In This Mountain Read online

  “The nice man at the drugstore told us where you live,” said the other, “but don’t tell him we told you he told us!”

  “We’re your biggest fans in the whole world, we drove all the way from Albany, Georgia, just to see where you do your little cat books!”

  “We hoped we’d run into you, but we never dreamed we’d find you out in your yard!”

  “Oh, gosh, I’m often in my yard,” said Cynthia.

  “Get over there behind her, Sue Lynn, and let me take a picture!”

  He noted that Sue Lynn jumped behind his wife with astonishing agility.

  Click. “Sue Lynn, honey, you blinked, let me take it again.” Click. “Oh, umm, could you move out of the picture, your arm was in that one.” He moved out of the picture. Click.

  “Now, would you take a picture of Sue Lynn and me behind Cynthia?” A camera was thrust into his hands.

  “Sue Lynn, honey, take your sunglasses off, we can’t see your face!”

  “Oh, mercy,” said his wife, clearly distressed. “I’m filthy, we really shouldn’t be doing this.”

  He was struck by her look of dumbfounded desperation. “Ladies!” he proclaimed in his pulpit voice, “perhaps we could—”

  “Just look through that little place in the middle and push down the button on the right,” said the camera owner. She hunkered over Cynthia, who appeared frozen in a squat position. “We just love your little books better than anything, this is so exciting I can hardly stand it, we’ll send you a copy of the pictures, we always order four-by-six glossy. Sue Lynn, honey, move over ! It’s that little button on the right! On th’ right! There you go!”

  He noted that Dooley was forking down his lasagna, itching to pick up Tommy and haul him to Wesley for a movie. The plan to eat at least one meal a day together wasn’t easy to stick to, especially with a teenager, but they were all hanging in there until Dooley’s move to his mother’s house tomorrow night. After that, he’d be out to Meadowgate for the summer, helping Hal Owen with his veterinary practice, and they’d be heading for Tennessee.

  “‘Fame…,’” he muttered, dribbling olive oil on a slice of bread.

  “What about it?” Cynthia inquired.

  “‘…can never be a bedfellow to tranquillity,’” he said, loosely quoting Montaigne.

  “And all because of little books about a cat. Who knew?” His wife looked oddly pleased.

  The award business in New York and the invitation to travel around the country had been one thing, but today had been another. He’d felt strangely unnerved by the women in muumuus.

  “So who’s going to the movie with you?” he asked Dooley. He thought the boy looked unusually handsome; his bones were fitting together nicely these days.

  “Tommy.”

  “I know about Tommy. Anybody else?”

  “Jenny. And Tommy’s date.”

  “Aha.”

  “Jenny,” murmured his wife, arching an eyebrow. Their young neighbor in the house with the red roof had moved in and out of Dooley’s life with some frequency over the years.

  “Isn’t Lace home yet?” asked Father Tim. He’d heard Lace was visiting a roommate on her way from school to Mitford.

  Dooley shrugged.

  “We’ll just ring up to the Harpers and see,” said Cynthia, bolting from the table. “Excuse me!”

  “Wait!” said Dooley, looking alarmed. “Don’t call. I don’t want to know if she’s home.”

  “You don’t want to know?” asked Cynthia, clearly not concerned about being obvious. “What could it hurt to know ?”

  With some haste, the boy folded his napkin, a civility drilled into him at school, and stood. “I’ve got to go. Thanks for dinner.”

  “You’re welcome,” said Father Tim, feeling the tension in the air.

  “Lunch tomorrow, right?”

  Dooley left the kitchen without looking back. “Be there or be square!” he called over his shoulder, and was gone down the hall.

  Father Tim peered at Cynthia, who had a positively wicked gleam in her eye. “You see?” she said.

  “See what?”

  “He’s dying to know if Lace is at home!”

  He sighed without meaning to. “He could have asked around town if he wanted to find out. Maybe he really doesn’t want to know if she’s home.”

  “It’s not that we’re trying to force him into anything,” said his wife.

  “Of course not,” he said. “Certainly not!”

  He wasn’t taking Dooley to the Grill, no way. J.C. and Mule and Percy would want to know everything about school, girls, cars, grades, it was too much. Besides, Dooley did not hold the Grill in high estimation, as the menu still offered livermush and fries that were decidedly on the limp side.

  He’d read somewhere that a place in Wesley was now selling wraps. He didn’t know exactly what a wrap was, but it sounded modern and upbeat. He got the new number from information, called to find out the address, and Dooley hied them there in the Mustang with the top down.

  “So what do you think?” he asked as they looked around the wrap place. There was a considerable crowd of young people with nose rings and tattoos, there was music that sounded like…he couldn’t be certain what it sounded like, maybe like someone breathing heavily into an empty coconut shell.

  “Cool,” said Dooley.

  “And how was the movie?” he asked as they unwrapped their wraps.

  “Neat.”

  What had happened to the boy’s vocabulary? At the stunning cost of twenty-two thousand a year, it had been reduced to that of a mynah bird. Of course, he and Cynthia had found Dooley’s grades to be first-rate, so there was no complaint in that department.

  “How’s Jenny?”

  Dooley took a huge bite. Father Tim took a huge bite; stuff from the other end of the wrap thudded into his lap.

  “Great,” said Dooley.

  At the age of eleven, and with hardly any schooling, Dooley Barlowe had been able to speak in complete sentences. Father Tim couldn’t understand this drastic decline—he couldn’t blame it on one lone year at the University of Georgia; it must have taken root at that fancy school in Virginia.

  “Wouldn’t you, ah, like to at least say hello to Lace before you go out to Meadowgate?”

  “Say hello? She doesn’t want to say hello to me. The last time I called her from school, she was too busy to say hello, she never even called me back, I wish you’d quit bringing up her name all the time, Lace, Lace, Lace, I could care less.” The boy’s face flamed.

  “Sorry,” said Father Tim, meaning it.

  “You just dropped lettuce in your lap,” said Dooley.

  “This is the coolest car in the whole town,” Dooley told him on the way home. “Mitford doesn’t have any really cool cars.”

  “Come on! There’s Miss Sadie’s 1958 Plymouth still sitting in the Fernbank garage. Some people would give their eyeteeth to get their hands on a car like that.”

  As Dooley wheeled right around the monument, Father Tim threw up his hand to Bill Sprouse, out for a walk with his dog, Sparky. Father Tim thought Sparky looked precisely like the head of a kitchen mop pulled along by a leash.

  “There aren’t any neat girls in Mitford, either.”

  According to Cynthia and Puny, there were no men; according to Dooley, there were no girls.

  Father Tim felt suddenly inspired. “Let’s don’t go home! Let’s drive to Farmer.” The road to Farmer was the road Dooley had practiced driving on, the road Dooley had crashed Harley’s old truck on…it was a road of memories, it was a day that felt like summer; he wanted to savor every minute with the boy who was growing up so fast, too fast.

  Dooley looked at his passenger and grinned. “Cool,” he said.

  They had stopped at a country store and taken their cold drinks out to a table and wooden benches under a maple tree. Father Tim relished its mentholated shade. There was even a small breeze blowing.

  “I’ve been wanting to talk with you about som
ething,” he told Dooley. He paused a moment and lifted a silent prayer. “It’s about Sammy and Kenny.”

  “I don’t want to talk about them anymore.”

  “But we’ve got to do it once and for all, we’ve got to find your brothers. It’s been on my mind a lot, and finally I have a good idea.”

  “It won’t work. There’s no use lookin’ for ’em, we’ll never find ’em, it’s been too long. Buck looked, you looked, and…”

  “And what?”

  “And you prayed.”

  “Always.”

  “Plus Cynthia prayed, Mama prayed, and I prayed. Even Jessie and Poo. It didn’t work.”

  “Right. Not yet.”

  Dooley looked at his drink bottle. “What kind of idea?”

  “If we’re going to find your brothers, especially Sammy, I think we’ve got to find somebody else first.”

  “Who?”

  This was the part he dreaded. “Your father.”

  “No,” said Dooley, getting up from the bench. “No.” All color drained from his face; he took several steps backward.

  “He’s the one who can give us leads. Sammy was with him when he was last seen. It’s a chance we’ve got to take, son.”

  “I thought you wanted to be my father.” Dooley had backed to the maple and stood there, defiant.

  “I want to give you everything a father can give, but I can’t give you any clues about Sammy like I believe your birth father can. Help me in this, Dooley.”

  “I hate his guts!” shouted Dooley. Tears escaped onto his freckled face. “I don’t want to see him, I don’t want him hanging around, bein’ drunk and knockin’ everybody in th’ head and callin’ me names.”

  “Yes, but—”

  “He might find Mama and hurt ’er, or try to take Jessie and Poo.”

  “I’ll be in Tennessee, but I’ll manage to go to wherever he is. Or Buck—Buck will go. But you’ve got to help us figure out where he might be, what some of his habits were.”

  Dooley had less than two days left with them, and now this hard thing in the midst of the only private time they’d had together….

  But one couldn’t wait forever to tackle hard things.

  Dooley wiped his eyes with the back of his hand. “I can’t remember,” he said. “Besides, maybe he’s dead. I hope he’s dead.”

  “Come on. Sit down. Try to remember. Kenny is seventeen now, Sammy is fifteen, only four years older than you were when I saw you the first time.” As clearly as if it had happened yesterday, Father Tim recalled the image of an eleven-year-old Dooley Barlowe, barefoot and in filthy overalls, peering in his office door. You got anyplace I can take a dump?

  “Let’s do our best, let’s give it another shot,” he said. “After all, life is short.”

  He had a terrible lump in his throat—for Sammy and Kenny, for Dooley, for the hard things of life in general.

  Was he jealous of his wife’s fame? He wrenched a dandelion from the damp earth and tossed it on the pile. On the other hand, could two women in muumuus be called a bona fide indication of fame? His face burned as he thought of being spoken to as if he were the yard man.

  He made it a point to pray—asking for humility, for help in swallowing down his pride. At least it appeared on the surface to be pride. Was there a deeper issue? Surely he couldn’t be jealous of any honor accruing to his wife’s long years of hard work and dedication.

  Whatever it was existed at a level deeper than jealousy. He thumped into the grass near the fence, took off his work gloves, and leaned against the pine tree. So what was really making his gut wrench?

  Fear.

  It was that simple.

  He was afraid she’d somehow be taken from him, swept away on a tide they couldn’t anticipate or control.

  “How’s the new book coming?” he asked as they lay in bed. He was rubbing her neck, as he often did when she was slaving over a drawing board. He’d long ago given up hope that she wouldn’t do this to herself anymore; no, she loved it too much. Just as preaching had been what he did, writing and illustrating books was what she did, it was how she processed her life.

  “Umm. Good, dearest. More to the right, there’s an awful crick on the right.”

  “I need to adjust the chair at your drawing table again.”

  “Would you, Timothy?”

  “Of course. First thing tomorrow. Tell me about the book.”

  “I’m dismayed, it won’t come right. I should have listened to myself when I said I wouldn’t do any more Violet books. I think I may put it aside ’til we come home from Tennessee.”

  “No wonder you’re having a problem with it. That cat’s already done everything there is to do—been to see the Queen, learned to play the piano, gone to the beach, stayed in a hotel in New York, taken up French as a second language—”

  “Right there! Ugh, it’s sore. What did you and Dooley talk about at lunch?”

  “About finding his father, to see if we can learn something about the boys. Any involvement with his father frightens him, of course. It could be like stirring a nest of hornets.”

  “I understand. But it’s a good idea, Timothy.”

  “He remembered that his father had a best friend, a drinking buddy he hung out with, got in trouble with. The name came to Dooley very clearly—Shorty Justice. He lived in Holding, worked on the highway. I’m going to get Emma on it.” His erstwhile secretary, who had helped locate Jessie Barlowe, liked nothing better than to spread a dragnet in cyberspace.

  “I’ll help you any way I can,” said Cynthia. “I’ll do anything.”

  He leaned down and kissed her shoulders, loving the feel of her living flesh. She was balm to him, she was everything he might ever want or dream of having, she was his best friend, his encourager. How had he ever bumbled along in that odd dream state of bachelorhood, thinking himself sane?

  “I love you,” he said.

  “I love you back, sweetheart.” She yawned and rolled over and put her arms around his neck. “You are still my sweetheart?”

  He grinned. “‘Until heaven and then forever!’” he said, quoting the inscription engraved on his wedding band.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  www.seek&find.com

  Emma Newland thumped into his leather chair in the study, adjusted the needlepoint pillow behind her back, and opened her laptop.

  It was her custom to arrive at the yellow house at eight-thirty every Tuesday morning, with the express purpose of inputting the latest portion of his current essay, sending various e-mails in her erstwhile employer’s stead, munching tortilla chips to maintain appropriate levels of blood sugar, and tidying his desk whether he wished it tidy or not.

  She considered this stint, generally four hours in length, to be her “bounden duty,” having made a pact with God. She had committed to serve her helpless former priest ’til death did them part if only God would spare her the agony and aggravation of arthritis—which, at least in recorded history, had afflicted every female in her family. So far, she had suffered only a minor twinge in her right thumb, which she blamed on excessive use of the mouse.

  Far be it from her former priest to mention such a thing, but he thought her eyebrows appeared singed this morning, or even missing, as if she’d failed to jump back when lighting an outdoor grill. He’d always thought her eyebrows incredibly similar to woolly worms that had grown extra-thick coats for winter. In truth, his secretary’s face looked so oddly denuded that he was embarrassed.

  “What’re you lookin’ at?” she demanded, without glancing away from the screen.

  He felt like a schoolboy, caught releasing a toad in the girls’ rest room. “Nothing!”

  She fiddled with the thing in her lap. “So have you had your spring cold yet?”

  “I don’t expect to have a spring cold,” he said.

  “How on earth you’ll escape it, I don’t know…all that drinkin’ out of th’ cup with everybody and his brother and shakin’ a hundred hands at th’ Peace.”
>
  He didn’t comment.

  “Now that you don’t have to drink out of the cup every Sunday, you ought to start dippin’ your wafer, that’s what I did before I went back to bein’ a Baptist.”

  He bit his tongue.

  “I guess you heard the Methodists are gettin’ a woman preacher.”

  He didn’t like it when Emma heard news before he did, especially news from the ecclesiastical realm. It was petty of him, but…“Well, well.”

  “I’m goin’ to see if you’ve got e-mail,” she said, “then we’ll go lookin’ for Dooley’s daddy.”

  He swiveled around to his desk and began final revisions to the essay on Wordsworth’s postulations, wondering whether he’d have to endure Emma Newland’s close company even in heaven. No, surely not, as that would somehow smack of the other place….

  He tried to disclaim his excitement that she might indeed be able to trace Clyde Barlowe, right here in this room, today. He didn’t want to get excited about a shot in the dark, though his Alabama bishop had once chastised him about that very thing.

  The Right Reverend Paul Jared Sotheby had wagged his finger like a schoolmarm. “Timothy, stop this nonsense of preparing for the worst and spend your time preparing for the best!” This counsel had never been forgotten, though he was seldom able to follow it.

  Emma stared at the screen, making a light whistling noise between her teeth. Pop music wasn’t his strong point, but it sounded like the first two lines of “Delta Dawn,” repeated ad infinitum.

  “Lookit,” she said, “you’ve got mail!”

  “Really?” He leaped up and crouched over her shoulder. “Aha!” Marion Fieldwalker, his former parishioner and good friend in Whitecap Island.

  “I gave her my e-mail address, bless ’er heart, so she could keep in touch.”

  Dear Fr, will dash this off as well as am able, it is my first try at cyberspace.

  Fr Conklin has not upset us too badly. He has a fondness for parish suppers and the old hymns and is organizing a trip to the Holy Land. Sam thinks he will work out.