Excerpt from Jack by Marilynne Robinson, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

He nodded and stood up. "You'd rather I left you alone. I'll do that. I'll be in shouting distance. In case you need me."

"No," she said. "If we could just talk a little."

"Like two polite strangers who happen to be spending a night in a cemetery."

"Yes, that's right."

"Okay." So he sat down again. "Well," he said, "what brings you here this evening, Miss Miles?"

"Pure foolishness. That's all it was." And she shook her head.

Then she said nothing, and he said nothing, and the crickets chanted, or were they tree toads. It had seemed to him sometimes that, however deep it was, the darkness in a leafy place took on a cast, a tincture, of green. The air smelled green, of course, so the shading he thought he saw in the darkness might have been suggested by that wistfulness the breeze brought with it, earth so briefly not earth. All the people are grass. QED. Flowers of the field. The pool of lamplight kept the dark at a distance. Shunned and sullen, he thought. Injured. He did not look at her, because then she would look at him. He had noticed that men in his line of worklessness, which did involve recourse to drink, were marked, sooner or later, by a crease across the forehead, but he did not touch his brow. It was nerves that made it feel that way, tense. If they sat there side by side till dawn, that would be reasonably pleasant.

She said, "I owe you an apology. I haven't been polite."

"True enough," he said. "So."

"So?"

"So, pay up."

She laughed. "Please accept my apology."

"Consider it done. Now," he said, "you accept mine."

She shrugged. "I don't really want to do that."

"Fair's fair, isn't it?"

"No, it isn't, not all the time. Besides, I promised myself I wouldn't."

"You promised yourself? That practically doesn't count. I break promises to myself all the time, and we're still on speaking terms, myself and I. When there's nobody around to hear us, anyway."

"Do you think I'm going to tell anyone else what you did? I can't believe I'm sitting here talking with you, now that I think about it."

"Well," he said, "so you thought you'd see me again, and you wanted to make sure you didn't give in to your better nature and let me make amends. You had to steel yourself against the possibility. Now here you are, glad to see me, whether you like it or not. We'll be here for hours. I'll be charming—"

"You're really not very charming. You should know that by now. You might as well stop trying."

He drew a breath. "All I'm trying to do is to keep some kind of conversation going. That's what you said you wanted. I acknowledge my limitations. No need to be harsh."

She shook her head. "Oh, I'm sorry. I am. Forget I said that. It's just that I've been so mad at you for such a long time."

He said what he thought. "I'm honored."

She looked at him, and he let her. The dark quiet of her face still soothed him, like a touch. She said, "I don't remember that scar."

He nodded. "It wasn't there." And then he said, "Thank you."

She looked away. "Let's not talk for a while. We can just be quiet."

"As you wish."

They were quiet, and then she whispered, "Did you hear that? Did you hear voices? Is somebody coming?"

"I didn't hear anything. But we could walk up the hill, out of the light, just to be safe."

"I guess we ought to do that. We could see farther up the road from there."

They were whispering. High-heeled shoes, of course. The ground was soft and uneven. They were trying to hurry. He thought of taking her arm, then decided he would not. They walked up beyond the farthest effect of the light and stood there, and watched a man in work clothes and a cap stroll past, singing to himself. Smoke, smoke, smoke that cigarette. "Maybe I could talk to him," she said, and he heard her shift a little, the beginning of an intention. When the man was gone, she said, "Why are you here?"

Excerpted from Jack by Marilynne Robinson. Copyright © 2020 by Marilynne Robinson. Excerpted by permission of Farrar, Straus & Giroux. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.