October Light

by John Gardner

  Sally slept on.

  He went to the head of the stairs, then, gripping the banister firmly with his left hand, started down. The cows mooed more urgently. “I hear you,” he said. With his right hand he rubbed his forehead, then his right temple.

  The kitchen startled him: broken plates on the floor, and the jack-o-lanterns; one of them leering up at him. He bent over to pick up some pieces of plate, put them on the table, then decided to let it go. First the chores, or he’d have himself a barn full of mastitis. He went to the back door to put on his coat and boots, then paused, thinking back, and because he’d changed his mind about which door to leave by, turned himself around to the left three times, then crossed the kitchen, awkwardly cocked forward, to open the front door and look out into the yard. The state police car was still sitting there, the policemen asleep, and a few feet away Lewis Hicks’ car, empty. The others were gone.

  He looked at the headlights of the police car a while, steeling himself, then opened the door farther and went out. The stoop was still wet—the rain had apparently stopped not long since—and the ground, when he stepped on it, was mushy. He walked over with long, squishy steps and knocked on the window of the police car. He knocked again. The man in the driver’s seat opened his eyes and turned his head, not startled, not thinking anything at all, the way it looked. The old man yelled, “Mahnin!”

  The state policeman nodded, then rolled down his window. He looked at James, saying nothing.

  “Mahnin,” James said.

  The state policeman nodded.

  James said, “Ith all over.”

  The policeman looked at the house. At last, pointedly not speaking, he reached for the radio mike to the right of his steering wheel. Now the younger one woke up, looked startled, then relaxed.

  “Mahnin,” James said.

  He nodded.

  “Winterth put-near here,” James said. His voice knocked against the trees, high and plain. He looked around the yard. The limbs were bare—all in one night. He shut his eyes. The luminous sky behind the bare branches even now sent pain shogging through him.

  The driver was saying on the radio, “It’s ok here. We’re comin in.”

  “You don’t want to arreth me?” James said.

  The driver looked at him, still holding the radio microphone. “Go milk your cows,” he said.

  James nodded and started to turn away.

  “Me ask you somethin,” the policeman said.

  He half turned back.

  The policeman looked at him, severe but not quite meeting his eyes. “You sure this is over?”

  “Ith over,” James said.

  The policeman hung up the radio mike, professionally uncivil.

  Despite the day’s dimness, he reached for his dark glasses on the dashboard, opened them, and hooked them on his ears.

  It crossed James’ mind that he could shoot his cows, then himself; but it was an idle thought.

  “Thankth,” he said.

  The policeman started up the motor.

  When he was back in the kitchen, intending to walk through it and out to the barn to begin his chores, he remembered that Ginny’s husband’s car was still here, out there sitting in the yard, and stopped in his tracks, looking down at the ripply linoleum, then turned and went over to the living-room door. It creaked as he opened it, but they remained fast asleep, Ginny on the couch, Dickey in front of the burned-cold fireplace, Lewis sitting up in the armchair next to the TV. Ginny lay crumpled and gray-faced, her coat and another one, a black one, over her, the black one from his closet. He recognized it as the one his son Richard had worn when he dressed up once as an axe-murderer for some party—a good joke, they’d all agreed, Richard included. All his life he’d been one of those people ascairt of his own shadow. Dickey too had two coats on, Lewis’s and his own. Lewis had only the afghan James’ wife Ariah had made when she was dying. He remembered for an instant how she’d worked on it, lying with her eyes closed, listening while Ginny read to her. Ariah would hardly speak to James, would look away when he came in. Well, he could endure it, just as she was enduring; anyway, she hadn’t been herself, with all those drugs. There were droplets on Ariah’s forehead, but she never once complained. It was assumed you’d try to be brave, in those days. When you were gone, people would tell stories of how you died, so you better not kick and whine and whinny like the man Judah Sherbrooke shot.

  The momentary sharp memory of his wife was gone now; his years with her frozen up as solidly as ever. The old man stood miserably gazing at his family, all that was left of it not counting Sally, his head splitting, the light in the room fluorescent gray, the child not even their own true blood but adopted, the spawn of God knew what—though there were of course times when James loved the child, whatever that meant—and the image before him he would have called, if he’d known the word, symbolic: poor miserable creatures not beautiful in any way, uncomfortably sleeping in an ugly room, lit by such weather as only October had the gall to fob off on dismal humanity—though that was unfair, October would be bluer than blue again soon—dense, sharp daylight, the last thing left alive—and his heart ached, that instant, even more than his head. He listened to the bellowing of the cows in their pain and with part of his mind heard the dog scratching, locked, for some reason, in the cellar. He backed out of the room and softly closed the door, then went to let the dog in. It leaped up on him, wet-muzzled. He pushed it away roughly, with a snarl not human, and went, with the cowering animal beside him—pushing up against him and wagging its tail—to the woodshed to put down food for the dog and cat. As soon as he shook the Purina box, the cat appeared from nowhere, racing, then switched to slow-motion, as if disdainful and not his dependent. Like Sally. “Come on, Thpot,” he said gruffly, for the dog held back, fearful of a kick. The dog snivelled up and ate timidly, looking up at him, large U’s of white below his eyes. The cat settled calmly, tail slowly switching, aware that he could vanish in an instant, or snarl, hiss, scratch, stay King of the Mountain and James Page be cussed. A foolish image, a kind of daydream, came into his head of putting down food for Henry Stumpchurch, Henry smiling, surprised and pleased. He thought of Henry’s theory of the cunning of the common frog, and his eyes slipped out of focus for a moment, dreaming again. Then the horses called to him, and, gingerly rubbing the sides of his head, the old man started for the barn.

  2

  Ginny started suddenly, waking with a snap from a nightmare of being eaten. It was freezing cold and her right arm was so numb it felt dead. She opened her eyes.

  “Mahnin, sweet-hot,” Lewis said, looking at her forehead as if afraid he might offend. He was kneeling at the fireplace, trying to start a fire. The room was full of billowing smoke. She flapped her left hand in front of her and made a face. Dickey said something—“I’m hungry”—but she didn’t quite register the words. She sat up abruptly, pushing up on one arm, the numb one, her left hand still flapping at the smoke. A kind of pain, almost a shock, went up the arm that was asleep. “What time is it?” The light coming through the smoke from the windows and off the walls was dull, as if the sun were dying. “Christ,” she said.

  “Almost noon,” Lewis said.

  “Why’s it so cold?”

  Lewis n;ew a time or two more, down on his hands and knees. “Seems like the frunace wasn’t stoked,” he said.

  “I’m hungry,” Dickey said.

  “Just a minute, honey,” she said. “Let Mama wake up.”

  “Lots of wood down there,” Lewis said. “Only trouble is, it’s wet.”

  She rubbed here eyes, smarting from the smoke, then looked at Lewis again. “You’re not srating that fire with Dad’s good magazines! You know he save ’em!”

  “Well, I could“ve used the wah-paper,” he said.

  It was as harsh as he ever got, and she was warned. “I suppose he’ll never notice.—Almost noon, you say? Aren’t you supposed to be working for Mrs. Ellis?”

  “I called her up on the telephone,�
� he said.

  “Oh.”

  she swung her legs over the side of the couch, yawned and stretched, thought of smoking a cigarettem then changer her mind. Sometimes he mad comments (distant and indirect) when she smoked first thing in the morning. She straightened out her coat, draped it around her shoulders, and remembered she had cigarettes in the pocket. She threw a look at him. On the back of his head a shock of hair stood up. Guiltily, she reached for the cigarettes, shook one out, and opened the pack of matches tucked inside the cellophane.

  “God damm smoke” Lewis said, rubbing his eyes. He turned and looked at her, or, rather, not at her, at the cigarette in her hand. “Whant you fix Dickey some breakfast,” he suggested. He made it sound like an alternative.

  “I will,” she said. “Don’t I always?” She steeled herself against his tyranny and lit the cigarette.

  Suddenly last night came over her, in its full horror, her father gone insane, waving the gun at them, his face a horrible leer above the jack-o-lanterns on the table. “Oh God!” she said.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “I was thinking of last night.” The wallpaper was light-gray and dark-gray, diamond-shapes with roses. She remembered staring at it as a child, when the colors were fresh and it had seemed to her pretty. Christ, what a ruin! Waking up in the living room was like learning you were dead.

  “Never mine,” Lewis said. He was fanning the fire with a magazine now. “Yoah dad was drunk, that’s ah.”

  “He was going to kill her!”

  “I wouldn’t think too much about it.”

  She stood up, sucking hard at the cigarette. It was like Kleenex in her throat, and in her back, just under the shoulder-blade, there was a sharp pain. Oh, Jesus, she thought. Oh, Christ. She started for the kitchen door. “Come on, Dickey.”

  “I’m cold,” Dickey said.

  “Jump up and down,” she said. “Hurry up! Come on!” At the door she turned her head, raising her hand and running it through her stiff, oily hair. “You had breakfast, Lewis?”

  “Not yet,” he said, careful, as if avoiding a fight.

  “Jesus,” she said angrily, and hit the door with just the heel of her hand, the cigarette between two fingers. “Dickey, go up and use the bathroom,” she said.

  “I don’t need to, Mom.”

  “Go try! Go on before I clobber you!”

  He went, dawdling, and when he returned she had breakfast on.

  While they were eating—she wasn’t hungry—she went up to the bathroom and the first thing she saw was that damn shotgun. Her cheeks went fiery, mainly because Dickey had just been here and might have killed himself, and if she could have thought of a way to destroy it that instant, she’d have done so. Instead, she sat down to go to the bathroom and while she was seated there picked up the shotgun to see if she could open it and make sure it was empty. It was heavy. She felt an urge to empty it by pulling the triggers/ shooting out the little square bathroom window, but it was only a passing thought, not a real temptation, and she continued to study the shotgun looking for a release. She found one on the top, where the barrels began, and the minute she touched it the gun broke, smoothly and silently, sending a shiver up her back—the pure efficiency of the thing. Once when her father had been hunting woodchucks with the shotgun and his dog, they’d cornered one against an old stone wall, and when the woodchuck had tried to attack the dog her father had poked the gun-barrel at it. The woodchuck had bit at the gun—had the barrel in his mouth—when her father pulled the trigger. You could hardly find the pieces.

  There were no shells where she knew they should be and she snapped the gun shut again. Perhaps there’d been no shells from the beginning, she thought, but then remembered the explosion when the minister and priest came diving out the door. Another job for Lewis. The pellets had not only demolished the plaster, they’d blasted away the lath.

  “Crazy!” she whispered, and felt tears welling up. How would she ever dare face them again, all those people! Again she felt her cheeks go hot with anger, this time at Lewis—superior bastard. But instantly, flushing the toilet, she was ashamed of the feeling. It wasn’t his fault. He’d been born that way, a damned saint. He really was! She arranged herself, splashed water on her face, and looked in the mirror. She looked, she thought, like an old village whore—hair sticking up crookedly where she’d slept on it, big circles under her eyes. She heard her father shouting and looked out the window. He was chasing the bull with a pitchfork, slipping and sliding in the mess of the barnyard. Chickens stood watching. He’d kill the damn thing before he knew it and be out a thousand dollars. “Stupid bastard,” she whispered. Tears welled up in her eyes again, and she splashed more water on her face. In the medicine chest above the sink she found an orange plastic comb with half the teeth gone. She held it under the faucet to wet it, then ran it through her hair. She looked as bad as before when she was finished, but gave up and put the comb back and angrily dried her hands. She felt some unconscious, habitual dissatisfaction and remembered she’d left her cigarettes downstairs.

  As she was about to go down it struck her like a thunderbolt that Aunt Sally’s door was open. She stood a moment staring in disbelief, then went striding down the hallway to reach it before Aunt Sally could slam it shut. She saw her aunt asleep on her back, snoring, her flabby brown and light-blue speckled arms outside the covers, and she felt something wrong—danger!, her body said, jerking her to a halt. She smelled kerosene smoke and stood perfectly still, or still except that she was tentatively pushing at the door. Suddenly, from nowhere, something heavy and sharp slammed down hard on her head—she felt a flash of unspeakable, splintering pain—and Aunt Sally’s eyes popped open. There was a roar like an explosion, a terrible, dark rumbling, the room shone with glittering pinwheels and stars, and she went hurtling, as if at the speed of light, into blackness.

  3

  Dickey sat motionless, carefully balanced like a bird on a wire, his knife and fork in his fists—he’d been trying to cut his toast and egg—his eyes wide. (Good boys don’t cut their toast like that.) The dog sat beside him, nose at the edge of the table, begging—he himself had let it in; in that too he knew he was wrong. His father’s leaping from the table and running up the stairs when everything went smashing and clattering had left the room dangerous and accusing. Be a good boy!, the hole in the ceiling warned. Be like the girl with the umbrella!, said the round, blue salt box. He stared at the round thing where once, he’d been told, a stovepipe had gone—there was a picture on it, a red barn, a white house, and a creek (it was winter)—and listened with all his might. There were no shouts, no voices; what had happened he could not guess.

  Carefully, eyes still wide, he got down from his chair, looked around to be sure he was unwatched, and went on tip-toe to the foot of the stairs, then up three steps, then up four more. When he was high enough to see into the upstairs hallway through the bannister, what he saw was apples all over the floor and his father kneeling over his mother, who didn’t move. Around her head there was blood. Aunt Sally was leaning through her bedroom door, holding her hand over her mouth, silent.

  “Ginny, sweet-hot?” his father said softly, as though nothing were wrong, there was no hurry. “Ginny?”

  In the kitchen below he heard the plate crash and knew the dog had gotten it. His father showed no sign of noticing. “Ginny?” he said again. He lifted her head with his right hand and felt through the hair with his left. There was blood everywhere, a lake of it. It was all over his father’s coveralls and hands and was coming in a slow rivulet toward the stairwell. His father put his mother’s head down again and put his two arms under her, bit down with his upper teeth on his lower lip, and lifted her up. He gave a jerk, trying to stand, and slipped in the blood and almost let her head hit the wall. Aunt Sally just watched with her hand over her mouth, not saying a word. His father, holding his mother in his arms, walked on his knees out of the lake of blood and tried again to stand up. He did it this time, the musc
les of his face bulging. He leaned on the wall, trying to wipe off the soles of his shoes, holding her—her arms, hung down—then lifted her higher, trying to get her on his shoulder. He grabbed at her seat with his right arm and made a grunting noise, lifting—she was bigger than he was, and heavier—and her skirt slid up so that her underpants showed—but he grabbed again, his arm under her seat, and now he got her over his shoulder. Her head hung over his back, bleeding, and her eyes were open. As if he’d known Dickey was there all along, he said, “Get to the cah. Get the coats.”

  Dickey turned like lightning, running down the stairs for the coats. On the table he saw his mother’s cigarettes and grabbed them—the dog looked up at him for food—and ran on to the living room where the coats were. He threw them over his shoulder and ran back to the kitchen. His father was down the stairs now, carrying his mother, and he ran to the front door to open it. He kicked away plaster so his father wouldn’t trip. His father’s face was red and showed nothing but how heavy she was. He was biting so hard on his bottom lip it looked as if it hurt. His father went through the door and as soon as he was down off the stoop, Dickey leaped off and ran ahead of him to open the car door.

  “Back one,” his father said.

  He widened his eyes as if in horror at his mistake, shut the front one, and opened the back one. He quickly pushed the folded tarpaulin and the paintbrushes off the seat and jumped back out of the way. His father set his mother’s rear end against the seat and gently laid her down, then got in and pulled her farther, then bent her knees to make room for the door to close. She made a farting noise. “Get in,” his father said.

  Quickly Dickey jumped in in front and closed the door while his father walked around to his side. His father opened his door and slid in and turned a little sideways to get his keys from his pocket, then put them in the switch. He turned the keys and the car made a little grunt, but nothing happened.