October Light

by John Gardner

  Sally Abbott could say truthfully that she had never in her life been afraid of death, though she minded pain and was glad to know her death, if her plan failed, would be a quick one. Nor did she hesitate to admit to herself that, if her death must be by violence, she was glad to have her friends and relations out there, sitting in their cars, anxiously looking up through the rain toward her window, witnessing it. She’d always had, she knew—and Horace had often mentioned—a truly outrageous theatrical streak. Born in another time and place, she might well have been a Broadway actress. She’d been beautiful in her youth, she had photographs to prove it—though with a beauty not fashionable in the present age. She’d worn ringlets and high-necked, floor-length dresses, and had been forced, for the most part, to play demure, though she knew tricks, never doubt it, tricks with her hands, with her eyes and eyelashes, tricks of posture and of voice. Oh Lord but she might have been a wanton, as her father would say, if she’d only had the luck to be born in her own proper time! She regretted now that she hadn’t been a good deal more wanton than she was. Years and years ago, when she was seventeen, and the juices flowing so that sometimes she had thought she would simply faint … well, never mind. She had had her good times, there was no denying it, though never such times as she might have had. What she wouldn’t give to be growing up now, when a girl might go anywhere she pleased and do anything she liked! Those things in that novel, now, how incredible to realize that they were all, in a sense, true! Hundreds of people smoked pot every day, though she’d never gotten a chance to—she could count herself lucky she’d got a bit of sherry!—and hundreds of people had sex orgies. She’d read stories in magazines, seen movies and plays on television. There were even special magazines that brought “adventuresome adults” together—magazines kept locked behind the counter in grim old Vermont. She, Sally Abbott, had missed all that, such were the cruel mechanics of the universe, as her novel would say. Her body—once so beautiful that when she stood in her bedroom, gazing in the mirror, she had thought it tragic that she must cover it with clothes, deny it to men’s eyes—that once lovely body was withered away to pure horror now, and virtually unused, unexploited. Not, heaven knows, that she was dissatisfied with her life with Horace, in general. But to think that she had never had the chance to make love with a single, solitary other man, except the Beeman boy—and that (she had to smile) hardly counted. She’d waited too long—it was out in the granary beyond the cowbarn (torn down long since)—and before he could even get it out and into her he’d gone off all over himself, poor silly, and was so embarrassed he wouldn’t even touch her though she lay there panting and perspiring and almost dying. It had been a ghastly time, those “good old days” she’d grown up in. Walking home from school with the other boys and girls, she’d see a bull mount a cow, or often a cow mount another cow, and she must stare like an idiot at the ground and say nothing—even if some boy made so bold as to mention it—must bury her talents, hide her light under a bushel. She might have made up for it. She might have had a lover almost anytime she pleased, if she’d chosen to. There had always been attractive young men available—Horace’s assistants, people who made deliveries, neighbors, friends—even Estelle’s handsome Ferris. He’d eyed her more than once, don’t think he hadn’t, and she’d smiled, head tilted, not exactly saying “yes” but certainly not saying “watch yourself, buster!“—considering the matter from every angle, watching developments; and in the end, for Estelle’s sake, or so she’d always told herself—but more likely, she thought now, because she was tyrannized in a world of unwitting male chauvinists and old fashioned jealous wives—she had neglected to bring that suggestion in the air to a reality. No one was troubled with such scruples nowadays, not the youngsters, anyway. She thought of the party in San Francisco that was mentioned in the book. Incredibly enough, there were such parties; one heard of them often, or anyway read of them in magazines. And perhaps there had always been such parties, if it came to that. Ancient Rome, France, England … She’d read something somewhere about a Prime Minister in England, many years ago, who’d even had orgies with young boys. Even United States Presidents did it—all of them, probably, except possibly Wilson. Certainly Grover Cleveland and John F. Kennedy, probably Teddy Roosevelt—she’d heard something of the sort, if she wasn’t mistaken—and didn’t Thomas Jefferson have a beautiful Negro mistress whose name was Sally? God bless you, Sally, she thought, casting her blessing back through time, and smiled. She’d always liked Jefferson—she and Horace had visited Monticello once, and Horace, as usual, had taken wonderful slides. She hoped Thomas Jefferson’s Sally was very, very dark, and beautiful and kind. “Would you have minded terribly, Horace?” she whispered to the bedroom’s shadows, and thought sadly, “Yes, you would.” Well, never mind. The lives she might have lived, the lovers and children she might have had (Horace had gone through World War I and was afraid to have children; the world was, he thought, too dark a place), the career she might have had as an actress on the stage, or even as a prostitute in New Orleans—why not? why not? the young people were right!—she’d missed them all for all eternity, and no use regretting it. Horace had dozens of women, he’d told her. Prostitutes in France. It had hurt her terribly, fool that she’d been. She was glad for him now. Perhaps even then what she’d felt, really, was that his having prostitutes and her having no one but Horace—dear as he was—was bitterly unfair.

  It was curious, now that she noticed it: she hadn’t thought of sex in quite some time, and here it was rising in her mind almost as strongly as it did when she was young. For that she could thank her trashy novel, and, by heaven, she did thank it. Shame was for old biddies! The reawakening was not just in her mind, in fact. Her whole body felt younger, sexually aglow, the girl rediscovering herself in the dry old woman.

  There was very little time, but she moved without hurry, climbing the attic stairs, feeling for the string that turned the light on. She groped and groped and was beginning to think it must have broken when at last, lower than she’d expected, it came to her fingers. When she’d turned the light on she continued to the top and crossed, still unhurried, to the apples. One of the crates was less than half full and she picked it up then, changing her mind, set it down on the floor to drag it. It scraped quietly to the top of the stairs and—without hurry, as if time were in the hands of some invisible guardian who would not allow James to move till she was ready—she managed to get the crate down, stair by stair, and over near the foot of the bed.

  Now things became more difficult. She stood at the door a moment, listening. He was still in the bathroom. Noises of his going to the toilet came to her, and sometimes a groan—poor old bastard! She saw in the mirror that she was smiling. On the way to the bed she paused and glanced out the window. The cars were still there. “Good,” she said aloud. Some of them were running, her friends trying to keep warm, no doubt. The rain was drizzling steadily, now and then shaken by a gust. Surely any moment the police would arrive. She hoped they did of course, yet in this mysterious state of serenity she didn’t really care—perhaps she even, with a part of her mind, had a hope that they’d arrive too late.

  The bed, fortunately, was on castors, and though it was heavy, and though the floor was slopy and the boards where they butted together not even, she managed to get it to a foot from the door, where, when the time came, she could stand on it. She lifted the applecrate up onto the bed, listened again, then unlocked the door, opened it almost to the bed, put a pair of shoes against it to keep it there, and stood back to inspect. It would do.

  Carefully, still feeling the mysterious serenity, she climbed up onto the bed. It was almost impossible, as she’d known it would be, to stand up on the bed and lift the applecrate to the top of the door—it would be something, she thought, if she fell and broke her neck!—but at last, by some miracle, she managed it. Slowly, slowly, as when you put the top block on a tower of blocks, she drew her hands away from each side of the crate. It sat firm, though precarious, t
ilted from the top of the doorframe—the summerbeam—to the door, and, even when she’d lowered herself to the bed again, it did not fall. She got out of the bed and carefully rolled it to its place against the wall. She smiled. In the mirror above the desk, it seemed to her, she looked positively young.

  “Now the lamp,” she said. She looked out the window. The cars were still there; no police car.

  She moved the white wicker table over to behind the door, where James wouldn’t see it and the crate might possibly fall on it if it didn’t fall on James, and where in any case the door would bump it when he came barging in; then she went to the wash-stand for the kerosene lamp. It was nearly full, and the wick was white and new, rising from the brass and sinking into the clean glass bowl. As she picked it up, to carry it to the table, she realized, with a gasp, that she had no matches. At once, all her serenity fell away. She had a vision, clear as a nightmare, of James raising the gun to aim at her, his eyes not human. There would be a thunderous crash that rocked the room—“Oh dear God,” she whispered. Her heart was like a hot potato, pounding just behind her throat. She set down the lamp and hurried around the table to the dresser and opened the top draw, then the next and the next. No matches! She looked around wildly, trying to think, then remembered the desk. Of course. Ginny sometimes slept in this room, and Ginny would certainly have matches, she couldn’t be without a cigarette two minutes.

  She tugged at the front of the desk. It seemed to be locked. She stared at the keyhole in disbelief, then tugged again. Nothing. She turned, listening, imagining she’d heard a footstep, but she’d been wrong, he was still in the bathroom—silent now. Still on the potty? She tugged again. The desk was locked. Then her mind cleared and she realized that for Ginny, too, it would be locked, so the matches must be somewhere else. She pulled at the handles of the desk’s top draw. It slid out so easily she almost fell down, and there, lo and behold!, lay a dozen paper matchbooks. She snatched one up and without even closing the draw went back to the lamp on the table. It lit easily, at the first match. She adjusted the wick, then balanced the lamp on the edge of the table, so that the first good bump would send it crashing to the floor. She straightened and looked up at the applecrate—still motionless and dark, waiting for him—and nodded to herself, satisfied.

  She knew, of course, that the plan had its risks. She refused to allow herself to think of them. If the applecrate fell on him it would probably kill him, or at very least knock him unconscious; but if he looked up before he came in, and saw it, or if it fell and missed, well, that would be tally-ho Sally, and James not dead with her! So she had no choice but to back up the crate with the kerosene firetrap, and pray that when they saw the flames, if she couldn’t get out past them, they’d come and save her. Perhaps they wouldn’t, of course, for fear of James’ gun … She wouldn’t think about it. She had lived a full life, a long one anyway. The plan was the only hope she had; it wouldn’t fail her; it couldn’t. It was like a gift from heaven—not her own plan at all but something that had come out of nowhere, like the plan Peter Wagner had had about knocking off his enemies with eels, in her novel. Not that she wasn’t sorry—as Peter Wagner had been—to have to do it. But the world was full of violence these days, nobody even thought twice about it. It wasn’t she who’d started this war. It was his tyranny that started it; she was willing enough to live and let live. It was just as Horace had always said, “Enemies in war, in peace friends.” Even if it was no one’s fault really, she must do what she must. That was simply how she was.

  She sat on the edge of the bed, listening. Still no hint of a sound from James! She looked out the window, leaning close to the pane to see better. The cars were still there. By the road there was movement and, squinting hard over the tops of her glasses, she was able to make out a boy and a girl, walking in the rain, holding hands. She stepped from the window, checked her deathtrap one more time, then decided she needed to use the bedpan. She pulled the windowshade down and squatted above the pan. Her bowels were like water and made a terrible stink—and there was no place to put the mess, she realized in dismay: she could hardly throw it out the window with her friends all watching. She thought and thought, then carried the pan up to the attic.

  When she came down again, bringing with her two apples, which she tossed into the bed, there was still no sign of James. She stood very still, listening, baffled, but there was nothing, no sound in all the house, only the rumble of rain on the attic roof and the howl of wind and then, very faint in the distance, a siren. She hurried to the window. She had, for an instant, an impression that the ghost was back, watching the house from the mailbox, but there was no one. The siren grew louder. A car door opened and someone got out, Ginny’s husband, Nit. He went up to stand by the mailbox and wait. Lights appeared down the road and then the state police car was sweeping in, stopping so suddenly it rocked, and the trooper who was driving leaned his head out. He and Mr. Nit talked; she couldn’t hear the voices. After a while the police car pulled in farther and parked among the other cars. They just sat there, watching the house, not doing a thing.

  According to the onyx clock it was three in the morning. She realized, seeing the time, that she was tired, sick-tired, but not sleepy. Even though it was way up in the attic, and behind the closed attic door, she could smell that bedpan. It was the bedpan, she realized, that she ought to have propped over the door to fall on James.

  Smiling like the wicked old witch she was—or so, that moment, she described herself—she got herself into her bed with her trashy book.

  Unbeknownst to Sally, though she ought to have guessed, James sat fast asleep on the toilet, his bowels still hard as a Pharaoh’s heart, despite the little burst that had brought him here, his trousers at his ankles and his shotgun leaning against the wall.

  Down in the yard the Mexican was saying—holding a newspaper over his head to keep the rain off—“What do you think?”

  The older of the state policemen shook his head. “Hate to go in shootin if the man’s changed his mind.”

  “Then again,” the younger policeman said, “time we hear somethin it might be too late.”

  “That’s true,” the older one said but didn’t move. He looked around at the cars. “You people might’s well go on home, I guess. No use sittin here in the weather.”

  “I’ll stay,” Virginia Hicks called, “I’m his daughter.”

  “We’ll stay too, if you don’t mind,” Lane Walker said. “I’m a minister. My friend here is a priest.”

  “Suit yourself,” the state policeman said.

  The younger one was writing with a ball-point pen. What he was writing on had pages and pages, an inch or more of them clamped together by a black binder.

  The Mexican leaned toward the window, trying to see. “That some kind of a report?” he asked.

  The older policeman grinned. “Naw,” he said. “Damn kid’s workin on a book.”

  Sally, up in her room, read:

  12

  THE PRICE OF PEARL

  On the second day after she’d lost track of him, Pearl Wilson slipped her key into Dr. Alkahest’s apartment door as she’d done a hundred times before that (the elevator stood open behind her, the grated, shuffling little room peculiarly humble in the presence of the entryhall’s cool white walls, the cobalt blue curtains; it had the look of a servant waiting politely, secretly scornful), and as soon as she’d pressed the apartment door open half an inch she knew there was something terrible inside. She hesitated, half expecting the door to be snatched out of her hands and the thing inside, whatever it was, to snatch her wrist and jerk her inward. Nothing happened. The rational part of her mind moved over the question with careful antennae while the rest conjured demons: Sundayschool horrors and newspaper horrors (she had read last night of a rape that had happened in one of the federal office buildings, and she had suffered then, as she suffered now, in the jungle-shadowy back of her mind, the flame of the intruder’s breath, the blue-white fire of his nails and te
eth).

  She closed her eyes, took a breath. If anything terrible was waiting in the room it would be a man in a suit, legs crossed at the knee, a notebook, a gold ball-point pen. That was the shape things ominous took in apartments like this one.

  All this time Pearl stood erect, prim—except for the closed eyes, the intake of breath, no sign of her panic on her face: a lovely young black, perhaps twenty-seven, in a fine, moderately expensive brown coat from Macy’s, loosely belted, a discreet brown hat with a vermilion feather three inches long, brown stockings, brown, Italian shoes that perfectly matched her purse, her hat, her gloves. Her form was magnificent, her face like a carving, not soft and pliable but elegant, poised. Her lips were full and sharply lined, undecorated. Her lashes, natural, were finer and darker than Japanese black silk. One might have wondered, peeking out at her in what she took for the empty entryhall, “Where does such a creature belong?” In some university, perhaps, regally poised at her student desk in a red dress open at the neck, narrow V’d, taking notes in her round hand on history or literature or microbes; but Pearl had done badly at

  State and had quit—though her speech was faultless and she liked to read, she’d gotten C’s in English, even worse in math—and she never wore red. In some shop then? Some nifty gentlewomen’s shoppe like the ones where she bought her shoes, her brown silk scarf? But Pearl had tried that. Her mind would click off while the supervisor was speaking with her, and in a moment she would see, as if from infinitely far away, the fat little woman’s lips shaking, her tiny blue eyes unnaturally light, one fat pink hand pressed to her heart. “Girl, why you got to be so uppidy?” her mother used to wail when she was still alive. Pearl would walk away. She wasn’t uppity. She knew what was deserved and what was not—knew, exactly to the penny, her worth.