A New Song by Jan Karon Read Free Book Online Page A

brother, Poobaw. Later, he’d driven to Florida on little more than a hunch, and located Dooley’s little sister, Jessie. Now two of the five Barlowe children were still missing. Their mother, Pauline, recovering from years of hard drinking, had no idea where they might be. As far as he could discover, there were no clues, no trail, no nothing. But he had hope—the kind that comes from a higher place than reason or common sense.
    “Will you believe that with me?” he asked Dooley.
    A muscle moved in Dooley’s jaw. “You did pretty good with Poo and Jessie.”
    Barnabas crashed into the grass at Dooley’s feet.
    “I believe we’re closer to deciding on some colleges to start thinking about.”
    “Yep. Maybe Cornell.”
    “You’ve got a while before you have to make any decisions.”
    “Maybe University of Georgia.”
    “Maybe. Their specialty is large animals; that’s what interests you. Anyway, that’s all down the road. For now, just check things out, think about it, pray about it.”
    “Right.”
    “We’re mighty proud of you, son. You’ll make a fine vet. You’ve come—we’ve all come—a long way together.”
    There was an awkward silence between them.
    “What’s on your mind?” asked Father Tim.
    “Nothing.”
    “Let’s talk about it.”
    Dooley turned to him, glad for the invitation. “It looks like you could let me borrow the money and I’ll pay you back. Working six days a week at five dollars an hour, I’ll have sixteen hundred dollars. Plus I figure three yards a week at an average of twenty apiece, I’m countin’ it seven hundred bucks because some people will give me a tip. Last year, I saved five hundred, so that’s two thousand eight hundred.”
    He had the sudden sense of being squeezed between a rock and a hard place. . . .
    “Nearly three thousand,” said Dooley, enunciating clearly. “I could prob’ly make it an even three if I cleaned out people’s attics and basements.”
    Aha. He hadn’t counted on three thousand bucks being a factor in the car equation. He gazed out to the view, unseeing.
    “This just isn’t the summer for it. We can’t be here, and that’s a very crucial factor. Besides, you know we agreed you’d have a car next summer. If we’re still at Whitecap, you’ll come there, and everything will be fine.” He looked at Dooley. “Call me hard if you like, but it’s not going to happen.”
    Dooley turned away and said something under his breath.
    “Tell you what we’ll do. Cynthia and I will match everything you make this summer.” It was a rash decision, but why not? He still had more than sixty thousand dollars of his mother’s money, and was a homeowner with no mortgage. It was the right thing to do.
    Dooley stared straight ahead, kicking the stone wall with his heels. If Dooley Barlowe only knew what he knew—that Sadie Baxter had left the boy a cool million-and-a-quarter bucks in her will, to be his when he turned twenty-one. He knew that part of Miss Sadie’s letter by heart: I am depending on you never to mention this to him until he is old enough to bear it with dignity.
    “Look. We gave you a choice between staying in Mitford and a summer at the beach. That’s a pretty important liberty. We didn’t force you to do anything you didn’t want to do. Give us credit for that. The car is a different matter. We’re not going to be around to—”
    “Harley’s going to be around all the time, he’s going to let me drive his truck, what’s the difference if I have my own car?”
    Well, blast it, what was the difference? “But only once a week, as you well know, with a curfew of eleven o’clock.”
    Father Tim stood up, agitated. He never dreamed he’d be raising a teenager. When he was Dooley’s age in Holly Springs, Mississippi, nobody he knew had a car when they were sixteen. Today, boys were given cars as casually as they were handed a burger through a fast-food window. And in fact, a vast number of them ended up decorating