She said, “Is that Montgomery?”
He nodded. “Yes, it is.” Then the screen showed a tube of toothpaste.
Glory said, “Lila told me their church was planning to get a TV set so that Ames can watch baseball. I suppose that means Papa will want one, too.”
He looked at her. “That’s an idea.” He took her package from her and they began to walk home. He said, “A portable is a couple hundred dollars. But you could ask him about it.”
“I could just have them deliver one to the house. If he doesn’t like it, they’ll take it back.”
He cleared his throat. “You could do that now.”
“Yes, I could. Do you want to help me choose one?”
“Not really. I’ll wait here.” He laughed. “I’ve already spent about an hour in there looking at them. They all seem to work.”
So she went back to the store and chose an eighteen-inch Philco with a rabbit-ear antenna. The clerk asked after her father and her brothers and sisters and after Jack, too. “Is he home for a visit, or is he thinking he might stay?”
Glory said, for brevity’s sake, “He’s just visiting for a while.” If she’d said she didn’t know what had brought him back to Gilead, the strangeness of his situation would have interested the clerk, and the owner of the store, who came out of the back room wiping machine oil from his fingers. Interested them more than it did already. She imagined Jack standing among the bins of nails and tool belts and the ranks of crowbars, unspoken to beyond the ordinary courtesies, seeming unaware of their awareness of him, watching flickering television in that cave full of the smells of leather and wood and oily metal, idle among all those implements of force and purpose, citified among the steel-toed boots and the work shirts. An odd place for a man to loiter who was so alive to embarrassment, so predisposed to sensing even the thought of rebuke. And when he did leave the store, standing on the pavement, looking in at the window, at the silently fulminating authorities and the Negro crowds.
Well, the clerk told her, the Philco would be delivered that afternoon, and if the Reverend decided to keep it, an antenna would be installed on the roof whenever he gave the word. The owner reassured her on precisely these same points. People had always been eager to accommodate her father, and to give even ordinary transactions like this one the aspect of exceptional kindness. So she was obliged to answer every question and to accept every assurance twice at least. They told her that many of the older folks find television a great comfort. They agreed that the baseball season was shaping up. And she was obliged to hear a little gossip.
Jack had stood a long time with his arms full of groceries when she could finally leave the store. “So that worked out,” he said. “Good. Thank you.” He let her take a bottle of milk to make the bag less awkward, and they walked home.
Jack set the television on a lamp table in the parlor. He plugged it in, turned it on, and moved the antenna around one way and another until a passable image presented itself. Their father came in and sat down in an armchair Jack had turned and pushed into place in front of the set.
“So here it is,” the old man said. “We’re very modern now.” He watched without comment a woman in high heels running back and forth across a stage carrying eggs in a teaspoon while a gigantic clock ticked.
Glory said, “The news will be on soon, Papa.”
“Well, yes, I was about to say there isn’t much to this. But you can hear people laughing. I hope there’s money involved. To get a grown woman to act like that.”
The phone rang and Jack came into the kitchen while she answered it, but it was Luke, so he went back to watch the beginning of the news. He was standing in the middle of the room with his hands on his hips. On the screen white police with riot sticks were pushing and dragging black demonstrators. There were dogs.
His father said, “There’s no reason to let that sort of trouble upset you. In six months nobody will remember one thing about it.”
Jack said, “Some people will probably remember it.”
“No. It wasn’t so long ago that everybody was talking about Senator McCarthy. Watching those fellows argue. It’s television that makes things seem important, whether they are or not. Now you never hear a word about Senator McCarthy.”
Jack said, “Well, that’s important, isn’t it?”
“I can’t disagree. I don’t know. I never admired him.”
Police were pushing the black crowd back with dogs, turning fire hoses on them. Jack said, “Jesus Christ!”
His father shifted in his chair. “That kind of language has never been acceptable in this house.”
Jack said, “I—” as if he had been about to say more. But he stopped himself. “Sorry.”
On the screen an official was declaring his intention to enforce the letter of the law. Jack said something under his breath, then glanced at his father.
The old man said, “I do believe it is necessary to enforce the law. The Apostle Paul says we should do everything ‘decently and in order.’ You can’t have people running around the streets like that.”
Jack snapped off the TV. He said, “Sorry.
