Jack smiled and stretched and looked at her as if to say she had no idea of the difficulty of what she was asking of him, but then he took a few bites. “Excellent, Glory. Thank you.” He pushed back his chair.
“You haven’t finished yet.”
“That’s true,” he said, and he rested his head on his hand and ate what she had put on his plate, mock docile. “There,” he said. “Now may I be excused?”
“No. You can wait for Papa to finish. Where are your manners?”
“A full-fledged domestic tyrant,” her father said. “You see what I have had to put up with.”
“Stop grumbling and eat.”
Her father said, “I wouldn’t mind if you cut this up a little for me, Glory. You could help me out here.”
“I’m sorry. I should have thought of that.”
“Too busy barking orders!” he said, and laughed.
Jack sat back with his arms folded and watched the old man struggle to close his hand on his fork. The scar under his eye was whiter, as it was, she knew by now, when he was weary.
WHEN SHE HAD SETTLED THE OLD MAN FOR SLEEP, SHE went out to the garden. Jack was at work already, chopping weeds. He stopped to watch the mailman pass on the other side of the street, then he lighted a cigarette.
She said, “Beware the Thane of Fife.”
“Yes,” he said. “This being a Scotsman is no bed of roses. A Scotsman!” He laughed. “I don’t think I’ve ever even seen one of those.”
“I suspect Scottishness is another name for predestination. It explains everything, more or less.”
“The poor old bastard. Sorry. I wouldn’t want to have me for a problem. At his age. Not that I won’t.” Then he said, “You know, if there has been another break-in, the cops might come by.”
“The cop. This is Gilead.”
“I’m serious, Glory. That could be very bad. For the old gent. For me, too. He already thinks I did it.”
“You’re making too much of this, Jack. If he thought you were a thief, would he give you the keys to the family coffers?”
“Yes, he would. That is exactly what he would do. He would think I might have needed money. He would give me money to keep me from stealing again. That’s what he was talking about in there.”
“Maybe.”
He nodded. “You know I’m right.” He said, “I don’t want you to comfort me, Glory. I want you to help me. This could ruin everything. I deal with things like this very badly. I’ve gotten worse with practice.”
“Of course I’ll help you. But you have to tell me what I should do.”
He said, “Just think it through with me. Help me think what to do if things go wrong. It probably seems crazy to be so scared, but I am scared.” He laughed. “I’ve done — I’ve done a lot of hard things in my life, but another— If I had to do thirty days, that would pretty well finish me up.” He said, “I fear I am not in my perfect mind, little sister. I don’t know how to deal with this.” Then he said, “You have to keep me sober. That’s the first thing.”
“I’ll do my best, Jack. I will. I swear to God. But if you want me to help you think this out, you’ll have to give me a little time. And you’ll have to promise me that you’ll try to ignore Papa. He shouldn’t talk to you the way he does. He isn’t himself. He’s always loved you more than any of us.”
“I do try to—”
“If he were himself, he would be grateful to you for ignoring the things he’s been saying.”
He wiped his face with the heel of his hand. “Thank you, Glory. That’s good of you.”
They saw the mailman stop and put letters in the box, and they began walking down from the garden together.
He laughed. “It’s amazing. I’m in hell over a miserable thirty-eight dollars.”
She looked at him. “Oh,” he said. “Oh.” Then, “It was in the newspaper, Glory. In the article.” He was ashen. He stopped and rubbed his eyes. “I can show you. I have the paper in my room.” Then he smiled at her, that weary, bitter smile of his, as if he knew her far too well, and did not know her at all.
She said, “Forgive me, Jack.”
He said, “Sure, I forgive you. What choice do I have?” He took the mail from the box, a bill and a letter from Luke to their father, glanced at it, and handed it to her. “Do you ever hear from him? Your, um, fiancé?”
“What? No.”
“Do you want to?”
“No.”
“Do you write to him?”
“No.”
He said, “Five years. That’s about eighteen hundred days. So you’d have been getting letters at the rate of one every four days, more or less.”
“He traveled.”
Jack laughed. “Yes. Of course he did. Still, he was a prolific son of a bitch.”
“Sometimes he just clipped poems out of magazines and signed his name.”
“Which was?”
“What does it matter?”
“Oh, I don’t know. I’m your big brother. I might want to stalk him down someday. Give him a black eye. Recoup some remnant of the
