“I remember I told myself I’d never heard the Lord call me in that mine, that I’d just been lonesome and was looking for an excuse to come home.
“I went on like that for a year or two, went to church to look at the girls, helped my daddy in the store. But that wasn’t enough, something was sorely missing. One day, I commenced to read everything theological I could get my hands on.
“I drenched myself in Spurgeon and plowed through Calvin, I soaked up Whitefield and gorged on Matthew Henry, as hard as I could go. But I was fightin’ my calling, and my heart was like a stone.
“One day I was settin’ in the orchard I planted as a boy, and the Lord spoke again. ‘Absalom, my son,’ He said, clear as day, ‘spread my Word to your people.’
“It made the hair stand up on my head. But in five minutes, I had laid down in the sunshine and gone to sleep like a lizard.
“I went on that way for about three years, not listening to God, ’til one night He woke me up, I thought I’d been hit a blow on the head with a two-by-four.
“It was like a bolt of lightning knocked me out of bed and threw me to the floor.
Blam!
‘Absalom, my son,’ said the Lord, ‘go preach my Word to your people, and be quick about it.’
“I got up off that floor, I ran in here where it was cold enough to preserve a corpse, I wrapped up in a blanket and lit an oil lamp, and I got to reading the Good Book, and for two years I did not stop.
“Everybody who knew me thought I’d gone soft.
“ ‘Absalom Greer has got religion,’ they said, but they were only partly right. It was religion that had got me, it was God Himself who had me at last, and it was the most thrilling time of my life.
“The words would jump off the page, I would understand things I had never understood before. I could take a verse my tongue had glibbed over in church, and see in it wondrous and thrilling meanings that kept the hair standing up on my head.
“I would go out to work at the lumber company and take it with me. I would set on the toilet and read it. I would walk to town reading, and I’d be so transported I would fall in the ditch and get up and go again, turning the page.
“I felt God spoke to me continuously for two transcendent years. Glory, glory, glory!” said the old preacher, with shining eyes.
“One Sunday morning, I was settin’ in that little church about three miles down the road there, and Joshua Hoover was pastoring then. I remember I was settin’ there in that sweet little church, and Pastor Hoover come down the aisle and he was white as a ghost.
“He said, ‘Absalom, God has asked me to let you preach the service this morning.’
“I like to dropped down dead at his feet.
“He said, ‘I don’t know about this, it makes me uneasy, but it’s what the Lord told me to do.’
“When I stood up, my legs gave out under me, I like to fainted like a girl.”
Lottie Miller laughed softly.
“I recalled something Billy Sunday said. He said if you want milk and honey on your bread, you have to go into the land of giants. So, I went into that pulpit and I prayed, and the congregation, they prayed, and the first thing you know, the Holy Ghost got to moving in that place, and I got to preaching the Word of God, and pretty soon, it was just like a mill wheel got to turning, and we all went to grinding corn!”
“Bliss!” said the rector, filled with understanding.
“Bliss, my friend, indeed! There is nothing like it on earth when the spirit of God comes pouring through, and he has poured through me in fair weather and foul, for sixty-four years.”
“Have there been dry spells?”
The preacher pushed his plate away, and Lottie rose to clear the table. Father Tim smelled the kind of coffee he remembered from Mississippi— strong and black and brewed on the stove.
“My brother,
dry
is not the word. There was a time I went down like a stone in a pond and sank clear to the bottom. I lay on the bottom of that pond for two miserable years, and I thought I’d never see the light of day in my soul again.
“I can’t say my current tribulation is anything like that. But in an odd way, it’s something almost worse.”
“What’s that?” Absalom Greer asked kindly.
“When it comes to feeding his sheep, I’m afraid my sermons are about as nourishing as cardboard.”
“Are you resting?”
“Resting?”
“Resting. Sometimes we get so worn out with being useful that we get useless. I’ll ask you what another preacher once asked: Are you too exhausted to run and too scared to rest?”
Too scared to rest! He’d never thought of it that way. “When in God’s name are you going to take a vacation?” Hoppy had asked again, only the other day. He hadn’t known the truth then, but he felt he knew it now—yes, he was too scared to rest.
The old preacher’s eyes were as clear as gem-stones. “My brother, I would urge you to search the heart of God on this matter, for it was this very thing that sank me to the bottom of the pond.”
They looked at one another with grave understanding. “I’ll covet your prayers,” said Father Tim.
As the two men sat by the fire and discussed the Newland wedding, Lottie Miller shyly drew up an armchair and joined them. She sat with her eyes lowered to the knitting in her lap.
“Miss Lottie,” said Father Tim, “that was as fine a meal as I’ve enjoyed in a very long time. I thank you for the beauty and the goodness of it.”
“Thank you for being here,” she said with obvious effort. “Absalom and I don’t have supper company often, and I’m proud for my brother to have an educated man to talk with. It’s a blessing to him.”
An educated man! thought Father Tim. It is Absalom Greer who is educating me!
“Take home a peck of our apples.” Lottie handed him a basket of what appeared to be Rome Beauties.
“If you like ’em,” said her brother, “we’ll give you a bushel when you come again!”
“I’m deeply obliged. We have quite an orchard in Mitford, as you may know. Miss Sadie Baxter is the grower of what we’ve come to call the Baxter apple.”
A strange look crossed Lottie Miller’s face.
“Miss Sadie Baxter,” Absalom said quietly. “I once made a proposal of marriage to that fine lady.”
Rain again! he thought, as he put the teakettle on. But every drop that fell contained the promise of another leaf, another blossom, another blade of grass in the spring. Better still, it would help make Russell Jacks’s wish come true, for the buds forming on the rhododendron were as large as old-fashioned Christmas tree lights.
Though it was fairly warm, he had laid a fire, thinking that he and Dooley might have supper in the study. But when he looked in the refrigerator, he found little to inspire him.
“Scraps!” he said, as the phone rang.
“Hello, Father!” said his neighbor. “I remembered that Puny isn’t there on Thursdays, and I’ve made a bouillabaisse with fresh shrimp and mussels from The Local. May I bring you a potful?”
Providence! he thought. And one of his favorite dishes, to boot. “Well, now . . .”
“Oh, and crabmeat. I used crabmeat, and I promise it isn’t scorched or burned.”
He laughed.
“I could just pop through the hedge,” she said.
“Indeed, not. I’ll ask Dooley to come for it. And I have two lemon pies here that Puny baked yesterday. I’ll send one over.”
“I love lemon pies!” she said.
“Of course, we’d be very glad to have you join us here. Dooley will be getting his science project done on the floor of the study, so if you wouldn’t mind a bit of a muddle . . .”
“Oh, but you should see the muddle here! I’d be glad to exchange my muddle for yours!”
“All right, then, fish stew and lemon pie it is! Give us an hour, if you will.”
“I will! And I look forward to it,” she said.
He couldn’t help thinking that his neighbor sounded like a very young girl who’d just been invited to a tea party.
While he was shaving, the phone rang.
Dooley appeared at the bathroom door and handed him the cordless. “It’s a woman,” he said, and sat down on the closed lid of the toilet seat to listen.
Father Tim held the phone away from the lather on his face. “Hello?”
“Father, this is Olivia.”
“Olivia! You’ve been much on my mind.”
“I could feel it. I’ve strongly felt your prayers. Something odd seems to be happening.”
“I’m all ears.” And all lather, he thought, noting that he’d gotten a great deal of it on the phone.
“I feel I’m being released from the fear of seeking a transplant, it has just . . . I feel the fear is being lifted, somehow. You know I’ve pored over every possibility, every hazard, I’ve done my homework—it doesn’t make sense to consider a transplant, even Leo finally agreed with that. I thought it was all settled, and now . . . and this is the oddest thing of all, there’s a sense in which I’m afraid of losing the fear.”
“Fear is one of the Enemy’s deadliest strategies. Fight this fear, Olivia.”
Dooley watched him.
“But how strange that I might be having . . . a change of heart,” she said.
“Have you told this to the one who wants to hear it even more than I?”
“No,” she said, “I just don’t feel sure enough, I feel confused. Will you pray for me to have wisdom in this? I don’t want to die, Father. I thought I was resigned to it, but I’m not. I’m not!”
“You know I love it when you talk like this,” he said.
“Pray for me,” she said, and the lightness of her voice touched him.
“You sure git a lot of calls from women,” Dooley said sullenly, taking the phone. The rector noticed that the boy’s cowlick was standing straight up.
“My friend, a priest gets a lot of calls from everybody. In fact, there are times when I’d like nothing better than to open the window and throw the phone in the yard!”
“I could tell ’em you ain’t here.”
“Aren’t here.”
No response.
“That, however, would be a lie, wouldn’t it?”
“I reckon.”
“No reckon about it. It would be a lie, and a lie is a hateful thing.”
“Why?”
“For one thing, telling a lie is like eating peanuts. One leads to another. In no time at all, you’ve gone through a bagful.”
He rinsed the razor under the tap. “Worst of all, you become a slave to something that isn’t real.”
“We been readin’ about slaves. I wouldn’t want t’ be one.”
“Let me say again that lying will make you a slave, for whoever tells a lie is the servant of that lie. I hope you’ll hide that in your heart, son.” He put his hand on the boy’s shoulder. “Now, why don’t we do something with that cowlick before company comes?”
Cynthia arrived, wearing a pair of blue oven mitts and carrying a large stew pot.
She set the pot on the stove and handed Dooley the book that was tucked under her arm. “This is for you. It’s my latest book, and it has a boy with red hair in it.”
Dooley looked at the cover. “’is ol’ Vi’let stuff’s f’r babies,” he said, offended.
“It most certainly is not! It’s for readers up to ten years old!”
“I’m eleven,” said Dooley, “but I’m grown for my age.”
A likely story! thought the rector.
“Okay, do this,” said Cynthia. “Read it. And if you don’t like it, you never have to read another Violet book as long as you live.”
“Dooley has been known to make up his mind in advance of the facts.”
“I understand perfectly. I was afflicted with that very trait for years on end.”
“Are we havin’ hot chocolate tonight?” Dooley asked.
“We are, as soon as you’ve finished your science project. Double marshmallows for you. While I’m in the kitchen, why don’t you poke up the fire for Miss Coppersmith?”
“Call me Cynthia,” she said to Dooley.
“Would you like to see our train?” asked Dooley.
“Oh, I would! I love trains.”
Was there anything his neighbor didn’t love, he wondered.
“What’s ’at smell?”
Father Tim took the lid off the steaming pot, and the aroma lifted from it like a fragrant cloud. “This, my friend, is a delicacy of the rarest sort.
In plain language, fish stew.”
“Yuck! I’m not eatin’ ’at stuff.”
“Thanks be to God! There’ll be more for the rest of us.”
“You don’t know what you’re missing,” said their neighbor with some asperity. “There’s octopus in here.”
Dooley looked at the pot with alarm.
“Not to mention good old scrod.”
“Scrod?”
“And fish eyes. Mmmmm. Delicious! My favorite! So tender.”
“Yuck! Gag!” said Dooley, fleeing to the study.
Cynthia laughed with delight. “I hope you’ll forgive an innocent lie.”
“Well,” he said, grinning, “but just this once.”
“I done read half of that book,” said Dooley, who had finished eating his fried bologna sandwich and was working on his science project. “I read it while you all was in th’ kitchen.”
“And what did you think?” asked Cynthia.
“Cool.”
“Thank you,” she said, obviously pleased.
The table had been moved from the bookcase to the fireplace and covered with a damask cloth that had come with the rectory. Dooley had lighted a green Christmas candle and set it in a saucer and, overall, the effect was so festive that they lingered over the lemon pie and coffee.
“Again, your bouillabaisse was outstanding.”
“I’m glad you liked it.” She smiled, almost shyly.
“Gross!” said Dooley.
“By the way,” said his neighbor, “if you catch any moles this spring, I’d truly like to have one.”
The idea was so grisly that Barnabas, who was lying by the fire, caught the sense of it and growled.
A dead mole! He’d never had such an odd and unwholesome request in his life.
“I’m about t’ puke,” said Dooley, vanishing into the kitchen.