In This Mountain Page 6

  Hal and marge Owen invite you and Harley out to Meadowgate Farm for homemade chicken pie any Sunday iin July. Take my word for it, you definitely don’t want to miss this great treat.

  In closing ii think back on the portion of psalm 126 which ii quoted at our parting eight years ago. he that goeth forth and weepeth, bearing precious seed, shall doubtless come again with rejoicing, bringing his sheaves with him. how good it is that God would have you come again, my friend…this time with rejoicing.

  in the love of Him Who Loved Us fiirst

  On his way to the Grill, a strange thing happened. Out of the blue, he had an idea that was so perfect, so right, that he couldn’t imagine why he’d never thought of it before. Of course. Of course! The only problem was, how would he present it to Dooley?

  “I got to do somethin’ to rake in business.”

  Percy slid into the booth, looking…Father Tim pondered what Percy was looking…Percy was looking old, that’s what; about like the rest of the crowd in the rear booth. He sucked up his double chin.

  “Maybe I ought t’ mess around with th’ menu,” said Percy, “an’ come up with a special I could run th’ same day ever’ week.”

  “Gizzards!” said Mule.

  “What about gizzards?”

  “I’ve told you for years that gizzards is th’ answer to linin’ your pockets.”

  “Don’t talk to me about gizzards, dadgummit! They’re in th’ same category as what goes over th’ fence last. You’ll never see me sellin’ gizzards.”

  “To make it in th’ restaurant business,” said Mule, “you got to set your personal preferences aside. Gizzards are a big draw.”

  “He’s right,” said J.C. “You can sell gizzards in this town. This is a gizzard kind of town.”

  Mule swigged his coffee. “All you got to do is put out a sign and see what happens.”

  Percy looked skeptical. “What kind of sign?”

  “Just a plain, ordinary sign. Write it up yourself an’ put it in th’ window, no big deal.”

  “When me an’ Velma retire at th’ end of th’ year, I want to go out in th’ black, maybe send ’er to Washington to see th’ cherry blossoms, she’s never seen th’ cherry blossoms.”

  “That’s what gizzards are about,” said Mule.

  “What d’you mean?”

  “Gizzards’ll get some cash flow in this place.”

  “Seem like chicken livers would draw a better crowd,” said Percy.

  “Livers tie up too much capital.” J.C. was hammering down on country ham, eggs over easy, and a side of yogurt. “Too much cost involved with livers. You want to go where the investment’s low and the profit’s high.”

  Mule looked at J.C. with some admiration. “You been readin’ th’ Wall Street Journal again.”

  “What would I put on th’ sign?” asked Percy.

  “Here’s what I’d put,” said Mule. “Gizzards Today.”

  “That’s it? Gizzards Today?”

  “That says it all right there. Like you say, run your gizzard special once a week, maybe on…” Mule drummed his fingers on the table, thinking. “Let’s see…”

  “Tuesday!” said J.C. “Tuesday would be good for gizzards. You wouldn’t want to start out on Monday with gizzards, that’d be too early in th’ week. And Wednesday you’d want something…”

  “More upbeat,” said Mule.

  Father Tim buttered the last of his toast. “Right!”

  “Wednesday could be your lasagna day,” said J.C. “I’d pay good money for some lasagna in this town.”

  There was a long, pondering silence, broken only by a belch. Everyone looked at Mule. “’Scuse me,” he said.

  “Do y’all eat gizzards?” Percy inquired of the table.

  “Not in this lifetime,” said J.C.

  “No way,” said Mule.

  “I pass,” said Father Tim. “I ate a gizzard in first grade, that was enough for me.”

  Percy frowned. “I don’t get it. You’re some of my best reg’lars—why should I go to sellin’ somethin’ y’all won’t eat?”

  “We’re a different demographic,” said J.C.

  “Oh,” said Percy. “So how many gizzards would go in a servin,’ do you think?”

  “How many chicken tenders d’you put in a serving?”

  “Six,” said Percy. “Which is one too many for th’ price.”

  “So, OK, as gizzards are way less meat than tenders, I’d offer fifteen, sixteen gizzards, minimum.”

  J.C. sopped his egg yolk with a microwave biscuit. “Be sure you batter ’em good, fry ’em crisp, an’ serve with a side of dippin’ sauce.”

  Percy looked sober for a moment, then suddenly brightened. “Fifteen gizzards, two bucks. What d’you think?”

  “I think Velma’s going to D.C.,” said Father Tim.

  A brief silence was filled with the sound of the dishwasher running full throttle behind the rear booth. Accustomed to its gyrations, the occupants of the booth no longer noticed that the wash cycle occasioned a rhythmic tremor in the floorboards.

  “So how do you think your jewel thief will go over?” asked J.C.

  “He’s not my jewel thief,” snapped Father Tim.

  “It was your church attic he hid out in,” said Percy.

  “I think he’ll go over just fine. He’s paid his debt to society in full, but better than that, he’s a redeemed man with a strong faith.”

  Silence.

  Chewing.

  Slurping.

  “I hope,” said Father Tim, “that you’ll extend the hand of fellowship to him.” There. That’s all he had to say about it.

  Mule nodded. “No problem. It’s th’ right thing to do.”

  More chewing.

  “So how come you’re not goin’ to Rwanda or someplace like that?” asked Percy.

  “Hoppy wouldn’t allow it.” Hoppy would never have considered such a thing. Father Tim knew his limitations and they were numerous.

  “What about th’ kids in your own backyard? You ever thought of doin’ somethin’ for them?”

  The fact that he’d supported the Children’s Hospital in Wesley for twenty years was his own business; he never talked about it. “Tennessee is our own backyard.” How he ever ended up with this bunch of turkeys was more than he could fathom.

  “We’ll miss you,” said Mule, clapping him on the shoulder. “I won’t hardly know what to order around here.”

  Father Tim laughed, suddenly forgiving. He thought he might miss them, too, though the possibility seemed a tad on the remote side.

  “Here comes Hamp Floyd,” said J.C. “Hide your wallet.”

  “What for?”

  “Th’ town needs a new fire truck.”

  “Seems like a good cause,” said Father Tim. He took out his billfold and removed a ten.

  “Th’ town’s got th’ money for a standard truck, but Hamp wants a few bells an’ whistles.”

  “Aha.”

  “Plus, he won’t have anything to do with a red truck,” said J.C.

  “Seems like a fire chief would like red. Besides, what other color is there?”

  “Yellow. He’s holdin’ out for yellow.”

  A yellow fire truck? Father Tim put the ten back in his billfold and pulled out a five.

  The usually talkative Puny moved around the kitchen without once acknowledging his presence. He might have been a bump on a log as he sat at the kitchen island drinking tea.

  He peered over his newspaper.

  He knew that pinched brow of hers and the soulful cast of her eyes; Puny Guthrie wore her heart on her sleeve, she couldn’t hide anything from him. He should ask her straight out what was going on, but then again…maybe he didn’t want to know.

  He dropped his gaze to the story about the grave sites of Union soldiers presumed to exist on Edith Mallory’s sprawling ridge property above Mitford. Coot Hendrick, their unofficial mayor pro-tem and great-grandson of Mitford’s founder, wanted the graves identified and
available to public view, as did several preservationists in the area. Edith Mallory, secure behind a combination of electric fences and electronic gates, continued to deny access to anybody, much less what she called in a letter to the editor, “the morbid and profane.”

  Though the controversy between the town and Edith Mallory had dragged on for two or three years, most people didn’t give a hoot either way. Who wanted to see graves? And especially Yankee graves? The legend that the soldiers were shot in cold blood by the town’s founder might have gone over big a hundred years ago, but in today’s world, said another letter to the editor, it was murder, plain and simple, and “nothing to be proud of.”

  As usual, the Muse printed a sidebar containing all the verses of a song said to have been composed by Mitford’s founder, Hezekiah Hendrick, and believed by Coot Hendrick and his elderly mother to be proof positive that the graves could be located on the Mallory property.

  Shot five yankees a-runin’ from th’ war

  Caught ’em in a cornfield

  Sleeping by a f’ar

  Now they’ll not run no more, oh

  They’ll not run no more!

  Dug five graves

  With a mattock and a hoe

  Buried ’em in th’ ground

  Before th’ first snow

  Now they’ll not run no more, oh

  They’ll not run no more!

  Editor’s note: Mrs. Hendrick, who enjoys singing the song passed down through her family, believes the first verse may have originally said, caught ’em in my cornfield, adding weight to the theory that five Yankee soldiers do, indeed, lie buried on the Mallory property.

  “Brouhaha!” exclaimed Father Tim.

  This comment elicited no response from his longtime house help, who remained silent as a tomb as she peeled apples for a pie.

  “Puny, what’s on your mind?”

  She turned from the sink and looked at him oddly, then burst into tears.

  See there? He should have kept his big mouth shut.

  Puny pulled up her apron and hid her face. “I had th’ awfulest dream!”

  “Tell me everything,” he said. “Come and sit here.” He patted the stool beside him.

  “I cain’t talk if I sit,” she said, wiping her eyes. “Th’ dream was so lifelike, I thought it was real. It’s worried me to death all day.”

  “What did you dream?”

  “It was about you. I didn’t know if I should tell you. I mean, I want to tell you, but I don’t know if I should, because it’s like if I tell you, it might really happen.” She drew her apron over her face again. “You were so sick.”

  “Puny, Puny, it was just a dream, don’t cry, everything’s fine! I’m healthy as a horse!” He got off the stool and went to her and put his arm around her solid shoulders.

  “I jis’ couldn’t stand it if anything happened to you, you’re th’ only granpaw th’ girls’ll ever have….” She blew her nose on the handkerchief he handed her.

  “What was the dream about?”

  “In th’ dream I begged you to go to the doctor and Cynthia did, too, and you wouldn’t go and you got real bad off an’…”

  “And what?”

  “An’ maybe died, I cain’t remember th’ end, but it seemed like you died, Joe Joe woke me up because I was cryin’.”

  “Let it go from your mind, it was only a dream. You were probably sleeping on your back. I have bad dreams if I sleep on my back.”

  “I was sleepin’ on my side, I always sleep on my side,” she assured him.

  “So you probably ate too late, that’ll do it every time.”

  “No!” she said, shaking her head. “All I had was fruit salad, you cain’t have bad dreams on fruit salad.”

  He sighed.

  “I feel like this dream meant somethin’. I think you’re supposed to go to Dr. Hopper and see if you’re OK.”

  “Well…,” he said, not wanting to make a big production over a dream.

  “Well ain’t good enough,” she said flatly. “You need to do this for Cynthia. An’ for Sissy an’ Sassy!”

  “OK,” he said. “I’ll go.”

  “You could pick up th’ phone and make an appointment this minute.”

  Emma Newland made over, except with freckles. “As a matter of fact, I have an appointment coming up in…let’s see, three days! How’s that?”

  She looked at him intently, red-eyed. “Father…”

  “Yes?”

  “I think th’ Lord wants you to do this.”

  “Well, then, that settles it,” he said earnestly.

  “Dearest, you need a haircut.”

  Get a haircut. See a doctor. Was there no end to it? “It can wait awhile.”

  “You look like a Los Angeles film director.”

  “What do you know about Los Angeles film directors?”

  “Television, darling. Remember television? Film directors appear on things like Oscar night, which you and I recently watched for a full nine minutes before we fell asleep with our clothes on.”

  “Ah.”

  “So when can you do it?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Yes, but you know the alternative. If you don’t get it done professionally, that means I must do it, or Dooley.” His wife raised one eyebrow and grinned.

  The very thought made him weak in the knees. Both had positively butchered him once or twice before, and Puny wouldn’t touch his hair with a ten-foot pole. But the last thing he wanted was to get caught in the fray between Joe Ivey and Fancy Skinner. No way would he slink in the back door of the Sweet Stuff Bakery and risk a run-in with Fancy Skinner; Fancy would curl his hair right then and there. In truth, rumor had it that she often looked down from her upstairs aerie to see who came and went to Joe Ivey, and was taking names. Emma said Fancy had seen Marcie Guthrie, to name only one, go turncoat. For a measly two bucks less, Marcie had popped in to Joe and was said to have exited the place looking like J. C. Hogan. “Let ’em go downstairs!” Fancy snapped, nearly burning Emma’s ear off with the curling iron. “Anybody can save two dollars and spend two months wishin’ they hadn’t!”

  “I’ll run over to Wesley one of these days,” he said, trying to mean it.

  He was sitting on the sofa in the study when he heard Puny and his wife discussing their neighbor.

  “I don’t think she’s the marrying kind,” said Cynthia, rinsing mixed greens for a salad.

  “Yes, but she’s a nice-lookin’ woman, seems it’d be good for her to have a husband.”

  “Maybe. But who on earth would it be? I mean, this is Mitford!”

  “Watch it!” he called into the kitchen. “Mitford, after all, is where you found yours truly.”

  Puny giggled. “I think she’s kind of soft on th’ father.”

  “Yes, well,” said his wife, “she can get over it!”

  There! He was thrilled to hear this. Feeling expansive, he kicked off his loafers.

  “What about the Collar Button man?” asked Puny, setting dinner plates on the island.

  “I don’t think he’s the marrying kind.”

  “Mr. Omer,” said Puny. “He has a nice, big smile.”

  “Omer Cunningham is a teddy bear, but not her sort. Darling, who are the bachelors in Mitford?”

  “Ummm. Let’s see. Avis Packard!”

  “Too strange!” said his wife, rolling her eyes.

  “Scott Murphy!” he called from the study.

  “Timothy! Scott and Miss Pringle wouldn’t be suited in the least. What are you thinking?”

  “I’m not trying to make matches here, you asked me who the bachelors are. I’d like to see Scott find someone, though, if you have any ideas on the distaff side.”

  “Then, of course,” said Cynthia, dismissing his agenda for Scott Murphy, “there’s Andrew Gregory’s brother-in-law, Tony, a handsome fellow, and Catholic like Miss Pringle, but quite clearly—”

  “Too young!” declared Puny.

  “This is hard.”
He scratched his head. “Old Man Mueller?”

  “Timothy, for heaven’s sake!”

  “Remember, I’m not proposing anything, I’m only naming bachelors, as I was asked to do. Lew Boyd!” Lew had been a widower for a number of years.

  His wife didn’t acknowledge this contribution.

  He threw up his hands, naming the only other bachelor he could possibly think of. “Coot Hendrick!”

  “You see?” Cynthia said to Puny. “There’s absolutely nobody in Mitford for a nice French lady who teaches piano.”

  He and Cynthia were hammering down on the front and side yards of the yellow house. Mayor Gregory had poured on the coal for their annual Rose Day, advertising the event in newspapers as far away as Charlotte, Asheville, Winston-Salem, and Raleigh. Now everybody was breaking their necks to get cleaned up for the tourists just days hence. While former Mayor Esther Cunningham had despised the very word tourist, Andrew Gregory thought otherwise, arguing that controlled tourism was an economy that produced no factory emissions or water pollution. The merchants, while fond enough of the Cunningham reign, clearly favored the Gregory renaissance.

  Though five projects had been marked off Father Tim’s list, the following remained:

  Add lkspr to front bds, cut wisteria off garage, grub honeyskle/ivy at steps, cultivate/mulch/spray roses, whlbarrow from H. Pringle, new hose/ nzzl.

  Could he finish in time? Had his list been too ambitious? And then there was Cynthia’s list, which was considerably longer than the one in his shirt pocket. He leaned on the garden spade and wiped his perspiring forehead with a worn handkerchief. “No rest for the wicked,” he said.

  “And th’ righteous don’t need none!” crowed his wife, completing a proverb favored by Uncle Billy Watson. She was squatting with a weeder, going full throttle at an infestation of wire grass in the perennial bed facing Wisteria Lane.

  He heard a car brake suddenly in the street, squawking to the curb. “There she is!” a voice called.

  He looked up as the driver and passenger leaped from a Buick, the motor still running, and dashed across the sidewalk to the perennial bed. Both callers wore muumuus, though of different colors, and both appeared flushed and overwrought.

  “You’re Cynthia Coppersmith!” exclaimed the one with a camera strapped around her neck.