Jack

by Marilynne Robinson

  The bells struck up that great music of clash and clangor, and when they were done, she said, “I have to go.” She put her book down on the bench, put a pen in her handbag, and walked away. He waited a minute or two, then leaned across the bench to pick it up. It was hardly in his hand when a colored boy in a ball cap grabbed it away. “You were just going to steal that lady’s book,” he said, and ran after her to give it to her. He saw Della thank him, saw the boy wave off whatever she was offering him from her purse, saw her walk away without a backward glance.

  * * *

  He had to think this through. She had known where to look for him because he had mentioned that bridge. She had brought a book for him. He thought he could let himself believe this. So that he could knock on her door and say, I believe this is yours, Miss Miles? Or there was a note in it, or something circled or underlined. He wished he had seen just the title of the book. It was slender, mossy green, worn-looking. It might have been poetry, something someone had read again and again. She had come looking for him on a Sunday morning, which meant she knew now he wasn’t the churchgoing type. It meant also that she might not be on time even for the last service at her own church. She had come a long way just to let him know that things were all right somehow, whatever “things” were, whatever “all right” could be. Since they could hardly manage a few words together. She would know he felt grief—that is what it was—at her disillusionment, since nothing less than grief would have made her come so far. To comfort him. That’s what it amounted to. If there had been a note in the book that said, You are a despicable fraud, or words to that effect, even that would mean he had not ceased to exist for her when the idea she had of him perished. This was simply remarkable. Then she found him dozing on a bench like any bum, rumpled and disheveled, and she looked at his face so calmly, which in the circumstances meant kindly, and offered her apology and left her book. It was incredible that she would feel the need to apologize, but thank God she did, because what other pretext would have brought her there. Was it a pretext? Sweet Jesus, how he loved the thought.

  What should happen next? Next. This was the language of consequence, lovely to him in this particular moment, because it meant there was an actual thread of connection between them. Knowing her in the particular way he did, he would also know how to answer her. What should he do next? This would take time, and thought, so he believed, but an answer began pressing itself on him immediately, because he had imagined something like it any number of times. He would ask her out to dinner. He had a dishwashing, floor-sweeping kind of familiarity with certain establishments, where mainly black people but a fair scattering of white people came for the fried chicken or the pork chops, and maybe for the piano player. Any of them might seem rambunctious to a Methodist lady. But she wouldn’t mind! He knew that about her!

  When he had once again collected Teddy’s money and put himself in order, and the weather permitted, he went to a street near Della’s house and loitered there, waiting for her to come home from school. When he saw her, he crossed the street and fell into step beside her. She only glanced at him, but she was smiling. He said, “Miss Miles, I’d like to take you out to dinner.”

  She laughed. “Well, there’s a thought.”

  “Seriously. I know a place. There’s always a mixed crowd. You might not go there for the food, particularly. But it could be, you know, a nice evening.”

  She shook her head.

  He said, “I understand.”

  “You probably don’t.”

  “I meant to say all right. No hard feelings.”

  She stopped and looked at him. “I’d meet you there. You shouldn’t come here again. You’ll have me on the train to Memphis if my family gets word.”

  “Yes,” he said, “yes, I thought we should meet there. So I made a sort of map.” He took the folded paper out of his pocket. “You see, on this side, all the streets, clearly marked. And on the other side”—he turned it over—“the place itself. From across the street.” She laughed. “There are a few inaccuracies. I was mostly working from memory.”

  “I take it you added the angels.”

  “Angels, trumpets, harps. They are universal symbols of exceptional happiness. So I tossed them in. You can keep that if you like. Even if you don’t accept.”

  She shook her head. “How can I say no?”

  “A week night? Not so noisy as the weekend.”

  “All right. Thursday.”

  “Eight?”

  “Seven. It’s a school night.”

  “Fine. Till then.”

  “Yes. Go away now. If I’m not there, there’s some reason why I can’t be.”

  “Understood.” He tipped his hat and walked on. It all went as he had hoped, knowing that his hopes, in the circumstances, had to allow for a certain reluctance, some caution. He thought, very briefly, about the risk to her they were always aware of, and then he put the thought aside. No doubt he would fall down a manhole or get hit by a streetcar before Thursday, before this unimaginable evening, fate intervening for her sake.

  * * *

  But there he was, Thursday evening, loitering a few doors away from the restaurant, watching the street. And then there she was, and wearing quite a pretty hat, considering that she was a Methodist and a schoolteacher, and very uneasy about drawing attention to herself.

  He said, “Miss Miles,” and she stopped and smiled, and he opened the door for her. The waiter, a black man, knew him, raised his eyebrows, but showed them to a table with a mock formality that was pleasant enough.

  “Out on the town tonight, I guess. With a lovely lady, too. You better take good care of this nice lady.” Jack tried to remember if this man had ever seen him sober. He hadn’t given this aspect of things enough thought. The waiter laughed. “Don’t mind me. I’m just here to say I hope you like pork chops, because tonight that’s what we’ve got.”

  “Pork chops would be excellent.”

  They had the place almost to themselves. They could talk in the ordinary way of conversation, at least till later, when the piano started up and the crowd came. He had spent days in the library thinking about what he would say to her, drawing the map and the heavenly host on the flyleaf of a big travel book that had not been checked out for years, since before the war, and then only twice. The page pulled loose from its binding very cleanly. Whenever his father found one of his drawings, he’d say, “He’s the clever one. He’s going to surprise us all one day.” He heard his mother say once, “I guess you’re never going to give up on him.” His father seemed to consider, and then he said, “I’m just not sure there would be any point in it.” But the angels went well, they were fat and buoyant, cumulus. Della had to like them, he thought. And she did. Cleverness has a special piquancy when it blooms out of the fraying sleeve of failure. That was his experience, the magic trick he could usually play when he had to.

  And here she was. He said, “New tie,” when he realized he was smoothing it.

  She smiled and said, “New hat.”

  He was in love with her. That did it. That hat brought out glints of rose in the warm dark of her skin. Women know that kind of thing. She, Della, wanted him, Jack, to see that particular loveliness in her. These thoughts interfered considerably with the efforts at conversation he should have been making.

  She said, “That bridge you talk about really is handsome. Those huge stones. The walls of Troy must have looked like that.”

  “Yes. Herod’s temple.” Then he said, “Have you ever been to Bellefontaine?”

  “The white cemetery? Why, no. I haven’t had much occasion.”

  Of course. What a stupid question. He said, “I only ask because there is a tree there, a really huge old tree. I’ve probably walked by it a hundred times without noticing anything about it. But one time I happened to look back, and I saw blossoms all over it. Seriously. Big sort of golden-colored blossoms, each one upright, like it was floating on something. And I thought that was an amazing thing. The leaves hide
them. But from a certain distance, there they are. I thought that was interesting.” He didn’t think it was even slightly interesting now, listening to himself tell her about it, although at the time it had seemed startlingly wonderful, one of those self-erasing, soul-freeing moments when you might actually say, “I get the joke!” He had felt the lack of someone to describe it to. This quiet, smiling woman had had that place in his thoughts for weeks. And now he was reminded that the places he went and the things he saw, few as they were, were nothing he had in common with her. That musty, unvisited corner of the library where he almost lived was a place he had imagined telling her about. And now he realized that it would be unkind to mention it—the refuge of his poverty and his idleness and whatever else it was about him that brought him to skulk among forgotten books, hoping that old lady had remembered him when she was packing her lunch. Dear Jesus, what a life! And this lovely woman, whose hat was no doubt actually new, wouldn’t have the privilege of reading through all that pathos and pomposity and finding a line here and there worth reading to someone—she having been that someone in his thoughts for what seemed like forever.

  She was looking at him calmly, kindly. She said, “It’s probably a tulip tree. That’s really what they’re called. They’re native to North America!” She laughed. “When I was a girl, one of my brothers gave me a book about trees. I knew everything about all of them for a while. Then he gave me a book about dogs.”

  “I have a brother. Actually, I have three brothers. But Teddy—he’s a little younger than I am. We were close, I suppose. He’s a doctor now.”

  “How often do you see him?”

  “Never.” Flinch. “Very seldom. It seems like never.” If he wasn’t careful, he might tell her the truth sometime.

  She read his face, and then she said, “I’ve always heard that Bellefontaine is beautiful.”

  “If you like that sort of thing.” The waiter put plates down in front of them. Pork chops, a mound of potatoes cratered with the back of a spoon and filled with that oddly species-less gravy. There are probably ten laws in Leviticus that forbid that gravy. He said, “There are some pretty amazing monuments in there, and whole little neighborhoods of Greek temples, probably accurate in every detail, I suppose. About the size of woodsheds. There is one that has a statue of the woman it belongs to lying there under a canopy. All marble, very elegant. The inscription on it says, ‘She died for beauty.’”

  “Really! How did she manage that?”

  “Arsenic. A gardener told me. She took little dabs of it to make her skin very white, and once she took too much.” Dear Jesus, what a story.

  Della said, “The poor dear!” There wasn’t just laughter in her eyes, he could see that. Affection, possibly.

  Then he heard a voice he knew too well. There were some fellows, not always the same ones, who made a joke of shaking him down, collecting something he owed, they said, never quite enough to pay it off. He probably did owe something to somebody and was, in any case, usually too drunk to object. He glanced over his shoulder. Sure enough, two of them. Della looked at them.

  He said, “Excuse me a moment, please,” and left through the kitchen, glad he knew the place. It wasn’t only the embarrassment, being taunted as a drunk and a deadbeat in front of Della, having to put his money on the table and then turn his pockets out. And having to do it sober. He would give in immediately, or he would attempt some sort of self-defense, which could only end badly, since there were two of them. In either case, the ruckus wouldn’t end until they let it, and by then the cops might have come. There would be talk, and Della might be named—sneaky and spineless as it would have been under any other circumstances, often as he had done it under all kinds of circumstances, he was pretty sure this time he was doing the right thing.

  It was a terrible thing. She would never forgive him. He had spared her having much better reasons for hating him than he had given her. What a life.

  He loitered in that doorway, watching to see them leave, or her leave. Ah, Jesus, it was taking her such a long time to give up on him. But finally he saw her, walked her to her door, and left feeling less desolate than he had expected. He had been running their conversation through his mind. Not so bad, not so bad.

  It was a mild night. He loosened his tie and folded his jacket over his arm. He took a shortcut down a side street, which he would never have done at night if he had been paying attention. And he heard that voice again, behind him. They were laughing. “Why, it’s the professor! I been wanting a word with you, son. If you could just stop there a minute. The boss tells me you owe him. He wants his money. I guess you better empty those pockets.”

  Jack said, “What boss? Who’s—”

  And the other man hit him in the belly, a blow that startled him because it was so deft and mean. He almost said, Wait, this isn’t the game! when he hit him again. He had to put his hand against a wall to keep from falling. He was carrying Teddy’s money, all of it he hadn’t spent on the tie and a shave. He took it out of his pocket and put it in the hand of the first man.

  “This all?” the man said. “It better be.” Jack actually checked, found a few coins, and gave them to him.

  The man laughed. “Okay, I guess we’re square for now.”

  Then the other man hit him again, in the face this time. He must have been wearing a ring. Jack felt a cut on his cheekbone, a gouge. He couldn’t put his hand to it. Get blood on your hands and the next thing you know it’s on everything. They were walking away, the one saying to the other, “I can’t stand that guy. Something about him.”

  “I know what you mean,” the other one said, and threw the change on the ground and shared out the bills.

  His jacket was probably all right. He laid it down on a cellar door and put his hat beside it. In the dark he couldn’t tell what was ruined already. He untucked his shirt to blot his face with his shirttail, then lay down beside his jacket and hat and waited till his breath was back and he had stopped bleeding. And the thought that came to him first, looking up at the narrow sky, was Now I can’t go home, ever. He thought, I can’t see Della again, I can’t go to the library, I’ll have to close my lapels over my shirt the way bums do, and that was all terrible. But the way his father would sorrow over this unconcealable wound was the thought he could not bear.

  * * *

  So he went to Bellefontaine. He had managed despite his ribs to pick up the coins that damn fellow threw on the ground. It was enough for a couple of Hershey bars, anyway. He would wait on a bench till the day began, the gates opened, the little shop across from the entrance that sold gum and cigarettes and candy came alive. He would wince back at the clerk who winced at his bloodiness, to let him know that comment was not necessary. Then he’d join any stream of people passing through the gates, walk on to some secluded place by the lake, take off his shirt and sink it in the water with a stone to keep it in place, close his lapels bum-wise, lie down on a grave, and eat some chocolate. Jesus, what a life. Water would not rinse out a bloodstain, but one does what one can. He would hang the shirt on a bush or a headstone, but only after dark, because it alarms people somehow to see laundry done in public places. Raskolnikov. He could pretend he was the villain, hiding the proof of terrible guilt. That would chase people away and give him a minute or two to consider his options, how to shelter that quivering nerve of pride, which was always ready to heighten the misery of any occasion. No, better, he would find a bouquet, lay it on his chest, and be very still. If someone came close, he would sit bolt upright and stare. The kind of thing a child would think of, but it would also be likely to give him a minute or two, and it would be less likely to involve the police. He crouched by the water and washed his face with his hands, like the first man who ever lived and died would have done, exactly. No one saw him. He was careful of that. People find attention to personal hygiene in public disturbing. He’d have to sneak back to his room for his comb and razor. People are reassured by combed hair. His effects wouldn’t fill a paper bag.
They might already be out on the curb.

  The problem was to keep body and soul together until Teddy came with his stipend. That would be about a month, since winter was coming on, stirring his brother’s solicitude, he supposed. He found a grave old enough that there was little chance of his actually terrifying survivors, and he fell asleep.

  His luck had never failed him entirely to this point. A big fellow in a greenish coverall with a patch on the pocket that said Bradshaw nudged him awake with the toe of his boot and asked him if he was looking for work. It was well before dawn and the question was whispered, which should have raised suspicions. But Jack was absorbing the surprise of realizing he had been asleep and only thought of this later. Bradshaw, who was struggling out of the coverall, said he hated having to plant a million damn bulbs, hated the whole damn thing, but had to keep this job till he found another one. So he’d give Jack a few bucks to pass for Bradshaw. “This place gives me nightmares,” he said. “I can earn better money on the docks any day. My brother-in-law got me this job, the son of a bitch. Steady work, he says. I could go nuts in here. I hate dead people.” In the excitements of new resolve, he took out a roll of bills and handed Jack one of them.

  Jack said, “I—” and Bradshaw said, “I don’t have time for this,” and handed him another one. He turned to look behind him. “Just wear this damn uniform for a few days! Is that so hard?” He gave Jack another bill. “And don’t say nothing.” He said, “Don’t kill yourself over them bulbs, either. Dump ’em in a corner somewhere.” And he strode away before Jack could think through his new situation. He had nothing against dead people or flower bulbs. He could put on the uniform of an honest workingman with that solid name, Bradshaw. He had money, three dollars, he supposed, though there wasn’t light enough for him to see the denominations. If perfection ever stooped to consider the likes of Jack Boughton, to deal, so to speak, in such small coin, then he could call his surprising new circumstances perfect, or so he thought at the time.