That is the sort of thing he did as a young boy, mischief only bordering on harm, generally speaking. That is my belief, though certain harmful things were done which I have never wished to ascribe to him but which, in the privacy of my thoughts, I always did. For example, there was a barn fire, and some animals were lost in it. I may be wrong in blaming him for that.
His transgressions were sly and lonely, and this became truer as he grew up. I believe I said earlier that he did not steal in any conventional sense, but by that I meant he stole things of no value except to the people he stole them from. There was no sense in what he did, unless his purpose was to cause a maximum of embarrassment and risk a minimum of retribution.
When he was fifteen or sixteen, he’d come into the house while I was at the church and pocket one thing or another. It was the most irritating trick you could imagine. Once, he took that old Greek Testament right off my desk. If ever there was a thing on earth so little worth the trouble of stealing I don’t know what it would be. Once, he stole my reading glasses. Once, I came in when he was standing right there in the parlor. He just laughed and said, “Hello, Papa,” cool and charming as you please. He made some small talk, in that precocious way he had, smiling as if there were a joke between us. It took me a while to figure out what was missing that time. Then I realized it was a little photograph in a velvet case of Louisa, taken when she was a child. I was as angry about that as I have ever been in my life just the sheer meanness of it. And how could I tell Boughton that he had done such a thing? How could I say the words?
Things would drift back sooner or later. The Greek Testament was left on the doormat. The photograph appeared on Boughton’s hall table, mysteriously, and was brought back to me. That penknife with the word “Chartres” pressed into the handle, which was made from a shell casing, was left on the kitchen table, plunged through an apple. I found that disconcerting at the time.
Then he started doing the things that got his name in the newspaper, stealing liquor and joyriding, and so on. I’ve known young fellows who spent time in jail or got themselves sent off to the navy for behavior that wasn’t any worse. But his family was so well respected that he got away with it all. That is to say, he was allowed to go right on disgracing his family.
I notice I have said he seemed lonely. That was one very strange thing about him, because, as I have said also, the Boughtons really loved him. All of them did. His brothers and sisters would stand up for him no matter what. When he was little, he’d slip out, run off, and they’d come by looking for him, anxious beyond their years, all business, hoping to find him and exert their respectable influence on him before he could get into too much trouble. I remember one summer I had planted a row of sunflowers along the back fence. There must have been twenty of them: One afternoon the other little Boughtons came to the door asking for Johnny, as they called him in those days. I went out to help them look around a little, and darned if those sunflowers hadn’t been pulled back, bent over the fence so their heads were hanging down on the other side of it. Glory said, “It could have been the wind that did that.” I said, Yes, maybe it was the wind.
If I had to choose one word to describe him as he is now, it might be “lonely,” though “weary” and “angry” certainly come to mind also. Once during the time I was missing Louisa’s picture I went over to Boughton’s to borrow a book, and we sat on the porch and talked awhile, and that boy sat on the steps, fiddling with a slingshot, I remember, and listening to every word, and from time to time he would look up at me and smile, as if we were in on a joke together, some interesting conspiracy. I found that extremely irritating. He almost provoked me into mentioning the photograph then and there. I had to leave to stop myself. He said, “Goodbye, Papa!” I went home just trembling. Maybe you can see why, when the business with the young girl came up, I was chiefly struck by the meanness of it.
I don’t think I do my heart much good by remembering these things. My point is that he was always a mystery, and that’s why I worry about him, and that’s why I know I can’t judge him as I might another man. That is to say, I can’t assign a moral valuation to his behavior. He’s just mean. Well, I don’t know that that is true of him now. But I do see what he might injure. That is very clear to me. While I was standing there in the pulpit, the thought came to me that I was looking back from the grave and there he was, sitting beside you, grinning up at me. This is not doing me any good at all; I’d better pray.
