That is a thing I would love to see.
As I have told you, I myself was the good son, so to speak, the one who never left his father’s house — even when his father did, a fact which surely puts my credentials beyond all challenge. I am one of those righteous for whom the rejoicing in heaven will be comparatively restrained. And that’s all right. There is no justice in love, no proportion in it, and there need not be, because in any specific instance it is only a glimpse or parable of an embracing, incomprehensible reality. It makes no sense at all because it is the eternal breaking in on the temporal. So how could it subordinate itself to cause or consequence?
It is worth living long enough to outlast whatever sense of grievance you may acquire. Another reason why you must be careful of your health.
I think I’ll put an end to all this writing. I’ve read it over, more or less, and I’ve found some things of interest in it, mainly the way I have been drawn back into this world in the course of it.
The expectation of death I began with reads like a kind of youthfulness, it seems to me now. The novelty of it interested me a good deal, clearly.
This morning I saw Jack Boughton walking up toward the bus stop, looking too thin for his clothes, carrying a suitcase that seemed to weigh almost nothing. Looking a good deal past his youth. Looking like someone you wouldn’t much want your daughter to marry. Looking somehow elegant and brave.
I called to him and he stopped and waited for me, and I walked with him up to the bus stop. I brought along The Essence of Christianity, which I had set on the table by the door, hoping I might have a chance to give it to him. He turned it over in his hands, laughing a little at how beat up it is. He said, “I remember this from — forever!” Maybe he was thinking it looked like the kind of thing he used to pocket in the old days. That thought crossed my mind, and it made me feel as though the book did actually belong to him. I believe he was pleased with it. I dog-eared page 20—”Only that which is apart from my own being is capable of being doubted by me. How then can I doubt of God, who is my being? To doubt of God is to doubt of myself.” And so on. I memorized that and a good bit more, so I could talk to Edward about it, but I didn’t want to ruin the good time we’d had that one day playing catch, and the occasion really never arose again.
There were two further points I felt I should have made in our earlier conversations, one of them being that doctrine is not belief, it is only one way of talking about belief, and the other being that the Greek word sozo, which is usually translated “saved,” can also mean healed, restored, that sort of thing. So the conventional translation narrows the meaning of the word in a way that can create false expectations. I thought he should be aware that grace is not so poor a thing that it cannot present itself in any number of ways. Well, I was also making conversation. I knew he must have heard more or less the same things from his father any number of times. My first thought was that nobody ought to be as lonely as he looked to me walking along by himself. And I believe he was glad of the company. He nodded from time to time, and his expression was very polite.
As we walked he glanced around at the things you never really look at when you live in a town-the fretting on a gable, the path worn across an empty lot, a hammock slung between a cottonwood and a clothesline pole. We passed the church. He said, “I’ll never see this place again,” and there was a kind of sad wonder in his voice that I recognized. It gave me a turn. So I said, “You take care of yourself. They could need you sometime.” After a minute he nodded, conceding the possibility.
Then he stopped and looked at me and said, “You know, I ‘m doing the worst possible thing again. Leaving now. Glory will never forgive me. She says, ‘This is it. This is your masterpiece.’” He was smiling, but there was actual fear in his eyes, a kind of amazement, and there might well have been. It was truly a dreadful thing he was doing, leaving his father to die without him. It was the kind of thing only his father would forgive him for.
So I said, “Glory talked to me about all that. I told her not to judge, that there might be more to the situation.” “Thank you.”
“I understand why you have to leave, I really do.” That was as true a thing as I have ever said. And I will tell you, remarkable as it seemed to me, at that moment I felt grateful for all my old bitterness of heart.
He cleared his throat. “Then you wouldn’t mind saying goodbye to my father for me?”
“I will do that. Certainly I will.”
I didn’t know how to continue the conversation beyond that point, but I didn’t want to leave him, and in any case, I had to sit down on the bench beside him on account of my heart. So there we were. I said, “If you would accept a few dollars of that money of mine, you’d be doing me a kindness.”
He laughed and said, “I suppose I could see my way clear.” So I gave him forty dollars and he kept twenty and gave twenty back. We sat there for a while.
Then I said, “The thing I would like, actually, is to bless you.”
He shrugged. “What would that involve?”
“Well, as I envisage it, it would involve my placing my hand on your brow and asking the protection of God for you. But if it would be embarrassing—” There were a few people on the street.
“No, no,” he said. “That doesn’t matter.” And he took his hat off and set it on his knee and closed his eyes and lowered his head, almost rested it against my hand, and I did bless him to the limit of my powers, whatever they are, repeating the benediction from Numbers, of course—”The Lord make His face to shine upon thee and be gracious unto thee: The Lord lift up His countenance upon thee, and give thee peace.” Nothing could be more beautiful that that, or more expressive of my feelings, certainly, or more sufficient, for that matter. Then, when he didn’t open his eyes or lift up his head, I said, “Lord, bless John Ames Boughton, this beloved son and brother and husband and father.” Then he sat back and looked at me as if he were waking out of a dream.
“Thank you, Reverend,” he said, and his tone made me think that to him it might have seemed I had named everything I thought he no longer was, when that was absolutely the furthest thing from my meaning, the exact opposite of my meaning. Well, anyway, I told him it was an honor to bless him. And that was also absolutely true. In fact I’d have gone through seminary and ordination and all the years intervening for that one moment. He just studied me, in that way he has. Then the bus came. I said, “We all love you, you know,” and he laughed and said, “You’re all saints.” He stopped in the door and lifted his hat, and then he was gone, God bless him.
I made it as far as the church, and went inside and rested there for a long time. I believe I saw in young Boughton’s face, as we walked along, a sense of irony at having invested hope in this sad old place, and also the cost to him of relinquishing it. And I knew what hope it was. It was just that kind the place was meant to encourage, that a harmless life could be lived here unmolested. “There shall yet old men and old women dwell in the streets of Jerusalem, and every man with his staff in his hand for every age. And the streets of the city shall be full of boys and girls playing in the streets thereof.” That is prophecy, a vision of the prophet Zechariah. He says it will be marvelous in the eyes of the people, and so it might well be to people almost anywhere in this sad world. To play catch of an evening, to smell the river, to hear the train pass. These little towns were once the bold ramparts meant to shelter just such peace.
***
Your mother seems to want every supper to be my favorite supper. There is often meat loaf, and always dessert. She puts candles on the table, since dark is coming early now. I suspect she has brought them from the church, and that’s all right. Often she wears her blue dress. You have outgrown your red shirt. Old Boughton’s family have gathered, except the one his heart yearns for. They pay their respects and invite us for dinner, but these days we three love to be at home. You come in reeking of evening air, with your eyes bright and your cheeks and fingers pink and cold, too beautiful in the candlelight for my old eyes. The cold has silenced all the insects. The dark seems to make us speak softly, like gentle conspirators. Your mother says the grace and butters your bread. I do wish Boughton could have seen how his boy received his benediction, how he bowed his head. If I told him, if he understood, he would have been jealous to have seen it, jealous to have been the one who bestowed the blessing. It is almost as if I felt his hand on my hand. Well, I can imagine him beyond the world, looking back at me with an amazement of realization—“This is why we have lived this life!” There are a thousand thousand reasons to live this life, every one of them sufficient.