Grace by Calvin Baker

knows who they are, they will be happy. Only to reach their aim, and turn to see themselves unhappy all over the newspapers every morning. The green-hearted ones look and see partway what’s going on, and turn gleeful to keep pulling them down, because they refuse any kind of world but their own misery. They look and all they see is imperfection, and they hate it, which is the same as hating beauty. But they do not know that. No one does. We all just sit sharpening up our different hates and hurts until we can point it all back at the world, thinking it is a sword, while calling it virtue. But tell me what you judge and I will tell you what you fear.”
    â€œI was talking about discernment of meaning, which is a high thing.”
    â€œIt certainly is a high thing.” He poured us more wine. “It ain’t the highest. Sometimes discerning shows what’s there; sometimes it veils it from you.”
    â€œWhat’s the highest?”
    â€œYou know what it is.”
    â€œDo I?”
    â€œOf course you do. At least you have the ear to hear it. The question is, do you have the faith to trust what you hear?
    â€œIf you like, I will find out who her fathers were, back as far as I can, because fortune like that is not a single instance of luck, but a second and a third; refigured each time history shifted to obliterate them, but did not because of the sheer refusal to die. If they did something in the past I dislike, or that threatens me, should I break with her? Before I have given her a chance? Somebody went to bed one night and decided there in the dark to try for a dynasty, and did not figure she would be on the other side of it all. Maybe she has a mind and will of her own. This play is for the living. Those who do not grasp that are puppets of the past, and the strings are whatever they have been told; and whoever it was who told them that’s the way it is, aims to be puppet master. If you wish to live in that mirage, fine, stick to the didactic. But, if you want to be in the present, it will keep you from the brass ring.”
    â€œSorry I brought it up,” I said in the face of his argument. “I didn’t mean to make anything of it. She is lovely.”
    â€œTo tell you the truth, I don’t want to know. Can I ask you something?” He scanned the room to see whether the women were in sight.
    â€œYes.”
    â€œWould you date a poor girl?”
    â€œOf course. Why wouldn’t I?”
    â€œI would not.”
    â€œI thought you just said it did not matter.”
    â€œThat’s not what I said. I said, politics do not describe people. There is nothing the matter with poor girls, but one could never understand my worries.”
    â€œWhat worries do you have, Davidson, other than the ones you invite?”
    â€œYou will find out one day. Before they make you a boss, you think how fine it would be to be top dog. You wait and wait your turn. You pine all night, and you pine all day. Until at last your day arrives, all gleaming and new. They pick you up by the scruff, and carry you along to the limousine, with all your anticipation, only to find it is for nothing more than to be thrown into the pit, where now, instead of pining, you get to fight. So you claw for the staff, and you bite for the crown, like you do not have good sense; or, if you do, you run from it all, until, exactly one day before you are ready, they catch up to you, or come pull you up from the pit. Next, the barber comes to you, and the tailor comes to you, and all the old king’s men, too, everybody come to you now. You are top dog in charge of it all. Boss bitch running the show. You do not sleep much anymore, but that is fine, because you might miss something if you did. So now they get you good and polished, and they put you up in front of whatever little tribe they give you for your own, where you see all your friends, who love you no matter what you do, and you see all your