These High, Green Hills (19 page)

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Authors: Jan Karon

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“Dooley told me you’ve always wanted one,” she said, slipping her arm around his waist.
He spread his hands over the parchment seas and continents, as if some inner warmth were coming from inside. There was the seductive blue of the Gulf of Bothnia, and, as he twirled the globe, the vastness of Arabia, and the emerald masses of the Angola and Argentine Basins.
“I love you, my dearest husband.”
“And I love you,” he said, resting his cheek against the top of her head. Grace, and grace alone.
The music was only a flute, and a clear, simple voice singing what Christina Rossetti had written.
Love came down at Christmas
Love all lovely, love divine
Love was born at Christmas
Star and angels gave the sign.
Love shall be our token
Love be yours and love be mine ...
Love was born at Christmas ...
Love incarnate, love divine ...
CHAPTER SEVEN
Flying High
Lady Spring’s Grand Surprise
—
by
Mitford Muse
reporter, Hessie Mayhew
Lady Spring has surprised us yet again.
Arriving in our lofty Citadel prematurely this year, she caught us looking to the mending of our winter mittens. As early as mid-April, the first bloom of the lilac peeked out, whilst in years past, not one of us had caught its virtuous scent until May. Last April at this time, you may recall, we were shivering in our coats as white icing lay upon the bosom of our Village as upon a wedding cake.
In any case, Lady Spring has left her calling card in our expectant Garden—this little Niche where, upon the margin of a rushing streamlet, the woods violet first revealed its innocent face on yesterday morn.
Those with an eye for fashion will wonder what fanciful attire our Lady is wearing this year. I have as yet glimpsed her only briefly, and cannot be certain of every detail, but she appears to have arrayed herself in lacy ferns from her maiden Breast to her unshod feet, and crowned her fickle head with trumpet vines and moss.
At any moment, she will make her couch upon the banks of Miss Sadie Baxter’s hillside orchard, so that every rude Cottage and stately pile might have a view of Heaven come down to earth.
Gentle Reader, may fragrant breezes fan thy brow this Spring, and whether you meet our Lady upon the wild summit or in the sylvan glade, please remember:
DO NOT PLANT UNTIL MAY 15.
He dropped the newspaper beside his wing chair, laughing.
Hessie Mayhew had been reading Wordsworth, again, while combing the village environs with looking-glass and flower press.
Rude cottages and stately piles, wild summits and sylvan glades! Only in the
Mitford Muse
, he thought, unashamedly proud of a newspaper whose most alarming headline in recent months had been “Man Convicted of Wreckless Driving.”
Though Hessie had given him a good laugh, he realized he hadn’t been much amused lately.
The rectory dining room and kitchen were upside down and backward, and the plunder from the two rooms had been scattered throughout the parlor and along the hallway, not to mention dumped on either side of the steps all the way to the landing.
On Easter Monday, his dining chairs and china dresser had been hauled to the foyer, along with a stack of pots, pans, dishes, and nine boxes of oatmeal. As he hadn’t cooked oatmeal in two or three years, he had no idea where it came from, and was afraid to ask.
He saw his wife on occasion, but hardly recognized her, smeared as she was with pumpkin-colored paint, and her hair tied back with a rag.
“Cynthia?” he said, peering into the dining room. He might have stuck his head inside a cantaloupe, for all the brazen new color on his walls.
She looked down from the top rung of a ladder. “H‘lo, dearest. What do you think?”
He honestly didn’t know what he thought.
What he wondered was how much longer they’d be dodging around paint buckets and ladders, not to mention that he’d stepped in a skillet last night as he went up to bed. His study was the only place on the ground floor that hadn’t been invaded by the haste to transform the rectory into an old Italian villa before May fifteenth.
The kitchen, which certainly hadn’t been painted in his fourteen-year tenure, was becoming the color of “clotted Devon cream,” according to Cynthia. She was also doing something with a hammer and sponge that made the walls look positively ancient.
If anything, shouldn’t they be trying to make the place look more up-to-date?
As worthless as guilt was known to be, he couldn’t help feeling it, seeing his wife work herself to exhaustion for a parish tea that would last only two hours.
“Yes,” said their friend Marge Owen, “but they’ll talk about it for two years!”
He tried once to help her, but he’d never held a paintbrush in his life.
“You bake,” she finally said, exasperated, “and I’ll paint. For starters, I need ten dozen lemon squares—they freeze beautifully. When you’re through with those, I need ten dozen raspberry tarts and fourteen dozen cookies, assorted ...”
She rattled off a baking list that sounded like the quarterly output of Pepperidge Farm.
Why couldn’t they just do vegetable sandwiches and strawberries dipped in chocolate ... or something?
“We’re also doing those, but not until the last minute,” she said, peering down at him from a ladder. She was always on a ladder. Except, of course, for the times she popped through the hedge to work on her book, which had an ominous deadline.
“I can’t even
think
about the deadline,” she wailed. “I can’t even
think
about it!”
At night, she rolled over and expired, while he stared at dancing shadows on the ceiling and listened to Barnabas snore in the hall.
“We’re thrilled,” said Esther Bolick. “I can’t remember when something this big has happened and I didn’t have to bake a cake for it!”
“You’re not hurt that we didn’t ask you to bake?”
“Hurt? I should say not!”
He could tell, however, that Esther wouldn’t have minded doing a two-layer orange marmalade.
He was relieved to see that Emma was softening toward the coming event. But she made it clear to him that Cynthia should at least get involved in Sunday School and chair the parish brunches.
The ECW called to offer help in serving and pouring, and promised to line up four or five husbands to keep the tea traffic untangled on the street in front of the rectory.
Hessie Mayhew stopped by, wanting an interview, just as Father Tim trekked home to pick up his sermon notebook.
“Talk to my wife,” he said, “it’s all her doing.” He hoped that Hessie would not read any Coleridge before she wrote the story.
Clutching her note pad, Hessie grilled Cynthia, who was painting dentil molding from the top rung of a ladder. “What are you serving? How many people? What time of day? Any special colors? Do you have a theme?”
He ran from the room.
Going out the back door five minutes later, he heard Cynthia announce that the event would be called the “First Annual Primrose Tea.”
Hessie gave a squeal of delight, which was definitely a good sign.
He had talked to local clergy over the winter, but wasn’t encouraged.
Bottom line, Creek people were not known to welcome meddling preachers, and especially not meddling town preachers.
When he reminded them that Absalom Greer had gone in there every week for an entire summer, they reminded him that not only was Greer elderly, which generally translates to nonthreatening, but he was a native—always an advantage.
“From what I’ve heard,” said Bill Sprouse, “I wouldn’t mess around in there. I hear they’d as soon shoot you as look at you, and there’s no question that drugs and alcohol are serious problems.”
“Isn’t something being done through social services?”
“When it comes to the Creek, I don’t think much gets done one way or the other.”
“Tell me what else you’ve heard.”
“The usual intermarrying, as you might guess. Used to be a nest of bootleggers in there, and before that the Creek was where they made corn whiskey. A lot of poverty. Houses where you can see through the walls, kerosene stoves in winter, a fair amount of families get burned out.”
“Where do they go when that happens?”
“They don’t usually come into Mitford or Wesley. They stay with their own. Of course, once in a while you’ll see some of the older kids hanging around town, but not often. The Creek buys its groceries and gets doctored over the county line, in Ipswich—that’s where they get their schooling, too, if they get any. I think the county line runs along the creek bank for several miles.”
“Go in there with me,” he said. That was radical, but was anything worthwhile ever accomplished without radical action? Preaching the Gospel was radical, forming the church had been radical. Heaven knows, marrying Cynthia—at his age—had been radical.
“Brother, I’ve got all the sick and hurting I can say grace over. I don’t have to go to the Creek to find suffering. My organist is dying of a brain tumor, and one of my finest deacons is too depressed to get out of bed in the mornings.” The usually jovial preacher looked solemn.
“Yes, well ...”
“Not to mention that Rachel’s old mother just passed and me and Sparky are on our own while she’s in Springfield cleaning out the home place.”
“My condolences to Rachel.”
“I keep on a tight string with what the Lord’s laid at my own back door,” said Bill.
Yes, but if they didn’t do something, who would?
“Tell you what,” said Bill, looking jovial again, “I’ll commit to pray about it.”
Father Tim felt strangely restless and annoyed. Certainly he had prayed about it and would continue to pray about it, but he was moved to act, as well. Somehow, he could see the girl who had jumped out of the tree; he could see her as plainly as if she’d landed at his own feet.

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