Table of Contents
For my precious grandmother,
Fannie Belle Bush Cloer,
Mama, Redwing, The Storyteller.
1893-1993
With sincere thanks to:
Miss Read (Dora Saint); Rev. Rocky Ward; Marrion Ward; Dr. Greg Adams; Dr. Bunky Davant; Dr. Greg Hawthorne; Flyin George Ronan; Jim Atkinson; Dr. John C. Wolff, Jr.; Billy Wilson; Dr. Buck Henson; Dr. Cara Roten-Henson; David Watts; Tony di Santi; Dr. Ken McKinney; Fr. James Harris; Ruth Bell Graham; Earl and Nancy Trexler; Sonny Klutz; Richard J. Foster; Dr. William Standish Reed; Jim Barber; Diane Grymes; Steve Sudderth; Bear Green; Bob Moody; Fr. Chuck Blanck; Fr. Rick Lawler; Fr. Russell Johnson; Raney MacArthur-Ratchford; Maribelle Freeland; Julie Q. Hayes, R.N. BSN, Blowing Rock Hospital; Pam Collette, R.N. BSN, Clinical Nurse Mgr., Donna Joyner, Assistant Clinical Nurse Mgr., and Pamela Thomas, R.N. BSN, of the Burn Center, North Carolina Baptist Hospitals, Inc., Winston-Salem; Dana Watkins, R.N. BSN, Sanger Clinic, Charlotte; Rev. James Stuart; Fr. Kale King; Dr. Ross Rhoads; Doug Galke; Shirlee Gaines Edwards; Bertie Beam; Nancy Olson of Quail Ridge Books; Shirley Sprinkle of The Muses; my friends at Gideon Ridge Inn; Liz Darhansoff, my gifted and indefatigable agent, and Carolyn Carlson, my visionary Viking Penguin editor and friend; Jerry Burns, the small-town newspaperman with the big heart; and the vanishing breed of old-time Gospel preachers (especially the late Vance Havner and the still-present Arndt Greer), who brought conviction to their calling and color to the language.
Last but never least, thanks to the wonderful booksellers who have enthusiastically spread the word, and to the many readers who have cheered me on, given my books to family and friends, and come to feel comfortably at home in Mitford.
CHAPTER ONE
Through the Hedge
HE STOOD at the kitchen window and watched her coming through the hedge.
What was she lugging this time? It appeared to be a bowl and pitcher. Or was it a stack of books topped by a vase?
The rector took off his glasses, fogged them, and wiped them with his handkerchief. It was a bowl and pitcher, all right. How the little yellow house next door had contained all the stuff theyd recently muscled into the rectory was beyond him.
For your dresser, she said, as he held the door open.
Aha!
The last thing he wanted was a bowl and pitcher on his dresser. The top of his dresser was his touchstone, his home base, his rock in a sea of change. That was where his car keys resided, his loose coins, his several crosses, his cuff links, his wallet, his checkbook, his school rin g, and a small jar of buttons with a needle and thread.
It was also where he kept the mirror in which he occasionally examined the top of his head. Was his hair still thinning, or, by some mysterious and hoped-for reversal, growing in again?
Cynthia, he said, going upstairs in the wake of his blond and shapely wife, about that bowl and pitcher ...
The color is wonderful. Look at the blues. It will relieve all your burgundy and brown!
He did not want his burgundy and brown relieved.
He saw it coming.
Ever since their marriage on September seventh, she had plotted to lug that blasted armoire over for the rectory guest room.
The lugging over was one thing; it was the lugging back that he dreaded. They had, for example, lugged over an oriental rug that was stored in her basement. Ten by twelve! she announced, declaring it perfect for the bare floor of the rectory dining room.
After wrestling the table and chairs into the hall, they had unrolled the rug and unrolled the rugto kingdom come. It might have gone up the walls on all four sides and met at the chandelier over the table.
This is a rug for a school gym! he said, wiping the pouring sweat from his brow.
She seemed dumbfounded that it didnt fit, and there they had gone, like pack mules, carting it through the hedge again.
The decision to keep and use both houses had been brilliant, of course. The light in the rectory would never equal that of her studio next door, where she was already set up with books and paints and drawing board. This meant his study could remain unchangedhis books could occupy the same shelves, and his vast store of sermon notebooks in the built-in cabinets could hold their place.
Marrying for the first time at the age of sixtysomething was change enough. It was a blessed luxury to live with so few rearrangements in the scheme of things, and life flowing on as usual. The only real change was the welcome sharing of bed and board.
Over breakfast one morning, he dared to discuss his interest in getting the furniture settled.
Why cant we keep things as they were ... in their existing state? It seemed to work....
Yes, well, I like that our houses are separate, but I also want them to be the samesort of an organic whole.
No organic whole will come of dragging that armoire back and forth through the hedge. It looks like a herd of elephants has passed through there already.
Oh, Timothy! Stop being stuffy! Your place needs fluffing up, and mine needs a bit more reserve. For example, your Chippendale chairs would give a certain sobriety to my dining table.
Your dining table is the size of something in our nursery school. My chairs would look gigantic.
She said exactly what he thought she would say. We could try it and see.
Cynthia, trust me on this. My chairs will not look right with your table, and neither will that hand-painted magazine rack do anything for my armchair.
Well, what was the use of getting married, then?
I beg your pardon?
I mean, if no one is going to change on either side, if were both just going to be our regular, lifetime selves, whats the use?
I think I see what youre getting at. Will nothing do, then, but to cart those chairs to your house? And what about my own table? It will be bereft of chairs. I hardly see the point. He felt like jumping through the window and going at a dead run toward the state line.
One thing at a time, she said happily. Its all going to work out perfectly.
deAr stuart,
thanx for your note re: diocesan mtg, and thank martha for the invitation to put my feet under yr table afterward. however, I must leave for home at once, following the mtghope youll understand.
while im at it, let me ask you:
why are women always moving things around? at Sunday School, jena iivey just had the youth group move the kindergarten bookcAses to a facing wall.
on the homefront, my househelp has moved a ladderback chair from my bedroom into the hall, never once considering that i hung my trousers over it for 14 years, and put my shoes on the seat so they could be found in an emergency.
