That old black coat he always wore to preach in was the one he put over her shoulders one evening when they were walking along the road together and he was throwing rocks at the fence posts the way a boy would do, still shy of her. But on a Sunday morning, with the sermon in front of him he’d spent the week on and knew so well he hardly needed to look at it, he was a beautiful old man, and it pleased her more than almost anything that she knew the feel of that coat, the weight of it. She’d be thinking about it when she should have been praying. But if she ever had prayed in all the years of her old life, it might have been for just that, that gentleness. And if she prayed now, it was really remembering the comfort he put around her, the warmth of his body still in that coat. It was a shock to her, a need she only discovered when it was satisfied, for those few minutes. In those days she had all the needs she could stand already, and here was another one. So she said something mean to him. That’s how she used to be and how she might be again someday, if she was ever just barely getting by and somebody seemed to be about to make it harder just by making it different. They’d had their wedding by then, but she wasn’t married to him yet, so she still thought sometimes, Why should he care? What is it to him? That was loneliness. When you’re scalded, touch hurts, it makes no difference if it’s kindly meant. Now he could comfort her with a look. And what would she do without him. What would she do.
Doll was hard that way. All of them were. Talking to strangers was putting yourself within the reach of sudden harm. What might they say? What might they seem to be thinking? Then you were left with it afterward, like remembering a bad dream, and nothing to do about it except to hate the next stranger a little more. Those times she used to think, I have a knife in my garter, and you don’t know how you’re pressing up against the minute I decide to use it. Doll told her, Don’t cut nobody with it. You don’t want all that to deal with. Just give them a look at it. Most of the time, that’s plenty. But there were times when the merciless knife was a comfort to her. Even when she only thought somebody might have looked at her the wrong way, she’d tell herself she had that furious old knife and it had done the worst already. That was before she had a child to look after. You have to stay out of trouble for the sake of your child.
She still actually thought like that, when she let her thoughts sink down to where they rested. She had never taken a dime that wasn’t hers or hurt a living soul, to speak of. But that’s what her heart was like sometimes, secret and bitter and scared. She had stolen the preacher’s child, and she laughed to think of it. Making him learn his verses and say his prayers would be like a joke, when they were off by themselves, getting by as they could. She did steal that Bible, and she’d keep it with her, and she’d show him that part about the baby toiling in its blood, and she’d say, That was me, and somebody said, “Live!” I never will know who. And then you came, red as blood, naked as Adam, and I took you to my breast and you lived when they never thought you would. So you’re mine. Gilead has no claim on you, or John Ames either, or the graveyard that has no place for you anyway.
Oh, if the old man knew what thoughts she had! She could make a pretty good meat loaf now and a decent potato salad. He told her he’d never liked pie very much anyway. She could keep the house nice enough. People passing in the road stopped to admire her gardens. The boy was as clean and pretty as any baby in Gilead. A little small, but that could change. And the old man did look as though every blessing he had forgotten to hope for had descended on him all at once, for the time being.
She couldn’t lean her whole weight on any of this when she knew she would have to live on after it. She wouldn’t even want to see this house again after they left it, or Gilead, at least till the boy had outgrown the thought that they belonged there. So she thought about the old life. She never really hated it until Doll came to her all bloody and she went to St. Louis. But it was a hard way to bring up a child. And she would tell him he was a
