Jack (Gilead #4)(72)

He had made an outcast of himself, yet he now knew he was not only a part of society, he was its essence, its epitome. If you could just explain your reasoning here—why you destroy and destroy, why you steal. He felt suddenly worse than ominous, the first buzzard to arrive at the scene of heartbreak. What a lovely home you have, Miss Miles! Jesus is looking especially well this evening. Then, crash! Your gentle self in jail, all love anyone ever felt for you an agony, all hope ever placed in you dissipated like smoke. I am the Prince of Darkness. I believe I may have mentioned that. For me, jail is a second home. Something I think I have not mentioned.

He went by the church, and there was Hutchins, sitting on the front steps, reading a newspaper. When he saw Jack, he laughed and flourished a cigarette. “At least I’m not hypocritical about it,” he said. “Good to see you, Mr. Boughton Ames.”

“Yes. I wanted to give you this. It’s nothing. A thank-you note. Really nothing.”

“It’s kind of you to go to the trouble.”

“No trouble at all.” This was not the plan. There was no way to explain that he had somehow promised himself he would lay a hand on that hulking building. He’d have had to step into shrubbery. God forbid he should mention any of the thoughts that made him crave this momentary assurance. He would have walked away, but Hutchins said, “I’ve given some thought to the things we talked about. I know you will do as well as you can in the circumstances, by your lights, which is all I can ask, all you can do. I know the gravity of the situation is clear to you.”

“Yes, very clear! Thank you.” He walked away before the man could say more. Once, when he was a boy, he had asked his father if the devil could feel regret. His father said, “Well, you know, the devil might be no more than a figure of speech.” Satan is Hebrew for adversary, and so on. So Jack didn’t ask the next question, whether the devil had nightmares. The abysmal has no place in polite conversation.

By your lights, said the preacher to the man wailing in outer darkness. If Della were less splendid, less burdened with others’ hopes, there might be less shame in his sidling up to her, pestiferous or combustible, or something of the kind, disguised as a social reject so that he could be the perfect agent of society’s malice. These Baptists, dropping their dimes into his hat, sharing their supper, dreaming no harm, probably. And he would make a miserable return on their kindness. He had dabbled in shame as a youth, and he had learned from the experiment that shame had qualities in common with very lofty things, infinity, eternity. Like them it could not be divided or multiplied. Time-bound creature that he still was, he could not say for certain that there was no end to shame. He had suspected for a long time that it had at least that much to do with hell—also probably figurative, his father had assured him, tears in his eyes as there often were when he had to curtail another part of the great explanatory system his theology once was, to spare himself the implications it might have for his son. Jack had dabbled in shame, and it still coursed through him, malarial, waking him up to sweat and pace until, unsoothed, unrationalized, unshriven, it secreted itself again in his bones, and at the base of his skull, and was latent except for the occasional leering strangeness of his dreams. An ordinary man would not grieve forever over the sins of his youth, he was fairly sure. And an ordinary man would not dread this great, blind impulse of destruction prophesied at officious length in any newspaper. Then there was Della. Abstractly considered, a man who could threaten her as Jack did, if he felt no more guilt about it than he could live with, would be an utter scoundrel. This meant the dark storms of bewilderment would deepen and Jack would have no refuge except, of course, in Della’s sweet calm. He took comfort so quickly at the thought of her that he felt a shudder of calm pass through his body, a thing he had never even heard of. He had to surrender his refuge in order to avoid the most desperate need of it. An hour or two tomorrow evening and then he would tell her goodbye and he would mean it. Try to mean it.





* * *





He knocked. The sister opened the door.

“John Boughton,” he said.

And she said, “I know.”

Della came into the room, quietly. He could not remember if he had been told the sister’s name. He seemed to have interrupted something, no doubt a conversation so intense that a moment passed before they adjusted to the fact that anything else could matter.

He had left work early to make himself presentable. A barbershop shave, matching socks, a carefully brushed jacket that had begun to show the wear of brushing. His clothes were too old to be relied upon. A pants pocket had failed at work a week before, and a handful of coins had spilled down his leg. It was funny, he couldn’t blame the ladies for laughing. He had gone to the five-and-dime for a packet of needles and three spools of thread, and he had mended, darned, reinforced with all the discretion he could manage, knowing these shifts might be seen as poignant, that the repair might be more conspicuous than the fray. In fact, standing there in Della’s parlor, the object of weighty silence and pure, blank scrutiny, he felt every mend as if it were a scar on his person. Cicatrix. Strange words came to him at strange times.

He said, “I’m sorry if I’m late.” Then, “Sorry if I’m early.” He made a gesture with his hat, which reminded him it was still in his hand. No one had taken it, which, he realized, was the omission of a conventional sign of welcome. Don’t interpret.