Jack (Gilead #4)(70)



“Yes. There’s a thought.” They shook hands, and Jack went down the stairs and out the door into the bright heat of afternoon. He saw a woman passing on the other side of the street. It couldn’t be Della. If she had come looking for him, how could she have waited for him so long without the risk, the certainty, of drawing attention, stirring gossip? He crossed and followed the woman for a few blocks; then she went into a house, letting herself in with a key. Not Della. Nothing like Della. She glanced at him, he tipped his hat, she stepped through the door and closed it behind her.





* * *





Here was his first thought. He would write the Old Gent a letter. It might be preparation for a visit home. His father would certainly write back, which would give Jack some sense of what he might expect, beyond the usual fondness and pardon and groundless hope. There would be a check, too, which Jack would not cash for ten or twelve days as a way of assuring his father that his straits were not especially dire. It was true of his good father that he allowed himself only virtuous words and behavior, which meant virtue in some form must be put to every use, even those best served by barbs and edges. This was not Jack’s impression only. Teddy would smile and shrug, almost imperceptibly, when a crack seemed about to open in their father’s determined patience—“If you could help me understand your reasoning here, Jack”—parsing some youthful dereliction that obviously made no sense at all, gently acquainting Jack with the fact that he wandered an inward terrain that was without pole or polaris, to put entirely too fine a point on the matter. And after the truth had sunk in, that Jack was as confounded by himself as his father was by him, Teddy would say, “Want to play a little catch?” or “It rained this morning. Let’s see if the fish are biting.” “Jack is with Teddy”— To the Boughtons, Jack, too, this meant Jack is all right, and the neighbors’ setting hens and pumpkin patches are all right, together with whatever other movables his attention might have drawn him to.

Jack would say, “You always worried that I was alone. So you will be pleased to know that I consult from time to time with a pastor. He is not unkind, though he is sometimes remarkably candid, and of course this can be disturbing, the pain involved overriding the benefit I take from it only if, for example, I get drunk, which I cannot do because it is Sunday, a fact which also prevents me from buying a pad of stationery and a pen, also no doubt for the best in my present state of mind. I just might find myself writing to him.”

“Dearest Della, my life, my love. The thought of you brings peace to my unquiet spirit.” He could write letters to her at long intervals, weeks rather than days, since mailmen are not always perfectly discreet. But he would use the time to make the letters very fine. He’d include sketches in them, and poems. He could write out musical notes, and they would be like a code. I don’t want to set the world on fire. / I just want to start a flame in your heart. She would laugh. He imagined her touching out the notes on Lorraine’s piano. He might make a tasteful display of his intellect if he had read a good book lately. He would read only very good books.

“Dear Reverend Hutchins, I am writing to tell you that I resent your word ‘arrangement’ and all that it implies. A Presbyterian by birth and rearing, I respect candor, even when I find it patronizing, stinging, as in this case. My reverend father often said that the kind of emphasis given the sacrament of baptism in your denomination tends to elevate the minister toward a status he called priestly, by which he meant, fairly or not, that some random Reverend Hutchins might feel himself to be invested with a degree of authority relative to a fellow Christian that the covenant honored among Presbyterians would not countenance, to the point, it seems, of denying a man a simple blessing. So presumably I must forgive you for assuming authority over me as you did in intruding so bluntly into my personal life, of which you know almost nothing. An intensely lonely man for whom life has not gone well—I believe that was your language. And how has life gone for you? I have read about eminent domain, a yet higher authority. A wrecking ball will break in on your parish, Reverend Sir, and the sheep will be scattered!”

Terrible, desperate malice, which, sweet Jesus, arose in him only after any rhetorical use could be made of it, leaving him grateful for the near-miss. He was shamed nevertheless that he had entertained such thoughts, less for their meanness than for their blatant desperation. They arose just before the passions of embarrassment passed and the foolishness of his wrath became overwhelmingly clear to him. Presbyterian, indeed. His father would be mortified to know that, even in imagination, his son would send a wrecking ball against a house of prayer. True, being Jack, there was that in him that had to wonder how it would look to demolish a steeple. Closing the world down once a week to frustrate some percentage of bad impulses was Moses’ best gift to humankind.

Wyoming doesn’t rhyme with anything, but it would make a good title. Della told him at their wedding supper that when she was a child there was an old man in her father’s church who had retired from the railroad. She asked him if he had ever been to Wyoming. He nodded. “Nothing there,” he’d said. “Just a bunch of half-wild white folks doing whatever they damn well please. No need to leave Memphis to see that. You got no business with Wyoming.” She said, “Well, it’s part of America,” because she’d read about it in school. He said, “It is. You ain’t.”

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