A Light in the Window (45 page)

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Authors: Jan Karon

BOOK: A Light in the Window
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He left the office much later than usual—it was nearly dusk—and saw Buck Leeper walking on the other side of the street, leaning into the strong wind that had been blowing all day. He thought the man looked utterly desolate; perhaps it was something in the slope of his shoulders, but he really couldn’t say.
“What will we do? Carry him off kicking and screaming?”
“He wouldn’t be the first boy carried to school that way.”
“Not meaning any disrespect, Miss Sadie, but what do you know about boys being carried off to school?”
“Father, you do not have to be a villain to act one in a play, nor do you have to be a boy to know that kicking and screaming about private school is more rule than exception.”
He pondered this.
She leaned on her cane and gazed at him steadily. “It was Mr. Oliver Wendell Holmes who said that a mind stretched to a new idea never returns to its original shape. That boy needs his mind stretched.”
“Why are you so interested in Dooley’s development?” He’d been wanting to ask that. At twenty thousand a year, he was curious.
“He’s a diamond in the rough, clear as day. My father was, and so was Willard Porter. They both made something of themselves, with no help from anybody. I’d like to see what happens when help comes to a boy who’s rough as a cob yet loaded with possibilities.”
“Miss Sadie, isn’t this like what Uncle Haywood did to you? He convinced your parents to send you to a fancy school in a foreign country, and you hated every minute of it. A fancy school, no matter where it is, will be like a foreign country to Dooley Barlow. Actually, he’ll go there speaking a foreign language, if you know what I mean.”
“Uncle Haywood thought a fancy school was the right credential for catching a husband,” she said crisply. “It had nothing to do with stretching my mind with new ideas!”
More than seventy years later, the very mention of Uncle Haywood was still distasteful to Miss Sadie. She made a face like she’d just eaten a persimmon.
Dooley looked up from his homework at the desk in the study. “I seen that woman today. I come up th’ steps and she was in th’ hall closet, gittin’ an armload of toilet paper.”
“Aha.”
“Seen me, went back to her room, locked th’ door.”
“Ummm.”
“Got some eyes, ain’t she?”
“Green, I think. We need to have a talk.”
“When?”
“Oh, soon, I guess.” Not now. Not tomorrow. Not necessarily next week or the week after that. But... soon.
“What about?” Dooley stared at him, expressionless.
“Oh, this and that.”
“I ain’t done nothin’.”
He sat on the edge of the desk. “Haven’t done anything.”
“That’s what I said.”
“Well, then, there’s nothing to worry about. Not a thing. Just a talk, that’s all.”
“Anyway, I ain’t smoked but two. Buster Austin sucked down a whole pack.”
Rats! He didn’t want to know that. “Really?”
“He’s th’ one stole ’em, not me. Me an’ Tommy stood across th’ street while he done it.”
No, he didn’t want to know any of this. But here it was, and he’d have to deal with it, which would result in another kind of talk, entirely.
Dooley dived into the pause to change the subject. “You git me them shirts?”
“I did. No plaid. Just blue.”
“Where’re they at?”
“Your prepositions dangle terribly,” he said, quoting Cynthia Coppersmith.
Those boys in their navy blazers would make chopped liver out of this kid; if he made it through alive, it would be a blasted miracle.
He thought his words had sunk in during their talk at breakfast, but he couldn’t be sure.
Hadn’t he smoked a few cigarettes in his time? He and Tommy Noles had nearly burned the Noles’s barn down, but, thanks be to God, they’d put the fire out by flinging themselves onto the smoldering hay and rolling in it.
They had shoved the blackened hay under the pile in the rear loft, and he’d gone around with singed hair for weeks, his father peering at him in his strangely abstracted way.
Stealing, however, was another thing. Hanging out with a boy who was not only smoking but stealing into the bargain—this was serious business. He hoped he had made his point and that it had been well-taken. Sometimes, talking to Dooley Barlowe was like talking to a fence post.
He was glad it was Emma’s day off when Mitford Blossoms made a delivery. Jena Ivey knocked on his office door and stepped inside, carrying a long box.
“Good morning, Father!” He could see the mischief in her eyes as she held it out to him. “Your birthday isn’t ’til June, so it must be something really special.”
“Aha.” He looked at the box as if it contained a set of barbecue tongs.
“They’re my best, Father. I know how picky you are about roses.”
He should have felt delighted, he thought. Instead, he felt interrupted. “Thanks, Jena. Well, then, see you later. I know how it is when there’s no one to mind the store.” He held the door open for her.
“Don’t you want to peep in before I go?” Jena liked a chance to see the look on people’s faces when they received flowers from her shop. “ ’Course, you don’t have to read the card ’til I leave.”
Obliging, he lifted the lid and stared with spontaneous admiration at the dozen roses. They appeared to have come from a country garden only minutes ago—in fact, morning dew still clung to their petals.
“Sprayed with mineral water,” Jena said proudly, reading his mind. “What do you think?”
“I think you’re the best florist in these mountains—no contest.”
She looked disappointed. “Somebody once said the East Coast.”
“The East Coast, then! I’m sure of it.” He gave her a hug, knowing that his Sunday-school supervisor thrived on hugs.
“Well, enjoy the roses, Father. We’re sure loving Dooley’s contribution to the choir! Having him, I think we can build something wonderful over the next couple of years.”
The next couple of years? He nodded bleakly.
She stepped out to the sidewalk. “Do you need a vase? I can run across the street and bring you one.”
“No, thanks. I have just the thing.” He called after her as she hurried away, “God bless you! Thank you!”
The roses had already begun to change the very air in the room with their subtle freshness.
He set the box on his desk. All his life, he had been a fool for roses, and she knew it. Perhaps she had been thinking of him as he had been thinking of her, both of them frightened in their own ways, for their own reasons.
He remembered the plaintive way she had said, “Have I been a good influence?”
Well, of course, she had. She deserved a medal for even recognizing his existence. What was he, after all, when you came down to it, but a country parson? Not tall and trim and debonair like Andrew Gregory, who owned a closetful of cashmere jackets, could speak Italian, French, and a bit of Russian, and drove a Mercedes the size of a German tank.
That she would wear a path through their hedge was wonder enough. But to love him into the bargain? That was supernatural.
He put the roses in the vase, stem by stem, and set it on top of the file cabinet, where the morning sun rimmed their petals with a bright glow.
It was as if a light had come on in the room.
He stopped by the rectory after a noon meeting and found a note from Meg Patrick on the kitchen counter:
C Cpersmth rang.
He put Barnabas on the red leash and hurried to the office, thinking how he didn’t deserve the roses, not at all. He didn’t deserve anything from her, not even the consolation of her voice.
What was wrong with him, anyway, to have thought he loved her, to have felt the certainty of loving her—only to have this frozen impotence grip him?
He had the image of one of Hal’s Guernsey cows going up against the new electrical fencing and stumbling back, dazed. The mention of marriage was for him an electrical fence; it was a barrier with its own raw shock through which he could not force himself to go.
Why was he, after all, fearful of marriage? He trusted her completely not to make a fool of him, or wound his pride, or do some sort of damage that he couldn’t foreknow.
The trouble was, he kept making a fool of himself, wounding his own pride, and doing his own damage—which always included disappointing her.
When he talked with Katherine on the phone, he had fought to keep his concerns to himself. But, little by little, like grinding a kernel of corn to a fine powder, she had got it out of him.
“Teds, fear is not of the Lord. You know that.”
“I know that.”
“So who do you think it’s of?”
“The Enemy, of course.”
“Bingo! If this weren’t right in God’s opinion, he would put sensible caution in your heart, not paralyzing fear. But until you have peace about it, it can’t be right—no matter how right it all looks on the surface. And believe me, it looks very right... at least for you. I don’t know about her, of course, but she could probably do a great deal better.”

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