The Eighth Day

by Thornton Wilder

  Throughout the seventies and eighties the members of the community were much derided as “screechers,” “jumpers,” and “holy rollers,” but gradually their honesty and the austerity of their lives began to command a puzzled respect. For years the young men had married girls from their own congregation and everyone on Herkomer’s Knob was soon many times his own cousin. The dangers resulting from this practice were brought to their attention in the middle sixties. Dr. Gillies’s predecessor—elected, as Dr. Gillies was later, to be the community’s physician—explained to them the deleterious consequences of consanguineous marriage. The Elders listened to him, impassive but astonished. Fortunately, Dr. Winsted was an admirable lecturer. Thereafter it became the custom for certain elders to journey eastward visiting churches allied to their own. From these trips they brought back brides and grooms for their young people, without relinquishing any of their own. Dr. Gillies presumed, without knowing, that some money was exchanged during these negotiations.

  Rumors persisted, however, that the sobriety of the congregation on Herkomer’s Knob was not all that it appeared to be. It was said that their Sunday-evening services culminated in leaping and shouting and “speaking in tongues”—“downright orggies,” as the eminent moral philosophers in the Illinois Tavern saloon called them. As no outsider had been within fifty yards of the tabernacle for longer than three minutes this description could not be confirmed.

  Porky left Roger before his grandfather’s house, leading away the horses.

  The Deacon was sitting in a rocking chair on his narrow front porch. A blanket was spread across his knees. His skin was very brown, his eyes were like his grandson’s of a black without luster. The faces of Indians show little change between thirty and seventy.

  “Forgive me for not getting up, Mr. Ashley,” he said, indicating by a gesture that Roger was to sit in the straight chair beside him.

  He turned and looked long at his guest. Roger felt a prompting of awe, then of affection. He had never known a grandfather. At last the Deacon spoke:

  “Did you know that your father came to the help of our Covenant Church when it needed help?”

  “No, Deacon,” said Roger with surprise.

  There fell one of the long Indian pauses to which Roger was accustomed. They were like wholesome breathing.

  “You must have been about eleven years old at the time. Our church then stood over yonder on that steep slope. Come spring there was a week of solid rain. There were mud slides all over the mountain. One night, in the middle of the night, the church rolled down into the valley. It turned over many times and broke up like kindling.” Another long pause. “The next week, soon as the roads were fit to travel, your father drove up here. He gave the elders one hundred and fifty dollars.” Pause. “It was a shake more than he could afford. You know that your father was not a rich man?”

  “I’ve only come to realize that these last years, Deacon. At home Father never talked about money.”

  “We paid him back slowly, now a little, then a little; but every cent of the money we gave him he used in ways to help our children. Your father had eyes wide open, Mr. Ashley. Did you know it was your father who sent Aristides to Springfield to learn the shoemaking trade?”

  “No, Deacon.”

  “Your father’s mouth wasn’t wide open, like his eyes were.”

  Long pause.

  “To the day he brought us that money not one of us older ones had exchanged a word with him. But he knew all our young ones. Your father had a feeling for young ones. Young ones appreciate it when it’s someone not in their own family. We had been watching him and when he brought us that money we knew that he had been watching us.” Pause. “Can you tell me what your father’s religious views were?”

  Roger hesitated. “He took us to the Methodist Church every Sunday. He didn’t talk about things like that at home. He took turns reading aloud to us in the evening and there were some parts of the Bible he liked, but he didn’t add any words of his own to them. I don’t know how he felt inside. When he was in jail he asked Dr. Benson not to visit him again. I guess you heard that. I wish I could answer you, Deacon. I wish I knew.”

  The Deacon leaned forward, grasping his cane. “We felt that his wanting to give us money for our church had a special meaning. We felt that he wasn’t only a kind man, but that he was meeting us as a religious man. . . . ? And we were right.”

  This was said with such solemnity that Roger asked in a low voice, “How did you know that, Deacon?”

  The Deacon began, slowly and painfully, to rise from his chair. “In a few minutes I will tell you that. First, I want to show you the church your father helped us to build.”

  Leaning on his cane, the Deacon slowly led Roger along a level lane that followed the contour of the hilltop. It was bordered on either side by identical houses. There were no marks of wheels on the path. The stables could be seen below them. Some men, women, and children passed. They bowed their heads slightly in greeting, but no word was spoken and no one glanced at Roger. The church had once been painted brown. Over the front door was a bell tower such as is customary in country schools. It stood on level ground, but before it, beside it, and above it on the clayey slope was a field enclosed by a white picket fence. The Deacon paused with his hand on the gatepost and looked at the field.

  “This is our graveyard.”

  There were no tombstones or markers of any kind. Roger did not voice his question.

  “The dead are given new names in Heaven, Mr. Ashley. Here our names and bodies soon decay and are forgotten. My name is Samuel O’Hara; there are at least ten Samuel O’Haras in this field.” His voice took on a dryness of tone. “Why should I wish an advertisement of myself here when I stand before God’s face?”

  Silence.

  “How many billions of billions have died? No man can count them. Only one name in a vast number is remembered a hundred years. All are the humus from which the cedars of Lebanon shall lift themselves.”

  They went into the church. There were no Christmas decorations. There was a table and many benches. It resembled a school-room. The floor was streaked and scuffed as though boisterous games had been played on it. It was very cold. Roger trembled with cold and a vague apprehension. The Deacon raised one hand and pointed to a board on the wall beside the entrance. It read: “This building is the gift of John Barrington Ashley, April 12, 1896.” Roger was aware of a stab of longing: to look at his father, as one would look at a stranger whom one had heard highly commended.

  “Was my father ever here, Deacon?”

  “No . . . ? You are the first person not belonging to our community who has entered this church.”

  A door at the end of the hall opened and three men entered carrying kerosene lamps. Seeing the Deacon, they turned and started to go out. The Deacon raised his voice and said, “You may go on with your work.”

  The men began attaching the lamps to hooks that hung from the ceiling. The lamps had been polished; their chimneys shone like crystal.

  The Deacon and Roger returned to the house and entered the front room. A fire was burning in the small fireplace. There was a strong smell of lye soap.

  “I will show you my reason for believing that your father dealt with us as a religious man. He drew a worn envelope from his pocket. “We received this letter from him four days before he started on that trip which he thought was carrying him to his death. Did your mother know anything about this?”

  “I think not, Deacon. I think I can say for certain she didn’t.”

  “You may want to read this by yourself. I think you will want to go out on the porch and read the letter. Then bring it back to me.”

  Roger had not felt so light-headed since the days he had made his way to Chicago, hungry. A feeling of something portentous and strange in human experience had been gathering within him. He felt as though he had walked all his life in ignorance of abysses and wonders, of ambushes, of eyes watching him, of writing on clouds. It came to him
that surely life is vaster, deeper, and more perilous than we think it is. He dropped the envelope and bent over to pick it up. He was suddenly filled with fear that he would go through life ignorant—stump ignorant—of the powers of light and the powers of darkness that were engaged in some mighty conflict behind the screen of appearances—fear, fear that he would live like a slave, or like a four-footed thing with lowered head.

  He went out on the porch. He put his fingers in the envelope. Stinging tears came into his eyes. He filled his lungs as though he were about to run a race and read:

  “To the Elders of the Covenant Church,

  “Respected friends:

  “Apart from the members of my family you are the only persons to whom I wish to say a word at this time.

  “On the afternoon of May fourth I fired a rifle at a target. A man several yards to the left of my aim fell dead. I can find no explanation for this. I am innocent of murder in deed and intention.

  “You remember that I have felt a deep interest in the church and community on Herkomer’s Knob. As a boy I attended with my grandmother a church which I believe resembled yours. Those hours of silence, self-effacement, and trust have become a part of my life. Those characteristics I have found reflected in the members of your community. Every Sunday morning in Coaltown, while attending a very different service, my thoughts have ascended the hill to Herkomer’s Knob.

  “I leave a son behind me. I know no older men who could counsel, encourage, or rebuke him. At twenty-one no man wishes guidance. If prior to that age my son Roger appears to you to have fallen into discouragement, thoughtlessness, or dishonorable ways, I wish you would show him this letter.

  “I go to Joliet with my grandmother’s prayer in my mind. She asked that our lives be used in the unfoldment of God’s plan for the world. I must trust that I have not totally failed.

  “With deep regard,

  John Ashley.”

  Roger let the letter fall to his lap. He gazed at the frozen hillside before him. The Deacon wanted him to know that it was the men from the Covenant Church who had rescued his father. They worked in the jail and on the railroad. They understood locks and handcuffs and the schedules of trains. They went unarmed; they were silent, agile, and very strong. In breaking the law they had risked their lives and—what was probably more important to them—the honor and dignity of their church. They were obedient to older laws. He had been entrusted with a grave secret. The debt was too solemn for gratitude.

  He returned into the house and placed the letter on the table beside the Deacon and sat down. The Deacon was gazing intently at the home-made rug at his feet and Roger’s eyes followed his. It had been woven long ago, but a complex mazelike design in brown and black could still be distinguished.

  “Mr. Ashley, kindly lift the rug and turn it over.”

  Roger did so. No figure could be traced on the reverse. It presented a mass of knots and of frayed and dangling threads. With a gesture of the hand the Deacon directed Roger to replace it.

  “You are a newspaperman in Chicago. Your sister is a singer there. Your mother conducts a boardinghouse in Coaltown. Your father is in some distant country. Those are the threads and knots of human life. You cannot see the design.”

  Silence.

  “Have you heard of the House of Jesse, Mr. Ashley?”

  “I . . . ? I think that Jesse was the father of King David.”

  The Deacon opened an enormous Bible on the table before him. The page presented a woodcut of a tall narrow tree from whose boughs, like apples, hung disks with names printed in them.

  “That is the tree of the House of Jesse. There are the descendants of Jesse through David to Christ. It is good that a man think of the house to which he belongs. Did Aristides tell you that we are descended from the house to which Abraham Lincoln belonged?”

  “No, Deacon.”

  “We are. Our forefathers came from his county in Kentucky.”

  Silence.

  “You come from such a house. You are marked. The mark is on your forehead. There are billions of births. At one birth out of a vast number a Messiah is born. It has been a mistake of the Jews and Christians to believe that there is only one Messiah. Every man and woman is Messiah-bearing, but some are closer on the tree to a Messiah than others. Have you ever seen an ocean?”

  “No, Deacon.”

  “It is said that on the ocean every ninth wave is larger than the others. I do not know if that is true. So on the sea of human lives one wave in many hundreds of thousands rises, gathers together the strength—the power—of many souls to bear a Messiah. At such times the earth groans; its hour approaches. For centuries a house prepares the birth. Look at this picture. Christ descended by more than thirty generations from King David. Think of them—the men and women, the grandfathers and grandmothers of Christ. I have heard a learned preacher say that it is probable that the mother of Christ could not read or write, nor her mother before her. But to them it had been said: ‘Make straight in the desert a highway for our God.’”

  He put his finger on the page and lowered his voice. “There are some names here of whom the Bible tells us discreditable things. Is that not strange? You and I would say in our ignorance that the men and women who were so near to bearing a Messiah would be pure and without fault, but no! God builds in His own way. He can use the stone that the builders rejected. There is an old saying, ‘God moves in a mysterious way His wonders to perform.’ Have you heard it?”

  “Yes, Deacon.”

  “The sign of God’s way is that it is strange. God is strange. There is nothing more childish than to think of God as a man.” He waved his hand toward Coaltown—“As they do. His ways to our eyes are often cruel and laughable.” He turned back a page of the Bible. “Here is the tree of Christ’s descent from Adam to Jesse. When Sarah—here!—was told that she would bear a son she laughed. She was an old woman. She bore Isaac—which means ‘Laughter.’ The Bible is the story of a Messiah-bearing family, but it is only one Bible. There are many such families whose Bibles have not been written.”

  Silence. He lowered his eyes. With his cane he slowly turned up for a moment a corner of the rug at his feet—to the tangle of knots and loose threads.

  “Can it be that your family has been marked? Can it be that your descendants may bring forth a Messiah, tomorrow or in a hundred years? That something is preparing? Your father fired a rifle; a man near him fell dead, but your father did not kill the man. That is strange. Your father did not lift a finger to save himself, but he was saved. That is strange. Your father had no friends, he says; but friends saved him. Your mother never left her house; she had no money; she was dazed. But a child who had never held a dollar in her hand sustained a house. Is that not strange? A great grandmother has reached out of her grave and spoken to you. Your father is right in this letter: there is no happiness equal to that of being aware that one has a part in a design.” Again he pointed to Coaltown: “They walk in despair. If we were to describe what is Hell it would be the place in which there is no hope or possibility of change: birth, feeding, excreting, propagation, and death—all on some mighty wheel of repetition. There is a fly that lives and lays its eggs and dies—all in one day—and is gone forever.”

  He raised his eyes and gazed weightily into Roger’s.

  “Can it be that this country is singled out for so high a destiny—this country which so greatly wronged my ancestors? God’s ways are mysterious. I cannot answer these questions.”

  He took back John Ashley’s letter and placed it between the leaves of the Bible.

  “It may be that I am deceived in these matters. It may be that I am guilty of the sin of impatience. I have read that men, dying of hunger and thirst in the desert, have visions of fountains and fruit trees. Have you read of them?”

  “Yes, Deacon.”

  “Do you know the name of these false hopes?”

  “Mirages, Deacon.”

  “It may be that this family and this America are mira
ges of my old eyes. Of my impatience. There are other lands and other ‘trees’ that I know nothing of. Four or five in five thousand years are sufficient to nourish hope. . . . ? I did not show you your father’s letter, Mr. Ashley, to counsel, encourage, or rebuke you. But to share with you at this solemn season a reverent joy. I thank you for your visit.”

  Darkness had fallen. After Roger had passed the last house he started running down the hill. He stumbled many times; he fell; he sang. At the supper table he scanned the faces of his family and their guests. He had been reading Lucretius recently; who else here was aware of the “flaming walls of the world”? Miss Doubkov, he thought. Sophia had seen them and lost them—perhaps, Dr. Gillies, too.

  Supper ended, he reminded his mother that he was to go for a walk with Constance and that he had promised to call at “St. Kitts.”

  “Wait,” said his mother. She returned from the kitchen with a parcel of her famous ginger cookies and marzipan.

  “Where do you want to walk, Connie?”

  “Oh, I like Main Street best.”

  They walked the length of it four times. She told him that she was allowed to go berry picking, but had given her promise not to appear on the Main Street. She told him about all the people she had come to know on the farms and in the little shacks up the hill. “I don’t tell Mama I know them. Lots of them are old and sick. Lots of them aren’t very happy. They aren’t very nice to their children.”

  “The Bells are happy.”

  “I don’t go there. There are no berries there. And I guess I’m most interested in the ones that aren’t so happy—and nice.” Her eyes slid toward his face; there was something guilty, yet amused, in her smile.