Free A New Song by Jan Karon

boy?”
    “Rev’rend, don’t you worry ’bout a thing. Y’r boy’ll be workin’, I’ll be watchin,’ an’ th’ Lord ’n’ Master’ll be in charge of th’ whole deal.”
    “I don’t know, Harley. . . .”
    “Well, if you don’t, who does?”
    “Seems like I can trust Him with everything but a teenager.”
    “That’s what you got t’ trust ’im with th’ most, if you ask me.”
    Father Tim felt a trickle of sweat between his shoulder blades.
    “Don’t let Dooley forget to take the livermush to his granpaw.”
    “Nossir.”
    “Every other week is how Russell likes to get it.”
    Harley nodded. “I’ll git them hornets’ nestes off th’ garage come Friday.”
    “Good. I thank you.”
    “I ain’t goin’ t’ rake y’r leaves b’fore winter, if you don’t mind, hit’ll be good f ’r th’ grass.”
    “Fine.”
    “I’ll mulch ’em so they’ll rot easy. An’ I’ll mulch up around y’r plants come October.”
    “And the roses . . .”
    “I’ll prune ’em back, jis’ like you said.”
    “I wrote the numbers down by your phone in the kitchen; I gave you the church office and home. Call us any time of the day or night, I don’t care how late it is or how early.”
    “I’ll do it. And I’ll have Cynthia’s little scooter runnin’ like a top when you come home f ’r the’ weddin’. In case she gits wore out ridin’ that bicycle, she can drive it back.”
    “Good. But don’t soup it up.”
    “Ain’t nothin’ t’ soup in a Mazda.”
    He remembered that Harley had once fiddled around with his Buick so it ran like a scalded dog; he had shot by the local police chief in a blur—twice. Not good.
    They sat quiet for a time, Father Tim cupping his chin in his hands.
    “And don’t let Dooley play loud music down here, or we’ll run our tenant off.”
    Harley sighed. “Lord knows I ain’t a miracle worker.”
     
    He went out into the night, damp with perspiration, leaving his wife sleeping like a child.
    Ten to eleven. No moon. Only a humid darkness that sharply revealed its stars as he looked up.
    They weren’t used to heat like this in the mountains. Mitford was legendary for its cool summers, which brought flatlanders racing up the slopes every May through October, exulting in the town’s leafy shade and gentle breezes.
    He walked with Barnabas around the backyard of the yellow house, stopping by the maple and hearing the stream of urine hiss into the grass.
    The path through the hedge, he saw in the light from the study windows, had nearly grown over. Harley usually came around to the front door these days, and it had been three years or more since he courted his next-door neighbor.
    He smiled, remembering the quote from Chesterton: “We make our friends, we make our enemies, but God makes our next-door neighbor.”
    Once, the depth of their feeling for one another might easily have been judged by the smooth wear on the path through the rhododendrons. Now the branches on either side of the weed-covered path had nearly grown together; one would have to duck to dash through.
    As he stepped under the tulip poplar. he felt a sudden coolness, as if a barrier had been formed around the tree, forbidding the day’s heat to collect beneath its limbs.
    He thumped onto the sparse grass under the poplar, and Barnabas lay at his feet, panting.
    Another party tomorrow night. He was weary of parties, of the endless goodbyes that stretched behind him since last December’s retirement party in the parish hall. He remembered feeling his head grow light as a feather, and could not imagine the occasion to be anything but an odd and disturbing dream. Then he found himself gone from Lord’s Chapel, the parish that had both succored and tormented him, and made him happier than ever before in his life.
    Retiring had been precisely what he wanted to do, and yet, when he did it, it had felt awkward and unreal, as it must feel to walk for the first time with a wooden leg.
    He rubbed his