Gilead

by Marilynne Robinson

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  meaning. Well, anyway, I told him it was an honor to bless him. And that was also absolutely true. In fact I’d have gone through seminary and ordination and all the years intervening for that one moment. He just studied me, in that way he has. Then the bus came. I said, “We all love you, you know,” and he laughed and said, “You’re all saints.” He stopped in the door and lifted his hat, and then he was gone, God bless him.

  I made it as far as the church, and went inside and rested there for a long time. I believe I saw in young Boughton’s face, as we walked along, a sense of irony at having invested hope in this sad old place, and also the cost to him of relinquishing it. And I knew what hope it was. It was just that kind the place was meant to encourage, that a harmless life could be lived here unmolested. “There shall yet old men and old women dwell in the streets of Jerusalem, and every man with his staff in his hand for every age. And the streets of the city shall be full of boys and girls playing in the streets thereof.” That is prophecy,

  a vision of the prophet Zechariah. He says it will be marvelous

  in the eyes of the people, and so it might well be to people almost anywhere in this sad world. To play catch of an evening,

  to smell the river, to hear the train pass. These little towns

  were once the bold ramparts meant to shelter just such peace. Your mother seems to want every supper to be my favorite sup^ per. There is often meat loaf, and always dessert. She puts candles on the table, since dark is coming early now. I suspect she

  has brought them from the church, and that’s all right. Often she wears her blue dress. You have outgrown your red shirt. Old Boughton’s family have gathered, except the one his heart yearns for. They pay their respects and invite us for dinner, but 242

  these days we three love to be at home. You come in reeking of evening air, with your eyes bright and your cheeks and fingers pink and cold, too beautiful in the candlelight for my old eyes. The cold has silenced all the insects. The dark seems to make us speak softly, like gentle conspirators. Your mother says the grace and butters your bread. I do wish Boughton could have seen how his boy received his benediction, how he bowed his head. If I told him, if he understood, he would have been jealous to have seen it, jealous to have been the one who bestowed

  the blessing. It is almost as if I felt his hand on my hand. Well, I can imagine him beyond the world, looking back at me with an amazement of realization—”This is why we have lived this life!” There are a thousand thousand reasons to live this life, every one of them sufficient.

  I promised young Boughton that I would say goodbye to his father for him, so I strolled over there after dinner when I knew

  the old fellow would be asleep, and when the room was empty I whispered a few words. My good friend is so nearly gone

  from the world that the clouds have settled over his mortal understanding. And his hearing has been doubtful for years. I

  knew if I spoke that name to him while he was awake he

  would struggle to gather himself, he would be avid to understand, and I’d have created an eagerness in him that I could not

  then, could never in my life, by any means placate. As if anything I could say could resolve any part of his great mystery

  for him. He would be alone in the confusions of his grief, and I just did not have the strength to witness that.

  I thought how good it would be if he could be like ancient Jacob, the cherished son who had been lost to him bringing for his blessing the splendid young Robert Boughton Miles—”I had not thought to see thy face, and, lo, God hath let nie see 243

  thy seed also!” There was a joy in the thought of how beautiful that would have been, beautiful as any vision of angels. It seems to me that when something really ought to be true then it has a very powerful truth, which starts me thinking again about heaven. Well, I do that much of the time, as you know. Poor Glory put a chair for me beside Boughton’s bed and I

  sat with him a good while. I used to crawl in through the window of that room in the dark of the morning to wake him up

  so we could go fishing. His mother would get cross if we woke her, too, so we were very stealthy. Sometimes he would just not want to quit sleeping, and I’d pull on his hair and tug on his

  ear and whisper to him, and if I thought of something ridiculous to say sometimes he’d wake up laughing. That was so long

  ago. There he was yesterday evening, sleeping on his right side as he always did, in the embrace of the Lord, I have no doubt, though I knew if I woke him up he’d be back in Gethsemane. So I said to him in his sleep, I blessed that boy of yours for you.

  I still feel the weight of his brow on my hand. I said, I love him as much as you meant me to. So certain of your prayers are finally answered, old fellow. And mine too, mine too. We had to wait a long time, didn’t we?

  When I left I saw Glory standing in the hallway, looking in on all the quiet talk there was in the parlor, her brothers and sisters and their wives and husbands and their children, grown

  and half grown. Trading news and talking politics and playing hearts. There were more of them in the kitchen and more upstairs. As I was leaving I met five or six who had been out for a

  walk. It shames me that I had not thought till then how hard it must have been for her to have Jack gone, and to have been

  left alone in that orderly turbulence of fruitfulness and contentment, left alone to tolerate all that tactful and heartfelt

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  kindness, with no one there even to smile with her at the sheer endlessness of it. And no one there for her to defend—which is the worst kind of abandonment. Only the Lord Himself can comfort that.

  It has seemed to me sometimes as though the Lord breathes on this poor gray ember of Creation and it turns to radiance—for a moment or a year or the span of a life. And then it sinks back into itself again, and to look at it no one would know it had anything to do with fire, or light. That is what I said in the Pentecost sermon. I have reflected on that sermon, and there is some truth in it. But the Lord is more constant and far more extravagant than it seems to imply. Wherever you turn your eyes the world can shine like transfiguration. You don’t have to bring a thing to it except a little willingness to see. Only, who could have the courage to see it?

  I’ll just ask your mother to have those old sermons of mine burned. The deacons could arrange it. There are enough to

  make a good fire. I’m thinking here of hot dogs and marshmallows, something to celebrate the first snow. Of course she

  can set by any of them she might want to keep, but I don’t want her to waste much effort on them. They mattered or they didn’t and that’s the end of it.

  There are two occasions when the sacred beauty of Creation becomes dazzlingly apparent, and they occur together. One is when we feel our mortal insufficiency to the world, and the other is when we feel the world’s mortal insufficiency to us. Augustine says the Lord loves each of us as an only child, and 2 45

  that has to be true. “He will wipe the tears from all faces.” It takes nothing from the loveliness of the verse to say that is exactly what will be required.

  Theologians talk about a prevenient grace that precedes

  grace itself and allows us to accept it. I think there must also

  be a prevenient courage that allows us to be brave—that is, to acknowledge that there is more beauty than our eyes can bear, that precious things have been put into our hands and to do nothing to honor them is to do great harm. And therefore, this courage allows us, as the old men said, to make ourselves useful. It allows us to be generous, which is another way of saying exactly the same thing. But that is the pulpit speaking. What have I to leave you but the ruins of old courage, and the lore of old gallantry and hope? Well, as I have said, it is all an ember now, and the good Lord will surely someday breathe it into flame again.

  I love the prairie! So often I have seen the dawn come and the light flood over the land and everything turn
radiant at once, that word “good” so profoundly affirmed in my soul that I am

  amazed I should be allowed to witness such a thing. There may have been a more wonderful first moment “when the morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy,” but for all I know to the contrary, they still do sing and shout, and they certainly might well. Here on the prairie there is nothing to distract attention from the evening and the morning, nothing on the horizon to abbreviate or to delay. Mountains would seem an impertinence from that point of view.

  To me it seems rather Christlike to be as unadorned as this place is, as little regarded. I can’t help imagining that you will 246

  leave sooner or later, and it’s fine if you have done that, or you mean to do it. This whole town does look like whatever hope becomes after it begins to weary a little, then weary a little more. But hope deferred is still hope. I love this town. I think sometimes of going into the ground here as a last wild gesture of love—I too will smolder away the time until the great and general incandescence.

  I’ll pray that you grow up a brave man in a brave country. I will pray you find a way to be useful.

  I’ll pray, and then I’ll sleep. 247