He said, “Hey, Jayber!”
I said, “Hey, Andy!”
He said, “Don’t go goosing no snowflakes,” and went out. As the door opened and shut again, the music sounded distantly in a kind of yawn.
I wasn’t, as Clydie thought, sick at my stomach. I was sick at heart, and I don’t mean that just as a manner of speaking; I was seriously afflicted. Do you know what picture came flying into my mind when I looked up and saw Troy Chatham looking at me over the head of whichever Other Woman that was? Not of Mattie at home with the children, wondering where Troy had gone off to and who with. Not that picture (which came to me clearly enough, later), but the memory of Mattie as she had been on that day when I knew I loved her. I had thought many times of her as I had seen her then, with the children so completely admitted into her affection and her presence—as, I thought, a man might be if he wholly loved her, if she wholly trusted him, a man who would come to her as trustful and heart-whole as a little child. I had thought of a flower opening among dark foliage, and of a certain butterfly whose wings, closed, looked like brown leaves but, opened, were brilliant and lovely and like nothing but themselves.
But I was thinking too, as Troy winked at me and raised his sign: “We’re not alike!” And that was what sickened me, because I wasn’t sure.
I wasn’t sure of anything. I hadn’t been particularly aware of being drunk out on the dance floor, but now I was drunk, blinking and unsteady in the harsh light and the stench of that grudging little room. I held on to the washbasin and tried to think. What I was sure of was that I wanted to get out of there and be gone, but I didn’t want to go back through the dance hall and the dancers. I didn’t want to see Clydie. I was going to be a while understanding what had happened in my mind, but I understood that, whatever it was, it had made me unfit for Clydie. I didn’t want to go back to Clydie, after all our loveliness, as a mere drunk to be helped out to the car.
And then I saw the little window rather high up over the toilet. I unhooked the sash and shoved it open. It looked impossibly narrow, but I was maybe no more rational than a penned sheep that lunges at a crack in the wall. I stepped up onto the rim of the toilet and then onto the flush tank, and thrust my right arm and then my head and both shoulders through the hole, and made as much of a jump as I could manage. And then I panicked. I had no foothold, my left arm was pinned between my ribs and the window. I began to suppose that some delighted boys were about to come in and see me stuck there with my legs waving about and would pull me back inside again. That thought sobered me some and gave me strength.
The men’s room was actually a little lean-to stuck onto the back of the building. I clawed around on the wall until I caught hold of what must have been a vent pipe or a downspout, and then I got my left foot against one of the stanchions of the toilet stall. I gave a mighty push and a pull, feeling the buttons pop one at a time off my jacket and the left sleeve tear loose at the shoulder, and then I tumbled out into the world headfirst, landing amidst a bunch of old tires, several garbage cans, thrown-away car parts, and other junk and trash.
As nearly as I could tell by feel, I was bleeding somewhat from a cut above my right ear and another on the bridge of my nose, and I was shy some skin along my ribs and belly. The rest of me was all right and able to get around, but I knew I had to use some caution now, for I didn’t want to be “helped” by anybody. I didn’t want to be kept safe from further damage to myself by being locked up in the county jail, either.
I eased around to the Zephyr, where by good luck I had left my hat and coat. I put them on so as to leave no dirt or blood on the upholstery, found a scrap of paper, and wrote a note to Clydie. The note said:Dear Clydie,
I am taken ill (iller than you think or I can describe) and have got to go. I don’t know when we will see each other again. I am changeable, I hope. Here are the keys to the car. I am leaving it to you with thanks for everything. You have been a true friend to one in need.
Love,
Jayber
It shook me to see what I had written and the way I had signed it: “Love.” I said earlier that I didn’t love her so much as I liked her. I will have to take that back. Love has a scale, and Clydie and I were on it somewhere. It hurt me to be leaving her.
But I had to go. It seemed that my way in this world had all of a sudden opened up again (like a door? a wound?) and was leading me on. I was thinking, “Oh, I have got to change or die. Oh, I have got to give up my life or die.”
Maybe I was wanting to get to a place where I could not be mistaken, at least in my own mind, for Troy Chatham. I thought, “I am not like him.” But that thought didn’t detain me long. I was thinking also of Mattie. I was going to have to choose. I was going to have to know what I was going to do.
I was plenty aware of the way I looked. My wrecked suit was mostly hidden by my overcoat, which I buttoned tight all the way up, but a man dressed as I was, drunk, with blood on his face, would surely be of interest to the police and maybe to other people. I pulled my hat low, turned down the brim, turned up my coat collar, and started walking home. I had to go back to Hargrave, through Hargrave, across the bridge at the river mouth, through Ellville, and then up the river road to Port William-twelve miles or better. I didn’t know what time it was. It was late.
There wasn’t much traffic. I walked on the left-hand side of the road, well off the pavement. When cars approached I stepped behind a tree, if one was handy, or kept walking with my head down. I tried to walk straight and fast to give the impression of sobriety and purpose. It was too cold, anyhow, to loiter.
When I got into Hargrave I turned off the main drag and went through on a darker street. After I got across the bridge, where I had no hiding place, I took care that nobody saw me the rest of the way home. On the Port William road, there was too good a chance that I would be recognized. At that time of night there were not many cars—three, maybe four. When I heard one coming I would get behind a tree or lie down in the weeds. I didn’t want a ride. I didn’t want help. I didn’t want to explain anything or answer any questions.
Once I got beyond the town lights, the night was as dark as the inside of a cow. I couldn’t see anything I looked directly at. By not looking at anything, by keeping my eyes focused on the dark in front of me, I could distinguish between the black surface of the road and the whiteness of the snow that, as it got colder, had begun to cling to the grass and weeds along the ditch. I kept to the darker side of the difference, and step by step, with a little surprise every time, felt the road there, solid underfoot. It was cold enough that I had to keep knocking along as fast as I could. I would have been glad to have more between my feet and the road than the soles of my Sunday shoes and a thin pair of socks. That it was snowing I could tell when a stray flake melted on my face, but it was snowing only as it had been earlier—a few big flakes drifting slowly down.
After I got used to the going, and the unseeable road and the cold and the dark and the wandering flakes of snow had become the established world of my journey, the thoughts of my mind began to separate themselves like the unbraiding strands of a cut rope.
I thought of Mattie at home up the river ahead of me, perhaps lying awake. I knew the subject of her thoughts, but I did not know her thoughts. I knew that she knew what her problems were, and that she would deal with them, that she was dealing with them, but I did not know how she was dealing with them. I did not know what she was saying to herself as she dealt with them. I knew (it never occurred to me to doubt) that, whatever her problems, whatever her thoughts, she was intact and clear within herself. This was what moved me and drew me toward her, though I could not come near her or be in her presence.
I knew also that Troy was incoherent and obscure within himself. He was a wishful thinker. A dreamer. His mere dream had led him into the reality of endless work and struggle, endless borrowing and paying of interest, endless suffering of the weather and weariness and the wear and tear of machines, and yet he was a dreamer still. He was
an escapee. He would plunge from the confines of one dream into the confines of another. In the midst of his altogether laborious and wearing and frustrating life, in the middle of a winter’s night, he would turn up at a roadhouse dance with the lips of a strange woman on his mind and a grin on his face. Where the hell did he think he was? What did he think he was?
What Troy Chatham was was my business—not because I chose to make it my business, but because it was. It was my business because I did not want to be what he was, and that was no sure thing. It was a fearful thing to be like him. But what I saw, walking up that dark road, was that it would also be a fearful thing to be unlike him. I saw that I had to try to become a man unimaginable to Troy Chatham, a man he could not imagine raising his hand to with the thumb and forefinger circled—but to do that I would have to become a man yet unimaginable to myself.
What I needed to know, what I needed to become a man who knew, was that Mattie Chatham did not, by the terms of life in this world, have to have an unfaithful husband—that, by the same terms in the same world, she might have had a faithful one.
On the dark road that night, I might have been anywhere at any time; I did not know where I was even in the little world I knew; I couldn’t have told you the time of night within three hours. And in all that darkness and unknowing, I was trying to say to myself that I knew what I was, that I could not have been just anybody.
In my mind, then, I began to question myself and answer myself. I wanted clarity, I wanted sight, but it seems to me that I did not try to think the thoughts I thought. I did not foresee the thoughts I was going to think.
“You want to believe that Mattie Chatham did not necessarily have to have an unfaithful husband.”
“Yes. That is right.”
“But can you prove that?”
“Maybe not.”
“She could prove that she could have a faithful husband only by having one.”
“I suppose so.”
“So her need, then, you’re saying, is to have a faithful husband?”
“Yes, that must be what I’m saying.”
“Well, where is she going to get one?”
“Well, I don’t know. It seems a stupid question. She already has got a husband.”
“But is he not unfaithful?”
“Yes, he is unfaithful.”
“And she needs a faithful one.”
“Yes, she does.”
“But if she never has one, you will never know if the terms of this world might have allowed her to have one.”
“I suppose that is right.”
“But where could—how could—she get one?”
“Well, if she ever is going to have one, I’m sure, of course, it will have to be me.”
“Wait, now. Hold on. Do you know what you just said?”
“Yes.”
“Do you mean that you love Mattie Chatham enough to say what you just said?”
“Yes. Oh, yes! I do.”
“You love her enough to be a faithful husband to her? Think what you’re saying, now. You’re proposing to be the faithful husband of a woman who is already married to an unfaithful husband?”
“Yes. That’s why. If she has an unfaithful husband, then she needs a faithful one.”
“A woman already married who must never know that you are her husband? Think. And who will never be your wife?”
“Yes.”
“Have you foreseen how this may end? Can you?”
“No.”
“Are you ready for this? Think, now.”
“Yes. I am ready.”
“Do you, then, in love’s mystery and fear, give yourself to this woman to be her faithful husband from this day forward, for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, till death?”
“I do. Yes! That is my vow.”
I tremble to say so, but when I had given that assent, it seemed that there were watchers watching in the dark who all of a sudden could see me.
Maybe I had begun my journey drunk and ended it crazy. Probably I am not the one to say. But though I felt the whole world shaken underfoot, though I foresaw nothing and feared everything, I felt strangely steadied in my mind, strangely elated and quiet.
The sky had lightened a little by the time I reached the top of the Port William hill. It was Sunday morning again. I left the road and more or less felt my way home over the fences and through the fields, at considerable further expense to my clothes and shoes. I climbed into my frozen garden, went up the stairs, and let myself into my room. There was still some warmth from the coal fire I had left burning down in the shop. I sat in my chair and let the cold, slow daylight come around me.
Part III
23
The Way of Love
It is a fearful thing to be married and yet live alone, and sleep alone (as I felt in my worst nights) like the dead in the ground. And yet ever after that night of the Christmas dance, I lived under the power of my vow, and I kept it.
Sometimes I knew in all my mind and heart why I had done what I had done, and I welcomed the sacrifice. But there were times too when I lived in a desert and felt no joy and saw no hope and could not remember my old feelings. Then I lived by faith alone, faith without hope.
What good did I get from it? I got to have love in my heart.
Was I fooling myself? I know myself to be a man skilled in self-deception, and so maybe (for the sake of argument, for the sake of whatever truth may be in argument) I ought to suppose that I was fooling myself. If, in addition to my being her husband, Mattie had been my wife and we had lived together, would we not have bickered and battled at times, as other married couples do? Would she not at times have been as incomprehensible and exasperating to me as most men’s wives appear to be at times? Would I not have been to her, at times, as thwarting and outrageous as most women’s husbands evidently are? Why should I assume that I would have loved her all her life?
All I can answer is that I did love her all her life—from the time before I ever saw her, it seems, and until she died. I do love her all her life, and still, and always. That is my answer, but in fact love does not answer any argument. It answers all arguments, merely by turning away, leaving them to find what rest they can.
I was married to Mattie Chatham but she was not married to me, which pretty fairly balanced her marriage to Troy, who became always less married to her, though legally (and varyingly in appearance) he remained her husband.
Young lovers see a vision of the world redeemed by love. That is the truest thing they ever see, for without it life is death. I believed that Mattie had seen that vision in the time of her falling in love with Troy Chatham, and that she kept it still and honored it. And so I honored it. But the answering vision, which ought to have been his, was mine. And my marriage to Mattie was validated in a way by Troy’s continuing invalidation of his marriage to her.
Only once did that questioning voice of my dark walk return. It said, “Is it legal to be married to somebody who is not married to you?”
I said, “I guess it’s legal to be married to any number of people as long as they don’t know it.”
“But there’s not any comfort in that.”
“No,” I said. “No comfort.” But I had to laugh.
I had not, you see, arrived at any place of rest. Maybe I had not solved a single problem or come any nearer to the peace which passeth all understanding. But I was changed. I had entered, as I now clearly saw, upon the way of love (it was the way I followed home from Hargrave that snowy night; maybe it was the way I followed back to Port William during the flood), and it changed everything. It was not a way that I found for myself, but only a way that I found myself following. Maybe I had always followed it, blunderingly and uncertainly. But now, though it was still a dark way, I was certainly following it. At first I thought that this great change had come to me during my walk after the dance at Riverwood. Later I knew that it had come the day, up there in the churchyard, when I fell in love with Mattie
and my heart cracked open like an egg.
Now that I knew what it was that had led me from the start, I had to reckon with it. I had to look over what I had learned so far of life in this world and see what light my heart’s love now shed upon it. What did love have to say to its own repeated failure to transform the world that it might yet redeem? What did it say to our failures to love one another and our enemies? What did it say to hate? What did it say to time? Why doesn’t love succeed?
Hate succeeds. This world gives plentiful scope and means to hatred, which always finds its justifications and fulfills itself perfectly in time by destruction of the things of time. That is why war is complete and spares nothing, balks at nothing, justifies itself by all that is sacred, and seeks victory by everything that is profane. Hell itself, the war that is always among us, is the creature of time, unending time, unrelieved by any light or hope.
But love, sooner or later, forces us out of time. It does not accept that limit. Of all that we feel and do, all the virtues and all the sins, love alone crowds us at last over the edge of the world. For love is always more than a little strange here. It is not explainable or even justifiable. It is itself the justifier. We do not make it. If it did not happen to us, we could not imagine it. It includes the world and time as a pregnant woman includes her child whose wrongs she will suffer and forgive. It is in the world but is not altogether of it. It is of eternity. It takes us there when it most holds us here.
Maybe love fails here, I thought, because it cannot be fulfilled here. And then I saw something that a normal life with a normal marriage might never have allowed me to see. I saw that Mattie was not merely desirable, but desirable beyond the power of time to show. Even if she had been my wife, even if I had been in the usual way her husband, she would have remained beyond me. I could not have desired her enough. She was a living soul and could be loved forever. Like every living creature, she carried in her the presence of eternity. That was why, as she grew older, I saw in her always the child she had been, and why, looking at her when she was a child, I felt the influence of the woman she would be. That is why, in marrying one another, we mortals say “till death.” We must take love to the limit of time, because time cannot limit it. A life cannot limit it. Maybe to have it in your heart all your life in this world, even while it fails here, is to succeed. Maybe that is enough.