“So you’re thinking that woman friend might come here?”
He shook his head. “Only when I’m trying to find a way to make myself go out and shop my miserable aspirations around town one more time. Or keep tinkering with that damn car. She’d probably hate it here, anyway.”
“You’ve never told me her name.”
“Her name is Della.”
“I’d like to know her.”
He said, “Would you be kind to her?”
“What a question!”
“Swear to God?”
“Of course! I’d be a sister to her!”
He laughed. “I’m going to hold you to that someday. If my wildest hopes are fulfilled. Which they won’t be.”
After a minute she said, “Jack, there’s something I’ve been wondering about.”
“Hmm?”
“What do you act like when you’re happy?”
He laughed. “I forget.”
“Seriously. When you came in just now, I thought something good must have happened.”
“Oh. How to account for the high spirits. Gasoline fumes? And I have replaced so much of that engine that I must be closing in on the problem by now. With any luck. When I turned the key this time it — chortled. And that triggered a fantasy of charging off in my father’s DeSoto to rescue my lady love from a smoldering Memphis.”
“I thought she was in St. Louis.”
He shrugged. “I’m a little tired of St. Louis. I’d rather rescue her from Memphis.”
“I see.”
“On second thought, her father is in Memphis. He’s very protective, and he has a car that actually runs. And he thinks I’m damn near worthless—‘damn near,’ because he’s professionally obligated to take a charitable view. She has three brothers in Memphis. So I guess I’d better rescue her from St. Louis.” He began to peel another potato. “Joking aside, maybe she would come to Gilead for a while, to give it a try. It’s possible.”
They had an early supper. She had meant to serve the chicken cold, but she decided it was better to serve the bread while it was still warm, and what difference did it make when they did anything, anyway. Her father enjoyed the warm bread and the chicken, too, and the peas with potatoes in cream sauce. He grew voluble, talking about his own boyhood in Gilead, how, he said, he couldn’t even draw water from the well to his grandmother’s satisfaction, let alone split kindling, so he didn’t have as many chores as other children did. “She never trusted me to bring the eggs in, either,” he said. “It was her way of spoiling me. Yes. I used to go over to Ames’s and help him out a little, and then we’d have the whole day, in the summer. The whole day by the river. I don’t know how we passed all that time. It was wonderful. Sometimes his grandfather would be down there, fishing and talking to Jesus, and then we’d be pretty quiet, or we’d wade upstream a little way. He was a strange old fellow, but he was just a part of life, you know. Like the birds singing.”
Jack said, “I spent time at the river. I liked to do that.”
His father nodded. “I always thought this was an excellent place to be a child. Not that I had anything to compare it with.”
“It is a good place.”
“Well, Jack, I’m glad you think so. Yes. Some things might have worked out better than they did, I know that. But there was always a lot to enjoy. That was my feeling, at least. And there still is. I watch the children, and they seem happy to me. I think they should be happy.”
AFTER SUPPER JACK CAME DOWNSTAIRS WITH THE NEW baseball mitt, flexing it and folding the pocket. He said, “I thought I’d see if the Ames kid would like to play a little catch. Is that a good idea? He’s old enough. He seemed interested.”
She said, “I think it’s a good idea.”
He went out to the porch and stood there for a while, and then he came into the kitchen again. “No,” he said. He shrugged. “I’m disreputable. I forget that from time to time. But I have it on excellent authority.” He smiled. “The good Reverend wouldn’t approve. I’m pretty sure they’ll give you your money back.” He handed her the glove. “Those high spirits,” he said. “They can get me in trouble.”
She said, “I don’t understand any of this. I think you worry too much. I’ll keep the glove until you want it.”
“You have to help me think things through, Glory.”
“Does that mean remembering that you’re disreputable?”
“’Fraid so.”
“I think you’re imagining.”
“It is the central fact of my existence,” he said. “One of three, actually. The one you have to help me keep in mind.”
“Well, really, Jack. How on earth am I supposed to do that?”
He laughed. “Don’t be so kind to me,” he said.
SHE THOUGHT ABOUT THE THING JACK HAD SEEMED TO ask of her, some attempt to save his soul. Dear Lord. How could that idea haunt her with a sense of obligation, when she really did not know what it meant. There are words you hear all your life, she thought. Then
