Marilynne Robinson - Home

Glory said, “If the Ameses ask you to supper again, say yes. And stay. Promise me.”

He laughed. “Will do. On my honor.” He said, “You have a feeling for these things.”

AND THE VERY NEXT DAY, HAVING TOILED EARNESTLY IN the vegetable patch and the flower beds from dawn till noon, and having tightened the joints of the three Adirondack chairs that had always slouched together under the kitchen window as if to be indolently serviceable in the event that something in the yard between them and the barn should attract spectators, and having restrung the clothesline, he came into the house, ironed a shirt, and polished his shoes. “I’m feeling useful,” he said. “Productive. That’s good for morale. So is the tan.” He pushed up his sleeve to show her. “There’s a definite line there.”

“So there is.” She had learned to worry about these hectic outbursts of purposefulness, and to know there was no point in trying to damp them down.

He said, “I believe this is Thursday. So tomorrow is Friday, and Ames will probably be working on his sermon. He won’t welcome interruption.” He said, “I will probably go to church on Sunday. I can do that. My suit no longer smells combustible. Just slightly automotive. I wouldn’t want to alarm anyone.” He laughed.

So all this was in preparation for supper at the Ameses’, for which he had not been invited. But he left the house in the early evening, pausing in the door to look at her and shrug, as if to say, Wish me luck. When he was not home for supper, she told her father that she thought he might have been invited by Ames and Lila.

“Yes,” her father said. “I hope John will take some interest in him. That is a thing I wished for many years. When you give a man a namesake, you do expect a certain amount of help. Ames was a help to me, of course. Not to Jack so much. I don’t mean to criticize. I guess I wasn’t much help to him either, as far as that goes.”

The old man wanted to wait for him in the porch, so they sat there together in the mild night. “You can’t see the lightning bugs through these screens,” he said. “You can’t see the stars. But at least you get the breeze. You hear the crickets.”

After a little while he said, “Ames will need his rest. Old fellows can’t tolerate these late nights. I hope he will realize that.” And then they heard footsteps and Jack came up the walk and up the steps.

“Nice evening,” he said. His voice was soft and calm. Glory knew that her father noticed, too.

“Yes,” the old man said. “Yes, it is. A fine evening.”

Jack said, “They were very kind. The boy likes me. And Mrs. Ames seems to think I’m all right.”

“I suppose you talked a little politics, Jack?”

“Yes, sir. He says, ‘Stevenson is a very fine man, no doubt.’”

His father laughed. “There’s no persuading him. He’ll agree with anything you say. But when the chips are down, it’s Eisenhower. Yes, I know what it’s like, trying to reason with him where politics are concerned. He hasn’t been around so much lately. Maybe I’ve been trying too hard.”

Jack said, “He talked a little bit about his grandfather.”

“Yes, he likes to tell the old stories. The Boughtons weren’t here for most of that. We left Scotland in the fall of 1870, so we missed out on the war and the rest of it. There was a lot of what you might call fanaticism around here in the early days. Even among Presbyterians. That old fellow was right in the middle of it, from what I’ve heard. And then in his old age he was about as crazy as it’s possible to be and still be walking the streets. I would never have named you after that John Ames. We were used to him, of course. We felt sorry for him. But he was crazy when I knew him, and before that, too, I believe.”

Jack was quiet for a while. Then he said, “Ames seems to have a lot of respect for him.”

His father said, “The old settlers, you know, the old families, they used to tell stories they thought were just wonderful, and then I think they began to realize that the world had changed and maybe they should reconsider a few things. It’s taken them awhile. Ames was pretty embarrassed about the old fellow while he lived. Always talking with Jesus. I suppose he didn’t tell you about that.”

“He told me. He told me the story about his grandfather leaving Maine for Kansas because he had a dream that Jesus came to him as a slave and showed him how the chains rankled his flesh. I’d heard the story before, of course. I always thought it sounded enviable. I mean, to have that kind of certainty. It’s hard to imagine. Hard for me to imagine.”

“Certainty can be dangerous,” the old man said.

“Yes, sir. I know. But if Jesus is — Jesus, it seems as though he might have shown someone his chains. I mean, in that situation.”

“You might be right, Jack. I’m sure Ames would agree. But when you see where we are now, still trying to settle these things with violence, I don’t know. Live by the sword and die by the sword.”

Jack cleared his throat. “The protests in Montgomery are nonviolent.”

The old man said, “But they provoke violence. It’s all provocation.”

There was a long silence. Then Jack said, “This week I will go to church. I will definitely go to church.”

“That’s wonderful, Jack. Yes.”

He helped his father to bed, and then he came into the kitchen. “You were right,” he said. “It was fine. I said the grace. I’d practiced this time. I was polite, I believe, and I didn’t talk enough to get myself in trouble. I don’t think I did. I’m not saying anything changed, but it wasn’t a disaster. Macaroni and cheese. I cleaned my plate.” He laughed.

THEN JACK TOOK THE AMESES SOME EARLY APPLES, AND some plums he said could be ripened on a windowsill, and he played a little catch with the boy, and he even helped Lila move the Reverend’s desk and some of his books down to the parlor so that he would not have to deal with the stairs. “Very neighborly,” he said. “Friend-like.”

Glory had no reason for concern about all this, except that Jack was intent on it. He seemed to have invested so much calculation in it that it bordered on hope, now that the Reverend and his family had warmed to him a little. Dear God, she thought. They are the kindest people on earth. Why should I worry? She had talked him into trusting them, which would have been entirely reasonable in any other circumstance. But his reservations were the fruit of his experience, and his experience was the fruit of his being Jack, always Jack, despite these sporadic and intense attempts at escape, at being otherwise. Dear God in heaven, no one could know as well as he did that for him caution was always necessary.

Sunday came and Jack rose early, loitered in the kitchen drinking coffee, refused breakfast, brushed his suit and his hat. He came downstairs at a quarter to ten looking as respectable as he ever did, tipped his hat, and walked out the door. She got her father up and brought him into the kitchen, where he lingered over his eggs and toast, then over the newspaper, then over a Christian Century he had read weeks before, then over the Bible. Finally he fell into that sleep or prayer that was his refuge in times of high emotion. At two o’clock Jack still had not come home, so she told her sleeping father that she was going out to look around a little and he nodded, abruptly, as if to say it was high time. She couldn’t hunt her brother down as if he were a lost child, or an incompetent of some kind. There was nothing he, therefore she, dreaded more than the possibility that he might be embarrassed in any way that could be anticipated and avoided. Enough that there was an incandescence of unease about him whenever he walked out the door or, for that matter, whenever his father summoned him to one of those harrowing conversations. Or while he waited for the mail or watched the news.