Gilead - Marilynne Robinson [32]
If you remember me at all, you may find me explained a little by what I am telling you. If you could see me not as a child but as a grown man, it is surely true that you would observe a certain crepuscular quality in me. As you read this, I hope you will understand that when I speak of the long night that preceded these days of my happiness, I do not remember grief and loneliness so much as I do peace and comfort—grief, but never without comfort; loneliness, but never without peace. Almost never.
Once when Boughton and I had spent an evening going through our texts together and we were done talking them over, I walked him out to the porch, and there were more fireflies out there than I had ever seen in my life, thousands of them everywhere, just drifting up out of the grass, extinguishing themselves in midair. We sat on the steps a good while in the dark and the silence, watching them. Finally Boughton said, "Man is born to trouble as the sparks fly upward." And really, it was that night as if the earth were smoldering. Well, it was, and it is. An old fire will make a dark husk for itself and settle in on its core, as in the case of this planet. I believe the same metaphor may describe the human individual, as well. Perhaps Gilead. Perhaps civilization. Prod a little and the sparks will fly. I don't know whether the verse put a blessing on the fireflies or the fireflies put a blessing on the verse, or if both of them together put a blessing on trouble, but I have loved them both a good deal ever since.
There has been a telephone call from Jack Boughton, that is, from John Ames Boughton, my namesake. He is still in St. Louis, and still planning to come home. Glory came to tell me about it, excited and also anxious. She said, "Papa was just so thrilled to hear his voice." I suppose he'll appear sooner or later. I don't know how one boy could have caused so much disappointment without ever giving anyone any grounds for hope.
Man, I should say, since he's well into his thirties. No, he must be forty by now. He is not the eldest or the youngest or the best or the bravest, only the most beloved. I suppose I might tell you a story about him, too, or as much of it as behooves me. Another time. I must reflect on it first. When I've had a little opportunity to talk with him, I might decide all that trouble is well forgotten and write nothing about it.
Old Boughton is so eager to see him. Perhaps anxious as well as eager. He has some fine children, yet it always seemed this was the one on whom he truly set his heart. The lost sheep, the lost coin. The prodigal son, not to put too fine a point on it. I have said at least once a week my whole adult life that there is an absolute disjunction between our Father's love and our deserving. Still, when I see this same disjunction between human parents and children, it always irritates me a little.
(I know you will be and I hope you are an excellent man, and I will love you absolutely if you are not.)
This morning I did a foolish thing. I woke up in the dark, and that put me in mind to walk over to the church the way I used to. I did leave a note, and your mother found it, so it wasn't as bad as it might have been, I suppose. (The note was an afterthought, I admit.) She seemed to think I'd gone off by myself to breathe my last—which would not be a bad idea, to my way of thinking. I have worried some about those last hours. This is another thing you know and I don't—how this ends. That is to say, how my life will seem to you to have ended. That's a matter of great concern to your mother, as it is to me, of course.
But I have trouble remembering that I can't trust my body not to fail me suddenly. I don't feel bad most of the time. The pains are infrequent enough that I forget now and then.
The doctor told me I had to be careful getting up from a chair. He also told me not to climb stairs, which would mean giving up my study, a thing I can't yet bring myself to do. He also told me to take a shot of brandy every day, which I do, in the morning, standing in