A Light in the Window (60 page)

They heaved the last of the boxes up the steps, too weary to speak.

“Give me a flashlight,” said the rector. “I’ll look around, one last time.”

He couldn’t remember feeling such exhaustion and soreness of spirit. All he wanted to do was go home and go to bed. Yet, they didn’t want to leave behind any valuable items that Percy might be able to turn into cash. The Collar Button man had offered five hundred dollars for the jukebox, if Percy would also let him have the records that included “Sixty-Minute Man,” “One Mint Julep,” and “Chattanooga Shoeshine Boy.” Percy was thinking about it.

Mule had swept the concrete floor and stood the broom in a corner. Strange that nothing but a worn-down broom was left of a family’s fifty-two-year history.

He shone the light throughout the eerie space, which had grown colder and damper with nightfall. He had smelled all the sour earth he could stomach and decided that plans for cleaning his own basement could wait a few years.

He pointed the flashlight under the floor joists where raw dirt left only a few feet of interval space. Maybe some of those old advertising signs had been stored in there—the Collar Button man’s excitement indicated they were valuable.

That was when he saw it.

Ron Malcolm whistled.

“The joists are rotten from front to back, but it looks like the worst is smack under the rear booth.”

All he could see were Ron’s feet sticking out where he’d crawled between the floor joists and the bank of earth.

“For goodness sake, tell Percy to stop jumping around up there.”

“Percy!” the rector shouted up the stairs.

“What?”

“Hold it down a minute.” He hadn’t told Percy what he had seen. Instead, he said he thought Ron Malcolm, being a former builder, might like to see the interesting way the building was supported.

“How fast can you get here?” he said from the phone booth in front of Happy Endings, and Ron had hit the floor beside his bed running.

Ron wriggled out of the space. “After forty years in the construction business, I sure as heck don’t want to be crushed under a pile of rubble.”

“That bad?”

“You wouldn’t believe it. Southern pine, plenty old, and rotten to the core. I’ve seen it a hundred times. It’s a miracle we haven’t all been dumped in the basement. Especially the rear booth—it’s a real hot seat.”

“The new tenants come in tomorrow morning.”

“Not in here, they don’t. When the town inspector gets a look at this ...”

“Could we call him, get him to take a look at it ... now?”

“Now?”

“Edith Mallory needs to hear this, but she probably needs to hear it from a town authority.”

“It’s eleven o’clock at night ...”

“How long could it take for repairs?”

Ron looked up and around. “Two months, six months. There’s a lot of hidden stuff in a setup like this. Who knows? Minimum, maybe two months. You got to rip out the joists from front to back ... lay a new floor.... Maybe we could salvage some of the old floor. I don’t know. I saw this same thing happen in a church once—a few more Sundays and the entire gospel side could have been swallowed up.

“They’ll want to check the stairwell that goes to J.C.’s press room, too. That whole area is pretty bouncy, as I recall.”

“Let’s think this through,” said the rector, sitting down on the bottom step.

Edith Mallory looked as if she’d dressed for a bridge luncheon, although it was nearly midnight. She drummed her fingers on the surface of her breakfast counter where they sat on stools. A cigarette smoldered in the ashtray.

“Rotten,” said the rector.

“Clear through,” said the former builder. “I plan to report it to the town inspector first thing in the morning, because it’s a hazardous situation. Somebody could get killed in there.”

The muscles in her face appeared to tighten, which made her enormous eyes seem larger. “I have a moving van arriving in Wesley at seven o’clock in the morning.”

“When the inspector sees the problem, chances are he’ll condemn it.” She uttered an oath.

“It’ll take a couple of months, maybe more, to make repairs. Worst case, other problems could be lurking in the structure, as well.”

She put the smoldering cigarette out. “I’m flying to Spain day after tomorrow.” She sat immobile, frozen. “I don’t suppose this is some cooked-up ruse to keep your friend from leaving ...”

“Keep him from leaving?” said Father Tim. “He’s already gone. Midnight, remember?”

She stared at the wall clock, a nerve twitching under her left eye.

“How long will you be in Spain?”

“Three months,” she snapped. “Then on a world cruise.”

“You said the dress shop would have to go elsewhere if they couldn’t occupy tomorrow, is that correct?”

“That,” she said, turning on him with a kind of seething fury, “is precisely what I said and precisely what they will be forced to do.” She drew one of her brown cigarettes out of the package. “That odious place has never been anything but trouble to me.”

“Perhaps the space will be attractive to another of your connections ...”

“I wanted it finalized before I leave.” She got up and paced the kitchen floor. “I suppose you think I have time to recruit tenants before Wednesday?”

“I have a tenant for you.”

She looked at him condescendingly. “Really?”

“The same tenant who occupied it for thirty-four years.”

She sniffed.

“I hear you’ll be spending more of your time in your Florida home.”

“You heard correctly.”

“Sign a lease with Percy and make your repairs. This would put the place in good hands, with no running back and forth to pacify a high-rent lessee. You’d have no fancy carpeting to pay for, no walls and ceilings to restore and paint, no upgraded toilet to install.” He paused and plunged ahead. “A five-year-lease with a twenty percent rent increase.”

She glared at him. “You must be kidding.”

“Five and twenty,” he said evenly.

The nerve under her left eye twitched again. “One year at forty percent.”

“Five and twenty, and you replace the awning. We’ll scrape and paint the front of the building.”

“Right,” said Ron.

She stood in the middle of the floor, rigid. “One and thirty. Bottom line.”

The rector got off the stool. “Have a good trip, Edith.” Ron followed him to the door.

He was turning the knob when she came into the foyer behind them. “All right, then. Five and twenty.”

He turned around to face her cold rage. Edith hissed a bitter curse, which, for all its foulness, didn’t surprise him in the least.

“Not one bit of skin off Percy’s nose,” said Emma. “He had to move out, anyway, for all that work to get done. Plus, it was in the nick of time, before the whole thing caved in and people raised a stink.”

It hadn’t been what the scripture from Isaiah had meant, exactly, but God had given Percy a treasure in the darkness. There in that dim basement were the rotten joists—which, oddly, had been worth their weight in gold.

“It’s wonderful,” said Cynthia. “You’re the man of the hour!”

He’d never been the man of any hour. He discovered that he felt taller, even thinner. How that was possible, he had no idea. However, he didn’t want to get carried away with such nonsense. And he also didn’t want to gloss over the most important of his feelings, which was joy.

A comfortable way of life was being changed—but then, it would soon be restored. Percy would not die, Velma would not cry, he could get a bowl of soup somewhere other than his own kitchen, and life would go on.

He walked to the church and knelt down and prayed, having a good laugh with the Lord as he confessed he had no idea that he’d wind up playing hardball with Edith Mallory—and win.

He would have to do something about Meg Patrick, but he didn’t know what.

Also, he needed to contact a few more schools and meet with at least two of Dooley’s teachers for the hoped-for recommendations.

Most important, Mitford School would be out in June, which was next month, so he’d better get cracking and have a talk with Dooley Barlowe.

June! he thought, sitting uneasily at his desk. The month in which a tutor would have to be brought in, Puny would be getting married and going away for two weeks, Hoppy and Olivia would be married at Lord’s Chapel and feted at Fernbank, and, last but not least, the bishop would come to perform the annual confirmation service—one in which both Dooley and Cynthia would be welcomed into the church. This time, Martha would come with the bishop, and he felt compelled to entertain them.

It seemed that something else was going on in June, but he was relieved that he couldn’t remember what.