Talbot walked to the counter with a kind of frailty he’d never seen in the man. ‘Greetings, Father. I’m on the street for the afternoon. Running the gauntlet, you might say.’

‘Henry . . .’

‘I’ve been spat at twice, called a name that shows no favor to my mother, and shunned by all the rest. It was the stoning I came for, though lacking in the zeal I feared.’

The beating pulse in Henry’s hand as he clasped it in both of his . . . He was thoroughly startled.

‘I just emptied my warehouse—I’m about to depart Mitford for the last time.’

‘Come,’ he said. They walked into the refuge of verse, and sat in the wing chairs, one of them added recently by a customer. Henry Talbot seemed somehow distilled, as if flesh had been exchanged for sinew. ‘I parked the U-Haul on Church Hill to force myself to walk here.’

‘Are you all right?’

‘I’m all right enough to take off the rug, the wig, the piece, the sham. My head is bare. And there you have it.’ Talbot gave him something like a smile. ‘How are you liking your bookstore parish?’

‘Small, but rewarding.’

‘How did you know where to find me that night?’

‘It was a hunch. You once said you ran back there.’

‘It’s no fit place for running, of course. I more often used the school track for running, and used the trail to hide. Why do you think God allowed it all?’

‘Why did you allow it?’

‘I wanted to do what I wanted to do and figured it was his job to stop me.’

‘He was the policeman.’

‘And I was the truant who demanded no rebuke, nor any disgrace.’

‘Some weeks ago, he stopped you. What now?’

‘I wish he had taken me, and yet here it is, a life to be lived. I have no answer to what now. He spoke to me on the trail that night and said quite plainly, You’re mine.

‘It made me angry. Why would he speak to vermin? It didn’t make me feel chosen; it made me feel he would speak directly to anybody, a cheap thing. And if I were his, for what was I his? What use could I possibly be?’

‘Give yourself time, let him show you.’

‘That night was a foxhole. One might suppose I’d gotten, at the very least, a religion out of it, but I did not. There were all the bells and whistles, and yet I was not transported beyond my sense of ruin.

‘I’m thinking that I missed something, that when he said I was his, I failed to respond in an acceptable way, I blew it. Because now I feel I might really wish to belong to him. But I don’t know how, and even so, maybe it’s too late.’

‘It’s never too late. Watch and wait.’

‘You know how to cut through the bull, Father, and I have a lot to cut through. On the walk over here, I stepped behind the school gym and wept for myself, that I could summon the courage to expose my worthlessness to all eyes. I’ve always felt worthless. Perhaps I became a priest to veil that notion of myself, but it didn’t work. I was all the more aware of my little value.

‘On the street just now, I was grateful for the spittle and cold looks. Grateful, because in facing their scorn, I felt a certain worth, after all.’

‘Thank you for coming to see me, Henry. It means a great deal.’

‘I came to thank you. But for you and your son, I was gone from this world. You were part of what forced me to this.’ He touched his bald pate. ‘Some actually call it fashion, I call it penance . . . though in the end, maybe that’s just more bull. Who knows?’

‘Mary?’

‘Gone from me completely. The wonder is that she stuck it out so long. I feel utterly naked, she was my shield and defender. If I’m to have any shield now, it must be God himself. There’s no one for me and everyone against me.’

‘I’m for you.’

‘I guess I believe it or I couldn’t be here. I’ve been sick, and I’m not well yet. I don’t know if I was ever quite well or ever can be.’

‘I remember,’ he said, ‘not knowing if I was ever well or ever could be. I was ordained, and yet all the seasons were Lenten; there was no relationship with him. I was a soul in prison, bound to stick it out and go on with the show of being his man.’

‘What changed?’

‘I think you could say I came to the end of myself. I really did want a show all my own, and he had to hammer me pretty hard to make me see that it was all his. We don’t like relinquishing the power we never had anyway, even though running the show ourselves never works.

‘I surrendered everything to him. What did I have to lose? What I had to gain was—believe it, Henry—everything. It’s so simple that it baffles us; we’re more enamored of what’s grinding and hard.’

‘Grinding and hard. Yes. Pray for me.’

‘I do pray for you. I believe quite a few in this town pray for you.’

‘I could never have said this a few weeks ago. But I want what you have.’

‘What I’ve come to have—out of all that was grinding and hard—is a relationship. Bonhoeffer said it’s not about hero worship, but intimacy with God.’

‘No. I can’t do the relationship business.’

‘From the Miserere Mei, Deus. “Make me hear of joy and gladness, that the body you have broken may rejoice.” You can have joy and gladness just as I got it, by petitioning God in a simple prayer delivered with a full heart.’

‘I’m not ready for . . . intimacy. I want it, but it terrifies me. What is close and visceral has always terrified me.’

‘It terrified me,’ he said. ‘Stood my hair on end—back when I had any to stand.’

It was mighty good to laugh.

Chapter Twenty-six

Their turkey order was in at the Local, the side dishes planned, the invitations out. All but Louella’s.

CNN was busy covering the world on Louella’s big-screen TV. He sat on the stool and took her hand.

‘You’re the gravy on our biscuit, Cynthia says. And we don’t see you half enough. Dooley will be home at Thanksgiving—could you come for dinner at our house? I’ll pick you up and deliver you back no worse for wear.’

‘Only place I go to supper these times is down th’ hall or Room Number One. I would sho’ like to do it, honey, but I’m past all that.’

He rattled off the menu. ‘I could bring you a plate.’

‘No, no, y’all go on an’ have a happy time an’ bring Dooley up to visit when you can. He’ll be good medicine for me an’ everybody else.’

‘I’ll see what I can do.’

She glanced at CNN, writ large on her wall.

‘What you think about these politics goin’ on?’

‘We must pray for wisdom,’ he said.

She leaned forward, cupped her ear. ‘Who’s William?’

•   •   •

THEY WOULDN’T ATTEND the All-Church Feast this year, they would have their feast at home. Dooley, Lace, Sammy, Kenny, Olivia, Hélène, Harley, Coot—the democratic system at work. Ten of them around the table set up in the study, with take-outs for the Murphys and Coot.

Dooley would actually have three Thanksgiving dinners. One at the yellow house; one with his mother and Buck, Jessie and Pooh; and a third with Marge, Hal, and Rebecca on the following day at Meadowgate, a feast to which he and Cynthia and Lace and Sammy and Kenny and Pooh and Jessie were also invited, along with his proffered ham.

So, okay. For the dinner on Wisteria Lane, he would pick up the turkey from Avis and the yeast rolls from Winnie; Puny would make a sweet potato soufflé; and Cynthia would do a classic green bean casserole and two pumpkin pies, sweetened with something parading as sugar.

Oh, and the cranberry relish, which he would concoct, and so forth and so on.

His head was spinning.

•   •   •

‘DARLING, please deliver yourself to the Collar Button man at three o’clock on Tuesday.’

‘Whatever for?’

‘He’s going to measure you.’

A startling thing to be told. ‘I don’t want to be measured.’

‘And wear your leading citizen ribbon.’

‘Why?’

‘Because it sets an example for your successor next year. It’s a lovely thing to be seen wearing. It gives people an uplift, I should think, knowing that we even have a leading citizen.’