“Tillie’s party is on Saturday afternoon at two. We have to be done in time for everyone to get to town for Saturday night. Why don’t you take a break and go for a change?”

Alex looked up from his sermon notes to find Lauren Carlson looking down at him. She had an enormous zucchini under one arm and a list in her hand. There was dirt beneath her fingernails, and her nose was red from too much sun. “I hear it’s wonderful, but I usually practice my sermon and spend time praying on Saturday night. I work on Sunday mornings, you know.”

“You really need to enjoy a Saturday night in Grassy Valley. It’s a major social event. It’s something extra special now, during harvest. The stores, all of which normally close at five thirty, stay open until nine. Everyone comes to town to do their grocery shopping, get a haircut or just hang out. There’s usually a little outdoor concert that the locals pull together. The elderly folks sit in their cars and watch the people go by, and the younger ones stop to say hello to them. A group of preteens watch the younger children. The teenagers roam together in packs, oblivious to anyone over twenty-five. It’s very convivial. You should come.”

“Maybe I will, now that I’ve become more comfortable preparing for Sunday mornings. Those first few sermons were pretty nerve-racking for me.”

“Good. Mike and I will look for you.”

“I have a question for you, Lauren. I’d like you to tell me more about this party for Tillie Tanner.” For a deceptively sleepy place, things happened in the Hilltop community at lightning speed.

“We’re doing cake, coffee, mints and nuts. She likes purple so that’s our theme color. We’re not putting a reference to age anywhere. Oh yes, bring a can of something for the new food shelf. In fact, bring two. We’re going to give one can of everything to Tillie as her birthday present.”

“She needs it, I’m sure.”

“Better yet, this way she won’t think it’s a handout. She’s particularly fond of pork and beans if you can’t decide what to bring.”

At that moment Gandy walked to Alex’s desk and handed him the Sunday bulletin to proof.

“Did you get all that, Gandy?”

“You bet. I already know what I’m bringing. I’ve been trying for weeks to get my family to start eating kidney beans. I make chili and what happens? At the end of the meal, everyone’s bowl still has a pile of kidney beans in it. They manage to eat around those things and suck the juice right off them. I give up. If they don’t want the protein or the fiber, so be it. I’ve got a whole case of the things to bring to the party. I’m bringing my chili recipe too. Everyone except my family says it’s excellent.”

“Perfect.” Lauren laid the zucchini on Alex’s desk. “See you two later.”

She disappeared through the door before Alex could ask what he should do with the long green vegetable.

“Make bread,” Gandy said, as if she’d read his mind. “Or cook it with onion, add corn and then melt cheese on top. You could buy Grassy Valley’s How to Cook Zucchini cookbook in town on Saturday. Everyone in the community contributed their favorite. By the way, be sure to lock the doors of your car when you get to town.”

“Car thefts? Robberies? What’s been happening?” Since coming to Hilltop, he’d quit locking the door of his van, although he still hadn’t embraced the idea of leaving his key in the ignition like so many did.

Gandy looked at him as if he’d lost his mind. “You don’t lock your car to keep people from taking something out, you lock your car to keep people from putting something in.” She picked up the zucchini and swung it around like a club. “You leave that van open and the whole thing will be filled with these and tomatoes too. Everyone who has a garden will be handing out vegetables. You, being the pastor, will be their first choice to ‘gift’ with their excess.” She chewed on the corner of her lip as she pondered this. “Unless you really like zucchini bread. Then take it all, bake it up and buy a new freezer to store it in.”

Either way sounded like more work than he wanted. “Maybe I’ll just stay home and practice my sermon.”

Gandy’s lips turned down at the corners. “Coward.”

He picked up the gauntlet she’d thrown down. “Oh, all right then, I’ll go, but if I get inundated with zucchini anyway, you’re helping me with it.”

“Lock your doors and you’ll be safe.”

This was very different from his home in Chicago. Fear of vegetables had never once entered his mind there.

Saturday dawned crisp and clear…and quiet. There were no geese honking outside Alex’s window. Maybe they were gone for good. Of course, if they were gone and something bad had happened to them, Will Packard would be devastated. As much as he hated the noise, he wanted the geese around for Will’s sake.

The coffee was already brewed thanks to his remembering to set the clock timer on the pot last night. He poured himself a mug and meandered outside without much enthusiasm to look for the geese. They were nowhere to be seen. Not that he was looking too hard. Tripod, who’d been at his side, suddenly took off toward Will’s hoomain society shed. The boy’s bike was already leaning against the wall. His parents, Alex thought, probably didn’t know where the boy was half the time, other than being confident that he was here, playing with the animals. Fortunately, this kept Will out of even more risky projects like launching one of the twins off the chicken coop in a homemade parachute.

Inside the shed, Will was trying to cram the geese into Rosie’s empty cage and not having much success at it.

“What are you doing?”

“I found them a home. Florence Kennedy says she loves goose eggs and doesn’t mind their mess so I’m taking them to her this morning.”

“Good for you, buddy. I’m sure the geese will be very happy.” And so will I.

“I need the room. There are more animals coming in all the time. If Bucky moved away, I could probably close this place up, but as long as he’s kicking cats and laying out bad meat for dogs, I’ll be busier than a one-legged paperhanger.”

“I think you mean one-armed paperhanger, don’t you?”

“I don’t know. The whole idea sounds dumb to me. My ma says it’s a clee-shay, whatever that means.”

Cliché. Will had a sophisticated vocabulary today.

“Are you going to the birthday party?” Will inquired as he finally got the second goose into the cage. “Ma can’t so she sent me over here with two cans of stewed tomatoes, one for Tillie and one for that other place. Can you take them?”

“Of course. Your mother is very generous.” He knew Minnie needed those tomatoes for her own brood.

Will beamed up at him, his cowlick particularly rowdy and his eyes shining. “She is, isn’t she?” Then, in a quick turnabout, he dragged the wagon on which the cage was sitting out of the shed. The geese honked in dismay as Will hooked it to his bike and hopped on the seat. “I’d better get going. These dumb birds are going to make me deaf if I don’t get them delivered soon.” Feathers flew as Will pushed off.

“Bye, Preacher!” Will pedaled away as fast as his legs could manage. As he watched the boy go, Alex wondered what kinds of scholarships would be available in years to come for young people who wanted to become veterinarians. Will was a budding animal doctor if there ever was one.

Glad he wasn’t the one with the geese in tow, he went inside for more coffee. He had the morning off and planned to spend it reading some of the many books that had piled up over the past three months.

At one thirty, Dixon’s pickup truck careened into the yard just as Alex was about to get in his van to drive to the church. “Want a ride to Tillie’s party?” Dixon hollered out his rolled-down window. “I’m going to Grassy Valley after, if you want to ride along.”

It didn’t take Alex long to decide that it might be prudent to leave his vehicle at home and escape the dreaded zucchini onslaught Gandy had predicted.

“Sure.” He clambered into the truck and eyed Dixon. “You look like you’re going on a date.” His friend was wearing a freshly starched pale blue shirt and khaki trousers. His shoes were polished and his hair was combed into something that looked like an actual haircut rather than a nasty mishap with a skinning knife.

“Big times,” Dixon said cheerfully.

“You look happier than I’ve seen you for a while.”

“I asked my sister Emmy to come for a visit.”

“Soon?”

“I’m not sure. She said she’d call me. She told me it would be September so it could be any day now. Emmy’s like everyone else who grew up in Hilltop Township. We all love harvest and like to be around when the combines are rolling. They’ll run night and day if there isn’t much humidity. Otherwise the crops get tough and we stop for the night. To store it a farmer can’t have too much moisture in the grain because of the danger of spoilage. It’s expensive to dry and sometimes shrinks. It’s best to let nature call the shots.”

“There’s much more to farming than I ever realized,” Alex admitted sheepishly. “I certainly had an inflated sense of what I knew.”

Dixon pulled into the church yard, which already held a surprising number of parked cars. “Hey, there’s Belle and Curtis Wells.” He pointed at an attractive blond woman with her hair piled in a complicated arrangement on her head. She was wearing black leggings, a white poet’s blouse and high heels. Not the usual Grassy Valley fare for women in their fifties. “She never misses a social event. She makes Curtis come too. He’d be happier mucking stalls, but he knows she needs to get out.”

“Gandy told me that Belle wants to go back to the city.”

“She’d go in a heartbeat if Curtis would come with her. The only thing she loves more than the city is Curt.”

They said hello to Ole Swenson, who was leaning against the church talking to Stoddard Block. From what Alex could hear of the conversation, Ole was getting advice about how to build a solid new pigsty. He’d gone to the right place.

As Alex walked into the church basement, the sounds reminded him of a school cafeteria, flatware clanking, cups and plates chinking together and an unrestrained din of voices, each trying to out-talk the other. The room had gone purple, as Lauren had predicted. There were violets on each table, purple streamers looping haphazardly across the ceiling, lavender paper tablecloths, as well as plum-colored paper plates and plastic forks. Off to one side were two tables, each mounded with groceries—rice, canned goods, boxed cake mixes, tubs of frosting, cereals and more. Tillie and the food shelf would do well today.

Tillie, wearing an amethyst dress to match the purple theme, was ensconced behind a cake that could only be described as a boisterous combination of violet, mauve and plum. She wore a straw hat with peacock feathers erupting from the brim. Tillie waved him over for a closer look at the cake.

“This is something, isn’t it, Reverend?”

“It certainly is.” What, Alex wasn’t quite sure. “Happy birthday, Tillie. How old are you now? Surely not sixty-five yet?”

Tillie cackled gleefully. “Believe it or not, I am!” She proudly brushed back her hair to reveal enough creases and furrows to make a bas-relief map. She lowered her voice to a whisper. “I know it’s amazing, but I use a good cold cream at night and stay out of the sun.”

“Good for you. You could teach us all a thing or two.” Alex’s spirits lifted just seeing the happy glow on Tillie’s face. Sometimes delusion wasn’t such a bad thing.

“There you are!” Lauren came up to him holding a plate of mints. “Sit down and have coffee. The party is in full swing.”

“I see that.” He glanced around the room, mentally taking roll call to see how many of his parishioners were in attendance. “Most everyone from Hilltop is here, and a few from All Saints Fellowship too.” He saw Althea Dawson’s white hair and trademark bun, and Amy Clayborn, the young woman who had no doubt given Althea a ride. He took another quick look at the crowd. “Bessie and Brunie Bruun are missing, of course, and where is”—he scanned the room a third time—“Lila Mason?”

“Isn’t she here? I thought I saw her. Maybe not. She’s such a little thing, she could get lost in a crowd like this. Look, there’s Betty Nyborg waving at you. You’d better say hello.” With that, Lauren sent him off to fend for himself.

He wandered over to Lilly Sumptner, who was pouring coffee with one hand and juggling a stack of empty plates with the other. “Have you seen Lila? Has she been here and gone already?”

Lily glanced around the room. “She must be here somewhere. She always is. I’ll bet she’s in the kitchen dishing up the nuts and mints. She likes that job.”

It sounded likely. Alex methodically made his way around the room, greeting the guests as if they were his own, particularly the ones who had arrived from All Saints.

“Good to see you, Emma. How’s the work on the quilt progressing? Gandy says you are all doing a wonderful job. She’s says it’s going to be the finest Township history quilt ever made. Yes, she told me about the fat quarters. Amazing…”

Steeped in the merriment of the party, the time flew quickly by.

“Ready to go, Reverend…Alex?” Dixon edged up to him and spoke into his ear.

“Please. I’ve drunk so much coffee and eaten so many mints I’m either going to overdose on a caffeine high or develop diabetes if I stay any longer. People here just don’t want to stop visiting, do they?”

“Wait until we get to town,” Dixon said. “They’ll all pick up where they left off here.”