Jack

by Marilynne Robinson

  “You see!” Jack said. “This fellow said the wallet was his! And in fact it was stolen!”

  “No,” the clerk said. “He paid for it.”

  “You have a bigger problem, anyway, sir,” the officer said.

  Meanwhile, the citizen, as if vindicated, took the wallet and left the store.

  “Somebody took the tag off this necklace,” said the clerk. “I’d get about three hundred for it.”

  Disaster. Jack was stunned. He went along quietly with the policeman, who looked very fit and could certainly outrun him.

  So, jail until his day in court, which was over in about ten minutes. He had, in fact, no visible means of support, your honor. No ties to the community. “Unfortunate,” the judge said. “And then the added misfortune that stolen items seem to materialize in your pockets.” He shook his head at the pathos of it, banged his gavel, and said what sounded like “Five years,” and something about the state penitentiary. Jack wanted to ask him to repeat what he had said. Shock had interfered somehow with his hearing. But the judge was on to other business.

  Then after two years he was out on the street again without the courtesy of an explanation. He tried not to seem surprised. It was very likely a clerical error. If he mentioned it, it might be corrected, and the intoxicating privileges of wearing his own clothes and drifting and loitering as he saw fit would be snatched away. How he loved the sound of traffic, the smell of it. He went by the old rooming house to see if Teddy had been leaving money for him, and he had! There was the note about his mother, which grieved him, certainly, and made him glad that he would probably be able to find a dark suit he could afford. Grief and euphoria at the same time, with the looming expectation that he would behave appropriately in the gentle old home he had abandoned. He imagined his mother in a pretty dress receiving visitors in the parlor, she laid out in her coffin, all the talk in whispers, good old Reverend Ames there to provide a little wisdom on the subject of death and loss so the Reverend Boughton would not be expected to. And he there, Jack, not a mystery, which would make him interesting, but clearly a question, a distraction. Perhaps so much irritation, not to say resentment, had built up around him over the years that the decorum of the family would break under the stress of containing it. Everything would go smoothly, and then he would somehow give the slightest offense and their restraint would fail. They would tell him what they really thought of him and he would leave before the funeral, compounding every grievance. He thought he should take a little time to lose the habits of incarceration, sullen deference, and the rest. He should stop smoking cigarettes down till they singed his fingers, and should definitely stop saving the butts. There were no doubt other things he had not yet noticed about himself that marked him as a stranger in the ordinary world.

  Seizing on this unanticipated freedom was probably a crime. If he was being rewarded for good behavior, it was the first he knew of it. In fact, he had acquired somehow a reputation for deft thievery, so whenever anything turned up missing, he and his cell were searched. And when nothing was found, this only added to his reputation for subtle criminality. They called him professor, even the guards. Who knows what the authorities would make of his escape, since that is no doubt what they would call it. The unease he had always felt at the mere sight of a policeman was almost infinitely compounded, and it had already been intense enough to have been the beginning of all these troubles. He had sometimes thought of turning himself in, to put an end to the suspense.

  But prison was terrible. It reduced him to absolute Jack, no matter what anyone thought of him. His great problem, after himself, was other people. Prison was full of them. And they were all bleakly undistracted. He had once almost resented the anonymous city crowds, passersby who might seem to sum him up in a glance, if they saw him at all, taking whatever glyph of him into that vast convivium of strangers, adding some trifling datum to whatever humankind thinks of itself. But prison was immersion in a standing pool of strangers, day after day, in a twilight perfumed by mop water. The thing that saved him was the piano in the chapel. Once, when he was sweeping up, the chaplain came in, and Jack, who had thought this out over days, said, “If you ever want someone to play some music, I could do that.”

  The chaplain said, “Show me.” So Jack sat down and played “Old Hundred.”

  “Pretty good. You know anything else?”

  Jack played a few bars of “Holy, Holy, Holy,” and a few more of “Immortal, Invisible.”

  The chaplain said, “‘Shall We Gather at the River,’” and Jack played it. “I’m pretty rusty.”

  “You’re all right.”

  “If I could practice—”

  “‘Sweet Hour of Prayer.’” Jack played it.

  “See you Sunday,” the chaplain said, and went away.

  After that, Jack worked cautiously at enlarging little by little the time he could spend in the chapel, refining his repertoire. “What a Friend We Have in Jesus.” From time to time there would be trouble—he was accused of cheating at cards because he was cheating at cards—but then it would be Sunday again and he would be playing a new variation on “The Old Rugged Cross” and feeling fine. Then one day he was called down through some gates to an office, given his clothes and shoes, walked through more gates, and put on a bus. He was afraid to ask.

  * * *

  Then something amazing happened. A few days after his talk with Hutchins, Jack went out walking, trying to get tired enough to sleep, staying sober, so that if he did jump in the river, he could feel that his demise had the dignity of a considered choice. This hope, that he might finally be weary enough, had already interfered with his tango, which really should not be done with vigor. He had felt the boss’s eyes on him. When he did finally walk back to the rooming house, he saw the light on, late as it was, and the clerk standing at the counter playing checkers with that other guy, the friend. He nodded as he passed them and was all the way to the stairs when the clerk said, “Hey, Boughton, I’ve got something for you.” So he went back and was handed a little book. H.D., Tribute to the Angels. “A colored gal dropped it by.”

  They were both watching him. He couldn’t trust his voice. The clerk said, “I told her you should be back pretty soon. She could wait upstairs. She’s still up there, for all I know. Probably a little tired of waiting for you.” They were laughing. The clerk said, “Don’t worry, I probably won’t call the cops,” and they kept laughing.

  He went up to his room, and there she was, asleep on his bed, in her coat and her shoes, her handbag and hat beside her, her lovely head on his pillow. Just when he thought he knew something about the rest of his life, there she was.

  * * *

  The first problem was to be quiet enough. He moved the chair, picked it up, and set it down so that it blocked the door, and he tipped it back a little with the thought of resting, even nodding off until she woke up. He took off his jacket and put it over himself, arms folded, which was always oddly comforting, like pulling up a blanket. This was the most remarkable experience he had ever had in his life, when he considered the emotions it set off in him, joy and bewilderment and only a little dread, since, whatever else might be true, she had come to him. He could actually think of no way in which he could be at fault. The sense of guilt might be no more than habit. When she woke up, this would change, of course. There would be all the problems of helping her leave, of getting her down the stairs and out the door without exposing her to remarks and laughter. No hope of that. His palms dampened. A surge of imagined ferocity passed through him, putting an end to the thought of rest. Besides, there she was, quietly asleep, blessing his shabby bedclothes with her peacefulness, her soft breathing. Blessing the whole barren room with her amazing trust. There was dread, yes, but grace, too.

  His dresser had a hat in one drawer and half a loaf of Wonder Bread in another, which was a little tainted by the cologne or pomade, whatever sad essence it was that imbued the drawers and cupboards of rented rooms. So he would have to figure out
how to offer her an edible breakfast. This was a worry, one of those problems he could consider endlessly and never solve. He was protecting himself from the shock of this miracle—he allowed himself the word—with a dose of futility, a qualm or two, to remind himself who he was. He couldn’t leave Della here to wake up alone, to suffer some rude intrusion, to deal with the police. Dear Jesus, not the police. He couldn’t go out in the street with her. That would only multiply attention to them, especially since they would be up to something so flagrant as buying breakfast together. He should not feel shame about having to borrow money from her if they went out to the store, an extraneous misery since they obviously would do no such thing. She would be safer without him, and he could not leave her undefended. So many things made no sense to him at all, which is one reason he had kept to himself so many years. He regretted this as often as he realized he had learned next to nothing about the world.

  He was inches into the shallows of despair when she stirred, opened her eyes, and looked at him. She whispered, “What time is it?”

  “No idea.”

  She sat up. “This is really embarrassing. I just came by to let you know I’m back in town, then I spent too long waiting for you, till it was too dark to walk home. I decided you weren’t coming, and I put my head down for a minute—”

  “I was just out walking around. I didn’t feel like sleeping.”

  “Well, you have to lie down now. You’ve been trying to sleep in that chair! Here, lie down.” She stood up and gathered her hat and her purse. “I’m so sorry.”

  “No, it was very wonderful to find you here.” But he did lie down without hesitation where she had been, where something remained of her warmth. Her perfume. He admitted this to himself, and he blushed. Where this lay along the continuum between honor and caddishness he simply did not know. He did believe it was harmless. “I can’t tell you how wonderful,” he said.

  “I’d like to wait a little longer before I leave. Until daylight.”

  He said, “I wish you could stay for the rest of my life,” and she laughed. “I do! That’s about the truest thing I’ve ever said.”

  “Well, now you should get some sleep. You’ve got all those white ladies to dance with tomorrow.”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “I thought maybe you were out passing the evening with one of them tonight.”

  “Did you. And I thought you were probably in Memphis making plans with one of those handsome young preachers your father has lined up for you.”

  “I met a couple of them. They were fine. If they were the last men on earth, I might settle for one of them.”

  “I can’t say the same for my white ladies.”

  “Poor things!”

  “The indifference is entirely mutual.”

  “I suppose I believe that.”

  It was true. Despite the cupcakes, he knew he was only the least unlike Fred Astaire of the four or five men who showed up to trot them around the floor, a distinction that would not survive the sunlight of a slightly larger world, a city sidewalk. But she was teasing him with the notion that she could be jealous, which was objectively remarkable.

  She said, “If you’re awake, anyway, we could have breakfast. It must be almost morning. My mother always fills my bag with food for the train. I could have fed the whole coach.” She picked up a carpetbag that had been sitting on the floor beside the dresser and opened it. A lovely fragrance reached him. She set its contents on the table. “Pecan bread, boiled eggs, apples. A bottle of orangeade, which I loved when I was ten, ham sandwiches, potato chips.”

  He lifted up the lamp so she could move the bed table away from the wall, then he propped it against the pillow. It shone on the food she was laying out, and on her dark hands, their rosy palms like a delicate secret. A bracelet he had not seen before. Her face was a little veiled by the shade of the lamp, and the walls were in shadow. She said, “The cat is in Memphis. I spent an hour hunting for it that night. Lorraine wouldn’t have it in the house. It’s taken a liking to my aunt Delia. At least she says it has. It’s a terrible cat. She calls it Jack.”

  He laughed. “I’m not sure I know how to take that.”

  “She sort of liked you. We’ve always had some secrets, the two of us. She took me aside one day and asked if I’d seen you at all since she visited. She said she’d been so rude to you it worried her.”

  “She was actually very kind. That was the gentlest expulsion I have ever suffered. A fond memory, more or less.” He watched her hands break the loaf, smooth the waxed paper.

  She said, “You wouldn’t have knives or forks or plates. Or cups.”

  “True. I don’t really spend much time here. Except to sleep.” He wanted to assure her that his life was solitary and ascetic, as it was, almost past bearing, relieved by the library, occasional drunkenness, and lately by lunch with the Baptists. But he knew how this would sound, either pathetic or, better, like lying.

  She said, softly, “I had a terrible dream, that you needed me and I couldn’t get to you. That you were so much alone, you were dying of it.”

  “Wait!” he said, and laughed. The tears were painfully abrupt, and he wiped his eyes with his hands.

  She said, very softly, “I was dying, too. In the dream.”

  “I’m happy to know that, Della. I mean, it’s kind of you to tell me that.”

  “But I was still glad you were longing for me.”

  “I was!”

  “What a mess we’re in, causing each other all this misery.”

  “And this is just the beginning.”

  “Promise?”

  “Promise!”

  She laughed. “Well, then, I guess we might as well have our breakfast. That’s what people do.”

  “And you might as well come sit beside me, so I can put my arm around you. So you can put your head on my shoulder. People do that, too. A fellow told me that if the Lord gave this doomed soul a few minutes of grace, He wouldn’t mind if I enjoyed it. If you’re going to be doomed, too, you can join me in this moment of reprieve.”

  “You’re not doomed. Neither am I. We’ve chosen a difficult life, that’s all.”

  “You’ve chosen a difficult life, I’m doomed. But we have other things in common.”

  She did sit down next to him, actually against him, and he put his arm around her waist. She took his hand, turned it up, measured her hand against it, turned it over. She said, “This won’t work. You’re right-handed. We’ll have to change sides so you won’t have an excuse for not eating anything.”

  “Ah! But one of the little known wonders of my nature—I am ambidextrous! I use my right hand by preference, so that I’ll seem ordinary to people.”

  She laughed. “That would do it.”

  “No, really. I have to keep my left hand in my pocket sometimes, to keep it from being too useful. I’m serious.”

  “Then eat something with it. I’ll watch.”

  The pecan bread was very good. “See that?”

  “Too easy. Can you peel an egg with one hand? I have an uncle who can.”

  “I like to keep some wonders in reserve.”

  “Meaning no.”

  “Meaning they’re slippery little devils with the shells off. They can end up on the floor.”

  She peeled an egg and gave it to him. She said, “Isn’t it strange?”

  “Yes, it is. Very strange. I don’t know what we’re talking about, but I’m sure you’re right.”

  After a minute he believed she had spent composing her thoughts, she said, “Isn’t it strange that I could hardly wait to see you, and you were longing to see me, and here we are talking about hard-boiled eggs.”

  Oh. He had been thrown off guard by the surprise of it all, never mind the pleasure of it, and he had not paused to think what such a situation might demand of him, what might be expected. He said, “You brought it up,” which sounded completely defensive, and a little cross. So he said, “Give me a chance here,” which was worse, since it mad
e clear that he was entirely at a loss.

  “I just mean it’s strange that there is nothing more I want from life. If I could imagine an eternity of sitting here with you talking nonsense, there’d be nothing more I would want from death. I mean it. And I’m a good Christian woman.” Her voice was very calm, but there were tears on her cheeks. He touched them away.

  She said, “Oh dear.”

  He said, “Yes.” Further into trouble, past the last threshold where they could even imagine turning back. Should he mention to her that, if eternity existed, his eternity would be a very different thing from hers? He hated the thought of her waiting it out alone. People were always waiting, their oldest habit, and they would go on with it even though the end of all the waiting would be—never. He tossing in the fires of perdition, while she failed to attend as completely as she should to the gold and pearl and the hosannahs. His father, too, trying to find a calendar, sneaking a look at his watch, still hoping, in the perfect knowledge that the end of time made hope a nostalgia. Jack caught in the snares of loyalties he could only disappoint. Maybe this was hell. Hellfire is figurative, his father had said, in that tone of certainty that had nothing to do with his belief in what he was saying and everything to do with the certainty that it must be said. Still, what if it was true? No flames at all, just an eternity of disheartened self-awareness. Outer darkness. Wailing and gnashing of teeth.

  She said, “What are you thinking about?”

  “Perdition.”

  She laughed. “Of course. What else?”

  “Our future.”