Gilead: A Novel (26 page)

They all did ponder a good while, and I did, too, listening to the evening wind and the cicadas. I came near alarming myself with the thought of the loneliness stretching ahead of me, and the new bitterness of it, and how I hated the secretiveness and the renunciation that honor and decency required of me and that common sense enforced on me. But when I looked up, your mother was watching me, smiling a little, and she touched my hand and she said, “You’ll be just fine.”

How soft her voice is. That there should be such a voice in the whole world, and that I should be the one to hear it, seemed to me then and seems to me now an unfathomable grace.

She began to come to the house when some of the other women did, to take the curtains away to wash, to defrost the icebox. And then she started coming by herself to tend the gardens. She made them very fine and prosperous. And one evening when I saw her there, out by the wonderful roses, I said, “How can I repay you for all this?”

And she said, “You ought to marry me.” And I did.

Here is my thought: If I were to put my hand on her brow and bless her purely, as if I were indeed and altogether a minister of the Lord, I would hope just such an experience for her as that one of mine. Oh, I know she is fond of me, and very loyal. But I could hope that sometime the Song of Songs would startle her, as if it spoke from her own heart. I cannot really make myself believe that her feelings could have been at all like mine. And why do I worry so much over this Jack Boughton? Love is holy because it is like grace—the worthiness of its object is never really what matters. I might well be leaving her to a greater happiness than I have given her, even granting every difficulty.

Sometimes I think I have seen the beginnings of it in her. If the Lord is letting me momentarily be witness to a grace He intends for her, I should find in this a great kindness toward myself. This morning a splendid dawn passed over our house on its way to Kansas. This morning Kansas rolled out of its sleep into a sunlight grandly announced, proclaimed throughout heaven——one more of the very finite number of days that this old prairie has been called Kansas, or Iowa. But it has all been one day, that first day. Light is constant, we just turn over in it. So every day is in fact the selfsame evening and morning. My grandfather’s grave turned into the light, and the dew on his weedy little mortality patch was glorious.

“Thou wast in Eden, the garden of God; every precious stone was thy covering, the sardius, the topaz, and the diamond.” While I’m thinking of it—when you are an old man like I am, you might think of writing some sort of account of yourself, as I am doing. In my experience of it, age has a tendency to make one’s sense of oneself harder to maintain, less robust in some ways.

Why do I love the thought of you old? That first twinge of arthritis in your knee is a thing I imagine with all the tenderness I felt when you showed me your loose tooth. Be diligent in your prayers, old man. I hope you will have seen more of the world than I ever got around to seeing—only myself to blame. And I hope you will have read some of my books. And God bless your eyes, and your hearing also, and of course your heart. I wish I could help you carry the weight of many years. But the Lord will have that fatherly satisfaction.

***

This has been a strange day, disturbing. Glory called and invited you and your mother to the movies. Then, when she came for you, she had old Boughton with her, and she helped him out of the car and up the walk and up the steps. He so rarely leaves his house now that I was really amazed to find him at my door. We sat him down at the kitchen table and gave him a glass of water, and then the three of you left. All the bother seemed to have worn him out, because he just sat there with a more or less sociable expression but with his eyes closed, clearing his throat from time to time as if he was about to speak but then thought better of it. I found something on the radio, and we listened awhile to that. He’d chuckle a little if anything interesting happened. I believe he had been there most of an hour before he started to speak.

Then he said, “You know, Jack’s not right with himself yet. Still not right.” And he shook his head.

I said, “We’ve talked about that.”

“Oh yes, he talks,” Boughton said. “But he’s never told me why he’s come back here. Never told Glory either. He was supposed to have some kind of job down in St. Louis. I don’t know what’s become of that. We thought he might be married. I believe he was, for a while. I don’t know what became of that, either.

He seems to have a little money. I don’t know anything about it.” He said, “I know he talks to you and Mrs. Ames. I know that.”

Then he closed his eyes again. The effort of speaking seemed to have been considerable, and I think it was because he hated to have to say what he had just said. I took it as a warning. I don’t know another way to look at it. And I took his coming to the house as a way of underscoring his words, as it certainly did. And now I am persuaded again that I must speak to your mother.

Young Boughton came walking up the porch steps while we were still sitting there. I said, Come in, and pushed a chair out for him, but he stood by the door for a minute or two taking us in and drawing conclusions, which were pretty near the mark, as I could see by his expression. He seems always to suspect that people are in some sort of league against him. And no doubt that’s true, often enough, just as it was true at that moment. And there is an element of frustration and embarrassment in his manner, when he looks past the pretense, as he seems always to do, that makes me feel ashamed to be a part of it, and sorry for him, too. There is also anger, and that concerns me.

Jack said, “I came home and there was no one there. It was a bit of a shock.”

Boughton said, in that hearty voice he can still muster when he wants to sound as though he’s telling the truth, “I’m sorry, Jack! Ames and I have been looking after each other while the women are out at the movies! We thought you would be gone a little longer!”

“Yes. Well, no harm done,” he said, and he sat down when I asked him to again, and he kept his eyes on me, with that half-smile he has when he wants you to know he knows what’s really going on and he can’t quite believe you persist in trying to fool him. Boughton sort of nodded off then, as he does when conversations get difficult, and I can’t blame him, though I do have my heart to consider, too. Because it was a considerable strain on me to think what to say to Jack, as it always is and always has been, it seems to me. I felt sorry for him, and that’s a fact. It seems almost a curse to me the way he can see through people. Of course, I couldn’t be honest with him, so there I was being dishonest with him, and there he was watching me as if I were the worst liar in the world, as if I were insulting him, as I suppose in fact I was.

“Your father felt like he needed to get out of the house,” I said.

He said, “Understandable.”

In fact, that was a ridiculous thing for me to have said, considering that it’s about all Boughton can do to walk from his bed to his chair on the porch.

I said, “I suppose he wanted to take advantage of the good weather while it lasts.”

“I’m sure he did.”

“Well,” I said, after a minute, “this is some year for acorns!” which was perfectly pitiful. Jack laughed outright. “The crows have made an impressive showing,” he said.

“And the gourds are particularly shapely and abundant, I think.” And all that time he was looking at me as if to say,
Let’s just be honest with each other for five minutes.

Now, I excuse myself in that I don’t know what the truth actually is. I do believe his father came here to, in effect, warn me about him, but I am not absolutely certain of it. And in any case, I can hardly betray a confidence, especially not one as inflammatory and injurious as that one, certainly not with poor old Boughton sitting there three feet from me, quite probably listening to the whole conversation. But dishonesty is dishonesty, a humiliating thing to be caught at, especially when you have no choice but to persist in it, and to salvage as much of the deception as you can, under the very eye of indignation, so to speak.

On the other hand, as an old man, his father’s senior by a couple of years despite my relative vigor, such as it is, I feel I have a right not to be deviled in this way. If the point was to make me angry, I am angry as I write this. My heart is up to something that is alarming the rest of my body, in fact. I must go pray. I wonder what he knows about my heart.

Well, of course he must know a good deal about my heart, since your mother did enlist him in bringing my study downstairs. When I pray about all this, it is a sense of the sadness in him that keeps coming to my mind. He is someone who must be forgiven a great deal on the grounds of that strange suffering. And when the three of you came back, which you did fairly soon, things were much better. Glory seemed a little startled at first at finding Jack there, but your mother was pleased to see him, as she always is, I believe.

You liked the movie. Tobias isn’t allowed to go to movies, so you brought him almost half your box of Cracker Jacks, which I thought was decent of you. I wonder whether you should go to movies. But with television in the house, there seems no point in forbidding them. Of course Tobias can’t watch television, either. Your mother promised his mother we’d see to that whenever he comes over, which is often enough to make you miss the Cisco Kid a lot more frequently than you would like. You’re not the most sociable child in the world, and I’m a little afraid that, given a choice, Tobias or television, your best chum would be on his own. As it is, he spends more time waiting on the porch than he should. From time to time, you have seemed so lonely to us, and here is Tobias, an estimable chap, an answer to our prayers, and you let him sit on the porch until some cartoon is over. But I’m not inclined to do much forbidding these days. T.’s father is young. He has years and years with his boys, God willing.

Well, the three of you came in, pleased with yourselves and smelling of popcorn, and I was so relieved I can’t tell you. Then after a little talk your mother and Glory helped Boughton out to the car and took him home, which is the only place he is comfortable anymore, and then they made a supper for us all to have there. You went off to find Tobias so you could contaminate his good Lutheran mind with nonsense about gunslingers and federal marshals. And I sat there at the table with Jack Boughton, who didn’t say a word. He just took a little time deciding to leave. He didn’t come back to his father’s house for dinner, and nobody said anything about it, but I know it worried us all. Your mother and Glory took a walk after the table was cleared, to enjoy the evening, they said, but when they came back, Glory said they had seen Jack, and he had told them he would come home later. I could tell they had found him down at the bar. They didn’t offer particulars and Boughton didn’t ask.

JACK BOUGHTON HAS A WIFE AND A CHILD.

He showed me a picture of them. He only let me see it for half a minute, and then he took it back. I was slightly at a loss, which he must have expected, and still I could tell it was an effort for him not to take offense. You see, the wife is a colored woman. That did surprise me.

I was over at the church yesterday morning, in my study, sorting through some old papers, thinking if I put aside the interesting ones, the actual records, they might not be discarded along with all the clutter. There are just boxes and boxes of memoranda and magazine articles and flyers and utility bills. It seems as if I never threw anything away. I’m afraid a new minister might not be patient enough to sort through it all, and that would be my fault.

Well, there I was, feeling a little dirty and cobwebby and also a little morose and, I must say, dreading interruption, too, since I may at any time stop feeling up to this sort of thing. I hadn’t been at it half an hour and I was tired already.

And in came Jack Boughton, once again wearing the suit and necktie, once again kempt and shaved, but looking a little frayed for all that, weary about the eyes, God bless him. I was interested to see him, more interested than pleased, I admit. I couldn’t very well talk to him with dirt all over my face and hands, so I excused myself to go wash, and when I came back, he was still standing by the door—I’d forgotten to offer him a chair, so he was just standing there. He was looking quite pale, and I was ashamed of myself for my thoughtlessness. But he is so afraid of offending unintentionally that he abides by manners most people forget as soon as they learn them, and that can make it seem almost as if he means to make you ashamed. That is how I felt, at least, and I know it was unfair of me.

Then when he sat down I went to lift some boxes from my desk and he stood up and took one of them right out of my hands, which was good of him, but irked me a little just the same. I’d rather drop dead doing for myself than add a day to my life by acting helpless. But he meant well. He moved both boxes onto the floor, and then his hands were grimy and the front of his jacket, so he took out his handkerchief and wiped himself down a little. I suggested we could go into the sanctuary, but he said the office was fine with him. So we sat there quiet for a while.

Then he said, “I stayed away from this town for a long time. As a courtesy to my father, mainly. I might never have come back.”

I asked him what had made him change his mind. It took him a while to answer.

“For several reasons I felt I needed to speak with him. My father. But,” he said, “somehow, when I came here, I didn’t expect him to be so very old.”

“The last few years have been hard on him.” He put his hand to his eyes.

I said, “It has done him good to have you here.”

He shook his head. “You talked with him yesterday.” “Yes. He did seem a little worried about you.”

He laughed. “A few days ago Glory said to me, ‘He’s fragile. We don’t want to kill him.’ We! It’s true, though. I don’t want to kill him. So I thought I might be able to speak with you. This will be my last attempt, I promise.”

I almost reminded him my own health is not perfect, which would have been foolish, since on second thought I could not really imagine that any revelation he might make would strike me down.