Gilead (2005 Pulitzer Prize)

by Marilynne Robinson

  pulled it underground and filled in the hole in the road so as to conceal it. But the legs were sound.

  Excavating around the horse would only open more tunnel, but they decided that they had no other choice than to make a big enough excavation to allow them to walk the horse up out

  of that hole. In the meantime, there it was, sobering up, nickering and switching its tail. So they decided to lift a shed off

  what it had for a foundation and set it down over the horse there in the middle of the road. It was a small shed, so it had to be set over the horse at a diagonal, the length of the horse being, in effect, the hypotenuse of two right triangles.

  All this seems preposterous. But in fact one lapse ofjudgment can quickly create a situation in which only foolish

  choices are possible. Someone noticed that the horse's tail was lying out on the road, so they had to put a child through the shed window to gather it in.

  As it happened, there was a young Negro fellow in the settlement at that time, the first fugitive to make his way there.

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  This made the people feel serious and purposeful, and it also heightened their embarrassment about the matter of the

  horse. The young man, who stayed in the dry-goods store unless there was some ground for alarm, saw and heard everything. And it was pretty obvious how much he wanted to

  laugh. He was just lolling and languishing with the effort it cost him not to do it. He avoided their eyes, and he bit his lips almost raw. When the shed had been walked down to the road, and just as it was being set crosswise over the horse, there came from the store one harsh, painful, unwilled whoop of laughter. It was at that point they bethought themselves of the fact

  that the fellow might be feeling some justifiable alarm having

  to do with the question of their good sense. And indeed it was that very night he did escape, so to speak, and headed north on his own, no doubt rightly concluding that so much had happened to make the region suspect that he had best get some

  distance from it.

  When they realized what had happened, a couple of the

  men rode after him on the two fairly serviceable horses that had not been traded for the horse in the hole (they wanted to be sure the stranger got far enough away not to trouble coming back, so it was their best horse they had given him). In any case, they hoped to overtake the fugitive in order to provide him with some food and clothes and direct him to the next abolitionist settlement, but for two days he eluded them. Then,

  when they had stopped for the night and were lying down to sleep, he stepped out of the dark and said, "I thank y'all kindly, but I think I best do this on my own." They handed him the bundle they had brought for him and he stepped back into the dark and said, "Y'all get that horse out yet?" and laughed a little, and that was the last they heard of him.

  They did dig a sloping trench they could walk the horse up,

  so that worked out well enough. But then they had to deal with 6 1

  the fact that a tunnel is a hard thing to be rid of. They had taken pains, when they were digging it, to scatter the dirt they removed as widely as possible, to conceal the excavation, and there was of course no way to reverse that process. And while they had made the tunnel secretly and at leisure,, they were obliged to unmake it openly and in haste. The edges around the hole kept crumbling, falling in, exposing more of it every day. (They had removed that shed, prudently, since a shed in a hole in the middle of the road would be no easier to account for than a horse.) The quickest solution would have been to collapse the tunnel altogether and fill it in from the top, but then the path it made from the store to the stables would have been visible immediately and indefinitely. So they chose a hill to level and began carting earth into the tunnel day and night, having placed a lookout on the roof of the dry-goods store to signal the approach of strangers. If asked, they would say they were constructing terraces, as in a certain book the preacher had which illustrated the customs of the Orient. I suppose that was the best they could do in the circumstances.

  These were hardworking people, but there is simply no way

  in the world to pack soil from the side, or in any wise to pack it and settle it as firmly as rain and snow and heat have done in

  the years since the world began. That is to say, with all their hard work to undo all the hard work they had done, with the

  first good rain the road sagged from one end of that tunnel to

  the other. Then they began filling it from the top, having no other choice and nothing at all to lose. And still it sagged as often as there was a good rain.

  So when the winter finally came and there was a hard

  freeze and snow, they pried up the few buildings they had and set them on planks and hitched their horses to them and moved the town, such as it was, half a mile down the road. They had to pry up their grave markers to hide where the

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  town had been, and that was a sad thing, though there weren't more than three or four. The tunnel became a kind of creek bed, a freshet in the spring, with nice grassy banks and flowers that had run wild from the old gardens. People who didn't know better would picnic beside it, spreading their blankets and baskets over those poor, forgotten graves, which was, on balance, a pleasant thing.

  You and Tobias are hopping around in the sprinkler. The sprinkler is a magnificent invention because it exposes raindrops to sunshine. That does occur in nature, but it is rare. When I was

  in seminary I used to go sometimes to watch the Baptists down at the river. It was something to see the preacher lifting the one who was being baptized up out of the water and the water pouring off the garments and the hair. It did look like a birth or a resurrection. For us the water just heightens the touch of the pastor's hand on the sweet bones of the head, sort of like making an electrical connection. I've always loved to baptize people, though I have sometimes wished there were more shimmer and splash involved in the way we go about it. Well,

  but you two are dancing around in your iridescent little downpour, whooping and stomping as sane people ought to do when

  they encounter a thing so miraculous as water.

  During those days after Edward came back from Germany, he was so much on my mind that I kept slipping away to look for him at the hotel. One time I took my baseball and glove and my father's glove and we walked down to a side street and played some catch. At first he was careful of his clothes. He hadn't even seen a baseball in years, he said. But when he got warmed up a little, he was pretty sharp. He threw one that

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  stung my hand, and when I said "Ow!" he laughed with pleasure, because it meant he had his arm back. It wouldn't have

  stung, though, except that I didn't expect it to be coming hard and I wasn't ready. So then we really started firing. I threw one high and he jumped for it, a lovely catch. By then he was in shirtsleeves with his collar open and his suspenders hanging down at his sides. Some people stood around watching us. It was a dusty little street and a hot day and we were throwing flies and grounders. Edward asked a girl for a glass of water. She brought us each one. I drank mine, but he poured his right over his head, and it spilled off that big mustache of his like rain off a roof.

  I thought after that day we would sometime be able to talk. That did not prove to be the case. All the same, after that day I did feel pretty much at ease about the state of his soul. Though of course I am not competent to judge.

  Here is what he said, standing there with his hair all plastered to his head and his mustache dripping.

  Behold, how good and how pleasant it is, For brethren to dwell together in unity! It is like the precious oil upon the head, That ran down upon the beard;

  Even Aaron's beard;

  That came down upon the skirt of his garments Like the dew of Hermon,

  That cometh down upon the mountains of Zion.

  That is from Psalm 133. It meant he knew everything I knew, every single word. Perhaps he was telling me that h
e knew everything I knew and he was not persuaded by it. Still, I have often thought what a splendid thing that was for him to do. I wished my father had been there, because I knew it would

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  have made him laugh. He still had a decent arm for a man his age. I, being very young at the time, believed they would never reconcile, and I was surprised that Edward could take the

  whole situation as calmly as he seemed to. I told him I had begun reading Feuerbach, and he wiggled his big eyebrows at me

  and said, "Don't you let your mama catch you doing that!" When I say that my reputation for piety and probity and so on may be a bit exaggerated, I would not wish you to believe therefore that I have taken my vocation lightly. It has been my whole life. I even kept up my Greek and Hebrew pretty well. Boughton and I used to go through the texts we were going to preach on, word by word. He'd come here, to my house, because his house was full of children. He'd bring a nice warm

  supper in a basket that his wife or his daughters would fix for us. I used to dread walking into his house, because it made mine seem so empty. And Boughton could tell that, he knew it. Four girls and four boys he had, robustious little heathens, every one of them, as he said himself. But good fortune is not only good fortune, and over the years things happened in that

  family that caused some terrible regret. Still, for years it all seemed to me to be blindingly beautiful. And it was.

  We had some very pleasant evenings here in my kitchen. Boughton is a staunch Presbyterian—as if there were another kind. So we have had our disagreements, though never grave enough to do any harm.

  I don't think it was resentment I felt then. It was some sort

  of loyalty to my own life, as if I wanted to say, I have a wife, too, I have a child, too. It was as if the price of having them was losing them, and I couldn't bear the implication that even that price could be too high. They say an infant can't see when it is as young as your sister was, but she opened her eyes, and 65

  she looked at me. She was such a little bit of a thing. But while I was holding her, she opened her eyes. I know she didn't really study my face. Memory cari make a thing seem to have been much more than it was. But I know she did look right into my eyes. That is something. And I'm glad I knew it at the time, because now, in my present situation, now that I am about to leave this world, I realize there is nothing more astonishing than a human face. Boughton and I have talked about that, too.

  It has something to do with incarnation. You feel, your obligation to a child when you have seen it and held it. Any human

  face is a claim on you, because you can't help but understand the singularity of it, the courage and loneliness of it. But this is truest of the face of an infant. I consider that to be one kind of vision, as mystical as any. Boughton agrees.

  I was so frightened of you when you were a little baby. I would sit in the rocking chair and your mother would put you in my arms and I would just rock and pray until she finished whatever

  it was she had to do. I used to sing, too, "Go to Dark Gethsemane," until she asked me if I didn't know a happier song. I

  wasn't even aware of what I was singing.

  This morning I have been trying to think about heaven, but without much success. I don't know why I should expect to have any idea of heaven. I could never have imagined this world if I hadn't spent almost eight decades walking around in it. People talk about how wonderful the world seems to children, and that's true enough. But children think they will

  grow into it and understand it, and I know very well that I will not, and would not if I had a dozen lives. That's clearer to me every day. Each morning I'm like Adam waking, up in Eden, 66

  amazed at the cleverness of my hands and at the brilliance pouring into my mind through my eyes—old hands, old eyes, old mind, a very diminished Adam altogether, and still it is just remarkable. What of me will I still have? Well, this old body has been a pretty good companion. Like Balaam's ass, it's seen the angel I haven't seen yet, and it's lying down in the path. And I must say, too, that my mind, with all its deficiencies,

  has certainly kept me interested. There's quite a bit of poetry

  in it that I learned over the years, and a pretty decent vocabulary, much of it unused. And Scripture. I never knew it the way

  my father did, or his father. But I know it pretty well. I certainly should. When I was younger than you are now, my father would give me a penny every time I learned five verses so

  that I could repeat them without a mistake. And then he'd make a game of saying a verse, and I had to say the next one. We could go on and on like that, sometimes till we came to a genealogy, or we just got tired. Sometimes we'd take roles: he'd be Moses and I'd be Pharaoh, he'd be the Pharisees and I'd be the Lord. That's how he was brought up, too, and it was a great

  help to me when I went to seminary. And through the whole of my life.

  You know the Lord's Prayer and the Twenty-third Psalm

  and Psalm 100. And I heard your mother teaching you the Beatitudes last night. She seems to want me to know that she will bring you up in the faith, and that's a wonderful effort for her to make, because frankly, I never knew anyone in my life with a smaller acquaintance with religion than she had when I first knew her. An excellent woman, but unschooled in Scripture, and in just about everything else, according to her, and

  that may be true. I say this with all respect.

  And yet there always was that wonderful seriousness about her. When she first came to church she would sit in the corner at the back of the sanctuary, and still I would feel as if she

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  were the only real listener. I had a dream once that I. was preaching to Jesus Himself, saying any foolish thing I could think of, and He was sitting there in His white, white robe looking patient and sad and amazed. That's what it felt like. Afterward I would think, That did it, she'll never come back^ and then the next Sunday there she'd be. And once again, the sermon I'd spent the week on would be ashes in my mouth. That happened before I even knew her name.

  I had an interesting talk this morning with Mr. Schmidt, T.'s father. It seems he overheard some inappropriate language. I'd overheard it, too, in fact, since it has been the favorite joke between the two of you for the last week. I'll admit I didn't see

  the need to object. We said the same thing when we were children and emerged unscathed, I believe. One of you asks, in a

  nai've and fluting voice, AB, CD goldfish? And the other replies in the deepest voice he can muster, a voice full of worldliness

  and scorn, L, MNO goldfish! And then outrageous and extravagant laughter. (It is the L, need I say, that has disturbed Mr.

  Schmidt.) That young man was very earnest, and I had a terrible time keeping a straight face. I said gravely that, in my experience, it is better not to attempt too strict an isolation of

  children, that prohibition loses its force if it is invoked too generally. He finally deferred to my white hair and my vocation,

  though he did ask me twice if I was Unitarian.

  I told Boughton about this, and he said, "I have ong fet

  that etter ought to be excuded from the aphabet." Then he laughed, tickled with himself. He has been in high spirits since he heard from Jack. "He'll be home soon!" he said. When I asked him where he was coming from, Boughton said, "Well, the postmark on his letter said St. Louis."

  I won't tell your mother about my talk with Mr. Schmidt. 68

  She wants very much for you to keep your friend. She suffered when you didn't have one. She suffers for your sake much more than she should. She always imagines the fault is with her, even where it appears to me there is no fault at all.

  She told me the other day she wants to read those old sermons that are up in the attic, and I believe she will do that, I

  really do. Not all of them—that would take years. Well, perhaps I can get a box of them down here somehow and do a little sorting. It would put my mind at ease to feel I was leaving a better impression.
So often I have known, right there in the pulpit, even as I read the words, how far they fell short of any hopes I had for them. And they were the major work of my

  life, from a certain point of view. I have to wonder how I have lived with that.

  Today was Lord's Supper, and I preached on Mark 14:22, "And

  as they were eating, he took bread, and when he had blessed,

  he brake it, and gave to them, and said, Take ye: this is my body." Normally I would not preach on the Words of Institution themselves when the Sacrament is the most beautiful illumination of them there could be. But I have been thinking a

  great deal about the body these last weeks. Blessed and broken.

  I used Genesis 52:23—32 as the Old Testament text, Jacob wrestling with the Angel. I wanted to talk about the gift of physical particularity and how blessing and sacrament are mediated through it. I have been thinking lately how I have loved

  my physical life.

  In any case, and you may remember this, when almost everyone had left and the elements were still on the table and the candles still burning, your mother brought you up the aisle to me and said, "You ought to give him some of that." You're too young, of course, but she was completely right. Body of

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  Christ, broken for you. Blood of Christ, shed for you. Your solemn and beautiful child face lifted up to receive these mysteries at my hands. They are the most wonderful mystery, body

  and blood.

  It was an experience I might have missed. Now I only fear I will not have time enough to fully enjoy the thought of it. The light in the room was beautiful this morning, as it often is. It's a plain old church and it could use a coat of paint.

  But in the dark times I used to walk over before sunrise just to sit there and watch the light come into that room. I don't know how beautiful it might seem to anyone else. I felt much at

  peace those mornings, praying over very dreadful things sometimesthe Depression, the wars. That was a lot of misery for

  people around here, decades of it. But prayer brings peace, as I trust you know.