Paul Robertson - According to Their Deeds

“That was when you were very little.”

“It was not my most positive memory,” Dorothy said. “I don’t remember as much about the donors and the fundraising from the later years.”

“The children looked very nice this evening. I expect they aren’t always so well behaved.”

“Not unless they are much better than children were in my day. You would know that just from driving the bus.”

“There were some very challenging episodes,” he chuckled. “But I was still very glad for the job. I don’t think an eighteen-year-old today would be trusted with a busload of children.”

“They have adult drivers and chaperones now.”

“Do they wear uniforms?”

“Not anymore. You were so handsome in yours, dear. And of course, you still are.”

“Why are some men so much less governable than others, Charles?”

“We all are, Derek, to some degree.”

“The degree varies so widely. It seems to be a critical property of any individual. I’ve been reading that it might be due to structure of the brain.”

“When in doubt, blame it on chemistry.”

“But, Charles, if some part of the brain that controls judgment and empathy isn’t developed, then wouldn’t that person be more apt toward crime?”

“But then all behavior is only neurons and synapses. Personality becomes just an equation of brain cells. I don’t want to believe that.”

“It’s a natural progression from Newton. The physical world is just an expression of mathematic laws, and we are complex biological objects.”

“Now you’re blaming heredity, Derek. I think we’re more than objects.”

“Show me anything else.”

“I think I am, just by having this conversation.”

“Touche, Charles! All right, I admit, it is a stretch to explain human reason by chemistry.”

“Human reason might be more reasonable if it could be explained that way.”

“But I don’t think we should leave heredity off the hook completely. We’ve touched on this before.”

“Yes, with William.”

“I’d value your opinions, Charles. You’ve paid dearly for them.”

“Yes, they’re dearly bought, Derek. But I don’t know if that makes them valuable to anyone else.”

“You said he was seventeen?”

“He was always troubled. We thought we could bring him through it, but in his last two years it became so much worse.”

“Did you have any real warning, though? At the end?”

“No. Looking back, there were probably things we should have seen. But there was no real warning.”

“Where did it all come from, Charles?”

“I wish I knew. It would help us so much, even now, to know why. Was it his upbringing or was it something he inherited? There is so much family history we don’t know. Obviously it tortures Dorothy, especially. But we just don’t know.”

The pillars were a century old, and the stone was ages old, and the light ageless, and what they all held was eternal. Dorothy took a place and Charles beside her, an hour before the service, in the quiet. It was a different silence than of books, the silence of light and stone; not the silence of words but of Word.

The hour and the silence passed. There was music; they sang; words were song. Words were spoken; Word was spoken, and they listened.

“ ‘ I am the Light of the world. ’ Why do we need light? To see, to ‘ not walk in darkness but have the Light. ’ Not in the world’s light, but in the ‘ Light of the world.’ ”

They listened.

“ ‘ You judge according to the flesh; I am not judging anyone. But if I do judge, My judgment is true. ’ ”

They listened.

“ ‘ His disciples asked, Who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind? ’ His judgment was true. ‘ It was neither that this man sinned, nor his parents; but it was so that the works of God might be displayed in him. ’ ”

They walked home in the world’s sunlight, outside, where it was everywhere. “How should I judge?” Charles said. “Was it Karen Liu who sinned, or her parents?”

“But she isn’t blind.”

“I’m the one who’s blind.”

“No you aren’t,” Dorothy said.

“I’m walking in darkness, not in light. I can’t see.”

“Maybe it was neither she that sinned, nor her parents.”

Charles stopped. “What could that mean?”

They sat at their own dining room table, just the two of them. An elegant platter of roast, potatoes and carrots was before them. Their china and silver and crystal shone. Charles served them both, still in his suit. The sun through the lace curtained window was a pillar. It was true perpendicular and the world was slanted against it.

“How could a person blame their sin on their parents?” Dorothy said.

“People will blame anyone. Just not themselves.”

“What if I never knew them?”

“Would that make it easier to blame them?” Charles said.

“It doesn’t,” Dorothy said. “Not for me.”

“And what about being a parent? How much blame can we take on ourselves for our child?”

“I take it all, Charles.”

“You can’t.”

“I do anyway.”

“Some of it is mine.”

“We share it, then,” Dorothy said.

“Besides, I have enough faults of my own.”

She matched his sigh. “You’re all I have, Charles. With all your faults, I still love you.”

Hs smiled. “What did I ever do to deserve you?” he said.

“Whatever you did, I must have done the same thing.”

“You deserve me?” Charles laughed. “Then whatever you did, it must have been very bad. I wonder who we can blame.”

They finished their meal mostly in silence. Charles cleared the table and Dorothy put an apron over her dress to clean the kitchen. Then still with no words she took off the apron and Charles held out the jacket she’d worn in the morning. He held open the car door for her and then drove a short way to an open, quiet place.

There was another quiet here; not books, not words at all; but here there was also stone.

A slight chill wind attended them. They walked a gravel path around the brow of a low hill and through the shadow of a single old tree, then a few steps over emerald grass bursting with spring life, and stopped at a headstone among others. It said William Beale and Our Dearly Beloved Son.

“Of all the books, I wonder why that one?” Charles said. He had a fire put up in the fireplace for the last cool evening of spring.

“What, dear?”

“Derek. Of all the books, why he would…” Charles couldn’t help but smile. “Why did he pick the Locke?”

Dorothy closed the book she was reading. “I know that you and the employees do that, but I do not allow puns in this house.”

“It was unavoidable.”

“I don’t think so.”

“Anyway.” He cleared his throat. “Why did he select the John Locke? He had hundreds of books just in his office. He didn’t have to mangle an antique.”

“Which antique books did he own?”

“Well let me see. I could look at the computer at the store. But I think I can remember from opening them last Monday.”

“There were thirteen?”

“Yes. Write them down to make sure I remember them all. The first one was Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations. Then Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Thomas Paine, Common Sense, the Rights of Man and Age of Reason.”

“One volume?”

“Yes, all in one volume. John Adams, A Defence of the Constitutions of Government of the United States. And then there was John Locke, of course, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding. That was the fifth one I opened.”