October Light

by John Gardner

  She was leaving the airport, walking toward the bus stop, when she saw a billfold lying on the sidewalk, the edges of some bills showing. She bent down, hardly thinking, and just as she was about to close her hand on the billfold, it moved. It moved about four feet, off the sidewalk into the grass, and stopped again. She felt her face going beet red: someone was pulling it by a string, children no doubt, as a joke on her. Any minute she’d hear their laughter. But though she waited, grinning at the bushes where she knew they must be, no laughter came. Cautiously, tentatively, secretly baffled though she continued to smile, she went over to the billfold and reached down for it again. Again it moved. “Now look here,” she said to the bushes. Still nothing. She got a brilliant idea. Quickly, but as if indifferently, she walked over to where the billfold was now, glanced up at the sky as if to see if it might rain, and, faster than a rattlesnake, stamped her foot down beside the billfold where the string would have to be. Sure enough, the billfold bumped into her foot and stopped. She reached down to grab it.

  “Your name’s Jane, I believe,” a voice said. The voice was so horrible she felt faint. It was the kind of voice cobras would have if they talked. Every leaf of the bush was suddenly distinct, every branch sharply outlined. She stared in stark terror, perfectly certain by the prickling of her skin that in a minute she was going to die. The birds had stopped singing. There was no sound anywhere. She saw herself as she would be shown in the newspaper photograph, naked in the bushes, or headless, lying in a pool of blood. In a few short seconds, she had crossed from the world of people to whom nothing ever happens into the world of perverts, maniacs, murderers—and she, she was the victim!

  Then her heart stopped dead. She was staring straight into two pale eyes, unmistakably the eyes of a serpent—unblinking, dusty.

  “Don’t be frightened,” the horrible voice said. “You’re a lovely girl. Nobody’s going to hurt you!”

  She wanted to get up, run from him; but her muscles wouldn’t move. “What do you want?” she whispered.

  “I want to make you an offer,” the voice said. “My name’s Johann Fist. I’d like to make you rich.”

  She said nothing, breathing hard. She was giddy.

  “I want you to fly my airplane. You wouldn’t believe how well I’m willing to pay you.”

  “Why?” she said. “Where?”

  “To Mexico and back, on regular runs. It’s Paradise, Mexico. I’ll pay you a thousand dollars a run. You’ll be richer than God.” He laughed, a heavy rippling sound like sewers overflowing.

  She thought about it. It was a lot of money. She was young, beautiful, full of ambition; also, she had her relatives to think about. They’d scrimped and saved all their lives for her. If God hadn’t meant for her to take this opportunity, why would He have sent it? Also, a thousand dollars was a lot of money. She peered into the dusty, unblinking eyes. “Is it illegal?”

  “Come, come, my dear.”

  She was satisfied. It would be different, she reflected, if she agreed to it knowing it was illegal. “I’ll do it,” she said. She laughed.

  And so she had done it. It was a fat brown World War II cargo plane so big you could drive huge trucks up into it. It creaked and shuddered with every gust, and the engines were so noisy she had to wear ear-plugs; but it flew. Or flew until one awful night over the Mojave. It was their fourth run. Some noise came over the radio—it didn’t work—and the next thing she knew the United States Air Force was shooting at them. “Keep driving,” Captain Fist said, his revolver at her head. All four engines were on fire. “I can’t,” she said. “Look out the window.” He looked out, saw the engines, sighed, and put the gun away. They parachuted down, Captain Fist, Mr. Goodman, Mr. Nit, and Jane. The plane crashed a half-mile upwind of them, and as they stood, then sat, then lay, smelling the burning marijuana, they became close friends, for the time being, and told each other the stories of their lives and in the end made love. She told of Uncle Fred—sweet fat old Italian who’d been derailed on the way to the California vineyards and refused, after that, to budge from Tomb City, Nebraska. “Dis America, she’s-a beautiful! She da rock of Ages,” Uncle Fred liked to say. He had a suitcase full of Caruso records. Her mother made him play them in the chicken house. Toward morning, as they were stumbling hand in hand across the Mojave, startling bats and tortoises and owls, Captain Fist said, “What we really need is a boat.” They’d gotten the boat, for two thousand dollars, from the California Salvage Corporation.

  She no longer pretended to herself that Captain Fist’s business was legal or her personal relationship with the three men strictly proper. Her poor mother and Uncle Fred would be shocked, no doubt. But what was right in Nebraska was not necessarily right for California or out on the Pacific. Also, as she sometimes reminded herself, it was perfectly possible for a person to begin badly but mend his ways later, when he saw the light. Meanwhile, the pay was good, her friendship with Mr. Nit and Mr. Goodman, at least, was comfortable—no one could accuse her of puritanical hang-ups—and she was getting, it might be, valuable experience. More than most anything, she wanted to be something, make something of herself. She wanted to be so rich she could do anything she wanted, anything she could think of; but it wasn’t just crass materialism. She wanted to be famous, do things that would change the world. She’d talked once, in a grubby little bar, to a girl with red hair and a smudged face who was planning to assassinate Dr. Kissinger. Jane’s heart had leaped. She would never do anything like that herself, she wasn’t the type, but she could understand the feeling—the eyes of the whole fucking world upon you! star of the Walter Cronkite show—beautiful eyes flashing, clenched fist raised … “Are you really going to shoot Dr. Kissinger?” she’d said. “Keep it down, will ya?” the girl had said. “Half the people in here are fuzz.” Jane had looked around, more awed than ever. Yes, she would definitely do something like that, except something more reasonable, something her mother and all her friends back in Nebraska would be proud of, it was hard to think what.

  Or so she had told herself until tonight. Tonight the stranger had dropped into their lives as if out of heaven, and everything was changed.

  What would they do with him? They couldn’t very well just let him go, with his clothes stinking of marijuana. Sure as day the police would trace him to their fishingboat. On the other hand, the longer they kept him aboard, the surer the man was to find out their secret. They’d just have to keep him as their prisoner forever.

  The thought blew her mind. She saw him chained up, getting gaunter every year. He’d grow a long beard, like the man in a movie she’d seen one time. She would sneak little presents to him—a bird in a cage, a book of sad poetry, one perfect rose and a cap of LSD, if he liked such things. They’d have whispered conversations.—No, on second thought, she would be, to him, like the Dragon Lady. He would reach out to her, in an anguish of indecision …—No, he would finally force her to see what had become of her: she would weep, facing the stark, awful truth, clinging to his knees. It was she who was in chains; he, in his iron shackles, was truly free. Like the play in San Francisco. She imagined him rubbing her back very gently, as Uncle Fred had done when she was a little girl and had been frightened by a nightmare. The stranger would smile, and she would know she was forgiven, both here and in the life hereafter.

  They were in Chinatown. Chickens hanging in darkened store windows. Boxes and cans with Chinese writing. Chinese theaters emitting their weird tinny music. Kee-yong, ka-waiyong, kee-yo, kyo, kyonnnng. Tourists milled on the sidewalks and in the street; little Chinese in business suits bobbed past them. Captain Fist darted from doorway to doorway, his hat-brim pulled down so that nothing showed but his blackish potato of a nose and his eyes. When they came to Wong Chop’s restaurant he darted in and ran upstairs. Jane followed. At the head of the stairs stood a large American flag.

  She found him in the last booth in the upstairs room, his back to the doorway, his hat sitting level on his shoulders as if, like a turtle, he’d
pulled in his head. She took a chair at the side of the table, and as soon as she was seated he turned away as if everything were her fault. She sighed, removing her glasses. She wondered if the stranger, back on the ship, had come to yet. Perhaps the old man had killed him with that blow.

  Music came through the wall. Gongs and something that sounded like tin cans on a string.

  “Captain Fist,” she began. She put on her glasses.

  He shrank from her voice, and she changed her mind, took her glasses off, and kept still. What was she doing here—a nice girl really—in this den of recooked leftovers?

  Then, without a sound, Wong Chop appeared in the doorway, big as a mountain, dressed in gold and scarlet, with tassels. He smiled and bowed. “Good evening, fliends.” He held a menu in front of Captain Fist. Captain Fist pretended to study it, then reached out, his hand shaking violently, and pointing to something. It was the signal, Jane surmised. Now Wong Chop bowed, deeply gratified, and slipped an envelope to the Captain. Even though she was watching for it, she almost missed the pass. Quick as an electric spark it went from Wong Chop’s hand into Captain Fist’s pocket. Wong Chop bowed again, deeply and slowly, and then, as if he had been an illusion, vanished. Captain Fist sat quiet as a mossy stump. Ten minutes expired.

  At last, unable to help herself, Jane leaned toward him. “What’s going to happen to the stranger?” she whispered.

  He gave a jerk, as if he’d been asleep. “Be still,” he croaked, and raised a trembling finger to his lips.

  “I won’t be,” she whispered. “You’ve got to free him.”

  He shook his head. “Impossible.”

  Everyone in the booths around them had stopped talking and sat perfectly motionless, heads tipped or turned, listening with all their might; the waiter, a few booths down, had his hand inconspicuously cupped to his ear. All federal agents, probably. Too softly for them to hear, she whispered, “But you can’t keep him with us forever. Think!”

  “I have,” he whispered.

  “Suppose they got onto us. Suppose—” She hung fire, visualizing it herself clearly for the first time. She put on her glasses. “Suppose they send out a destroyer or something and sink us! You’ll be a murderer.”

  Captain Fist smiled. She looked away and wished she were back on the farm with the chickens and tractors and dear Uncle Fred.

  “I can’t let you,” she whispered. “It’s not ethical.” She whispered it so firmly, so courageously, that it gave her a little thrill. At the same time it occurred to her that she’d done all she could. The murder would not be on her hands. “And then too,” she said, “there’s the Militant. What if—”

  The Captain went white. “Don’t mention them!” he whispered. His shudder made the floor shake.

  “If the Militant attacks us, and the stranger is killed—”

  “Be still!” he whispered. He clutched his hands together; sweat popped out on his forehead. His eyes rolled and his mouth shook, but he managed to bring out, “He’ll be dead already, stupid girl. Do you think he was joking when he jumped off the Golden Gate Bridge?”

  “We can’t let him,” she said.

  “We can’t stop him,” he hissed. “If I don’t miss my guess, our visitor’s dead as a doornail right this minute.” He jerked out his pocketwatch and glanced at it. It had stopped. He thumped it against his palm.

  She studied him, light with alarm. Only now did she fully realize how pleasant the stranger’s kiss had felt, when she was reviving him. “What do you mean,” she whispered, “dead already?” It came to her that Mr. Nit was still on the Indomitable. He always came ashore when they hit San Francisco. He loved the city, would never have missed it for the world, unless … They had whispered, she remembered. She had come upon Mr. Nit and the Captain in the passageway below, by the engine room door, and the minute they saw her they’d stopped whispering and looked guilty. Now it was all coming clear to her. Murder! she thought. Her face felt on fire. It was one thing to smuggle, to steal a little gas in an emergency, or to slow down the harbor police boats with mines, but cold-blooded murder, even if that was what the handsome stranger wanted … He was a sick man, a pitiful person whose life had gone all wrong or he would never have jumped, and they, who should have been his saviours and restorers …

  “I quit,” she said. She felt reckless, suddenly pure and invulnerable. Astonishingly, the stranger really had become her redeemer, had brought her proud, wicked heart to submission. She stood up, radiantly beautiful, she knew—it was exactly like a thing she’d seen on the Wednesday Night Movie. She was free of him. As free—even if he whipped out his pistol and shot her dead—

  “Sit down,” he hissed. “Don’t be stupid.”

  “Never!” she said. Then, glancing at his eyes, she reconsidered; it might be best not to overdo it. “I need to go to the ladies’,” she said, and slipped her glasses off.

  As soon as the ladies’ room door closed behind her she was up on the sink in a flash and climbing out the window. It opened onto a flat roof high above the street. The lights were beautiful, below: deep reds, sharp blues and greens. It was as if she were seeing the neon signs for the first time, all transmuted to a new beauty by the harsh ugliness of the roof with its clumsy chimneys and antennae, desert plants on a strange planet. She slipped her shoes off, to cross the roof more quietly. She felt light, as if born again. She’d gone only two steps when a blocky shape detached itself from the chimney.

  “Good evening,” a voice said. She couldn’t see the man’s face, but his bow was Oriental. He had on a turban, or an incongruous silver Afro. She put on her glasses. In his right hand, casually stretched toward her, he had a knife. She went back to the Captain.

  “Ah,” he said, “you’re back. As you see, dinner’s served.”

  She sat down. “I’m not really hungry,” she said. She put her hands on the table, getting herself steady.

  The Captain smiled. His teeth were like a carp’s. “Ah well,” he said.

  It was still more than an hour before they could return to the boat. She thought frantically, snatching about for some stratagem; but there was no possibility of escape, he had her cold. Surely Mr. Goodman would never allow … But he would never know, she realized. He was as innocent as a baby. She would rush back, go below at once, and she would find … nothing. The body would be gone. Her eyes filled with tears. The poor man, she thought; but she was weeping for herself, the Nebraska farmgirl that was lost—ah, lost forever!

  “You should read more philosophy,” Captain Fist said.

  She listened to the queer, half-musical noises that were coming through the restaurant wall. Drums. Gongs. Tinkles. A long human wail. It sounded to her, in her troubled state, like some weird blood-sacrifice.

  “Personally, I read philosophy all the time,” Captain Fist remarked. “Ask me about Hegel.”

  She met his dusty, soulless eyes, as close together as shotgun barrels. “Evil man,” she whispered. “Wicked demon!”

  “Eat your seaweed,” Captain Fist said. “Or whatever it is.” He sighed.

  ~ ~ ~

  It was the end of a chapter.

  Sally Abbott smiled. The book had improved, it seemed to her, though perhaps it was just that her mind was fresher, her brother’s attack on her receding in time and the morning clear and beautiful, crisp. She hadn’t spent a morning in bed reading since heaven knew when. She’d been missing something! Also, the battered old paperback was oddly comforting, though she couldn’t exactly put her finger on why. The impishness of it; perhaps it was that. The delicate way the writer mocked all those foolish things her brother James, among others, set such store by. The flag in Wong Chop’s restaurant—that was a wonderful touch!—and all those government spies! Or the stupid false piety of the girl from Nebraska! Ah, but hadn’t she known such people!

  She smiled again, blessing the fine weather, the sunlit room. James would be livid, if he could know what she was reading, know what wickedness she was thinking. James was a Veter
an—had gone off to World War II though he was nearly middle-aged and didn’t even have to, as a farmer. “Duty,” he said. He’d been a Seabee in the South Pacific. She poked her chin out, mimicking him, and saluted, then smiled at her antics and at James. Every Veterans Day, there he’d be in his ridiculous VFW cap—it was all that still fit, now that he was old and shrunken. He and Henry Stumpchurch would lead the parade, James, as the oldest, carrying the Colors of the United States of America (she saluted again), his eyes smouldering as if he imagined he was marching it through China. Henry Stumpchurch, a huge man, looking equally stern, would carry the flag of the VFW—he had enormous curling eyebrows and a round, bald head, sun- and windburnt below the sharp line of his normal wide, floppy hat; the skin above—revealed in near nakedness under the gray VFW service cap—was as pale as your bottom, boiled looking, like a cabbage. Behind them, grimly on the watch for Jews and Democrats, came William Peabody Partridge, Jr., and Samuel Denton Frost, and then the younger men, mostly Irishmen and Italians (Democrats!). The old ones thought of themselves as descendants of Vermont’s Green Mountain Boys. Her Horace had smiled. “That’s odd,” he’d said, all innocence. Round faced, cherubic. “I’d understood they were nearly all killed.” He’d wisely gone no further—James had come alert and was prepared to pounce—but she knew her husband’s full opinion, which he’d read in some book: after the Revolution, there was practically not a man left in all the East except cowards and Tories and, here and there, an Indian. Ethan Allen himself ended up with only twenty live men.