A Light in the Window Page 6

  He smiled, sensing an odd happiness welling up in her, even though tears began to roll down her cheeks. She did not try to stop them nor turn her face away but let them come freely.

  "All those years I might have known her! Might have skipped rope with her, or let her braid my hair, or told her my dreams! If I might just have seen her or touched her, my own flesh. There she was, all I'd ever wanted, yet God kept her from me...and replaced her with China Mae and Louella." She laughed through her tears.

  "Two for one," he said gently.

  "I have to believe He knew what He was doing."

  "You can count on it."

  "I had a great aunt in Arbourville. Maybe that's why Mama had the child there. A year and a half later, she married Papa...I don't suppose he ever knew...In another year and a half, she had me." Her breath caught. "Oh, I so wish I could have known my sister!"

  "I so wish she could have known you, Miss Sadie." He stood up and went to her and drew her from the chair and put his arms around her and held her like a child. "I love you," he said simply.

  She looked up at him, the tears shining in her eyes. "We're going to make the best of this thing."

  She pulled a handkerchief from her pocket and blew her nose. "Now, let's move on to what started all this in the first place. You are going to help me take these hats to Olivia Davenport, aren't you, Father?"

  "Absolutely"

  "Just think of the joy we'll have when we see her wearing them! You do think she'll wear them, don't you?"

  "I haven't the slightest doubt."

  "Can we take them this week?"

  "I'll have to see about renting a UHaul," he said, grinning.

  "Pshaw! We can get them all in my Plymouth. I have a trunk as big as a bathtub, and you'll do the driving."

  "Deal!"

  "I'm so glad to have a priest who minds me," she said.

  He turned left out of the Fernbank driveway and walked toward the construction site. Church Hill literally vibrated under his feet with the churn and tumult of heavy equipment, which at last had fair weather for operating.

  It was a wonder to him that the street wasn't thronged with onlookers, field trips from schools, and chartered buses from every point in the county. For there, under a perfectly blue and cloudless sky, lay an open wound in the earth, with more spectacular vehicles crawling upon it than one could count.

  He felt light as air. And no wonder—it was the first time in his life that he'd worn tennis shoes with his tab collar, though that was all the rage with Father Roland and his crowd in New Orleans. He'd been accustomed to running a few years behind the rest of the world, but he was going to make an effort to change that. He was tired of bringing up the rear in the march of civilization.

  The equipment crawled over the site like ants on a hill, except for two thundering yellow Cats, stationed at either end of a vast excavation. His attention was instantly riveted by their great maws that dipped into the earth and came up again, overfed with red clay. The arms of the machines swung around and dumped their loads onto a pile.

  A man pulled onto the site in a truck, got out, and threw up his hand. It was Ron Malcolm's boy, who had driven from Colorado to work on this job. Though Ed Malcolm was walking hurriedly toward the trailer, the rector caught up with him.

  "Ed, how's it going?" They shook hands.

  "Great, Father, just great. We're glad to have the good weather."

  "And we're glad to have you on this job."

  "Thanks, I appreciate that." Ed glanced anxiously at the trailer and then sprinted away. "See you around," he called over his shoulder.

  He'd take a look in the hole before he walked to the Grill for lunch. Recalling the plans, he knew the basement would house the kitchen, a composting drum, storage, a tenbed infirmary, and a small pharmacy.

  If he'd worn a hat, he would have removed it respectfully at the rim of the crater. The vast excavation appeared to penetrate Beijing, dug in clay that ranged in layers of color from blood red to purple to black to ochre. Were those layers like the rings of a tree, telling the age of this ancient hill?

  "You sonofa..." was all he heard as the arm of the machine thundered up from the hole, and he was jerked backward by his left shoulder.

  He stumbled, but before he could fall, he was spun around and Buck Leeper grabbed him by his lapel. His face was so close that he could feel the man's spittle when he shouted.

  "Do that again, Mister, and you'll eat my dirt. Got it? I got enough trouble without some fool lookin' to fall in my excavation. Now, leave my men alone and stay off my site."

  Leeper cursed and shoved him roughly away, then stalked toward the trailer.

  The rector had felt the man's raw power, as if he were part of the heavy equipment, some extension of it in human form. He stood rooted to the spot, shaken.

  "You look like you seen a ghost," said Percy.

  "I wish," he muttered. It had been years since anyone had muscled him around like Buck Leeper had just done.

  "Theys a paper in your booth. J.C. come early and left it for you, said look on page five."

  Percy peered intently at him. "Page...five..." He said this slowly, as if speaking to someone deaf as a stone.

  Sitting in the booth, he stirred his unsweetened tea as if it were poison. He couldn't think of anything he detested more than a glass of tea without a few spoonfuls of sugar.

  He glanced at the paper on the table but couldn't concentrate. He was remembering Louella's face when she stopped him at the front door.

  "We goan tell her 'bout Miss Olivia?"

  He had thought for a moment. "No. Something tells me we ought to wait."

  "If she fin' out I been knowin' all my days 'bout Miss Olivia bein' her kin, she goan be plenty mad and hurt. Law!" Louella had turned an odd, gray color.

  "Let's keep our peace," he had said. "And whatever you do, don't worry. It's going to work out."

  Frankly, he wasn't so sure.

  He continued to stir his tea, as if there might be something in there to stir.

  How would Miss Sadie feel toward Louella, knowing she had hidden that ancient secret about her mother? And what if they told Miss Sadie it was her own great niece who'd be wearing those hats?

  "You seen it yet?"

  The Muse editor tossed his battered briefcase on the seat and sat down heavily.

  "Seen what?"

  "Page five. Dadgummit, I told Percy to tell you to look on page five."

  He stared at the rector, disgruntled, until page five was located.

  "You probably know this, already, bein' her neighbor, but I wanted you to see how I wrote it up."

  The story appeared under a picture of Fancy Skinner's new beauty shop, the Hair House.

  J.C. tapped the headline with his stubby finger. "Right here," he said, "Local Woman Wins Critical Acclaim."

  He read the article silently.

  Cynthia Coppersmith, a local author and illustrator oj children's books, has been praised by reviewers for her new release, The Mouse in the Manger.

  Mrs. Coppersmoth, who lives on Wisteria Lane in the house that once belonged to her uncle, Joe Hadleigh, has been writing and drawing since she was ten years old, according to a news report released to the Mitjord library.

  Mrs. Copermoth's story about a mouse who attended the birth of the baby Jesus was called "a rare jewel" by one library journal, and another called it "a tiny masterpiece." Our library volunteers say, "This could be another medal winner."

  Avette Harris, our local library head, says the book is great for story hour, any time of year. "The only trouble," says Avette, "is that both our copies already have jam or something on the covers and we could do with a new batch."

  Mrs. Coppersmitj's book, Violet Goes Abroad, won a Davant medal jive years ago. It is just one in a series of books about her white cat, Violet, who also lives on Wistoria Lane. According to the titles oj the books, this cat has been to school, learned to play a piano and speak French, not to mention has visited th
e queen. The entire collection is at the library, so hurry on over.

  As the rector put the paper down, the editor leaned forward, obviously pleased. "I tried to give it a personal touch. What do you think?"

  Think? He couldn't think. His mind felt like it had been stirred with his teaspoon. "Great," he said, feebly. "Terrific. What else did the story at the library say?"

  "Said she liked to walk in the rain and eat peanut butterandbanana sandwiches. Said somethin' else, too, ah...let's see, oh, she likes to dance the rhumba. I thought all that was a little weird, so I left it out."

  "Good idea." His heart felt leaden.

  "I tried to call her for an interview, but th' machine said she was in..."

  "New York."

  "Right. Well, I gotta get outta here. The Presbyterians have a big story brewin'."

  The rector didn't look up.

  "Don't you want to know what it is?" asked J.C., wiping his face with the everpresent handkerchief.

  "Sure I do."

  "They're givin' away a Cadillac," said J.C.

  He was dumbfounded. "Doing what?"

  "Adios, hasta la vista" said J.C, creaking out of the vinyl seat with his bulging briefcase. "See you in the funny papers."

  If there was anything J.C. loved, it was going around town telling half a story to make sure somebody bought his newspaper.

  "Don't that beat all?" said Percy, who had heard J.C.'s announcement. "I never knew the Lord was in the car business."

  He went at once to the library and gave an astonished Avette Harris two twentydollar bills.

  "My!" she said, looking at him with admiration.

  "This is to replace those Mouse in the Manger books," he said.

  "I declare, we have tried and tried to clean those book covers. It's something just like jam, but it won't come off. We don't know what it is. You should see the things that happen to children's books, sometimes. We found a dead cricket the other day in Little Women, and it looked like lasagna in The Hungry Caterpillar."

  He nodded.

  "Isn't that Miss Coppersmith something? We're so proud of her, we could just bust."

  He smiled.

  "Of course, this is way too much money. Two little books don't cost forty dollars! Not yet, anyway."

  "If there's anything left," he said, "buy a box of candy and pass it around to the volunteers."

  He was on the sidewalk, headed toward the post office, when Avette caught up with him.

  "Oh, Father, when someone gives a book, we like to put a little book plate in the front that says who it's given by. What would you like yours to say?"

  He thought for a moment.

  "Just say, 'Given by Miss Coppersmith's neighbor.'"

  Peanut butterandbanana sandwiches? That had been Tommy Noles's favorite food. Tommy had subsisted on that very fare from fourth grade through high school, with an occasional side of grape jelly. Tommy liked his on white bread, with the bananas mashed flat into the peanut butter. He wondered how she liked hers.

  Barnabas stopped to sniff a rock.

  The rhumba! What an extraordinary thought. He would have thought the fox trot, if he had ever thought about it at all.

  He was struck by the endless number of things he hadn't thought about concerning Cynthia. Why had he never been more curious about her life, about her work? Where had she gone to school, for heaven's sake? And why hadn't he found out why she nearly died in a hospital? He'd even lacked the courtesy to ask lately about her nephew, who was as cherished as a son. It seemed a small thing to wonder, but what was his last name? He didn't even know what kind of work he did.

  She had asked him to pose for a wise man in The Mouse in the Manger, yet he'd never inquired about the finished book. Worse, he had never once read anything she had written.

  He had treated her, he realized, as if she didn't really exist.

  That realization was overwhelming to him. He'd believed what his parishioners had told him, that he was caring and nurturing. Yet, it was a lie. He wasn't really either of those things. The truth was, he was unutterably selfish and selfseeking, going his own way, doing his own pious thing. It was disgusting to him.

  How had he come this far without seeing himself for what he really was?

  How had God let him get away with this loathsome deception for so long?

  Barnabas lifted his leg against a tulip poplar.

  He believed he had never married because he was married to his calling. The truth was, he had a complete lack of the equipment demanded for truly loving.

  Perhaps he was like his father, after all, though he'd believed all these years that he had his mother's disposition. He had believed the friends and relatives and old Bishop Slade who had said, "Kind like his mother! Patient like his mother! Easygoing like his mother!"

  Yet, underneath all that show of sop and decency was a man utterly fixed on himself, on his own concerns. And underneath some shallow layer of seeming warmth and caring was a cold stratum of granite.

  The very last place he wanted to be day after tomorrow was in the pulpit. It was all a joke, and the joke was on him.

  •CHAPTER THREE•

  "YOU OUGHT TO LET FANCY GIVE YOU A HAIRCUT," said Mule Skinner over breakfast at the Grill. "Get you somethin' new goin'."

  "I've got enough going, thank you," said the rector, who was scheduled for two meetings, a noon invocation at the Rotary Club, a livermush delivery to Russell Jacks, and a visit to the construction site with Ron Malcolm.

  "You could take a little more off the sides, if you ask me," said Mule.

  "They ain't anybody askin' you," said Percy, handing a plate of toast to J.C.

  J.C. grabbed the toast and sopped his egg yolk. "If you promoted your realestate business like you're promotin' your wife's beauty shop, you'd be a millionaire."

  "Besides," said the rector, "I've been with Joe for thirteen going on fourteen years."

  "Well, that's the trouble," said Mule. "A man needs a change."

  Percy poured another round of coffee. "I hope you can look Joe Ivey in th' eye, th' way you're tryin' to rob 'im of his business."

  "Anyway," said J.C, "why would a man want to get a haircut from a woman?"

  "I guess you never heard of unisex," said Mule. "Fancy runs a unisex shop. That means she cuts anybody's hair, one sex as well as the other. You ought to let 'er have a go at you, in the meantime."

  "Where is she set up?" the rector inquired.

  "In th' basement where we had that big blowout for our twentyfifth. You ought to see it now—completely redecorated wall to wall, new pink carpet, you name it. Put in two sinks, in case she adds on a stylist."

  "Your neighbor still got that dog tied up next door?" Percy called from the grill.

  "That dog'll never let anybody near your basement," said J.C. "When it starts lungin' at somebody gettin' out of their car, that'll be enough right there to curl their hair."

  "That dog died," said Mule, scowling.

  "They'll probably get another one just like it," said J.C. "That's what usually happens."

  The rector checked his wristwatch. "Tell Fancy I wish her well. If Joe goes down with the flu this winter, I might consider it. I've got to get out of here. Catch you tomorrow."

  "I declare," said Mule as the local priest went out the door, "a little excitement starin' him right in the face, and he won't even spring for it."

  "You won't believe this," said Ron Malcolm, "but they've hit rock on the hill. Twelve feet of rock."

  "What does that mean?"

  "It means Buck Leeper is calling in a dynamite man. This'll set us back. They'll have to drill into the rock and set the dynamite at intervals. It'll be a series of explosions—blam, blam, blam—probably going on for more than a week."

  "Not good."

  "Once the rock is busted up, they'll have to excavate it out of there with a back hoe and a grab bucket. That's more time."

  "And more money."

  "By the way," said Ron, as if reading his mind,
"Buck is in Wesley today. I guess you won't be brokenhearted."

  He had decided not to tell Ron that the superintendent had shoved him around the other day; it was hardly worth repeating.

  The architect met them in the trailer. "I've been rethinking a couple of things, Father. I feel the chapel ceiling is too bland, too...uninspired. With your blessing, I'd like to enrich the vault. Here's what could happen."

  He unrolled a drawing and spread it out on a metal table.

  "What if we come in here with a herring-bone pattern using V-joint tongue-and-groove fir? Fir is native to these mountains, and the pattern would add to the overall beauty without being a visual distraction. Then we'd come in with a deep fir molding around the base of the vault. What do you think?"

  "I like it," said the rector.

  "Ditto," said Ron. "And we know a man and his son who could do an outstanding job of it, real native artisans."

  "Great! Native workmanship can add a lot of aesthetic value. Terrific."

  The architect was clearly excited about the new plan and shook hands gratefully with both men.

  "How's Buck working out for you?"

  "Couldn't be better," said Ron, eyeing the rector.

  "Tough break about striking rock. Well, I'm going to walk over the job and see what's happened since last week. Want to come?"

  "You go," said Father Tim. "I've got to make a call."

  The two men went out, letting a blast of stinging air into the trailer. He shivered as he sat down at the desk in Buck Leeper's ravaged swivel chair.

  "Hello, Avis? I'm running late. Could you put together a few things for me to pick up before you close? A pound of ground sirloin. Right. A gallon of milk. A pack of buns. No, not the whole wheat. Dooley won't eat anything brown." He still felt the blast of cold air along his shoulders.

  "While I'm at it, do you know where I can get a load of wood for the winter? Sure, I'll hold."

  While Avis laid the receiver down to help a customer, his eyes wandered to the desk blotter that contained a large calendar. He blinked.