October Light

by John Gardner

  Captain Fist was asleep in his bunk, his hands at his sides. He went on snoring, undisturbed, when Peter Wagner poked his head in.

  It wasn’t much, as captains’ cabins go. Between the head of the bunk and the washstand opposite, the communicating door to the chartroom swung open and shut with the motion of the boat.

  Just as he was drawing back his head the Captain’s snoring changed, and a moment later Captain Fist jerked up. “Ah, Captain!” Captain Fist said. He stretched his eyes, tasted his mouth, coming the rest of the way up out of sleep.

  “Now wait a minute,” Peter Wagner said. A merry, queerly boyish and indifferent indignation surged up in him, then dissolved in the general warmth and light, the end-to-end-of-the-universe dazzle of love. Now he was certain of what he’d suspected before: it was not mere good humor that had made the woman, and then Mr. Nit, call him “Captain.” Something curious was going on.

  “Just dozed off for a minute,” Captain Fist said, “while I was waiting for you to awaken.” He chuckled, horselike, and whether it was evil or just apologetic, Peter Wagner couldn’t tell. The Captain threw his legs over the side of the bunk—he was fully dressed except for his shoes and hat—and pushed up into sitting position. He swept white hair away from his eyes and put his hat on. “Captain, let me show you around,” he said, and grotesquely smiled.

  “Now hang on,” Peter Wagner said. Still half-grinning, he clenched one fist, then relaxed it. Though he knew better, he said, “What’s this ‘Captain’ business?”

  “Why, my dear boy!” Captain Fist exclaimed. He got up and staggered to the door to take Peter Wagner’s hand. “You agreed! The whole crew shook hands to it!” His smile was like a snake’s. He even weaved a little, head thrown forward. It was true that they’d all shook hands on something. Peter Wagner smiled uncertainly and waited.

  “Let me show you around the ship,” the Captain said.

  Discounting the rotten smell and the dirt, the chartroom was standard: chart rack on the ceiling, chart table to the right with drawers underneath, etc. The two compasses were stuck, the protractor and parallel ruler on the chart table were museum pieces, and the ship’s sextant was so old its silver scale had been worn down to brass. The chronometer in its padded box was not running.

  “Everything all right?” the Captain asked nervously.

  For the first time in months—unless it had happened last night, when he was stoned—Peter Wagner laughed, without irony, from the heart. He went back through the connecting door to the Captain’s cabin and out onto the bridge. He was still laughing, like a boy, like a bridegroom. The Captain came behind him, worried, his fingertips stuck in his pockets. “Is everything all right?” he said again. His back was so crooked his head came straight out of his chest.

  “Where are we?” Peter Wagner asked, still grinning, brimming with childish brainless joy.

  “I don’t know that,” the Captain said.

  He laughed again. He took the binoculars from the shelf where they had been lying for, perhaps, years. They were so moldy they worked like tandem kaleidoscopes, but he wasn’t really looking for anything anyway, so he peered into them, facing first one direction, then another. “How in hell do you usually make it clear to Mexico?” he asked.

  His smile was perhaps infectious. In any case, the Captain grinned back. “We stick close to shore, normally. But that’s dangerous, of course. Now that we’ve got you, Captain—”

  As nearly as Peter Wagner could tell, without compass or stars, they were heading due west. He said, “How long we been out?”

  “All night,” the Captain said, and smiled again.

  “And you expect,” he said—but he couldn’t finish, because a fit of laughter took him once more, so severe that he had to bend double and hold out the binoculars to the Captain for fear of dropping them.

  “Is everything all right?” the Captain said.

  “Everything’s wonderful!” Peter Wagner said. “I’m going below.” Another laughing fit. “Let me know when we get to Japan.” He started for the hatch.

  The Captain stared after him without a word, leaning on his cane with both hands, for perhaps three seconds. Then abruptly, angrily, he called out, “See here!”

  Peter Wagner turned, looked at the furious old cockroach, and again bent over laughing.

  “See here!” he said again—a roar, this time. “You’re the Captain of this vessel, boy! You’re responsible!”

  Peter Wagner went on laughing, staring down the bore of the Captain’s pistol. Young male chimpanzees in love, he’d read somewhere, sometimes went without eating for days, in their jubilant stupor, until they fainted. The pistol was shaking; the Captain was in a fury. And that, for some reason, was so funny that Peter Wagner sank to his knees. “My dear Captain,” he gasped and, after thinking about it, went down on his hands and then over on his back, rolling like a bear. “My dear Captain, we’re all—” His body convulsed, and though at first he had been at least partly clowning, by now the laughter was in such earnest that he couldn’t catch his breath. “All dead men!” He hooted with laughter. The pistol hit his face. He laughed and laughed, though now he was crying too.

  “He’s crazy,” Mr. Nit said. “We’re lost in the Pacific with a lunatic.”

  Captain Fist hit him with the pistol again, but not as hard as before; he was feeling unsure of himself.

  And now Mr. Goodman was there, Peter Wagner made out, peeking through weeping, nearly closed eyes.

  “Let me talk to him,” Mr. Goodman said. No one answered, and Mr. Goodman kneeled down beside him. “Mr. Wagner?” he said.

  Peter Wagner smiled, groaned, felt himself at the edge of another laughing or maybe crying fit, and caught himself.

  “Mr. Wagner, sir,” Mr. Goodman said. “I understand your feeling, since you wanted to kill yourself anyway and we seem to be playing right into your hands. But Mr. Wagner, I beg you to think a minute. We’re family men, Mr. Nit and I. What will become of our children? Think about it, sir. And then too, there’s Jane, who’s a fine young woman and counting on you. If we go down, sir—” he paused, for some reason flustered. Peter Wagner smiled, or grimaced—he could hardly have said himself which it was—and the Captain moved his pistol to within inches of his nose. Mr. Nit bent over, holding out his billfold. There was a picture of a wall-eyed girl of six or seven. Mr. Goodman got out his billfold too. He had three boys, two girls, and two cats. He lived in Sausalito, up on the mountain. Even the headache where the old man had hit him couldn’t hold down Peter Wagner’s spirits. He was reminded, by the way they were holding out those snapshots, of something else he’d read about those chimpanzees. When the leader males had a fresh kill of monkeys and young baboons, the rest of the chimps would approach and beg for morsels. They’d touch the meat and the faces of the males, whimpering and hooing, holding out their hands, palms up, in supplication. Grandly (sometimes) the males would drop food into the outstretched hands. Such was life’s generosity.

  Peter Wagner closed his eyes, and even now the dream that had proved no dream filled the world with dazzle. “We’re on the Ship of Death,” he said. “The Lord be with us.” Another line, he remembered, from the novel about the hoax.

  Captain Fist cocked his pistol, but Mr. Goodman bent down closer. “Why?” he said. “Why?”

  “Metaphysically,” Peter Wagner said, leering, tears still falling, “that’s a difficult question. But in practical terms, you’re way out at sea with no radio, no telegraph, no compass that works, no sailors, and no pilot.”

  “You be our pilot!” Mr. Goodman said.

  Peter Wagner smiled blissfully and said nothing. They too were silent. At last he opened his eyes. The sea was serene; the sun directly overhead. Mr. Goodman’s look was full of idiotic woe.

  Captain Fist said, “You’re a philosopher! ‘Metaphysically,’ you said. I’m a philosopher myself—phenomenologist!” He put his pistol away in clumsy haste, as if to cancel his ever having drawn it. He had his hands aro
und Peter Wagner’s shoulders, pulling him up. “Help him up,” he hissed to Mr. Nit, “he’s a philosopher!”

  Mr. Goodman looked reverent. His children were forgotten.

  Peter Wagner sat up.

  “We’ll do anything, sir,” Mr. Nit said. There were tears in his eyes. “Just tell us what to do!”

  Peter Wagner sighed again. The sea was serene. “Fix the radio,” he suggested. “Take the compasses apart, to the last little screw, and clean them.” Mr. Nit jumped like a monkey and darted to the bridge.

  “You’ll do it, then! You’ll save us!” Mr. Goodman cried.

  Peter Wagner got to his feet slowly and shook his head. Impossible as it might seem, he felt peaceful, joyful, thinking of Jane—it was as if she had become the sea-smell, the sunlight, the rumbling and shuddering of the ship—and at the same time, he felt he had never been more depressed. Perhaps even that, it crossed his mind, was genetic. He was thinking again of those chimpanzees, generously giving food, and of the soldier throwing himself on the grenade, genetically chosen. “Kin selection,” it was called by sociobiologists. The family of the sacrificial lamb survived, saved by him, passing on his genes—the brothers and sisters, if the lamb had no daughters or sons—and so, little by little, the world grew more sublime and pathetic. And so now he had been chosen saviour of this groaning, floating little Eden. Saviour, not leader, there was no mistaking that, “Captain” him and “sir” him as they might. Pride and Damnation were their leader; agent: J. Faust. It was the Fausts of this world that the genes chose for kings and generals, black-hearted and soulless, infinitely cunning, cruel and selfish as bulls. And yet he’d chosen, or accepted the choice of his genes, Peter Wagner saw. He would take them to Mexico, to confront whatever law or competitive outlaws he must face there—had chosen just like that, without a flicker of thought, as it seemed he always chose. Fool! he thought, and thought no further.

  In two hours the radio was fixed. Four hours later the compasses were clean and Mr. Nit was working on an electro-magnet which would remagnetize the compasses and serve as a compass itself in case of emergency. There was no point in fixing the engine room telegraph. Any message that came would be Greek to the gold-winged angel down below. There was a speaking tube, not very effective since it had an obstruction of some kind—seaweed, bird manure, he couldn’t tell—but it worked if Jane kept close to it. They were no longer headed west. His first order had been to turn the old can around.

  A little before dark he decided he’d better give the ship a few tests. God only knew what he’d be required to demand of her—or it: for all his time at sea, it was hard to think of the reeking, patched up hulk as a she. (“Rapist,” his wife said, crying, in his mind.) He called down through the tube, “Dead Slow, Jane.” The Indomitable slowed down. Eyes drawn to slits, ear close to the tube, he listened to the engines. He jumped when Jane said, standing at his elbow on the bridge, “Was that right?”

  “Holy cow,” he said.

  “Was that what you meant by ‘Dead Slow’?” She smiled, full of love, and touched his arm.

  “Yes, fine,” he said. She moved her hand softly, sweetly on his arm. He seized her by the elbows and kissed her, dizzy with joy, then, gravely, said, “Get back down there, Jane. It’ll be dark soon.” She nodded, radiant, kissing him again and pressing her body close, then ran down the bridge steps quick as a boy, one lovely hand holding on her patriotic cap, and danced over to the hatch. When he was sure she was back in the engine room he called down through the tube, “Take back the revolutions till we’re barely ticking over.” She did so and called up through the tube, “Was that right?” “That’s fine,” he called back, stupidly proud. Then, to Mr. Goodman in the wheelhouse: “Take her up a point.” And then again to Jane: “Ring her up to Full.” They obeyed. “Steady as you go!” he yelled to Mr. Goodman.

  After dark he took an easy reading of bearings—not a cloud in sight—set his course, and put Mr. Nit on watch, letting Mr. Goodman rest. At the door of the Captain’s cabin he said, “All ship-shape, sir. Relatively.” He smiled.

  At the radio cubicle he paused and, after a moment, went in to look the old instrument over. He switched it on, playing with the tuner. For a full minute he got nothing but static. It wasn’t much of a radio, and they were still a long way out. Rut for some reason he kept at it, the old nautical sixth sense, perhaps. And then, quite suddenly, loud and clear a voice came through. “Indomitable. Calling Indomitable.” His mouth was open to answer before he remembered and switched off the mike. Captain Fist appeared behind him, eyebrows lifted. A second later Mr. Nit was there, and then Mr. Goodman and Jane.

  “Don’t answer!” Captain Fist whispered.

  “I knew we should never have fixed it,” Mr. Nit moaned.

  Jane pressed her head in, cocked as if to listen to the radio tubes. “Who could it be?” she whispered. “The Coast Guard, you think?”

  “Not way out here.”

  “Then who?”

  They looked at one another.

  “We’ll never know unless we answer,” Peter Wagner said. Line from some novel.

  Captain Fist put a finger to his lips.

  “We had a plane once,” Jane whispered. “We heard some static on the radio, and the next thing we knew the United States Air Force was shooting us down on the Mojave.”

  “Could be the Navy, all right,” Mr. Goodman said.

  “Calling the Indomitable,” the radio said. “Come in Indomitable!”

  Peter Wagner flicked the switch. “This is the Indomitable,” he said. “We read you. Identify.”

  Captain Fist leaned hard on his cane with one hand and hard on the bulkhead with the other.

  “Hello Indomitable,” the radio said. “This is your old pal the Militant, baby! We’ll see you in somethin like a hour, you dig?”

  Then static.

  Captain Fist’s cane went out from under him and he went down like a fat, greenish baby. “Get the lights out!” he croaked, still sitting.

  “You giving the orders?” Peter Wagner said. He drew Jane toward him, for some reason, as if to shield her.

  “I tell you get those lights out!”

  “You said I was Captain,” Peter Wagner said. The familiar churn of anger bloomed up in him. The smell of Jane’s hair in his nostrils gave the anger strength. “Divide …

  Sally Abbott had come to another large gap. She sighed and closed the book.

  “Passion governs, and she never governs wisely.” Benjamin Franklin, February 5, 1775

  3

  The Spat Between the Old Man and the Old Woman Turns More Grave

  She was not a fast reader. She liked to take her time and savor what she read, even when she knew what she was reading was hardly worth a speck. Moreover, whether it was because of the softness of the pillows behind her back, or the crispness of the bright, October day, or the unimportance of the writing—Horace, she knew, would have wondered at her continuing on with such a book: life was too precious to be idled away, he’d always said—her mind kept wandering and from time to time she would nod and drop off; and so, when she laid the book aside, not yet half finished, and looked over at the clock on the desk, it was mid-afternoon.

  It was hunger that had roused her again from her story. She looked around in surprise, reality flooding in—or another reality, so to speak; the book, for all its foolishness, had convinced her exactly as a dream might do, she’d seen those people and that ridiculous old fishingboat as plain as day, as plain as the pictures on Hawaii Five-O. She glanced at the cover—the half-naked girl and the horrible old Captain (not at all as she herself imagined them)—and shook her head. “Well that does take the cake,” she said. The Captain was supposed to have eyes like bullet holes, and the girl’s hair was dark. As if from another time and place, the memory of her battle with James came back. It seemed silly now, cranked up out of nothing like the troubles in her book, and considering the leaves outside her window and the blue-as-blue October sky, she had half a m
ind to call him and let bygones be bygones. It occurred to her that maybe, one of those times when she’d nodded off, he’d come up and unlocked her door.

  She got up to see. The floor was so cold it was like walking on hard snow, and despite her curiosity about the door, she stopped to put her slippers on, and then, as an afterthought, her gray cardigan sweater. In the back of her mind she heard the phone ringing. Now she went to the door and tried it. Still locked. “Stubborn old fool,” she said aloud. The phone rang on. He’d be outdoors somewhere, collecting the eggs, cleaning the stables, feeding the pigs and horses, or whatever. Well, she thought, there was nothing she could do about the phone, locked in her bedroom like some poor old madwoman in a novel. She went toward the attic door, planning to smuggle down more apples. She could smell the bedpan, which she’d pushed in under the washstand after she’d used it this morning. She frowned, trying to think how to empty it. Maybe there was some old pail or empty trunk in the attic. But she was standing looking out the window toward the road as she thought the problem through, and abruptly she seized, almost without consciously thinking of it, the simplest solution: she opened the window and unhooked the screen, then, nose wrinkling, carried the bedpan over and dumped it on the bushes down below. Then she went up to get the apples.

  When James came back in from watering the stock and gathering eggs, the phone was ringing. He had a pretty fair idea who it would be. He picked up the receiver and called, “Ay-uh?”

  “Hi, Dad. It’s Ginny.”

  “I thought it might be you, Ginny.”

  “I just thought I’d call and see how everything’s going.”