He Stopped His Knees

“WHAT” — the voice “he used to break up fights on the field” hits the ceiling of the private room; a glass rolls, red creeps toward the place cards. “It was you,” he says to Priscilla, and reads her face “on the first try, because there was nothing to search for.” His father stands: “Sit down. This instant. You are at the table. There are people here. Conduct yourself the way this table requires. Like a Voss.” “Jacob had obeyed this voice before he’d learned his own name.” His knees begin to bend — “the same way his hand went for the napkin.” The chair is already waiting behind him. “He stopped his knees.” His hand goes to his throat: the hook under his chin, his father’s tailor “had done his job thoroughly.” “He dropped the bow tie on the tablecloth. Black on white, one end in the red.” “Sorry, Father.”

This is the climax of Jacob’s arc, and it is done through the body, like everything in this book: his obedience to his father lives not in his convictions but in his knees, and stopping them is an act as physical as Simon’s bite on the road. The bow tie that “had been gripping his throat since five o’clock” is the last collar in this story’s succession of collars (see “A Collar Worn With Pride”), and for the first time Jacob takes his off himself. Note that what leads him out of the room is not the truth about himself and not love in its pure form, but fear for one specific person: separation from a parent almost always begins not with “I want it to be different” but with “I can’t do otherwise — for someone’s sake.” He leaves “no louder than people spoke at this table,” and it is the first quiet voice in his life that belongs to him.