These High, Green Hills (32 page)

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Authors: Jan Karon

BOOK: These High, Green Hills
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“Lord have mercy, are y‘all OK?” yelled Joe Joe, tripping over the long rope leash they’d anchored to Barnabas.
“Fine! Wonderful!” shouted the rector.
“I ought to kick your butt,” said Larry Johnson, meaning it.
They stumbled out of the opening into the light, which issued from a ring of lanterns and the flash of J. C. Hogan’s Nikon.
J.C. walked backward as they advanced from the cave, shooting at close range, and crashed into the underbrush.
Cynthia, who was covered with mud from head to toe, embraced various members of the exultant youth group and shouted, “Hallelujah!”
“What time is it?” asked the rector.
“Ten o‘clock!” announced Bo Derbin, proud to be asked. “We thought Indians were living in that cave and had scalped you or made you their slaves.”
Mule Skinner appeared, carrying a lantern. “Lord help, look at that gash on your head! I hope you’re up to walkin‘ th’ two miles out of here. We got to get you to th‘ hospital.”
“We’re fine,” he said. “No harm done!”
“We was goin‘ to radio for a helicopter in case you was in
real
bad shape,” said a police officer, who appeared disappointed.
Father Tim felt positively humiliated by all this ruckus. Not only had he and Cynthia spoiled the camping trip, they’d brought out the police and the press, who, worse yet, had to hump it on foot across two miles of rough terrain.
“Cave!” said Larry Johnson. “That’s all I had to hear. I gave you an hour and we started looking. We called and hollered, then went a little ways in and poked around, but couldn’t see for squat, even with a lantern and flashlight. I walked out to the van, drove to the nearest phone, and called Rodney.”
“I was down at th‘ station chewin’ th‘ fat when Larry called,” said Mule. “I told ’em how my daddy was lost in a cave in Kentucky, and they like to never found ‘im ’til they sent in his Blue Tick hound. So Rodney collected th‘ boys and went to your house and got Barnabas.”
“A stroke of genius.”
Larry leaned close to the rector’s ear. “I hate to tell you that Rodney took a wrong turn outside Farmer and every one of ‘em were lost as the tribes of Israel for two hours.”
“We followed Barnabas as hard as we could go,” said Joe Joe. “The way he tracked you, y‘all must’ve been runnin’ around in there like chickens with their heads cut off.”
“Tell me about it,” said the rector.
“Actually,” Cynthia informed J.C., “it was a very
interesting
experience. So sorry we alarmed everybody.”
“Want my last package of peanut butter?” Lee Lookabill asked Cynthia.
“If you’ll
knead
it first, I’ll eat it,” she said. “I never thought it would come to this.”
Rodney Underwood looked at the rector sternly and hitched up his holster belt. “I don’t know when I’ve had to fool with a man who was lost in a cave. I just radio’d th‘ county sheriff. He says this cave is totally unexplored.”
“Not anymore it ain’t,” said Mule, grinning proudly.
Emma Newland was making her pronouncement.
“Anybody who’d step
foot
in a cave
deserves
to get lost!”
“It was a very interesting experience,” he said, quoting his wife.
“Interesting? With
bats
swarmin‘ around your head, and steppin’ in water out th‘
kazoo
?”
“We never saw a bat, actually.”
“Never
saw
a bat? That’s where bats
live
—in
caves
!”
“So sue me,” he said.
Merely walking out the door of the rectory was invigorating. It was as if he’d come back from the grave, given the dazzling, living energy of every green thing he saw.
He had escaped the tomb, and felt his spirit quicken in response. In a way, it was his own Eastertide.
“Lost in a cave?” said Bill Sprouse, who passed him on the way to the Grill. “That’ll preach, Brother, that’ll preach!”
“For you,” said Percy, “a dollar off th‘ special.”
“Why a dollar off?” He was leery of Percy’s specials.
“You been lost in a cave! You’re a big gun!”
He grinned. “Big gun, is it? Well, then, bring on the special.”
“Velma,” Percy called to his wife, “th‘ Father’ll have th’ special! Coffee’s on th‘ house.”
“What, ah, is the special?” he inquired.
“Grilled horned toad on a bed of fresh mustard greens,” said Percy, looking solemn.
“Give me a side of salsa with that,” replied the rector.
Percy doubled over with laughter, slapping his leg. Clearly, the week that Percy and Velma had spent in Hawaii last summer was still working wonders with the proprietor’s sense of humor.
“You got lost in a dern
cave
?” Dooley yelled into the phone.
“Totally!” Where Dooley Barlowe was concerned, only the bald truth would do. “Completely!”
“Totally, completely lost? Man!”
“Want to do it sometime?”
“What? Get lost in a cave? No way.”
“You don’t know what you’re missing,” he said.
“Did ol‘ Cynthia get scared?”
“Terrified.”
Dooley cackled. “Did you get scared?”
“What do you think?”
“I think it scared th‘ poop outta you, is what I think.”
“You hit the nail on the head, buddy.”
Dooley Barlowe sounded as if he were rolling on the floor. Maybe, just maybe, hearing Dooley laugh was the payoff for that miserable experience.
A dollar off a horned toad that turned out to be tuna salad, and a ripping good laugh out of Dooley Barlowe....
So far, so good, for a couple of hours spent stumbling around in the dark.
When he arrived home at five-thirty, he thought he had never smelled such a seductive aroma in his life, though ‘something in his stomach was definitely off.
“Leg of lamb!” exclaimed Cynthia.
“Man!” Sometimes there was nothing else to do but quote Dooley Barlowe.
“And glazed carrots, and roasted potatoes with rosemary.”
“The very gates of heaven.”
“Dearest,” she said, putting her arms around his neck, “there’s something different about you....”
“What? Exhaustion, maybe, from only four hours of sleep.”
She kissed his chin. “No. Something deeper. I don’t know what it is.”
“Something good, I fondly hope.”
“Yes. Very good. I can’t put my finger on it, exactly. Oh. I forgot—and a salad with oranges and scallions, and your favorite dressing.”
“But why all this?”
“Because you were so brave when we were lost in that horrible cave.”
The payoff was definitely improving. He brushed her hair back and kissed her forehead. “It wasn’t so horrible.”
“Timothy ...”
“OK,” he said, “I was scared out of my wits.”
She laughed. “I knew that!”
“You did not.”
“Did so.”
“Did not.”
“Are y‘uns havin’ a fuss?” Uncle Billy peered through the screen door.
“Not yet,” said the rector. “Come in and sit!”
“I cain’t. I dragged m‘self down here t’ give you m‘ tithe, as Rose is on to me akeepin’ it in th‘ newspapers. She’s done gone through a big stack alookin’ for it, don’t you know. It’s a scandal what a man with a little cash money has t‘ put up with, ain’t it?”
“I don’t have a clue, Uncle Billy. I never had much cash money.”
“I hear you’n th‘ missus was lost in a cave. I got lost in a cave when I was a boy. Hit’s somethin’ you don’t never forget. Them red Inyuns that roamed these mountains, they knowed caves like th‘ back of their hands, but th’ white feller cain’t hardly go a step without broad daylight in ‘is face.”
“That’s a fact,” he said.
“I hear your dog pulled you out, or y‘uns might’ve been in there’til Christmas.”
Barnabas, who was lying under the kitchen table, thumped his tail on the floor.
“He’s the man of the hour, all right,” said the rector, stepping outside. “They say he led them straight to us, nearly a quarter of a mile in. We got to bed about three o‘clock this morning.”

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