like a metaphor for something. So much does. Ralph Waldo Emerson is excellent on this point.
It seems to me to be a metaphor for the human soul, the singular light within the great general light of existence. Or it
seems like poetry within language. Perhaps wisdom within experience. Or marriage within friendship and love. I'll try to remember
to use this. I believe I see a place for it in my thoughts on Hagar and Ishmael. Their time in the wilderness seems like a specific moment of divine Providence within the whole providential regime of Creation.
Just before suppertime yesterday evening Jack Boughton came strolling by. He sat himself down on the porch step and talked baseball and politics—he favors the Yankees, which he has
1 19
every right to do—until the fragrance of macaroni and cheese so obtruded itself that I was obliged to invite him in. You and your mother still regard him as a fairly wonderful surprise, this John Ames Boughton with his quiet voice and his preacherly manner, which, by the way, he has done nothing to earn, or to deserve. To the best of my knowledge, at any rate. He had it even as a child, and I always found that disturbing.
Maybe it's something he isn't conscious of, growing up the way he did. But it seems to me sometimes that there's an element of parody in it. I wonder if he acts that way everywhere, or if he does
it only around me, and around his father. What do I mean by preacherly? There's a way of being formal and deferential and at the same time cordial, while maintaining an air of dignified authority, which is preacherly. I never mastered this myself, but my father had it and Boughton had it. My grandfather, that old Nazirite, was impressive in another style.
But of sheer and perfect preacherliness I have never seen a finer example than this Jack Boughton, heathen that he is, or was. Your mother asked him if he would like to say grace, and he did,
with an elegant simplicity that seemed almost wasted on macaroni and cheese.
He mentioned that I had not been to see his father in a few days, -which is the truth, and which is no coincidence either. I thought he might be at his father's only a few days. It has been one of the great irritations of my life, seeing the two of them together. I hoped to stay away till he left, but clearly he is not about to do that.
In the old days I used to come into the kitchen and look around in the pantry and the icebox, and generally I'd find a pot full of soup or stew or a casserole of some kind, which I would warm up or not depending on my mood. If I didn't find anything, I'd 120
eat cold baked beans and fried-egg sandwiches—which, by the way, I enjoyed. I'd find pie or biscuits on the table sometimes. When I was at the church or up in my study, one of the women would just step in the door and leave dinner there for me and go away, and then another day she'd come back and take her pan and her tea towels or whatever and go away. I'd find jam and pickles and smoked fish. Once I found liver pills. It was a strange life, with its own pleasures.
Then, when your mother and I got married, it was a little hard for people to learn that they couldn't just come and go anymore. They suspected she was not a cook, I believe, and in
fact she was not, so they kept coming in the door with their casseroles until I realized it upset her, and then I spoke with them about it. I found her crying in the pantry one evening. Someone had come in and changed the pull cord on the light and put new paper down on the shelves. It was kindly intended, but not considerate, I understand that.
I mention this because it seemed so strange to me to be sitting there with the two of you and young Boughton, of all
people. Because not so many years ago I was sitting at that table in the dark eating cold meat loaf from the pan it came in, listening to the radio, when old Boughton let himself in the door and sat down at the table and said, 'Don't put the light on.' So I turned the radio off and we sat there together and talked and prayed, about John Ames Boughton, for John Ames Boughton.
But that story may be more than you need to know, more than I ought to tell you. If things have come right, what is the point? There's nothing very remarkable in the story, in fact it is very commonplace. Which is not an extenuation by any means. So often people tell me about some wickedness they've been up to, or they've suffered from, and I think, Oh, that again! I've heard of churches in the South that oblige people to make a 121
public confession of their graver sins to the whole congregation. I think sometimes there might be an advantage in making people aware how worn and stale these old transgressions
are. It might take some of the shine off them, for those who are tempted. But I have no evidence to suggest it has that effect. Of course there are special and extenuating circumstances. They were fairly special in young Boughton's case and
by no means extenuating, if I am any judge. Which I am not, or ought not to be, according to Scripture.
Transgression. That is legalism. There is never just one transgression. There is a wound in the flesh of human life that scars when it heals and often enough seems never to heal at all. Avoid transgression. How's that for advice.
I have to decide what to tell your mother. I know she is wondering. He's very nice to her, and to you. And to me. No 'Papa'
this evening, thank goodness. He's so respectful I feel like telling him I'm not the oldest man in the world yet. Well, I know I'm touchy about some things. I have to try to be fair with him.
You look at him as if he were Charles Lindbergh. He keeps calling you little brother, and you love that.
I hope there's some special providence in his turning up just when I have so many other things to deal with, because he is a considerable disruption when peace would have been especially appreciated.
I'm not complaining. Or I ought not to be.
I've been thinking about my funeral sermon, which I plan to write to save old Boughton the trouble. I can do a pretty good imitation of his style. He'll get a laugh out of that.
122
Young Boughton came by again this morning, with some apples and plums from
