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She said to her guests, feigning the same slight strangerliness they feigned, too, “Please come into the dining room. Jack will help me serve.”

“Oh, good,” Jack said. “I was feeling a little at a loss.” Then to Lila he said, “No gift for small talk, polite conversation. None at all.”

Lila smiled. “Me neither.” She had a soft, slow, comfortable voice that suggested other regions, and suggested, too, in its very gentleness, that she knew a good deal more about the world than she would ever let on. Jack looked at her with pleasant interest, with a kind of hopefulness, Glory thought. Clearly Ames noticed, too. Poor Jack. People watched him, and he knew it. It was partly distrust. But more than that, the man was at once indecipherable and transparent. Of course they watched him.

He followed her into the kitchen. He said, “Maybe I should go change.”

“No, no. You’re just fine. You look nice.” She put serving dishes into his hands. “I’ll bring the condiments. Come back for the roast.”

He carried in the huge, chipped semi-porcelain platter on which roasts and hams and turkeys had always made their entrances in that house and, after a moment’s hesitation, set it down in front of his father, in keeping with what was once family custom.
But the old man was still a little grimly bemused by the apparition he had seen of himself in his relative youth. He said, “I don’t know what I’m supposed to do with that. It might as well still be on the hoof for all the luck I’d have with it. Give it to Ames.”

Jack said, “Yes, sir,” and after Lila had rearranged the serving dishes, he set the roast in front of Ames, who said, “I’ll do my best.”

Jack took the chair next to his father, and then Robby left his mother’s side and came around the table and leaned into the chair beside Jack’s.

“I could sit here,” he said shyly.

Jack said, “You could, indeed. Please do,” and helped him pull the chair a little way from the table. Ames glanced up from the roast.

Lila said, “He’s taken to you. He don’t often act that friendly. Doesn’t.”

Jack said, “I’m honored,” as if he meant it. Then he stood up from the table. “Excuse me. One minute. An oversight,” and left the room. They heard him leave the porch.

His father shook his head. “He’s up to something, I suppose. No idea in the world what it could be.”

They sat waiting for him, and in a few minutes he came back with a handful of sweet peas in a water glass, which he put down in front of Lila. “We can’t have Mrs. Ames as our guest and no flowers on the table!” he said. “It’s not much of a bouquet. A little better than nothing, I hope.”

Lila smiled. “They’re nice,” she said.

Ames cleared his throat. “Well, Reverend Boughton, since I have carved, maybe you could offer the blessing.”

Boughton said, “I was thinking you might do that, too.”

There was a silence.

Jack took a slip of paper from his pocket. “In case of emergency,” he said. “I mean, in case this should fall to me, the grace. I’ve written it out.”

His father looked at him a little balefully. “That’s excellent, Jack. Perhaps it won’t be necessary.”

Jack glanced at Ames, who shrugged, and he began to read. “‘Dear Father,’” he said. He paused and studied the paper, leaning into the candlelight. “My handwriting is very poor. I crossed some things out. ‘You are patient and gracious far beyond our deserving.’” He cleared his throat. “‘You let us hope for your forgiveness when we can find no way to forgive ourselves. You bless our lives even when we have shown ourselves to be utterly ungrateful and unworthy. May we be strengthened and renewed, to make us less unworthy of blessing, through these your gifts of sustenance, of friendship and family.’” And then, “‘In Jesus’ name we pray, amen.’”

Again there was a silence. He looked at Ames, who nodded and said, “Thank you.”

“Jack, that was fine,” his father said.

Jack shrugged. “I thought I’d give it a try. I should have noticed I had the word ‘unworthy’ down twice. I thought ‘sustenance’ was good, though.” He laughed.

After a moment Boughton said to Ames, “We have had some conversation about family over the last few days, and I believe Jack has brought the conversation to a point here. It is in family that we most often feel the grace of God, His faithfulness. Yes.”

Jack nodded. He murmured, “Amen.”

Heartened, his father launched into an account of his views on Dulles’s policy of containment. “It is provocation!” he said. “Pure and simple!” Ames thought Dulles might be proved right in the long term, and Boughton said “the long term” was just a sort of feather pillow that was used to smother arguments.

Ames laughed. “I wish I’d known that sooner.”

Boughton said, “You’ve always enjoyed a good quarrel as much as anybody, Reverend.”

Jack asked his father if he thought the long-term consequences of the violence in Montgomery would be important, and his father said, “I don’t believe there will be any consequences to
speak of. These things come and go. The gravy is wonderful, by the way.” Jack absently spindled the slip of paper in his fingers. When he realized Ames had noticed, he smiled and smoothed it out again and slipped it into his pocket. Ames cut Robby’s roast for him, and Jack split and buttered a biscuit and set it on the boy’s plate.

Whatever part of her father’s hopes for the evening could be satisfied by fragrance and candlelight and by food consecrated to the rituals of Boughton celebration, that part at least had been seen to. The roast beef was tender, the glazed beets were pungent, the string beans were as they always were so early in the year, canned. But she had simmered them with bacon to make them taste less like themselves. She waited for someone to remark on the biscuits, but it was the gravy they admired, and she was proud of that, too.

Still, there was something strained about it all, as if time had another burden, like humid air, or as if it were a denser medium and impervious to the trivialization which was all they would expect or hope for on an evening like this one, now that grace was said. Her father gazed at Jack from time to time, pondered him, and Jack was aware of it. His hand trembled when he reached for his water glass, and ordinarily the old man, gentle as he was, would have looked away. But instead he touched Jack’s shoulder and his sleeve. Ames, his expression pensively comprehending, watched his friend take the measure of his erstwhile youth.

Jack said, “Dinner with Lazarus.”

His father drew his hand away. “Sorry, Jack. I didn’t quite hear that.”

“Nothing, it just came to my mind. ‘And Lazarus was one of those at table with him.’ I’ve always thought that must have been strange. For Lazarus. He must have felt a little—‘disreputable’ isn’t the word. Of course he’d have had time to clean himself up a little. Comb his hair. Still—” He laughed. “Sorry.”

Boughton said, “That’s very interesting, but I’m still not sure I see your point.”

Ames turned a long look on Jack, almost the incarnation of his father’s youth. It was a reproving look, as if he suspected that he did see the point and he felt the conversation ought to take another turn. Jack shook his head. “I just—” he said. “I don’t know what I was thinking about.” He glanced at Glory and smiled.

F
OR A WHILE TALK DRIFTED GENTLY AND PREDICTABLY
from the world situation to baseball to old times. Then there was a lull in the conversation, and Jack turned his gaze on Robby, who had sat beside him quietly, using his spoon to make a fort or embankment of his mashed potatoes.

“Robby for Robert,” Jack said.

He nodded.

“Robert B.”

He nodded and laughed.

“B. for Boughton.”

He nodded.

Jack said, “I believe that is the best name in the world.”

Ames said, “Your father was always naming his sons after other people. He didn’t have a Robert of his own.”

“No,” Boughton said. “Glory would have been Robert, but she wasn’t a boy.”

Jack looked at her.

His father, afraid he had been rude, said, “It worked out very well—four of each.”

Jack shrugged. “Faith. Hope. Grace. Roberta—”

“No,” his father said. “Charity was my first thought. But your mother sort of put her foot down. She thought it would make her sound like an orphan or something. The word is actually
agape. Caritas
is the Latin. Nothing you would name a child.”

Glory said, “I think we should change the subject.”

“Your mother wanted to call her Gloria, the usual spelling, but I couldn’t see that, when all the other names are in English.”

Jack said, “
Fides
,
Spes
,
Gratia
,
Gloria
.”

“Ah, the old jokes,” Glory said.

“Yes, it was Teddy who came up with that one,” the old man said. “Everything was high school Latin around here for a while, wasn’t it.” He looked at Jack. “Teddy called yesterday, by the way.”

Jack nodded. “Sorry I missed him.”

“Well, I suppose he’s used to it by now. I guess he’d better be.”

Jack smiled at his father. “Yes, well, there’s something else I forgot. If you’ll excuse me for a minute—” And he put down his fork and stood up and left the table and left the room.

Boughton shook his head. “First he was off picking flowers. Now he’s left the table in the middle of dinner. I suppose because I mentioned Teddy. I don’t understand it. They used to be close, when they were boys. At least he’d talk to Teddy now and then. I believe he did. That was my impression.”

Glory said, “You might lower your voice a little, Papa.”

“Well, sometimes I just don’t understand his behavior,” he said in an emphatic whisper. “I thought after all this time he might be—”

Glory touched her father’s wrist, and Jack walked into the silence of interrupted conspiracy, or so he must have thought, smiling as he did, guilelessly, eyebrows raised. “Sorry,” he said. “If you’d like, I could just wait out here in the hall for a minute or two. Until you’ve finished.”

“No. You’d better sit down,” his father said. “Your dinner is cold enough already.”

Jack smiled. “Yes, sir.” He was holding a baseball in his hand. When he had sat down, he held it up for Robby to see. “What have we here?” he said.

Robby said, “Um, fastball!”

Jack laughed with surprise, and looked at his hand. “Right you are!” He shifted the ball in his fingers. “And what is this?”

“Knuckleball!”

“And this?”

“Um. Curveball.”

He shifted the ball again.

“Um. I forget that one. Let me think. A slipper!”

“Well,” Jack said, “when I was a boy we used to call it a slider. Same idea.”

Robby put his hands to his face and laughed. “No, a slipper is, like, a shoe!”

Jack nodded. “I suppose you could get in trouble with the umpire if you were out there throwing slippers,” and then he watched the child with grave, pleasant interest until he had finished laughing. “So I guess you want to be a pitcher.”

Robby nodded. “My dad was a pitcher.”

“A very fine pitcher, too,” Boughton said. “I don’t think people play that game as much as they used to anymore. They’re home watching it on television.”

“My dad taught me all those pitches,” Robby said. “With an orange!” He laughed.

Ames said, “We were just talking baseball over lunch the other day. I thought I’d show him a few things.”

“He’s a quick study,” Jack said.

Ames nodded. “I’m a little surprised he remembered all that.”

Robby said, “We have a real baseball, but it’s up in the attic somewhere. My dad hates to go up in the attic.”

“Well,” Ames said. “I see I have been remiss.”

Jack put the baseball beside Robby’s plate. “This one is for you. It’s a present. I knew you probably had one of your own, since your dad was a pitcher. But an extra one can come in handy.”

Robby looked at his mother. She nodded.

“Thanks,” he said. He took up the ball, shyly, tentatively.

“It’s brand new, so you’ll have to take care of it. Do you know how to take care of a new baseball?”

“No, but my dad’ll tell me.”

Jack said, “It’s pretty simple. You just rub dirt all over it. Scruff it up a little.”

“Rub dirt on it—” the boy said, doubtful. “I guess I’ll ask my dad, anyway.”

Jack laughed. “That’s always a good idea.” And he glanced at his own father. “My dad and I used to play a little ball.”

The old man nodded. “Yes, we did. We had some good times, too, didn’t we?” He looked at his hand. “Hard to believe it now, when I can’t even tie my own shoes! I think back to those times, when I was just an ordinary man, not even a young man, and it’s like remembering that I used to be the sun and the wind! Taking the steps two at a time—!”

Ames laughed.

“Well, it all just seemed so natural, like it could never end. Your mother would be there in the kitchen, cooking supper, singing to herself. And she’d have a cup of coffee for me, and we’d talk a little. And I could tell just by hearing all the voices who was in the house. Except for Jack, of course. He was so quiet.”

Ames said, “The sun and the wind!”

“Oh yes, you can laugh. A big brute like you wouldn’t even know what I’m talking about. It seems to me I’ve gotten old for both of us.”

“I beg to differ, Reverend. I feel I’ve done my share of getting old.”

Robby said, “He told me he’s too old to play catch.”

Ames nodded. “And so I am. It’s a sad fact.”

Glory saw her brother glance at her, as if an intention had begun to form, and then he looked away again and smiled to himself.

T
HEY ATE THEIR PIE
. “I
SUPERVISED
,”
HER FATHER SAID
. “Jack pared the apples and Glory made the pastry, and I made sure it was all up to my specifications.” He laughed. “Jack put my chair out there in the kitchen, right in the middle of everything.
It was very nice. We’ve had some good times, we three. I told you that he’s almost got the old DeSoto running. Yes. Good times. And he plays the piano! I must say, that came as a surprise.”

“Yes,” Jack said, “I could play a little now, if you’d like.” And he excused himself. They heard him from the next room, trying one hymn and then another—“‘I come to the garden alone, while the dew is still on the roses,’ then ‘Sweet hour of prayer! sweet hour of prayer! that calls me from a world of care.’” Glory brought him a cup of coffee. “Thanks,” he said. “‘If I have uttered idle words or vain, if I have turned aside from want or pain.’” He laughed. “If only I knew how you do that!” Then “‘Love divine, all loves excelling’—they’re all waltzes! Have you noticed that?” Lila and Robby came to listen, then Ames, who had stayed behind a little to offer Boughton help, should he admit to needing it.