

  He heard Barnabas in the garage barking to go out, but he sat down on his stool at the counter and stared at the morning mail, not seeing it.

  When he stopped in to see the mayor and the renderings of the statue, she looked him up and down.

  "You're antsy," she said. "You ought to get you a chew of tobacco to work on. That's what Ray does, an it helps him every time."

  Get a haircut!

  See your neighbor!

  Loosen up!

  Take a laxative!

  Chew tobacco!

  Women were forever trying to tell him what to do. What he needed was the company of other men. Perhaps he should go hunting. But then, he'd never been hunting in his life.

  He saw himself stalking something through the woods, possibly a deer, which made him feel nauseated. Then he saw himself tripping over the gun and blowing his head off.

  No, he was not outfitted for stalking anything. And no wonder. His father had not only refused to take him hunting and fishing but refused to let him go with anyone else. He had ended up with his nose stuck in a book when he .might have been bagging a few quail with Tommy Noles.

  The truth was if he wanted male camaraderie, he'd have to get it in his private club—that finest of institutions known as the Main Street Grill.

  In the meantime, he would pour himself into his work as he hadn't done in years. And, he would mind his health with more spirit than ever. No, he was not ready to retire. Stuart had seen all along something he couldn't see. He had many more years left to serve, and that was what he wanted to do, desperately. If nothing else came of his feelings for Cynthia, he had realized, at last, that he wanted to go on, with more stamina and conviction than ever.

  He needed to look into Olivia's Biblereading group, which had become so popular that other churches in the diocese had requested bookings.

  He needed to make time for a Youth Choir supper and ferret out his final Bane and Blessing contribution, perhaps that lace cloth bought so long ago for the rectory by the old bishop's wife, which should fetch a nice sum.

  There was the visit to Absalom Greer coming up, the final touches required to pull together the Men's Prayer Breakfast, the slide show of his Ireland trip for the ECW and the choir, and the Francis of Assisi observance that would be held in the church gardens. He needed to prepare some remarks for the presentation of the fountain to be installed near the memorial roses.

  He needed, also, to get by and see Miss Pattie, and he absolutely had to check on Russell Jacks, their church sexton and Dooley's grandfather.

  Though it wasn't on his list of church matters, Dooley Barlowe must have clothes—at once. That meant an evening sorting through Dooley's closet, followed by an afternoon in Wesley.

  On top of everything else, of course, were the upcoming sermons. The one he preached on returning from Ireland had been like a crude raft launched upon the ocean; he had nearly swamped himself. That he could have gotten so rusty after two short months was astounding to him.

  "Why don't you use one you already done? Did?" Dooley had asked.

  Sermons, like manna, he replied, must be fresh. He'd once heard a priest say that he prepared his sermons up to a year in advance! He'd been incredulous.

  For him, making a sermon was like getting dressed in the mornings. As the Spirit moved, one put on what one felt like wearing that particular day. After all, who could preach effectively from a prepared sermon on joy when he might be feeling as dull as a post? No, he would not be tempted by prepared sermons any more than he might be tempted by the meatloaf Puny made eight days ago, sitting in the refrigerator in Saran Wrap.

  Soon, he wanted to preach on personal, as compared to institutional, salvation. Confessing Christ before others was an act of institutional salvation that most churchgoers had done long ago. He wanted to get at something more compelling, more lifechanging—the process of personal confession, of personal relationship with Christ. He also wanted to point out that being a priest no more assured him of heaven than being a chipmunk would assure him of nuts for winter.

  He realized he hadn't felt so strong in nearly a year. He would go home, put on his jogging suit, and take Barnabas for a run up Church Hill if the blasted rain would hold off long enough. Yesterday, the sun shone until everything he beheld revealed its dazzle. Then, today, the gray clouds stretched across the heavens like a canopy of steel.

  He had turned the corner toward the rectory when he saw it.

  A moving van was backed within inches of Cynthia's front door, barely missing the bushes she had so proudly twined last year with strings of Christmas lights.

  "Wait up!" he called, running. He reached the van just as two men came out with her drawing board.

  "What are you doing?" he asked hoarsely, feeling his heart thunder in his ears.

  "We're loadin' this van," said the man with a tattoo on his arm.

  "What for? Why are you loading this van when someone lives here? This is a permanent residence!"

  "Coppersmith. We're movin' a Coppersmith. And if we're goin' to make time, we gotta haul butt outta here."

  "Where? Where are you moving Miss Coppersmith?" He was afraid to hear the answer.

  "New York City," they said in unison, disappearing into the van with the drawing board.

  "Eat you some grits," said Percy.

  "Eat! Eat! Is that all anyone can think of? I'm not here to eat." He came closer to cursing than he had come in years. It was right there, waiting to be spoken, but he turned from it, ashen.

  "Dadgum," said Percy quietly.

  He sat frozen in the booth, thankful that Emma was out with a toothache. If he had been trapped today in that minuscule office with Emma Newland, he couldn't have hacked it. He felt stripped, exposed, not wanting anyone to speak to him.

  Eat. Well, if that's not what he came here to do, what was he doing here? The tea looked insipid to him. He went to the counter and took his mug off the rack.

  "I'll have coffee. Half decaf."

  Percy filled the mug without a word.

  "Sorry."

  Percy nodded. He would make it up to him, the rector thought. He had no right to bite the head off one of his staunchest friends. He felt humiliated. Was this what life was going to be like because things hadn't gone to suit him?

  The salty old evangelist, Vance Havner, once preached at his mother's church and told a story he'd never forgotten. "How're you?" the preacher had asked one of his congregation. "Oh, pretty good, under the circumstances," was the reply. "What I want to know," said Havner, peering intently at his audience, "is what is a Christian doing under the circumstances?"

  What, indeed, was he doing under the circumstances?

  Straighten me out, Lord, he prayed, before I become an embarrassment to you and everybody else.

  "Only the mediocre man is always at his best," Somerset Maugham had said.

  Aha, he thought, hoping to find some consolation in this.

  He did not find any "Have you started on the family research?" his cousin Walter wanted to know when he called from New Jersey.

  "Haven'
t touched it," he said. "Too much going on."

  "Like what?"

  He reeled off his list dutifully, thinking it sounded pretty flat after all. He needed a big wedding, perhaps, or a baptism. He always loved celebrations that filled the church with flowers and relatives and that little hum of excitement and love that gave special witness to the Holy Spirit.

  "What about your neighbor?"

  "What about her?"

  "Blast, Timothy! You know what I mean. Tell all, or I'll put Katherine on. She'll be unmerciful."

  Lord knows, that was the truth. "She moved to New York."

  "What?" Why did his cousin sound so personally affronted? What was it to him that she moved to New York? "Why?"

  "I don't have the particulars."

  "Well, if you don't have the particulars, who does?"

  "Walter..."

  "You let her slip away, didn't you, old boy? Right through your fingers. As if you could afford such a thing..."

  "What do you mean, as if I could afford..."

  "How many men your age, in your income bracket, would be pursued by a goodlooking woman with all her wits about her? She sounded like a prize to me, but if you're so hellbent on growing old alone, with no one to..."

  "Walter," he said sternly, "put Katherine on."

  "Hello, Teds!" She had called him by this silly nickname for twenty years, which she had thankfully shortened from the early version, "Teddy Bear."

  "You wicked girl, how are you?"

  "Oh, fine, I suppose, as long as Walter goes into the city. But he's been home for days with a runny nose. You'd think it was terminal. I've fetched and carried like a slave."

  "There's a good wife."

  "Speaking of wife, how's your neighbor?" She had never owned the slightest streak of discretion.

  "Moved to New York!" He was surprised to hear himself say this almost gaily, with a certain enthusiasm. There. That was the solution right there. Just toss it off as if it were nothing. A couple of times, and he'd have it down pat.

  "Timothy!" she exclaimed. "How could you?"

  "Katherine, I refuse to discuss it, and that's that. The whole thing has been beyond me, is beyond me, and promises to stay beyond me. So, please. Back off."

  "Back off! Ha! You forget who you're talking to. This is me, Teds, who does not believe that life consists of backing off but of forging ahead! Did you have a fight?"

  "We did not. I hardly even saw her after I came home."

  "Well, you big dope, that's the problem right there."

  He felt weary of all this, as if he'd like to fall prostrate on the carpet and not bother getting up.

  The sun had been shining brilliantly for days, and the intense blue sky he'd looked for was there, cloudless, perfect.

  Up on the hill, where the ruins of the old church had lain for so many years, something new, something restorative was going on. He could hear engines gunning, hammers ringing, voices shouting back and forth. It was not a clamor. It was, instead, the sound of excitement, even of happiness.

  He remembered the summer he and Tommy Noles had hung over the fence surrounding a gaping hole that, in the spring, became the First National Bank. As much as he loved baseball, he had wanted nothing more than to watch the sober gray edifice being constructed, stone upon stone. The sight of an entire building coming together before their very eyes was awesome, better than a movie, better than a hundred movies.

  He would have given anything, anything he owned or would ever own, to get in the cab of one of those cranes and muscle something around, something huge, something gigantic.

  He would visit Russell and Betty tomorrow, then he'd walk up to the job site and take a look. That he'd steer clear of Leeper went without saying.

  Betty Craig looked ten years younger and had lost weight into the bargain.

  "Betty! You look like a girl. What's your secret? I demand to be told."

  "I don't know!" she said, blushing. "I guess it's that Mr. Jacks is bein' such a help around here. I can't imagine what I ever did without him."

  "You can't mean it."

  "Oh, but I do! Just look at these shelves he built in the hall."

  Putting Russell Jacks into Betty Craig's care had beefi a brilliant move. It had also kept him from going back to his derelict house in the scrap yard and taking Dooley with him.

  Betty took the rector by the arm and led him along the little hallway. "And look here in my room how he made that nice headboard I always wanted and built me a little round table to go by the bed."

  Betty's clock radio and a Bible were sitting on the table the old sexton had built. Amazing!

  "And see," she said, leading him to the window, "how he's made those nice beds with the pansies for me to look at of a mornin'!"

  "A beautiful sight! He's completely well, then, is he?"

  "Oh, yes, sir, and I just hate it, I just hate it! Don't tell a soul I said so, but once he goes, they'll want me to nurse Miss Pattie, and I don't believe I'm up to that, oh, Father..." Betty was wringing her hands. She had gone from blithe to mournful in only moments.

  "Let's cross that bridge when we get to it," he said.

  "Do you know the latest on Miss Pattie?"

  How could Emma have skipped over that one? "What's the latest?"

  "Naked on the roof."

  "No."

  "Oh, yes. Used to crawl out on the roof in that little pink wrapper, but not anymore. No sirree, now it's her birthday suit"

  He put his arm around her shoulder as they walked up the hall.

  He was as anxious as Betty for Russell to stay in this sunny home with the starched curtains. Something would have to be done to keep him from going back to the scrap yard, but he didn't know what.

  She sighed. "Well, come and see him. He'll want to see you. Oh, dear, you didn't bring the livermush. He's nearly had a fit for livermush since you left."

  "I confess I forgot. Two months without livermush is a stretch. Of course, you could have asked Puny to bring some from Wesley. She would have done it gladly."

  "Well, he'll be happy to get it when it comes. You know, Father, it's good to do without something that means a lot to you."

  "Is it, Betty?" he asked, sincerely wanting to know.

  "Oh, yes. Then when you get it again, you appreciate it more."

  But he didn't know if he would ever get it again, if he'd ever have the chance to appreciate it more.

  "Are you all right?" she asked.

  "I am," he said and smiled.

  "Got 'er runnin' like a top," said Lew Boyd, wiping his hands on a rag. "You want t' sell 'er, I'll make you an offer."

  Lew Boyd no more wanted to buy his Buick than he wanted to go bungee jumping in Wesley. He always said that to his customers. He felt it was part of his service to make them feel good about the vehicle he'd just worked on.

  "What would you give me for it, Lew?" He assumed what might be taken for his pulpit look.

  "Well," said Lew, "I'd...ah, have to think about it."

  He tried not to laugh until he got around the monument.

  The weather was turning colder, the flame of autumn had torched the red maples along Lilac Road, and now and again he caught the scent of wood smoke. It was his favorite perfume, right up there with horse manure and new-mown hay. And where would he get wood to make his own smoke this year? Parishioners were good about supplying everything from produce for his table to bulbs for his garden, but wood was not something that often came his way. As smart as Avis was about finding a load of corn, surely he'd know where to get a load of wood.

  He was barely winded when he turned onto Church Hill Drive from Lilac Road and headed toward Fernbank.

  Louella had called and asked him to come. Was Miss Sadie sick? Something worse than sick, Louella said ominously.

  When Louella answered the door, she didn't speak but shook her head as if words could not suffice.

  In Miss Sadies upstairs bedroom, he saw hats piled on the bed and hatboxes stacked in the comers and o
n the dresser. Miss Sadie was sitting in the wing chair where she had told him the last tragic episode of her love story He was surprised to realize her feet did not touch the floor; she might have been a doll sitting there. Like Louella, she didn't speak.

  She handed him a yellowed certificate, and he sat down in the wing chair across from hers.

  This certifies that Lydia Anne, child of Father (unknown) and Mother, Rachel Amelia Livingstone, was born in Arbourville, Jackson County, North Carolina, on the 14th day of March, 1901, and that the birth is recorded as Certificate No. 5417.

  He looked up slowly to meet her eyes, but she was looking out the window.

  He found he didn't wish to speak, either. Three people in one household had been struck dumb by the appearance of a piece of paper, a piece of plain truth. Rachel Livingstone was the maiden name of Miss Sadie's mother.

  Clearly, she had sent for him so that he might come and do something, but he could do nothing. He looked at her face in profile, in the unforgiving autumn light, and saw a strange peace. Indeed, the room seemed wrapped in a peace that he began to enter.

  They sat for a long time in a silence that he found deeply comforting. He could not remember ever sitting like this with someone, except following a death. Perhaps this hard thing was for her a type of death; the mother whom she had adored as a saint had at last revealed the secret of her illegitimate child. It had been a family of secrets, a life of secrets.

  "We went up in the attic yesterday, looking for Mama's hats. I said, 'Louella, let's look in this old dresser. We never really went through Mama's things.' We found the birth certificate folded up in a handkerchief bag with a little pair of socks.

  "Last night when I couldn't sleep, I remembered Mama going out with her basket for the poor. Twice a week, every week, she went and always came back so sad, so sad. Finally, I quit begging to go with her She was going to see my older sister," she said, looking at him in amazement. "Just think...I had a sister."