Jack (Gilead #4)(48)
He had tried, so far as this calculus of dread permitted attention to what was passing around him, to sway and sing and clap when they did, and to voice the occasional Amen. He was not failing to pass for a Baptist so much as experiencing the fact, whatever this could possibly mean in his case, that he really was a Presbyterian. He had experienced this, though not in so many words, when he realized he had to exchange the double-breasted suit for one that was a little shabbier but which carried no suggestion of bonhomie.
He was so preoccupied with his anxieties the realization came upon him suddenly that he was not far from Sumner, Della’s school. He had been careful lately not to walk by it, or near it, but his old habit asserted itself when he seemed to be thinking of other things, more or less. A janitor or librarian might very well live in the neighborhood and come to this church. She would know everything. A surge of shame passed through his body. He felt for his handkerchief. Sweet Jesus, how sudden it was that he was daubing at his face, his eyes stinging, the man beside him watching him now with gentle concern.
Embarrassment overwhelmed him. The preacher had mentioned repentance from time to time without special emphasis. Still, everyone around him must have thought he, Jack, was in the throes of repentance, reconsidering his sullied life. And in fact, he was wondering why he should repent so bitterly when he had done nothing more disgraceful than stop on the pavement to consider the lining of his hat. If the Fall had made sinfulness pervasive and inescapable, then correction might be abrupt and arbitrary, to draw attention to itself as the assurance of an ultimate order without reference to specific wrongs, which, in a post-lapsarian world, must all more or less run together. These are the terms in which he made sense of most bad surprises. They were of little use except in retrospect, which had not arrived yet. And the same young man who had carried off his hat was coming down the aisle, taking the collection, so futile pride compelled Jack to drop his other dollar in the plate. His hat, his two dollars, his personal dignity, and quite possibly any hope he had of maintaining a jot of status in Della’s eyes gone because he had decided to go out for a walk. No wonder he had a drinking problem.
He almost left the church without asking after his hat, but he loitered a few minutes, looking around for the young man. The lady who had invited him to come for lunch, dauntlessly cordial, took him by the crook of his arm and led him down some stairs to a basement, more specifically, a church basement, which resembles everything of its kind and nothing else in the world. His heart sank with nostalgia. Chairs and tables battered by merciless use, a frieze of child art on scriptural subjects. An upright piano. There was a kitchen, too, big pots on the stove and the smell of beans cooked with a ham bone, and corn bread. The lady said, “You sit here and I’ll bring you a plate. Everybody gets in line and then they start visiting and forget why they’re in line in the first place, and folks waiting behind them, getting hungry.”
Jack said, “That’s very kind of you, ma’am. I seem to have lost my hat.” She said, “One thing at a time.” And she did bring him beans and corn bread, with a promptness that seemed to suggest she saw him as an emergency. He knew it was his lean and hungry look that rallied old ladies, galvanizing their compassion, making him, in their eyes, a middle-aged orphan. The beans were wonderful, so he ate them even though this would encour age the notion that he was a beggar, not simply a gentleman betrayed by circumstance. The corn bread was also very fine.
She filled his plate again. All that nutrition settled his nerves. Surrounded by so much talking and laughter, he began to feel a little conversational, though he could not think of anything to say to anybody. He went to the piano and touched some keys. I would be true, for there are those who trust me; / I would be pure, for there are those who care. This came from the heavy heart of his nostalgia, the anthem of a childhood aspiration he did not himself share.
Somebody said, “Play the song!” So he played it from the beginning, with a few little flourishes. They clapped, and one or two said, “All right!” Then someone said, “Now you play something, Miss Jones. Show him how it’s done!” That little woman shook her head, seemed to demur, then sat down and played a most spectacular “Rock of Ages.”
“Your turn now, honey,” she said.
“I can’t do anything like that.”
She laughed. “I doubt anybody expects you to.”
So he played “The Old Rugged Cross,” not quite as he had done for those convict funerals since he was in a church, but close enough. They clapped and said, “Now you, Miss Jones.”
She shook her head. “I’ve got things to do. I’ve got to get home.”
Jack said, “Yes, if I can find my hat, I’ll be on my way. And thank you. Thank you very much.”
“Well, you come back any time. I could teach you a few things!”
She was laughing, but he said, “That would be very kind.”
“Here comes your hat.”
The young man came down the steps carrying it upside down on the tips of his fingers, a weightless vessel, the money still in it. He felt a shock of embarrassment when he saw it. He considered saying, This is a mistake. I was trying to give the money back, I’m not a beggar, but even the thought of the denial embarrassed him. He could hear the civilities through the thrum of blood in his ears—he should come back again, always a nice dinner, that piano doesn’t get enough use. Yes, yes, he said, goodbye, certain he would never step through that door again, where everyone would think of him as the beggar out on the pavement, the stranger who wiped away tears at the mere mention of repentance. Where someone might know who he was and carry the piteous tale back to Della, none of it true, but all of it, he knew, entirely believable.