Jack said, “You’ve always been generous.”
“But not like I could have been. So I want to change that now.”
“I don’t think there’s any real need.”
“Reason not the need, Jack. Yes. If it lightens your burden a little, that’s reason enough. I hate to think that any trouble might have come to you because your father was a tight-fisted old Scotsman!”
“I can reassure you on that point, sir.”
“Good. That’s fine. But there is that other vice of the Scots, you know. Drink.”
Jack smiled. “So I understand.”
“It is a plague among them, my grandmother said. They have no defense against it. She said she had seen many a good man wholly destroyed by it.”
“Remarkable.”
“Yes, it is. It is. When you’re old like me you will understand. These are serious things, with grave consequences.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t intend any disrespect. I really didn’t.”
His father looked at him. “I know that, Jack. And I see that the fault here is mine. I have been speaking to you as if you were a very young man, and you are not young at all.”
Jack smiled.
“I’ve been saying things to you I should have said many years ago.”
“You did say them, sir.”
The old man nodded. “I thought perhaps I had.”
Glory said, “Neither one of you has eaten a bite. You are both wasting away before my eyes, and the dogs in this neighborhood are getting too fat to walk. It is ridiculous.”
“Yes, Glory, well, I’m very tired now.”
“I’m sorry, Papa, but no one is leaving this table until he has eaten breakfast.”
Jack smiled and stretched and looked at her as if to say she had no idea of the difficulty of what she was asking of him, but then he took a few bites. “Excellent, Glory. Thank you.” He pushed back his chair.
“You haven’t finished yet.”
“That’s true,” he said, and he rested his head on his hand and ate what she had put on his plate, mock docile. “There,” he said. “Now may I be excused?”
“No. You can wait for Papa to finish. Where are your manners?”
“A full-fledged domestic tyrant,” her father said. “You see what I have had to put up with.”
“Stop grumbling and eat.”
Her father said, “I wouldn’t mind if you cut this up a little for me, Glory. You could help me out here.”
“I’m sorry. I should have thought of that.”
“Too busy barking orders!” he said, and laughed.
Jack sat back with his arms folded and watched the old man struggle to close his hand on his fork. The scar under his eye was whiter, as it was, she knew by now, when he was weary.
WHEN SHE HAD SETTLED THE OLD MAN FOR SLEEP, SHE went out to the garden. Jack was at work already, chopping weeds. He stopped to watch the mailman pass on the other side of the street, then he lighted a cigarette.
She said, “Beware the Thane of Fife.”
“Yes,” he said. “This being a Scotsman is no bed of roses. A Scotsman!” He laughed. “I don’t think I’ve ever even seen one of those.”
“I suspect Scottishness is another name for predestination. It explains everything, more or less.”
“The poor old bastard. Sorry. I wouldn’t want to have me for a problem. At his age. Not that I won’t.” Then he said, “You know, if there has been another break-in, the cops might come by.”
“The cop. This is Gilead.”
“I’m serious, Glory. That could be very bad. For the old gent. For me, too. He already thinks I did it.”
“You’re making too much of this, Jack. If he thought you were a thief, would he give you the keys to the family coffers?”
“Yes, he would. That is exactly what he would do. He would think I might have needed money. He would give me money to keep me from stealing again. That’s what he was talking about in there.”
“Maybe.”
He nodded. “You know I’m right.” He said, “I don’t want you to comfort me, Glory. I want you to help me. This could ruin everything. I deal with things like this very badly. I’ve gotten worse with practice.”
“Of course I’ll help you. But you have to tell me what I should do.”
He said, “Just think it through with me. Help me think what to do if things go wrong. It probably seems crazy to be so scared, but I am scared.” He laughed. “I’ve done — I’ve done a lot of hard things in my life, but another— If I had to do thirty days, that would pretty well finish me up.” He said, “I fear I am not in my perfect mind, little sister. I don’t know how to deal with this.” Then he said, “You have to keep me sober. That’s the first thing.”
“I’ll do my best, Jack. I will. I swear to God. But if you want me to help you think this out, you’ll have to give me a little time. And you’ll have to promise me that you’ll try to ignore Papa. He shouldn’t talk to you the way he does. He isn’t himself. He’s always loved you more than any of us.”
“I do try to—”
“If he were himself, he would be grateful to you for ignoring the things he’s been saying.”
He wiped his face with the heel of his hand. “Thank you, Glory. That’s good of you.”
They saw the mailman stop and put letters in the box, and they began walking down from the garden together.
He laughed. “It’s amazing. I’m in hell over a miserable thirty-eight dollars.”
She looked at him. “Oh,” he said. “Oh.” Then, “It was in the newspaper, Glory. In the article.” He was ashen. He stopped and rubbed his eyes. “I can show you. I have the paper in my room.” Then he smiled at her, that weary, bitter smile of his, as if he knew her far too well, and did not know her at all.
She said, “Forgive me, Jack.”
He said, “Sure, I forgive you. What choice do I have?” He took the mail from the box, a bill and a letter from Luke to their father, glanced at it, and handed it to her. “Do you ever hear from him? Your, um, fiancé?”
“What? No.”
“Do you want to?”
“No.”
“Do you write to him?”
“No.”
He said, “Five years. That’s about eighteen hundred days. So you’d have been getting letters at the rate of one every four days, more or less.”
“He traveled.”
Jack laughed. “Yes. Of course he did. Still, he was a prolific son of a bitch.”
“Sometimes he just clipped poems out of magazines and signed his name.”
“Which was?”
“What does it matter?”
“Oh, I don’t know. I’m your big brother. I might want to stalk him down someday. Give him a black eye. Recoup some remnant of the family honor.”
“Well,” she said, “you’d better start eating a little, then.”
“A big fellow, is he.”
“No.”
“I get it. Another crack about my physique.”
“Yes. You deserve it. You know I don’t like to talk about any of this.”
He seemed to consider. “One sinner to another,” he said. “I have never found comfort in confession, either. It just unleashes every bad consequence you might have avoided by keeping your transgressions to yourself. That has been my experience, at any rate.”
She said, “So I guess I have that to look forward to.”