A Light in the Window (23 page)

The phones were working again. He called Rodney at the police station.

“Any passage down the mountain?”

“If you’re goin‘, better hop to it. Th’ roads are pretty clear, but more snow’s comin’. They’re closin’ th’ mountain at eight o’clock. I just got a call.”

He and Dooley worked with the bishop under the light of a street lamp for a full hour, shoveling the car out. Bundled to the eyes, Stuart got in the Bronco. “Pray for me!” he called before closing the door. Then he turned his car around in the frozen street and disappeared in a cloud of vapor from the exhaust.

White on white, as far as the eye could see. But a million bucks was a million bucks.

They stomped back into the house as a gray dawn broke.

Around noon, the snow started falling again.

Barnabas bounded to the hedge, making a path wide enough for a small sleigh, did his business, and returned at once. White on black, racing through the house, shaking snow from backdoor to front. “Good fellow!”

“Good ol’ pooper,” said Dooley.

Lord, he prayed, don’t let us lose power. There was enough wood in the garage to last two days, maybe less, and no one would be hauling logs in weather like this.

He set the Christmas baskets on the counter, finished filling them, and tied the bows, then looked for the fur-lined boots that laced to his knees. He mustn’t sit around mooning, as Puny called it. He needed to move along smartly. No argument could convince Dooley to accompany him.

“Listen, buster,” he snapped, “you want Santa Claus, you’ll help me take it to others.” He was inevitably cross in foul weather. It worked, however. They each carried two baskets, leaving the fifth behind until the weather cleared. There would be no walking along the creekbank to visit Homeless Hobbes today, nor would his Buick get farther than the sidewalk, if he bothered to back it out of the garage.

At Evie Adams’s house, he warned Dooley. “We mustn’t get Miss Pattie started or we’ll be here all day.”

Dooley looked daggers at him as Evie opened the door.

“Oh, Father!” she said, bursting into tears. “I’m so glad to see you! And Dooley! How you’re growing! Come in, come in. Oh, do come in!” He felt rather like the pope.

There was only one thing to make of her tears. “What’s Miss Pattie done now?” he asked. They were standing in a puddle.

“Crawled under the bed and won’t come out!”

That ought to be a godsend, he thought.

“Under there, singing to beat the band, and won’t come out unless I buy her a baby doll with long, blond hair and a blue pinafore. Where am I going to get a baby doll in weather like this—much less in a blue pinafore?”

“Would you like me to talk to her?”

If looks could kill, Dooley Barlowe would have dropped him right there, dead as a doornail.

At the sagging Porter mansion, he had a word of caution. “Don’t eat anything here.”

“I’m about t’ starve t’ death,” Dooley said, glaring at the rector.

“You’ll live. After all, you’re full of baloney.”

“Real funny.”

“I thought so.”

Uncle Billy opened the door. “I’ll be et f’r a tater if it ain’t th’ preacher! Rose, come an’ look! It’s th’ preacher an’ th’ boy!”

He heard some rustling sounds, and Miss Rose appeared, looking fierce. “The preacher? What’s he want?”

“Wants t’ give us Santy Claus, looks like.”

“Tell him to come in, then.”

They dripped a large puddle in the foyer, where a hand-carved banister railing lay on the floor exactly where it had fallen years ago. He looked up at the portrait of the handsome, intense Willard, who was almost certainly turning over in his grave.

Dooley handed them a basket stuffed with fruit, nuts, candy, a tinned ham, and a pecan pie. “Merry Christmas!” he said.

“Looky here, Rose,” said the old man, obviously elated. “Ain’t this th’ beat? Well, come on back to th’ warm place. We’ll all be froze t’ popsicles standin’ here. Rose baked a cobbler that’ll melt in y’r mouth. You’ll have t’ set an’ have a piece.”

“Oh, no, no, Uncle Billy. Can’t stay, have to run. They’re calling for eight inches tonight and high winds. Have to get along.”

“I’m sure this boy would like a piece,” said Miss Rose, looking fiercer. “Preachers don’t eat like the rest of us. All they like is fried chicken.”

“I b’lieve it’s th’ Methodists as like chicken,” said Uncle Billy.

Miss Rose grabbed Dooley by the sleeve. “Come along! Let these men stand an’ jaw ’til th’ cows come home. We’ll have us a bite to eat. I like boys!” She grinned, revealing a frightening display of dental conditions.

Dooley looked back in desperation as she hauled him through the tunnel of newspapers that packed the dining room toward the heated apartment at the rear.

Ah, well, no rest for the wicked and the righteous don’t need any, the rector thought, following meekly.

They stomped up the hill to Fernbank, against an increasingly bitter wind, and down the winding driveway that was thigh-deep in snow. Miss Sadie gave Dooley a set of shoelaces, wrapped in aluminum foil and tied with a ribbon, as they stood in another puddle in another foyer.

“Father, I’m so upset. I ordered you the nicest can of mixed nuts, but if this weather keeps up, UPS will never get through.”

“Don’t even think about it,” he said.

“Louella, why couldn’t we just give him a check for the value of the nuts?”

“You askin’ th’ elf, Miss Sadie. You th’ Santy!”

“You wait right here,” she said, leaving the room and returning with a check. In her spidery handwriting, she had made out a check for five dollars and thirty-two cents. “Merry Christmas!” she said brightly. “Just in case the nuts don’t get through! I didn’t include shipping and handling, but I did add state tax.”

He literally dragged himself to the door of Betty Craig’s snow-bound blue house. It was exhausting to walk through heavy drifts, uphill and down, hither and yon, and keep a smiling face while crawling under beds and eating cobbler you didn’t want.

He had never been so glad to see the rectory, which looked like a cottage on a Christmas card, set as it was into a deep bank of snow with a drift of wind-tossed smoke rising from the chimney.

“I’m give out,” Dooley announced at supper, over a fried bologna sandwich. “You can git yourself somebody else next year. That’s church stuff. You need to git you some church people t’ carry that stuff around.”

“My friend, you are church people.”

“I wouldn’t be if you didn’t make me.”

“I make you?”

“I reckon you think I’d go if you didn’t make me.”

“Well, then, I’ll quit making you. Why don’t you just stop going?”

“I might.”

“Nobody should have to go to church against their will.” Sometimes he had to, but that was beside the point.

At a quarter to seven, Dooley came into the study. “I’m outta here,” he said vaguely, putting on his down jacket.

“Out of here to where, may I ask?”

“Church. Choir practice.”

“You don’t have to go, you know.”

“Yeah. Well, bye.”

“Bye, yourself.”

He went at once to the phone and dialed her number. He was too tired to speak, but it had to be done. No answer.

Nobody but Dooley and Jena Ivey had shown up at the Youth Choir rehearsal.

At eight, Martha Cullen called, distraught. Stuart had not arrived at the meeting, nor had he called home.

“I bought him a car phone, but he said it was too elitist, and it’s still in the box. Timothy, I’m beside myself. He always calls.”

“He’s fine, I’m sure of it. Chances are he’s stranded on the side of the mountain. Perhaps there’s been an accident. It can back cars up for miles.”

“I’ve protected him so, that I sometimes think of him as a child. I confess this to you, Timothy. I’m not proud of it, but I sometimes treat him like a mindless boy, God forgive me.”

“Whatever you’re doing, it must be right. You should be a fly on the wall and hear him sing your praises. Don’t worry. Please! Call me when you hear.”

He got a call from the adult-choir director, who was stranded at the foot of the mountain. Would he contact everyone and cancel the rehearsal?

The head of the Altar Guild phoned to say that forty-four memorial poinsettias had been left by the florist on the church stoop and had frozen solid.

The winds increased. Walter rang.

“We hear you’re under three feet of snow, for Pete’s sake.”

“Nearly. It’s losing power that concerns me—there’re so many old people in this communiry ...”

“Including yourself, of course.”

“Ha. There goes your cashmere jacket for Christmas.”

“Have you gone through any of the family papers yet?”

“What do you think?”

“You’ve been too busy, you haven’t gotten to it, you apologize for the long delay, but you’ll get right on it after the first of the year.”

“I couldn’t have put it better myself.”

“We’re off to a party. Keep in touch. Stay warm. Best to Dooley.”

“Did the package arrive?”

“Under the tree.”

“Great. I love you, you big lout.”

“Same here, Cousin. Katherine sends her love. Let’s have another trip together in the new year. By the way ...”

He could hear it coming. To avoid an interrogation about his love life, he put his hand over the phone and yelled, “Be right there!”

“Have to go, Walter. So long. Merry Christmas! God bless you!”

The wind roared around the house, moving the curtains and rattling pictures on the wall.

The evening news reported that major airports across the state were closed, the interstate highways were closing, and the word for the storm was officially “blizzard.”

“One of nature’s most life-threatening storms is the winter blizzard,” said a newscaster, standing hatless in the TV station parking lot, looking bewildered.