Marilynne Robinson - Home

He followed her out to the barn and opened the door for her. “Stay here,” he said. Then he dragged an empty crate out from the wall, climbed up on it, took hold of the edge of the loft with one hand, and with the other brought down a ladder that had been lying on the floor of the loft, out of sight. When the base of it hit the floor, there was a painful sound of crotchety wood and pulled nails. He said, “This is where I was last night when you came looking for me. I meant to say something, but I — didn’t.” He shrugged. “I wasn’t out staggering the streets of Gilead, in case you were worried about that. I didn’t disgrace the family.”

He held the doubtful old ladder while she climbed up into the loft. It smelled airy, and like hay or burlap and desiccated wood, a place with a history of rain and heat, long abandoned by human intention. Her older brothers and sisters had stories of playing in it, but their father had forbidden them to play there years before she was born because of the splinters in the plank floor and the nails that had been driven through the shingles in the low roof, and he had taken away the ladder in order to baffle temptation. Nevertheless, from time to time the boys contrived to hoist one another up into that secret and forbidden place to act out stealth and ambush, an impulse too primordial for even Teddy to resist. It would never have occurred to them to bring her along, the baby sister whose indiscretions were notorious in the family for years after she had outgrown them. So this was the first time she was setting foot in that fabled space.

Jack had run a length of clothesline from beam to beam and thrown a tarp over it to make a low tent in the angle of floor and roof. She knelt and looked into it. The edges were neatly nailed down. There was a floor of newspapers, a rumpled blanket and a pillow. He had set a wooden box on its side as a table and shelf. A flashlight, a few books, a mayonnaise jar with a handful of her oatmeal cookies in it. The framed photograph of a river. A glass and an uncapped pint bottle, three-quarters empty. The dark little room smelled strongly of whiskey and sweat. It seemed almost domestic, and yet there was a potency of loneliness about it like a dark spirit lurking in it, a soul that had improvised this crude tabernacle to stand in the place of other shelter, flesh. She thought, What if he had succeeded in dying, and then she had found this, so neatly and intentionally made out of nothing anyone could want, with the fierce breath of his grief still haunting it, the blanket still tangled.

Jack said, “Are you all right? I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have asked you—”

She said, “I’m fine.” He would know from her voice that she was crying, but she had to say something, and he would expect her to cry, surely. She pulled the blanket out of the tent. An empty bottle dragged along with it. She put the bottle aside and folded and smoothed the blanket and put it back. Then she pulled the crate to her and took the bottle and the glass out of it and set them aside. The books were The Condition of the Working Class, The High and the Mighty , and a worn little Bible. The flashlight had burned itself out, but she turned it off and put it beside the books and slid the crate back into its place. It felt like piety and propitiation to calm the disorder this most orderly man had left in the confusions of his sorrow.

He said, “I think there are only two bottles up there. I’m pretty sure.”

That meant he thought she was taking longer than she needed to. He would be embarrassed that she had seen and touched his secretiveness, which was so like shame, so like affliction, that they could hardly be distinguished. She said, “I’m coming,” and stayed where she was, kneeling there, amazed at what was before her, as if it were the humblest sign of great mystery, come from a terrain where loneliness and grief are time and weather.

She held the bottles against her side with one arm and the glass in her hand, and with her free arm she held to the ladder and lowered herself onto it.

“I’m right here,” Jack said, and held it steady for her. Then he stepped away and stood with his hands on his hips, looking at her with the distant and tentative expression that meant he felt she might be making a new appraisal of him. He said, “A little strange, hmm? A little squalid? Sorry.”

“No matter,” she said. “I think this is everything.”

He nodded.

“I poured out the other bottles in the orchard.”

“Fine.” He said, “I made that to keep the bats off when I read with the flashlight. Bats are attracted by light, did you know that? Useful information. And it kept the rain off. That roof is just about worthless. So it made a kind of sense. To me.”

HE WAITED FOR HER, AND WHEN SHE CAME BACK FROM the orchard and the shed he walked to the house with her, a few steps behind. He said, “I’ll pull that down tomorrow. My shanty. I’ll clean things up around here before I go. I’ve let a lot of things slide.”

“It’s still much better than it was when you came.”

He opened the screen door for her. He said, “I’m going to try to get some of these stains off my hands. I can’t help much with the old fellow until I do. I think he’s scared of me, the way I look now.”

“No, he just hates the thought that you hurt yourself.”

He nodded. “You can hate thoughts. That’s interesting. I hate most of my thoughts.” He opened the cupboard under the sink and found a scrub brush.

Glory said, “You might rub your hands with shortening. That would probably dissolve the grease. Scrubbing will make them look inflamed.” She took the can from the cupboard, scooped out a spoonful, and put it in his palm. She said, “Remember when you talked to me about your soul, about saving it?”

He shrugged. “I think you may be mistaking me for someone else.”

“And I said I liked it the way it is.”

“Now I know you’re mistaking me for someone else.” He did not look up from the massaging of his hands.

“I’ve thought about what I should have said to you then, and I haven’t changed my mind at all. That’s why it embarrassed me, because it would have been so presumptuous of me — I’m not even sure what it means.” Then she said, “What is a soul?”

He looked up, smiled, studied her face. “Why ask me?”

“It just seems to me that you would know.”

He shrugged. “On the basis of my vast learning and experience, I would say — it is what you can’t get rid of. Insult, deprivation, outright violence—‘If I make my bed in Sheol, behold, thou art there,’ and so on. “‘If I take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea.’”

“Interesting choice of text.”

“It came to mind. Don’t make too much of it.”

“Well, your soul seems fine to me. I don’t know what that means, either. Anyway, it’s true.”

He said, “Thanks, chum. But you don’t know me. Well, you know I’m a drunk.”

“And a thief.”

He laughed. “Yes, a drunk and a thief. I’m also a terrible coward. Which is one of the reasons I lie so much.”

She nodded. “I’ve noticed that.”

“No kidding. What else have you noticed?”

“I’m not going to mention vulnerable women.”

“Thanks,” he said. “Very generous in the circumstances.”

She nodded. “I think so.”

He said, “I am unaccountably vain, despite all, and I have a streak of malice that does not limit itself to futile efforts at self-defense.”

“I’ve noticed that, too.”

He nodded. “I guess there’s nothing subtle about it.”

She brought a washcloth and began gently to soap away the dingy shortening from his hands. He took the cloth from her.