“That’s good,” his father said. And then, as if to explain himself, “I just woke up from the saddest dream! My grandmother always said you can trust a morning dream. I hope she was wrong about that.”
“It sounds like I’d better hope so, too.”
“Well, you’re still here. You’re alive.” He closed his eyes.
JACK WAS RESTLESS, SO SHE GAVE HIM A SHOPPING LIST. IT surprised her that he was willing to brave Gilead again, and he was gone long enough to make her begin to worry, but then he came back with a bag of groceries. She saw him from the garden and followed him into the kitchen. He had put his hat on the refrigerator and loosened his tie. “One pork roast,” he said. “One pound of butter. One loaf of bread. Two yellow onions.” He put a carton of cigarettes on the table. “I owe you for these. And”—he said—“one small present for Glory.” He reached into the bag again and produced an elderly book. “The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844. Friedrich Engels. It was the best I could do. There was nothing by Marx. Nothing by DuBois, either. Plenty of Norman Vincent Peale, but I thought you might already have read him.” He smiled.
She picked up the book and opened it. “This hasn’t been checked out since 1925.”
“I suppose that’s why it was there at all. It has just stood quietly on the shelf for a quarter century, waiting to tantalize my sister’s budding interest in Marxism.” He unswaddled the pork from its butcher paper. “The best piece of meat in the store, so the grocer told me. Pretty fine, don’t you think?”
“Yes, very nice.”
He wrapped it up again and set it in the refrigerator. “You don’t seem pleased.”
“Well,” she said, “the card is still in the book, and 1925 is still the last date on it.”
“Oh. Hmm. Are you suggesting that I might have stolen it?”
“No. Just that you might have failed to satisfy the library’s expectations before you walked off with it.”
“I certainly do intend to return it. If you really want me to.”
“Of course.”
“A minor infraction.”
“No question. But they would have let you borrow it. They might have asked you to sign your name.”
“I’ll confess, I considered that. But then I thought, Jack Boughton, noted rake and scoundrel, is observed in the Gilead public library checking out a virtual malcontent’s bible. Here I am trying to rehabilitate myself, as they say, to cut a moderately respectable figure in this town. So that seemed out of the question. I could have told the truth, that the book was for you because you had mentioned to me your interest in exploring Communism, but then I would have been exposing you to every consequence I dreaded for myself. And why do that, I thought, when there is so much room for it in this grocery sack? If slipping it in with the butter and onions resembles petty theft, I will not lower myself in Glory’s estimation, since that is the sort of thing she expects of me anyway.”
“Oh,” she said.
“What!?”
“I’m still being punished.”
“No, I meant that as a little joke, I believe.” He looked at her. “You don’t seem to see much humor in it.” He laughed. “You’re right. A relapse. It all seems a little crazy, doesn’t it. In the circumstances. Best not to seem light-fingered just now. You’re absolutely right.” Then he said, “When I walked into the store, there was that same silence I mentioned to you last time. If Gilead had forgotten any of the particulars of my troubled youth, it’s been reminded of them again. As if Jack Boughton were the only thief in the world. God help me if anything catches fire around here.” He looked at her. “I’ll take Herr Engels back tonight. There’s a slot in the door.”
“No, you aren’t going out at night anymore, remember? Not before the bars close. And not after the bars close.”
“Oh. Right. I forgot.” He smiled. “I’m under house arrest. But I don’t want to leave here,” he said. “Not just yet. The way things are going, though, I suppose I might as well leave.”
“You have to remember, nothing has happened. As far as you’re concerned.”
“Yes, that is so true. Jack Boughton is in hell over nothing at all. And it serves the bastard right, I’d say.”
“I’ll take the book back tomorrow,” Glory said. “I can just slip it onto a shelf. Not that anything would ever come of it, but it’s one less thing to think about.”
“Tomorrow,” he said. “All right. I was going to ask you if I could borrow it, though. I’ve never read it myself. I thought it might help me pass a night or two.”
“Well,” she said, “I’ll take it back day after tomorrow. Next week. It won’t make any difference. I might read it.”
He laughed. “Good girl. We might even be able to work up a disagreement, one of those ideological differences I read about in the news from time to time. Shouting and arm waving. In the heat of it all I might come up with a conviction or two.”
“That sounds wonderful,” she said, “except we’d better forget the shouting, for Papa’s sake. But we could still do the arm waving.”
He shook his head. “That would be
