Jack (Gilead #4)(21)

“Why?”

“Because I said so. Because you’re skin and bone. Because you’re keeping a birthday in a graveyard.”

“That was a joke.”

“No, it wasn’t. If I think of you sometime, I don’t want to think of you here.”

He said, “I won’t be here. I have that address in my pocket. Instructions, and some telephone numbers. Mention of a modest reward. They’ll see to it. My family. They’re very reliable.” She was silent, so he reconsidered what she had said. “Oh, I see. You mean I should reform my life. This has been suggested to me on other occasions. Just this morning, in fact. I asked a fellow for a light. Such a small thing to ask, but it didn’t go very well. He kept the whole match to himself. That kind of day, I thought. A day of atonement. But you want me to change my life so that, if you do happen to think of me sometime—”

“I want you to be alive. That’s all. Nothing complicated.”

He laughed. “Not for you, maybe.” Then he said, “My father was right. He told me once, The creatures want their lives. Every one of them. When this creature has an empty belly, he finds something to put in it. So, no need to worry.” If you walk along the docks, you can almost always find a place where the dishwasher didn’t show up.

She just shook her head.

So he said, “You caught me a little off guard there. At first I thought that was a remarkable thing to say. I don’t believe I have ever heard anyone say that, so explicitly. Then I realized that I feel the same about you. I mean, that I’m glad you’re alive. And hope you stay that way, and so on. I suppose the sentiment is fairly commonplace. Most people feel that way about most people, I believe. Which is a good thing. There can be disappointments, of course. I hadn’t thought about it in so many words, but I see your point. Thank you, in fact.” Nerves.

She laughed.

But he felt he should say, “You really don’t know what you’re asking.” Changing his life meant changing himself. Could it be some misbegotten loyalty that made him so intractably Jack Boughton, when so many better options must be available?

She said, “I’m asking it, anyway.”

“Then I’ll try.”

She shook her head. “Not good enough.”

“Well, you have to understand certain things. Let’s see.”

“I’m listening.”

“That may be the problem.”

“Be serious.”

“I’ll try.”

She shook her head.

“All right,” he said. “I have not actually chosen this life. The path of least resistance is not a choice, in the usual sense of the word. I know it appears to be one. But when the resistance you encounter on every other path seems, you know, indomitable, then there you are. I’m sure I have been too easily discouraged. Still, I know whereof I speak, more or less.”

She said, “That won’t do. The path of least resistance put that scar on your face.”

“It’s done worse, believe me. But there is the path of less resistance. No improvement. That one cracked a rib.”

“Don’t tell me. It’s none of my business. I don’t want to hear about it.”

“I was kidding.”

“You weren’t kidding. At least be honest about that.” She stepped away from him, turned away from him. “Oh.”

Two ribs. Not that it mattered. Finally he said, “You happen to have spent a few hours with a bum, Miss Miles. I’m sure this is an unusual experience for you. For most people, really. Anyone in my family, certainly.” She was standing there with her back to him. It had to be morning sooner or later, and then it would be over, anyway. “This sort of life has its costs, I agree. But I’m basically harmless. Most of us are. If we’re incorrigible, that might just be a sign of—contentment.” He might have said “—resignation.” They aren’t unrelated. He was telling her to stop talking to him as if she had a claim on him, from taking that proprietary tone, of the fortunate to the less fortunate, the reputable to the disreputable. No, he wasn’t really talking to her. The Methodists ran very good soup kitchens, and she’d have been in one of them, smiling and ladling, from the minute she was old enough to know the word “charity.” He wasn’t quite a regular, and this was St. Louis, but the thought that she might have seen him there sometime, in the bald light, bowl in hand, shocked him. He had given himself another of those unbearable memories, a stark vision of something that had not happened but was so very possible that he had to retrieve his handkerchief and wipe his brow. A memory like that is half an impulse. He would make himself avoid everything Methodist—AME, Wesleyan, and United. There were things he sometimes imagined in his foolish moments he might say to anyone who seemed to take offense at him. To that man who shook out the flame on his match rather than giving Jack the use of it. Or to a brother or sister, if one of them ever found him. But to hear the words aloud, and spoken to her, was startling. He said, “Yes, I should try to do better.”

“I didn’t mean that.”

Well, neither did he. It was probably best just to be quiet and wait until the conversation changed, as conversations will when no one is saying anything. Given a little time they change like weather, clouds passing, a breeze coming up. No way to predict, but something else is usually something better. He wished he had a cigarette. It was that shame he could never talk himself out of. Candor was no help at all. He walked along the verge of the water, just a few steps away from her, but far enough to make a point of some kind. After a few minutes she came and stood beside him, in the dark and the quiet, the water at their feet making its soft, idle sounds, sifting pebbles. She was in every way still. No words, just stillness, like a presence in a dream.