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“Yes,” he said. “Perspective. Thank you, Glory. I’d forgotten what it’s like to have anyone give a damn who my father is.”

She said, “If you feel he’s so worried about you, have you ever considered—just to ease his mind—?”

He looked at her. “Lying to the old fellow? About the state of my soul?” He laughed and rubbed his eyes. He said, “Ah, Glory, what would I be then?”

“Forgive me. It was just a thought.”

After a minute he said, “You remember that lady I mentioned, the one who had a good effect on my character. She was very pious—still is, no doubt. Very virtuous. I actually asked her father for her hand in marriage. He was aghast. Really horrified. Religion was one part of it. My not having any. I wished very much at the time that I could have been, you know, a hypocrite. But I just didn’t have it in me. My one scruple. And it has cost me dearly.” He considered. “No, if I were being honest, I’d have to say he despised me on other grounds as well. Religion first and foremost, of course. He was a man of the cloth. Is.” He laughed. “I fell a little in my own estimation. I don’t know what I could have expected his reaction to be. Something less emphatic, I suppose.” He said, “I don’t know why I told you that story, except maybe to let you know I do have one scruple. I’m not sure I should be as confident as I am that there is a difference between hypocrisy and plain old dishonesty. Though I have noticed that thieves are crucified and hypocrites seem not to be. And from time to time I have taken up my cross—” He laughed. “Not lately, you understand.” He looked at her. “Sorry. No disrespect intended. I’m not a hypocrite. That was my point.”

“I know you aren’t. I shouldn’t have suggested—”

“A fraud, perhaps. I’ll have to grant you that.” He smiled.

“I didn’t accuse you of anything. If I were in your place I might be tempted, but you’re right. I’m sorry I brought it up.”

He nodded. “If I thought I could get away with it, I might be tempted, too,” he said. “But I’ve been taking stock. These gray hairs. This battered visage. These frayed cuffs. I’ve had to admit that I’m not a very good liar, Glory. A lifetime more or less given over to dishonesty, and I have very little to show for it. It wouldn’t be a kindness for me to lie to him, because I know he wouldn’t believe me. If he still has a shred of respect for me—well, you see what I mean. I wouldn’t want him to lose it.”

“I find it hard to believe these things you say about yourself, Jack.”

He laughed. “‘All Cretans are liars.’ Feel free to doubt me, if you want to. It gives me a sort of reprieve, I guess. But you see my problem. I can never persuade anyone of anything.”

“I’m persuaded,” she said. “Not of anything in particular, I suppose. Except that you’re very hard on yourself.”

He nodded. “Yes, I am. For all the good it does me.” There was a silence.

“Well,” she said, “I wouldn’t care if you were a petty thief.”

He smiled. “That’s very subjunctive of you.”

“All right. I don’t care if you are a petty thief.”

He said, “Thanks, Glory. That’s kind.”

He did not show her the newspaper article, the mention of thirty-eight dollars, and she did not ask to see it.

G
LORY WENT TO THE HARDWARE STORE TO TELL THEM
they would keep the Philco, and to ask them to install an antenna. When she came back she looked for Jack around the house, then found him in the barn, oiling the blade of a scythe, of all useless and forgotten things. She said, “I went to the hardware store to ask them to put up an antenna. They kept me there for an hour. But they did tell me who it was that stole that money from the dime store. Some high school kids. Good kids, they said. That’s why there was never anything about it in the paper. It was a prank, I guess. Then one of the boys had an attack of conscience and fessed up.”

Jack laughed. “How nice of them to tell you! I wonder how they knew you would be interested.”

“Oh well. It’s one less thing to worry about.”

“True,” he said. “In a sense that’s true. For the moment.”

T
HE NEXT MORNING
J
ACK OFFERED TO READ TO HIS
father, and the old man was pleased. “Yes!” he said, “that will
pass the time!” So they thought they might make a custom of taking him into the porch early every morning, after he was bathed and shaved, when the warmth would be tolerable to him, and the breeze would be pleasant.

“What would you like to hear?” Jack asked. “We’ve got
The Condition of the Working Class in England
.”

The old man shook his head. “Read it in seminary,” he said. “It was very interesting, but as I remember, the point was clear. I don’t feel I need to return to it. I’m surprised we still have it. I thought I gave my copy to the library.”

Jack laughed and glanced at her. He said, “Here’s one Luke sent.
Something of Value
. It’s about Africa.”

His father nodded. “I had a considerable interest in Africa,” he said. “At one time.”

Glory said, “Luke sent me a note about that one. He says the critics raved.”

Jack said, “I’m a little bit interested in Africa, myself.”

“Yes, well, Mozambique, Cameroon, Madagascar, Sierra Leone. Beautiful names. When I was a boy I used to think I’d go there someday. We can read that one.”

“It’s about Kenya.”

“Well, that’s fine, too.”

Jack lowered his head and began to read, leaning over the book almost prayerfully. He smiled at the parts he liked—“‘Somewhere out of sight a zebra barked, and along the edge of a stream a baboon cursed.’” Teddy used to say Jack was the bright one, that he, Teddy, was only conscientious. And in fact there was a kind of grace to anything Jack did with his whole attention, or when he forgot irony for a while. It was always a little surprising because it was among the things about himself he shrugged off, concealed when he could. But his voice was mild and warm, courteous to the page he read from, and his father looked at her and lifted his brows, the old signal that meant, He is wonderful when he wants to be. Really wonderful.

The old man laughed over the cook’s pagan version of “Jesus Wants Me for a Sunbeam,” listened with interest to the household arrangements of the McKenzies, marveled at the killing of the elephants, and nodded off. Jack continued reading to himself. He said, “I think I can see how this is going to end.” He turned to the last few pages. “Yes.” He read, “‘Peter hunched his shoulders close to his neck and took a deep, sobbing breath and squeezed. Kimani’s tongue came all the way out past his teeth, and his eyes suffused in blood as the tiny vessels broke. There was a slight crick and then a sharp crack, as if a man had trodden on a dry stick, and Kimani’s body went limp.’”

Their father roused himself. “Kimani is that child he’s playing with at the beginning, isn’t he? Those two children are playing together.”

Jack nodded.

“I guess he killed him.”

Jack closed the book. “I guess he did.”

“A pity,” the old man said. “That seems to be how it is, though. So much bad blood. I think we had all better just keep to ourselves.”

Jack laughed. “I have certainly heard that sentiment before,” he said. “I know a good many people who agree with you about that, believe me.”

“Yes. We might want to try another book, Jack, don’t you think? It seems there’s nothing in that one that’s going to surprise us.”

“Not a thing.”

He nodded. “The fellow writes well, though. The elephants were very interesting.”

T
HE DAY SEEMED TO BE PASSING IN THE WAY THAT HAD
become customary, Glory tending to household things while her father slept and Jack made himself useful around the place, making
small, patient inroads on dishevelment and disrepair. Or so she assumed. Then she realized that she hadn’t seen him for a while. Usually he found some reason to speak to her from time to time, to joke with her a little, as if to assure himself again that she was kindly disposed toward him. She looked out at the garden, then she walked to the shed, looked into the barn. Jack was nowhere to be found. This is ridiculous, she thought. I can’t worry this way. An hour passed, then two. She had glanced through the mail and the new
Life
magazine. She had answered letters from Dan and Grace. Then the screen door closed and there was Jack, coming through the porch, looking disheveled and yet a little pleased with himself. He was in his undershirt, having made his shirt into a bundle of some kind which he set on the table and opened. “Mushrooms!” he said. “Morels! Right where they always were!” Sand and leaf mold and that musky smell.

“Where were they?”

“In a remote area, my dear. Far from the haunts of men.”

“Honestly! I’m your sister! Your only friend in the world!” “Sorry. No dice. Just look at these beauties. We eat mushrooms tonight, Glory!”

“What is that?” their father called. “What are we talking about?”

Glory said, “Go show Papa. He loves morels.”

“I think I’d better clean up a little.”

“You don’t have to clean up. Just go show him.”

So Jack carried the bundle into his father’s room and spread it open on the old man’s lap. “Ah,” his father said. “Ah yes. You’ve been out foraging.” He drew a deep breath and laughed. “‘See, the smell of my son is as the smell of a field which Jehovah hath blessed.’ Morels. Dan and Teddy used to bring me these. And blackberries, and walnuts. And they’d bring in walleye and catfish. And pheasants. They were always off in the fields, down by the river. With the girls it was always flowers. So long ago.”

Jack stood back and watched the old man study the mushrooms, sniff them, turn them in the light. He rubbed his bare
arms as if he felt the way he looked, thin, exposed. He said softly, “Bless me, even me also.”

“No,” his father said, “that’s Esau. You’re confusing Esau and Jacob.”

Jack laughed. “Yes, I am the smooth man. How could I forget? I’m the one who has to steal the blessing.”

His father shook his head. “You have never had to steal one thing in your entire life. There was never any need for it. I have been searching my memory on that point.”

Glory said, “Papa, while I was in the hardware store the other day—”

But Jack said, “No, don’t. Don’t.” And smiled at her, and she knew she had come near shaming him. He had not robbed the dime store. How painful for this weary man to need exoneration from the mischief of bad children. “So good to be home,” he said to her afterward. “No place like it, the old song says.”

“Can I get something for you? Coffee?”

“Sure. Coffee. Why not?” He said, “You are a good soul, Glory. That fellow who did not marry you was a very foolish man.”

She shrugged. “Not altogether. He was a married man.”

“Oh.”

“So he said.”

“Oh.”

“Of course I didn’t know it at the time. Particularly.”

He laughed. “Particularly.”

“You know what I mean. I could have figured it out if I’d wanted to.”

He nodded. “Ah, that’s hard. I’m sorry.” After a moment, “And no child was born of this union, I take it.”

She shook her head. “No.”

“So you were spared that, at least.”

She drew a deep breath.

He said, “I’m sorry! Why did I say that? Why don’t I just stop talking? Why don’t you tell me to stop?”

“Well, Jack, you didn’t know her. So I suppose it isn’t surprising
that you’d think about her that way. As something we might have wished to be spared.”

“Yes, the little girl.”

“Your little girl.”

“My little girl.” He stood up. “I’m not much good at—I stayed away all that time—it was the best I could do—”

“That’s not what I mean. I mean we’re glad she was born. We enjoyed her life. I believe she enjoyed it, too. I know she did.”

He put his hand to his face. “Thank you. That’s good to know, I suppose. I’m probably saying the wrong thing—I’ve never known how to deal with this. Shame. You’d think I’d be used to it.”

“But I’m trying to tell you, there was so much more than shame in all that, or wrongdoing or whatever. Anyone could have been proud of her. That’s what I tried to say in those letters I sent you.”

“Oh. Then I guess I should have read them.” He laughed. “Dear God,” she said. “Dear God in heaven, I give up. I throw up my hands.”

“Please don’t say that, Glory. I’m alone here—”

“Well,” she said, “you know I don’t mean it.”

After a moment he said, “Why don’t you mean it?”

“Well, I’m your sister, for one thing. And for another thing—” He laughed.

“—I’m your sister. That’s reason enough.”

He nodded. “Thank you,” he said. “That’s very kind.”

J
ACK HAD ADDED TO THE GARDEN, SUNFLOWERS AND SNAP
dragons and money plants, several hills of cantaloupe, a pumpkin patch, three rows of corn. He rescued the bleeding-heart bushes from a tangle of weeds and tended the gourds with the tact of a man who believed, as all Boughtons did, that they throve on neglect. When her brothers and sisters were children they had made rattles of the gourds when they dried, and bottles and drinking cups, playing Indian. They had carved pumpkins and toasted the seeds. They had pretended the silver disks of money plants were
dollars. They had pinched the jaws of snapdragons to make them talk, or pinched their lips closed to pop them. They had eaten the seeds of sunflowers when they were ripe and dry. They had opened the flowers of bleeding hearts to reveal the tiny lady in her bath. Corn on the cob they had all loved, though they hated to shuck it, and they had all loved melons. Jack tended these things with particular care. When he was restless he would sometimes walk out into the garden and stand there with his hands on his hips, as if it comforted him to see their modest flourishing. Once, when he saw her looking at it all, he said, “Have I forgotten anything?”

“No, I don’t believe you have.”

“I’m no farmer,” he said, clearly pleased that his crops were doing well enough just the same.

His father watched from the porch day after day and asked him what it was he was planting, and then whether the corn was up and the sunflowers, and whether the melons were setting on. Jack brought him a sprig of bleeding heart, the bud of a pumpkin blossom.