Gilead

by Marilynne Robinson

  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

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  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 ofjob 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 211

  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.

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  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 2 15

  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 fa214

  ther’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.
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  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. 1 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 2 18

  would have been foolish, since on second thought I could not really imagine that any revelation he might make would strike me down.

  He took a little leather case out of his breast pocket and

  opened it and held it in front of me. His hand was not steady, and I had to put on my reading glasses, but then I could see it fairly well. It was posed like a portrait photograph—himself, a young woman, and a boy about five or six. The woman was seated in a chair with the child standing next to her, and young Boughton was standing behind them. It was Jack Boughton, a colored woman, and a light-skinned colored boy.

  Boughton looked at the picture and then he snapped the

  case shut and slipped it back into his pocket. He said, “You see,” and his voice was so controlled it sounded bitter, “you see, I also have a wife and child.” Then he just watched me for a minute or two, clearly hoping he would not have to take offense. “That’s a fine-looking family,” I said.

  He nodded. “She’s a fine woman. He’s a fine boy. I’m a lucky man.” He smiled.

  “And you’re afraid this might kill your father?”

  He shrugged. “It came near enough killing her father. And

  her mother. They curse the day I was born.” He laughed and touched his hand to his face. “As you know, I have considerable experience antagonizing people, but this is on another level entirely.” I was thinking my own thoughts, so he said, “Maybe not.

  Maybe that’s just how it seems to me—” and then he sat there studying his hands.

  So I said, “Well, how long have you been married?” And regretted the question.

  He cleared his throat. “We are married in the eyes of God, as they say. Who does not provide a certificate, but who also 219

  does not enforce anti-miscegenation laws. The Deus Absconditus at His most benign. Sorry.” He smiled. “In the eyes of God

  we have been man and wife for about eight years. We have lived as man and wife a total of seventeen months, two weeks, and a day.”

  I remarked that we have never had those laws here in Iowa, and he said, “Yes, Iowa, the shining star of radicalism.”

  So I asked him if he came here to be married.

  He shook his head. “Her father doesn’t want her to marry

  me. Her father is also a minister, by the way. I suppose that was inevitable. And there is a good Christian man down there in Tennessee, a friend of the family, who is willing to marry my wife and adopt my son. They think this is very kind of him. I suppose it is. They believe it would be best for everybody.” He said, “And the fact is, I have had considerable difficulty looking

  after my family. From time to time they have gone back to Tennessee, when things were too difficult. That’s where they are now.” He said, “I can’t really ask her to make a final break with her family under the circumstances.” He cleared his throat.

  We were just quiet. Then he said, “You know the chief thing her father has against me? He takes me for an atheist!

  Delia says he thinks all white men are atheists, the only difference is that some of them are aware of it. Delia is my wife.”

  I said, “Well, from certain things you have said, I have gotten the impression that you are an atheist.”

  He nodded. “It is probably truer to say I am in a state of categorical unbelief. I don’t even believe God doesn’t exist, if you see what I mean. Of course this is a matter of concern to my wife, too. Partly for my sake. Partly for the boy’s. I lied to her about it for a little while. When I told her the truth, I believe she thought she could rescue me. As I said, when she first knew me, she took me for a man of the cloth. Many people

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  make that mistake.” He laughed. “I generally correct them. I did her.”

  Now, the fact is, I don’t know how old Boughton would take all this. It surprised me to realize that. I think it is an issue we never discussed in all our years of discussing everything. It just didn’t come up.

  I said, “I take it you’ve talked to Glory.”

  “No. I can’t do that. She’d just break her heart over it. She can tell there’s something on my mind. She probably thinks I’m in trouble. I believe my father thinks so, too.”

  “I believe he does.”

  He nodded. “He was crying yesterday.” He looked at me. “I have disappointed him again.” And then he said, controlling his voice, “I haven’t had any word from my wife since I left St. Louis. I have been waiting to hear from her. I have written to her a number of times— What is the proverb? ‘Hope deferred maketh the heart sick.’ ” He smiled. “I have even found myself tur
ning to liquor for solace.”

  I said, “So I understand,” and he laughed.

  ” ‘Give strong drink unto him that is ready to perish, and wine unto the bitter in soul.’ Isn’t that right?”

  Word for word.

  He said, “The first thing she ever said to me was ‘Thank

  you, Reverend.’ She was walking home in a rainstorm with an armful of books and papers—she was a teacher—and some of the papers fell onto the pavement, and the wind was scattering them, so I helped her gather them up, and then I walked her to her door, since I had an umbrella. I didn’t think about what I was doing, particularly. My impeccable manners.”

  “You were well brought up.”

  “I was indeed.” He said, “Her father told me that if I were

  a gentleman I’d have left her alone. I understand why he feels that way. She had a good life. And I am not a gentleman.” He 221

  wouldn’t let me object to that. “I know what the word means, Reverend. Though I can now say that the influence of my wife worked a change in me for the better, at least temporarily.” Then he said, “I don’t want to tire you with this. I know

  I’ve interrupted you. I’ll tell you why I have kept trying to talk to you.”

  I told him he was welcome to take all the time he wanted.

  He said, “That’s very kind.” And then he just sat there for a little while. “If we could find a way to live,” he said, “I think she

  would marry me. That would answer her family’s most serious objections, I believe. They say I can’t provide a decent life for my family, and that has in fact been the case to this point.” He cleared his throat. “If you can really spare me the time,

  I will explain. Thank you. You see, I met Delia during a fairly low point in my life. I won’t go into that. Delia was very nice to me, very pleasant. So I found myself now and then walking down that street at that hour, and sometimes I saw her and we spoke. I swear I had no intentions at all, honorable or otherwise. It was just pleasant to see her face.” He laughed. “She

  would always say, ‘Good afternoon, Reverend.’ I was not at that time accustomed to being treated like a respectable man. I must say I enjoyed it. It got so that I would walk along her street with no thought of seeing her, just because there was a kind of comfort in being reminded of her. And then one evening I did meet her, and we spoke a little, and she asked me in for tea. She shared rooms with another woman who taught at the colored school. It was pleasant. We had our tea together, the three of us. I told her then I was not a minister. So she knew that. I believe she invited me in in the first place because she was under that impression, but I was honest with her. About that. It didn’t seem to matter too much.