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by Marilynne Robinson

  “And how is the old gent?”

  He shook his head. “Well, you know, he’s old. I don’t know why, but I can’t quite get used to it. When we were kids, he was taller than Ames, wasn’t he? He was very impressive. He used to seem to me to loom over everybody. And he had that big laugh. I was proud of him, I really was.”

  “We were all proud of him.”

  “Of course.”

  “And we were proud of you.”

  He looked at her. “Why do I find that hard to believe?”

  “No, really. Not always. And it got a little harder over time.” He laughed. “But we thought you were, I don’t know, chimerical, piratical, mercurial—”

  He said, “I was a nuisance and a brat. I was a scoundrel.”

  “Well,” she said, “you know more than I do about the particulars. I’m just telling you how you seemed to the rest of us.”

  He smiled. “What a pleasant surprise.” Then he said, “Ames always saw right through me. And when he looks at me he still sees a scoundrel. The other day I had the terrible feeling that maybe he wasn’t quite wrong. So I began to be charming, you know. A little oily.” He laughed. “I called him Papa. He deserved it, too. He hadn’t even mentioned to the wife that my father had honored him with a namesake. Can you imagine?”

  “You did bring out the crotchety side in him.”

  “The poor old devil.” Jack shook his head. “I tried his patience. Like I would have teased a cat or stirred an anthill. Once I blew up his mailbox. He was walking up the street from Bible study. He just put his books down on the porch step and went and got the garden hose. I don’t believe he ever told anybody a thing about it.” He laughed. “It really was quite a spectacle. It was dark. I’d had to climb through my window to be out so late.”

  “You know, they moved you into that room, with the porch roof under the window, so that you could make your escape without killing yourself. You remember that time the trellis broke and Mama thought you were dead because you’d gotten the wind knocked out of you.”

  “I thought they’d just moved me away from the trellis.”

  “That, too, of course. They thought of telling you that you could leave through the door if you were so intent on leaving. But they were afraid that might seem like encouragement.”

  He looked at her. “What right did I have to be so strange? A good question. I’ve lost my watch. It must be ten o’clock by now.”

  “Yes, five after. I was a child when I said that to you. I hoped you had forgotten it. It didn’t mean anything.”

  He laughed. “Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings. Good night, now.”

  She went up to her room and sat down at the dresser to brush out her hair. She heard the front door open and, quietly, close.

  JACK CAME DOWNSTAIRS LATE THE NEXT MORNING AND asked if he could borrow an envelope.

  “Do you need a stamp?”

  “Yes. Thank you.” He took a folded letter from his jacket pocket and slipped it into the envelope and sealed it, affixed the stamp, and then went into the dining room to write the address. When he came back into the kitchen, he picked up the coffeepot. “All gone.”

  “I’ll have a fresh pot for you when you come back.”

  “Thanks, Glory.” Then he said, “I’m sorry if I kept you awake last night. I was restless. I needed to take a walk.”

  “No, I went right to sleep,” she said, which was not true. “I tried to be quiet.”

  “I didn’t hear a thing.” That also was not true. She had heard him come through the door at a little after three. A five-hour walk. Well, he was always a mystery.

  Her father had been grave that morning, having heard the furtive opening and closing of the door, she supposed, and again, the opening and closing of it and the cautious steps on the stairs. “No Jack for breakfast this morning, I see,” he said. “Things don’t change, I guess. People don’t. So it seems.” He picked up the newspaper, looked at it for a minute or two, and put it down again. “I guess I’m off to my room, Glory, if you don’t mind helping me here.”

  “You haven’t touched your cereal, Papa.”

  “That’s a fact. I just don’t feel up to it. If you don’t mind.” So she took him to his room and helped him into bed again. She would speak to Jack, when the time seemed right, and when she could think of a tactful way to broach the subject. There was no knowing what the old man heard, or what he knew, but it was clearly anxiety that made him so unaccountably aware. Jack troubled his sleep even when he didn’t leave the house in the middle of the night. Five hours, she thought, imagining her father awake in the darkness. She sat down with the crossword puzzle. Before she was done with it, Jack had come downstairs with his letter and had left for the post office.

  SHE SAW HIM COMING UP THE ROAD AGAIN, LOOKING A little dejected, she thought, but he smiled when he came in the door and set his hat on the refrigerator and a can of coffee on the table. “I thought we might be running out,” he said. “The Reverend isn’t up yet?”

  “I guess he didn’t sleep well. He didn’t want any breakfast. I put him back to bed.”

  “Oh,” Jack said. “I’m sorry. It’s probably my fault.”

  “No way of knowing. Sleep isn’t always easy for him.”

  Jack said, “Yes,” and nodded, as if he were accepting a rebuke. He poured himself a cup of coffee, sat down at the table, and opened the newspaper. Then he put it aside. “Did he see this?”

  “What?” She looked at the headline. RASH OF BURGLARIES. “I don’t know. I suppose he did. Why?”

  He rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands. “No reason, I suppose. When I walked into the drugstore this morning, the conversation stopped. You know that feeling you have when you’re the reason people aren’t talking.” He laughed. “So I went into the grocery store, just to see if it would happen again. And it did. I was trying to tell myself it didn’t mean anything.”

  “Well,” she said, “I doubt that it did, Jack. Why should anyone think this has anything to do with you? Papa wouldn’t think that.”

  He laughed into his hands. “I’m sorry,” he said. “This is humiliating.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “I did that once. I did exactly that. I went out at night and tried doorknobs. And I found a couple of doors that were unlocked and took some money and some beer. Teddy saw it in my room. He said he’d tell the Reverend if I didn’t. He gave me an hour. I used the time to drink the beer. Then the old gent came upstairs and gathered up the money and took me off to return it, drunk as I was. I couldn’t stop laughing—ah!”

  “Really, Jack. That must have been—what?—thirty years ago?”

  “Hmm. More like twenty-eight.”

  “How can you think anyone would remember?”

  “You don’t think he remembers?”

  “He probably does, I suppose. But that doesn’t mean anyone else would. And it doesn’t mean he thinks you did this, for heaven’s sake.”

  He looked at her. “Would you be willing to vouch for my whereabouts?”

  “Willing,” she said. “Of course I’d be willing. But I don’t know a thing in the world—your whereabouts are always your best-kept secret.”

  He nodded. “That’ll change. But you see my point.”

  “No, I don’t. Besides, this must have happened night before last, to be in the paper this morning.”

  “Did I leave the house night before last?”

  “I don’t know.”

  He shrugged. “You see what I mean.”

  “Did you?”

  He nodded. “I can’t sleep,” he said. “I can’t walk around in the house. He hears me. I can’t stay in that room. Well, now I will.” He looked at her. “I’m not going to leave yet.”

  “Leave? But maybe nothing has happened, Jack. Maybe Papa was reminded of that other time, but he’ll forget it again—”

  “What will I say to him? By the way, Dad, I sure haven’t been out stealing petty cash from the dime store?�
�� He laughed.

  “You won’t say anything. Things like this happen. It has nothing to do with you.”

  “Right. I have to remember that. I will keep that firmly in mind.”

  “Now, what would you like for breakfast?”

  “A little more coffee.”

  “No. You’re going to eat something. If you want to look like Raskolnikov, all right. Otherwise, you had better start eating. It would probably help you sleep. I’m going to make pancakes.”

  He laughed. “Oh, please no. Not pancakes. You have to let me work up to this.”

  “French toast. Oatmeal. Eggs and toast.”

  “Now I’m Raskolnikov. Just yesterday I was Cary Grant.”

  “You don’t eat and you don’t sleep. That’s what happens. I’ll make French toast.”

  “Yes. I have to keep my strength up, I suppose. I have to try to look employable.”

  She said, “So you really are thinking of staying here?”

  He shrugged. “The thought has definitely crossed my mind.”

  “Well. I’m surprised.”

  “And you want to leave.”

  “Yes, I do. I hate this town.”

  “Why?”

  She said, “Because it reminds me of when I was happy.”

  “Oh. So I suppose there isn’t much chance that you might reconsider.”

  “Probably not. Should I?”

  He laughed. “I believe you may be the only friend I have in the world at the moment, Glory. Nobody else would bother to force breakfast on me. So my motives are selfish. As always.”

  She stirred the milk and eggs and heated the griddle. “I know that could be charm,” she said. “I’ll believe you if you actually do what I tell you to do. Eat, primarily. And stop worrying about everything.”

  “I’ll do my poor best. Seriously. I will.”

  “Then I might reconsider, after all.”

  “It’s kind of you to say that, Glory. Everything would be so much harder if you weren’t here. Impossible, in fact. I know that doesn’t put you under any kind of obligation—”

  Their father called from the next room, “Something smells very good. Yes, a late breakfast. That will be wonderful.”

  “Coming, Papa,” Glory said. She helped the old man pull himself together and brought him into the kitchen. Jack had set the table and was standing, waiting for them. That deference, that guardedness. The newspaper was nowhere in sight.

  “So, Jack. Up and about early today. Yes.”

  “Yes, sir. I had a letter I wanted to get in the mail.”

  “Well, that’s fine.” Then he said, “Could you say the grace for us, Jack? I think I’m not quite awake yet. Not up to it.”

  “Perhaps Glory—”

  “No, no, Jack. I want to hear you say the grace. Humor an old fellow.”

  “All right.” He cleared his throat. “For all we are about to receive, help us to be truly thankful. Amen.”

  His father looked at him. “That will do, I suppose. I have heard that grace any number of times. ‘Bless these gifts to our use and us to Thy service’—that’s another one. Perfectly all right. And the Lord is forgiving. So we can start our breakfast now.”

  Jack said, “Sorry.”

  “Yes, it doesn’t matter. Prayer, you know, you open up your thoughts, and then you can get a clear look at them. No point trying to hide anything. There is a great benefit in anything the Lord asks of us, especially in prayer. I should have done more to encourage that habit in you.”

  Jack said, “You did a great deal, as I remember.”

  “Not enough, I’m afraid.”

  Jack smiled. “So it would seem.” He glanced at Glory.

  She said, “Would you like syrup on your toast, Papa? We also have honey and blackberry jam.”

  “Syrup is fine. Here I am trying to sort out things I should have seen to forty years ago. Well, just take it as fatherly wisdom, Jack. Prayer is a discipline in truthfulness, in honesty.”

  Jack said, “Yes, sir. I will bind those words for a sign upon my hand. They shall be for frontlets between my eyes.”

  His father looked at him. “That may be sarcasm, but at least you know your Scriptures.”

  “I didn’t intend it as sarcasm, really.”

  “Very good. But here is the other thing I want to see to. It came to me in my prayer this morning. There is an account at the bank, some money from your mother’s side of the family. I was going to just leave it there for all of you to share when I died. But I will tell the bank to give the two of you access to it. There is no reason why you should want for money. No need for problems of that kind.”

  Jack blushed darkly. He put his hands to his face.

  “Yes,” his father said. “We’re Boughtons because my father’s grandfather was an Englishman, but except for him we’re Scots. You know about all that. But I mention it because I was always told by my grandmother, and my father, too, that you can’t be too careful with money. But I think you can be, and I think maybe I have been a little too careful with it. My father, you know, he was a man of God, a very good man, but he was shrewd in ways I thought were not always becoming to him. My intention was to be openhanded, especially toward my children. As I could have been, because my poor old father left me the farm and this house and the furnishings. But I think I may have been more like him than I realized. I have money that just sits there in the bank, year after year.”

  Jack said, “You’ve always been generous.”

  “But not like I could have been. So I want to change that now.”

  “I don’t think there’s any real need.”

  “Reason not the need, Jack. Yes. If it lightens your burden a little, that’s reason enough. I hate to think that any trouble might have come to you because your father was a tight-fisted old Scotsman!”

  “I can reassure you on that point, sir.”

  “Good. That’s fine. But there is that other vice of the Scots, you know. Drink.”

  Jack smiled. “So I understand.”

  “It is a plague among them, my grandmother said. They have no defense against it. She said she had seen many a good man wholly destroyed by it.”

  “Remarkable.”

  “Yes, it is. It is. When you’re old like me you will understand. These are serious things, with grave consequences.”

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t intend any disrespect. I really didn’t.”

  His father looked at him. “I know that, Jack. And I see that the fault here is mine. I have been speaking to you as if you were a very young man, and you are not young at all.”

  Jack smiled.

  “I’ve been saying things to you I should have said many years ago.”

  “You did say them, sir.”

  The old man nodded. “I thought perhaps I had.”

  Glory said, “Neither one of you has eaten a bite. You are both wasting away before my eyes, and the dogs in this neighborhood are getting too fat to walk. It is ridiculous.”

  “Yes, Glory, well, I’m very tired now.”

  “I’m sorry, Papa, but no one is leaving this table until he has eaten breakfast.”

  Jack smiled and stretched and looked at her as if to say she had no idea of the difficulty of what she was asking of him, but then he took a few bites. “Excellent, Glory. Thank you.” He pushed back his chair.

  “You haven’t finished yet.”

  “That’s true,” he said, and he rested his head on his hand and ate what she had put on his plate, mock docile. “There,” he said. “Now may I be excused?”

  “No. You can wait for Papa to finish. Where are your manners?”

  “A full-fledged domestic tyrant,” her father said. “You see what I have had to put up with.”

  “Stop grumbling and eat.”

  Her father said, “I wouldn’t mind if you cut this up a little for me, Glory. You could help me out here.”

  “I’m sorry. I should have thought of that.”

  “Too busy barking orders!”
he said, and laughed.

  Jack sat back with his arms folded and watched the old man struggle to close his hand on his fork. The scar under his eye was whiter, as it was, she knew by now, when he was weary.

  WHEN SHE HAD SETTLED THE OLD MAN FOR SLEEP, SHE went out to the garden. Jack was at work already, chopping weeds. He stopped to watch the mailman pass on the other side of the street, then he lighted a cigarette.

  She said, “Beware the Thane of Fife.”

  “Yes,” he said. “This being a Scotsman is no bed of roses. A Scotsman!” He laughed. “I don’t think I’ve ever even seen one of those.”

  “I suspect Scottishness is another name for predestination. It explains everything, more or less.”

  “The poor old bastard. Sorry. I wouldn’t want to have me for a problem. At his age. Not that I won’t.” Then he said, “You know, if there has been another break-in, the cops might come by.”

  “The cop. This is Gilead.”

  “I’m serious, Glory. That could be very bad. For the old gent. For me, too. He already thinks I did it.”

  “You’re making too much of this, Jack. If he thought you were a thief, would he give you the keys to the family coffers?”

  “Yes, he would. That is exactly what he would do. He would think I might have needed money. He would give me money to keep me from stealing again. That’s what he was talking about in there.”

  “Maybe.”

  He nodded. “You know I’m right.” He said, “I don’t want you to comfort me, Glory. I want you to help me. This could ruin everything. I deal with things like this very badly. I’ve gotten worse with practice.”

  “Of course I’ll help you. But you have to tell me what I should do.”

  He said, “Just think it through with me. Help me think what to do if things go wrong. It probably seems crazy to be so scared, but I am scared.” He laughed. “I’ve done—I’ve done a lot of hard things in my life, but another— If I had to do thirty days, that would pretty well finish me up.” He said, “I fear I am not in my perfect mind, little sister. I don’t know how to deal with this.” Then he said, “You have to keep me sober. That’s the first thing.”

  “I’ll do my best, Jack. I will. I swear to God. But if you want me to help you think this out, you’ll have to give me a little time. And you’ll have to promise me that you’ll try to ignore Papa. He shouldn’t talk to you the way he does. He isn’t himself. He’s always loved you more than any of us.”