Jack

by Marilynne Robinson

  “Yes, I did. Mention that. I do have that problem.”

  “But that isn’t why you came here this evening.”

  “No. In fact, sir, there’s a woman.” He had actually said it.

  “I see.”

  “I hardly know her. We spent one night wandering around Bellefontaine. The cemetery. Just talking together. That was months ago. I have seen her a few times since then. It’s very difficult.”

  Did the minister know that the lenses of his glasses were as opaque as two moons? A little backward tilt of his head and his eyes vanished. It was an odd thing to say, that they had passed a night in the cemetery. He almost said, “She’s all right, she’s fine,” since the mention of the cemetery sounded sinister. That thing was happening again, when the cherished thought withers in the light of the slightest attention. “I should go,” he said, and stood up. Then he said, “No matter what you might think of me, Reverend, you must understand that my relationship—friendship—with this woman was entirely honorable. Her family despise me, so I couldn’t persuade them if I tried, but I worry that they might think less of her because of me. I’ll never see her again. For her sake. But her family won’t know how to interpret that. They’ll think I didn’t really care about her, when she may be the only thing I’ve ever cared about. So I was very careful, how I acted toward her. When I met her, I was just out of prison, which is, you know, a very emotional time, but it was much more— I’ve never told her I’ve been in prison. There are some other things she doesn’t know—why frighten her?” Jack thought, Sweet Jesus, listen to me. I am crazy.

  The minister nodded. “The way things stand, there wouldn’t be much point. You said you’re not planning to speak with her again, anyway.”

  Embarrassing. He never did quite remember that intention, that vow. It’s true, the Old Gent was right, it helps to talk to someone sometimes, to keep your thinking straight. The minister leaned toward him, and his eyes appeared again, still tactfully appraising. He said, “It’s an excellent thing to be able to say you have been honorable. If you leave things as they are, stop trying to see her, you will always be able to say that, for the rest of your life. You will know it, she will know it, the Lord will know it. So you can feel good about that. Her family—that’s a problem that might get worse if you try to solve it.”

  Jack sat down again, assuming Hutchins had forgotten to ask him to. He said, “I’ve never said a word to anyone about this. Her name is Della.” He laughed. “I’ve probably said it two or three times, to her, no one else. Della. She’s been to college. She teaches high school. We like to talk.” He shrugged. “It’s amazing to me that any of it could have happened.” He said, “That punishing grace we talked about. She’s gone back to Memphis to try to put things right with her family. Her father’s a minister there. A.M.E.”

  “Oh.” The minister picked up his pencil again. “So we’re talking about a colored lady here.”

  “Yes. That’s part of the problem. I mean, part of what makes it so hard just to sit down with her and talk about something for a few minutes.”

  “Well, that might be for the best, don’t you think? It might be best for her. She’ll be wanting to make a life for herself.”

  “I know. It would have been kind of me to stay away from her completely. I tried a few times.”

  The minister said, “It would have been kind of her to encourage that. For your sake.”

  “She tried, a few times.”

  Hutchins seemed less cordial, now that he knew Della was black. He said, “A woman with her opportunities also has important obligations.”

  “She is aware of that. So am I.”

  “Well, then,” he said, as if the conclusion to be drawn were too obvious to be put into words. As in fact it was.

  “I really have no intention of trying to see her again. Her father is pastor of a big church. He’ll be easy to find. I’ll go there on a Sunday, tell him that, and leave. Because it does seem to me it might be a good thing for Della if he had a better opinion of me.”

  That appraising look again. “Possible,” he said, in a tone that meant, Not possible. He said, “You should be prepared for the fact that he won’t want a better opinion of you. I mean that, at best, he has no use for it. If you were the most impeccable white gentleman on earth, to him you would most likely just be trouble.”

  It surprised Jack to realize that, in some part of his mind, he aspired to being an impeccable white gentleman. On the one hand, there was jail time and destitution and a slightly battered face, and on the other, there were neckties and polished shoes and a number of lines of Milton. This might be a wholly groundless pretense, but he couldn’t stop pretending. It was this or dissolution. He had abruptly confronted the fact that there was nothing to recommend him to anyone, which was a more profound concession than the situation actually asked of him. The minister sat quietly, fiddling with his pencil, seeing, apparently, that Jack needed a minute to recover himself.

  Della’s letter was in his pocket! “Look at this. She sent me this letter.” Jack took it out and started to remove it from its envelope, then put it back in, so that Hutchins would see it really was addressed to him. Then he remembered he hadn’t introduced himself by his actual name. But the minister didn’t seem to notice. He took the letter from him, removed the slip of paper with pleasing care, and read it over.

  He raised his eyebrows. “That’s quite a letter!” he said, and handed it back to him. “‘Dear friend, gracious companion.’ She thinks a lot of you. I see that.”

  “Good behavior,” Jack said. A little cynicism could damp down earnest conversation as needed. And why should he have let this stranger see her precious words? He had to try to get some distance. What might he do next?

  “No, no,” Hutchins said. “To be gracious is a gift. Lots of people can’t manage it. You can be very proud of that. What she says there.”

  “Really? That sounds like a problem, theologically speaking.”

  “Well, then, let’s just say I’d be proud that someone said those things to me.”

  Jack said, “It’s gracious of you to sit here while I talk. A stranger. A bum, actually. Though at the moment I’m employed.” Did Baptists approve of dancing? No point getting into that.

  “It’s been interesting. I’m not sure I’ve been entirely gracious in what I’ve been saying to you. I just wanted you to know that going to Memphis might be a disappointment for you. You could get hurt. Your feelings, I mean.”

  Jack laughed. “I’m really not fragile.”

  Hutchins shook his head. “Trust me, son. If I’m any judge of these things, you’d better take care. You’d better not be looking for ways to test yourself. Maybe you don’t quite realize what you’re living through already.”

  This summary of his situation struck Jack like a bolt of frozen grief. Those days to get through, those months, those years. Hutchins opened a desk drawer and handed him a handkerchief. Jack thought, I guess I’m crying. Nothing to be done about it.

  After a few minutes, Hutchins said, “One last thing. Would this lady we’re speaking about be a Miss Miles?”

  “How did you know?”

  “Well, her father is Bishop James Miles. He’s much admired in certain circles. A very imposing man. I heard she was in town, at Sumner. I know her pastor.”

  Jack said, “Sweet Jesus! A bishop! She never told me that.” And he laughed. “Sorry.”

  “So you’d be dealing with a very prominent family, very devoted to the betterment of the race—”

  “—and in wanders Jack Boughton, a textbook case of human degeneracy!” He was laughing, painfully, and the minister was laughing a little, too.

  “Jack Boughton?”

  “Yes. My actual name. Who I really am.”

  Hutchins said, “As it happens, you have wandered in on the most respectable family on this round earth. Everybody is a little scared of them.” He said, “I shouldn’t be laughing. They’re fine folks, all of them, their great-aun
ts and their third cousins, so I’m told. They’d make you quite a set of in-laws. They’d put you on the narrow path, for sure.”

  “If the police did not intervene in my choice of in-laws. And, theoretically, their choice of me.”

  “Well, yes, of course.”

  They were silent. Then Jack said, “I was just out of prison, still a little light-headed from the change. I was carrying an umbrella I stole from an old man dozing on a park bench, and I was wearing a black suit I bought with money my father sent me for my mother’s funeral, which, as it happened, I did not attend.” He looked at the minister for the expression of regret and disapproval, and there it was. He said, “It began to rain, to storm, really. I saw a young woman with an armful of books and papers, trying to pull a scarf up over her head. Some of the papers were slipping out of her arms and falling on the sidewalk, blowing down the street. So I crossed the street and gave her the umbrella and gathered up the papers for her. She said, ‘Thank you, Reverend,’ and invited me in for tea. We talked about poetry.” He laughed. “It was very nice. I let her know I wasn’t a minister, after a while. I mean, she found out. It didn’t seem to matter too much.”

  Hutchins had been looking to the side, this tale of small gallantry unfolding before his mind’s eye. “That’s a nice story,” he said. “All in all. I’m telling people all the time, take any chance you get to do a kindness. There’s no telling what might come of it.”

  Jack was folding the handkerchief on his knee, fully intending to give it back. “There’s a world of truth in that. In my case, I guess I know what came of it.” He laughed, and the minister just shook his head. When he was almost out the door, he said, “So you’re not going to try to save me.”

  “If you ever want me to, I might give it a try. Meantime, the ladies are putting together a dessert this Sunday. Somebody’s birthday.” He came to the door. He said, “You take care. That’s the first thing.”

  * * *

  He thought sometimes that he might tell Della just enough to let himself feel he had not been entirely dishonest with her. Two years—if that had been his sentence, and he would let her think it was, two years were almost nothing, at least in terms of the degree of criminality that would rouse society to such measured retaliation. It was almost an endorsement of his character. The terrible part was that, on the day of his arrest, he just happened to have been indulging that old thievish impulse, in imagination only, not to the point of acting on it. Palming some trifle, feeling thine dissolving into mine in the damp of his hand, was a familiar pleasure, one he could almost summon at will.

  And there was the problem. It was as if his habit of guilt and guile, in the light of official suspicion, had conjured the small storm of larceny that had overwhelmed him, making nonsense of his protestations. To be fair, he was not entirely persuaded by them himself. Then prison, a simpler mystery than the outside world, clearer in its expectations, which were shouted and sometimes underscored with nightsticks. It was frightening that he took a very small comfort from the relative predictability of it all. What was the phrase? A sense of belonging.

  What could this mean for the future? What hope of reform? If he was a thief to the marrow of his bones, essentially and, perhaps, everlastingly, what would keep further punishment, random yet condign, from embarrassing him every now and then for as long as he lived? He could never say, I used to be a thief, when any cop on a corner seemed to know otherwise. The plain truth, two years for crimes he did not commit, would be deception. Better to leave things as they were.

  If he could get past the word “prison.” “Penitentiary” was worse. He had not been guilty of theft that day, strictly speaking, though another day he might have been. One man’s disorder was the next man’s opportunity, and pawnshops were random assortments of things that might be there one day and gone the next, in any case. Would anyone even bother keeping track of the trifles he considered stealing? No theft was truly harmless, granted. Thou shalt not—a categorical prohibition. A violation of the courtesy we owe one another, his father said. Yet there were gray areas. In a pawnshop everything belonged to someone and was surrendered only conditionally and under duress, which meant anything could have a value far beyond ordinary estimation. A lonely man might be reminded of the intensities of life just by passing an odd few minutes in a pawnshop, gleaning this overplus. Then he would go out on the street with all that anonymous sentiment clinging to him, on which he had no more claim than theft could give him, feeling the vast distance between himself and the web of fraught lives that dealt among themselves in gifts and mementos. There would probably be a policeman across the street, alert to thievishness.

  Jack had been leaning against a wall, reading a newspaper, aware of the policeman across the street, who was clearly aware of him. It was true that he had been browsing in a pawnshop, making a little practical use of an idle afternoon. It was true also that he had been curious to see whether the store was the chaos of minor valuables it appeared to be from the street, or whether there was a system behind it all that would draw attention to a minor theft. He wondered whether some of the items awaiting ransom, not the ones displayed in the window like trophies but the playing-card cases, the plated money clips, could be palmed or pocketed without much risk. Shops like this were an aspect of urban life, one thing that made Jack feel he really did belong in a city. These odds and ends could be intimate to the point of pathos, like the things he used to steal at home. There were brides and babies in ornate frames, crystal canisters etched with the dates of anniversaries. There was a long-handled shoehorn inlaid with rhinestones. All these things hovered between redemption by the wretches who had made hostages of them, or else abandonment into the traffic in preposterous things which must undergird the pawnbroking industry. And here they were, in their moment of poignant suspense. Jack had always felt a silent hum, like the nimbus of rubbed amber, around objects that had nothing else to recommend them. And here they were, as if some great thief moved by just the same impulse had found and hoarded them up. Two dozen clocks disputing the time. Chaos in another dimension.

  “Just browsing,” he had said to the clerk, though the better word would have been “casing.” Then he sauntered out to the sidewalk, saw the cop, bought a newspaper from a stack on the street, folded it lengthwise, and read, with an eye on the cop. Here was the problem. He knew that, since he was aware of official attention, if he tried to walk away, he would appear to skulk. If he tried to look vigorous and purposeful, he would look as if he were leaving the scene, as they say. He had taken nothing. He was pretty sure no stray trinket had clung to his sleeve. So the wisest thing in ridiculous circumstances was simply to stand there and read about mounting tensions in Belgium. The cop would have to wander off sometime.

  As it happened, however, a gentleman emerged from the pawnshop who clearly also saw the cop, bumped into Jack, begged pardon more sincerely than the situation seemed to require, and walked off, leaving Jack with a definite weight in his jacket pocket. Then another man came out, slapping his own pockets the way people do when they can’t believe they have lost what they have lost. And there was law enforcement, just when needed, as was too often the case. The officer noticed and interpreted the citizen’s distress, not remarkable considering the incredulous slapping, and he crossed the street. “My wallet!” the man said. The official gaze turned on Jack.

  “Sir,” the officer said.

  Jack said, “A man just bumped into me. He must have put something in my pocket. To conceal evidence, I believe.”

  “Would you please show me what you have in your pocket, sir.”

  It was red morocco, hand-stitched, expensive but very lean. Jack should not have looked at it appraisingly. He handed it to the officer, who checked the name of the injured party against a business card that seemed to be the one thing in it. So, petty larceny. That was a relief.

  But the policeman said, “Is there anything missing from your billfold, sir?”

  “About five hundred doll
ars is missing! That’s what’s missing!” the citizen said, inflating his importance and making Jack a felon. The larceny was now grand.

  Jack said, “If there was any money, the other man must have taken it.”

  “If there was any money! You calling me a liar?” said the citizen, shoving Jack against the wall in his indignation.

  The cop said, “Calm down or I’ll arrest you, too.”

  “Too.” The word was a dagger in Jack’s heart. And as he was pulling himself together, he realized that there was, again, a weight in his pocket. His amazement overwhelming his good sense, he slipped his fingers in and felt something round, metal, with a fine chain attached to it.

  “Sir,” the policeman said, “would you please empty your pockets.” So out came a handkerchief, a quarter and a dime, and a necklace, maybe gold, set with what might have been precious stones. The policeman said, “Okay,” and took it from him. It lay there in his hand, gleaming quietly, clearly valuable. The citizen gave Jack a look and shrugged almost imperceptibly, the gist being that he had a life that was incompatible with jail time.

  Of course! That is the whole point of jail time! Jack said, “Officer, this fellow put that necklace in my pocket when he shoved me!”

  “This happened to you twice in what? Five minutes?”

  “Yes, Officer. It did.”

  “So the first fellow was a pickpocket who had robbed a thief.”

  “This appears to have been the case, Officer.” His verb forms became exact under pressure.

  “So now I’m the thief!” said the citizen.

  “Calm down,” said the policeman. “We’ll step into the shop and see what the clerk has to say about this.”

  So Jack returned to that world that still seemed his somehow, even with a policeman at his shoulder. All the oddly deployed shine and detail, the kinds of things that reward prowlers for their trouble. There were the clocks, variously quartering the hour, time being one more dubious commodity. He was the suspect. The clerk, a stranger, glanced at him with bland hostility. Clearly this was a man practiced in negotiating desperation, nostalgia, the plain worth of a thing, haste, embarrassment, guilt, all of them leveraged against the naked hopes of the customer. This sly, cold arbiter of the fates of the bail-seeking and the creditor-pursued looked at Jack as if he were weary of him. “I wondered why this guy was hanging around in here,” said the clerk to the officer. “Of course, I had my suspicions.” He identified the wallet and the necklace.