These High, Green Hills Read Free Page B

remember he had this blasted disease. The information seemed to go in one ear and out the other.
    “Ask Louella if she’ll marry me,” he said.
    “Louella, the Father wants to know if you’ll marry him.”
    “Tell ‘im he got a short mem’ry, he done married Miss Cynthia.”
    He laughed, contented with the sweetness of this old friendship. “Just name the time,” he said. “We’ll be there.”

    Autumn drew on in the mountains.
    Here, it set red maples on fire; there, it turned oaks russet and yellow. Fat persimmons became the color of melted gold, waiting for frost to turn their bitter flesh to honey. Sassafras, dogwoods, poplars, redbud—all were torched by autumn’s brazen fire, displaying their colorful tapestry along every ridge and hogback, in every cove and gorge.
    The line of maples that marched by First Baptist to Winnie Ivey’s cottage on Little Mitford Creek was fully ablaze by the eleventh of October.
    “The best ever!” said several villagers, who ran with their cameras to document the show.
    The local newspaper editor, J. C. Hogan, shot an extravagant total of six rolls of film. For the first time since the nation’s bicentennial, readers saw a four-color photograph on the front page of the Mitford Muse.
    Everywhere, the pace was quickened by the dazzling light that now slanted from the direction of Gabriel Mountain, and the sounds of football practice in the schoolyard.
    Avis Packard put a banner over the green awning of The Local: Fresh Volley Hams Now, Collards Coming.
    Dora Pugh laid on a new window at the hardware store featuring leaf rakes, bicycle pumps, live rabbits, and iron skillets. “What’s th‘ theme of your window?” someone asked. “Life,” replied Dora.
    The library introduced its fall reading program and invited the author of the Violet books to talk about where she got her ideas. “I have no idea where I get my ideas,” she told Avette Harris, the librarian. “They just come.” “Well, then,” said Avette, “do you have any ideas for another topic?”
    The village churches agreed to have this year’s All-Church Thanksgiving Feast with the Episcopalians, and to get their youth choirs together for a Christmas performance at First Presbyterian.
    At Lord’s Chapel, the arrangements on the altar became gourds and pumpkins, accented by branches of the fiery red maple. At this time of year, the rector himself liked doing the floral offerings. He admitted it was a favorite season, and his preaching, someone remarked, grew as electrified as the sharp, clean air.
    “Take them,” he said one Sunday morning, lifting the cup and the Host toward the people, “in remembrance that Christ died for you, and feed on Him in your hearts by faith, with thanksgiving.”
    Giving his own wife the Host was an act that might never cease to move and amaze him. More than sixty years a bachelor, and now this—seeing her face looking up expectantly, and feeling the warmth of her hand as he placed the bread in her palm. “The body of our Lord Jesus Christ, which was given for you, Cynthia.”
    He couldn’t help but see the patch of colored light that fell on her hair through the stained-glass window by the rail, as if she were being appointed to something divine. Surely there could be no divinity in having to live the rest of her life with him, with his set-in-concrete ways and infernal diabetes.
    They walked home together after church, hand in hand, his sermon notebook tucked under his arm. He felt as free as a schoolboy, as light as air. How could he ever have earned God’s love, and hers into the bargain?
    The point was, he couldn’t. It was all grace, and grace alone.

    He was sitting in his armchair by the fireplace, reading the newspaper. Barnabas ambled in from the kitchen and sprawled at his feet.
    Cynthia, barefoot and in her favorite robe, sat on the sofa and scribbled in a notebook. One of his antiquated towels was wrapped around her damp hair. He still couldn’t get over