Jack (Gilead #4)(59)
Then after two years he was out on the street again without the courtesy of an explanation. He tried not to seem surprised. It was very likely a clerical error. If he mentioned it, it might be corrected, and the intoxicating privileges of wearing his own clothes and drifting and loitering as he saw fit would be snatched away. How he loved the sound of traffic, the smell of it. He went by the old rooming house to see if Teddy had been leaving money for him, and he had! There was the note about his mother, which grieved him, certainly, and made him glad that he would probably be able to find a dark suit he could afford. Grief and euphoria at the same time, with the looming expectation that he would behave appropriately in the gentle old home he had abandoned. He imagined his mother in a pretty dress receiving visitors in the parlor, she laid out in her coffin, all the talk in whispers, good old Reverend Ames there to provide a little wisdom on the subject of death and loss so the Reverend Boughton would not be expected to. And he there, Jack, not a mystery, which would make him interesting, but clearly a question, a distraction. Perhaps so much irritation, not to say resentment, had built up around him over the years that the decorum of the family would break under the stress of containing it. Everything would go smoothly, and then he would somehow give the slightest offense and their restraint would fail. They would tell him what they really thought of him and he would leave before the funeral, compounding every grievance. He thought he should take a little time to lose the habits of incarceration, sullen deference, and the rest. He should stop smoking cigarettes down till they singed his fingers, and should definitely stop saving the butts. There were no doubt other things he had not yet noticed about himself that marked him as a stranger in the ordinary world.
Seizing on this unanticipated freedom was probably a crime. If he was being rewarded for good behavior, it was the first he knew of it. In fact, he had acquired somehow a reputation for deft thievery, so whenever anything turned up missing, he and his cell were searched. And when nothing was found, this only added to his reputation for subtle criminality. They called him professor, even the guards. Who knows what the authorities would make of his escape, since that is no doubt what they would call it. The unease he had always felt at the mere sight of a policeman was almost infinitely compounded, and it had already been intense enough to have been the beginning of all these troubles. He had sometimes thought of turning himself in, to put an end to the suspense.
But prison was terrible. It reduced him to absolute Jack, no matter what anyone thought of him. His great problem, after himself, was other people. Prison was full of them. And they were all bleakly undistracted. He had once almost resented the anonymous city crowds, passersby who might seem to sum him up in a glance, if they saw him at all, taking whatever glyph of him into that vast convivium of strangers, adding some trifling datum to whatever humankind thinks of itself. But prison was immersion in a standing pool of strangers, day after day, in a twilight perfumed by mop water. The thing that saved him was the piano in the chapel. Once, when he was sweeping up, the chaplain came in, and Jack, who had thought this out over days, said, “If you ever want someone to play some music, I could do that.”
The chaplain said, “Show me.” So Jack sat down and played “Old Hundred.”
“Pretty good. You know anything else?”
Jack played a few bars of “Holy, Holy, Holy,” and a few more of “Immortal, Invisible.”
The chaplain said, “‘Shall We Gather at the River,’” and Jack played it. “I’m pretty rusty.”
“You’re all right.”
“If I could practice—”
“‘Sweet Hour of Prayer.’” Jack played it.
“See you Sunday,” the chaplain said, and went away.
After that, Jack worked cautiously at enlarging little by little the time he could spend in the chapel, refining his repertoire. “What a Friend We Have in Jesus.” From time to time there would be trouble—he was accused of cheating at cards because he was cheating at cards—but then it would be Sunday again and he would be playing a new variation on “The Old Rugged Cross” and feeling fine. Then one day he was called down through some gates to an office, given his clothes and shoes, walked through more gates, and put on a bus. He was afraid to ask.
* * *
Then something amazing happened. A few days after his talk with Hutchins, Jack went out walking, trying to get tired enough to sleep, staying sober, so that if he did jump in the river, he could feel that his demise had the dignity of a considered choice. This hope, that he might finally be weary enough, had already interfered with his tango, which really should not be done with vigor. He had felt the boss’s eyes on him. When he did finally walk back to the rooming house, he saw the light on, late as it was, and the clerk standing at the counter playing checkers with that other guy, the friend. He nodded as he passed them and was all the way to the stairs when the clerk said, “Hey, Boughton, I’ve got something for you.” So he went back and was handed a little book. H.D., Tribute to the Angels. “A colored gal dropped it by.”
They were both watching him. He couldn’t trust his voice. The clerk said, “I told her you should be back pretty soon. She could wait upstairs. She’s still up there, for all I know. Probably a little tired of waiting for you.” They were laughing. The clerk said, “Don’t worry, I probably won’t call the cops,” and they kept laughing.