October Light

by John Gardner

  Her body, even now that she was seventy-six, was a creation as curious as her voice. Her walk was no longer spry—she’d limped badly ever since she’d slipped on a shag-rug and broken her hip, six years ago (she had a pin in it now), and her thick gray-stockinged legs were bent just slightly the wrong way at her knees, so that she looked, standing up, like a large deer balanced on its hind legs in an orchard, reaching up for apples. Aside from her walk, her every gesture was the soul of natural grace. For all her weight, she might have been the model of elegance if she’d liked—might, that is, have been a graceful and elegant fat woman—but Ruth was too much the clown for that (for which some people liked her and others did not), delighting in mimickry and buffoonery of every sort, from parody of Queen Victoria to the low bumps and grinds of burlesque halls. This too her years as librarian had tended to modify and inhibit, as was perhaps just as well. She’d learned to limit herself for hours at a time to nothing more outlandish than a clever, perhaps slightly overstated mimickry of primness. Her native impishness showed only, for the most part, as a wicked sparkle in her bright blue eyes and a tendency to make faces. “This book,” a visitor to the library might say in high dudgeon, as though it were Ruth Thomas’s fault, “is stupid.” “Stupid?” Ruth Thomas would exclaim, as if distressed. Before she could stop herself, assuming she wanted to, her upper teeth, or rather dentures, would protrude and her bright blue eyes would cross. With children—or at any rate with most children—it had made her, for years and years, the Queen of North Bennington. On other occasions her curious ability with gestures would slip out—a Jewish shrug, an Italian’s flip of the hand for “eh paesan,” the silly go-get-em-boys jab and cross of a dim-witted highschool coach.

  There was no denying that she could be, at times, an embarrassment. “Ruth, you should be on the stage!” Estelle had told her once. “Or somewhere,” Ferris had added dryly. Yet she was, for all that, a tender-hearted, gentle and well-meaning woman, a lover of books, though her taste was odd. She loved “Chaucer,” though she had not read him in a while, and she read in modern English; the name “William Shakespeare” she always pronounced in full, with some sort of vaguely British accent; and she would have to think twice, she often said, before choosing between Milton and the gas chamber.

  “James,” she called out now, bending toward him—she was very tall—“you look like a dog who’s eaten fence-nails!”

  He shrank back a little. Her breath smelled powerfully of Ovaltine.

  The kitchen was now bursting. Behind Ruth Thomas, his hand around her waist, helping to support her, was Ruth’s husband Ed Thomas, red-faced, white-haired, cigar-smoking, eighty-year-old Welshman. He looked considerably older than Ruth, partly because of her dyed hair. He was a farmer, a rich one, as large as his wife around the waist and about two-thirds as tall. “Evenin James,” he said, “evenin Estelle! Hi there, Lewis, Dickey! Evenin! Evenin!” He swept the unlighted cigar from his mouth and with the same hand took his hat off. Behind him stood his eighteen-year-old grandson DeWitt, carrying a guitar, and behind DeWitt came Roger, close to Dickey’s age. Both of the Thomas boys had freckles and dark red hair. “Brought the boys along, ’Stelle,” Ed Thomas said. His l’s had a kind of click to them, his tongue hitting the teeth on either side. “Witt’s in from college for the weekend.” He turned to the tall boy: “You remember ’Stelle?” The boy with the guitar bowed formally, shyly. “Roger,” Ed Thomas said, “take off yer hat and say How.”

  Ruth was already plunged deep in conversation with Virginia, who’d just come in.

  “Can I see your guitar?” Dickey said.

  DeWitt Thomas winked at him, edging away toward the living room, and Dickey followed, glancing apprehensively at his father. Roger moved tentatively after Dickey.

  “Well I be damned,” James said, whether in anger or in pleasure it was hard to tell.

  “Is that you, Ruth?” Sally Abbott’s voice called down the stairs.

  Reverend Lane Walker was next into the room, his hand on the arm of a stranger, a wicked looking Mexican with a moustache like a cat’s. He was fat, with what seemed—to James Page at least—unnaturally and offensively short legs. He wore a brownish green suit that made him look like a frog and had highly polished shoes, the kind of wide-winged shoes you’d expect to be worn, in James’ opinion, by an abortionist. Lane Walker was young, maybe thirty, thirty-five. He was Sally’s minister in North Bennington, a shy, intellectual sort of man with a horsey wife—wore jodhpurs and carried a ridingwhip even in the grocery store—and three adopted children, Vietnamese. The hair on the top of Rev. Walker’s head was cut off like a prisoner’s, and under his chin—under it, not on it—he had a scraggle of hair like a billygoat’s beard or the beard on some Irish elf.

  “I asked Lane to come over,” Ruth told Estelle. She swept her arm back toward the Mexican, as if to draw him farther in. “Father—” she began, then made a quick face. “Now isn’t that silly! I’ve forgotten your name!” She threw a girlish look at him. He drew back slightly, smiling.

  Lane Walker said, bowing and smiling, edging toward James with his hand on the elbow of the Mexican, “Mr. Page, let me introduce an old friend of mine, Father Rafe Hernandez.”

  “Father, is it,” James said unsociably, making no attempt to hide his dislike of foreigners. He had no intention of shaking the man’s hand. The Mexican, to James’ intense annoyance, did not offer it.

  “Rafe will be sufficient,” the Mexican said. His voice was oily, soft as a cat’s voice, full of insinuation. He slid his black eyes toward the kitchen window as if thinking of stealing it. “Thees is a beautiful setting for a farm,” he said.

  “S’prised you can see it so well in the dahk,” James said.

  “Now James,” Estelle said.

  James smiled acidly, pleased to see that someone had noticed his inhospitality. “You must be one of them new-style priests,” he said. He pointed toward his own throat, moving the finger from left to right in a gesture meant to indicate the absence of a clerical collar, but suggesting a throat-cutting.

  “Sometimes I wear it, sometimes not,” the priest said, impossible to offend.

  Lane Walker said, “We were marchers together, Rafe and I.” He grinned at the Mexican.

  The Mexican nodded. “Selma.”

  “Is that you, Ruth?” Sally Abbott called down the stairs.

  Virginia was over at the stove now, putting on milk, preparing to fix cocoa. In the doorway old Dr. Phelps was calling, leaning on his cane, “Anybody home?”

  “Come in, come in and shut the door!” Ruth Thomas bellowed.

  “Lo, Doctor!” Ed called grandly waving his cigar. “’Sthat Margie with you?”

  Dr. Phelps’ granddaughter was peeking shyly past the door-jamb. She had long blonde hair and timid, faded looking eyes. Dr. Phelps had a face even redder than the Welshman’s, and tightly curled white hair. When his granddaughter was in—she seemed to float in her long gray coat like a stick on a stream—Dr. Phelps reached behind him to close the door.

  “Don’t close it yet!” the Mexican called out, then giggled like a Japanese.

  Estelle’s grand-nephew Terence was in the doorway, smiling sheepishly, blue with cold.

  “Terence!” Estelle cried. “Heavens to Betsy! Come in, child, come in!” She looked at Ruth, smiling and horrified. “He’s been out there all this time. I forgot all about him!”

  “I was listening to the concert,” Terence said, smiling at the floor. “WAMC.”

  “That’s right,” Ruth Thomas said, towering near the doorway to the living room. “The Boston Symphony was on. Who won?”

  Estelle explained to Rev. Walker, “Terence is a French horn player. He’s very good.”

  “French horn player?” Dr. Phelps asked joyfully, head thrown back like a swordsman’s. “Margie here plays the flute. You children know each other?”

  They both grinned shyly. They played in the same school orchestra, the same school woodwind quintet.

&n
bsp; “You bring your flute tonight, Margie?” Dr. Phelps asked. He was an organizer, also an avid musician.

  “It’s in the cah,” she said. A whisper.

  “By cracky, we’ll have a concert here, before we’re through. I saw DeWitt in there with his guitar. James, we’re gonna make your house a concert hall!” He turned around, beaming, to look at James. He wasn’t there.

  “James?” Estelle said.

  “Well don’t that beat heck,” Dr. Phelps said merrily, lifting his wild white eyebrows and poking his thumbs in his vest.

  “Is that you, Dr. Phelps?” Sally Abbott called down.

  “Where on earth can he have gone to?” Ruth exclaimed.

  In all the commotion, no one had heard the truck start up, but they saw the lights now, careening out toward the road.

  “Why that snake in the grass!” cried Ruth Thomas, and made a face.

  6

  It was a terrible temptation for Sally Page Abbott—as they meant it to be. It reminded her of a thousand happy times, Estelle’s piano playing drifting up the stairs, Estelle and the Thomases and Dr. Phelps all singing—They asked me how I knooooo—and the glorious smell of cocoa and cinnamon-toast, and in the kitchen people talking, Rev. Walker and some young people and possibly, she couldn’t be sure, a stranger. It was the kind of thing she wouldn’t have missed for the world, ordinarily, and she was half inclined to think she was a fool to be missing it now, but still she hesitated, standing with her ear to the door-crack, trying to determine what was right, pursing her lips, her palsied old head slightly trembling, her heart full of trouble. If there were a fire, it occurred to her, they’d break her door down and find her looking a sight. Better fix her hair, put on her good bathrobe and slippers just in case.

  As she was making her bed, puffing up the pillow, thinking, I must hide those applecores, she heard footsteps coming up the stairs—someone young and light, probably Lewis. She heard whoever it was go into the bathroom and close the door and use the toilet. When he came out she called, “Is that you, Lewis?”

  The footsteps stopped, then came somewhat tentatively toward her. “It’s Rafe Hernandez, ma’am,” a voice said, formal and apparently embarrassed. “You must be Mrs. Abbott?”

  Sally looked at the bedroom door as if it had tricked her, then tried to see through the crack. Remembering herself, she said: “How do you do?”

  “Very well, thank you,” Hernandez said, more formal than before. He had a touch of foreign accent. “Is there anything I can get you?”

  She gave a little laugh. “I thought you were my nephew Lewis.”

  “Ah yes, ha ha. These things will hoppin!”

  Her heart beat rapidly. It was difficult to know how to deal with an introduction in these circumstances. No doubt it was hard for Mr. Hernandez too. He merely stood there. She bent down to see if she could see him through the keyhole, but he was standing out of line. She straightened up again, flustered, patting her hair back in place. “Hernandez,” she said. “That’s a Latin name.” She laughed politely, showing interest. “Are you visiting friends here?”

  “I’m visiting with Rev. Lane Walker, yes. We knew each other many years ago.” He paused, then said—desperate, perhaps, though he hid it well—“He’s spoken of you often.”

  “How kind of you to say so!” She laughed again.

  “It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

  She could see him, in her mind’s eye, bowing to the door. As a matter of fact she was doing that herself. “My pleasure, I’m sure,” she said. “Is this your first visit to Vermont?”

  “My very first. I must say, it is as beautiful as everybody says!”

  “Well yes, we like it.”

  He was silent a moment, no doubt still smiling, bowing at the door.

  She picked at her collar with stiff, crooked fingers, hunting for something more to say. It had always been Horace who had the knack for conversation with strangers; she’d smile, delighted, getting by on her looks, and would hurry away to make tea. Theirs had been a wonderfully sociable house, while Horace was alive. He had a way about him. Everyone said so. He had always just finished some interesting book, or heard something curious at his dentist’s office, or had acquaintances in common with the stranger. “Pittsburgh!” he would say, “I have a cousin in Pittsburgh! Furniture business.” She said: “Where do you call home, Mr. Hernandez?”

  “Well, Mexico City, many years ago. At present I have a parish in Tucson.”

  She felt an instant’s panic. She knew no one in either place. “Then you’re a priest?” she said.

  He laughed rather oddly. “Yes, a man of the cloth.”

  “Well well,” she said. “How interesting!” She leaned closer to the door. “I hope you haven’t met with any racial prejudice.”

  “Oh no,” he said, and laughed. “Not at all, not at all.”

  She smiled and nodded, gratified to hear it, but nevertheless wondered what her wretched brother James might have said. “We’re backward, here in Vermont,” she confided. “It’s because we have no industry, my husband used to say. People don’t move in, so we never get to know them. I suppose it’s only natural for people to be afraid of the unfamiliar—the ‘intruder,’ as they think.”

  “That’s natural, yes.”

  “I’ve always said we tend to think if we’re white, of great, apelike black boys raping poor innocent white girls, you know? We never stop to think how frightening it must be for a black girl to walk down an unfamiliar street filled with white people.”

  “That’s so, yes. That can be very frightening for them. On the other hand, of course …”

  She nodded to the door, encouraged. “Well, someday all that will be behind us, thank heavens.”

  “Yes, that’s so, no doubt. I hope not too soon.”

  She tipped her head, suspecting the man might be teasing her. “Not too soon?” she said.

  “Individual differences, cultural differences”—she could imagine him thoughtfully gesturing as he spoke—“those are wonderful things. I would hate to see them go.”

  “Yes, that’s certainly true.” She was nodding emphatically. (How difficult it was to have a serious conversation through a closed door! There was a lesson in that!) Sally said, “They’re wonderfully colorful, the minorities. What would we do without our Italians and Jews, or the coloreds with their beautiful, queer speech?” She laughed. She caught a glimpse of her smile in the mirror above the desk.

  “Exactly,” Mr. Hernandez said happily, “or these wonderful tight-mouthed New Englanders.” He flattened his voice and pitched it somewhat higher, mimicking Robert Frost: “Wheah had ey heahd the wind befoah / Change like this to a deepah roah?” He laughed, delighted at his own performance. “It’s a language I’d hate to see die,” he said.

  Though she continued to smile, Sally was a little distressed. She had not thought of herself before as one of the colorful minorities. Her people had been here before the Iveses, the Dew-eys, even the Aliens.

  The Mexican continued, unaware, it seemed, of her slightly ruffled feelings, “But it all has to go in the end, you’re right. Lazy, fat Mexicans, coloreds with their rhythm and beautiful, queer speech, Jews with their skullcaps and keen intelligence, tight-mouthed, tight-fisted New England farmers—”

  “Some things will probably survive, of course,” she said cautiously.

  “Yes, I’m sure that’s true.” He sounded eager to please, yet Sally was increasingly unsure of herself, inclined to be suspicious. As if glad Sally had reminded him of the fact, he said: “As more and more blacks and New Englanders marry and have children, we’re sure to see an increase in stubbornness among black people, and a marked relaxation of morals in New England.”

  Her hands began to shake. She could no longer doubt it. He was attacking her! What had she done? But it wasn’t only that. He was a priest. What in the world was wrong with him? They were supposed to be gentle and understanding.

  She said, “I’m afraid I don’t quite fol
low you, Father.”

  His laugh, she thought, was distinctly hostile. “My fault,” he said. “You must forgive me. It’s the language barrier.”

  Her heart was pounding and her cheeks felt hot. She had half a mind to unbolt the door and look at him, find out for sure what the trouble was. But before she could decide whether or not to do it, heavy footsteps were coming up the stairs, climbing very slowly, as if with the greatest difficulty, and she knew it was her friend Ruth Thomas.

  “Is that you, Ruth?” she called.

  “Hello, Sally!” Ruth called back, cheery. And then at once: “Father Rafe, we’ve missed you. You mustn’t stand chatting with this stubborn old woman. We need male voices!” She seemed to have made it to the top of the stairs.

  “Yes of course,” he said, and his voice, it seemed to Sally, was cheerful again, without a trace of hostility. “I’ve been having a wonderfully interesting conversation, one of the most interesting I’ve had in some time.” He made it a kind of apology to Sally.

  “It’s good of you, Father,” Sally said, “to come and talk with a stubborn old woman.” For Ruth’s benefit, or mainly for Ruth’s, she put an angry little emphasis on stubborn.

  “Nonsense,” he said lightly. “Stubborn? All human beings are stubborn. It’s the reason we’re survivors.”

  “Sally, why don’t you come join us?” Ruth called.

  Sally hesitated, thinking for the hundredth time of giving in, but before she could decide, Ruth had dismissed her—”Well, do as you like!“—and she heard Ruth go into the bathroom and close the door.

  “Goodnight, Mrs. Abbott, I’m glad to have met you,” the Mexican said. She heard him going lightly down the stairs.

  When Ruth had gone down too, with hardly another word, closing the kitchen door behind her, Sally sat wincing on the edge of the bed, wringing her hands, feeling guilty and misjudged and full of woe. Over and over she asked herself what had happened, what she’d done. She might have guessed—though she didn’t—that her brother had intentionally offended the priest. (It would have come as no surprise.) But her mind was filled with a chaos of righteous indignation and distress, perfectly reasonable self-defense and unfair but convincing self-deprecation. The priest—smug and soft-spoken though he’d never laid eyes on her—could have no idea how much she and Horace had done for the poor and underprivileged in their day—how, right to the end, when, aflutter with panic, she knew she was losing everything, she’d kept up her contributions to Foreign Missions. He could not know how she’d listened with sympathy and interest to visitors from tragic inner-city churches and deplored the evils or prejudice in Boston. Yet she knew, for all that, that she was in some way guilty, had unknowingly let some cruel insult slip, had offended the man inside the priest and deserved every bit of his hostility.