October Light

by John Gardner

  “However, I digress.”

  Dancer was shaking his head and moaning.

  The Captain slipped his free hand inside the lapel of his overcoat and stood, like Sam Adams, with one fat leg thrust forward.

  “To see and to feel would be the first conditions of savage man, which he would enjoy in common with other animals. To will and not to will, to wish and to fear, would be the first and only operations of his soul. Let professors say what they will, my friends—blathering of ‘models’ like Hektor and Akhelleus, heroes who reveal to us the ways of the gods—the human understanding is profoundly indebted to the passions. It is by their activity that our reason improves: we covet knowledge merely because we covet pleasure, and it is impossible to conceive why a man exempt from fears and desires should take the trouble to reason. The passions, in their turn, owe their origin to our wants, and their increase to our progress in science. For we cannot desire or fear anything but in consequence of the ideas we have of it, and savage man, ideally considered, destitute of every species of knowledge …

  Another gap.

  … And what are all these, to speak more directly, but empathy—the unconscious outreach of soul to soul, the direct, precognitive experience of another man’s toothache?

  “Obviously this identification must have been infinitely more perfect in the state of nature than in the state of reason. It is reason that makes man keep aloof from every thing that can bother him. So psychologists tell us, whose whole occupation is to get us back in touch with our emotions. It is philosophy that destroys our connections with other men. What can disturb the calm sleep of the philosopher and force him from his bed? One man may slit another’s throat with impunity under his open window: the philosopher needs only to clap his hands to his ears, argue with himself a little, and rest. In riots and street brawls, the lowest and meanest of the populace flock together, the prudent sneak off.

  “And I might add in support of Mr. Wagner’s perhaps somewhat antifeminist position—” he made a depreciatory little gesture, as if to say everyone has his little faults “—that all I’ve said concerning empathy can be said as well of so-called sexual love. The physical part of love is easily enough dismissed: the general desire which prompts the two sexes to unite. A form of empathy rewarded. But what is the ‘moral’ part of love? The ‘moral’ part, as all truly modern men perceive, is a factitious not to say meretricious sentiment, dismissed by feminists while it suits their whim and fleshly greed, then later cried up by them, with great care and address, in order that they may establish their empire and secure command for the sex which ought rightly to obey. How decadently civilized, how advanced and reasonable, is this ‘moral’ love whose signs and proofs are jealous rages, murdered philanderers, the sorrows and sicknesses of whorehouses, and the black shame of death by abortion—yes, I say, death by abortion!”

  Captain Fist paused, heaving and panting, surveying his audience. They were visibly shaken. He looked all but distraught.

  “Perhaps you are asking yourselves, ‘What has all this to do with Captain Fist?’ I will tell you. You see before you, in my humble person, the extreme of the civilized philosopher, dread image (if you’ll forgive me) of your own too ironic, too self-conscious selves: a man so distant from the simple and lovable emotions of the savage that nothing makes him weep but a nicely constructed argument, true or false; a man who, tossing in his bed, instead of counting sheep, invents bland, sophisticated chatter on world-wide starvation. I am deeply, deeply aware of this fault. As a matter of fact, I carry newspaper clippings in my pocket—touching and uplifting things that I think it might do my soul good to peruse from time to time; for believe me, my fellow Americans and guests, philosophy will not save us! Intelligence will not save us! Art will not save us! We must find our way back to authentic emotion, back to the Spirit that carried our forefathers through Valley Forge, and the Battle of the Marne, and Okinawa! It is our hearts that must save us, our pure and uncomplicated Yankee emotion—Ben Franklin, Mark Twain, Norman Rockwell! I carry such clippings as this, for instance—”

  He reached clumsily with his right hand for his left hip pocket, but unluckily he was much too fat, and neither by going around front nor by going around back could he get his wriggling, fat-pink-spider fingers near the pocket. “Excuse me,” he said to Dancer with a look of sorrow, “would you object to untying my left hand?”

  Dancer did so.

  “Ah, thank you!” he said. The clippings were not in the left hip pocket after all, but eventually, by patting all his pockets—trousers, shirt, suitcoat, overcoat—he found them and unfolded them. He sorted through them, glancing them over. “Ah!” he said. “Listen!”

  FATHER WHO JOINED SON IN HOLDUP GETS PROBATION

  Thomas Pepper, 51, San Diego, was placed on five-year probation today by Judge John Claypole in circuit court, San Diego.

  Pepper pleaded guilty to armed robbery of the San Diego American Legion Club Dec. 5, 1960.

  In issuing his opinion, Claypole said, “The fact that 17 people appeared in the courtroom on a day when temperatures were below 60 outside and less than 70 in the courtroom, several of them war veterans and people of means, and strongly recommended probation for the defendant, shows, I think, that their request must be taken seriously.”

  Pepper was joined in the robbery by his 16-year-old son, Thomas Jr. The youth was committed to the California Youth Commission and then released for military service when he expressed a desire to serve his country.

  “Now isn’t that something?” Captain Fist said. “Is that how America works or isn’t it? By God, my fellow countrymen and guests, I tell you wherever you please to look, from Seattle to Miami, from New York to San Francisco, by God that’s America!”

  A thrill went through them and they applauded. As for the Captain, for some reason as he spoke his final words his face shattered into laughter. They all stopped applauding and looked at him. He laughed harder and harder. “That’s America!” he squealed. They tipped their heads, looking, and the corners of their mouths began to wiggle. He’d lost all control now. He hooted, howled, bawled, gasped, guffawed and wet his pants; and gradually, after glancing at one another, the others began laughing too, first Jane and Mr. Goodman and Mr. Nit.

  “That’s Nebraska!” cried Jane, and laughed more shrilly. Then Dancer and Santisillia and Peter Wagner grinned, then began to laugh, and finally all the Mexicans joined in, rolling around, slapping the ground with their sombreros. The laughter swelled until the whole volcanic basin roared and rumbled and wheeped with it. For a moment the walls themselves shook, and a roar as of terrible laughter came booming from below. Captain Fist was on the jittering, cracking ground, lying on his humped back, kicking like a ladybug, clutching his belly, clawing at his eyes and nose. Dancer gasped and reeled and coughed, so weak he had to drop his machine gun. Captain Fist snatched at it as soon as it fell, but he was laughing so hard his fingers had no strength. Dancer tried to drag the machine gun out of the Captain’s reach, but he lurched and gasped and couldn’t pick it up. Santisillia tried to grab it but he fell down, helplessly laughing, and soon they were all, or almost all, piled up together, hitting each other’s backs with great resounding wallops, hooting, howling, bawling, gasping, and guffawing. This went on for some time.

  When the hilarity passed—the earthquake had also stopped, temporarily—they lay exhausted for a while, only giggling now and then, or giving a little chortle, and then at last they began to extricate themselves from the heap, giving each other a friendly hand. When everyone who had been in the pile was on his feet, it began to appear that Captain Fist was not among them.

  ~ ~ ~

  15

  THIS PROVES

  YE ARE ABOVE, YE JUSTICERS!

  The lights went on early in the Governor’s high chambers. Many of those present had been informed only at the last minute of what was to transpire—had been assembled in such haste that some still had on their nightgowns beneath their coats. Only the Governo
r, the State and Federal Narcotics officials, the CIA, the FBI, several U.S. Senators, and the representatives of the military had been in on the plan from the beginning. They’d been here with the Governor, working out strategy and keeping touch with Washington, the various agencies jockeying for position, since midnight. There had been shouting and some violence and even one such threat of violence as had not been heard between government officials since Ethan Allen and Aaron Burr debated on who should be Governor of Fort Ticonderoga. All that, however, had been behind closed doors. Now, in public view, the whole assembly sat hushed and solemn in wide semi-circular rows facing the television set, the Governor and various politicos in front, serious men with large paunches …

  Another gap. She took a bite of her apple.

  … “That’s it, Chief,” the Governor’s aide said, and gave him a little poke.

  The Governor jerked as if he’d nodded off, then said into his mike: “Go, boys! God bless!”

  The fat aide beside him pressed his palms together as if praying.

  Over the TV came now the roar of engines.

  In his murky living room, the Police Commissioner of San Francisco, tiny eyes staring at the black and white TV, reached over to shake the cosmic flank of his wife beside him. “Zero hour,” he said. She opened one eye, raised her beer, and wriggled her nose. “God be with them,” she said. “Amen,” he said. “Amen,” they said together.

  Sally Abbott looked up from her book. “That’s stupid,” she said. Then, pursing her lips, she looked down again.

  Now in the Governor’s high chambers everyone sat on the edge of his chair as, in the blood red light of early morning, fifteen miles from San Diego, the big planes lifted off one by one and droned in V-formation south-southwest. A reporter was talking with a bombardier. The emergency call, the bombardier said, had not awakened the post. There had been a party going on. The troops had snatched up their bottles and brought them along.

  “Are you afraid?” the reporter asked, and again held the mike to the bombardier.

  “Not too bad,” the bombardier said, grinning boyishly.

  Twenty minutes into the mission, after some talk and commercials, the camera picked up the lead pilot, Commander Purcel, who was checking the roll. All the planes were still with him. He nodded satisfaction to his co-pilot, a woman, and smiled, showing perfect little teeth. He was an older man, veteran of World War II. He had shaggy white hair pushing out around his helmet, and his leather jacket was covered, like the chest of a Czar, with ribbons and medals. “Our Father, which are in Heaven,” he said. He flicked on the radio button so the others could hear him. “Hallowed be Thy name.”

  Far in the distance, black against the red of the sky, towered Lost Souls’ Rock. The Governor abruptly leaned forward in his chair, snatching off his glasses, and squinting at the television. “What the hell is that?” he bellowed.

  His aide said, “Holy cow! It looks like—”

  A few thousand feet above Lost Souls’ Rock, motionless and gleaming, hung a huge and serene flying saucer.

  “No sir! No siree!” Sally Abbott cried, jerking her head up. “Oh, really! For mercy’s sakes!” She stared at the book as if right in front of her eyes it had changed into a garden snake, then threw it so hard that when it hit it made a crack in the panel of the bedroom door. She was surprised her arm had such strength left in it—must have hit the panel just exactly right. She sat wide-eyed and shaking, so angry she could have cursed. What kind of person would write such slop? she’d like to know. And not only that, some company had published it! Had those people no shame? A thought still more terrible came to her: there were people out there who read these things. It made her sit up and put her feet over the side, her hand on her heart, though what she meant to do, once she was up, she was hard put to say. She looked out into the evening darkness, trying to imagine what debauched, sick people would believe such foolishness amusing. “Gracious!” she breathed.

  What came to her mind first was the ugly old men she would sometimes notice at bus stations, when she went on her yearly spree with Estelle to New York: old blear-eyed bums, tobacco running down their whiskered chins, fingernails black, trousers unbuttoned, perhaps one eye poked out and grown over below the lid. But she knew at once that, ugly as they were, they weren’t the ones. Such people never read, or if they did, read only newspapers, following along under the words with their fingers, jerking and muttering, finding in everything they stumbled on new and ever more bitter confirmation of what their lives had taught them long ago, that sorrow and disease are the lot of all animals, so that perhaps they’d been right, after all, to give in, become these mindless and despairing husks that they knew very well they’d become. No, they were not the ones; no. Her own brother James might become such a man without much labor, violent, stubborn, and self-critical as he was, beset with more troubles than a cranberry merchant; and though he was her enemy, for now at least—“in war enemies, in peace friends,” as Horace would say—James and miserable people like him were not the evil she’d hurled from her bed. Young people, then?

  She pursed her lips and pulled at a strand of her hair, considering. It was possible, of course. She half-turned and felt behind her on the bed for the bedpan. Some young people, heaven knew, were arrogant fools, always sneering at their elders, sure they knew far more than anybody. It wasn’t true of the young people she knew just now; but she had known such children from time to time. And one thought of people like Patricia Hearst, or those people who blew up banks and stores, or those Manson people—terrifying things!—Satanists who lived off the garbage of hotels—so she’d heard on the news—and at night crept into people’s houses and chopped them up horribly, no one knew why. But it was hard to believe such people as poor Patricia or those others read novels, though perhaps they read Communist tracts—perhaps they read even honest books about the troubles in the world, and because they were young and hadn’t yet noticed that for the most part grown-ups are merely stupid, not purposely evil (though some were that too), they took things into their own young, foolish hands. They were idealists, in a certain sad, terrible way. Some of them had gotten good grades in college, she’d seen on TV, and if you could believe what they said—and Sally was inclined to believe what people said, even when she knew they were partly lying—their whole purpose was to call attention to social injustices and destroy what they saw as the System. She would not care to be friends with such people (it might be interesting—though Horace would be shocked—to talk with one, briefly), but she could not believe it was for them her book was meant. They had better things to do—self-pity to revel in and plots to hatch, sticking pins into candle-lit maps somewhere down cellar. The book would bore them, even though they might well agree with its sour opinions.

  Who then?

  She finished with the bedpan, opened the window and dumped it out, closed the window again, and, noticing only now how cold the floor was, pushed her feet into her slippers. She absently took an apple and began to eat it, pacing in an L back and forth around the bed, back and forth between the window and the attic door. The night was very quiet. Out in the barn she could hear James’ milking machines chugging. She paused, sucking a piece of apple from her dentures and thinking of him moving from cow to cow, hunched over, hauling heavy cans, laboring on though his life, he must know if he looked at it, had no longer any hint of rhyme or reason—laboring on by senseless habit, or for the cows’ sake and, by accident, half against his will, for hers.

  She turned in haste from the window and the thought. There was only one place that thought could lead, she knew: capitulation. She’d find herself giving in to his senseless tyranny, a life not worth living, as far as she was concerned, plain and dreary as a plank in the barn—giving in for no better reason than James had for milking his cows. She glanced past her shoulder at the book on the floor, face down, as she’d have looked at a crushed brown spider that might not be dead.

  She returned to her pacing, touching the bedpost ea
ch time she went by. Who else was there, she asked herself, that read books? Suddenly and mysteriously—though she did not notice the mystery—a picture came to her, clearer than a picture on television, of people on a bus. It was a gloomy bus with knife-slashed seats and, outside the windows, dull rain and the lights of a city. Perhaps it was a bus she’d really seen, in New York for instance, or perhaps she was only imagining it, as she imagined things while reading; either way, the image was crystal clear, so clear that, except for curious blurs and uncertainties, she could study the faces one by one.

  She studied a large, middle-aged black woman. The woman was tired, her head tipped back, the flesh of her face all hanging, it seemed, from the shiny bridge of her nose. Her eyes were closed, her fingers interlaced, her workshoes worn over on the outsides. She had a paper bag, wrinkled as if she’d carried things home in it many times. She had with her no newspaper, no books. If she ever read anything, it was the Bible. There were people these days—mostly young; people that never read it—who claimed the Bible was an enslaver of women like this one, this … From nowhere the weird thought came that the black woman’s name was Sally. How odd! … Perhaps it was true (her mind hurried on) that the Bible enslaved the poor and oppressed, such as women, inclining them to acceptance; but Sally Abbott for one did not believe it. She was a true Christian woman if ever one lived, though she said so herself, and she was no slave. Some things, of course, one had to accept without whimpering, such as old age. But as for human tyranny … Sally Abbott smiled, her eyes closed tightly, studying the black woman. For all her weariness, all her burdens of family, poverty, uncertainty, and the weight of her flesh, she was no cowed dog, no weakling. Her black eyes could flash, she could lash out with words or with her hand or with the end of her broom …

  She studied the young, light-skinned black girl beside the fat woman, no relation. The girl was beautiful and generous of heart, though it seemed to her troubled in some way, dissatisfied or frightened. She had a brown leather purse, an elegant brown coat, and probably, at home in her apartment, good books, novels translated from French, poetry by Langston Hughes, biographies perhaps, also records and prints … Her face was motionless, hiding all her thoughts. Her hands, too—in brown gloves—were motionless. Sally realized with a start that the girl was Pearl Wilson, from her novel.