Tommy nodded his head again.
“Tell me more about what you just said,” Pete asked.
“About what? What was I just saying?”
“The—struggle, did you say that? Between doing what we should and what we shouldn’t do.”
“Oh.” Tommy looked through the windshield at the house sitting so silently and so worn out there in the sunshine, its blinds drawn like tired eyelids. “Well, here’s an example on a large scale.” And then Tommy told Pete about what his brother had seen in the war, the women who had walked through the camps, how some had wept and others had looked furious and would not be made to feel bad. “And so there’s a struggle, or a contest, I guess you could say, all the time, it seems to me. And remorse, well, to be able to show remorse—to be able to be sorry about what we’ve done that’s hurt other people—that keeps us human.” Tommy put his hand on the steering wheel. “That’s what I think,” he said.
“My father showed remorse. He’s what you’re talking about, in one person. The contest.”
“I suppose you’re right.”
The sun had grown so high in the sky it could not be seen from the car.
“I never have talks like this,” said Pete, and Tommy was struck once again by how young this boy-man seemed. Tommy experienced a tiny physical pain deep in his chest that seemed directly connected to Pete.
“I’m an old man,” said Tommy. “I think if we’re going to have talks like this one I should stop by more often. How about I see you two Saturdays from now?”
Tommy was surprised to see Pete’s hands become fists that he banged down on his knees. “No,” Pete said. “No. You don’t have to. No.”
“I want to,” said Tommy, and he thought—then he knew—as he said this that it was not true. But did that matter? It didn’t matter.
“I don’t need someone coming to see me out of obligation.” Pete said this quietly.
The pain deep in Tommy’s chest increased. “I don’t blame you for that,” he said. They sat together in the car, which was now warm, and the smell, to Tommy, was palpable.
In a moment Pete spoke again, “Well, I guess I thought you were coming here to torture me, and I was wrong about that. So I guess maybe I’d be wrong to think you were just obliging me.”
“I think you’d be wrong,” said Tommy. But he was aware, again, that this was not true. The truth was that he did not really want to visit this poor boy-man seated next to him ever again.
They sat in silence for a few moments more; then Pete turned to Tommy, gave him a nod. “All right, I’ll see you then,” said Pete, getting out of the car. “Thanks, Tommy,” he said, and Tommy said, “Thank you.”
Driving home, Tommy was aware of a sensation like that of a tire becoming flat, as though he had been filled—all his life—with some sustaining air, and it was gone now; he felt, increasingly as he drove, a sense of fear. He could not understand it. But he had told what he had vowed to himself never to tell—that God had come to him the night of the fire. Why had he told? Because he wanted to give something to that poor boy who had been smashing the sign of his mother so ferociously. Why did it matter that he had told the boy? Tommy wasn’t sure. But Tommy felt he had pulled the plug on himself, that by telling the thing he would never tell he had diminished himself past forgiveness. It really frightened him. So you believe that?, Pete Barton had said.
He felt no longer himself.
He said, quietly, “God, what have I done?” And he meant that he was really asking God. And then he said, “Where are you, God?” But the car remained the same, warm, still slightly smelling from the presence of Pete Barton, just rumbling over the road.
He drove more quickly than he usually did. Going past him were the fields of soybeans and corn and the brown fields as well, and he saw them only barely.
At home, Shirley was sitting on the front steps; her glasses twinkled in the sunlight, and she waved to him as he drove up the small driveway. “Shirley,” he called as he got out of the car. “Shirley.” She pulled herself up from the steps by holding on to the railing, and came to him with worry on her face. “Shirley,” he said, “I have to tell you about something.”
At the small kitchen table, in their small kitchen, they sat. A tall water glass held peony buds, and Shirley pushed it to the side. Tommy told her then what had just happened that morning at the Barton home, and she kept shaking her head, pushing her glasses up her nose with the back of her hand. “Oh, Tommy,” she said. “Oh, that poor boy.”