CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

A Cup of Kindness

An early October hurricane gathered its forces in the Caribbean, roared north along the eastern seaboard, and veered inland off Cape Hatteras. In a few short hours, it reached the mountains at the western end of the state, where it pounded Mitford with alarming force.

Rain lashed Lord’s Chapel in gusting sheets, rattled the latched shutters of the bell tower, blew the tarps off lumber stacked on the construction site, and crashed a wheelbarrow into a rose bed.

The tin roof of Omer Cunningham’s shed, formerly a hangar for his antique ragwing, was hurled toward Luther Green’s pasture, where the sight of it, gleaming and rattling and banging through the air, made the cows bawl with trepidation.

Coot Hendrick’s flock of three Rhode Island Reds took cover on the back porch after nearly drowning in a pothole in the yard, and Lew Boyd, who was pumping a tank of premium unleaded into an out-of-town Mustang, reported that his hat was whipped off his head and flung into a boxwood at the town monument, nearly a block away.

Phone lines went out; a mudslide slalomed down a deforested ridge near Farmer, burying a Dodge van; and a metal Coca-Cola sign from Hattie Cloer’s market on the highway landed in Hessie Mayhew’s porch swing.

At the edge of the village, Old Man Mueller sat in his kitchen, trying to repair the mantel clock his wife asked him to fix several years before her death. He happened to glance out the window in time to see his ancient barn collapse to the ground. He noted that it swayed slightly before it fell, and when it fell, it went fast.

“Hot ding!” he muttered aloud, glad to be spared the aggravation of taking it down himself. “Now,” he said to the furious roar outside, “if you’d stack th’ boards, I’d be much obliged.”

The villagers emerged into the sunshine that followed, dazzled by the spectacular beauty of the storm’s aftermath, which seemed in direct proportion to its violence.

The mountain ridges appeared etched in glass, set against clear, perfectly blue skies from horizon to horizon.

At Fernbank, a bumper crop of crisp, tart cooking apples lay on the orchard floor, ready to be gathered into local sacks. The storm had done the picking, and not a single ladder would be needed for the job.

“You see,” said Jena Ivey, “there’s always two sides to everything!” Jena had closed Mitford Blossoms to run up to Fernbank and gather apples, having promised to bake pies for the Bane just three days hence.

“But,” said another apple gatherer, “the autumn color won’t be worth two cents. The storm took all the leaves!”

“Whatever,” sighed Jena, who thought some people were mighty hard to please.

Balmy. Like spring. It was that glad fifth season called Indian summer, which came only on the rarest occasions.

He was doing his duties, he was going his rounds, he was poking his nose into everybody’s business. How else could a priest know what was happening?

He rang the Bolicks. “Esther? How’s it going?”

“I’d kill Gene Bolick if I could catch him, that’s how it’s goin’!”

“What now?”

“Haven’t I been bakin’ since the bloomin’ Boer War, tryin’ to get ready for Friday? And didn’t I tell him, I said, ‘Gene, don’t you mess with these cookies, there’s three hundred cookies I just baked, and I’m puttin’ ’em in these two-gallon freezer bags this minute, so you’ll keep your paws off.’ Well, I zipped up those bags and stacked ’em in th’ freezer and first thing you know, I came home last night and who was sittin’ at the table with his head stuck in one of those two-gallon bags, goin’ at it like a fox in a henhouse? I ask you!”

“You don’t mean it!”

“Frozen hard as bricks and him hammerin’ down on those cookies like they’d just come out of th’ oven.”

“Aha.”

“It’s a desperate man who’ll do a trick like that.”

“I agree. But try to forgive him,” he said, knowing that Gene Bolick had not had a cookie to call his own since this whole event began brewing several months ago.

He rang off, assuring her that he’d do his part on Friday, down in the trenches with the rest of the troops.

He flipped quickly through the Muse, looking for another batch of Stickin’ ads.

“Looks like Esther’s pullin’ ahead,” said J.C., totally convinced that his small-space ad idea had done the trick. It was generally agreed that the full page of Mack Stroupe’s face had been a dire mistake by the other camp. It was one thing to look at Mack’s mug on a billboard, but somehow seeing it right under your nose had been a definite turnoff, according to the buzz around town.

Along with a growing number of others, the rector was beginning to feel upbeat about the outcome of the election just one month away. The wife of a deacon at First Baptist had planned a preelection Stickin’ With Esther tea, and the mayor would also be riding down Main Street in a fire truck during a parade for Fire Awareness Day.

Things were definitely looking up.

Coming into the kitchen to make a pot of tea, he noted that Violet had descended from her penthouse atop the refrigerator and was curled up on his dog’s bed under the table.

Thank God Barnabas was coming home on Saturday, the day after the Bane. Hal had kept him at Meadowgate nearly a month, just in case.

He’d still have the splint on for a couple of weeks, but the chest wrap had come off. The job of healing could be finished up neatly by close confinement for five or six months, with no running, chasing, or stick-fetching.

“There’s certainly a lot of hilarity going on in my house,” said Cynthia. She stood at the kitchen door, her head cocked to one side.

“What do you mean?”

She listened intently, as if to the music of the spheres. “Somebody’s laughing!”

“What’s wrong with laughter?”

She didn’t answer, but came and stood by the stove, her brow furrowed, as he put the kettle on.

“Elton used six blocks t’ build a model of a staircase that has three steps . . .” Harley’s voice drifted up to the kitchen.

“Poor Harley,” said Cynthia. “I hope he makes an A this time.”

“That B-minus cut him to the quick.”

“I think Lace is too hard on him.”

“And you’re too soft! Delivering his breakfast downstairs on a tray, for Pete’s sake.”

“You’re jealous because I don’t deliver yours, much less on a tray, but then, dear fellow, you have never, ever once cleaned out and organized my attic so that it looks better than my studio!”

“True.”

“Nor have you ever hauled the detritus from said cleanup to the Bane, and brought me back a form which makes it all tax deductible.” She turned and went quickly to the door.

“Good Lord, Timothy! Listen!”

He heard a woman’s hysterical laughter coming from the little house next door.

They went out to the back stoop. The high-pitched laughter continued, followed by a crash that sounded like breaking glass.

“What on earth?” she asked. Her alarm was evident.

“I’ll go and see.” He didn’t want to go and see; he didn’t want anything out of the ordinary to be going on next door.

He darted through the hedge and up the dark steps to the screen door. He looked into Cynthia’s kitchen and saw Pauline Barlowe standing at the sink. She was throwing up.

“Pauline,” he said.

She retched into the sink again, then turned and stared toward the door, her eyes swollen, wiping her mouth.

“What?” she said. Her voice was cold, coarse; the stench of warm bile and alcohol permeated the room.

He opened the door and went in. “What’s going on?” He tried to keep his voice free of anger, tried to make it a simple question, but failed.

“Ask y’r big high an’ mighty in there what’s goin’ on, and if you find out, let me know, that’s what I’ve been tryin’ to do, is figure out what’s goin’ on.”

She laughed suddenly and sank to the floor, leaning against the cabinets.

He walked down the hall and into the living room, where Buck Leeper sat in a Queen Anne chair, asleep and snoring, an empty vodka bottle on the lamp table and a glass on the floor at his feet.

He cleaned the kitchen and swept up a broken glass on the back stoop, while Pauline sat in a chair with her head in her hands. He sensed that she was crying, though she made no sound. Then he turned off the downstairs lights, except for the lamp in the living room and the light in the hallway. Buck didn’t stir and he didn’t wake him. He would deal with this tomorrow.

He drove Pauline home and they sat in the car in front of the house where her father, son, and daughter were sleeping.

The hilarity and weeping had passed; she was silent as a stone, her face turned away from him.

“We need to talk,” he said.

She nodded.

“Sunday afternoon, if you can.”

She nodded again. “I’m so sorry,” she whispered.

He got out of the car and opened her door and helped her up the sidewalk. The temperature had dropped considerably and she was shivering in a sleeveless dress. “Will you wake anyone?”

“Don’t worry,” she said, still avoiding his gaze. “I won’t let nobody see me like this.”

When he came in from the garage, Cynthia met him in the hallway.

“It’s Esther!” she said. “She had an accident, and they say it looks bad. They want you to come to the hospital at once!”

Esther! He raced to the bathroom, splashed water on his face, took his jacket off the hook in the kitchen, and once again backed the Buick out of the garage, tires screeching.

There were many ways to lose an election. He prayed to God this wasn’t one of them.

“What happened?” he asked Nurse Kennedy in the hospital corridor.

“She fell off a ladder, broke her left wrist, broke the right elbow, and . . .” Nurse Kennedy shook her head.

“And what?”

“Fractured her jaw. Dr. Harper is wiring her mouth shut as we speak.”

“Good Lord!”

“But she’ll be fine.”

“Be fine? How could anybody be fine with two broken limbs and her mouth wired shut?”

“It happens, Father.” Nurse Kennedy sighed and continued down the hall.

He wound his way along the corridor to the waiting room, where Gene Bolick sat on a Danish modern sofa in shock.

“Where’s Ray?” he asked Gene. Why wasn’t Ray Cunningham here? Didn’t he know his wife had had a terrible accident?

“Ray who?” queried Gene, looking stupefied.

“Esther’s husband!”

“I’m Esther’s husband,” said Gene, as plainly as he knew how.

“You mean . . . you mean, the mayor didn’t fall off a ladder?”

“I don’t know about th’ mayor, but Esther sure did, and it busted her up pretty bad.” He appeared disconsolate.

“Good heavens, Gene, I’m sorry. Terribly sorry.” He sat beside his parishioner on the sofa. “How is she?”

“Not so good, if you ask me. She was down at th’ parish hall on a ladder, puttin’ up signs—you know, Kitchen Goods, Clothing Items, such as that, and went to step down and . . .” Gene lifted his hands.

“And crashed.”

“Where is everybody?” Usually, when someone was rushed to the hospital in Mitford, a whole gaggle of friends and family showed up to pray, make a run on the vending machines, and rip recipes from outdated issues of Southern Living.

“They’re down at th’ parish hall, I reckon, where they’ve been for th’ last forty-eight hours.”

“I’ll get the prayer chain going,” said the rector. He sped along the hall to the phone, where he called his wife to put the chain in motion.

“How bad is it?” asked Cynthia.

“There’s a break in both arms, and they’re wiring her jaws shut.”

She gasped. “Good heavens!”

“I’ll be here for a while.”

“Poor Esther. How awful. Please tell Gene I’m sorry, I’ll go see Esther tomorrow, and I’ll call the chain right now. Love you, dearest.”

“Love you. Keep my place warm.”

Hurrying down the hall, he stopped briefly at a vending machine for a pack of Nabs and a Sprite.

He’d just finished praying with Gene for Esther to be knit back together as good as new when Hessie Mayhew rushed into the waiting room. He looked at his watch. Eleven o’clock. Hardly anyone in this town stayed up ’til eleven o’clock.

“How is she?” asked Hessie.

“Doped up,” said Gene.

“I’ve got to see her,” insisted the Bane co-chair. Given her wide eyes and frazzled hair, Hessie looked as if she’d been plugged into an electrical outlet.

“You can’t see ’er,” said Gene. “Just me an’ th’ Father can go in.”

“Do you realize that at seven in the morning, the Food Committee’s gettin’ together at my house to bake twelve two-layer orange marmalades, and we don’t even have th’ recipe?”

Gene slapped his forehead. “Oh, Lord help!”

“I’m sure it’s written down somewhere,” suggested the rector.

“Nope, it’s not,” said Gene.

“That’s right. It’s not.” Hessie pursed her lips. “If I’ve told her once, I’ve told her a thousand times to write her recipes down, especially the orange marmalade, for heaven’s sake.”

“It’s in her head,” said Gene, defending his wife.

“Well,” announced the co-chair, looking determined, “we’ll have to find a way to get it out!”

He arrived at the office the next morning, feeling the exhaustion of half a night at the hospital.

At two a.m., he’d left Esther resting, one arm in a cast, the other in a cast and a sling, and unable to speak a word even if she wanted to. Gene slept by her bed on a hospital cot.

How on earth anybody was going to get a cake recipe out of Esther Bolick was beyond him. In any case, Hessie had postponed the baking session until Thursday afternoon, which meant the cakes would be squeaking in under the wire—if at all.

“We have to have Esther’s orange marmalades,” she had said flatly. “People expect Esther’s marmalades. At twenty dollars per cake times twelve, that’s two hundred and forty dollars, which is nothing to sneeze at.”

He yawned and sat wearily at his desk.

He was rubbing his eyes as Buck Leeper opened the door and walked in, taking off his hard hat.

“Good morning,” said the rector.

Buck stood in the doorway, uneasy. “I need to talk.”

“Sit down.”

“I can’t stay. I came to tell you I’m . . .” Buck looked at the floor, then met the rector’s gaze. “I’m sorry. That was bad, what happened. I took a drink, I offered her one, and it went from there.”

“Did you know she’s an alcoholic? An addict?”

“Yes.” Buck’s voice was hoarse. “I got to tell you, I talked her into it, I shouldn’t have done it, I’m sick to my gut about it.”

“There’s help, Buck.”

The superintendent scraped his work boot on the floor, looking down. “No. I can beat this, I’ve been beatin’ it, this is th’ first time in . . . in a while. I wanted to tell you I’m movin’ out, one of the crew knows a house for sale, but thinks they’ll rent.”

“Before we talk about that, let’s name the problem. It has a name. It’s your alcoholism. Your addiction.”

Buck stiffened and turned away, but didn’t walk to the door.

“How long have you been drinking, seriously drinking?”

“I was thirteen when my old man started pourin’ it down my gullet. The first time, he made me drink ’til I puked.” He faced the rector. “Bourbon. Sour mash. He liked it when I got to where I could drink him under the table, not many people could. When he died, I swore I’d never touch th’ stuff again.”

“But you did, and now you’re suffering on your own account as well as Pauline’s. Do you care for Pauline?”

“Yeah. I care for her.”

“Why?”

“I respect what she’s been able to do, to come back like that, out of her hell, and find faith. God, I hate what I did.”

“You did it together. It takes two.”

“And her kids. They’re great kids. Who deserves kids like that? Nobody, not even people who have it all together, who never took a drink! I thought that maybe I could . . . maybe we could . . .”

“You can.”

“No.” His voice was hard. “It’s too late for me.”

“What if you had somebody in this thing with you, somebody who’d stick closer than a brother, somebody who’d go to bat for you, help you through it—help you over it?”

“Oh, Jesus Christ!” Buck said with disgust, moving toward the door.

“That’s who I had in mind, actually.”

Buck’s face colored. “That crap don’t work for me.”

“How long have you hauled the pain of your dead brother in your gut? And how much longer do you want to haul it? Stop, friend. Stop and look at this thing that cheats you out of all that’s valuable, all that’s precious.”

The superintendent turned and stared out the window, his back to the rector.

“You can’t beat this alone, Buck. You’ve tried for years and it never worked. Bottom line, we’re not created to go it alone, we’re made to hammer out our lives with God as our defender. Going it alone may work for a while, but it never has and never will go the mile.”

Buck shrugged his shoulders, still looking out the window. “Pauline knows about God and she couldn’t make it.”

“No, but she’s going to. In any case, we don’t come to God to attain perfection, we come to be saved.”

“You remember my grandaddy was a preacher. There’s no way I could be good enough to get saved or whatever you call it. No way.”

“It isn’t about being good enough.”

Buck turned to him, furious. “So what is it about, for Christ’s sake?”

“It’s about letting Him into our lives in a personal way. You can do that with a simple prayer you can repeat with me. When we let Him in, He guarantees that we become new creatures.”

“New creatures?” Buck laughed bitterly. “Who wants to be a new creature when you can’t even get the old one to work?”

“New creatures make mistakes, too, they stumble around and fall in a ditch. But once the commitment is made with the heart, He takes it from there.”

“It always sounded like a lot of bull to me.”

Father Tim got up and stood beside his desk. “I could tell you all day what you’d gain by making that commitment—but look at it another way: What do you have to lose?”

For a time, the only sound was the ticking of the clock on the bookshelf.

“Listen,” said Buck, “I’ll be out of the house in a couple of days.”

He moved suddenly to the door and opened it, then went down the walk to his truck, not looking back.

“The fields are white . . .”

“Buck!” said the rector. “Wait . . .”

But he didn’t wait.

“They want to buy me out and let me run it,” said Winnie, looking anxious. “What do you think?”

If he ever had to mess with another real estate deal . . .

“What do you think?” he asked.

“It sounds like a good idea. I mean, I do the work and get a regular paycheck, and they have all th’ headaches.” She sighed. “That might be refreshin’.”

“Weren’t you going to wait ’til after the cruise to make a decision?”

“They want an answer right away. Soon.” She wrung her hands. “At once!”

He didn’t feel he had the credentials to counsel Winnie on what amounted to the next few years of her life. “What’s God saying to you about all this?”

“I still have that stuck feelin’, like I don’t know which way to turn.”

Definitely not a good sign, but what more could he say?

“Your hair . . .” said Emma.

“What about it?” he snapped.

“Dearest,” said Cynthia, “about your hair . . .”

“Don’t touch it!” he said. So what if he had hacked on it himself? At least it wasn’t draping over his collar like so much seaweed.

“Man!” exclaimed Mule, eyeing him with interest.

“You don’t like it?” he asked. “I never say anything about your hair, I never even notice your hair, why you can’t do the same for me is beyond all imagining—”

“Gee whiz,” said Mule, looking perplexed. “I was just goin’ to ask where you got that blue shirt.”

When he walked into Esther’s hospital room on Thursday morning, her bed was surrounded by Bane volunteers. One of them held a notepad at the ready, and he felt a definite tension in the air.

They didn’t even look up as he came in.

Hessie leaned over Esther, speaking as if the patient’s hearing had been severely impaired by the fall.

“Esther!” she shouted. “You’ve got to cooperate! The doctor said he’d give us twenty minutes and not a second more!”

“Ummaummhhhh,” said Esther, desperately trying to speak through clamped jaws.

“Why couldn’t she write something?” asked Vanita Bentley. “I see two fingers sticking out of her cast.”

“Uhnuhhh,” said Esther.

“You can’t write with two fingers. Have you ever tried writing with two fingers?”

“Oh, Lord,” said Vanita. “Then you think of something! We’ve got to hurry!”

“We need an alphabet board!” Hessie declared.

“Who has time to go lookin’ for an alphabet board? Where would we find one, anyway?”

“Make one!” instructed the co-chair. “Write down the alphabet on your notepad and let her point ’til she spells it out.”

“Ummuhuhnuh,” said Esther.

“She can’t move her arm to point!”

“So? We can move the notepad!”

Esther raised the forefinger of her right hand.

“One finger. One! Right, Esther? If it’s yes, blink once, if it’s no, blink twice.”

“She blinked once, so it’s yes. One! One what, Esther? Cup? Teaspoon? Vanita, are you writin’ this down?”

“Two blinks,” said Marge Crowder. “So, it’s not a cup and it’s not a teaspoon.”

“Butter!” said somebody. “Is it one stick of butter?”

“She blinked twice, that’s no. Try again. One teaspoon? Oh, thank God! Vanita, one teaspoon.”

“Right. But one teaspoon of what? Salt?”

“Oh, please, you wouldn’t use a teaspoon of salt in a cake!”

“Excuse me for living,” said Vanita.

“Maybe cinnamon? Look! One blink. One teaspoon of cinnamon!”

“Hallelujah!” they chorused.

Esther wagged her finger.

“One, two, three, four, five . . .” someone counted.

“Five what?” asked Vanita. “Cups? No. Teaspoons? No. Tablespoons?”

“One blink, it’s tablespoons! Five tablespoons!”

“Oh, mercy, I’m glad I took my heart pill this morning,” said Hessie. “Is it of butter? I just have a feelin’ it’s butter. Look! One blink!”

“Five tablespoons of butter!” shouted the crowd, in unison.

“OK, in cakes, you’d have to have baking powder. How much baking powder, Esther?”

Esther held up one finger.

“One teaspoon?”

“Uhnuhhh,” said Esther, looking desperate.

“One tablespoon?” asked Vanita.

“You wouldn’t use a tablespoon of baking powder in a cake!” sniffed Marge Crowder.

“Look,” said Vanita, “I’m helpin’ y’all just to be nice. My husband personally thinks I am a great cook, but I don’t do cakes, OK, so if you’d like somebody else to take these notes, just step right up and help yourself, thank you!”

“You’re doin’ great, honey, keep goin’,” said Hessie.

“Look at that!” exclaimed Vanita. “She’s got one finger out straight and the other one bent back! Is that one and a half? It is, she blinked once! I declare, that is the cleverest thing I ever saw. OK, one and a half teaspoons of bakin’ powder!”

Everyone applauded.

“This is a killer,” said Vanita, fanning herself with the notebook. “Don’t you think we could sell two-layer triple chocolates just as easy?”

“Ummunnuhhh,” said Esther, her eyes burning with disapproval.

Hessie snorted. “This could take ’til kingdom come. How much time have we got left?”

“Ten minutes, maybe eleven!”

“Eleven minutes? Are you kidding me? We’ll never finish this in eleven minutes.”

“I think she told me she uses buttermilk in this recipe,” said Marge Crowder. “Esther,” she shouted, “how much buttermilk?”

Esther made the finger and a half gesture.

“One and a half cups, right? Great! Now we’re cookin’!”

More applause.

“OK,” commanded the co-chair, “what have we got so far?”

Vanita, being excessively near-sighted, held the notepad up for close inspection. “One teaspoon of cinnamon, five tablespoons of butter, one and a half teaspoons of baking powder, and one and a half cups of buttermilk.”

“I’ve got to sit down,” said the head of the Food Committee, pressing her temples.

“It looks like Esther’s droppin’ off to sleep, oh, Lord, Esther, honey, don’t go to sleep, you can sleep tonight!”

“Could somebody ask th’ nurse for a stress tab?” wondered Vanita. “Do you think they’d mind, I’ve written checks to th’ hospital fund for nine years, goin’ on ten!”

“By the way,” asked Marge Crowder, “is this recipe for one layer or two?”

He decided to step into the hall for a breath of fresh air.

Hammer and tong. That’s how one Bane worker said they went at it on Friday.

The weather was glorious, the parish hall was full to overflowing with both goods and people, the lawn was adorned with three white tents, sheltering from any possible bad weather everything from fine antiques and children’s toys to hot meals and homemade desserts. Three tour buses stood parked at the curb, signaling the penultimate event of the year.

Parkers filled the two church lots first, then sent traffic up the hill to satellite hospital parking, and down a side street to the Methodists. A stream of cars and pickups also flowed into lots behind the Collar Button, the Irish Woolen Shop, and the Sweet Stuff Bakery.

Mitford Blossoms kicked in ten parking spaces while several Main Street residents, including Evie Adams, earned good money renting their private driveways.

For the Bane workers, it was down in the trenches, and no two ways about it.

For eleven hours running, the rector made change, sorted through plunder for eager customers, dished up chili and spaghetti, boxed cakes, bagged cookies, carried trash bags to Gene Bolick’s pickup, made coffee, hauled ice, picked up debris, found Band-Aids and patched a skinned knee, demonstrated a Hoover vacuum cleaner, took several cash contributions for the dig-a-well fund, told the story of the stained-glass windows, and mopped up a spilled soft drink in the parish hall corridor.

Uncle Billy came to supervise, armed with three new jokes collected especially for the occasion.

After five o’clock, vans from area companies and organizations hauled in and out like clockwork, carrying employees who proceeded to eat heartily and shop heavily.

By eight o’clock, the cleaning crew came on with a vengeance, and at eight-fifteen, a small but faithful remnant, despite weariness in every bone, arrived at the hospital, where they gathered around Esther Bolick’s bed and sang, “For she’s a jolly good fellow.”

The marmalades, they reported, had been among the first items to go, with some anonymous donor kicking in sixty bucks—thereby bringing the total to three hundred dollars, or ten feet of well-digging.

It had been the most successful Bane in anyone’s memory, and had raised the phenomenal sum of twenty-two thousand dollars. This total not only defeated the Bane’s previous record by several thousand, it clearly put every other church fund-raiser, possibly in the entire world, to utter vexation and shame.

Pauline came to his office in the afternoon and sat on the visitor’s bench, looking proud and strong.

“I’m goin’ to AA,” she said, “and I’m not seein’ Buck anymore. That’s the best I can do, Father, and I want to do it, and I’m askin’ God to give me strength to do it.” She looked at him earnestly. “Will you pray that I can?”

It was the longest speech he’d ever heard her make.

He walked home with Pauline, loving the crisp air, the blue skies.

“Whenever you think you’d like to move into your own place, I’ll give you a hand, and so will Harley.”

“Thank you. But I don’t deserve—”

“Pauline, you’ve given me one of the richest gifts of this life—the chance to know Dooley Barlowe. I don’t deserve that. So, let’s not talk about deserving, OK?”

She looked at him and smiled. And then she laughed.

“Mr. Tim!” Jessie ran up the hall and grabbed him around the legs. “I ain’t suckin’ my thumb n’more. Looky there!” She held her thumb aloft and he inspected it closely.

“Buck got me to quit,” she said, grinning up at him. “He give me a baby doll with hair to comb, you want to see it?”

“I do!” he said.

Jessie darted into the living room and returned with the doll. “See how ’er hair’s th’ color of mine, Buck said he looked at a whole bunch of baby dolls ’til he found this ’un. You want to hold it? Her name’s Mollie, she don’t wet or nothin’.” She took him by the hand. “Come and sit down if you’re goin’ to hold ’er. Buck holds ’er a lot, but he cain’t come n’more, Pauline said he cain’t.”

Jessie popped her thumb in her mouth, then took it out again.

Pauline glanced at the rector and shrugged and turned away, but he’d seen the sorrow in her eyes.

Bane is a Blessing
To Thousands

Last Friday, Lord’s Chapel gave their annual Bane and Blessing sale, which netted the record-braking sum of $22,000.

According to Bane co-chair Hessie Mayhew, major funding will be provided to dig wells in east Africa, and buy an ambulance for a hospital in Landon county. Other recipients of Bane funds include mission fields in Bosnia, Croatia, Ruwanda, Harlan County, Kentucky, and food banks throughout our local area.

Mrs. Mayhew said that special thanks are due to co-chai, Esther Bolck, who demanded the best from all voluntears and got it.

A list of voluntears is printed on the back page of today’s edition. As Mrs. Bolik is sadly laid up in the hospital with two broken arms and a fractured jaw, you may send a card to room 107, but please, no visits until next Wednesday, doctor’s orders. She is allergic to lilies, which kill her sinuses, but likes everything else.

A photograph of a large, fake check for twenty-two thousand dollars was included in the story.

“Who wrote this?” asked Father Tim.

“I’ve hired help,” said J.C., looking expansive. “Vanita Bentley!”

“Who keyed it in?”

“I did, Vanita only does longhand. She’ll be writin’ a special ‘Around Town’ column every week from here out.”

“Congratulations!” said the rector. So what if the Muse would never win a Pulitzer? It wasn’t like it was The New York Times, for Pete’s sake.

“Buon giorno, Father! Andrew Gregory, home at last!”

“Andrew! By George, you’ve been missed!”

Andrew laughed. The rector didn’t think he’d ever heard his friend sounding quite so . . .

“Fernbank has been my fervent contemplation since we last talked,” said Andrew. “I’m eager to go up and have a look. How’s it faring?”

“Well, for one thing, you have an orchard full of apples, and the roof is holding its own.”

“Splendid! Can you let me in to have a look around?”

“Absolutely. What’s good for you? How about . . . fifteen minutes?”

“Perfect!” said Andrew, sounding . . . how was Andrew sounding, anyway? Was it carefree? Boyish? Relaxed?

Come to think of it, who wouldn’t be relaxed after three months of visiting cousins in Italy?

When Father Tim arrived at Fernbank, Andrew’s gray Mercedes was already parked in the drive, and Andrew stood waiting on the porch with a man and woman.

As he trotted up the steps, he couldn’t help but notice that the woman was exceedingly attractive, nearly as tall as the tall Andrew, and with a striking figure. He blinked into the dazzling warmth of her smile, hardly noticing the dark-haired man standing with them.

“Father!”

“Welcome home, my friend!”

They embraced, and Andrew kissed the rector, European-style, on both cheeks.

“Father, first I’d like to introduce you to Anna, my cousin . . .”

Good heavens, this was a cousin?

“ . . . and my wife,” said the beaming Andrew.