Jack (Gilead #4)(17)

Jack said, “He says it like he means it,” and then regretted speaking at all because she seemed intent on the song and then on the silence that followed it.

Finally she said, “You can’t sing that song without sounding like you mean it. You can’t even say the words.”

“It’s a good song.”

“It’s a terrible song. I hate that word ‘wish.’ It sounds like somebody’s dying breath! Like it’s taking the wind right out of you.”

“Yes. But it’s still a pretty good song.”

Then she said, “I did a foolish thing. I tried to use it in class. Expressive language that you’d hear right on the radio. Perfectly ordinary language. I thought it might help them like poetry better if I used that kind of example.”

“I guess it didn’t work.”

“Well, they got embarrassed. Some of them started whispering and laughing behind their hands. Notes passed. At their age, I don’t know how I could have expected anything else.”

“They suspected you of romantic longings, I suppose?”

“I tried to talk my way out of it, whatever it was they suspected. Are the words of the song spoken words, or are they just thoughts in someone’s mind? How do you feel when you wish for something? I was going to talk about that word ‘so.’ Most of the time you would say ‘so much,’ ‘so well.’ Something that finishes the thought. But just saying ‘so’ like that. It could mean a hundred things. All at the same time.”

“Tenderly. Hopelessly.”

“I was going to ask them whether they would be sorry or glad to have feelings like that. I don’t know what I thought I was doing.”

“Deeply. Utterly. Irrationally. Passionately. Futilely.”

“Tenderly.”

So after a minute, he asked her, “What would you say? Sorry or glad?”

She was quiet. Then she said, “I don’t know. Those things can be hard to tell apart sometimes.”

“Where tenderness is involved, definitely.”

“Definitely.”

He brought her up a hill. “Our lovely little tomb,” he said. “And a fine view of the lake.” He actually carried a handkerchief, as his father had told them all to do. Excellent advice. He used it to wipe down the steps, and then he shook it out and folded it. Too damp to put in a pocket. No place else to put it. “Please,” he said, “make yourself comfortable.”

She sat down on one side of the top step. “Now you sit down, too. There’s room. I can move over a little more.”

“I actually forgot—I thought we’d have more spacious accommodations, I really did. This is the first time I’ve brought a guest.” “Masher” is the word his father would have used. A man who contrives to make himself familiar. A masher would be thinking, “Clever of me.”

She said, “That’s fine. But you can’t keep standing there. We could go find a bench if you want to.”

He said, “We’re a little bit out of the rain here, if it rains.” She moved over some more, pulling her coat around her. He sat down on the second step, rested his folded arms on his knees, and looked at where the lake was. They were quiet.

Then she said, “It’s best when we talk. For passing the time.”

“Yes. I was about to mention that.”

They were quiet. The lake was darker than the darkness, visible because it was absolutely invisible. Like the sky on a night that was moonless and clear, a strong, present black. On one such night he had thrown a rock at a streetlamp, just to see the sky he knew was up there. He hadn’t even been especially drunk. He had been asserting a fundamental human privilege, as he explained to the cop. The cop had said, “Drunk and disorderly,” predictably enough. Was that a year ago? Five years ago? It all ran together.

He said, “The word ‘lake’ is related to the word ‘lack.’ An absence. No kidding, I looked it up. Long hours in the public library, out of the weather. The intellect can share its wealth without diminution. Somebody said that, if I remember correctly. So I always feel a little at ease in a library. I can take the best they have and no one is the worse for it. I mean, you know, things to think about. Not actual books. Well, I do get attached to certain things, books, but I bring them back sooner or later.” Then he said, “I owe you one Paul Dunbar. With interest by now, I suppose.”

She said, “Finish that couplet and leave the book on the porch and we’ll be even.”

“Spoken like a teacher.”

After a minute, she said, “I’ll probably be doing that for the rest of my life, no matter what happens. Talking like that. You start thinking in a certain way, thinking you have something to say to people. That they ought to listen to.”

“Like a preacher.”

“Worse. A preacher still has an air about him, even if his last church chased him out and barred the door behind him. He can still cite texts. People never quite ignore that.”

“Things might turn out all right. You might be talking to adolescents about couplets for decades to come. An excellent life. I mean that. Really.”

“Well, it is. Especially since I seem to be looking back on it.”

“Well,” he said, “you listen to this, now. Diligent effort has gone into this—what do you call it?—recitation. It sounds better if you shout it, but, you know, neither the time nor the place. I have to remember how it begins. Yes. ‘Before their eyes in sudden view appear The secrets of the hoary deep; a dark Illimitable ocean, without bound, Without dimension, where length, breadth, and height, And time, and place, are lost; where eldest Night And Chaos, ancestors of Nature, hold Eternal anarchy, amidst the noise / Of endless wars, and by confusion stand.’ John Milton. The greatest Presbyterian poet, my father said.”