Jan Karon - In the Company of Others

‘Are ye learnin’ a tune for your Daideo now?’

‘Aye. ’t will make you laugh.’

‘We need a laugh in this world. Has it got th’ strong beat to it?’

‘For you, always th’ strong beat.’

‘You might get me dancin’, so.’

‘I’d give a packet of striped humbugs to see you dancin’.’

The platter was coming around again. His early training frowned on taking two of anything, and his diabetes demanded such a rigor. On the other hand, the ziti was outstanding and life notoriously short. He defied his upbringing, flouted his wife’s instruction-and took seconds. Anna looked pleased

‘Delizioso, Bella!’ The poker club tutorial hadn’t eluded him altogether. ‘Salute! ’

All glasses raised to the cook. ‘Salute! ’

Some flicker in her eyes-of what, he couldn’t say.

He saw Anna touch Bella’s arm; saw the girl flinch, thought again of Dooley and how he must call tonight without fail.

Liam went across the lodge to work on the unfinished room. Everyone else carried their portion of ‘afters’ into the library, where the Labs drowsed by the fire. Feeney sat with him on the sofa and swiftly devoured a serving of tiramisu.

‘I’ve asked Bella to come up and assist me in the ankle exam. Stay here if you will, I’ll be down directly with a report. You might say a prayer, Tim, for your wife’s cooperation.’

‘In what, exactly?’

‘In doing what has to be done.’

‘Which is?’

‘The pain tells me she must have an x-ray, and no quibbling.’

William poked up the fire, and there went the combing of the mustache, the placement of the cane by William’s chair, the match to the pipe. There shone the pint at their elbows and the old checkerboard in its pool of light from the lamp. He was moved by the grateful satisfaction of the two men, each a harbor for the other.

In the kitchen, he stuffed himself into the farthest corner, away from the gurgle and slosh of the dishwashers, and dialed.

‘Hey, Dad.’

‘Hey, yourself. What’s going on?’

‘Not much. Big fly problem in the barn. How about you?’

‘Not much. A lot of rain.’ He would ask and get it over with. ‘Are you still done?’

‘Look, Dad, you’re worried, I can tell. Don’t worry. There’s nothing to worry about.’

‘The two of you… both of you… mean so much.’

‘What else can I do?’

‘Don’t quit,’ he said. ‘Not yet. Hunker down. Talk. I’ll be home soon, we can talk together, the four of us.’

In the silence between them, a cow bawled in the Meadowgate barn.

‘Keep going, son. It’s too soon to quit.’ He heard the odd desperation in his voice.

‘Hey, Dad…’

‘Yes?’

‘Thanks. Thanks a lot. Gotta go.’

‘Whoa. Wait a minute. We love you, buddy.’

‘Love you back.’

He chose a book and took it to the sofa and opened it at random. He wanted to see his boy-Dooley would return to school at month’s end. He missed Barnabas, and Puny and her two sets of twins; he wanted to fill up the Mustang at Lew Boyd’s and eat a cellophane-wrapped egg salad sandwich and a pack of Fig Newtons and sit around in a plastic chair with Mule and J.C. and Percy and shoot the bull. He found he was completely over the notion of running up and down the road with Walter and Katherine; taking his chances at this inn or that, packing and unpacking. Bottom line, he was no good at vacations, and come to think of it-this was no vacation.

‘Will she be able, do ye think, Seamus?’

‘If Dr. Feeney can’t help her, nobody can. They say it’s up there with peelin’ off your own skin.’

‘God above,’ said William, ‘she’ll need a priest, for all that.’

‘Aye, but she won’t allow Father Tad to do his priestly bit in her company.’

‘I hope he’s sneakin’ it in, then, when she’s not lookin’.’ William gave a honking blow into his handkerchief. ‘Th’ oul’ heathen.’

There was the paw on his foot; the one scratch, the two. He peered down, hardly recognizing the little guy without the shoe. The pleading eyes, and again the paw on his foot; the one scratch, the two. No way was he going to search for the misbegotten shoe.

He patted the cushion where the Labs were sometimes allowed.

Pud leaped up, lay down, sighed. And here he was, three thousand miles from home and scratching another man’s dog behind the ears.

Feeney came along the stair hall and joined him on the sofa. ‘Studies say we live longer with a dog in our lives. I should get a dog.’

‘No doubt about it. How did it go?’

‘She says you must take your time, Bella’s with her. Now, then-she didn’t quibble. I’ll fetch you early Monday at eight o’clock. If I’m with you, things may get done more quickly, though granted, hardly anything gets done more quickly these days.’

‘What’s going on?’

‘She told me about the mishap in the shower. There you have it. The pain, the swelling all over again.’

‘Anything serious, do you think?’

‘I’m thinking a disruption of the ankle joint, which would be good news compared to other scenarios. She has too much history with this thing to suit me. I’ve given her another pain medication, she’ll sleep well and be fine ’til Monday. I should have cracked my bloody whip the night it happened.’

‘She doesn’t take to whip-cracking.’

Feeney had an affecting, albeit crooked smile. ‘I’m a widower with no face across the table in twelve years. Don’t know if I could be married again.’

‘Why is that?’

‘Women are very strong-minded.’

He laughed. ‘I’ll say. But that’s a good thing. I was an old fogey straight from Central Casting-living alone, set in my ways, walking the dog for an evening’s entertainment. What she saw in yours truly I’ll never understand, but she’s made something of me. Definitely.’

‘That’s the problem, Tim. They want to make something of you.’

More laughter.

‘She says you have Type One diabetes.’

‘Correct.’

Feeney cocked an eyebrow. ‘You went at the tiramisu pretty good.’

‘Just this once,’ he said, shamelessly reciting the diabetic’s unholy mantra.

‘Your Irish ancestors were Protestant?’

‘Seven generations back we were Catholic, with a couple of priests to our credit. I fear we took the soup in one way or another.’

‘But for the soup, you may not have been here this evening.’

‘What about Mrs. Conor? Anything you might need from me?’

‘Pray, would be my advice. She’s not such a bad old thing, if you know her history. Why don’t we move to the front hall? Open the door and get a breath of air?’

They stepped out to the entrance hall, to the fishing gear and deer head, where Aengus Malone’s hat swung from an antler like a totem.

He opened the door to the washed August night; Pud bolted outside, nose to the ground. Feeney moved boots and waders from an iron bench and they sat down among the clutter of other lives.

‘How much do you know?’ asked Feeney.

‘She was young, met William, they fell in love. He didn’t return as expected.’

‘Aye. His career as a prizefighter was on the upswing, and soon after their meeting, off he makes for England and other parts.

‘She was desperately in love with him, and took a lot of chiding from her family when he didn’t come back and marry her, as he vowed. She was a very proud girl, and likely boastful, so the insults and harassment grew, became a kind of sport among her kin and neighbors. Her beauty was probably no help, for all that-you’ve seen the painting.

‘She didn’t care for three of her four brothers, but she loved her two sisters a good deal, though they fought like cats. The father had died some years before and the upkeep of the family fell to the women-the boys were not much accountable. Two went over to England, one to Canada, the youngest was finished off in a pub fight. Thomas. He’d been Evelyn’s pet, her bright and shining star, she called him, something of a poet and dreamer.