the house
looks sort of like a huge duck blind. Boughton corrected me when I told'him that. 'A hummingbird blind,' he said. 'There are times when a little bird shot would bring down a thousand of them.' But, he says, since that's not enough yet to season a cup of broth, he's going to bide his time.
All his gardens have more or less gone to brush, but as I came up the road I saw young Boughton and the daughter Glory clearing out the iris beds. Boughton owns his house. I used to think that was an enviable thing, but there's been no one but him to see to it, and things have gotten a little out of hand these last years.
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 runnings 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 116
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 117
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 ofthe 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 twenty years younger—I'd be making an orderly passage through the Gospels and the Epistles before I
turned to Genesis again. That was my custom, and I have always felt it was effective as teaching, which is really what all
this is about. Now, though, I talk about whatever is on my mind—Hagar and Ishmael at the moment.
The story of Hagar and Ishmael came to mind while I was praying this morning, and I found a great assurance in it. The story says that it is not only the father of a child who cares for its life, who protects its mother, and it says that even if the 1 18
mother can't find a way to provide for it, or herself, provision will be made. At that level it is a story full of comfort. That is how life goes—we send our children into the wilderness. Some of them on the day they are born, it seems, for all the help we can give them. Some of them seem to be a kind of wilderness unto themselves. But there must be angels there, too, and springs of water. Even that wilderness, the very habitation of jackals, is the Lord's. I need to bear this in mind.
Young Boughton came by to see if you felt like a game of catch. You did. He was sunburned from working in the garden.
It gave him a healthy, honest look. He's teaching you to throw overhand. He said he couldn't stay for supper. You were disappointed, as I believe your mother was also.
The moon looks wonderful in this warm evening light, just as a candle flame looks beautiful in the light of morning. Light within light. It seems
