Gilead - Marilynne Robinson [21]
I read somewhere that a thing that does not exist in relation to anything else cannot itself be said to exist. I can't quite see the meaning of a statement so purely hypothetical as this, though I may simply lack understanding. But it does remind me of that afternoon when nothing flew through the air, no one slid or drifted or tagged, when there was no waltz at all, so to speak. It seems to me that the storm had to put an end to it, as if it were a fire to be put out, an eruption into this world of an alarming kind of nullity. "There was silence in heaven for about half an hour." It seems a little like that as I remember it, though it went on a good deal longer than half an hour. Null. That word has real power. My grandfather had nowhere to spend his courage, no way to feel it in himself. That was a great pity.
As I write I am aware that my memory has made much of very little. There was that old man my grandfather sitting beside me in his ashy coat, trembling just because he did, sharing out the frugal pleasures of his licorice, maybe with Kansas somehow transforming itself from memory to intention in his mind that very afternoon. (It was Kansas he went back to, not the town where his church used to be. That's why we were so long finding him.) Bud Fowler stood at second base with his glove on his hip and watched the catcher. I know he liked to play bare-handed, but that is what I remember, and it's all I ever could remember about him, so there is no point trying to put the memory right. I followed his career in the newspaper for years, until they started up the Negro Leagues, and then I sort of lost track of him.
I was a fairly decent pitcher in high school and college, and we had a couple of teams up at the seminary. We'd go out on a Saturday to toss the ball around. The diamond was just worn in the grass, so it was anybody's guess where the baselines were. We had some good times. There were remarkable young men studying for the ministry in those days. There are now, too, I'm sure.
When my father and I were walking along the road in the quiet and the moonlight, away from the graveyard where we'd found the old man, my father said, "You know, everybody in Kansas saw the same thing we saw." At the time (remember I was twelve) I took him to mean the entire state was a witness to our miracle. I thought that whole state could vouch for the particular blessing my father had brought down by praying there at his father's grave, or the glory that my grandfather had somehow emanated out of his parched repose. Later I realized my father would have meant that the sun and moon aligned themselves as they did with no special reference to the two of us. He never encouraged any talk about visions or miracles, except the ones in the Bible.
I can't tell you, though, how I felt, walking along beside him that night, along that rutted road, through that empty world—what a sweet strength I felt, in him, and in myself, and all around us. I am glad I didn't understand, because I have rarely felt joy like that, and assurance. It was like one of those dreams where you're filled with some extravagant feeling you might never have in life, it doesn't matter what it is, even guilt or dread, and you learn from it what an amazing instrument you are, so to speak, what a power you have to experience beyond anything you might ever actually need. Who would have thought that the moon could dazzle and flame like that? Despite what he said, I could see that my father was a little shaken. He had to stop and wipe his eyes.
My grandfather told me once about a vision he'd had when he was still living in Maine, not yet sixteen. He had fallen asleep by the fire, worn out from a day helping his father pull stumps. Someone