Gilead (2005 Pulitzer Prize)

by Marilynne Robinson

  That still seems right to me. I think it is a sound reading of the text. Well, in 1947 I was almost seventy, so my thinking should have been fairly mature at that point. And your mother would have heard me preach that sermon, come to think of it. She first came to church on Pentecost of that year, which I think was in May, and never missed a Sunday after it except the one.

  It rained, as I have said, but we had a good many candles lighted, which has always been our custom for that service, when we could afford them. And there were a good many flowers. And when I saw there was a stranger in the room, I do 161

  remember feeling pleased that the sanctuary should have looked as cheerful as it did, that it should have been such a pleasant place to step into out of the weather. I believe that day my sermon was on light, or Light. I suppose she hasn't found it, or she doesn't remember it, or she doesn't think it was especially good. I'd like to see it, though.

  I do enjoy remembering that morning. I was sixty-seven, to

  be exact, which did not seem old to me. I wish I could give you the memory I have of your mother that day. I wish I could leave you certain of the images in my mind, because they are so beautiful that I hate to think they will be extinguished

  when I am. Well, but again, this life has its own mortal loveliness. And memory is not strictly mortal in its nature, either. It

  is a strange thing, after all, to be able to return to a moment, when it can hardly be said to have any reality at all, even in its passing. A moment is such a slight thing, I mean, that its abiding is a most gracious reprieve.

  Once, I went out with Glory to take some things to that little baby. The family lived just across the West Nishnabotna, and when we came to the bridge we saw the two children, the baby and her mother, playing there in the river. We drove on to the house and set the food we had brought by the fence. We didn't approach the house, because that pack of dogs came roaring out to the gate and no one appeared to call them off—we always brought canned ham, canned milk, and so on, things the

  dogs couldn't get into. The little girl must have heard the car passing and the dogs barking and known that we had come to her house, since it was a Monday. She would have ignored us if she did. She loyally reflected her father's view of us. She was offended by our concern and our helpfulness and let us know as much by ignoring us as often as we gave her the chance.

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  And I must say I do not find that hard to understand. Her father clearly assumed that we were going to so much bother

  and expense in order to keep Jack out of trouble. And while no one ever said such a thing or even hinted at such an idea, I can't say he was altogether wrong. Nor can I say that it was no part of Jack's motive in confessing to his father, that he knew poor old Boughton would respond to the situation as he did. That would explain why he left the Plymouth.

  In any case, Glory and I parked the car along the road a hundred yards beyond the bridge and walked back and stood on the bridge and watched those children. The baby, who had

  just begun to walk, didn't have a stitch on, and the little girl was wearing a dress that was soggy to her waist. It was late summer. The river is very shallow at that time of year, and the bottom was half exposed and braided like water. There were sandbars right across, the bigger ones small jungles of weedy vegetation weedily in bloom, with butterflies and dragonflies attending on them like spirits. The little girl was practicing the maternal imperative from time to time, the way children sometimes do when they are playing. Maybe she knew she was being overheard. She was trying to dam a rivulet with sticks and mud, and the baby was trying to understand the project well enough to help. She would bring her mother handfuls of mud and handfuls of water, and her mother would say, "Now, don't you go stepping on it. You're just messing up all my work!"

  After a while the baby cupped her hands and poured water on her mother's arm and laughed, so her mother cupped her hands and poured water on the baby's belly, and the baby laughed and threw water on her mother with both hands, and

  the little girl threw water back, enough so that the baby whimpered, and the little girl said, "Now, don't you go crying! What

  do you expect when you act like that." And she put her arms 163

  around her and settled her into her lap, kneeling there in the water, and set about repairing her dam with her free hand. The baby made a conversational sound and her mother said, "That's a leaf. A leaf off a tree. Leaf," and gave it into the baby's hand. And the sun was shining as well as it could onto that shadowy river, a good part of the shine being caught in the trees. And the cicadas were chanting, and the willows were straggling their tresses in the water, and the cottonwood and the ash were making that late summer hush, that susurrus. After a while we went on back to the car and came home. Glory said, "I do not understand one thing in this world. Not one."

  This came to my mind because remembering and forgiving

  can be contrary things. No doubt they usually are. It is not for me to forgive Jack Boughton. Any harm he did to me personally was indirect, and really very minor. Or say at least that

  harm to me was probably never a primary object in any of the things he got up to. That one man should lose his child and the next man should just squander his fatherhood as if it were nothing—well, that does not mean that the second man has transgressed against the first.

  I don't forgive him. I wouldn't know where to begin.

  You and Tobias are out in the yard. You have put your Dodgers cap on a fence post, and the two of you are chucking pebbles

  at it. Accuracy will come, probably. "Ah, man!" says T, and screws up his face and does a tightfisted dance of frustration, as if he had achieved a near miss. Now off you go to gather more pebbles, Soapy tagging after at a fastidious distance, as if she had some business of her own that happened to be taking her in more or less the same direction.

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  I was trying to remember what birds did before there were telephone wires. It would have been much harder for them to roost in the sunlight, which is a thing they clearly enjoy doing. And here comes Jack Boughton with his bat and his glove. You and T. are running up the street to meet him. He has set his glove on top of your head and you think that is a very good thing. You are holding it on with both hands and striding straight-legged along beside him, barefoot and bare-bellied

  like some primordial princeling. I can't see the Popsicle streaks down your belly, but I know they're there. T. is carrying the

  bat. Since Jack never looks entirely at ease, it should not surprise me that he looks a little tense. But here he is, coming

  through the gate. I can hear him speaking with your mother

  on the porch. It sounds pleasant. I believe my heart would prefer that I stay here in this chair, at least for the time being.

  You three have come out in the side yard. He's batting

  fungo. You and T. are running hither and yon as if to catch the ball. When you get anywhere near the ball, you put up your gloves to protect yourselves from it, and it thumps on the ground somewhere nearby. But you're getting the idea of throwing overhand. It's pretty to watch you, the three of you. I believe I will just step outside and see what he has on his mind. I know there's something.

  He wanted to know if I would be in my study at church tomorrow. I said in the morning, yes. So he will come by to talk

  with me.

  I wish I had more pictures of myself as a younger man, I suppose because I believe that as you read this I will not be old, and when I see you, at the end of your good long life, neither of us will be old. We will be like brothers. That is how I imag165

  ine it. Sometimes now when you crawl into my lap and settle against me and I feel that light, quick strength of your body

  and the weightiness of your head, when you're cold from playing in the sprinkler or warm from your bath at night, and you

  lie in my arms and fiddle with my beard and tell me what you've been thinking about, that is perfectly pleasant, and I imagine your child sel
f finding me in heaven and jumping

  into my arms, and there is a great joy in the thought. Still; the other is better, and more likely to be somewhere near the reality of the situation, I believe. We know nothing about heaven,

  or very little, arid I think Calvin is right to discourage curious speculations on things the Lord has not seen fit to reveal to us. Adulthood is a wonderful thing, and brief. You must be sure to enjoy it while it lasts.

  I believe the soul in Paradise must enjoy something nearer

  to a perpetual vigorous adulthood than to any other state we know. At least that is my hope. Not that Paradise could disappoint, but I believe Boughton is right to enjoy the imagination

  of heaven as the best pleasure of this world. I don't see how he can be entirely wrong, approaching it that way. I certainly don't mind the thought of your mother finding me a strong young man. There is neither male nor female, they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but, mutatis mutandis, it would be a fine thing. That mutandis] Such a burden on one word!

  Grant me on earth what seems Thee best, Till death and Heav'n reveal the rest. —Isaac Watts

  And John Ames adds his amen.

  This morning I woke early, which is really a way of saying last night I hardly slept at all. I had it in my mind that I 166

  would dress a little more carefully than has been my habit lately. I have a good head of hair, not as evenly distributed

  as it might be, but pretty thick where it grows and a good white. My eyebrows are white, too, and quite thick. I mean the hairs grow long and spiral off in every direction. The irises of my eyes have begun to melt at the edges a little. They

  never were any particular color, and now they're a lighter shade. My nose and ears are definitely larger than they were

  in my prime. I know I'm a perfectly passable old fellow

  with regard to my appearance, for what that's worth. Age is strange, though. Yesterday you stood by my chair and toyed with my eyebrow, pulling the hairs out to their full length and watching them curl back again. You thought it was funny, and it is.

  Well, but I shaved carefully and put on a white shirt and buffed my shoes a little, and so on. I think such preparations can be the difference between an elderly gentleman and a codger. I know the former is a more suitable consort for your lovely mother, but sometimes I forget to go to the necessary trouble, and that's an error I mean to correct.

  And after all that, I went up to the church and waited in

  the sanctuary for the light to come and fell asleep in the pew, upright, which is a good thing, because young Boughton came in looking for me when he found I wasn't in my study. I felt just the way I imagine the shade of poor old Samuel must have felt when the witch dragged him up from Sheol. "Why hast thou disquieted me, to bring me up?" In fact, I had spent the morning darkness praying for the wisdom to do well by John Ames Boughton, and then when he woke me, I was immediately aware that my sullen old reptilian self would have

  handed him over to the Philistines for the sake of a few more minutes' sleep. I really despise the pathos of being found

  asleep at odd times in odd places. Your mother always tells people I'm just up the whole night reading and writing, and some

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  times that is true. And sometimes I'm just up the whole night wishing I weren't.

  (I do recommend prayer at such times, because often they

  mean something is in need of resolving. I had arrived at a considerable equanimity, there in the dark, and I believe that is

  what permitted me to sleep. The problem was that I slept too deeply. The physical body can crave sleep with an animal

  greed, as everybody knows. Then it is snappish when it is disturbed, as I would have been if I hadn't had the memory, at

  least, of praying for tranquillity. At that moment I cannot claim to have had tranquillity itself.)

  So Jack Boughton's first words to me were "I'm very sorry." He sat down in the pew, allowing me time to gather myself, which was good of him. I noticed that he also was dressed with special care, that he was wearing a jacket and a tie and that his shoes had a good shine on them. He studied the room, taking in the simplicity of it, which I know is naked simplicity, not the elegant, ornamental kind you see in some of the finer old churches, since this one was always meant to be temporary. "Your father preached here," he said.

  "For a good many years. It hasn't changed much since then."

  "It's like the church I grew up in."

  The Presbyterians did have a church very much like this

  one, but they replaced it several years ago with a fairly imposing building of brick and stone. It already has a good deal of

  ivy clinging to it. Boughton says if he could just get them to dilapidate the bell tower a little they would have a real antiquity. He has suggested that we out-antiquate the Presbyterians

  by modeling our new building on the catacombs. I believe I'll propose it.

  Jack said, "It's an enviable thing, to be able to receive your identity from your father."

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  I have a dreadful habit of taking the measure of a conversation

  early, in terms of the pleasure or benefit I can expect

  from it or what I might accomplish through it, and at that point my hopes were not high. I said, "My vocation was the

  same as my father's. I assume that if I'd had another father entirely the Lord would still have called me." I'll admit I'm a little

  touchy on that point.

  Jack was quiet for a minute, and then he said, "I always

  seem to give offense. I don't always intend to." Then he said, "I hope you will understand that I don't wish to offend you. Reverend." I said, "I'll bear that in mind."

  He said, "Thank you." Then after a minute he said, "I wish

  I could have been like my father," and he glanced up at me as though he thought I might laugh.

  I said, "Your father has been an example to us all."

  He gave me a look, then covered his eyes with his hand. There were elements of grief and frustration in the gesture, and of weariness as well. And I knew what it meant. I said, "I'm afraid I offend you."

  "No, no," he said. "But I do wish we could speak more—directly." There was a silence. Then he said, "But I thank you for

  your time," and stood up to leave.

  I said, "Sit down, son. Sit down. Let's give this another try." So we were just quiet there for a while. He took off his

  necktie and wound it around his hand and showed it to me as though there were something amusing about it and slipped it into his pocket. Finally he said, "When I was small I thought the Lord was someone who lived in the attic and paid for the groceries. That was the last form of religious conviction I have been capable of." Then he said, "I don't mean to be rude."

  "I understand." 169

  "Why would that happen, do you think? I mean, that I

  could never believe a word my poor old father said. Even as a child. When everyone I knew thought it was all, well, everyone thought it was the Gospel."

  "Do you believe any of it now?"

  He shook his head. "I can't say that I do." He glanced up at me. "I'm trying to be honest."

  "I can see that."

  He said, "I'll tell you another strange thing. I lie quite a lot, because when I do people believe me. It's when I try to tell the truth that things go wrong for me." He laughed and shrugged. "So I know the risk I 'm running here." Then he said, "And in fact, things also go wrong when I lie."

  I asked him what exactly it was that he wanted to tell me. "Well," he said, "I believe I put a question to you."

  He had every right to point that out. He had asked a question, and I had avoided responding to it. That's true. I couldn't help but notice the edge of irritation in his voice, considering how earnest he seemed to be about keeping the conversation civil.

  I said, "I just don't know how to answer that question. I truly wish I did."

  He folded his arms and l
eaned back and twitched his foot

  for a minute. "Does it seem right to you," he said, "that there should be no common language between us? That there should be no way to bring a drop of water to those of us who languish in the flames, or who will? Granting your terms? That between us and you there is a great gulf fixed? How can capital-T Truth not be communicable? That makes no sense to me."

  "I am not sure those are my terms. I would speak of grace in that context," I said.

  "And never of the absence of grace, which would in fact seem to be the issue here. If your terms are granted. I don't mean to be disrespectful."

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  "I understand that," I said.

  "So," he said, after a silence, "you have no wisdom to share with me on this subject."

  I said, "Well, I don't know quite how to approach it in this case. Do you want to be persuaded of the truth of the Christian religion?"

  He laughed. "I'm sure if I were persuaded of it, I would be grateful in retrospect. People generally are, as I understand." "Well," I said, "that doesn't give me much to work with, does it?"

  He just sat there for a while, and then he said, "A friend of mine—no, not a friend, a man I met in Tennessee—had heard about this town, and he had also heard of your grandfather. He told me some stories about the old days in Kansas that his father had told him. He said that during the Civil War Iowa had

  a colored regiment."

  "Yes, we did. And a graybeard regiment, and a Methodist regiment, as they called it. They were teetotalers, at any rate."

  "I was interested to learn that there was a colored regiment," he said. "I wouldn't have thought there were ever that

  many colored people in this state."

  "Oh yes. Quite a few colored people came up from Missouri

  in the days before the war. And I think quite a few came up the Mississippi Valley, too."

  He said, "When I was growing up, there were some Negro families in this town."

  I said, "Yes, there were, but they left some years ago." "I remember hearing about a fire at their church."