A Thousand Acres_ A Novel - Jane Smiley [98]
Henry was not in his office, but he was somewhere—the door to his office was open and his chair was pushed back from the desk. There were no shafts of sunlight—the windows faced east and north. The carpet was beige, and the window seats, I remembered, were actually in the church parlor. They, too, had been covered in beige not too long ago by the ladies’ sewing group. Henry’s office was small and cluttered. Files were stacked on both of the chairs I might have sat in.
I stood in the hall for five minutes. During that time, the phone rang four times, each time for six or more rings. Outside, a lawn mower clattered around the corner of the church. There was a window in the swinging doors down the hall. I saw the face of the church secretary, whom I had avoided coming in, look through it and take note of my presence.
That was the thing. Henry was not only my “pastor,” he was Henry. His voice wasn’t a low murmur, for one thing, it was flat and somewhat droning, with an edge of unsuccessfully suppressed emotion. He was fifty, but seemed thirty and just starting out, as if his experiences had taught him very little.
I looked around, wondering how to get out without anyone’s seeing me, and he came through the swinging doors. He wore grass-stained shorts, and I realized that the sound of the lawn mower was gone. It was Henry who’d been cutting the grass. He came toward me with an earnest smile. His face was red and sweat ran off his upper lip. I stepped back, setting my shoulder blades against the stippled concrete-block wall. Henry came on. When he got to me, he said, “Ginny!” and seemed to press me toward the door of his office. It seemed like he pressed me, but perhaps it was only me, resisting. He said, “Now, Ginny, you mustn’t worry. Harold Clark—” Just then the phone rang again, and he leaned across the desk to pick up the receiver. His back was to me. I walked, then ran, to the exit. I couldn’t do it. He was too much himself, too small for his position, too anxious to fit in to our community, too sweaty and dirty and casual and unwise. I started the car and drove out of the parking lot. In my rearview mirror, I could see him waving to me from the door I had come out of.
That night after supper, I called Rose and got her to meet me on Daddy’s porch. We sat together on the top step, and it took me a while to say anything. Long ribbons of clouds floated a ways above the western horizon, and the cornfield on the other side of the road rolled to meet it. A wash of pale pink seeped upward from the lower margin of the sky and rimmed the clouds with fire. Above them, clear blue shaded to lavender. Rose bent down and brushed some dirt out of the corner of the step below us. I said, “Rose, don’t you think we should talk some more? What’s next?”
“We’ll see.”
“I’m afraid to see.”
“What are you afraid of?”
“I guess I’m afraid of anything having to do with Daddy, actually.” Rose laughed, then she said, “Did we treat him badly?”
“I know people think we did.”
“But did we? Do you think so?”
I thought about the storm, the fight, his cursing me, and then, clearest of all, that moment when he came close to me and lowered his voice, tried to wheedle me. Even then, five days later, it gave me a shiver, as if water had trickled down my back. Threats I was used to, but this—
I said, “I don’t think so, no.”
“Well, then. Stick with what’s true.”
“What’s true?”
“He went out into the storm because he was stubborn and childish.”
The clouds had drifted