Ames said, “Yes, Reverend, that may well have been the case.”
Jack said, “Thank you. So the law can’t punish a child for his father’s sins, but the Lord will.”
His father said, “There is the passage in John, the ninth chapter, in which the Lord Himself says, ‘Neither this man nor his parents sinned.’ Speaking of the man born blind.”
“Yes, sir. But how do we know what He says is not specific to that case? Or that what He means is that sin can’t always be inferred from — misfortune? He doesn’t really say that if the parents had sinned, they would not be punished through the child. As I read it.”
Silence again. Then Ames, clearly irritated, said, “It is true that children suffer when their fathers aren’t good men. Anyone can see that. That’s common sense. It’s a grave error, I think, to interpret their suffering as an act of God, rather than as a consequence of their fathers’ own behavior.”
Boughton said, “We tried to do right by her. We should have done much more, I know that.”
Jack smiled. He said very softly, “I really am a sinful man. Granting your terms.” He shrugged. “Granting my terms.”
Boughton waved this off, a gesture that discouraged elaboration. There was a long silence. Then he said, “Nonsense. That had nothing to do with it.”
“And I don’t know why I am. There’s no pleasure in it. For me, at least. Not much, anyway.”
Boughton covered his face with his hands.
Ames said, “I think your father is tired.”
But Jack continued, very softly. “I’m the amateur here. If I had your history with the question I’d be sick of it, too, no doubt. Well I do have a history with it. I’ve wondered from time to time if I might not be an instance of predestination. A sort of proof. If I may not experience predestination in my own person. That would be interesting, if the consequences were not so painful. For other people. If it did not seem as though I spread a contagion of some kind. Of misfortune. Is that possible?”
Ames said, “No. That isn’t possible. Not at all.”
“No,” his father said. “It just isn’t.”
Jack laughed. “What a relief. Because that visiting of the sins, it seems to describe something. It works the other way, too. The sins of the sons are visited on the fathers.”
There was a silence. Then Ames said, “‘If our heart condemn us, God is greater than our heart.’ That’s from the First Epistle of John.”
Jack nodded. “He is writing to the ‘beloved,’ the church. I do not enjoy the honor of membership in that body.”
“I don’t know why you want to insist on that,” his father said. “Why you want to set yourself apart like that. You were baptized and confirmed just like anybody else. How can you know all this Scripture when all you do is reject it?”
Ames said, “He doesn’t exactly reject it, Robert. He’s clearly given it a good deal of thought.”
“Still. It seems almost like pride to me.”
Jack said, “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to be disrespectful. My question is, are there people who are simply born evil, live evil lives, and then go to hell?”
Ames took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. “Scripture is not really clear on that point. Generally, a person’s behavior is consistent with his nature, which is to say that his behavior is consistent. The consistency is what I mean when I speak of his nature.”
Boughton chuckled. “Do I detect a little circularity in your reasoning, Reverend Eisenhower?”
Jack said, “People don’t change, then.”
“They do, if there is some other factor involved. Drink, say. Their behavior changes. I don’t know if that means their nature has changed.”
Jack smiled. “For a man of the cloth, you’re pretty cagey.”
Boughton said, “You should have seen him thirty years ago.”
“I did.”
“Well, you should have been paying attention.”
“I was.”
Ames was becoming irritated, clearly. He said, “I’m not going to apologize for the fact that there are things I don’t understand. I’d be a fool if I thought there weren’t. And I’m not going to make nonsense of a mystery, just because that’s what people always do when they try to talk about it. Always. And then they think the mystery itself is nonsense. Conversation of this kind is a good deal worse than useless. In my opinion.”
Glory said, “Your five minutes aren’t up yet.”
Jack glanced up at her blandly, not quite smiling, touching his fingertips together as if there were no such thing in the world as a hint. So she went into the parlor and turned on the radio and took up a book and tried to read, and tried to stop wanting to make sense of words she was doing her best not to hear. The Presbyterian Church. Redemption. Karl Barth. She read one page over three times without giving it enough of her attention to remember anything about it, and the radio was playing the William Tell Overture, so she set the book aside and went to stand in the doorway.
Lila said, “What about being saved?” She spoke softly and blushed deeply, looking at the hands that lay folded in her lap, but she continued. “If you can’t change, there don’t seem much point in it. That’s not really what I meant.”
Jack smiled. “Of course I myself have attended tent meetings only as an interested observer. I would not have wanted to find my salvation along some muddy riverbank in the middle of the night. Half the crowd there to pick each other’s pocket, or to sell each other hot dogs—”
Lila said, “—Caramel corn—”
He laughed. “—Cotton candy. And everybody singing off key—” They both laughed.
“—to some old accordion or something—” she said, never looking up.
“And all of them coming to Jesus. Except myself, of course.” Then he said, “Amazing how the world never seems any better for it all. If I am any judge.”
“Mrs. Ames has made an excellent point,” Boughton said, his voice statesmanlike. He sensed a wistfulness in Ames as often as he was reminded of all the unknowable life his wife had lived and would live without him. “Yes, I worried a long time about how the mystery of predestination could be reconciled with the mystery of salvation.”
“No conclusions?”
“None that I can recall just now.” He said, “It seems as though the conclusions are never as interesting as the questions. I mean, they’re not what you remember.” He closed his eyes.
Jack finally looked up at Glory, reading her look and finding in it, apparently, anxiety or irritation, because he said, “I’m sorry. I think I have gone on with this too long. I’ll let it go.”
Lila said, never looking up from her hands, “I’m interested.”
Jack smiled at her. “That’s kind of you, Mrs. Ames. But I think Glory wants to put me to work. My father has always said the best way for me to keep out of trouble would be to make myself useful.”
“Just stay for a minute,” she said, and Jack sat back in his chair, and watched her, as they all did, because she seemed to be mustering herself. Then she looked up at him and said, “A person can change. Everything can change.”
Ames took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. He felt a sort of wonder for this wife of his, in so many ways so unknown to him, and he could be suddenly moved by some glimpse he had never had before of the days of her youth or her loneliness, or of the thoughts of her soul.
Jack said, very gently, “Why, thank you, Mrs. Ames. That’s all I wanted to know.”
THE NEXT MORNING THE MAIL CAME EARLY, SO SHE SAW it first. Jack was upstairs. Once he would have been waiting somewhere, lingering, even an hour before the usual time for it to come, but that sharp old hope seemed to have dulled a little. Notes to her from her sisters. And four of Jack’s letters, addressed to Della Miles in Memphis. They were unopened, and the words Return to Sender were written across each one, in bold print and underlined. She put the envelopes facedown on the hall table and went into the kitchen to collect herself.