October Light

by John Gardner

  There were tears in her eyes, he dreamed. He felt guilty again that he’d abandoned her, for now it seemed to him again that she was the wife he’d loved, as sometimes it had seemed to him that his wife, when he was falling-down drunk and they were making fierce love, had been somebody else; such was life’s fidelity. “No secrets between us anymore,” he said “no anger, no hitting.”

  He heard her laughter, too real for a dream. The dream had turned nightmare. “I’m not your wife, silly,” she said. “I mean, Je-sus!”

  He clung to her, struggled to focus her face, and now it seemed that she wasn’t his wife but some man, big-shouldered, with eyes like steel. The huge man, sharp-nosed, wearing steel-rinimed glasses, lifted Peter Wagner in his arms and, like a wrestler, hurled him down. He saw the wrestling mat coming toward him as if from hundreds of miles below, and there was fire-green grass at the edges. It was a grave, an angel sitting at the head of it with folded wings. The moment before he hit he awakened, staring out into some pitch-dark room. He was alone, his body bathed in sweat. “Margaret,” he whispered. She stood, in his memory, erect as a steeple, tits like Akhaian breastplates. He clenched his eyes shut. All his fantasies, the best and the worst, were trash. He reached out suddenly, angrily, for the eels. The table was gone. His hand came down on the soft, warm flesh of some woman.

  He labored, full of panic now, to rise out of the dream. A black, furry hand came toward him, extending a red-glowing pipe.

  ~ ~ ~

  Sally Abbott set the page number in her mind, closed the book and laid it on the blanket beside her. She’d reached a chapter end; she needed to relax her eyes.

  The room was bright and cheerful with early afternoon, yellow glints in the faded wallpaper, the leaves outside her window colorful and gently fluttering, stirred by a faint breeze; yet for all the light and warmth, she discovered she was being drawn down, for no reason she could pinpoint, by an undertow of anxiety. She closed her eyes for a minute—the brightness still came through—and for a time, perhaps half an hour, she rested. If she dreamed, she was not aware of it.

  When her mind rose toward thought again, she found herself brooding, eyes still closed, on Peter Wagner’s marijuana dream. She could have no idea, of course, whether or not the description was true to life, never having smoked or even seen marijuana, so far as she knew. She had never even been drunk, in fact, though sometimes she and Horace had had a drink or two, Canadian Club, or sherry with Estelle and Ferris Parks. She felt the draw of anxiety building in her, an emotion that seemed to be groundless, yet increasing rapidly; and then, abruptly, as if the emotion had summoned the image instead of the reverse, she saw the open door the night of Horace’s death. She saw, in sharper detail than in any photograph, the red and yellow leaves, the crooked sidewalk, the streetlamp, the lighted jack-o’-lanterns on the porch across the street, and in memory she heard again the stuck needle on the gramophone, a phrase like an ironic question. The whole scene was caught in her brain as if snatched out of time. She knew that in a moment she would turn and see Horace in his chair, his mouth forming an O as if of slight surprise, and she would cry out and run to him. But she didn’t turn yet, perhaps knowing already that Horace would be there, unless the prescience had crept into the memory later, after she knew. Every line in the room was as sharp as a razor cut—books, glass-topped table, hat-rack by the door—and for an instant it seemed there was a smell, exaggerated by memory but elusive as ever. Someone had been there, someone from her past, perhaps her childhood. All this she had told the police, later, going over it and over it in meticulous detail. “What did it smell like?” “I don’t know. The woods,” she said. “Decaying leaves. Like a zoo.” In the end they had concluded, and she had agreed, that he’d died of natural causes. She believed it still. But she was filled, again now, with anxiety, and she suddenly believed she knew what, all along, she’d been afraid of.

  She had at one time understood her brother as fully as she understood herself—though she didn’t always, perhaps, understand him now. When they were children she’d been more like a mother to him than like an older sister, at least most of the time. It was because she could control him when no one else could that Ariah had called her, the night he burned the house. Ariah had been sick at the time; in fact—though Sally had not known sarcoma could be so swift—Ariah had been dying. That had been partly what had made James snap, that and his son’s death a year before, and the whiskey. Ariah had said on the phone, feebly, too drugged even to be clear-minded about her fear, “If you could just come up and … talk to him … Sally—”

  “Where is he?” she’d said.

  “He’s at the house.” A pause, then: “Richard’s.” Another pause, her voice growing weaker: “Burning it.”

  She’d said that earlier, but only now did Sally understand that it was true. “I’ll send the police,” she’d said.

  “No!” Ariah begged. Sally waited, and across the ten miles of telephone wire she could feel Ariah fumbling, struggling to clear her wits, unclog her tongue. At last she said hoarsely, “Don’t send … police.” There was a silence for a moment, or silence except for the roar of the line, and then there was another sound, which it took her a moment to identify: Ariah’s crying.

  “Is Ginny with you?” Sally asked in alarm.

  Ariah tried to answer and at last brought out, “Yes.”

  “Are you all right, Ariah?” And then: “Has he hurt you?”

  The answer was unintelligible, and she broke in, “I’ll be there as soon as I can. Stay where you are, and keep Ginny with you. Do you hear me?”

  She could catch no answer, only Ariah’s crying—hopeless, not quite human—and the roar of the line. She hung up. She threw her coat and hat on, pulled on her overshoes, grabbed her purse, drawing the keys out as she walked, and hurried to the car. It was dark, lightly snowing, and there was ice on the roads. She drove as fast as she could, wondering all the way whether she should have called the police, whispering to herself, listening with intense concentration, for some reason, to the grind of the motor and the almost inaudible swish of windshield wipers. Halfway up the mountain she saw the glow of the burning house. Her heart chilled. She had believed Ariah, but it was as if she hadn’t understood her. She drove more slowly, accelerator-foot shaking, and she was deathly afraid that by some accidental jerk of her arm she’d swerve the old Buick out over the drop-off.

  When she came abreast of the burning house she saw there were cars there, parked beside the road, watching. One of them belonged to Sam Frost, from a little down the mountain. She slowed as if to stop, looking over at the house and the lighted trees, and by one of the trees she saw her brother, standing with his hands over his face. The sight so shocked her—the look he had of brute sorrow and confusion—that she pressed down hard on the accelerator, swinging and skidding, then driving on. Half a mile higher, when she came to the family house, she pulled in, turned the motor off, and sat for two minutes breathing deeply. She had a pain in her chest, like fire.

  Inside, Ariah was in the downstairs bed, Ginny tucked beside her. Ariah was wasted to a skeleton, her arms like sticks, eyes enormous.

  “Ginny, you go sleep upstairs,” Sally said, taking off her coat. The child opened her mouth to protest, but Sally snapped, “Go!” and drew the covers back. Ginny slipped out and went quickly toward the door. “And brush your teeth!” Sally said. She took her hat off, then pressed her palm to Ariah’s forehead; it was warm but not hot. “Ariah, we’ve got to change these sheets,” she said. She drew them away, gently, and prepared to lift Ariah to the chair.

  “Thank you,” Ariah said, and could bring out nothing more. Tears washed down her cheeks.

  “Never mind, now,” Sally said, “everything’s all right. In a jiffy we’ll have you in nice clean sheets, and maybe a nice bath and your hair brushed—” She talked cheerfully, loudly, her heart slamming. She’d had no idea. Dr. Phelps ought to have told her. Then she wondered the next moment if he knew himself. When ha
d he last been here? There were pill bottles on the tallboy, at least a dozen of them, and on the typed labels stood Dr. Phelps’ name. She took sheets from the drawer—clean-smelling, not ironed—carried them to the foot of the bed and began putting them on. No doubt James wouldn’t call him, as long as he had pills. Two weeks might pass, she might shrivel up to nothing, and James would imagine he was doing all he could; he’d always been a fatalist, drunk or sober, and he’d been doctoring sick animals all his life. Never mind. She was here now. Meanwhile, as she put on new pillowslips and blankets, heated water for a bath, and laid a clean nightie out, Sally chattered, talking of how wonderfully Ariah was holding up, how obedient Ginny was becoming these days—talking of every light and trivial thing that came flitting into her head. Ariah—whispering “Thank you, thank you,” understanding none of it—wept.

  When James came home, Ariah was white and shivering, clenching her teeth in pain, refusing to cry out. He stood in the kitchen doorway, reeking of smoke and gin, red-eyed, staring at Sally, his expression both belligerent and defensive. “I burnt the house,” he said.

  “I know,” she said. “Ariah needs her medicine.”

  He turned his head slowly, blood draining from his whiskered cheeks, then stumbled toward the living room and the bedroom beyond. She followed, keeping enough distance to avoid offending him—he’d been a big man then, dangerous—and she watched as he fumbled with the pills. Ariah opened her mouth for them eagerly, like an animal, and he dropped them in, then lifted her head with his left hand, carefully, and with his right gave her the dusty water that had been standing on the bedside table for, probably, days. When she had swallowed she closed her eyes, and he laid her head back into the pillow again, then sat holding her hand, Sally leaning in the doorway, until Ariah was asleep. He stood up, looking around vaguely, baffled by something that hadn’t quite registered; then he saw what it was, that the sheets had been changed and that even without his clothes on he’d be black as soot.

  “I’ll sleep on the couch,” he said.

  She nodded. “I’ll sleep up with Ginny.”

  He looked at her. “You stayin?”

  She nodded slightly, not otherwise answering, moving away toward the kitchen and the door to the stairs.

  He said, too loudly, “I burnt Richard’s house.” She said nothing—for the moment.

  In the morning he couldn’t say why he’d done it—in fact he didn’t even remember, at first, that he had done it. It was hard for Sally Abbott to believe that people could do violent acts and not remember, as Peter Wagner had done in her novel and James had done in life. She never could do violence and forget it; she was certain of it. Yet she couldn’t believe that James was lying about forgetting. It was all far in the past, admittedly; he hadn’t gotten dangerously drunk in years; she oughtn’t to be frightened. To tell the truth, even when he’d chased her up the stairs with the log she hadn’t really been frightened, just alarmed and—mostly—furious. But now she was beginning to have second thoughts. More than she realized, her brother was a stranger to her—possibly even to himself.

  She stared at the wall for a time, thinking nothing, at first with an expression of sadness and compassion, then with a sterner expression. Her jaw became firmer, her eyes more fierce. Then, with a quick little shake of the head, Sally returned to her book.

  7

  THE PHILOSOPHY OF RANK

  He woke up with a queer, not entirely unpleasant sense that he had lost days, perhaps months, out of his life. He was in a bunk-room he’d never seen before, its peeling walls trembling with the shudder of engines somewhere aft—not far, he guessed; perhaps on the other side of the bulkhead he leaned on now as he thought about getting up. There were four bunks: his own, one above it, another that was clumsily made up with Army surplus blankets, and the one above that piled high with boxes, folded clothes, two jars of olives, parts of a record player, and a coffee cup, cracked. He remembered, dimly, that someone had spoken poetry—Mr. Goodman. A dream, perhaps? He remembered that someone had sung hymns, and he’d enjoyed himself, but the memory would not come clear in detail, not even the cabin it had happened in.

  A sound to his left startled him and he turned. It was the bunkroom door swinging open. The passageway beyond was bathed in sunlight coming down through the hatch like a shaft from heaven, and suddenly, for no reason, he knew where he was and what had happened last night, or some of it: the Captain’s cabin, the pipes of pot, the singing, talking, handshaking. He jumped up and crossed to the door quickly, as if thinking of escape. The galley door across the passageway opened by itself, exactly as the bunkroom door had opened, as if some absentminded ghost were looking for his glasses. The galley was empty except for the sink, the refrigerator, the stove, and two inches of water sloshing on the deck. Someone had left out bread and peanut butter, and the sink was full of cups and plastic plates. He went forward down the passageway, came to the engine room door. The girl Jane turned and smiled at him. She had a shielded mechanic’s lightbulb hanging down through a hole in the decking, and a pipewrench in her right hand. There were grease smudges on her forehead and nose and cheek.

  “G’mornin, Cap’n,” she said brightly.

  He said nothing, snatching wildly in his mind to get his bearings. She went on smiling, then puckered her lips, blowing him a kiss. He remembered, suddenly, the dream he’d had, and knew it was no dream. He blew a kiss back, joyful and full of sharp panic, then abruptly pulled his head out and closed the hatch. He went up the ladder and stood a moment blinking, adjusting to the sudden and absolute change in the universe.

  The sea was serene; the sun was directly overhead. He felt stupidly at peace. It meant nothing, of course; another proof that all human emotion, all experience, is meaningless mechanics. So days grow longer and in chemical reaction the feathers of birds grow brighter and their joys increase. He did not approve of what had happened to him. To Peter Wagner, it was a matter of high indignation that a man eating lunch, approached by a female panhandler, was almost certain to give money, because it was programmed in his genes: centuries ago, in some African cave, sharing the kill with some female had meant getting between her legs. It was an outrage—on occasion a matter for tears—that the noblest human altruism, the young man who throws himself down on a grenade to save his comrades’ lives at the expense of his own, was similarly programmed, as surely programmed as the altruistic self-destruction of that walking bomb of the insect world, Globitermes sulfureus, who to save his tribe from the invading ant could, and sooner or later would, explode himself, sending the splash of his poison in every direction. But even as he scorned the way he was pulled to and fro by the universe, driven by his ancient, monkey past, enslaved by every tremor at the edges of space, he could not deny the fact that he was boundingly happy. The girl was pretty and in love with him, such a playmate as only the gods ever catch; he had sea beneath his legs, sky on all sides of him: he was king of the ocean-faring apes.

  “G’mornin, Cap’n,” Mr. Nit said. He touched his black wool cap but did not stir from the canvas chair where he was sitting with an old Science Digest on the deck.

  “Morning,” Peter Wagner said. He glanced up at the wheel-house. Mr. Goodman was there, smiling down at him like an old, old friend. Mr. Goodman touched the front of his hat.

  “Go ahead,” Mr. Nit said, “look the ole tub over.”

  Doubtfully, but full of bliss, Peter Wagner went up the bridge steps, past the radio cubicle and the engine room skylight. He’d gotten used to the smell of pot now and was beginning to catch other things—old steam and the acid in the batteries stored in the louvered box between the Indomitable’s stacks. And something else: a kind of a toadstool and duff smell, as if the old can had lain for years half sunk in some forest. At the entrance to the Captain’s cabin he glanced at the bridge. The engine room telegraph was as green as the dome of a public building, and the bridge itself was thick with oily dirt. Sandbags barricaded the wheelhouse, half rotten, seeping grit where someon
e had poked holes in them—or maybe shot at them.