Jack had stood a long time with his arms full of groceries when she could finally leave the store. “So that worked out,” he said. “Good. Thank you.” He let her take a bottle of milk to make the bag less awkward, and they walked home.
Jack set the television on a lamp table in the parlor. He plugged it in, turned it on, and moved the antenna around one way and another until a passable image presented itself. Their father came in and sat down in an armchair Jack had turned and pushed into place in front of the set.
“So here it is,” the old man said. “We’re very modern now.” He watched without comment a woman in high heels running back and forth across a stage carrying eggs in a teaspoon while a gigantic clock ticked.
Glory said, “The news will be on soon, Papa.”
“Well, yes, I was about to say there isn’t much to this. But you can hear people laughing. I hope there’s money involved. To get a grown woman to act like that.”
The phone rang and Jack came into the kitchen while she answered it, but it was Luke, so he went back to watch the beginning of the news. He was standing in the middle of the room with his hands on his hips. On the screen white police with riot sticks were pushing and dragging black demonstrators. There were dogs.
His father said, “There’s no reason to let that sort of trouble upset you. In six months nobody will remember one thing about it.”
Jack said, “Some people will probably remember it.”
“No. It wasn’t so long ago that everybody was talking about Senator McCarthy. Watching those fellows argue. It’s television that makes things seem important, whether they are or not. Now you never hear a word about Senator McCarthy.”
Jack said, “Well, that’s important, isn’t it?”
“I can’t disagree. I don’t know. I never admired him.”
Police were pushing the black crowd back with dogs, turning fire hoses on them. Jack said, “Jesus Christ!”
His father shifted in his chair. “That kind of language has never been acceptable in this house.”
Jack said, “I—” as if he had been about to say more. But he stopped himself. “Sorry.”
On the screen an official was declaring his intention to enforce the letter of the law. Jack said something under his breath, then glanced at his father.
The old man said, “I do believe it is necessary to enforce the law. The Apostle Paul says we should do everything ‘decently and in order.’ You can’t have people running around the streets like that.”
Jack snapped off the TV. He said, “Sorry. I was just kind of—”
“No need to be sorry, Jack. Young people want the world to change and old people want it to stay the same. And who is to judge between thee and me? We just have to forgive each other.” After a moment he said, “But I hope we don’t have to argue. I don’t like the shouting and I don’t like the swearing. Especially the swearing.” He said, “I know those words don’t mean much to you. They do to me. You could respect that.”
“Yes, sir.” Jack stepped away and felt in his shirt pocket for his pack of cigarettes. His hand trembled. He stopped in the doorway and looked back at his father. The old man sat bowed in his chair, his head forward, the deeply cleft nape of his neck exposed under the thin tousle of hair. He might have been praying, but anyone who did not know him well could think he was simply sad and frail. Jack glanced at Glory. “Did I do that to him?” The scar under his eye was white.
“He’s tired.”
He said, “I shouldn’t have said what I did. But things keep getting worse—”
“He’ll be all right when he’s had some sleep.”
“No. No, I mean the dogs. The fire hoses. Fire hoses. There were kids—” He gave her that distant, appraising look, as if to see the effect of trusting her so far.
“Are you thinking of going back to St. Louis? None of that will be a problem for you if you stay here.”
He laughed. “Oh, Glory, it’s a problem. Believe me. It’s a problem.”
He went upstairs, came down again for a book, brought the book back down in half an hour and put it by the radio. He stood in the porch and smoked, and then he said, “Back in a while,” and left. She kept his supper warm. Her father could not be persuaded to take even a bite of his. “I have never heard him speak that way. No, he was always respectful, as far as that goes. Here in my house. I may have made too much of it. No, it’s something I don’t feel I should tolerate.”
When Jack came in, his father was still at the table, brooding over his cold soup. “Don’t bother,” he said, when Jack offered to help him with his chair. “Glory is here. She will look after me.”
When she came back into the kitchen, Jack was standing in the porch. He said, “It’s nice out here. Dark.”
She went out and stood beside him.
He cleared his throat. “Can I ask you something?”
“Probably.”
“It’s nothing personal.”
“All right.”
“Say you do something terrible. And it’s done. And you can’t change it. Then how do you live the rest of your life? What do you say about it?”
“Do I know what terrible thing we’re talking about?”
He nodded. “Yes. You do know. When I was out walking the other day I took a wrong turn and ended up at the cemetery.” He said, “I’d forgotten she was there.”
“She was part of the family.”
He nodded.
“All I can tell you is what Papa would say. He’d say repent, and then—you can put it aside, more or less, and go on. You’ve probably heard him say that as often as I have.”
“More often.” Then he said, “Regret doesn’t count, I suppose.”
“I don’t claim to know about these things. It seems to me that regret should count. Whatever that means.”
“But if you just found out about it, no matter whether I regretted or repented—what would you think of me?”
“What can I say? You’re my brother. If I were someone else, and I knew you and thought you were all right, then that would matter more to me than something that happened so many years ago.”
“Even though I had never told you about it. And I should have told you.”
“I think so.”
He nodded. “You’re not being kind.”
“I don’t really know.”
“Well, I might have a chance. Things could work out.” He said, “It will be bad at best. A miserable thing to have to hope for. Pain all around. Ah, little sister. It’s no wonder I can’t sleep.”
The television set stayed on the lamp table. Jack turned it on for the morning, noon, and evening news, and turned it off again if there was nothing about Montgomery. His father ignored it completely.
FOR YEARS, BEFORE GLORY CAME HOME AND WITHOUT regard to the occasional pious attentions of family returned for holidays, Lila had gone up to the cemetery to look after the Boughtons as well as the Ameses. Glory noticed a special tenderness toward the first Mrs. Ames and her child, who had passed from the world together so long ago, and toward the other little girl about whom, in that gentle, worldly way of hers, Lila seemed neither to know nor to wonder. Snowdrops, crocuses, jonquils. Jack might have seen late tulips or creeping phlox. That was probably good, Glory thought. She would tell him, if he asked, that the flowers were Lila’s, so he would not think they meant endless mourning so much as the wish to somehow compensate a child for missing seventy springs, or perhaps to offer delight to her perpetual childhood—she wondered if Lila would ever tell her what all the flowers meant, except kindness, and love of the lives, past and present, into which she had chosen to adopt herself, as if finally at home. She would probably smile and say, The soil is better there, or That spot gets more sun. But Glory was pleased that Jack must first have thought how pretty the place was, and then have looked to see who was cared for so lovingly. It must have been some comfort to him, though she knew no comfort was ever sufficient.
Maybe great sorrow or guilt is simply to be
accepted as absolute, like revelation. My iniquity/punishment is greater than I can bear. In the Hebrew, her father said, that one word had two meanings and we chose one of them, which may make it harder for us to understand why the Lord would have pardoned Cain and protected him, and let him go on with his life, marry, have a son, build a city. His crime was his punishment, which had to mean he wasn’t such a villain after all. She might mention this to Jack sometime, if it ever seemed to her a conversation had arrived at a point where she could dare, could summon delicacy enough, to compare him to Cain. She laughed at herself. What a thought.
GLORY HAD KEPT MOST OF THE HABITS OF HER PIOUS youth. Morning and evening she took her Bible out to the porch and read two or three chapters. When the others were at home for the holidays, they would sit around the table in the dining room and one of them would read aloud from the Psalms or the Gospels. Like most of their obligations and many of their pleasures, this was, whatever else, a performance meant to please their father, to assure him that they loved the old life, that they had received all the good he had intended for them. To please him was so potent a motive that it displaced motives of her own, which no doubt would have included piety. During the years she lived alone she had read the Bible morning and evening with the thought that her father would be pleased if he knew, and also to remember who she was, to remember the household she came from, to induce in herself the unspecific memory of a comfort she had not really been conscious of until she left it behind. Now, back in her father’s house, as she read she remembered that same comfort, and remembered as well the privilege of distance and solitude, the satisfactions of that other life.
What a strange old book it was. How oddly holiness situated itself among the things of the world, how endlessly creation wrenched and strained under the burden of its own significance. “I will open my mouth in a parable. I will utter dark sayings of old, which we have heard and known, and our fathers have told us.” Yes, there it was, the parable of manna. All bread is the bread of heaven, her father used to say. It expresses the will of God to sustain us in this flesh, in this life. Weary or bitter or bewildered as we may be, God is faithful. He lets us wander so we will know what it means to come home.
What does it mean to come home? Glory had always thought home would be a house less cluttered and ungainly than this one, in a town larger than Gilead, or a city, where someone would be her intimate friend and the father of her children, of whom she would have no more than three. Then she could learn what her own tastes were, within the limits of their means, of course. She would not take one stick of furniture from her father’s house, since none of it would be comprehensible in those spare, sunlit rooms. The walnut furbelows and carved draperies and pilasters, the inlaid urns and flowers. Who had thought of putting actual feet on chairs and sideboards, actual paws and talons?
She had dreamed of a real home for herself and the babies, and the fiancé, a home very different from this good and blessed and fustian and oppressive tabernacle of Boughton probity and kind intent. She knew, she had known for years, that she would never open a door on that home, never cross that threshold, never scoop up a pretty child and set it on her hip and feel it lean into her breast and eye the world from her arms with the complacency of utter trust. Ah well.
Once, Jack had come into the porch and found her sitting there reading the Bible. He seemed pleasantly embarrassed and asked pardon for interrupting, and she said he was more than welcome to stay if he liked, so he took the chair next to hers and opened the newspaper. But he leaned over to see where she was reading. “Psalms,” he said. “An excellent choice.”
“Yes,” she said.
“Sorry.”
“I’m almost finished.” She could feel that he was aware of her, restless enough to distract her, so she put the ribbon to mark her place and closed the book. He recrossed his ankles and rustled the paper. So she said, “What is it?”
“Oh. Sorry. Really just a sort of interest, I suppose. In the fact that you still do that sort of thing. That you always used to do. Not that I wouldn’t expect you to. I don’t mean that. In fact, I’m always a little surprised by things I would have expected. When they happen. If that makes sense.”
“I think it does.”
“Do you still, um, pray”—he gestured at the floor—“down on your knees?”
She laughed. “None of your business.”
“I remember when you were little, you’d kneel by your bed and close your eyes and whisper things into your hands. Secrets. Hope’s cat threw up on the rug. Johnny said a bad word. And we would sit there and listen to it all and try to be very serious about it.” He laughed.
“You listened to my prayers?”
“Hope did, and Dan. I heard them laughing about it. So I came in a few times.”
“I can only apologize.”
“No point in it. The damage is done. The Lord will use the information as he sees fit, come Judgment.”
She said, “I’m surprised you remember so much.”
He shrugged. “I lived here, too.”
“All I mean is that when everybody comes home for holidays we go over the old stories again. I doubt that we would remember half of them if we didn’t remind each other three or four times a year.”
“I’ve thought about this place. Sometimes I’ve even talked about it.”
There was a silence. Then he said, “So. Are you going to try to save my soul, little sister?”
“What? Save your soul? Why would I do that?”
“Why not? It seems like a genteel occupation for a pious lady. I thought you might want to do me that kindness. Since you have a little time on your hands.”
She looked at him. He was smiling. She knew him well enough to know that he smiled when he thought he might offend, whether intentionally or unintentionally. He could seem to be laughing at himself, or at her.
She said, “I’d be happy to oblige, but I have no idea how to go about it.”
“Well,” he said, “I’m willing to confess to a certain spiritual hunger. I think that’s usually the first step. So that’s out of the way.”
“And then?”
“Then I think it is usual to ponder great truths. That has been my experience.”
“Such as?”
“The fatherhood of God, for one. The idea being that the splendor of creation and of the human creature testify to a gracious intention lying behind it all, that they manifest divine mercy and love. Which sustains the world in general and is present in the experience of, you know, people whose souls are saved. Or will be.” After a moment he said, “It is possible to know the great truths without feeling the truth of them. That’s where the problem lies. In my case.” He looked at her.
She said, “I’m flummoxed. I’ll have to give this some thought.”
“Yes. Well, it is a lot to spring on you, I know. I always nourish the suspicion that pious folk are plotting my rescue. Now and then it has been true. Not so often, really. But you are my sister. So it seemed worthwhile to inquire. Just to save time.” He smiled.
She said, “I think I like your soul the way it is.”
He looked at her and laughed, and his color rose. “Thanks, Glory. That’s no help at all, but I do appreciate it. I really do.”
GLORY MADE UP A BATCH OF BREAD DOUGH. BROWN BREAD was her father’s preference. Something to lift the spirits of the household, she thought. The grocer brought her a roasting hen. She opened the windows to cool the kitchen and air out the dining room a little, and the breezes that came in were mild, earthy, grassy, with a feel of sunlight about them.
Jack came in from the barn, bringing with him a whiff of old straw and sweat and crankcase oil. He took a deep breath. “Ah! Bread!” She lifted the towel so he could see the speckled belly of the rising dough. Then he held up his hands to her, which were oily and grimy, and said, “Don’t touch those potatoes!” He went upstairs. There were sounds of haste and ablution, and then he came back down with his shirt half buttoned and hi
s hair wet. He found a knife. “Blunt as a poker,” he said, but he set to paring. “It is art that keeps the demons at bay!” This was to bring home to her the significance of a long spiral of peeling he had removed intact.
“Amazing,” she said.
He said, “Practice.”
“Were you quoting?”
He nodded. “La Sagesse de Jacques Bouton. Bouton de la Rose, that is. Poète maudit. Poète malgré lui. Roué and—kitchen help. For some reason they didn’t teach the French for that in college.” He held up another spiral of peel. “Pity,” he said. “Things sound so much better in French—pomme de terre, fait-néant, voleur—” He smiled. “My intellectual lady friend was set on keeping up her French. So I summoned what little I could of mine. We read L’Education sentimentale. My enthusiasm for the project was almost unfeigned.”
“Your friends are more interesting than mine.”
“You must know where to find your friends, ma petite.”
“And where is that?”
“If you are very, very good I might tell you. Someday. But you must be exceptionally good.”
She laughed. “God knows I try.”
He said, “That’s a beginning, I suppose. Though not in every case.”
She raised the tea towel and punched the dough, and a great sigh of yeasty air breathed out of it. After a minute he said, “I’ve been into the cash drawer again. I bought some spark plugs and a tire pump. The old one leaked so much it was almost useless. And a fan belt.”
“You don’t have to tell me about these things.”
“And a baseball glove.”
“That money isn’t mine, either, Jack. And Papa doesn’t care about it.”
He nodded, delicately gouging out a potato’s eye. He smiled at her. “A diligent and humiliating search for employment has persuaded me that I have to look beyond Gilead,” he said. “I’ll need a car. If I’m ever to become a respectable family man.”
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