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by Marilynne Robinson

  They had had a horse once, mottled white with a grayish face and stockings. They called him Snowflake for a dingy splat of near-white on his brow. He was docile when her father bought him for the first two of his children. There were photos of Luke and Faith as toddlers astride the horse and her father holding the reins. Docile meant old, and in the photos his weariness and bewilderment are already visible. But in fact what the photos captured was only the onset, in fact the spring, of a terrible longevity. Even Glory remembered the ancient, moldy horse standing in the barn or the pasture with his legs splayed out as if he expected the earth to tilt abruptly and was braced for it. It was his misfortune to be a horse, with enough persisting horse-like attributes, for example a mane and most of a tail, to have, in the eyes of children, a chivalric dignity and romance. So, year upon year, the matter of bringing an end to the tedium and confusion of his interminable life could not even be broached. Then finally one day he was gone. The boys made horrible jokes about how he had made a run for it, had charged through Gilead overturning matrons and baby carriages on his way to the freedom of the high plains. They took to calling glue and all that was gluelike Snowflake, to the irritation of their father and the bafflement of the younger children. Still, there was something about the fact that there had been a horse in that barn, that his trough still stood by the wall and his bridle still hung from a nail above it, that gave the barn itself a certain melancholy romance. A few motes of straw still managed to scintillate in any shaft of sunlight. It seemed sometimes as if her father must have meant to preserve all this memory, this sheer power of sameness, so that when they came home, or when Jack came home, there would be no need to say anything. In the terms of the place, they would all always have known everything.

  JACK STILL HAD A LETTER TO MAIL ALMOST EVERY DAY. HE TOOK the letters to the post office, at the back of the drugstore. He dressed carefully before every venture into town, jacket, tie, and hat. It was a louche sort of respectability he achieved, she thought, but it was earnestly persisted in, with much attention to the shine on his shoes. He would sometimes tell her whom he had met on the street, if he recognized anyone, or, more precisely, if anyone recognized him. He reported brief conversations as if they were heartening, proof of something. Once he said, “I believe I could see myself here. Jack Boughton, honest working man. Little wife at home, little child—frolicking with his dog, I suppose. Not unthinkable.” And sometimes he came back drawn and silent, as if he had been shunned or slighted, perhaps. All those letters, and never a word about whomever it was he sent them to, and never a word of reply.

  One day when she was in the parlor, dusting among the clutter of gifts and souvenirs that crowded the mantel, he said, “Well, Glory, I did as I was told. I stopped by Ames’s, paid my respects. Met the wife.” He laughed. “You know, after all these years he still can’t stand the sight of me.”

  She said, “He’s a kind old fellow. He was probably just tired, probably up all night.”

  “No doubt you’re right.” Then he said, “I’m an insensitive brute for the most part. But if there is one thing I know I can recognize, it is dislike. If he allows himself such thoughts, he was sitting there on his front porch thinking, Here comes Jack Boughton, that son of a bitch.”

  “Maybe. Maybe not.”

  “Sorry.”

  “For what?”

  “The language.”

  “Never mind.”

  He shook his head. “It’s hard, coming back here.” He opened the piano and touched middle C. “Did somebody tune this?”

  “Papa had it tuned when I told him I was coming home. Back. That was the first thing he wrote to me, after his regrets and prayers and so on. ‘It will be wonderful to have music in this house again.’ I haven’t played, though. I haven’t really felt like it.”

  Jack slid onto the bench. “I can’t do it without squinting one eye,” he said. He took a sip from an imaginary glass, set it down again, and sang, “‘When your heart’s on fire, you must realize, smoke gets in your eyes.’”

  “I hate that song,” she said.

  “‘I’ll be seeing you, in all the old familiar places . . .’”

  “Stop it,” she said.

  He laughed. “Sorry. I really am sorry.” He shrugged. “Limited repertoire.”

  “How can you even have a repertoire? You never practiced!”

  “I thought playing piano had something to do with being Presbyterian. Nobody told me you could get paid for it.”

  Their father’s voice rose from the next room, reedy and perfectly pitched. “‘This robe of flesh I’ll drop and rise, To seize the everlasting prize . . .’”

  Jack said, “I guess that’s a hint,” and he played the hymn through, embellishing a little but respectfully enough. “‘And sing while passing through the air, farewell, farewell, sweet hour of prayer.’” He knew the words, and he whispered them as he played. Well, that always was their father’s favorite hymn.

  “Yes!” the old man said. “And I would also very much enjoy ‘Shall We Gather at the River.’ Or ‘The Church’s One Foundation,’ if you prefer that one. It’s all the same to me.” And he began, rather lustily, “‘Shall we gather at the river, the beautiful, beautiful river—’” Jack plunged in after him. “That was rousing, Jack! Yes, the old songs. I believe I’ve worked up an appetite. Four o’clock. Well, I might have a cookie—”

  Jack said, “I’ll get one for you. Milk?”

  “If you don’t mind.”

  Jack brought him a plate and a glass. “Here you are, sir.”

  His father said, “It’s always ‘sir,’ isn’t it? Never Papa. Or Dad. Some of the others call me Dad now, some of the boys do.”

  “It’s a habit, I suppose. Do you mind?”

  “Oh no, Jack, I don’t mind! Call me whatever you like! It’s just so good to hear your voice. To hear your voice in this house again. It’s just wonderful. If I could tell your mother, she’d never believe me.” He took Jack’s hand and stroked it.

  Jack said, “Thank you, sir. It’s good to be here.”

  And his father said, “Oh yes. Well, I hope so. That’s another matter entirely, isn’t it. Yes, it is.” He patted Jack’s hand and released it. “There’s not much I can do about it. That’s how it is.” He said, “I know Glory got her feelings hurt something terrible. Terrible.” He shook his head.

  Jack looked at her, almost as if he had just learned something about her that was not perfectly obvious. Or maybe it was to see her reaction, to confirm his sense of things. How should she react? Her father understood much more than his happiness could abide with, and he was very old.

  “I’ll start supper,” she said.

  THE NEXT MORNING JACK WAS OUT IN THE GARDEN EARLY, cutting back weeds and spading up the soil. The old prairie came back the minute a spot of ground fell into neglect. Suddenly there would be weeds head high, gaunt shafts of plants with masses of tiny flowers on them, dusty lavender, droning with bees. And there would be black-eyed Susan, and nettles and milkweed and jewelweed and brambles and some avid vine that wilted in sunlight and broke at the slightest touch, leaving tiny whiskers of thorn in the hand that touched it. The roots they put down were deep and tough. It was miserable work to get them up. And here was Jack outside in the new morning light wrestling weeds out of the ground for all the world as if something depended on it. Glory made a pot of coffee and carried a cup of it out to him.

  “I am working up an appetite,” he said. “Today I will eat. Tonight I will sleep.” He stood the spade in the ground and sipped the coffee. “Excellent. Thank you.” They saw the little Ames boy in the road, walking along with his friend Tobias, the two of them elaborating a tale or a joke of some sort, to judge by the laughter. Robby saw them and shouted, “Hey, Mr. Boughton!”

  Jack said, “I guess that’s me.” He handed her the cup and walked down to the foot of the garden. He said, “Whatcha got there, kiddo? Is that a baseball?”

  “No,” he said, holding it up. “It�
�s just a ball.”

  Jack said, “Close enough. Chuck it here.”

  The boy threw the ball a few feet into the garden. Jack dropped down on one knee in the dirt and scooped it up, and made as if to fire it back to him, then lobbed it gently into the road. The boys laughed. Tobias said, “My turn. Let me throw it this time.” And again, the ball fell into the garden. Jack picked it up, then drew himself up sidelong, formal as a matador, held the ball to his chest in both hands, and sited at Tobias along his shoulder. The boys giggled. Jack lifted his foot—“The windup, the pitch”—and lobbed the ball into the road. They laughed and stamped and shouted, “Do that again!” and threw him the ball, but he tossed it back and said, “Sorry, gentlemen. Another time. There is work to be done.”

  Tobias said, “Are you his cousin?” and Robby said, “I already told you he isn’t my cousin!” and the two of them said goodbye and went off down the road, talking and laughing.

  Jack watched them. “They seem like good kids. Nice kids.” Then he brushed at the dirt on his pant leg. “I really shouldn’t have done that,” he said.

  Glory thought, That strange and particular grace a man’s body seems never to forget. Scooping up grounders and throwing sidearm. When her brothers were at home, even Jack would play baseball. That may have been why they were all so taken up with it. Even Jack could be drawn into arguments about records and statistics. He would sit around the radio with the rest of them to listen to the games. And sometimes when he played on a team he would make a beautiful catch or lay down a perfect bunt, exactly sufficient to circumstance as he never was elsewhere, and there would be a general happiness that included him, for a little while at least. She had forgotten all that.

  She said, “It’s good of you to clear this out. I had more or less decided to let it go back to nature.” He had even cleared the weeds out of the place by the fence where gourds reseeded themselves year after year.

  “Well,” he said, “at least now it will be a lot easier for the birds to find the strawberries.” He had always had a kind of hectic high-spiritedness that came over him when he ought to have been sad, and there it was, the strange old glitter in his eyes, the old brusqueness in his manner. What could have made him sad? He brushed again at the smudge on his knee and shrugged and said, “‘When Adam delved and Eve span, who was then the gentleman?’”

  “But you do need some work clothes.”

  “Oh yes,” he said. “Bib overalls. I have always admired them.”

  “You know what I mean. Something I could throw in the wash. Or you could.”

  He nodded, and took out a cigarette and lighted it. He said, “I am a stranger in a strange land. I might as well look like one, don’t you think?”

  “It doesn’t matter to me. They’re your trousers.”

  “Yes,” he said. “So they are. Good of you to point that out.” And he tossed his cigarette and went back to delving. That was a little flippant, she thought. She went into the kitchen to peel potatoes for a salad.

  After a while he came into the porch and the kitchen and stood by the door.

  “I’m sorry,” he said.

  “What for?”

  “When we were talking just now. I think I may have seemed—flippant.”

  “No. Not at all.”

  “That’s good,” he said. “I didn’t mean to. I can never be sure.” Then he went outside again.

  When she went out to the garden for chives and parsley, she saw the Reverend Ames strolling up the street. Jack said, “I guess he’s decided I’ll be around for a while. No point trying to avoid me.”

  Glory said, “Papa’s been storing up so many grievances against John Foster Dulles I was beginning to wonder if he could survive another day without Ames to grumble at.”

  “Then he won’t expect us to contribute to the conversation. That’s good,” he said. “I’m filthy.”

  GLORY WENT UP TO THE ATTIC, THE LIMBO OF THINGS that had been displaced from current use but were not in the strict sense useless. If civilization were to collapse, for example, there might be every reason to be glad for this hoard of old shoes and bent umbrellas, all of which would be better than nothing, however badly they might fare in any other comparison. Other pious families gave away the things they did not need. Boughtons put them in the attic, as if to make an experiment of doing without them before they undertook some irreparable act of generosity. Then, what with the business of life and the passage of time, what with the pungency of mothballs and the inevitable creep of dowdiness through any stash of old clothes, however smart they might have been when new, it became impossible to give the things away. From time to time their mother would come down from the attic empty-handed, brushing dust off herself, and write a check to the orphans’ home.

  So, Glory thought, the shirts her father had worn before he began to lose weight and height were no doubt in the attic, too. She found them in a cedar chest, laundered and ironed as if for some formal event, perhaps their interment. They had changed to a color milder than white, and there was about them, besides the smell of time and disuse, of starch and lavender and cedar, a hint of Old Spice that brought tears to her eyes. She took six of them, the newest, to judge by the cut of the cuffs and collars, and brought them down to the kitchen, hoping to get them washed, at least, before Jack saw them. But he was there, in the kitchen, rummaging in a drawer. He closed it. He said, “I was just looking for a tape measure. I thought I might get some chicken wire and fence in that garden.” It made her uneasy that he always seemed to feel he had to make an account of himself to her.

  “I found these shirts of Papa’s in the attic. I thought you could use them if you wanted to. Around the house. They’re good broadcloth.”

  He stepped back and smiled. “What is that? Cedar? Starch? Lilies? Candle wax? Isn’t the phrase ‘the odor of sanctity’? I would not presume.”

  She said, “I’m pretty sure the odor of sanctity will come out in the wash,” and he laughed. “I’ll try the effects of detergent and sunshine and then I’ll ask you again.”

  “I’ve put you to a lot of trouble.”

  “It’s no trouble.”

  He nodded. “You really are kind to me,” he said, almost objectively, as though he finally felt he could justify that conclusion.

  “Thank you,” she said.

  SHE DECIDED TO WALK TO THE GROCERY STORE WHILE THE shirts were in the washing machine and her father was content with the new issue of Christian Century. It was time she stopped avoiding ordinary contact with people. If Jack could brave it, certainly she could, too. It was a beautiful afternoon, bright, warm, and the leaves still had a glitter of newness about them. She had almost forgotten weather, between her father and her novels and her unaccountable insistence on reading them in the darkest room in the house, excepting only the dining room, beside that tedious radio. The store was almost empty, the cashier was cordial. She started home again through the radiant day with a brown paper bag in her arms, redolent of itself and the cabbage she had bought and the Cheddar cheese, thinking she had done herself a little good, just getting out. She decided to put Andersonville aside for a day or two.

  Jack was standing on the pavement with his hands on his hips, looking in the window of the hardware store. There were always two television sets in the window, a portable and a console, and they ran all day, test pattern to test pattern. This had been true for years, from the time television was a curiosity. A woman stopped beside him and watched for a minute. She said something to him, and he nodded and spoke, and then she went on. Glory walked up to him and stood beside him. He touched his hat brim, never looking away from the screen.

  She said, “Is that Montgomery?”

  He nodded. “Yes, it is.” Then the screen showed a tube of toothpaste.

  Glory said, “Lila told me their church was planning to get a TV set so that Ames can watch baseball. I suppose that means Papa will want one, too.”

  He looked at her. “That’s an idea.” He took her package from h
er and they began to walk home. He said, “A portable is a couple hundred dollars. But you could ask him about it.”

  “I could just have them deliver one to the house. If he doesn’t like it, they’ll take it back.”

  He cleared his throat. “You could do that now.”

  “Yes, I could. Do you want to help me choose one?”

  “Not really. I’ll wait here.” He laughed. “I’ve already spent about an hour in there looking at them. They all seem to work.”

  So she went back to the store and chose an eighteen-inch Philco with a rabbit-ear antenna. The clerk asked after her father and her brothers and sisters and after Jack, too. “Is he home for a visit, or is he thinking he might stay?”

  Glory said, for brevity’s sake, “He’s just visiting for a while.” If she’d said she didn’t know what had brought him back to Gilead, the strangeness of his situation would have interested the clerk, and the owner of the store, who came out of the back room wiping machine oil from his fingers. Interested them more than it did already. She imagined Jack standing among the bins of nails and tool belts and the ranks of crowbars, unspoken to beyond the ordinary courtesies, seeming unaware of their awareness of him, watching flickering television in that cave full of the smells of leather and wood and oily metal, idle among all those implements of force and purpose, citified among the steel-toed boots and the work shirts. An odd place for a man to loiter who was so alive to embarrassment, so predisposed to sensing even the thought of rebuke. And when he did leave the store, standing on the pavement, looking in at the window, at the silently fulminating authorities and the Negro crowds.

  Well, the clerk told her, the Philco would be delivered that afternoon, and if the Reverend decided to keep it, an antenna would be installed on the roof whenever he gave the word. The owner reassured her on precisely these same points. People had always been eager to accommodate her father, and to give even ordinary transactions like this one the aspect of exceptional kindness. So she was obliged to answer every question and to accept every assurance twice at least. They told her that many of the older folks find television a great comfort. They agreed that the baseball season was shaping up. And she was obliged to hear a little gossip.