The Book of Joby (54 page)

“Just didn’t wanna disturb an artist at work,” the fellow teased.

“You get smoother every year, Jake.” Drying her hands on her apron, she walked over and stretched up to give him a hug, for which he had to stoop almost comically. “Merry Christmas, dear.”

“You too.” He smiled, offering her the wine.

“Oh, thank you,” she said. “These are much nicer than what I’ve got!”

“Liar,” he grinned, “but I couldn’t think what else to bring, with you already serving up half of Taubolt’s winter food supply.”

“All I needed was your charming company, dear.” She turned to Joby, and said, “This is Jake: one of Taubolt’s local heroes. When he’s not out cutting everybody’s firewood, he’s in charge of Taubolt’s volunteer fire department and emergency response team, which means he probably hasn’t slept since yesterday.”

“Got a nap this afternoon.” Jake shrugged. “I’m good to go.”

She smiled skeptically, and said, “Jake, this is—”

“Joby Peterson, I’ll bet,” Jake said, reaching out to shake Joby’s hand.

“How’d you know?” Joby asked, wondering if perhaps they
had
met.

“Oh, everybody’s heard about you.” Jake grinned. “We’re all wonderin’ how Mrs. Lindsay knew to hire on extra help just in time for all this storm repair.”

“He’s been worth his weight in gold, I have to say.” Mrs. Lindsay beamed.

“I’m the lucky one.” Joby smiled. “You look familiar, Jake. Have we met?”

“Don’t think so. You just got into town yesterday, didn’t you?”

“Yeah,” Joby said, still certain that he knew this face.

“Well then,” Jake said, grinning, “you’re probably just mistaking me for some other good lookin’ woodcutter you knew down in the city.” He turned back to Mrs. Lindsay, and asked, “Maybe I could help you with the table?”

“That would be lovely, dear. You know where things are.”

Joby watched him go, feeling certain he was missing something.

Half an hour later, the table was clothed in white linen and lace, bone
china and sterling settings, cut-crystal tumblers, and graceful long-stemmed wineglasses. The fish was on, the fowl and venison were almost done, the salads and side dishes were on the table, and a lovely version of the
Nutcracker Suite
wafted from the parlor stereo.

Bridget and Drew O’Reilly were first to arrive. Mrs. Lindsay introduced Drew as a local apple farmer, and Bridget as “head teacher” at the town’s high school. Thirty-five at most, Bridget had sparkling gray eyes and short, dark blond hair agleam with sunny highlights. Her smile was wide and frequent. Joby could picture her as a ski instructor, or a triathlete, but not a head teacher. Then again, her husband looked younger than he’d ever imagined any farmer looking. They had just begun to talk when another knock at the door turned out to be the Connollys.

“Hello, Clara! Hi, Tom,” Bridget said brightly. She smiled warmly at their daughter. “How ya doing, Rose? A little too exciting at your house last night, huh?”

When Joby saw Rose’s pale, heart-shaped face and long dark tresses, he felt a flush of embarrassment. Rose stared back at him with the same startled expression that he realized he was wearing. Their mouths snapped shut in unison.

“Joby,” Mrs. Lindsay said, seeming unaware of their mutual discomfort, “these are my wonderful neighbors, Tom and Clara Connolly, and their daughter, Rose. And this,” she said to the Connollys, “is my new right-hand man, Joby Peterson. He got here yesterday, just in time for the storm.”

“Your daughter was pretty much the first person I met here,” Joby said self-consciously, shaking Mr. Connolly’s hand. “She caught me sort of eavesdropping on her while I was out walking on the headlands.”

He turned awkwardly to Rose. “That’s really not like me at all. I just heard voices in the trees, and turned to listen without thinking. It’s, um, nice to meet you more . . . formally, I guess.”

“No big deal,” Rose said, recovering her smile. “It was just . . . we’d never seen you before. . . . That’s all.”

“Saw your house,” Joby said, trying to flee the subject he had broached.

“It’s a little crunched,” Rose said, smiling ruefully. “Our bedrooms are all in back, though. So that was good.”

“I wish my office had been in back,” Tom said, trying to sound cheerful.

“One of Tom’s many hats here is real-estate agent,” Mrs. Lindsay explained. “He works out of his home.”

“
Really
out of my home now!” Tom laughed. “For a while, at least.”

“Well, you know Bridget and I will be by to help tomorrow,” Drew assured him.

“Thanks,” Tom said. “We’ve gotten offers all day, and I can’t tell you how much it means to us. I just hope the weather cooperates long enough to get it done quickly.”

“So, what brought you to Taubolt, Joby?” Mrs. Connolly asked.

“Father Crombie and I are friends,” Joby replied, having figured out by now that this was the simplest answer to that question. “He set me up here with Mrs. Lindsay.”

Joby had just started to tell them about St. Albee’s when Father Crombie himself arrived bearing two small but handsomely wrapped packages.

“Hello, everyone!” he said cheerfully. “Hope I haven’t kept you all waiting,”

“You’re right on time,” said Mrs. Lindsay. “Joby was just talking about you.”

“Well, I hope he hasn’t spilled too many of my secrets.” He gave Joby a conspiratorial wink, then handed one of his packages to Mrs. Lindsay. “Merry Christmas, Gladys.” To Joby’s surprise, he handed the other package to him. “And this is for you.”

“Thank you,” Joby said as Father Crombie shrugged out of his coat. “I . . . didn’t expect this. . . . I—”

“Should open it and refrain from silly protests.” Father Crombie grinned, handing his coat to Mrs. Lindsay who smiled and took it up the stairs with her present. “It’s a sneak attack, Joby. You’re only responsibility is to be surprised and delighted.”

Joby removed the wrapping to find a richly bound anthology of American poetry.

“You mentioned a degree in English at dinner last night.” Father Crombie smiled. “I hoped you might enjoy that. I own a well-read copy myself.”

“Well, thank you so much,” Joby said again, then surprised himself by leaning forward to hug the old priest, who returned the gesture warmly.

Mrs. Lindsay reappeared and ushered everyone toward the dining room, where the large, elegant table waited, alight with candles.

Even having helped to prepare it, Joby was astonished at how good the meal was. The candlelight made everyone look youthful and merry. Mrs. Lindsay’s paying guests chastised her for spoiling them so badly, insisting they’d never be able to enjoy normal food again, while Rose began to quiz Joby about his tastes in music and what city girls were wearing these days. Soon they were talking and laughing as if there’d never been an awkward moment between them.

“Father said you have a degree in English, Joby?” Bridget asked as soon as Rose gave her an opening.

“Just a B.A.,” he replied. Hoping to avoid talk about his past, he turned quickly back to Rose, and asked, “Wasn’t that you down on the headlands this morning, around that tree with a bunch of other kids?”

Suddenly uncomfortable again, Rose gave Joby a weighing look, then said, “We were praying for the tree that got hit by lightning last night.”

“Praying for a tree?” Joby said. That seemed . . . a little weird.

“That particular grove of trees is pretty special to us all,” Mrs. Lindsay said. “We have weddings down there, and memorial services, and all kinds of things. I can’t begin to guess how many marriage proposals have been made under those branches.”

Joby saw Tom and Clara Connolly smile knowingly without looking up from their meals, and suspected their initials might be down there somewhere.

“We pray a lot around here,” Jake said to Joby with an oddly pointed grin. “We’re too far from everywhere to get help any other way.”

When everyone had gone, and Joby had finished helping Mrs. Lindsay with the cleanup, she had surprised him with another wrapped box pulled from far under her Christmas tree. It had contained an old-fashioned writing kit: stationery, quill pen, inkwell, even sealing wax and a stamp engraved to emboss the letter “J” in the blob of wax. “For writing home,” she’d told him, saying that the kit had been her son’s before he went away. When she saw Joby glance again at the monogram stamp, she said, “His name is Justin.”

Now, up in his room, Joby sat flipping through the poetry anthology Father Crombie had given him, thinking about how generous everyone had been to him, and how strange it felt after . . . so much time.

He still hadn’t called his parents. The memory of their frightened messages on his machine back in Berkeley stung his conscience. He should have called, especially on Christmas, but he still couldn’t face . . . what? Their fear? Their anger? . . . Their shame? . . . His own perhaps? Still, he couldn’t just leave them wondering if he was even alive. If they hadn’t learned of his sudden disappearance yet, they would soon. He was sure their names and address were on the rental papers somewhere. His landlord would probably be after them to get rid of all the stuff he’d left behind. He’d left a lot of details untended in his flight from Berkeley.

Amidst these thoughts, he noticed a page corner that someone, Crombie,
he supposed, had bent down. It marked a poem by Longfellow, and one stanza caught Joby’s attention immediately:

I remember the gleams and glooms that dart
Across the school boy’s brain;
The song and the silence in the heart,
That in part are prophecies and in part
Are longings wild and vain,
And the voice of that fitful song
Sings on, and is never still:
A boy’s will is the wind’s will,
And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts.

He stared at the page, then closed the book, thinking of the storybook Mary had returned to him, stuffed now in his duffel bag across the room. Taubolt already felt so much like the home he’d wanted for so long without knowing. He was already determined to belong here, whatever it took. But in part, he knew, it would take laying his past to rest somehow . . . or at least cleaning it up enough to move on.
For writing home,
Mrs. Lindsay had said. Could she know him that well already?

A moment later he was seated at her son’s old pine desk, staring at a blank sheet of cream-colored stationery, dipping and redipping the old pen into the bottle of ink.

“Dear Mom and Dad,” he wrote at last. “I’m sorry I never answered your messages last week. A lot has happened, but first let me say that I am very well.” His pen hung thoughtfully over the paper for a moment. “In fact, I’m better than I have been in years. You’ll never guess where I am living now. . . .”

“In the headlines this morning: five people were killed and seventeen injured in the bombing of an outdoor market in Belfast. No one has claimed credit for the attack, but members of Parliament were adamant in demanding harsher measures against such extreme elements.

“Senate Republicans held a press conference outside the Capitol building in Washington this morning, calling again for tougher economic reforms, including a crackdown on abuse of the Federal Welfare system, and the elimination of capital gains taxes. Across the street, protesters branded Republicans ‘the party of punishment,’ accusing them of trying to divert responsibility for the nation’s current economic woes from America’s wealthy elite by penalizing the country’s poorest citizens instead.

“In Los Angeles this morning, two teenage boys were gunned down outside a Tastee Freez in Pico Rivera. Police say the killing seems to have been gang-related, and that suspects are currently in custody for questioning. This latest instance of youth-related violence has spurred new calls in California’s Senate for legislation permitting youthful offenders to be tried and incarcerated as adults.

“The Dow is up 257 points this morning, to 9435. The NASDAQ is up as well, 70 points to 2381. Analysts say there seems to be no end of good news in sight.”

Agnes Hamilton got up from her breakfast to turn the radio off. Being reminded that the world was going to Hell on a bullet train did nothing good for her digestion.