The Wolcotts may have been members of St. Bartholomew’s since its founding in 1854, but Kaitlin Wolcott Wilcox must not have paid much attention to the lessons. For when I said that I was trying to find her brother, she became wary. And when I said I’d heard he might be staying with her, she became outright unfriendly.
—My brother is in Kansas, she said. Why would he be here? Who told you that he would be here? Who is this?
And so forth.
Next I dialed Sarah. This time the phone rang and rang and rang.
When I finally hung up, I sat there for a moment, drumming my fingers on my father’s desk.
In my father’s office.
Under my father’s roof.
Going into the kitchen, I retrieved my purse, counted out five dollars, and left them by the phone in order to cover the cost of the long-distance calls. Then I went to my room, took my suitcase from the back of my closet, and started to pack.
* * *
The journey from Morgen to New York took twenty hours spread over the course of a day and a half.
To some that may seem like an onerous bit of driving. But I don’t believe that I’d had twenty hours of uninterrupted time to think in my entire life. And what I found myself thinking on, naturally enough I suppose, was the mystery of our will to move.
Every bit of evidence would suggest that the will to be moving is as old as mankind. Take the people in the Old Testament. They were always on the move. First, it’s Adam and Eve moving out of Eden. Then it’s Cain condemned to be a restless wanderer, Noah drifting on the waters of the Flood, and Moses leading the Israelites out of Egypt toward the Promised Land. Some of these figures were out of the Lord’s favor and some of them were in it, but all of them were on the move. And as far as the New Testament goes, Our Lord Jesus Christ was what they call a peripatetic—someone who’s always going from place to place—whether on foot, on the back of a donkey, or on the wings of angels.
But the proof of the will to move is hardly limited to the pages of the Good Book. Any child of ten can tell you that getting-up-and-going is topic number one in the record of man’s endeavors. Take that big red book that Billy is always lugging around. It’s got twenty-six stories in it that have come down through the ages and almost every one of them is about some man going somewhere. Napoleon heading off on his conquests, or King Arthur in search of the Holy Grail. Some of the men in the book are figures from history and some from fancy, but whether real or imagined, almost every one of them is on his way to someplace different from where he started.
So, if the will to move is as old as mankind and every child can tell you so, what happens to a man like my father? What switch is flicked in the hallway of his mind that takes the God-given will for motion and transforms it into the will for staying put?
It isn’t due to a loss of vigor. For the transformation doesn’t come when men like my father are growing old and infirm. It comes when they are hale, hearty, and at the peak of their vitality. If you asked them what brought about the change, they will cloak it in the language of virtue. They will tell you that the American Dream is to settle down, raise a family, and make an honest living. They’ll speak with pride of their ties to the community through the church and the Rotary and the chamber of commerce, and all other manner of stay-puttery.
But maybe, I was thinking as I was driving over the Hudson River, just maybe the will to stay put stems not from a man’s virtues but from his vices. After all, aren’t gluttony, sloth, and greed all about staying put? Don’t they amount to sitting deep in a chair where you can eat more, idle more, and want more? In a way, pride and envy are about staying put too. For just as pride is founded on what you’ve built up around you, envy is founded on what your neighbor has built across the street. A man’s home may be his castle, but the moat, it seems to me, is just as good at keeping people in as it is at keeping people out.
I do believe that the Good Lord has a mission for each and every one of us—a mission that is forgiving of our weaknesses, tailored to our strengths, and designed with only us in mind. But maybe He doesn’t come knocking on our door and present it to us all frosted like a cake. Maybe, just maybe what He requires of us, what He expects of us, what He hopes for us is that—like His only begotten Son—we will go out into the world and find it for ourselves.
* * *
? ? ?
As I climbed out of Betty, Emmett, Woolly, and Billy all came spilling out of the house. Billy and Woolly both had big smiles on their faces, while Emmett, per usual, was acting like smiles were a precious resource.