These High, Green Hills (57 page)

Authors: Jan Karon

BOOK: These High, Green Hills

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“No problem,” he said, happy to mind his wife.

At twilight, they trooped through the backyard and out to Baxter Park, carrying a blanket.

She brought a little sackful of things and began setting them out. There were small candles in holders, which she lit with a match, then placed in the grass like so many fireflies caught in jars.

Two ripe peaches. A bottle of champagne. Crystal stemware. Two damask napkins.

“There!” she said, pleased with herself.

He fell back on the blanket, quietly intoxicated with an idea he couldn’t have come up with in a hundred years. Tree frogs called, crickets whirred, a night bird swooped from the hedge and rushed over them.

“Ahhhh,” said his wife, letting out her breath.

“What did you do today?” he asked, feeling a sudden tenderness for his wife’s good instincts.

“The usual, of course. And I sat with Miss Pattie for an hour and a half.”

He loved the familiarity of the question everyone asked of Evie Adams’s elderly mother. “What’s Miss Pattie done now?”

“Nothing much, actually. We were sitting on the sofa playing Who’s Got the Button, that’s her favorite, when she went sound asleep. She just sort of fell over on my shoulder and snored for ages.”

“And what did you do?”

“I didn’t want to move and wake her up, of course, so I just sat there and prayed for Pauline and Evie and Miss Pattie, then I made out our grocery list in my head, and figured out how to mix two blues together with a dash of green, for some feathers I’m painting.”

He smiled. “Good work, Deacon. How’s your book?”

“Wonderful! Just two more pages to go. Do you know I absolutely love painting birds?”

“What don’t you love?”

“Three things. Stress, stress, and stress.”

“We’ve certainly had all three lately. And all for good reason, of course, but ... ”

“We shouldn’t even have to
talk
about stress, much less
have
it. After all, we live in Mitford!”

“Right. A quaint little town where people value each other and nothing bad ever happens to anybody.”

“Poop!” she said, with feeling.

“Where are we going to live when we retire?” he asked, seeing a star appear. “And where are we going in August, which is only next month? To the coast?”

“I can’t swim!” she said.

“I can’t tolerate sun,” he confessed.

“I hate sand!”

“So that’s out,” he declared. “Let’s open the champagne.” They hadn’t had champagne since ...

“We haven’t had champagne since our wedding,” she said, handing him the bottle. “And please be careful. My nephew, David, drew out the cork one evening and looked in to see why it hadn’t all come out.”

“Uh-oh.”

“That’s when it came out! He wore the eyepatch for two months.”

He drew out the cork and they heard it pop across the grass and into the rhododendron.

“Bingo!” exclaimed his wife.

They raised their glasses. “How did I ever find you?” he asked.

“You were poking around in the hedge, and there I was!”

“In your curlers,” he said, grinning.

“To curlers!” she crowed. “Let’s figure out August later, and dream of the other, now. We can paint retirement with a much bigger brush!”

“How about if I supply in Canada?” he asked, lying back and holding the glass on his chest.

“We could live in the wilds!”

“Wherever I’m called.”

“I could do that,” she said.

“Or England. We could live in England. We know the language. Roughly speaking, of course.”

“I could do almost anything, dearest. And just think—I can work anywhere, as long as I have paints and a brush. By the way, I hear there’s a little church at the coast with an apartment in the rear, and clergy from different denominations supply it every week or so. Of course we’d hate the sand, but we’d love the seafood. That might be fun.”

“Maybe ... ” he said, smiling.

The champagne was going straight to his head. He saw himself wearing shoes with treads that might have been spliced from tractor tires. He would be a veritable globe-trotter; he would go here, he would go there ...

“Timothy, dear?” She nudged him in the side. “Are you dropping off?”

He sat upright at once. “Who, me? Dropping off? Of course not!”

Good Lord! Where would he get the energy to go farther than his own backyard?

Dooley came from his mother’s hospital room, looking drawn and silent.

They drove slowly down Old Church Lane in a downpour, the windshield wipers turned on high.

“Your mother is going to be all right.”

“She ain’t got but one ear.”

It was the old Dooley talking, the boy who still lived under the emblem on his prep school blazer.

“Do you want to stay with us awhile, and go see her every day?”

Dooley was quiet. Then he said, “I want t‘ go back to th’ farm. I’ve got stuff t‘ do.”

Two steps forward, one step back.

On Main Street, they passed Olivia Harper in the blue Volvo, who blew the horn and waved. He saw Lace sitting beside her, unsmiling, the old hat jammed on her head.

One for you and one for me, he thought, waving back.

The Hope House project was booming along, even with the heavy rains. Buck Leeper was driving his crew to finish on time, and unbelievable as it seemed in today’s world, he was still committed to bringing it in on budget.

“He’ll kill himself one day,” said Ron Malcolm. “He’ll just fall over in an excavation and they’ll throw the dirt over him. Or, he’s going to blow like a volcano.” Ron shook his head. “It’s not worth it.”

“Amen.”

“How’s the computer? And don’t bite my head off for asking.”

“My friend, I am a happy man. By some miracle I’ll never understand, Emma likes the blasted thing, and has taken to it like a bee to clover. Go figure!”

Ron laughed. “Hope House is going to be a dazzler.”

“Indeed. Have you found an administrator? I missed the last meeting.”

“It looks like Hoppy has one,” said Ron. “We’ll be in the interview process in the next week or two. I hear she’s tough.”

“You’d have to be tough to run a forty-bed nursing home and make it go like clockwork.”

“What do you know about tough?” Ron asked fondly.

“What do I know about tough? Plenty. More than I’d like to know.”

“You’ve been looking all in, if you ask me. Are you taking care of your Big D?”

“Pretty well. I’m off my running schedule, but Scott Murphy will be here in September, we’re going to try and run together. That’ll get me going again.”

Ron looked concerned. “I wouldn’t wait for Scott Murphy to get you going.”

“So?” said Mule, as a rain-soaked J.C. slammed into the booth.

“So what?” snapped J.C.

“Oh, no. Don’t tell me ...”

“I don’t have any intention of telling you. It’s none of your dadgum business.”

“After all we did to help you, it’s none of our business?” asked the rector.

“You didn’t send the flowers,” said Mule, looking depressed.

“I sent the bloomin‘ flowers.”

“You forgot the reservation at the restaurant and they wouldn’t seat you and you had to go to Hardee’s,” surmised the rector.

“I not only remembered the reservation, I shelled out sixty bucks for something on a lettuce leaf the size of snail droppings.”

“Oh, law!” said Mule. “We told you not to go to that French place.”

“Maybe it
was
snail droppings,” said the rector, trying not to laugh.

“So, did you propose?”

“Propose? We never talked about me proposing.”

“We didn’t think we had to talk about it, we thought you got the drift. Did you at least tell her you love her?” asked Mule.

“Sort of.”

The rector looked at the editor over his glasses. “What do you mean, sort of?”

“I said ... well, you know.”

“No, we don’t know. And if we don’t know, chances are she doesn’t know, either. Have you ever thought of that? Read my lips,” said the rector. “You have to say it outright, I l-o-v-e y-o-u. Get it?”

“I said something kind of like that.”

“What was it?” asked Mule.

“I told her I really like the way she keeps her squad car clean.”

Mule slapped himself on the forehead. “No way, no way, no way! You’re hopeless.” He turned to the rector. “We’re wasting our time.”

“Go back and try again,” said Father Tim. “Send the flowers. Take her to dinner. Tell her you love her.”

“Then give her a ring,” said Mule. “Don’t you know
anything
about th‘ birds and bees?”

“I might tell her I love her, but I’m not doin‘ flowers and snail stuff again.”

The rector peered at J.C. “There’s that one-time deal rearing its ugly head. Flowers one time, a fancy dinner one time. You’re getting off the train before you get to the station, buddyroe.”

“Whatever that’s supposed to mean.”

“Go back and start over,” said Mule, looking grouchy.

J.C. gave a shuddering sigh and wiped his face with a Scot towel.

“See? Look at that? A paper towel. You’re in such sorry shape, I can’t believe it. If you’re ever going to get a woman to look after you, the time is now, before you’re too far gone.”

“Right!” said the rector.

J.C. shambled out of the booth, dragging his bulging briefcase.

“Call her up!” said Mule.

“Right now!” instructed the rector.

“Lord have mercy,” groaned J.C., heading for the door.

Mule blew on his coffee. “You don’t think we were too hard on him, do you?”