These High, Green Hills (4 page)

The line of maples that marched by First Baptist to Winnie Ivey’s cottage on Little Mitford Creek was fully ablaze by the eleventh of October.

“The best ever!” said several villagers, who ran with their cameras to document the show.

The local newspaper editor, J. C. Hogan, shot an extravagant total of six rolls of film. For the first time since the nation’s bicentennial, readers saw a four-color photograph on the front page of the
Mitford Muse.

Everywhere, the pace was quickened by the dazzling light that now slanted from the direction of Gabriel Mountain, and the sounds of football practice in the schoolyard.

Avis Packard put a banner over the green awning of The Local:
Fresh Volley Hams Now, Collards Coming.

Dora Pugh laid on a new window at the hardware store featuring leaf rakes, bicycle pumps, live rabbits, and iron skillets. “What’s th‘ theme of your window?” someone asked. “Life,” replied Dora.

The library introduced its fall reading program and invited the author of the
Violet
books to talk about where she got her ideas. “I have no idea where I get my ideas,” she told Avette Harris, the librarian. “They just come.” “Well, then,” said Avette, “do you have any ideas for another topic?”

The village churches agreed to have this year’s All-Church Thanksgiving Feast with the Episcopalians, and to get their youth choirs together for a Christmas performance at First Presbyterian.

At Lord’s Chapel, the arrangements on the altar became gourds and pumpkins, accented by branches of the fiery red maple. At this time of year, the rector himself liked doing the floral offerings. He admitted it was a favorite season, and his preaching, someone remarked, grew as electrified as the sharp, clean air.

“Take them,” he said one Sunday morning, lifting the cup and the Host toward the people, “in remembrance that Christ died for you, and feed on Him in your hearts by faith, with thanksgiving.”

Giving his own wife the Host was an act that might never cease to move and amaze him. More than sixty years a bachelor, and now this—seeing her face looking up expectantly, and feeling the warmth of her hand as he placed the bread in her palm. “The body of our Lord Jesus Christ, which was given for you, Cynthia.”

He couldn’t help but see the patch of colored light that fell on her hair through the stained-glass window by the rail, as if she were being appointed to something divine. Surely there could be no divinity in having to live the rest of her life with him, with his set-in-concrete ways and infernal diabetes.

They walked home together after church, hand in hand, his sermon notebook tucked under his arm. He felt as free as a schoolboy, as light as air. How could he ever have earned God’s love, and hers into the bargain?

The point was, he couldn’t. It was all grace, and grace alone.

He was sitting in his armchair by the fireplace, reading the newspaper. Barnabas ambled in from the kitchen and sprawled at his feet.

Cynthia, barefoot and in her favorite robe, sat on the sofa and scribbled in a notebook. One of his antiquated towels was wrapped around her damp hair. He still couldn’t get over the sight of her on his sofa, looking as comfortable as if she lived here—which, he was often amazed to realize, she did.

“Wasn’t it wonderful?” she asked.

“Wasn’t what wonderful?”

“Our wedding.”

“It was!” She brought the subject up fairly often, and he realized he’d run out of anything new to say about it.

“I love thinking about it,” she said, plumping up a needlepoint pillow and putting it behind her head. “A tuxedo and a tab collar are a terrific combination.”

“No kidding?” He would remember that.

“I think you should dress that way again at the first possible opportunity.

He laughed. “It doesn’t take much for you.”

“That’s true, dearest, except in the area of my new husband. There, it took quite a lot.”

He felt that ridiculous, uncontrollable grin spreading across his face.

“It was a wonderful idea to ask Dooley to sing. He was absolutely masterful. And thank goodness for Ray Cunningham’s video camera. I love the frames of you and Stuart in his bishop’s regalia, standing in the churchyard ... and the part where Miss Sadie and Preacher Greer are laughing together.”

“Another case of two hearts beating as one.”

“Would you like to see it again? I’ll make popcorn.”

“Maybe in a day or two.” Hadn’t they watched it only last week?

“It was very sweet and charming, the way you insisted on baking a ham for our reception.”

“I always bake a ham for wedding receptions at Lord’s Chapel,” he said. “I’m stuck in that mode.”

“Tell me something ... ?”

“Anything!” Would he really tell her anything?

“How did you unstick your mode long enough to propose to me? What happened?”

“I realized ... that is, I ...” He paused thoughtfully and rubbed his chin. “To tell the truth, I couldn’t help myself.”

“Ummm,” she said, smiling at him across the room. “You know I love that you knelt on one knee.”

“Actually, I was prepared to go down on both knees. As soon as I dropped to one, however, you saw what was coming, and seemed so happy about it, I didn’t bother to advance to the full kneel.”

She laughed uproariously, and held her arms out to him. “Please come over here, dearest. You’re so far away over there!”

The evening news was just coming on when the phone rang. It was his doctor and friend, Hoppy Harper, calling from the hospital.

“How fast can you get here?”

“Well ...”

“I’ll explain later. Just get here.”

He was out the door in thirty seconds.

CHAPTER TWO

“DR. HARPER’S in the operating room, Father, he can’t come out. He said put you in his office.”

Nurse Kennedy opened a door and firmly pushed him inside.

“He said for you to pray and pray hard, and don’t stop till he comes in here. Pray for Angie Burton, she’s seven. Dr. Harper says it’s a ruptured appendix, septic shock. We’re all praying—except Dr. Wilson.”

Nurse Kennedy, who generally looked cheerful, looked strained as she closed the door.

In Hoppy’s cluttered office, only a lamp burned.

Angie Burton. That would be Sophia Burton’s youngest. He thought of Sophia, who was well known for taking her two girls to First Baptist every Sunday morning, rain or shine, and for teaching them the Twenty-third Psalm as soon as they could talk. Working in the canning plant in Wesley, she kept bravely on in the wake of a husband who had totaled their car, tried to burn down their house, and disappeared into Tennessee only yards ahead of the law.

He phoned home and asked Cynthia to pray, then fell to his knees by Hoppy’s desk.

“God of all comfort, our only help in time of need, be present in Your goodness with Angie....”

It was nearly midnight when Hoppy opened the door. “I owe you an apology,” he said. “I could have asked you to pray at home, but all I could think of was having you here—on the premises.”

The rector had seen that look on his friend’s face before. It was utter exhaustion. “How did it go?”

There was a long pause. Hoppy looked up and shook his head. “We did everything we could.”

He sank wearily into the chair at his desk. “Ever since we prayed for Olivia’s transplant and I saw the miracles that happened, I’ve been praying for my patients. One day, I asked Kennedy if she would pray. Then she told Baker, and soon we discovered that the whole operating room was praying.

“I never talked to you about it, I kept thinking I would.... Anyway, we’ve seen some turnarounds. No miracles, maybe, but turnarounds. We felt something powerful was going on here, something we wanted to explore.”

Hoppy took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. “The bottom line is, we prayed, you prayed, and Angie Burton didn’t make it.”

What could he say, after all?

Angie Burton’s death was something the village could hardly bear.

Winnie Ivey was grief-stricken—Angle and her sister, Liza, often visited the Sweet Stuff Bakery after school. To them, she was Granny Ivey, who hung their school drawings on the wall in the Sweet Stuff kitchen.

The editor of the
Mitford Muse,
who scarcely ever spoke to or acknowledged a child, was moved to sudden tears over breakfast at the Grill and excused himself from the booth.

Coot Hendrick went to Sophia’s house with a pie his elderly mother had baked, but, not knowing what to say, ran before anyone answered the door.

The members of First Baptist mourned the loss. So many of them had been involved in Angie’s life; had held her as a baby, taught her in Sunday School, and made certain that she and Liza regularly got a box of decent clothes. In recent years, some had quietly paid the drugstore bill when the girls were sick with flu.

After the funeral, the rector went with his wife to the rented house behind Lew Boyd’s Exxon station, still known to most villagers as the Esso.

He didn’t say much, but sat on the sofa and held Sophia’s hand, against a background murmur of neighbors bringing food into the kitchen.

Next to him, Cynthia cradled Liza on her lap, caressing the damp cheek that lay against her shoulder.

When Liza began to sob, Cynthia began to quietly weep with her. Then, somehow, they were all weeping and clinging to each other, huddled together on the sofa.

It was at once a terrible and a wondrous thing. He didn’t care that he suddenly had no control, that he had lost it, that his grief was freely pouring forth, apart from his will.

They held each other until the wave of their sorrow passed and he was able to pray. They all knew that he had no answers, though they had hoped he might.

Afterward, he and Cynthia walked down the path to their car.

“Blast,” he said, clenching his jaw.

She looked at him, at the way this death had moved and stricken him. In the car, she took his hand and drew it to her cheek. “Thank you for being a loving priest.”