Jack (Gilead #4)(45)
Della stepped away from the group and walked down the pavement to where he stood, he intent on lighting a cigarette so as not to lose face, whatever that might amount to.
She said, “I didn’t expect to see you here.”
He said, “Ditto,” and flicked his cigarette.
“I’m here with my brothers. They have friends from the service who are passing through town.” She said, “I’d like you to meet my brother Marcus.”
Jack said, “Maybe another time. When I’m a little less drunk.”
She nodded. “They came up from Memphis just for a couple of days. I don’t know when there’ll be another time.”
He took a long drag on his cigarette. “Why do this, Miss Miles? What point is there in this?”
“Well,” she said, “they’ve heard the rumors. About the white man.”
He laughed. “So shaking my hand is supposed to make him feel better about that. I have my doubts. Sorry, lady. I’ve had a rough day. I don’t want to meet your brother.”
He was trying to put an end to absolutely everything, but she hung down her lovely head and he was covered with shame that he had been rude to her.
“I understand,” she said. “Another time.” But she didn’t step away.
By then her brother was simply watching them, with his hands on his hips. And there was Jack, shivering in his stale shirt, with a pretzel in each pocket, which had earlier seemed a stabilizing arrangement but now seemed to sum up his whole life. He took a drag on his cigarette and did not look at her.
“I’m glad I know you,” she said. “People act as though it’s something to be ashamed of. I mean, that we’re friends, that we talk sometimes. But I can’t live that way. I can’t just be ashamed because people say I should be.” She said, “I have something to give you.” She opened her purse—Good Christ, not a handout. She said, “It’s a poem. I’d like to know what you think of it. I’ve been carrying it around with me in case I might see you sometime. Don’t read it now. Maybe I’ll see you again and you can tell me then.”
Jack said, “They’re waiting for you.” He didn’t say, Please be gone. Let your brothers look after you. Don’t associate yourself with some old white bum just to show the world that you’re brave.
But she stood there with him, beside him, just long enough to make it clearly intentional, to her brothers and to him. Then she said, “You take care of yourself, Jack,” and looked at him for emphasis, and walked away.
Mortal, can these bones live? O Lord God, you know.
He folded her poem to fit in his shirt pocket, not a place where those debt collectors would expect him to carry money. Then he ate a pretzel, which was a first step in rethinking his life.
The first thing to decide was whether it was kind or unkind of her to speak with him that way. To rekindle the thought of herself when he was ready to believe those ashes were cold. On the other hand, what could it matter? There were a thousand barriers between black Della and his indigent, disreputable self, and mere kindness could not lower any of them so much as an inch. Sometime he might have a chance to say, That poem of yours is very whatever, deep or something, and the world will clear its throat and scowl, seeing them together, and her brothers will be on the train to St. Louis. And he will skulk away, hoping to leave her life undamaged, her good name. He should have let her introduce Marcus, assuming he would have agreed to it. Furtiveness, evasiveness, would have encouraged the notion that impropriety figured somehow.
* * *
By the time he was back in his room he had decided that he might as well look at her poem. Clothed as he was in the garments of misfeasance and bewilderment, there lived in him a deeply arrogant man. How could this be true? But as he walked away from the miserable scene of his rudeness and drunkenness, having brought a beautiful thing to a bad end, he began to gloat a little in anticipation of the mediocrity, at best, of this attempt at poetry, for this purpose making himself believe that she was like most people. Maybe some third-rate magazine had held on to this scrap of martyred language long enough to have kindled hopes in her, pride even. It was a very good thing that he would never see her again. He would be spared the temptation of telling her, with unaccountable confidence, exactly what he thought of her poem. Of embarrassing her with a cutting assault on her illusions. That old, familiar qualm passed over him as he imagined himself giving in to his sense of her vulnerability. Jesus, what a good thing it was that he had utterly disgraced himself already.
He unfolded the paper. Below the poem it said, “Thomas Traherne.” Oh. These two words deflated his condescension instantly. It seemed both deft and kind of her to put herself beyond the reach of even his fantasy of desolating criticism, though she could hardly have known when she wrote it out that he would have been driven to such a shift, that he would have hoped to smirk inwardly, to destroy his own illusions about her and to snuff out any hope that still lingered in him. At the bottom of the paper she had written This is true.
All right.
“For Man to Act as if his Soul did see
The very Brightness of Eternity;
For Man to Act as if his Love did burn
Above the Spheres, even while it’s in its Urne.”
Oh, too bad. “Urne” is a stretch. Plenty of words rhyme with “burn.” This fellow was probably writing before some ideas were all worn out. Love does actually burn, to ashes, which is how it ends up in an urn, presumably. But no one could say that now. “Superannuated” was a word that came to mind. It would sound learned. Actually, she had made herself vulnerable. He could choose to dismiss her poem with a word like that. He found a disheartening comfort in the thought.