Gilead (2005 Pulitzer Prize)

by Marilynne Robinson

  Again, all any heart has ever said, and just as the word is said the moment is gone, so there is not even any sort of promise in it.

  Wherefore each part Of my hard heart Meets in this frame, To praise thy Name:

  That, if I chance to hold my peace,

  These stones to praise thee may not cease. Yet awhile.

  Well, if Herbert is right, this old body is as new a creation

  as you are yourself. I mean as you are now, playing under my window on the swing Dan Boughton put up for you. You must remember it. He tied fishing line to an arrow and shot it over the bough and then used the fishing line to hoist the rope, and so on. It took him the whole day, but he did it. He's a clever, good-hearted young fellow. He was a great comfort to his father and mother. Now he's teaching school somewhere in Michigan, I'm told. He didn't choose the ministry, though for a long time he was expected to.

  You are standing up on the seat of your swing and sailing higher than you really ought to, with that bold, planted stance of a sailor on a billowy sea. The ropes are long and you are

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  light and the ropes bowlike cobwebs, laggardly, indolent. Your shirt is red—it is your favorite shirt—and you fly into the sunlight and pause there brilliantly for a second and then fall back

  into the shadows again. You appear to be altogether happy. I remember those first experiments with fundamental things, gravity and light, and what an absolute pleasure they were. And there is your mother. "Don't go so high," she says. You'll mind. You're a good fellow.

  I did not mean to criticize the trustees. I do understand the reluctance to make any substantial investment in the church

  building at this point. But if I were a little younger, I tell you, I'd be up on that roof myself. As it is, I might drive a few nails into the treads on the front steps. I don't see the point in letting the old place look too shabby in its last year or so. It's very plain, but the proportions of it really are quite pleasing, and when it has a fresh coat of paint, it's all the church anyone could need, in terms of appearance. It is inadequate in other ways, I recognize that.

  I did remember to mention to them that that weather vane

  on the steeple was brought from Maine by my grandfather and stood above his church for many years. He gave it to my father on the day of his ordination. The people in Maine used to put those roosters on their steeples, he told me, to remind themselves of the betrayal of Peter, to help them repent. They really

  didn't use crosses much at all in those days. But once I mentioned that there was a rooster on the steeple, which most of them had never noticed before, they became a little uneasy with the fact that there wasn't a cross up there. I believe

  they will put one up, now that it's on their minds. That's the one thing they'll get around to. They said they will mount the weather vane on a wall somewhere, in the foyer," probably,

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  where people can appreciate it. I don't care what they do. I only mentioned it at all because I didn't want it to be discarded with everything else. It is very old. This way at least you can get a good look at it.

  It has a bullet hole at the base of its tail feathers. There were a good many stories about how it got there. I was told

  once that, since my grandfather had no bell or any other respectable way to call a meeting, and almost nobody had a

  working timepiece, he would fire a rifle in the air, and one

  time he wasn't paying enough attention where he pointed it. There was a story, too, that a man from Missouri who was passing by just as the people were gathering fired one shot and set

  the rooster spinning around to try to dishearten them a little, since he knew they were Free Soilers. And there was a story that the church had taken delivery of a crate of Sharps rifles and somebody wanted to find out if they were really as accurate as they were said to be.

  A Sharps is a very fine rifle, but I suspect the first story is

  the true one, because in my experience that degree of precision is only achieved accidentally. My grandfather could be very quiet about his embarrassments, so he might just have let

  people speculate, invent. I told my committee the story about

  the Missourian because it has a certain Christian characterdinging the weather vane would have been an act of considerable restraint, because feelings ran high in those days. That

  story has the most historical interest, too, I think, and it could well be true, for all I know to the contrary. It is hard to make people care about old things. So I thought I should do what I could for that poor old rooster.

  Often enough these settlers' churches were only meant to keep the rain off until there were time and resources to put up something better. So they don't have the dignity of age. They just get shabby. They were never meant to become venerable. I 1 13

  remember that old Baptist church that my father helped to

  pull down, all black in the rain, looking ten times as formidable as it would have before the lightning struck. That was always

  a major part of my idea of a church. When I was a child

  I actually believed that the purpose of steeples was to attract lightning. I thought they must be meant to protect all the other houses and buildings, and that seemed very gallant to me. Then I read some history, and I realized after a while that not every church was on the ragged edge of the Great Plains, and not every pulpit had my father in it. The history of the church is very complex, very mingled. I want you to know how aware I am of that fact. These days there are so many people who think loyalty to religion is benighted, if it is not worse than benighted. I am aware of that, and I know the charges that can be brought against the churches are powerful. And I know, too, that my own experience of the church has been, in many senses, sheltered and parochial. In every sense, unless it really is a universal and transcendent life, unless the bread is

  the bread and the cup is the cup everywhere, in all circumstances, and it is a time with the Lord in Gethsemane that

  comes for everyone, as I deeply believe. That biscuit ashy from my father's charred hand. It all means more than I can tell you. So you must not judge what I know by what I find words for. If I could only give you what my father gave me. No, what the Lord has given me and must also give you. But I hope you will put yourself in the way of the gift. I am not speaking here of the ministry as such, as I have said.

  I did a strange thing this morning. They were playing a waltz on the radio, and I decided I wanted to dance to it. I don't

  mean that in the usual sense. I have a general notion of waltzing but no instruction in the steps, and so on. It was mostly a

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  matter of waving my arms a little and spinning around a little, pretty carefully. Remembering my youth makes me aware that I never really had enough of it, it was over before I was done with it. Whenever I think of Edward, I think of playing catch in a hot street and that wonderful weariness of the arms. I

  think of leaping after a high throw and that wonderful collaboration of the whole body with itself and that wonderful certainty

  and amazement when you know the glove is just where it should be. Oh, I will miss the world!

  So I decided a little waltzing would be very good, and it

  was. I plan to do all my waltzing here in the study. I have thought I might have a book ready at hand to clutch if I began to experience unusual pain, so that it would have an especial

  recommendation from being found in my hands. That seemed theatrical, on consideration, and it might have the perverse effect of burdening the book with unpleasant associations. The

  ones I considered, by the way, were Donne and Herbert and Barth's Epistle to the Romans and Volume II of Calvin's Institutes. Which is by no means to slight Volume I.

  There's a mystery in the thought of the re-creation of an old man as an old man, with all the defects and injuries of what is called long life faithfully preserved in him, and all their claims and all their tendencies honored, too, as in t
he steady progress of arthritis in my left knee. I have thought sometimes that the Lord must hold the whole of our lives in memory, so to speak:. Of course He does. And "memory" is the wrong word, no doubt. But the finger I broke sliding into second base when I

  was twenty-two years old is crookeder than ever, and I can interpret that fact as an intimate attention, taking Herbert's view.

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  This morning I strolled over to Boughton's. He was sitting in the screened porch behind the trumpet vines, dozing. He and

  his wife were fond of those vines because they attract hummingbirds. They've pretty well taken over now, so the house

  looks sort of like a huge duck blind. Boughton corrected me when I told'him that. "A hummingbird blind," he said. "There are times when a little bird shot would bring down a thousand of them." But, he says, since that's not enough yet to season a cup of broth, he's going to bide his time.

  All his gardens have more or less gone to brush, but as I came up the road I saw young Boughton and the daughter Glory clearing out the iris beds. Boughton owns his house. I used to think that was an enviable thing, but there's been no one but him to see to it, and things have gotten a little out of hand these last years.

  He seemed in excellent spirits. "The children," he said, "are putting things to rights for me."

  I talked to him some about the baseball season and about the election, but I could tell he was listening mainly to the

  voices of his children, who did sound very happy and harmonious. I remember when they played in those gardens with

  their cats and kites and bubbles. It was as pretty a sight as you're likely to see. Their mother was a fine woman, and such a one to laugh! Boughton says, "I miss her something dreadful." She knew Louisa when they were girls. Once, I remember,

  they put hard-boiled eggs under a neighbor's setting hen.

  What the point was I never knew, but I remember them laughing so hard they just threw themselves down on the grass and

  lay there with the tears runnings down into their hair. One time Boughton and I and some others took a hay wagon apart and reassembled it on the.roof of the courthouse. I don't know what the point of that was, either, but we had a grand time, working under cover of darkness and all that. I wasn't 116

  ordained yet, but I was in seminary. I don't know what we thought we were up to. All that laughter. I wish I could hear it again. I asked Boughton if he remembered putting that wagon on the roof and he said, "How could I forget it?" and chuckled to please me, but he really wanted to sit there with his chin propped on the head of his cane and listen to the voices of his children. So I walked home.

  You and your mother were making sandwiches with peanut butter and apple butter on raisin bread. I consider such a sandwich a great delicacy, as you are clearly aware, because you

  made me stay on the porch until everything was ready, the

  milk poured and so on. Children seem to think every pleasant thing has to be a surprise.

  Your mother was a little upset because she didn't know

  where I was. I didn't tell her I might go to Boughton's. She's afraid I'll just drop dead somewhere, and that's reasonable enough. It seems to me worse things could happen, actually, but that's not how she looks at it. Most of the time I feel a good deal better than the doctor led me to expect, so I 'm inclined to enjoy myself as I can. It helps me sleep.

  I was thinking about old Boughton's parents, what they were like when we were children. They were a rather somber pair, even in their prime. Not like him at all. His mother would take tiny bites of her food and swallow as if she were swallowing live coals, stoking the fires of her dyspepsia. And his father, reverend gentleman that he was, had something about him that bespoke grudge. I have always liked the phrase "nursing a grudge," because many people are tender of their resentments,

  as of the thing nearest their hearts. Well, who knows what account these two old pilgrims have made of themselves by now.

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  letting us laugh at what we became, laugh at the preposterous disguises of crouch and squint and limp and lour we all do put on. I enjoy the hope that when we meet I will not be estranged from you by all the oddnesses life has carved into me. When I look at Boughton, I see a funny, generous young man, full of vigor. He's on two canes now, and he says if he could sprout a third arm there would be three. He hasn't stood in a pulpit

  these ten years. I conclude that Boughton has completed his errand and I have not yet completed mine. I hope I am not presuming

  on the Lord's patience.

  I've started The Trail ofthe Lonesome Pine. I went over to the library and got a copy for myself, since your mother can't part with hers. I believe she's reading through it again. I'd forgotten it entirely, if I ever read it at all. There's a young girl who falls

  in love with an older man. She tells him, "I'll go with ye anywhar." That made me laugh. I guess it's a pretty good book. He

  isn't old like I am, but then your mother isn't young like the girl in the book is, either.

  This week I intend to preach on Genesis 21:14—21, which is the story of Hagar and Ishmael. If these were ordinary

  times—if I were twenty years younger—I'd be making an orderly passage through the Gospels and the Epistles before I

  turned to Genesis again. That was my custom, and I have always felt it was effective as teaching, which is really what all

  this is about. Now, though, I talk about whatever is on my mind—Hagar and Ishmael at the moment.

  The story of Hagar and Ishmael came to mind while I was praying this morning, and I found a great assurance in it. The story says that it is not only the father of a child who cares for its life, who protects its mother, and it says that even if the

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  mother can't find a way to provide for it, or herself, provision will be made. At that level it is a story full of comfort. That is how life goes—we send our children into the wilderness. Some of them on the day they are born, it seems, for all the help we can give them. Some of them seem to be a kind of wilderness unto themselves. But there must be angels there, too, and springs of water. Even that wilderness, the very habitation of jackals, is the Lord's. I need to bear this in mind.

  Young Boughton came by to see if you felt like a game of catch. You did. He was sunburned from working in the garden.

  It gave him a healthy, honest look. He's teaching you to throw overhand. He said he couldn't stay for supper. You were disappointed, as I believe your mother was also.

  The moon looks wonderful in this warm evening light, just as a candle flame looks beautiful in the light of morning. Light within light. It seems like a metaphor for something. So much does. Ralph Waldo Emerson is excellent on this point.

  It seems to me to be a metaphor for the human soul, the singular light within the great general light of existence. Or it

  seems like poetry within language. Perhaps wisdom within experience. Or marriage within friendship and love. I'll try to remember

  to use this. I believe I see a place for it in my thoughts

  on Hagar and Ishmael. Their time in the wilderness seems like

  a specific moment of divine Providence within the whole providential regime of Creation.

  Just before suppertime yesterday evening Jack Boughton came strolling by. He sat himself down on the porch step and talked baseball and politics—he favors the Yankees, which he has

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  every right to do—until the fragrance of macaroni and cheese so obtruded itself that I was obliged to invite him in. You and your mother still regard him as a fairly wonderful surprise, this John Ames Boughton with his quiet voice and his preacherly manner, which, by the way, he has done nothing to earn, or to deserve. To the best of my knowledge, at any rate. He had it even as a child, and I always found that disturbing. Maybe it's something he isn't conscious of, growing up the way he did. But it seems to me sometimes that there's an element of parod
y in it. I wonder if he acts that way everywhere, or if he does

  it only around me, and around his father. What do I mean by preacherly? There's a way of being formal and deferential and at the same time cordial, while maintaining an air of dignified authority, which is preacherly. I never mastered this myself, but my father had it and Boughton had it. My grandfather, that old Nazirite, was impressive in another style. But of sheer and perfect preacherliness I have never seen a finer example than this Jack Boughton, heathen that he is, or was. Your mother asked him if he would like to say grace, and he did,

  with an elegant simplicity that seemed almost wasted on macaroni and cheese.

  He mentioned that I had not been to see his father in a few days, -which is the truth, and which is no coincidence either. I thought he might be at his father's only a few days. It has been one of the great irritations of my life, seeing the two of them together. I hoped to stay away till he left, but clearly he is not about to do that.

  In the old days I used to come into the kitchen and look around in the pantry and the icebox, and generally I'd find a pot full of soup or stew or a casserole of some kind, which I would warm up or not depending on my mood. If I didn't find anything, I'd 120

  eat cold baked beans and fried-egg sandwiches—which, by the way, I enjoyed. I'd find pie or biscuits on the table sometimes. When I was at the church or up in my study, one of the women would just step in the door and leave dinner there for me and go away, and then another day she'd come back and take her pan and her tea towels or whatever and go away. I'd find jam and pickles and smoked fish. Once I found liver pills. It was a strange life, with its own pleasures.

  Then, when your mother and I got married, it was a little hard for people to learn that they couldn't just come and go anymore. They suspected she was not a cook, I believe, and in

  fact she was not, so they kept coming in the door with their casseroles until I realized it upset her, and then I spoke with them about it. I found her crying in the pantry one evening. Someone had come in and changed the pull cord on the light and put new paper down on the shelves. It was kindly intended, but not considerate, I understand that.