‘Shut it off, then, f’r th’ Lord’s sake.’

The room seemed to tremble in the silence. He sat down again by the bed.

‘It says . . .’ He was going to make this up out of his head. ‘It says Coot Hendrick of Rural Route Four says Mitford has been good to me and my mama.’

‘That’s right,’ she said. ‘Keep goin’.’

‘We have many friends and family here and th’ weather is good except in winter when water freezes in th’ sink and we have to bust it with a hammer.’

‘That’s dead right,’ she said. ‘A good answer.’

He felt warm all over. She hardly ever spoke kindly of anything he said or did.

She turned her head on the pillow to give him a look. ‘Who’s th’ family we got here? We don’t have no family here, why’d ye say a thing like that?’

He made out like he didn’t hear, and plowed on and went to conjuring again. ‘At Christmas, Miz Bolick brings us a orange marmalade cake. It is the best cake me and my mama ever et.’

‘It is that, all right.’ Her hair was gray as fog against the pillow.

He remembered the first time Miz Bolick ever showed up at their door. It was snowing, and she was about covered up with it, as she wasn’t wearing a hat, but she was wearing red gloves and she was holding out that cake with the orange slice on top. He had busted out crying and been mighty embarrassed because her husband was standing right behind her. He hadn’t known what to do, if he should take the cake and leave them out in the snow or invite them to come in the house. He had never invited anybody to come in the house, the neighbor woman just came in whenever she took a notion, and the nurse sent by the county done the same. But Mr. and Miz Bolick had gone on home, saying Merry Christmas and waving bye-bye, and he remembered Miz Bolick’s red glove shooting up in the dark night.

It was hard to keep his eyes glued to the paper and make something up at the same time. ‘At Thanksgiving, th’ church people bring us a plate from down at th’ All-Church Feast, one f’r me and one f’r Beulah Mae Hendrick.’

She sat up and glared at him. ‘You mean to say I got my name in th’ paper?’

He hadn’t meant to say her name because she didn’t deserve to get her name in the paper. But the mule was out of the barn.

She was wagging her bony old finger like a hickory switch. ‘How come you didn’t say nothin’ ’bout my name bein’ in there?’

‘It’s a . . .’ He almost said a bad word. ‘. . . surprise!’ He’d be runnin’ for the county line if he’d of said that word.

She snatched the paper. ‘I’ll be et f’r a tater,’ she said. ‘Let me see my name. Where’s it at?’

Lord help. She could read a little bit. His finger trembled as he poked at a jumble of words in the middle of the page.

‘Well, I’ll be,’ she said, sinking back on the pillow. ‘You tear that out where my name is and put it in th’ Bible. An’ go on and keep readin’, this is mighty good.’

He felt a terrible need to pass water, but wanted to stick with this and see where it was headed; he never knowed before that he could make out like he was reading.

‘Sometimes it is a Baptist that brings our plates from th’ All-Church, and sometimes it is th’ Methodists, an’ one time it was th’ Presbyterians, but most of th’ time it’s Father Tim who used to preach down at Lord’s Chapel.’

‘That’s right,’ said Beulah Mae. ‘Most of th’ time, that’s who it is. What else did ye say?’

His mind was empty as a gourd. ‘Let me think a minute.’

He didn’t know when they dropped off to sleep, but they woke up at the same time as a clap of thunder broke directly over the house.

She sat up, hollering. ‘Let me die, I’m too old to live!’

‘Stop that now, dadgummit!’ He was sick of hearing it. His mama was going on a hundred, maybe already was a hundred, since she won’t too sure when she was born.

‘Let me die!’ she hollered again.

‘Stop eatin, then!’ he hollered as he went into the kitchen.

‘Go to meetin’ men? Are ye crazy as a bedbug?’

You’re a mama’s boy, they said in school—whenever he went to school. But he didn’t even like his mama, whose people come over from Ireland—she was mean as a wet cat.

‘What d’ye want for supper?’ he shouted.

‘Warm milk and buttered toast and you could boil me a egg if we got any.’

‘We ain’t got any eggs n’r any milk. Our checks don’t come ’til day after next.’

‘Why’d you ask, then?’

‘To hear m’ head roar!’ he hollered.

He would bake her an onion, right in the skin, then take the skin off when he put it out in the bowl and salt it a little but not much, given she had high blood pressure and fluid around her heart and he didn’t know what all. And he’d put a piece of buttered toast with that and a cup of hot tea with a spoon of sugar. Don’t say that wouldn’t be good, and he’d fix the same for hisself.

He heard the rain on the roof, coming down hard; he liked rain and snow and weather of all kinds except high wind. He fairly hummed as he took two yellow onions out of the basket and set about doing what had to be done in this life.

•   •   •

‘I LOVE THEE WITH the breath, smiles, tears, of all my life,’ he read aloud from the Browning model. Hard to beat. Impossible, actually. He would give cash money to be released from this torment.

He picked up the pen, wrote.

I love thee for the way you look in the morning, like the girl next door which you once were and ever shall be to me . . . for the way you forgive me even before I commit the unforgivable . . . for believing that I am all the things I thought myself never to be—

How she occasionally raved on, his heedless, imaginative wife, and how he loved her with everything in him.

. . . for being brave when I am not, for being cheerful when I am sour, for putting up with me.

Somehow, it wasn’t coming together as he hoped. Though each sentiment was supremely true, the words lacked something visceral—bells needed to chime, bands needed to march.

The rain had stopped; he had enjoyed the sound of it pecking at the window. He looked to the kitchen, to the wall clock. Nine p.m. Cynthia had gone up to bed with a book; his crowd snored by the last embers of the fire.

He removed his glasses, rubbed his eyes. A desperate matter, the bishop had said.

He stood and stretched, feeling newfound muscles in his back, in his legs, as headlights flashed into the rectory drive next door. Sammy, Kenny, and Harley were home from the hills of Kentucky, safe and sound as he’d prayed them to be.

He pulled on his cardigan and walked out to the stoop. He’d get a breath of air, maybe go over and welcome them home.

Truck doors slamming, the crunching of pea gravel beyond the hedge, voices.

‘Tote my grip in, somebody.’ Harley, his old buddy. ‘I got t’ find th’ door key. Leave th’ truck lights on, hit’s dark as a dungeon out here.’

‘I ain’t g-goin’ back to school, I don’t c-care what you say.’ Ah, Sammy.

‘I just said Dooley wants to talk about it when he comes home.’ Kenny’s deep baritone. ‘Talk about it, that’s all.’

‘D-Dooley th’ king, dude of th’ earth, Mr. m-money f-freak!’

‘Chill, Sam. Dooley loves you, he’s good to you.’

‘You been mouthin’ off th’ last twenty miles,’ said Harley. ‘I’m gon’ yank a knot in y’r tail if ye don’t hush.’

‘I’d like to s-s-see that. You ain’t th’ b-boss of me.’ This followed by a stream of language.

‘Miz Pringle don’t want t’ hear such talk,’ said Harley. ‘She’ll give ye y’r walkin’ papers.’

‘She won’t g-give me n-nothin’. But she might g-g-give you somethin’, parley voo f-francay.’

‘Whoa, now, dadgummit.’

The back porch light switched on.

‘Pour l’amour de Dieu, cessez ces vilains cris tout de suite! N’avez-vous donc aucune consideration pour nos bons voisins?’

Hélène Pringle spoke French when vexed, and though he hardly understood a word she’d just said, he definitely got her meaning.