She stayed with her father, who she thought had reacted to the news that Jack was at church with a brief and tentative cheerfulness. Jack came home as calm as he was when he left, to his father’s apparent relief, and when she asked him what the sermon was about, he laughed and said, “It wasn’t about me.” Then he said, “Well, it was about idolatry, about the worship of things, on one hand the material world, in the manner of scientific rationalism, and on the other hand—chairs and tables and old purple drapes, in the manner of Boughtons and totemists. It did cause me to reflect.”
“Don’t worry,” she said. “I won’t change a thing.”
“If you want to, feel free.”
“Of course.”
She made a beef roast and dinner rolls while Jack worked in the attic, clearing space for whatever in her hardness of heart she might decide to put out of sight. Again he was purposeful. The picture of the river was back in its old place, so she glanced through the open door of his room and saw the volumes of Kipling on his dresser between the Lincoln bookends. Nothing to be said, nothing to be done. Her father, who hardly spoke at all, watched their comings and goings with irritation and distrust. She served dinner in the kitchen, careful not to stir memories if she could avoid it. When they were seated and she had said the grace, her father sat impatiently with his hands folded in his lap until Jack offered to feed him his mashed potatoes and gravy. These last few days his gentleness had been especially striking to her, and why should it be? She had always known he could be gentle. She would tell the others in case they had forgotten, so that they would all hope someday to know him as well as she did. Then if he ever came to any of them he would be deeply and immediately welcome, however disreputable he might seem or be. Finally her father gestured at the meal she had made and said, “I guess this is goodbye.”
Jack said, “Not quite yet.”
The old man nodded. “Not yet,” he said bitterly. “Not yet.”
“Teddy will be here soon.”
“I’m sure of that.” His head fell. “With his stethoscope. As if that solved anything.”
Jack cleared his throat. “It’s been good to be home. It really has.”
The old man raised his eyes and studied his son’s face. “You’ve never had a name for me. Not one you’d call me to my face. Why is that?”
Jack shook his head. “I don’t know, myself. They all seemed wrong when I said them. I didn’t deserve to speak to you the way the others did.”
“Oh!” his father said, and he closed his eyes. “That was what I waited for. That was what I wanted.”
GLORY HAD DEVELOPED A NEW APPRECIATION FOR THE SABBATH because it was the day when no mail came. That Sunday had passed in sad tranquillity, her father a little stronger, she thought, and Jack full of solicitude for them both, regretful but not at all in doubt, embarrassed by his own undeviating will to be gone. Monday morning she heard him in his room, sorting through his dresser, putting aside, she was sure, everything of her father’s she had given him, to suit his strangely rigorous notions of what indeed belonged to him. She had never known another thief, so she could not generalize, but she thought thievishness might involve some subtle derangement of the sense of mine and thine. Some inability to find the bounds of scrupulousness. That would account for his refusal to leave the house with a pair or two of his father’s socks. The austerity of it all broke her heart. The handkerchiefs he had borrowed were washed and pressed and back in their father’s drawer. He was becoming once again the Jack who had turned up at the kitchen door claiming to have lost a suitcase.
No, there was that other thief, the one who had kept an account of the money she gave him, perhaps even believing he might pay her back. Time enough to think about children, he said, and she had nodded, knowing it wasn’t true. He needed a little money, a little more money, because he was going into business with an old army buddy of his. He couldn’t wait for the two of them to meet, she would love him—in a manner of speaking, ha ha. She gave him the money so he would stop talking, maybe even so he would go away. He might have known this. He would go away and leave her with her thoughts of him. Those few things it still moved her to remember, how he took her hand. Luke and Daniel and Faith had all been there in the parlor waiting, the day she brought him home. They were perfectly cordial, not visibly surprised. She was fairly sure nothing sardonic would have passed among them when she and the fiancé left the room. There was no hint that they had any particular doubts about his character or his intentions. Still, there was a flicker of nerves in the glance he gave her. Then he took her hand.
She was thinking about all this when the mail came. Letters to her from Luke and Hope and a letter to Jack from Della Miles. She went into the kitchen and sat down. She had become used to the idea that nothing more of consequence would happen after the last of the letters Jack had sent came back to him. But if the woman named Lorraine—Glory had addressed the envelope—telephoned Della and read Jack’s letter to her—no, this still would have arrived too quickly. It was sent from Memphis, not by air mail. She was light-headed. It is terrible that letters can matter so much. She thought of burning it. She even thought of opening it. Then she would burn it if need be. No, some things are sacred, even, especially, this wounding thing—wounding, how did she know that? She knew. She went to the stairs and called to Jack to come down, which he did very promptly. He would think she needed help with their father. When he saw her he said, “What’s the matter?”
“Nothing. This letter came for you.”
She had left it lying on the table. He picked it up and looked at it. “Jesus,” he said. “Sweet Jesus.”
“Would you like me to leave you alone?”
“Yes,” he said. “If you don’t mind. Thank you.”
So she went into the parlor and sat down next to the radio, and waited for any sign that she might be wanted or needed. There was only silence. Finally she went to the kitchen door. Jack looked up at her and smiled. He said, “It doesn’t really change anything.” He cleared his throat. “It isn’t unkind. I’m all right.” Then he said, “Cry if you want to, chum. Feel free.”
Glory sat there with him, ready to go away if he gave any sign that she should. From time to time he looked up at her, as if there were something he thought of saying and did not, or as if he knew she was of one mind with him though neither of them spoke. Finally he said, “I’m still planning to stay around until Teddy calls. I won’t be good for much.” And he said, “Anyone in the world would want a drink right now.” When they heard their father stir he went with her to tend to him. The old man blinked at Jack and said, “Now she’s crying. I don’t know what to do about it. Jesus never had to be old.” But he let them bathe him and dress him and shave him, and he let Glory brush his hair. Jack brought the Old Spice and touched it to his cheeks. They helped him to the parlor, to his Morris chair. Glory poached an egg, and Jack leaned in the door and watched while she fed him.
Then there was a knock at the kitchen door, and Ames came in, carrying the little case he brought with him when he visited the sick. Their father’s eyes found it and remained on it while Ames said his hellos and remarked on the weather. Glory knew they were conspicuously miserable, the three of them, and that Ames would acknowledge this only by the gentleness of his voice. Her father tapped his fingers on the arm of his chair, as he did when he was impatient. Ames said to him, “Robert, I was hoping I might share communion with you,” and the old man nodded. So he put the little case on the mantel and opened it and took out a silver cup. He filled the cup from a flask, and then he asked Glory for a bit of bread. She brought him a roll from their Sunday dinner on a linen napkin. He set the elements on the broad arm of Boughton’s chair. He was silent for a while, and then he said, “‘The Lord Jesus in the night in which he was betrayed, took bread and when he had given thanks, he brake it, and said, This is my body, which is for you, this do in remembrance of me.’” Boughton said, “Yes. ‘In like manner the cup.’ Yes. ‘You proclaim the Lord??
?s death until he come.’” And the two old men fell silent. They had said those words so many times. Ames broke the bread and gave a piece of it to Boughton, and to Glory, and offered it to Jack, who smiled and stepped away. Then he held the cup to Boughton’s lips, gave it to Glory, drank from it himself. The two old men were silent together for some time.
When Boughton nodded off, Ames came into the kitchen. There seemed to be nothing he wanted to say to them, but he took a chair at the table when it was offered to him and he accepted a cup of coffee. His care of their father, bringing the Sacrament, would have been an enhancement of the sad quiet of the day. But he stayed, and he attempted conversation. Jack leaned back in his chair with his arms folded and watched him, too weary to help sustain it. Glory went to see that her father was comfortable, and brought his quilt, and when she came back, Ames was letting himself out the door, looking a little embarrassed and dejected.
She said, “What happened?”
“Well, he tried to give me money. To leave. I told him I was leaving anyway, he needn’t bother.”
“Ah, Jack.”
“You know he wants me out of here. He can see what I’ve done. To my father.”
“Did he say that?”
“Good Reverend Ames? Of course not. He said he thought I might want to go to Memphis.”
“Well, why wouldn’t he think that? You and I have talked about going to Memphis.”
He reflected a moment, and then he laughed. “We did, didn’t we. That seems like a million years ago. Another life.” He said, “You’re right. Poor old blighter. Trying to give away money he doesn’t have. What a fool I am.” He rubbed his eyes. “That was friendliness, wasn’t it. I should have thought of that. He was starting to like me, I suppose.”
The day passed. Glory wanted to value it, though of course she could not enjoy it. She would probably never see her brother again—in this life, as Teddy had said. Sweet Jesus, she thought, love this thief, too. After a while Jack roused himself and went about the work he had set for himself, putting things in order. He nailed a loose plank in the shed wall, and he cut some dead canes out of the lilac hedge. He split a pile of kindling. Then he came in and asked her for the car keys. He said, “I think I’ve got it back together well enough. I’ll try to start it.” She went to the porch and heard the engine start and idle. Jack opened the barn doors, and then he backed the DeSoto into afternoon light. He pushed the door on the passenger side open. “I was thinking we might go for a spin, take the old gent along.” So they went into the house and Jack took their father up in his arms and carried him out to the car. And then he drove them past the church, which was, to their father’s mind, the place where the old church had stood. And he drove them past the house where Mrs. Sweet had lived, and past the Trotskys’ old house, and past the high school and the baseball field, and then out to the peripheries, where town gave way to countryside and the shadows of late day were blue between the rows of corn and on the evening side of trees and the swells of pasture and in the clefts of creek. The smell of ripe fields and water and cattle and evening came in on the wind. “Yes,” their father said. “It was wonderful. I remember now.”
When they came back to the house again, Jack smiled and handed her the keys. They settled their father for the night, sat together in the kitchen trying to read, then trying to play Scrabble. It was a habit of hers to stay up as long as Jack did, thinking he would be more reluctant to leave the house if he knew she was aware of his leaving. Finally he went upstairs, and in half an hour she did, too. She spent the night listening and worrying, dreading his absence, because the thought of it made her life seem intolerably long. She thought, If I or my father or any Boughton has ever stirred the Lord’s compassion, then Jack will be all right. Because perdition for him would be perdition for every one of us.
She came downstairs at dawn and Jack was in the kitchen already, in his suit and tie, with his suitcase by the door. He said, “I hope I haven’t been too much trouble. There’s a lot I regret.” He said it the minute she came into the room, as if it were the one thing he was determined to have said, the one thing he wanted her to know.
She said, “Ah, Jack,” and he laughed.
“Well, I haven’t been the perfect houseguest. You have to grant me that.”
“All I regret is that you’re leaving.”
He nodded. “Thank God,” he said. “I could have given you a lot more to regret. And myself. You’ve really helped me.”
“Now you know where to come when you need help.”
“Yes. Ye who are weary, come home.”
“Very sound advice.”
He said, “I’m not sure you should stay here, Glory. Promise me you won’t let anyone talk you into it. Don’t do it for my sake. I shouldn’t have talked to you about it the way I did.”
“Don’t worry. If you ever need to come home, I’ll be here. Call first, just to be sure. No, you won’t have to do that. I’ll be here.”
He nodded. “Thank you,” he said.
He helped her bathe their father and dress him and feed him, and then it was eight o’clock and the phone rang. Teddy had driven the whole night to make up for an emergency call and a late start. He was in Fremont, where he had stopped for coffee. Jack said, “I’m going to have to ask you for some traveling money. Not enough to get me in trouble. Just enough to get me out of town.” She had set aside Teddy’s envelope and put into it the ten-dollar bill Jack gave her when he had just arrived, and the money hidden in the Edinburgh books.
Jack hefted the envelope and handed it back to her. “Too much. You know how much liquor this would buy me? Perdition for sure. Unless I got lucky and somebody rolled me for it.”
“Oh dear God in heaven, Jack. How much can I give you, then? Sixty? It’s all your money. You won’t owe me a dime.”
“Forty will do. No need to worry. There are always more dishes to be washed, more potatoes to be peeled. Except in Gilead.”
“I’ll keep the rest for you. Call me. Or write to me.”
“Will do.” He picked up his suitcase, and then he set it down again and went into the parlor, where his father was sitting in the Morris chair. He stood there, hat in hand. The old man looked at him, stern with the effort of attention, or with wordless anger.
Jack shrugged. “I have to go now. I wanted to say goodbye.” He went to his father and held out his hand.
The old man drew his own hand into his lap and turned away. “Tired of it!” he said.
Jack nodded. “Me, too. Bone tired.” He looked at his father a minute longer, then bent and kissed his brow. He came back into the kitchen and picked up his suitcase. “So long, kiddo.” He wiped a tear from her cheek with the ball of his thumb.
“You have to take care of yourself,” she said. “You have to.”
He tipped his hat and smiled. “Will do.”
She went to the porch to watch him walk away down the road. He was too thin and his clothes were weary, weary. There was nothing of youth about him, only the transient vigor of a man acting on a decision he refused to reconsider or regret. No, there might have been some remnant of the old aplomb. Who would bother to be kind to him? A man of sorrows and acquainted with grief, and as one from whom men hide their face. Ah, Jack.
SO TEDDY ARRIVED AND SETTLED IN AND BECAME THE ONE to read in the porch, to bathe his father and feed him and turn him, and to help prepare for the others, going off to buy groceries. He didn’t ask much about their brother and she didn’t offer much about him, except to say that he had been helpful and kind. Jack was Jack. There was little enough to say that would not seem like betrayal, even though Teddy knew him well enough to have a fairly good idea of the terms he had made with the world. In time she would say more, when the sense of his presence had dimmed a little.
Once, Teddy knelt by his father’s chair to help him with his supper, and the old man reached out his hand to stroke his hair, his face. He said, “You told me goodbye, but I knew you couldn’t leave,” and there w
as a glint of vindication in his eyes.
THE SECOND DAY AFTER JACK HAD LEFT, GLORY WAS OUT IN THE garden clearing away the cucumber vines and gathering green tomatoes. There had been a sudden change of weather, a light frost. She noticed a car passing slowly on the farther side of the street. She watched it, thinking it must be someone from the church, some friend or acquaintance wondering if the rumors were true, that her father was indeed failing and the family were coming home. But the driver of the car was a black woman, and that was a curious thing. There were no colored people in Gilead. Glory bent to her work again, and the car came back on the near side of the street and stopped. She could see two colored women in the front seat and a child in the back. They looked at the house from the car for a few minutes, as if deciding what to do next, and then a woman stepped out of the passenger side and came up the walk. She was a dark, angular woman in a gray suit. Her hair was pulled back under a gray cloche. She looked very urban here in Gilead, and conscious of it, as if she felt the best impression she could make was one that would set her sharply apart. She turned and spoke to the child, “Robert, you stay in that car.” So the boy stood on the edge of the grass with one foot inside the car door. He was wearing church clothes, a blue suit and a red tie.
Glory came down out of the garden to meet the woman on the sidewalk. She said, “Hello. Can I help you?”
The woman said, “I’m looking for the home of Reverend Robert Boughton.” Her voice was soft and grave.
“This is his house,” Glory said, “but he’s very ill. I’m his daughter Glory. Is there something I can do for you?”
“I’m sorry to hear your father is ill. Very sorry to hear it.” She paused. “It’s his son I was hoping to talk to, Mr. Jack Boughton.”
Glory said, “Jack isn’t here now. He’s been gone since Tuesday morning.”