Jack (Gilead #4)(13)

That made her pause. “How, exactly?”

“The way I ruin things. It’s a little different every time. I actually surprise myself. Except that it’s inevitable. That’s always the same, I suppose. One thing I can count on.”

“I suppose I’m the one who ruined it, if it’s ruined. I’m really sorry. It’s been nice, considering everything. Walking barefoot in the dark. I wouldn’t expect to enjoy that.”

“All right,” he said. “I’m all right. For a minute there I was plunged back into the land of the living. Terrible experience! Did you say ‘enjoy’?”

“Yes, I did.”

“Well, that helps.”

“And we are not in the land of the living. We’re ghosts among the ghosts. They’d be jealous. The two of us out here in the sweet air, just talking for the pleasure of it.” She took his arm.

“Yes, two spirits. Invisible. Nothing else to say about us. I mean, in terms of our measuring up to expectations. Until the Last Judgment, anyway. The outward man perisheth and so on. Then again, if the outward man needs a haircut, that’s a problem that can be solved, in theory. The inward man—renewed day by day—the same blasted nuisance every time. Sometimes I wish I were just a suit of clothes and a decent shave. Uninhabited, so to speak.”

Quiet.

He said, “That must have sounded strange.”

“Not really. My father had a word or two to say about the immortal soul. Poor, vulnerable thing that it is.”

After a while, she said, “Remember, I mentioned that there seemed to be stories behind Hamlet? That weren’t told and weren’t hidden? A letter behind the one Polonius reads would go along with that idea, wouldn’t it?”

“I guess so. And why would Horatio have been around for months without letting Hamlet know he was there?”

“Yes. And Henry the Eighth said he’d broken biblical law when he married his brother’s widow. The audience would know that. Claudius does exactly the same, worse, and only Hamlet is bothered by it. Isn’t that odd?”

He laughed. “I can’t keep up. I hung around college for a while and let my brother take my classes for me. If the subject of English kings came up, he never mentioned it. You should be talking to Teddy.”

Her cheek brushed his shoulder. “You’ll do.”

Quiet. That would be embarrassment. Well, uneasiness at forgetting for a moment just who was walking beside her. Next she would mention Timbuktu. The dark side of the moon.

She said, “I believe we have souls. I think that’s true.”

He could deal with that. “Interesting,” he said. “Yes, I suppose I agree. A pretty thought, in any case. Basically. Depending.” Reprobation. Then he thought, You be my soul. But at least he didn’t say it. “Are there things you don’t believe, Miss Miles? I mean, that your father said you ought to believe? Are you at peace with the tenets of Methodism?”

“I like my church. I don’t really like tenets, I suppose.”

“The communion of saints? The forgiveness of sins?”

“Well, I do like those. I’m not so sure what they mean, though.” She was quiet, and then she said, “I wonder sometimes if there would be such a thing as sin if God didn’t exist.”

“I’m certain of it.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. I suppose sinning is doing harm. Agreed? And everything is vulnerable to harm, one way or another. Everybody is vulnerable. It’s kind of horrible when you think about it. All that breakage, without so much as an intention behind it half the time. All that tantalizing fragility.” He laughed. “Maybe it wouldn’t be called sin. And I suppose there wouldn’t be such a thing as forgiveness. Which would be a relief, frankly.” Then he said, “In my opinion,” wishing he hadn’t laughed, and really wishing he hadn’t mentioned tantalizing fragility. When did he first notice that in himself, that little fascination with damage and its consequences? He might alarm her. He might even mean to alarm her. Doing damage to this fragile night because it was such an isolated thing, an accident, with a look of meaning about it and no meaning at all. She held his arm and he guided her steps, skirting the places where the shadows of the burr oaks would have been and their acorns would have fallen for so many years. Any spirit looking on might have thought they had come there from days or years of dear friendship, passing through the graveyard on their way to the kind of futures people have ordinarily, heartbreak or marriage or something, when in fact they were not only strangers but estranged, she talking with him only to make the time pass, the long few hours.

Finally she said, “Sometimes I do wonder. If we were the only ones left after the world ended, and we made the rules, they really might work just as well. For us, at least.”

“Us. So you think we could agree? We could come up with a new set of commandments, between the two of us? We’ll still remember the Sabbath, I suppose.”

She shrugged. “It would be pretty hard to forget it.”

“I’ve tried,” he said. “I’ve made the experiment.”

“No luck?”

“I’ve forgotten one or two. They’re hard to forget—no liquor, no cigarettes. All those bells. I’ve tried to plan ahead, to get through the day, but it’s not really in my nature. If I’ve got ’em, I smoke ’em. Et cetera. Anyway, that’s remembering. You just start a little early.”