Endwork
Stories
New Mercies I See
"Good grief!" Susie said. "It's Alfred Plunket!"
"What?" I exclaimed, startled. I hurried to the window from which Susie was peering intently into the church parking lot. Sure enough, the wizened little man who had been our neighbor in Thornberry, a four-hour drive away, was climbing out of a taxi, suitcase in hand.
The sight of the taxi itself was so rare in North Doncaster as to seem ominous. It had caught Susie's attention as she glanced out the window on that Saturday morning in late spring. The sight of Alfred added dismay to her surprise.
"What's he doing here?" she asked.
"Offhand, I'd say he's planning to visit, though why is beyond me."
"This can't be happening," she muttered to herself. Then, rallying, she added, "You go out and stall him for a few minutes. I'll get the spare room tidied up." She headed off.
As I started out the door, I recalled when, newly ordained and just appointed to the Thornberry Church, I'd first met Alfred Plunket.
Alfred and his wife Dorothy lived across the street from the parsonage, two houses down. In earlier days, the Plunket residence had been a rooming house, used by travelers and seasonal farm laborers. Alfred and Dorothy had made a modest living running the place, Dorothy cooking and cleaning and Alfred handling upkeep and repairs. But the construction of the Interstate highway in the late '50s drew most of the through traffic away from Thornberry, and improvements in harvesting equipment reduced the need for the laborers. The Plunkets were old enough to retire anyway, and they simply closed the business. By the time Susie and I arrived in town, the rooming house had been shut down for nine years, and the couple had the place to themselves.
I'd met Dorothy, a smiling, white-haired woman, at the worship service on my first Sunday. Though a few pounds over her ideal weight and wrinkled with age, she had clearly been a beauty in her younger years. Dorothy had been active in the congregation throughout her lifetime, as was the couple's grown son, who still lived in the community. But although I'd seen Alfred's name on the church's membership role, Dorothy was unaccompanied in church, not only that day, but on each successive Sunday.
Dorothy, I soon discovered, was a woman of sweetness and light, whose Christian virtues shone plainly in her speech, manner, and good works. Each Tuesday morning, Dorothy and a half dozen other older ladies gathered in the fellowship room of the church for quilting. Sitting around the four sides of a large quilting frame, these women industriously stitched their way through three to four quilts every year, quilting them on commission for various customers, and then giving the money to the church's mission fund. The women worked each Tuesday until noon, then ate together from sack lunches they'd brought with them from home.
The quilts they made were beautiful, and I admired them greatly. But as labor-intensive items, they were too expensive for me on a beginning pastor's salary.
Because of the proximity of the Plunket home to ours, I occasionally caught a glimpse of Alfred as he came outside to get into their car. He was shorter than Dorothy, with a bristling shock of dishwater-gray hair, and he walked with a decided limp. But I didn't actually meet Alfred until I made a pastoral visit to their home. Even then, I barely made his acquaintance as he stayed in the living room only long enough to say hello before retreating and leaving Dorothy alone to host me. Dorothy, cheerful and calm, carried on without apology for her husband's brusqueness.
A few weeks later, one of the other quilters filled me in. "Alfred's lived in the township all his life," she said, "but he's always been pretty much a loner. He joined the church back about the time I did, when we were teenagers, but he never attended regularly until he started courting Dorothy. She was a regular attender. Never could understand what she saw in him, though. She was the prettiest girl in our class, and smart and talented too. And you know how nice she is. Alfred was such an odd goat, you know. Never friendly. But once Dorothy made up her mind, she stuck with him."
"He doesn't come to church now, though," I said.
"No, after they'd been married a couple of months, he stopped coming. He's always seemed uncomfortable around people. I figured he forced himself to come while he was pursuing Dorothy, but once he'd married her, he went back to his old ways."
No one else had much to say about Alfred one way or the other. On the other hand, people often mentioned Dorothy, but they spoke about her almost as if she were a widow. Their son, who served on our church board of trustees, was a quiet, steady fellow, but he seldom spoke about Alfred either, though he often referred appreciatively to his mom.
One evening in late fall that first year, I returned from making a hospital visit. Turning into our driveway at dusk, I happened to glance down the street and noticed the Plunket's car parked in front of their house as usual, but its lights were on. It didn't appear that anyone was in it, so I walked the few steps over to it. The engine was not running, but the doors were locked. Assuming Alfred or Dorothy had forgotten to turn off the lights, I stepped onto their porch and knocked on their door. Dorothy answered and I explained.
"Oh, thank you, Reverend Payton," she said. "I went to the store a little while ago. I must have forgotten to turn them off when I got home. I'll take care of it." Because of some vision problems Alfred had developed in his later years, Dorothy now did all the driving.
Later, the phone rang, and when I answered, Dorothy was on the line. "Alfred asked me to call you," she said. "He's sure we'd have had a dead battery in the morning if you hadn't alerted us. He wanted me to thank you again."
"Glad to help," I said, wondering if Alfred was quite as antisocial as I'd thought.
I didn't see Alfred again until midwinter. Actually, I only saw him from behind as he hobbled away from my driveway. In late January, the whole northeastern section of Ohio, including Thornberry, was hit with a blizzard that lasted more than 24 hours. Schools closed and event-cancellations were announced all day long on the radio. When the storm finally ceased, our community was under 17 inches of snow. The township trucks, with snowplows mounted in front, had been working throughout the night, and by morning, when the snow at last stopped falling, the trucks began to make headway, making our streets and roads at least passable.
But my driveway certainly was not. Since first light, I'd been shoveling out, beginning at the garage and working toward the street. The snow was wet and heavy, and the work was exhausting. Still, I gradually cleared a path wide enough for the car to the street. There, I encountered the belt of plowed snow that had been pushed to the side of the street by the township trucks. This massive heap was at least three feet deep, more than four feet wide, and comprised of compressed, hard-packed snow and ice.
Against this massive obstruction my shovel seemed a puny weapon, but I flailed away until some 45 minutes later, I had cleared a passage that I judged to be just wide enough for my car. I had now been at the battle more than three hours. Just as I was beginning to think I could get the car out, a township plow barreled by, widening the traffic lane. In the process, it threw a fresh curl of heavy snow into the end of my driveway. My thoughts at that moment were distinctly unkind.
Though not nearly as wide or deep as the first pile, it took me another 20 minutes of shoveling to undo this latest contribution. Even then, there was still a small hump of tightly packed snow on the ground, but I figured I could get over it with the car if I got a good run from the garage.
At last I was ready to try. I got into the car and began backing out. As I neared the street and prepared to accelerate, I noticed with exasperation that another car was coming slowly down the street. If I gunned the engine now, I'd back right into its path. Reluctantly applying the brakes, I slid to a stop, with the car's rear wheels settling over the icy hump where the driveway met the street.
After the other vehicle passed, I tried to resume backing. The tires spun furiously, but the car had no traction and did not move. I shifted to first gear and attempted to pull back up the drive. Again the tires spun, but the car wouldn't budge. I was stuck.
Retrieving my shovel, I spent the next 30 minutes stabbing at and scraping the resisting mound of snow under the rear tires, but this was the hard-pack, and I made little progress. Every few minutes, I got back in the car and attempted to move it, but to no avail.
Exhausted, with cold feet and an overheated body, I went into the house to recover and get a cup of coffee. Coming back out to try again, I saw Alfred limping back toward his house. His footsteps in the snow led directly to my car, and there, where his tracks turned back, sat an old bucket, filled with sand.
Gratefully, I shoveled generous amounts of the sand under both back tires. This time, when I got in the car and stepped on the accelerator, the tires took hold and my car clawed its way into the street.
I drove to the store and ran a few necessary errands. When I returned, I carried the now empty bucket back to the Plunket's. Dorothy answered my knock, and I expressed my thanks.
She said, "We always kept some sand in case our boarders got their cars stuck, and we still had some." Then, after glancing over her shoulder as if to make sure her husband was out of earshot, she added, "Alfred sat by our window and watched you the whole time you were trying to dig your car out. I think he admires your hard work."
"Uh, thanks," I stammered with surprise.
When warmer weather returned, Susie and I often walked the streets of our neighborhood in the evenings, enjoying the pleasant evening air. But the night I noticed Alfred sitting on his porch, I happened to be walking alone. "Hello," I said.
"Yup," Alfred said, nodding his head. I stopped and made small talk about the weather for a few minutes, and Alfred responded with a few brief comments of his own. "Yup. It is nice."
Susie and I walked by there many evenings after that, but only very occasionally did we encounter Alfred, and then, he was always sitting on his porch. When he was there, we stopped and talked briefly. Alfred never did much with his end of the conversation but I had the feeling that he welcomed our words nonetheless.
Our first child, Tommy, was born a year later, and now when Susie and I walked, we often had Tommy with us, first in stroller and later toddling between us. On the rare occasions when we saw Alfred, he sometimes stuck out his hands to our son. Invariably without hesitation, Tommy went to him. Alfred didn't say much more to Tommy than he did to Susie or me, but clearly the old man enjoyed holding our little boy. That pleased Susie, but she was bothered that Alfred seldom spoke directly to her. She came to think of him as a recluse, and she wondered aloud how Dorothy put up with him.
Following the service on our last Sunday in Thornberry, the congregation held a reception for Susie, Tommy, and me in the church's fellowship hall. Dorothy, although now looking rather frail, was among the women working in the kitchen, laying out the cookies and making the punch. Alfred, of course, was nowhere to be seen.
By August, we were pretty well settled in the North Doncaster parsonage, and I was busy getting to know my new congregation. A phone call from the new seminary graduate who had replaced me in Thornberry brought my attention abruptly back to my former congregation. "Dorothy Plunket died quietly in her sleep last night," he said.
"I'm sorry to hear that," I said. "How's Alfred taking it?"
"That's why I'm calling," he said. "I've never met the man, but their son says his father would like you to perform the funeral. That's okay by me. I'd appreciate it if you would."
So two days later I was back in the Thornberry sanctuary, officiating at the well-attended service for Dorothy. I'd never seen Alfred wearing anything but a flannel shirt and work pants, but today he was clothed in a suit and tie, sitting in the front pew with his son, daughter-in-law, and their family. It occurred to me that this was the first time I'd ever seen him in church. His expression was as somber as I'd ever seen it.
After the funeral and the graveside committal service that followed, Dorothy's family and friends returned to the fellowship hall for a meal served by the women of the church. I too was invited. As we went to the tables, I held back, waiting for the family members to choose their seats. I noticed that while Dorothy's people sat together, Alfred was on the edge of the group. His son sat to Alfred's right, but the seat to his left remained empty. Finally, I took that seat.
"I'm so sorry about Dorothy," I said to Alfred after I was seated.
"Yup," Alfred said. Then, after a pause, he added. "Thanks for doing her funeral. She always liked you."
All of that now swirled in my mind as I walked toward the taxi. "Alfred, this is a surprise." I said. "How are you?"
Alfred gave my extended hand a quick shake, ignoring my question. "I can only stay for three days," he said.
With a guest as untalkative as Alfred, that sounded like an eternity, but I said, "Well, you're welcome."
As he turned to pay the driver, I noted that the cab bore the name Mount Alban, a city some 17 miles away. Alfred pulled out a worn wallet and paid the cabby his stated fee of 35 dollars, and then handed the man an additional 50 cents. The driver looked disgusted, but said nothing. Alfred reached into the cab again and pulled out a second suitcase, this one smaller than the first.
I reached for the larger one, and asked, "How did you get to Mount Alban?"
"I took a bus," Alfred said as the cab drove away.
"Oh. If we'd known you were coming, I could have met you at the station and saved you a cab fare."
"Yup. It cost a lot."
I waited for Alfred to say more, but as usual, he didn't.
"Uh, well ... let's go inside."
As I expected, the next three days were filled with awkward moments as both Susie and I worked hard to maintain a conversation with Alfred. He responded briefly to each of our attempts to begin a dialogue, but soon lapsed back into what seemed to be a contented silence. Tommy was our salvation. Now four years old, he was as talky as Alfred was taciturn, and he kept up a running monologue to which the old man responded with occasional chuckles and expressions like "Yup. Isn't that nice?" and "My, my!" Several times, Tommy climbed into Alfred's lap, yakking away. The first time, Susie, thinking Tommy might be annoying our guest, tried to intervene. But Alfred, in an uncharacteristic spurt of verbosity, said, "No. He's not bothering me. Let him stay. You and I are friends, aren't we, little boy?" Tommy beamed and nodded his head.
That evening, needing to make a trip to the grocery store, I invited Alfred to ride with me. "Okay," he said.
"I bet you miss Dorothy," I said, once we were in the car.
"Yup. She was wonderful."
"I thought so too," I said. Although I waited for Alfred to add more, he remained quiet.
Knowing of Alfred's habitual avoidance of church, I wondered how the next morning, Sunday, would go. "We'll be busy with church tomorrow morning," I said. "We'd love to have you go with us."
"Yup. I'm planning on it."
Sure enough, the next morning Alfred came to breakfast dressed in the same dark gray suit he'd worn to Dorothy's funeral, but said he'd wait until Sunday school was finished before walking over for the worship hour. I wasn't surprised. The adult Sunday school class would no doubt provide more social interaction than a man of Alfred's mindset could tolerate. We left him reading the Sunday paper. As promised, he did appear for worship and sat quietly in the back of the sanctuary.
At dinner, Tommy kept up his chatter at Alfred. We filled the afternoon by driving Alfred to a couple of historic attractions in the area: an old village that had been refurbished by the county historical society and a lock that had been part of the canal system through Ohio in the 19th century. Alfred looked with interest and seemed content. That evening, the old man sat in front of the television, watching it with Tommy in his lap.
As Susie and I lay in bed that night, she said, "You know, I was dreading Alfred being here all weekend, but actually it's been kind of nice. He's really been no trouble at all, and I've enjoyed having him."
We'd arranged that I would drive Alfred to the bus stop the next morning for his trip back to Thornberry. As he prepared to leave the house, he said to Tommy, "Well, goodbye, young man." Tommy solemnly stuck out his hand and Alfred shook it. Alfred then turned to Susie extending his hand, but instead of taking it, she reached out and hugged the old man. He immediately blushed but looked pleased.
He and I said our goodbyes at the bus station. "We're glad you came," I said. "Feel free to come again."
"Yup. Maybe I will. But I'm getting pretty old. You never know." He climbed into the bus.
Later when I got home, Susie met me at the door. "Tom, come with me," she said. "I want to show you something." She led the way to the guestroom where Alfred had slept. There, neatly folded on the bed, lay a beautiful, handmade quilt. A note pinned to it read, "To the Paytons. Dorothy was making this for you."
Three months later, I received a note from the quilter who a few years earlier had told me about Alfred's courtship of Dorothy. Alfred had died peacefully in his sleep, she explained. She added that she hadn't seen the old man since he'd picked up the quilt from them. "Dorothy had started it at home," she wrote. "He brought it to us and paid us to finish it. He never said who it was for, only that it was for some good friends."
"What?" I exclaimed, startled. I hurried to the window from which Susie was peering intently into the church parking lot. Sure enough, the wizened little man who had been our neighbor in Thornberry, a four-hour drive away, was climbing out of a taxi, suitcase in hand.
The sight of the taxi itself was so rare in North Doncaster as to seem ominous. It had caught Susie's attention as she glanced out the window on that Saturday morning in late spring. The sight of Alfred added dismay to her surprise.
"What's he doing here?" she asked.
"Offhand, I'd say he's planning to visit, though why is beyond me."
"This can't be happening," she muttered to herself. Then, rallying, she added, "You go out and stall him for a few minutes. I'll get the spare room tidied up." She headed off.
As I started out the door, I recalled when, newly ordained and just appointed to the Thornberry Church, I'd first met Alfred Plunket.
Alfred and his wife Dorothy lived across the street from the parsonage, two houses down. In earlier days, the Plunket residence had been a rooming house, used by travelers and seasonal farm laborers. Alfred and Dorothy had made a modest living running the place, Dorothy cooking and cleaning and Alfred handling upkeep and repairs. But the construction of the Interstate highway in the late '50s drew most of the through traffic away from Thornberry, and improvements in harvesting equipment reduced the need for the laborers. The Plunkets were old enough to retire anyway, and they simply closed the business. By the time Susie and I arrived in town, the rooming house had been shut down for nine years, and the couple had the place to themselves.
I'd met Dorothy, a smiling, white-haired woman, at the worship service on my first Sunday. Though a few pounds over her ideal weight and wrinkled with age, she had clearly been a beauty in her younger years. Dorothy had been active in the congregation throughout her lifetime, as was the couple's grown son, who still lived in the community. But although I'd seen Alfred's name on the church's membership role, Dorothy was unaccompanied in church, not only that day, but on each successive Sunday.
Dorothy, I soon discovered, was a woman of sweetness and light, whose Christian virtues shone plainly in her speech, manner, and good works. Each Tuesday morning, Dorothy and a half dozen other older ladies gathered in the fellowship room of the church for quilting. Sitting around the four sides of a large quilting frame, these women industriously stitched their way through three to four quilts every year, quilting them on commission for various customers, and then giving the money to the church's mission fund. The women worked each Tuesday until noon, then ate together from sack lunches they'd brought with them from home.
The quilts they made were beautiful, and I admired them greatly. But as labor-intensive items, they were too expensive for me on a beginning pastor's salary.
Because of the proximity of the Plunket home to ours, I occasionally caught a glimpse of Alfred as he came outside to get into their car. He was shorter than Dorothy, with a bristling shock of dishwater-gray hair, and he walked with a decided limp. But I didn't actually meet Alfred until I made a pastoral visit to their home. Even then, I barely made his acquaintance as he stayed in the living room only long enough to say hello before retreating and leaving Dorothy alone to host me. Dorothy, cheerful and calm, carried on without apology for her husband's brusqueness.
A few weeks later, one of the other quilters filled me in. "Alfred's lived in the township all his life," she said, "but he's always been pretty much a loner. He joined the church back about the time I did, when we were teenagers, but he never attended regularly until he started courting Dorothy. She was a regular attender. Never could understand what she saw in him, though. She was the prettiest girl in our class, and smart and talented too. And you know how nice she is. Alfred was such an odd goat, you know. Never friendly. But once Dorothy made up her mind, she stuck with him."
"He doesn't come to church now, though," I said.
"No, after they'd been married a couple of months, he stopped coming. He's always seemed uncomfortable around people. I figured he forced himself to come while he was pursuing Dorothy, but once he'd married her, he went back to his old ways."
No one else had much to say about Alfred one way or the other. On the other hand, people often mentioned Dorothy, but they spoke about her almost as if she were a widow. Their son, who served on our church board of trustees, was a quiet, steady fellow, but he seldom spoke about Alfred either, though he often referred appreciatively to his mom.
One evening in late fall that first year, I returned from making a hospital visit. Turning into our driveway at dusk, I happened to glance down the street and noticed the Plunket's car parked in front of their house as usual, but its lights were on. It didn't appear that anyone was in it, so I walked the few steps over to it. The engine was not running, but the doors were locked. Assuming Alfred or Dorothy had forgotten to turn off the lights, I stepped onto their porch and knocked on their door. Dorothy answered and I explained.
"Oh, thank you, Reverend Payton," she said. "I went to the store a little while ago. I must have forgotten to turn them off when I got home. I'll take care of it." Because of some vision problems Alfred had developed in his later years, Dorothy now did all the driving.
Later, the phone rang, and when I answered, Dorothy was on the line. "Alfred asked me to call you," she said. "He's sure we'd have had a dead battery in the morning if you hadn't alerted us. He wanted me to thank you again."
"Glad to help," I said, wondering if Alfred was quite as antisocial as I'd thought.
I didn't see Alfred again until midwinter. Actually, I only saw him from behind as he hobbled away from my driveway. In late January, the whole northeastern section of Ohio, including Thornberry, was hit with a blizzard that lasted more than 24 hours. Schools closed and event-cancellations were announced all day long on the radio. When the storm finally ceased, our community was under 17 inches of snow. The township trucks, with snowplows mounted in front, had been working throughout the night, and by morning, when the snow at last stopped falling, the trucks began to make headway, making our streets and roads at least passable.
But my driveway certainly was not. Since first light, I'd been shoveling out, beginning at the garage and working toward the street. The snow was wet and heavy, and the work was exhausting. Still, I gradually cleared a path wide enough for the car to the street. There, I encountered the belt of plowed snow that had been pushed to the side of the street by the township trucks. This massive heap was at least three feet deep, more than four feet wide, and comprised of compressed, hard-packed snow and ice.
Against this massive obstruction my shovel seemed a puny weapon, but I flailed away until some 45 minutes later, I had cleared a passage that I judged to be just wide enough for my car. I had now been at the battle more than three hours. Just as I was beginning to think I could get the car out, a township plow barreled by, widening the traffic lane. In the process, it threw a fresh curl of heavy snow into the end of my driveway. My thoughts at that moment were distinctly unkind.
Though not nearly as wide or deep as the first pile, it took me another 20 minutes of shoveling to undo this latest contribution. Even then, there was still a small hump of tightly packed snow on the ground, but I figured I could get over it with the car if I got a good run from the garage.
At last I was ready to try. I got into the car and began backing out. As I neared the street and prepared to accelerate, I noticed with exasperation that another car was coming slowly down the street. If I gunned the engine now, I'd back right into its path. Reluctantly applying the brakes, I slid to a stop, with the car's rear wheels settling over the icy hump where the driveway met the street.
After the other vehicle passed, I tried to resume backing. The tires spun furiously, but the car had no traction and did not move. I shifted to first gear and attempted to pull back up the drive. Again the tires spun, but the car wouldn't budge. I was stuck.
Retrieving my shovel, I spent the next 30 minutes stabbing at and scraping the resisting mound of snow under the rear tires, but this was the hard-pack, and I made little progress. Every few minutes, I got back in the car and attempted to move it, but to no avail.
Exhausted, with cold feet and an overheated body, I went into the house to recover and get a cup of coffee. Coming back out to try again, I saw Alfred limping back toward his house. His footsteps in the snow led directly to my car, and there, where his tracks turned back, sat an old bucket, filled with sand.
Gratefully, I shoveled generous amounts of the sand under both back tires. This time, when I got in the car and stepped on the accelerator, the tires took hold and my car clawed its way into the street.
I drove to the store and ran a few necessary errands. When I returned, I carried the now empty bucket back to the Plunket's. Dorothy answered my knock, and I expressed my thanks.
She said, "We always kept some sand in case our boarders got their cars stuck, and we still had some." Then, after glancing over her shoulder as if to make sure her husband was out of earshot, she added, "Alfred sat by our window and watched you the whole time you were trying to dig your car out. I think he admires your hard work."
"Uh, thanks," I stammered with surprise.
When warmer weather returned, Susie and I often walked the streets of our neighborhood in the evenings, enjoying the pleasant evening air. But the night I noticed Alfred sitting on his porch, I happened to be walking alone. "Hello," I said.
"Yup," Alfred said, nodding his head. I stopped and made small talk about the weather for a few minutes, and Alfred responded with a few brief comments of his own. "Yup. It is nice."
Susie and I walked by there many evenings after that, but only very occasionally did we encounter Alfred, and then, he was always sitting on his porch. When he was there, we stopped and talked briefly. Alfred never did much with his end of the conversation but I had the feeling that he welcomed our words nonetheless.
Our first child, Tommy, was born a year later, and now when Susie and I walked, we often had Tommy with us, first in stroller and later toddling between us. On the rare occasions when we saw Alfred, he sometimes stuck out his hands to our son. Invariably without hesitation, Tommy went to him. Alfred didn't say much more to Tommy than he did to Susie or me, but clearly the old man enjoyed holding our little boy. That pleased Susie, but she was bothered that Alfred seldom spoke directly to her. She came to think of him as a recluse, and she wondered aloud how Dorothy put up with him.
Following the service on our last Sunday in Thornberry, the congregation held a reception for Susie, Tommy, and me in the church's fellowship hall. Dorothy, although now looking rather frail, was among the women working in the kitchen, laying out the cookies and making the punch. Alfred, of course, was nowhere to be seen.
By August, we were pretty well settled in the North Doncaster parsonage, and I was busy getting to know my new congregation. A phone call from the new seminary graduate who had replaced me in Thornberry brought my attention abruptly back to my former congregation. "Dorothy Plunket died quietly in her sleep last night," he said.
"I'm sorry to hear that," I said. "How's Alfred taking it?"
"That's why I'm calling," he said. "I've never met the man, but their son says his father would like you to perform the funeral. That's okay by me. I'd appreciate it if you would."
So two days later I was back in the Thornberry sanctuary, officiating at the well-attended service for Dorothy. I'd never seen Alfred wearing anything but a flannel shirt and work pants, but today he was clothed in a suit and tie, sitting in the front pew with his son, daughter-in-law, and their family. It occurred to me that this was the first time I'd ever seen him in church. His expression was as somber as I'd ever seen it.
After the funeral and the graveside committal service that followed, Dorothy's family and friends returned to the fellowship hall for a meal served by the women of the church. I too was invited. As we went to the tables, I held back, waiting for the family members to choose their seats. I noticed that while Dorothy's people sat together, Alfred was on the edge of the group. His son sat to Alfred's right, but the seat to his left remained empty. Finally, I took that seat.
"I'm so sorry about Dorothy," I said to Alfred after I was seated.
"Yup," Alfred said. Then, after a pause, he added. "Thanks for doing her funeral. She always liked you."
All of that now swirled in my mind as I walked toward the taxi. "Alfred, this is a surprise." I said. "How are you?"
Alfred gave my extended hand a quick shake, ignoring my question. "I can only stay for three days," he said.
With a guest as untalkative as Alfred, that sounded like an eternity, but I said, "Well, you're welcome."
As he turned to pay the driver, I noted that the cab bore the name Mount Alban, a city some 17 miles away. Alfred pulled out a worn wallet and paid the cabby his stated fee of 35 dollars, and then handed the man an additional 50 cents. The driver looked disgusted, but said nothing. Alfred reached into the cab again and pulled out a second suitcase, this one smaller than the first.
I reached for the larger one, and asked, "How did you get to Mount Alban?"
"I took a bus," Alfred said as the cab drove away.
"Oh. If we'd known you were coming, I could have met you at the station and saved you a cab fare."
"Yup. It cost a lot."
I waited for Alfred to say more, but as usual, he didn't.
"Uh, well ... let's go inside."
As I expected, the next three days were filled with awkward moments as both Susie and I worked hard to maintain a conversation with Alfred. He responded briefly to each of our attempts to begin a dialogue, but soon lapsed back into what seemed to be a contented silence. Tommy was our salvation. Now four years old, he was as talky as Alfred was taciturn, and he kept up a running monologue to which the old man responded with occasional chuckles and expressions like "Yup. Isn't that nice?" and "My, my!" Several times, Tommy climbed into Alfred's lap, yakking away. The first time, Susie, thinking Tommy might be annoying our guest, tried to intervene. But Alfred, in an uncharacteristic spurt of verbosity, said, "No. He's not bothering me. Let him stay. You and I are friends, aren't we, little boy?" Tommy beamed and nodded his head.
That evening, needing to make a trip to the grocery store, I invited Alfred to ride with me. "Okay," he said.
"I bet you miss Dorothy," I said, once we were in the car.
"Yup. She was wonderful."
"I thought so too," I said. Although I waited for Alfred to add more, he remained quiet.
Knowing of Alfred's habitual avoidance of church, I wondered how the next morning, Sunday, would go. "We'll be busy with church tomorrow morning," I said. "We'd love to have you go with us."
"Yup. I'm planning on it."
Sure enough, the next morning Alfred came to breakfast dressed in the same dark gray suit he'd worn to Dorothy's funeral, but said he'd wait until Sunday school was finished before walking over for the worship hour. I wasn't surprised. The adult Sunday school class would no doubt provide more social interaction than a man of Alfred's mindset could tolerate. We left him reading the Sunday paper. As promised, he did appear for worship and sat quietly in the back of the sanctuary.
At dinner, Tommy kept up his chatter at Alfred. We filled the afternoon by driving Alfred to a couple of historic attractions in the area: an old village that had been refurbished by the county historical society and a lock that had been part of the canal system through Ohio in the 19th century. Alfred looked with interest and seemed content. That evening, the old man sat in front of the television, watching it with Tommy in his lap.
As Susie and I lay in bed that night, she said, "You know, I was dreading Alfred being here all weekend, but actually it's been kind of nice. He's really been no trouble at all, and I've enjoyed having him."
We'd arranged that I would drive Alfred to the bus stop the next morning for his trip back to Thornberry. As he prepared to leave the house, he said to Tommy, "Well, goodbye, young man." Tommy solemnly stuck out his hand and Alfred shook it. Alfred then turned to Susie extending his hand, but instead of taking it, she reached out and hugged the old man. He immediately blushed but looked pleased.
He and I said our goodbyes at the bus station. "We're glad you came," I said. "Feel free to come again."
"Yup. Maybe I will. But I'm getting pretty old. You never know." He climbed into the bus.
Later when I got home, Susie met me at the door. "Tom, come with me," she said. "I want to show you something." She led the way to the guestroom where Alfred had slept. There, neatly folded on the bed, lay a beautiful, handmade quilt. A note pinned to it read, "To the Paytons. Dorothy was making this for you."
Three months later, I received a note from the quilter who a few years earlier had told me about Alfred's courtship of Dorothy. Alfred had died peacefully in his sleep, she explained. She added that she hadn't seen the old man since he'd picked up the quilt from them. "Dorothy had started it at home," she wrote. "He brought it to us and paid us to finish it. He never said who it was for, only that it was for some good friends."
