Jack came upon them there, talking together. She heard them greet him, and a word or two, and then he came into the kitchen with cucumbers from the garden. His shirt bloused and his pants gathered a little under his belt, but she was pleased all in all with the way he looked and she could tell he was, too. He managed to seem a little dapper, somehow, a thing his pride required. She knew this was a relief to him. He washed the cucumbers. “Cucumbers smell like evening,” he said. “Like chill. Need any help?” When she said no he went to the piano and sat down and began to play “Softly and Tenderly,” a favorite hymn of his father’s. He played it softly, and, she thought, very tenderly. She went into the hallway to listen, and he glanced up at her sidelong, as if there were an understanding between them, but he played on pensively, without a hint of detachment or calculation. “Come home, come home, ye who are weary, come home.” The old men fell silent. “Earnestly, tenderly, Jesus is calling, calling for you and for me.” Her father sang, Ames with him. Then “Rock of Ages,” then “The Old Rugged Cross,” and when that song was over, it was night. It had begun to thunder and rain, one of those storms that come after dark and change the weather. The old men sat there, silent for a long time. She brought Ames an umbrella, and after a while she heard him take his leave. She was afraid the damp might make her father uncomfortable, but he asked her, very kindly, to leave him alone for a little while. He said, “Tell Jack that was wonderful. I was proud of him.”
She found Jack in his room, the door open, lying on his bed reading a book. She said, from the doorway, “Jack, Papa told me to tell you it was wonderful that you played for them. He said he was proud of you.”
He considered. “Was Ames still here when he said that?”
“Not when he said it to me. Ames would have known it anyway.”
Jack nodded. “I suppose he would. Good. Thanks, Glory.”
IT RAINED SOUNDLY AND SATISFACTORILY OVERNIGHT. There was talk of drought, and one good rain would not end the worry, but it did make a beautiful morning, a mild and fragrant wind and shimmering trees loud with birds. Jack had left the house early. Glory heard the creak of the screen door before the sun was well up. His restlessness took on the aspect of virtue, rousing him out of bed in the dark and sending him out into the garden to expend the sour energies of failed sleep. She went down to the kitchen and started a pot of coffee, and sat in the porch while it brought itself to the kind and degree of fragrance her family had always preferred. Then she poured a cup for Jack. She found him out by the clothesline. He pulled a line down and released it, and raindrops flew up, brilliant in the morning light. He did the same with the next one, and the next.
“Thanks,” he said, as he took the cup from her. She saw that he had brought the gasoline can out of the barn. He said, “Back in a minute,” and went into the house, and came out again with his suit on hangers and a dishtowel over his shoulder. “I’m going to do a little dry cleaning.” He poured gasoline into an empty coffee can and soaked the cloth in it, and then sponged the sleeve of his jacket, saturated the bulge at the elbow and the creases at the inside of the elbow, and pulled it straight. He glanced at her. “This sort of works,” he said. “After a while the smell goes away. Here,” he said, and handed her his cigarettes and his matches. “I can be absentminded.”
She said, “I’ve heard that people did this. I’ve never actually seen anyone do it before.”
He said, “Sheltered life.”
The whole of that morning he worked at his suit. She saw him stand back finally and study it as it swung there in the wind and apparently decide it was good enough, since he emptied the coffee can out on the ground and carried the gasoline back to the barn. She went out to see for herself, and it did look to her as if it had fewer of the signs of hard use than it had had before, that it looked more impersonal, less conformed to one particular life. In the breeze there was something game about it, even a little jaunty. No wonder he was pleased.
He came inside, washed up, and made himself a peanut butter sandwich. “Want one? I’ll give you half of mine. All of it. I washed my hands.” He said, “What is the French for sandwich?”
“I’m pretty sure the French for sandwich is sandwich.”
He nodded. “I was afraid of that. So I am at a loss to make this slightly gaseous object more appealing to you. To me, for that matter.”
“Jelly?”
“Hate the stuff. It can be good in doughnuts.” He lifted the top slice of bread and looked under it. “An ugly food, peanut butter. If I struck a match, perhaps I could serve it to you flaming, madame. As they do in the finer restaurants. Mademoiselle.”
“No, thanks. I’m having soup. Want some?”
He shook his head. “I am hungry in general. It is the particulars that discourage me.”
“Then you might as well just eat your sandwich.”
“True.” He said, “Do we still have that baseball mitt?”
“Yes, we do. I put it in my closet. I was afraid you might find some way to swap it for a hair shirt.”
He nodded. “That was prudent of you. I was thinking, if you still had it, I might borrow it back.”
She said, “Sure. As soon as you finish your sandwich.”
“I do this,” he said, “only because I trust you to have my best interests at heart.” He ate it in eight bites and washed it down with a glass of water. “Well, now I’ve fed the beast,” he said. “It should stagger through till supper. It is an oddly patient beast, my carnal self. I call it Snowflake. For, you know, its intractable whiteness. Among other things. A certain lingering sentiment attaches to it. It reminds me of my youth.”
She brought him the mitt. He said, “Kids his age are always losing things, so I bought another baseball. I mean, I was always losing things. At his age.”
“That’s fine.”
He put the mitt on his hand and popped the ball into the pocket with a flick of his wrist. That ancient gesture. “I thought Ames might appreciate — A kid ought to learn how to play catch. I was good at baseball. I thought he might remember that.”
“It’s a good idea, Jack. I don’t think you need to worry so much about what Ames thinks of you.”
“I know what he thinks of me. It can’t get much worse. So that doesn’t worry me.”
“Then what does?”
“You’re right. Deranged by hope. I guess I thought he might look down upon me from his study window and say to himself, ‘He’s a cad and a bounder, but I appreciate his attention to my son.’” He laughed. “That won’t happen. No need to worry about that. What a stupid idea.”
Glory said, “I’ve been meaning to ask you to take the new Life and The Nation over to the Ameses’. They don’t subscribe. Ask Lila if Robby might like to play a little ball. If she says yes, the Reverend won’t object.”
He nodded. “All right. I’ll do it. Nothing ventured and so on.”
AFTER HALF AN HOUR SHE WALKED OUT JUST FAR ENOUGH to see Jack and Robby in the road in front of Ames’s house, Robby encumbered with the big stiff glove, scrambling after the ball when Jack tossed it and throwing it back halfway and in something like the right direction. “That’s the idea!” Jack called. The child squared off and punched his mitt, ready for anything. The next toss bounced off his shoe. Jack laughed, very kind laughter that she had not heard for decades if she had ever heard it. He ran forward to field Robby’s throw, and when he turned around he saw her. He waved. “Home soon,” he called.