A Light in the Window (58 page)

Percy didn’t see him, but he saw Percy—and he was shocked at the grief so plainly revealed on his friend’s unguarded face, as if it could no longer be hidden.

“And the name of the slough was despond,” said J.C., who couldn’t eat a bite.

“Th’ last supper,” said Mule. “With its own Judas.”

They had all seen the sign on the door.

J.C. stared into his coffee cup. “I helped pack last night. It was awful.”

“I’ll help tomorrow,” said Mule, “and Fancy’s comin’ to help Velma. Omer’s loadin’ this end. Lew Boyd’s unloadin’ the other end. We got four college kids from Wesley, and Coot and Ron are runnin’ their trucks to the warehouse.”

“Well done,” said the rector. “I’ll be here tomorrow at daylight.”

J.C. rolled his eyes. “Good luck with what’s down th’ hatch.”

“What’s down there?”

“Fifty-two years of bein’ in the food business. You got creamed corn in cans big as this booth, not to mention stewed tomatoes and sauerkraut out th’ kazoo. You got busted display cases, old counter stools, rusted tin signs, milk crates, and a jukebox that’ll take four men to lift it. Did you know this place had a jukebox in 1950? His daddy was trying to loosen up and go after a new demographic. Percy won’t throw away a bloomin’ thing, so eat your Wheaties.”

“You’re not packin’ tomorrow?” Mule wanted to know.

“I’ve got a paper to get out.”

“How are you going to treat the story?” asked the rector.

“I’m blaring it across the whole front page. Big photo of the sign on the door. Headline says,
Read It and Weep.
We’ll run a black border around the front page—which hasn’t been done on the
Muse
since World War Two. What do you think?”

“Check your spellin’,” said Mule, looking distraught. “This is important. It needs to be respectful.”

J.C. wiped his face with his handkerchief. “This is goin’ to change my dadgum life. I don’t take kindly to things that change my life.”

“Get you a hot plate and start cookin’,” said Mule. “You bachelors lead a sheltered existence.”

“Rave on,” said the rector.

J.C. leaned out of the booth and looked toward the front of the Grill. “There’s Mack Stroupe with a toothpick stuck in his jaw. He’s about to finish roofing that shed he built to snatch Percy’s trade.

“There’s your Collar Button man. He’s shakin’ Percy’s hand like an undertaker. And there’s Esther and Ray, both of ’em bawlin’ like babies. Man, this is giving me an ulcerated stomach.”

“In two days, they’ll be nailin’ boards over your stair steps,” said Mule.

“I sent her a note, said she better fix th’ back steps or I haul my presses out of here.”

“I wouldn’t get too high-hat with that witch on a broom,” said Mule. “You’ll be printin’ your paper on th’ creekbank.”

J.C. squinted toward the front. “Velma’s breakin’ down.”

“Let me out,” said Father Tim.

He walked with Velma Mosely to the Sweet Stuff Bakery, where Winnie set her in a chair in the back room and let Velma do something she said she’d been needing to do: cry her eyes out.

A letter from Father Roland in his “rude cabin in the wild”:

He’d been taken in a canoe to a parishioner’s house, where a meal for fourteen church members consisted of salmon steaks roasted over live coals. He declared he had never tasted anything so fine since his preseminary days in southern France. Clearly, his honeymoon with the rugged north woods of Canada remained in full swing, albeit the pay was minuscule.

A letter from the man in the attic, George Gaynor, who had discovered several prison inmates with whom he was praying and searching the Scriptures:

A note from Cynthia, faintly reminiscent of wisteria:

She had drawn a picture of herself in her bathrobe, looking frazzled, while he sat opposite her in a suit of shining armor, reading aloud from Wordsworth.

Ah, but he liked mail. Always had. One never knew what might turn up in the mail. It was like a lottery in which one could hit the jackpot at any moment.

The letter from Dooley’s principal was not the jackpot.

He woke at five, as usual, and called the hospital to say he wouldn’t be around to visit on the wards this morning, but he’d be there tomorrow, without fail.

He read morning prayer and lections and spent time on his knees for Percy and Velma. Then, he asked the Holy Spirit to open his heart for any special prayer for others. Buck Leeper was first in line.

At six, he pulled on an old pair of corduroy workpants and a denim shirt and woke Dooley and their houseguest. He didn’t think he was up to looking at his cousin over breakfast, but he knocked anyway.

“Rise and shine!” he shouted, loud enough to be heard to the Presbyterian parking lot and beyond. Two of his dearest friends were being dumped on, and he was plenty mad about it. If his cousin was thinking of ignoring his knock, she had better think again.

When she showed up in the kitchen in her robe and slippers, scowling, he acquainted her with a few rules he should have laid down in the beginning—and in no uncertain terms.

Dooley stared at him with his mouth hanging open.

“And,” he informed his charge, “if you think that’s something, just wait ’til I get through with you. In other words, my friend, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet.”

Dooley Barlowe didn’t say one word during breakfast, nor did his cousin, nor did he.

“Where’s Percy?”

Velma’s eyes were red and swollen. “Down th’ hatch,” she said.

The place was a tomb. He could hear his footsteps on the hardwood floor, even though he was wearing tennis shoes.

“You’ll open again,” he said, meaning it.

Velma didn’t reply. She was dumping flatware in a box with egg turners, colanders, and a metal grater. The sound seemed to echo off the walls, which was denuded of its usual array of outdated calendars, prints of covered bridges, and a collection of Cheerwine and Dr. Pepper signs.

The autographed photo of Percy and the former governor was gone, as was the photo of Percy’s daddy wrestling an alligator in Florida. The photos of their grandchildren had been peeled off the back of the cash register, and they had stripped off the battered sign that read,
Good Taste, Ample Portions, Quick Service, Low Prices.

He sighed, not knowing what else to do.

“Mule’s runnin’ late,” said Velma. “Help yourself to coffee.”

He poured a cup of coffee and descended broad wooden stairs to the basement.

He’d never been underneath the Grill before, in the room lined with shelves built over earthen walls and lighted by two bare, weak bulbs.

“Percy?”

“Over here,” said Percy, appearing from behind the furnace. In the gloom, the pallor of his friend’s face was startling.

He’d known priests who could make people laugh in the jaws of disaster, but he wasn’t part of that breed. In all his years in the clergy, he’d never been able to think of witty remarks that, even for a moment, might obscure the pain of loss.

“How’s it going?” he asked quietly.

Percy looked away from him. “I cain’t hardly seem to go on from here.”

“Why don’t we take a load off our feet before we get started?”

“I thought I’d be able t’ handle it,” said Percy, sitting with the rector on the bottom step. “But I ain’t able, it seems like.”