Marilynne Robinson - Gilead

But it is hard for me to see good faith in John Ames Boughton, and that’s a terrible problem. As we were walking home, your mother said, “He was only asking a question,” which was almost a rebuke, coming from her. Then, after we’d walked a little farther, she said, “Maybe some people aren’t so comfortable with themselves.” Now, that was a rebuke. And she was quite right. What need had an old soldier like me to defend himself even from mockery, if that was what he was up to? There was no question of need, there was only habit.

I believe I have tried never to say anything Edward would have found callow or naive. That constraint has been useful to me, in my opinion. It may be a form of defensiveness, but I hope it has at least been useful on balance. There is a tendency among some religious people even to invite ridicule and to bring down on themselves an intellectual contempt which seems to me in some cases justified. Nevertheless, I would advise you against defensiveness on principle. It precludes the best eventualities along with the worst. At the most basic level, it expresses a lack of faith. As I have said, the worst eventualities can have great value as experience. And often enough, when we think we are protecting ourselves, we are struggling against our rescuer. I know this, I have seen the truth of it with my own eyes, though I have not myself always managed to live by it, the Good Lord knows. I truly doubt I would know how to live by it for even a day, or an hour. That is a remarkable thing to consider.

I believe it will put my mind at ease to tell you straightforwardly what is at issue here. Sleep has become a great problem, elusive, and then pretty grueling when it comes. Prayer has not been equal to quieting these perturbations. If I feel that what I tell you is untrue in some way, or that I simply ought not to tell it, I can just destroy these pages. They certainly won’t be the first I’ve destroyed. Back when I had a woodstove, it was a satisfyingly easy thing to do. There was a tightness to seeing nonsense and frustration fall into the flames. I’m thinking we should have somebody build us a barbecue, like the Muellers did.

***

Let me say first of all that the grace of God is sufficient to any transgression, and that to judge is wrong, the origin and essence of much error and cruelty. I am aware of these things, as I hope you are also.

Let me say, too, that there are bonds which oblige me to special tolerance and kindness toward this young man, John Ames Boughton. He is the beloved child of my oldest and dearest friend, who gave him to me, so to speak, to compensate for my own childlessness. I baptized him in Boughton’s congregation. I remember the moment very clearly, Boughton and Mrs. Boughton and all the little ones there at the font, watching to see my joyful surprise, which I hope they did see, because my feelings at the time were a little more complex than I’d have wished. I had not been warned.

All this being the case, it offends my conscience to bear witness against him. Nevertheless, there is a very real sense in which people are fairly and appropriately associated with their histories, for human purposes. To say a thief is a brother man and beloved of God is true. To say therefore a thief is not a thief is an error. I don’t wish to imply that young Boughton ever, to the best of my knowledge, stole anything of significance in any conventional sense of the word “stole.” It is only to explain why I feel I may speak to you of his past, or at least of what little I know of it and what is to the point.

As I said before, the basic circumstances themselves are so commonplace that they can be dealt with in a very few words. About twenty years ago, while he was still in college at any rate, he became involved with a young girl, and the involvement produced a child. This sort of thing happens, and it is sorted out one way or another, as any clergyman can tell you.

In this instance, however, there were aggravating circumstances. For one thing, the girl was very young. For another, her family situation was desolate, even squalid. In other words, to say the least, she enjoyed none of the protections a young girl needs. How Jack Boughton even found her has never, been clear to me. She and her family lived in an isolated house with a lot of mean dogs under the porch. It was a sad place and she was a sad child. And there he was with his college airs and his letter sweater and that Plymouth convertible he got somewhere for a song, he said, when he was asked about it. (Boughton had so many children to educate, they all had to work, Jack too, and a car was out of the question even for old Boughton. His congregation gave him a used Buick in 1946, because by then it was too hard for him to walk anywhere.) Jack Boughton had no business in the world involving himself with that girl. It was something no honorable man would have done. However I turn it over in my mind that fact remains. And here is a prejudice of mine, confirmed by my lights through many years of observation. Sinners are not all dishonorable people, not by any means. But those who are dishonorable never really repent and never really reform. Now, I may be wrong here. No such distinction occurs in Scripture. And repentance and reformation are matters of the soul which only the Lord can judge. But, in my experience, dishonor is recalcitrant. When I see it, my heart sinks, because I feel I have no help to offer a dishonorable person. I know the deficiency may be my own altogether.

In any case, young Boughton never acknowledged the child, to make any provision for it at all. But he did tell his father about it. As if confessing a transgression, as his father saw it, though to me it seemed like pure meanness, because he must have known that grandchild would weigh on old Boughton’s mind something terrible, as it did. He even told Boughton where the young girl lived, and Glory drove the old man out there in that foolish convertible. Boughton hoped to baptize the child — it was a little girl — or at least to satisfy himself that she would be baptized, but the people were hostile to him, as if he were the one at fault. So he left some money and went away, very dejected and humiliated. He was so obviously miserable that Mrs. Boughton made Glory tell her what the problem was, and then she was so miserable that Glory drove them both out in the country. Mrs. Boughton had to see the baby, and she had to hold her. It was probably unwise for her to do that. Well, I held her, too. Where wisdom could have found a place in a situation like that one I don’t claim to know. They brought diapers and clothes and they left money.

This went on for a long time. It went on for several years, in fact. Glory used to come to me and cry about it, because nothing ever got better. The baby was always too dirty and too small.

She took me out to see the situation for myself, and I can tell you it was very bad. People have a right to live as they see fit, but that was no place for an infant. There were tin cans and broken glass all over the yard and dirty old mattresses on the floor, and who knows what all. Dogs everywhere. How could young Boughton have taken advantage of that girl? And then to have abandoned her? Glory said when she asked her brother if he planned to marry the girl he just said, “You’ve seen her.” On the way there Glory told me how I must try to persuade the family to let the girl and her baby come into town and live in a nice Christian family. I tried that, but her father spat on the floor and said, “She’s already got a nice Christian family.” Then all the way home Glory described a plan she had come up with to kidnap the child. The baby, that is. She knew some stories about the old days when they used to smuggle fugitives up from Missouri, and she thought one small infant would be a much easier thing to conceal. Several houses in town have hidden cellars or cabinets where people could be put out of sight for a day or two. The church has one in the attic. I’ll have to remember to show it to you. It will involve climbing a ladder. Well, we’ll see.