Jan Karon - In the Company of Others

He’d never seen a Jack Russell sit still. A mite long in the tooth, perhaps, though last night’s tango on hind legs had been impressive.

‘It’s said you were named after a parson; a John Russell, I believe, who did a little breeding with his fox terriers, and voilà, here you are.’

The dog suddenly leaped off the cushion, dashed from the room, and returned with the chewed shoe, which was deposited with a certain delicacy by the footstool.

‘No way. Don’t even think about it.’

The dog sat his ground-head slightly lowered, brown eyes gazing up.

Toss a shoe once, you’re engaged. Toss a shoe twice, you’re married. He concentrated on the fire.

The dog made a sound, something like a politician clearing his throat before a filibuster.

He stared at the ceiling.

The throat-clearing again.

He grabbed the notebook and was down the hall in a shot.

The dining room by candlelight had been handsome; it was less so in a morning light breaking palely through overcast.

Above the sideboard, a large painting of low mountains and a lake at sunrise. On the water, a lone fisherman casting a net from a boat, a white swan in the rushes. On the painted hill of the far shore, a cottage with a single lighted window and a plume of smoke from the chimney.

The George Barret. And a big George Barret, into the bargain. He leaned over the sideboard and squinted at the signature. The senior or the junior Barret? He couldn’t tell.

The coffee had been set out ahead of schedule, kept warm on a heated tile; a wheeled cart by the kitchen door gave evidence of an early breakfast for the fishermen.

He poured a mug of coffee and took it to what they’d already claimed as their table, and sat facing the triple windows. In the way women were loath to travel with good jewelry, he had pondered whether to carry his Waterman. Carry it, said his wife. Vita brevis!

He removed the cap from the pen she had given him years ago, and opened the notebook to a blank page. He felt no haste. How seldom he’d sat without some pressing inclination, watching mist steam off a lake, sunlight coloring a far shore. Through a door open to the garden, the sound of a rooster crowing…

He warmed his hands on the mug and inhaled the oily, slightly sweet scent of dark roast. It was nearly impossible to trump a blank page, a good pen, strong coffee.

Dear Henry,

We are happy to be at Broughadoon and, as promised, I’ll share our experience as faithfully as I’m able.

To quote a fellow guest from Dublin, there’s ‘a monstrous good view’ from where I sit in the dining room of the lodge, c. 1860s. After the heavy downpour of yesterday evening, the morning appears to be fairing off, as we say in Mississippi, and the view reveals itself with shy satisfaction. Outside the windows, flower borders of considerable ambition, with a deal of old buddleia or butterfly bush, and three enormous beeches beyond. We were told last night at dinner that the beech grove consists of eleven such specimens roughly a thousand years old.

Further along on a gradual slope from the lodge, a wide sward on which I see something moving-a herd of deer, knee-deep in ground fog-thrilling to behold. Then the tree line of a darkly green patch of forest descending to the pewter sheen of Lough Arrow with its several small, uninhabited islands. Beyond are hills with a house or two, and low mountains lit now by the sun.

One finds certain useful words worn to a nubbin-which, as a poet, is a fact you well understand. I refrain, then, from using ‘magical,’ though that would definitely work. (When I was here ten years ago, we scarcely had time to look at the view, being out and about like chickens with their heads cut off, so there’s a sense in which it all feels new.)

Have brought and am reading St. Patrick’s Confession and the collected poems of Yeats, while Cynthia has a go at Patrick Kavanagh, the poet and novelist-no kin as far as I know. I wonder whether all you’ve been through in recent months has wrung any verse from you. If suffering wrings it, then you have much to say to us.

Sounds of movement in the kitchen adjoining the dining room. The smell of cooking. Good smells.

A door slammed somewhere.

Walter and Katherine delayed four days, so no immediate visit to the ruin of the fortified Kavanagh house (not a castle, though we like to call it one), or the cemetery where my-and also your-great-great-great-grandparents are buried. When W and K arrive with wheels, I’ll tell you more. But be advised even at this early stage that the land of saints and scholars is greener than can be imagined. Which reminds me-Cynthia says she will put something on paper to send your way, a watercolor or two.

He stared out the window, searching the few houses on the opposite shore, thoughtful.

It is among the oddest experiences of my life to find now that someone shares my heritage, my very blood. You must tell me how it’s going with you-this adjustment to having a brother. As for me, I like it very much, yet I shake my head often as if to clear it.

‘There you are, have you seen her?’

‘Ní fhaca, ar chor ar bith.’

Loud voices in the kitchen. Anna. Liam.

‘Is scríos mór i-scríos agús míchlú,’ said Anna. ‘I am broken by such willfulness.’

‘Is é an grá a caithfidh si a fháil tar éis an rud go léir.’

‘Caithimid go léir an grá a fháil ach ní tagaimid tríd an gáitéar ag lorg é?’

‘Tá Bella ag pleidhcíocht linn.’

‘Tá Bella ag iarraidh muid a bhriseadh.’

‘Níl, Anna, we mustn’t be broken… ansin ní bheidh éinne aici chun tacaíocht a thabhairt di.’

The sound of a pan or pot crashing to the floor.

‘Now look what I’ve done. All that lovely rhubarb…’

Anna weeping.

Liam spoke in a low voice, then said in English, ‘For God’s sake, I hope no guests are about.’

The kitchen door pushed open to the dining room; he met Liam’s startled gaze. Liam moved to close the door, his face ashen. There was an awkward pause. ‘Ready for breakfast, then?’ Liam asked.

‘I know I’m early. No hurry at all.’ He felt a flame of embarrassment. ‘Thank you.’

He tucked the letter into the notebook and adjusted his glasses and stared for a long time at the view, unseeing-at a small island forested with trees, at a yellow boat moored on its narrow shoreline. He got up and tried looking again at the Barret, but moving clouds obscured the light.

Liam entered with a tray, averting his eyes. He set a warmed plate on the white cloth, then a French press, a cup and saucer. The cup rattled in the saucer. ‘I’m completely undone, Reverend. Please forgive us.’

‘Not at all. I hardly understood a word you said.’

Liam removed the empty coffee mug. ‘But you heard the boil in it.’

‘Language barriers can’t disguise feeling, that’s true. But it’s forgotten entirely.’

‘Thanks. I think it’s the first time we’ve blurted our business in the ear of a guest. It won’t happen again.’

‘Gone from my mind.’ Not gone yet; he felt mildly rattled.

He stared with wonder at his breakfast. A pair of eggs with yolks the color of a Florida orange, surrounded by sausages, bacon, new potatoes roasted in their skins, a broiled tomato, thick slices of brown soda bread.

‘A pot of raspberry conserve there, and that would be blackberry jam. The berries weren’t so sweet this year. The rain.’

‘Wonderful. Thank you.’ He felt the tension in the air, wanted to dilute it somehow, but could not.

‘Anna remembered you like rhubarb; we’ll have it tomorrow morning. Did you rest, please God?’

‘I did,’ he said. ‘Feel good, actually. The lag won’t hit ’til tomorrow.’