Jan Karon - In the Company of Others

He glanced at his wife, burrowed like a vole into the bedclothes and as dead to the world as any teenager. ‘A clean conscience,’ she said when he made envious remarks.

He dressed in waterproof running gear and stepped out to the hall, greeted by a zephyr of cooking smells from downstairs.

While Cynthia read last night, he’d used the kitchen phone to call the erstwhile secretary who served during his years as Mitford’s working priest. Then, when he retired, she didn’t. Known by some as the Genghis Khan of church secretaries, she was Velcro that wouldn’t unstick.

No, he couldn’t remember his cell phone number, because he never called it. And no, he couldn’t remember his PIN number or even if he had one.

But yes, she would try to reach Dooley and get the phone number from him, and yes, she would take care of calling the phone company ASAP, but keep in mind that she’d be put on hold ’til she was old and gray, as if she had time to waste, thank you, didn’t he know she’d been rooked into organizing the Bane and Blessing at Lord’s Chapel this year, and if it was all the same to him, would he bring her a really nice souvenir, her preference being a vase from Waterford?

If anyone could get the account unplugged, it was Emma Newland, who would go after Sprint like Turks taking Cairo.

No Pud in the wing chair; he was disappointed.

He placed the outgoing envelope in the box on the sofa table, and took a minute to examine the sepia prints of the fishermen. Boats in the background, no houses yet built on the opposite shore, a black Lab seated in front of the lineup of men in boots and tweed, their catch on display at their feet-all looked particularly happy, he thought. Perhaps one day even he would cast a line, send it singing over the water…

In another photograph, two boys in shorts and sweaters and buckled shoes, the taller one sober, the other smiling and shy, each with a large fish in one hand and a net in the other, most likely Liam and Paddy. He wondered which of the men was their father.

‘Rev’rend.’

He started.

‘I heard back last night from Corrigan.’

He saw that Liam hadn’t slept well.

‘No matches to Slade’s prints. No evidence to warrant a search of his place.’

‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘Somehow, it felt too easy.’

‘But they’re sending a Gard to question his whereabouts the other night.’

‘Thanks for the update.’

‘You’re going out?’

‘Need to get the heart pumping.’ As if recent events hadn’t done the job. ‘Back in half an hour, maybe less, it’s still raining.’

‘Take care,’ said Liam.

‘Don’t worry about this,’ he said. A useless comment in the world’s view, but thoroughly scriptural and all he had just then.

In the entrance hall he pulled the hood over his head, tied the drawstring, and stepped out into the misting rain. The path to Catharmore was almost completely engulfed in fog. He jogged across the gravel and around to the garden bench, where he warmed up before beginning his measured lope down the path to the lake.

Someone had said that in Ireland there’s no such thing as bad weather-only the wrong clothes. He was prepared. In his hood and jacket, he was as hidden as a turtle in its shell, yet he felt more at one with the rain than if he were naked to it. Halfway along the path, he stopped running and lifted his face to its quenching sweetness, opened his mouth to it like a child.

He had known for a long time in his head, and knew now in his marrowbones-his spirit was dry as dust. He hadn’t completely realized that ’til this moment. Dry from giving out for months and even years, and failing to take in.

Create in me a clean heart, oh, God, renew a right spirit within me.

It was a prayer borrowed from the psalmist, but too long to sum his great need. It was a breath prayer he was after.

Clean me out, fill me up, please.

Running again. The woods on either side fell away; the lake opened itself to him-gray water devouring gray clouds, immense.

He could see the absurdity, even the comedy of his feeling about the bridge afternoon, see that it didn’t matter enough to be resisted.

Clean me out, fill me up, clean me out…

He drew the smell of water on water into his lungs, felt the fulsome air enter the tissues in a way he’d never experienced, heard his living breath suck in, pump out…

He reached the shore, heart hammering, and stood looking over the great swell of the lough, palms lifted to the rain.

He saw something, then, moving in the heavy mist beyond the reedbeds, someone walking his way and nearly upon him. Probably one of their gung-ho fishing guys. Without his glasses, which would be no better than windshields without wipers, he was clueless. He threw up his hand, didn’t look to see if there was a response, and headed toward the path.

‘Reverend.’

He turned. Anna was wearing a raincoat, the hood pulled close about her face.

‘I hope I didn’t startle you,’ she said. It’s my day off.’

‘Not at all.’

‘Well, then, let’s hope it clears up and gives you sunshine.’

‘Reverend…’

Why harp on this foolishness of having people call him Tim, let them call him what they bloody well pleased.

‘I can’t call you Tim,’ she said. ‘I did it the once to be brave and modern, but I’m not at all modern and certainly not brave.’

‘I’m sure one must be very brave to operate a fishing lodge!’ This was no place for a jocular chat; he wanted coffee.

‘Could we… could I possibly talk with you? I won’t keep you, I’m so sorry to ask. I’ve been wanting… but I didn’t know…’

He saw a kind of agony in her face. ‘Of course. Where shall we…’

‘Our fishing hut just there, in the beeches. God bless you. Thank you. I won’t keep you.’

‘You lead, I’ll follow.’

The hut was a small, parged building with a couple of stone steps to the door and a single room. A table with anglers’ magazines and an ashtray, a few books on a shelf, a candle in a bottle, chairs, a mantel clock stopped at twelve minutes past three. Rain streaked the windows.

‘We could sit,’ she said, anxious.

‘Good idea.’ He untied his hood, shook water from his jacket, hung it on the back of a chair. She hung her raincoat on a hook by the door and sat across the table from him.

‘I didn’t know I would see you this morning, ’ she said, ‘but I was hoping… I’m so sorry to do it like this.’ Tears welled in her eyes.

‘Tell you what-no more apologies. Not for anything.’

She put her hands over her face and wept, silent.

As a curate, he’d tried using words against tears, yet something he thought wise often came out as banal. Later, he learned to be silent, praying.

Rain pecked the roof; she wiped her eyes with the palms of her hands and looked at him. She was brave after all, he thought.

‘I don’t know where to begin.’

‘Begin anywhere.’

‘Yes.’ She was silent again, looking at her hands on the table, palms down. ‘My mother died when I was born. That has always haunted me, I always felt I had to apologize to my father, somehow, and of course there can be no making up for such a loss. I think he loved her, but more than that, I think he needed her, yes, that’s what it was, he needed her. She was a kind and lovely woman, everyone said, very deep-and they say I look like her. There are long days when I miss her; ’t is a punishing want, and yet I never knew her at all.’ She looked at him, appealing.

‘I never saw what was needed to be a mother, I had no model for it. I bungled the job.’ She turned away. ‘But I love my child.’ She wept again, soundless.

He drew a bandanna from his pocket and handed it to her and she took it and wiped her eyes and blew her nose. ‘I’ll wash it,’ she said, earnest. ‘Bella is hurting and I can’t reach her-she won’t let me in. She was angry with me for leaving her Da, she was only four at the time, but a very bright and deep and sensitive four, she begged me to stay with him, but I could not. Niall was very loose with his affections those years we were married, and I couldn’t bear what it was doing to all of us. When Koife-Bella-and I left, we lived for a time in Dublin, but it wasn’t a good place for her to come up, and so we moved here to be with Da in what’s now the kitchen wing. He had bought the oul’ place long ago when Liam’s mother had to let it go. Da had invested his boxing money in a haulage business in Dublin. It did very well-seventeen lorries on the move; in good times, day and night together. When someone bought him out, he came back to Lough Arrow, just five kilometers from where he lived as a lad.