Jack (Gilead #4)(79)

It was so late it would be early sooner or later. Night to morning turned like an hourglass, darkness divided arbitrarily. One of those mysteries sustained by nearly universal consent. Clearly prowlers and insomniacs were never consulted. In any case, he could go sit on Della’s steps until the sun was well up, and then he would knock at the door. If the sister answered, no matter, because the speech he was composing in his mind would be just what she wanted to hear from him. Then she would know something about him that she could not tell by looking at him: he could be honorable. She would tell Della’s father how candid and well-meaning he had been in his farewell, and how deeply he seemed to feel the loss to which he was nevertheless resigned. The whole business would be done within ten minutes. He could see past it already. He could draw his breath, almost light-headed with relief. “I have to give you up because I love you.” She would see his point. He would have to nerve himself to glance at her face, but he could do that. It shouldn’t seem too easy, since he believed that would hurt her. He knew how badly calculated his attempts at charm could be. Slick. But at worst that would make things final, which was the whole idea. She would think she had finally seen him for what he was, and honor would be served, at some cost in regret, which would involve him in fantasies of making things right to relieve the misery now and then. He went down the stairs to the street.

He had rolled up his sleeves, left his collar unbuttoned, tipped back his hat. A breeze chilled him. He was carrying his jacket slung over his shoulder and the blanket under his arm. A black couple, out late, dressed up, arguing pleasantly—“No, I didn’t,” “Why yes, you did!”—smiled and said hello. He felt like part of the neighborhood sometimes, his familiarity made interesting by his stealthiness. He said, “Good evening.” At night the streets looked calm, solid, darkness hiding the decrepitude brought on by Eminent Domain, the giant that would fell forty churches. “Condemned” is the word they used. Bedamned. Steeples and sanctuaries bedamned. Even the very poor churches had managed a peaked window or two, or some lesser elegance that meant here we sing, here we pray, here we tell our children who they are. And all that life was condemned for the ground under it. He sat down on a stoop.

Della’s church would be gone, and the house she lived in gone, too, condemnation certain, though every other part of the great plan was still being weighed. His own church would be gone, where he had known he could always go for a plate of beans and a little painful candor. Surely the Baptists would remove that rather bad painting of Christ ascending that hung behind the choir, put it away somewhere before a wrecking ball exposed it to the street, where its awkwardness, desacralized, ungraced, would make a joke of it. It was the earnest sign of solemn hope. It was a gloss on a beautiful text in the form of a clumsy image, which, he sometimes thought, if no other provision was made for it, he would steal and carry away to his room. It was hard to get a sense of its scale from the last pew, but he thought it would probably fit through his door edgewise. After that, decisions would be made. To stand upright it would have to be tilted, which would take up some part of a small space, from the floorboard to the foot of his bed. He’d have to move the dresser. This big, vivid, floating man did not square precisely with his own Presbyterian notion of Christ, but respect was owed. It might do him good to sleep under those blessing hands. If the desk clerk was astounded by a geranium, what would he make of this? The whole idea was ridiculous. The pastor probably knew the painter’s name and where he lived and how he fared or where he was buried. He might have six cousins in the choir. This Jesus was family, and he would be seen to.

Exposure was a particular nightmare of Jack’s even when he was not reminded of it by walking through these streets. He imagined all the papered walls, too pretty or too bright, the shadows of vanished furniture showing that they had once been prettier and brighter. Gaping doorframes, the ghosts of stairways. The rooming house he lived in would be excellent material for demolition. The apparent pathos of its bared interior would align with reality exactly. But his side of town was under no threat. Why should he feel guilty about this? Perhaps because, an adult male from a fine family with a plausible claim to a little education, he had absolutely no influence of any kind. He was not dust in the scales. This was a condition to which he had once aspired, which he could no longer think of as exonerating. He could watch with a certain joy a wrecking ball making splinters of that oversized hovel he called home, since Jack the Cat was safe in Memphis and the desk clerk would have been warned ahead of time. But this was no part of any plan. The shadow of Civic Improvement would pass over his house, and there would be no more weeping and gnashing of teeth in it than usual.

If he was going to spend the night on a stoop, it might as well be Della’s. He put on his jacket and tied his tie. The sister could be the first one to open the door. It wasn’t as if he had much to lose, as if her opinion of him could suffer any decline. Or it would be Della who opened the door, in which case he would rather not seem too hapless. He imagined himself making a dignified exit from her life, insofar as possible. He almost succeeded in persuading himself it would be better to go back to his room, to talk with Della in a clean shirt, with a fresh shave. He walked a block in that direction before he admitted to himself that he was very likely to lose his resolve. This was the kind of struggle he had often found himself sleeping off on a bench somewhere. And why assume her last impression of him would have a special importance? She had seen him drunk, as phony clergyman and roué; she had seen him as well turned out as circumstance permitted. She could be angry or scornful or wistful or embarrassed, and her memory would choose from the range of Jacks, narrow as it was, to suit her state of mind. He knew he would definitely have a place in her memory, for the misfortune he had been to her, and would continue to be, as long as she felt his effects on her good name and her father’s hopes. Ah, Jesus. Was he talking himself into or out of that final conversation? Having done so much harm, was it really the honorable thing to walk away from it all? He had done that once, so long ago, and there were still leaden guilt, merciless dreams.