Out to Canaan by Jan Karon Page B

to help him.

    Hoppy Harper was on his way, possibly the last of that sterling breed of doctors who made house calls.
    Heaving Harley up the stairs to the guest room was worse than hauling any armoire along the same route. Though shockingly frail, Harley’s limp body seemed to have the weight of a small elephant. It took three of them to get Harley on the bed, where the rector undressed him and bathed him with a cloth, which he dipped in a pan of soapy water.
    Harley looked comic in the rector’s pajamas, which had to bechanged immediately, given Harley’s inability to make it to the adjoining bathroom on time. “I didn’t go t’ do that,” said Harley, whose flush of embarrassment returned a bit of color to his face.
    What had he gotten into? Father Tim wondered. He didn’t know. But when Harley Welch looked at him and smiled weakly, the rector felt the absolute wisdom of this impulsive decision, and smiled back.

    He went to bed, exhausted. Lace had gained permission to stay over, sleeping in Dooley’s room next to Harley’s, and keeping watch.
    He reached for his wife, and she took his hand. “Am I dead meat around here?” he asked.
    She rolled toward him and kissed him softly on the nearly bare top of his head.
    â€œI married a preacher,” she said. “Not a banker, not an exporter, not an industrialist. A preacher. This is what preachers do—if they do it right.”

    Nobody on the vestry had heard a word from the real estate company that had made inquiries around town.
    Oh, well, they’d thrown out the line and there would be another bite at another time. But had they made the bait attractive enough? They couldn’t worry about that. They couldn’t install additional bathrooms in the hope that Fernbank would lure a bed and breakfast. They couldn’t cut up the ground floor into classrooms in the hope it would lure an academy. In the end, they couldn’t even afford to paint and roof it, hoping to lure anyone at all.
    At eight in the morning he dropped by Town Hall and sat in a Danish modern chair that once occupied the mayor’s own family room. He declined the weak coffee in a Styrofoam cup.
    â€œBarbecue?” growled the mayor. “Barbecue? Two can play that game. Ray Cunningham makes the best barbecue in the country—outside the state of Texas, of course.”
    â€œI don’t know if I’d fight barbecue with barbecue,” he said. “I hear Mack’s planning to have these things right up ’til election day.”
    The mayor was just finishing her fast-food sausage biscuit. “Whydo anything at all, is what I’d like to know! I don’t see how that snake could oust me, even if I was the most triflin’ mayor ever put in office.”
    â€œAny town in the country would be thrilled to have you running things, Esther. Look at the merchant gardens up and down Main Street, look at our town festival that raised more money than any event in our history. Look at Rose Day, and how you put your shoulder to the wheel and helped turn the old Porter place into a town museum! Look how you rounded up a crew and painted and improved Sophia’s little house . . . . The list is endless.”
    â€œAnd look how I don’t take any malarkey off the council. You know we’ve got at least two so-and-sos who’d as soon put a paper plant and a landfill in here as walk up th’ street.”
    â€œYou’ve never taken your eyes off the target, I’ll hand you that.”
    â€œSo what do you think?” asked Esther, leaning forward. The rector saw that she’d broken out in red splotches, which usually indicated her enthusiasm for a good fight.
    â€œI think I’d wait a while and see how things go in the other camp.”
    â€œThat’s what Ray said.”
    â€œIn the meantime, I hope you’ll have a presence at the town festival. I hear Mack’s setting up