Gilead - Marilynne Robinson [52]
He seemed in excellent spirits. "The children," he said, "are putting things to rights for me."
I talked to him some about the baseball season and about the election, but I could tell he was listening mainly to the voices of his children, who did sound very happy and harmonious. I remember when they played in those gardens with their cats and kites and bubbles. It was as pretty a sight as you're likely to see. Their mother was a fine woman, and such a one to laugh! Boughton says, "I miss her something dreadful." She knew Louisa when they were girls. Once, I remember, they put hard-boiled eggs under a neighbor's setting hen.
What the point was I never knew, but I remember them laughing so hard they just threw themselves down on the grass and lay there with the tears running down into their hair. One time Boughton and I and some others took a hay wagon apart and reassembled it on the.roof of the courthouse. I don't know what the point of that was, either, but we had a grand time, working under cover of darkness and all that. I wasn't ordained yet, but I was in seminary. I don't know what we thought we were up to. All that laughter. I wish I could hear it again. I asked Boughton if he remembered putting that wagon on the roof and he said, "How could I forget it?" and chuckled to please me, but he really wanted to sit there with his chin propped on the head of his cane and listen to the voices of his children. So I walked home.
You and your mother were making sandwiches with peanut butter and apple butter on raisin bread. I consider such a sandwich a great delicacy, as you are clearly aware, because you made me stay on the porch until everything was ready, the milk poured and so on. Children seem to think every pleasant thing has to be a surprise.
Your mother was a little upset because she didn't know where I was. I didn't tell her I might go to Boughton's. She's afraid I'll just drop dead somewhere, and that's reasonable enough. It seems to me worse things could happen, actually, but that's not how she looks at it. Most of the time I feel a good deal better than the doctor led me to expect, so I 'm inclined to enjoy myself as I can. It helps me sleep.
I was thinking about old Boughton's parents, what they were like when we were children. They were a rather somber pair, even in their prime. Not like him at all. His mother would take tiny bites of her food and swallow as if she were swallowing live coals, stoking the fires of her dyspepsia. And his father, reverend gentleman that he was, had something about him that bespoke grudge. I have always liked the phrase "nursing a grudge," because many people are tender of their resentments, as of the thing nearest their hearts. Well, who knows what account these two old pilgrims have made of themselves by now.
I always imagine divine mercy giving us back to ourselves and letting us laugh at what we became, laugh at the preposterous disguises of crouch and squint and limp and lour we all do put on. I enjoy the hope that when we meet I will not be estranged from you by all the oddnesses life has carved into me. When I look at Boughton, I see a funny, generous young man, full of vigor. He's on two canes now, and he says if he could sprout a third arm there would be three. He hasn't stood in a pulpit these ten years. I conclude that Boughton has completed his errand and I have not yet completed mine. I hope I am not presuming on the Lord's patience.
I've started The Trail of the Lonesome Pine. I went over to the library and got a copy for myself, since your mother can't part with hers. I believe she's reading through it again. I'd forgotten it entirely, if I ever read it at all. There's a young girl who falls in love with an older man. She tells him, "I'll go with ye anywhar." That made me laugh. I guess it's a pretty good book. He isn't old like I am, but then your mother isn't young like the girl in the book is, either.
This week I intend to preach on Genesis 21:14—21, which is the story of Hagar and Ishmael. If these were ordinary times—if I were