Jack (Gilead #4)(46)

For Man to Act even in the Wilderness,

As if he did those Sovereign Joys possess, Which do at once confirm, stir up, enflame, And perfect Angels; having not the same!

It doth increase the value of his Deeds,

In this a Man a Seraphim exceeds.



This makes a kind of sense if the stress falls on the second syllable of “perfect,” which would make it a verb. He would like to ask her what in this is true. “Sovereign Joys”—when he dared, he would think about that long night with her in Bellefontaine, the beautiful graveyard. So many angels in attendance, not one of them stirred up, enflamed, roused from the encumbrance of her stony flesh, not even the angel that reached toward a baby forever, day and night, and never held her. He laughed at the thought of all those angels ecstatically liberated, finally seeing the fulfillment of everything their presence had promised for so long. This had to be the dream behind all the statuary. The angels would open the caskets and lift up old Mrs. This and young Mr. That, making themselves, to their great joy, much less marvelous and interesting than the recently disinterred. Wings are fine, and a kind of luminosity would be very nice, but to hear a familiar laugh would be an almost unbearable joy, a human joy exceeding anything seraphim could feel, since angels cannot know death. So that much was true, granting his terms. In such a blast and glare of astonishment, what offenses could be remembered? Those who can’t hope can still wish. He would not write Della a letter about this, with sketches of angels.





* * *





He spent that week offering to put his shoulder to the wheel of commerce and actually landed a stint in a dance studio. He got a haircut and a shoe shine and went back again to that dance pavilion where he had seen Della, and after an hour or two, there she was, with two young women this time. And this time he walked over to her, tipped his hat, and said, “Miss Miles,” and her friends smiled at each other and him and stepped away. If she could be brave, given all she had to lose, certainly he could, too. He was glad he had nerved himself to read her poem, and avoided the embarrassments of dealing with the fact that estimable people—his sisters, specifically—could write very bad poems. Glory cried once. She was a little kid, for heaven’s sake, and he had subjected her to fairly withering criticism. What a scoundrel he was, before he made a vocation of harmlessness. But people watch your reactions, and try as you might, they are rarely deceived. There was that fellow in prison. A left uppercut before Jack had even gotten to his main point.

And here was Della, standing beside him as if neither of them could ever be anywhere else. The crowd seemed indifferent to them, talking and joking around enough that they drifted to the edge of it, where they could hear each other if they decided to say anything.

Finally Jack said, “I thought Methodists didn’t dance.”

“Do Presbyterians?”

“This one does.”

They drifted beyond the light, and they found that there were steps down to a shabby garden and picnic tables. By then he was holding her hand, her smooth, slender hand, more perfect in his than he ever imagined it would be. And she felt perfect in his arms.

“This is a waltz,” he said.

She said, “I know.”

They waltzed through four songs, two fast and two slow, and they waltzed in the time between songs and after the last one had ended. Then she said, “I have to find my friends. People will be talking!” When she was on the second step, she turned and lifted his hat and smoothed back his hair, kissed his brow, and replaced his hat. So he kissed her cheek. Chaste, chaste. The dourest angel in heaven could not find fault. They stood there together, not speaking, not touching. Then she ran up the steps. He followed, to make sure she was with her friends, and then he went down into the dark to sit at a picnic table and think.



* * *



He had a job, a very good thing in the circumstances. He would need to practice a few new steps, but that sort of thing came easily. His fox-trot was absolutely solid. He would be paid, and then he would consider his options. His option, more precisely, which was to bring Della upstairs to his room. There would be the smart remark as they passed the desk, then smirks and stares if other inmates of the place happened to be around, then his room with the door closed, his very orderly room with some kind of curtain thing on the window and two chairs he’d find somewhere. He could push the bed to one side to make room for the chairs and put the wobbly little table beside his bed between the chairs so that if he could think of something to offer her to eat or drink he could do that. It would mean moving the little Bible his father had given him when he found him sitting by the river early one Sunday morning and told him he might as well consider himself confirmed. “A full-fledged member of the invisible church,” he said, and laughed, and shook his head. “God willing.” He remembered the feeling of his father’s hand on his shoulder. The day was calm and still, and his father was enjoying it, enjoying the silence, and Jack was, too. It was the Sabbath. The Reverend had to be elsewhere, but he could hardly bring himself to leave. “Well,” he said finally, “dinner will be roast beef. To celebrate,” hoping to lure him home. And he took the little book out of his jacket pocket and set it down on the rock beside him, not presuming even to put it in Jack’s hand. He said, “The Lord bless you and keep you,” to solemnize the moment a little, and then he went away. If Della saw that Bible, she’d know exactly what it was and how many years he had kept it. He had read in it when there was nothing else, which had given it a worn look. It would inevitably redound to his credit with a preacher’s daughter. In his mind he put it away in a dresser drawer. He might let her see it sometime, when she knew him better.