Gilead (2005 Pulitzer Prize)

by Marilynne Robinson

  Then silence again. They never looked up from their work. It was the drought they were speaking of, which had already

  set in and which would go on for years, a true calamity. I remember a sweet, soft wind like there is today. There is no work

  more tedious than shelling black walnuts, and the two of them did it every autumn of the world. My mother said they tasted like furniture, and I'm not sure anyone disagreed. But she always had them, so she used them.

  You and Tobias are on the porch steps sorting gourds by size and color and shape, choosing favorites, assigning names. Some of them are submarines and some of them tanks, and some of them are bombs. I suppose I should be expecting another visit from T.'s father shortly. All the children play at war now. All of them make those sounds of airplanes and bombs and crashing and exploding. We did the same things, playing at cannon fire and bayonet charges.

  192

  There is certainly nothing in that fact to reassure.

  Cataract that this world is, it is remarkable to consider what does abide in it.

  I fell to thinking about a sermon my father gave, after the

  breach with Edward had become known and he had had a little while to reflect on it. It was not at all like him to refer to

  anything private or personal except in the most abstract terms. But that morning he thanked the Lord for letting him know finally in some small degree what defection was, for allowing

  him to understand what it was he himself had done to his father in those days after the war when he had gone off to the Quakers and left his father to carry his terrible burden alone. He said a thing I had never heard before, that his mother, though she had been too ill and in too much pain to come to church for months, did come when she learned that he was staying away. His sisters, who by then were always with her, carried her in their arms, one and then the other, up the road, which must have seemed very long to them. They were late because it was only that morning their mother had asked thern to bring her, and they were hot and unkempt with haste, haste in the slow work of gentleness, because by then their mother could hardly bear to be touched. Their mother was white and shorn, much too small for the dress they had to ease her into with such painful care. They walked in in the middle of the sermon in their wash dresses, sweaty and unbonneted, Amy, the eldest, carrying their mother in her arms as she might

  have carried a half-grown child. My father said the old reverend stopped preaching and stood looking at them, then took

  up his text again, which was about the profound mystery of suffering for others, as all his sermons were in those days. He preached a few minutes and prayed a few minutes and said the

  193

  benediction, and then he went to his wife and took her up in his arms and kissed her forehead and carried her home, leaving his flock to the long Sabbath of the Methodists.

  "I cannot describe the shame I felt," my father said. "My sisters spoke to me about what my mother had done because they were afraid she might insist on going to church again if I stayed away again. Amy told me, 'If you put us through that one more time, I will hate you till I die!' And of course I did not."

  My father was telling himself and all the rest of us that Edward's transgressions were trivial beside his own. He was also

  saying, to himself and to the rest of us, that there was an aptness

  in this present embarrassment and disappointment which

  made it valuable and instructive to him—that there was a

  seeming ^design in it that might mark it in fact as the Lord's benevolence, a sort of parable meant to deepen his own understanding. This construction of the matter would certainly have

  forbidden, or at least discouraged, any impulse he might have felt to blame Edward. The thoughtlessness of any individual, when it is seen to be in service to the mindfulness of the Lord, cannot justify anger.

  I have used this line of reasoning any number of times myself, when I have felt the need and found the occasion. And the

  fact is, it is seldom indeed that any wrong one suffers is not thoroughly foreshadowed by wrongs one has done. That said, it has never been clear to me how much this realization helps when it comes to the practical difficulty of controlling anger. Nor have I found any way to apply it to present circumstance, though I have not yet abandoned the effort.

  194

  This afternoon I came back from a fairly discouraging meeting at the church—just a few people came, and absolutely nothing was accomplished. That is the kind of thing that wears me out. So I took a nap and slept through supper. It was dark when I woke up and the house was empty so I went out to the porch. You and your mother were sitting on the swing, wrapped up in a quilt. She said, "This might be the last mild night." She made room for me beside her and spread the quilt across my lap and rested her head on my shoulder. It was just as pleasant as could be. This summer she planted what she calls her owl garden, I being the owl in question. She read somewhere that white flowers are most fragrant at night, so she planted every white flower she could think of along the front walk. Now there are just a few roses left, and alyssum and petunias.

  So we sat there in the dark together for a while, you asleep, more or less, with your mother stroking your hair. Then we heard footsteps in the road. And sure enough, it was lack Boughton. I believe he may have meant to say good evening and pass by, but your mother asked him to come visit a little, so he did. He came in the gate and sat down on the steps. I have noticed that toward her he is consistently obliging.

  "We were just enjoying the quiet," she said.

  He said, "No better place in the world to do that." Then, as though he was afraid he might be misunderstood, or at any rate that he might give offense, he said, "It really is good to be back for a while." He laughed. "There are people here now who don't know me from Adam. It's wonderful."

  Then he put his hand to his face, his eyes. It was dark, but I could recognize that gesture. He has made it his whole life, I believe.

  I said, "It has been a great happiness to your father, having

  you here."

  He said, "The man's a saint." 195

  "That might be true, but it was still good of you to come." "Ah," he said, as a man might when a chasm has opened at his feet.

  So there was a silence of a few minutes, and then your mother stood up and lifted you out of the quilt and carried you away to bed.

  "I have been glad to see you, too," I said, because I really was, for old Boughton's sake.

  To that he made no reply. "I say that quite sincerely."

  He stretched out his legs and leaned back against the porch pillar.

  "No doubt," he said. "Stack of Bibles."

  He laughed. "How high?" "A cubit or so."

  "That'll do, I guess."

  "Would two cubits put your mind at ease?"

  "Entirely." And then, remembering his manners, "It has

  been good seeing you again. And meeting your wife. Your famiiy-" Then we were quiet for a while.

  I said, "I'm impressed that you know Karl Barth." "Oh," he said. "From time to time I still try to crack the code."

  "Well," I said, "I admire your tenacity."

  He said, "You might not, if you understood my motives." Of all people on this earth he must be the hardest one to have a conversation with.

  So I said, "That's all right, I admire it anyway." And he said, "Thanks."

  So we were just quiet there for some time. Your mother came out with a pot of hot cider and cups, and she sat there 196

  quiet right along with us, the dear woman. And I spent the time thinking how it would be if Jack Boughton were indeed my son, and had come home weary from whatever life he had, and was sitting there still and at seeming peace in that peaceful night. There was a considerable satisfaction in that thought. The idea of grace had been so much on my mind,

  grace as a sort of ecstatic fire that takes things down to essentials. There in the dark and the quiet I felt I could forget all

  t
he tedious particulars and just feel the presence of his mortal and immortal being. And a sensation came over me, a sort of lovely fear, that made me think of Boughton's fear of angels. Now, I may have been more than half asleep at that point,

  but a thought arose that abides with me. I wished I could sit at the feet of that eternal soul and learn. He did then seem to me the angel of himself, brooding over the mysteries his mortal

  life describes, the deep things of man. And of course that is exactly what he is. "For who among men knoweth the things of a

  man, save the spirit of the man, which is in him?" In every important way we are such secrets from each other, and I do believe

  that there is a separate language in each of us, also a

  separate aesthetics and a separate jurisprudence. Every single one of us is a little civilization built on the ruins of any number of preceding civilizations, but with our own variant notions

  of what is beautiful and what is acceptable—which, I

  hasten to add, we generally do not satisfy and by which we struggle to live. We take fortuitous resemblances among us to

  be actual likeness, because those around us have also fallen heir to the same customs, trade in the same coin, acknowledge, more or less, the same notions of decency and sanity. But all

  that really just allows us to coexist with the inviolable, untraversable, and utterly vast spaces between us.

  Maybe I should have said we are like planets. But then I would have lost some of the point of saying that we are like 197

  civilizations. The planets may all have been sloughed from the same star, but still the historical dimension is missing from

  that simile, and it is true that we all do live in the ruins of the lives of other generations, so there is a seeming continuity

  which is important because it deceives us. I am old enough to remember when we used to go out in the brush, a lot of us, and spread out in a circle, and then close in, scaring the rabbits

  along in front of us, till they were trapped there in the center,

  and then we would kill them with sticks and clubs. That was during the Depression, and people were hungry, and we did

  what we could. I am not finding fault. (We didn't take the jackrabbits, only the cottontails. We all knew there was something objectionable about jackrabbits, though I don't remember

  anyone saying just what it was.) There were people eating groundhogs. The children would go to school with nothing in their lunch buckets but a boiled potato or a scrap of bread with lard smeared on it. In those days the windows of the church used to get so pelted with dust that I'd get up on a ladder and sweep them down with a broom so there would be light enough inside for people to read their hymnals.

  The times were dreadful, but it was just how it was, and we

  got very used to it. That was our civilization. The valley of the shadow. And it might as well be Ur of the Chaldees for all people know about it now. For which I thank God, of course,

  though, since it had to happen, I don't regret having been here for it. It gives you another look at things. I have heard people say it taught them there is more to life than security and the material comforts, but I know a lot of older people around here who can hardly bear to part with a nickel, remembering those hard times. I can't blame them for it, though it has meant

  that the church is just now beginning to come out of its own Depression. "There is that scattereth, and increaseth yet more, and there is that withholdeth more than is meet, but it tendeth only to want." Much in this very town proves the truth of that 198

  proverb. Well, the church is shabby for the same reason it's still standing at all. So I shouldn't really complain. It is a good thing to know what it is to be poor, and a better thing if you can do it in company.

  I believe they thought I had nodded off, as I do with fair frequency, I know. They began to talk. Your mother said, in a lowered

  voice, "Have you decided how long you will be staying here?"

  He said, "I'm afraid it's already begun to seem long—not to me so much."

  There was a silence, and then she said, "You'll be going back to St. Louis?"

  "That's possible."

  Another silence. He struck a match. I could smell the smoke of a cigarette.

  "Would you care for one?"

  "No, thank you." She laughed. "Sure I would. It just isn't seemly in a preacher's wife."

  " 'It just isn't seemly'! I guess they've been after you."

  "I don't mind," she said. "Somebody had to tell me a few things sooner or later. Now I been seemly so long I'm almost beginning to like it."

  He laughed.

  She said, "It did take me a while to get used to this place. That's a fact."

  "Well, for me that's not the problem. It feels familiar to me, all right. It feels a little like returning to the scene of the crime."

  After a moment she said, "Everybody speaks about you very kindly, you know."

  "Really? Interesting. I suppose I believe you." She laughed. "I haven't lied in years."

  199

  "Hmm. That sounds exhausting."

  "They say you can get used to anything."

  He said, "Reverend Ames still hasn't warned you about me?"

  She found my hand and took it between her two warm hands. "He don't speak unkindly. He never does."

  There was a silence. I was fairly uncomfortable with myself,

  as you can imagine, and I was about to show some signs of stirring, just to extricate myself from this discreditable situation I had put myself into, which seemed almost to be spying.

  But your mother said, "I was in St. Louis once. Some of us went there looking for work." She laughed. "No luck."

  He said, "It's a miserable place to be broke."

  "If there's a good place to be broke, I sure never found it. And I tried 'em all."

  They laughed.

  He said, "When I was young I thought a settled life was what happened to you if you weren't careful."

  She said, "I always knew better than that. It was the one

  thing I wanted. I used to look in people's windows at night and wonder what it was like."

  He laughed. "That's how I was planning to spend this very evening."

  There was a silence.

  "Well," she said, and her voice was very gentle, "well, Jack, bless your heart."

  And he said, "Why, I thank you for that, Lila." Then he stood up. "Tell the reverend good night for me." And he went away.

  I lay awake the whole night, except for the part of it I spent sitting at my desk, writing this all out and thinking it over. Of course I was touched by your mother's pride in my tendency to 200

  avoid speaking evil. It is something I do in fact try to avoid, though you know very well what a struggle it has been for me in this case.

  But I could only be struck by young Boughton's amazement that I had not yet, in his words, warned her about him. It was almost as if he thought I had been negligent. And who would be a better judge of that than he is? He might think I know things I don't know, assuming Boughton confided in me more than he ever did, or that talk about him would have reached me, as in fact it did only rarely. I always suspected people of a good deal of tact where he was concerned.

  "The scene of the crime." That was a joke, I'm pretty sure. But it does lead me to wonder how much of the misery I feel in him comes from the fact that he is here, where things went on that still might cause him suffering, maybe shame.

  I wish I could put my hand on his brow and calm away all

  the guilt and regret that is exaggerated or misplaced, or beyond rectification in the terms of this world. Then I could see

  what I'm actually dealing with.

  Theologically, that is a completely unacceptable notion. It just happened to cross my mind. I apologize for it.

  Since I am trying to tell the truth, there is one other thing. The edginess went out of his voice while he was talking with your mother. I would almost say he seeme
d to relax. He sounded like someone speaking with a friend. And so did she.

  I believe I am beginning to see where the grace is for me in this. I have prayed considerably, and I have slept awhile, too, and I feel I am reaching some clarity.

  I have never been to St. Louis, a fact I now regret. 201

  I have been looking through these pages, and I realize that for some time I have mainly been worrying to myself, when my intention from the beginning was to speak to you. I meant to leave you a reasonably candid testament to my better self, and it seems to me now that what you must see here is just an old man struggling with the difficulty of understanding what it is he's struggling with.

  I believe I may have found a way out of the cave of this tedious preoccupation, however. It's worth a try. So:

  When I was sitting there on the porch last night more or

  less feigning sleep and your mother took my hand and held it

  in her hands, that was a great happiness to me. I see I did indicate this—"her two warm hands"—and I noted that at the

  same time she spoke of me much more kindly than I deserve. Only thinking back on it did I realize that she was speaking as

  if from that settled life she said she had always wanted and as

  if it could not be lost to her, though in every practical, material sense she knows it will be. That pleased me, too. Remembering when they said what they did about looking in windows and wondering about other people's lives made me feel companionable with them. I could have said that's three of us, because, as

  the Lord knows, for many years I did exactly the same thing. But in that moment, the way she spoke, it seemed that all the wondering about life had been answered for her, once and for all, and if that is true, it is wonderful. The notion is a source of peace for me.

  I had a dream once that Boughton and I were down at the river looking around in the shallows for something or other—when we were boys it would have been tadpoles-—and my grandfa202

  ther stalked out of the trees in that furious way he had,

  scooped his hat full of water, and threw it, so a sheet of water came sailing toward us, billowing in the air like a veil, and fell down over us. Then he put his hat back on his head and stalked off into the trees again and left us standing there in that glistening river, amazed at ourselves and shining like the apostles.