October Light

by John Gardner

  But she did not stop her little game with her mind merely because her mind had tricked her. She pressed her fingertips to her eyelids until colors came, but also an image. Behind them sat … a rabbi with a tangled beard. She smiled—he somehow pleased her—but passed over him at once, remembering her purpose. He, certainly, would waste no time on such a novel.

  There was a countrified girl with bad skin, a cheap overcoat of electric purple, a piece of gum in her cheek, and in her squat, slightly spatulate hands she had, Sally saw, a paperback novel. But it was a novel about a nurse, some silly, frumpy book that could surely do no harm, no more harm than a daydream, a cup of hot milk—or at any rate no harm beyond making her snap at her husband, if she should be lucky enough to catch one, some innocent drudge like Ginny’s Mr. Nit—no harm beyond making her criticize the man, or use tears against him because he failed to measure up to the doctor who loved the nurse (Jennifer) in her book.

  There was a Jewish girl with a bad cold, shy and lightly moustached, thick glasses on her nose—not flattering to her red and swollen eyes—a scratchy woven bag drooping down from her shoulder and, peeking from the top, along with other college books, a Russian novel. Beside her sat a man in a shabby raincoat. He had a large, long-nostrilled nose and tiny eyes, a black hat with a pinkish purple band and feather. His hands were pushed down in the raincoat pockets, and for an instant Sally thought, in alarm, that he was going to expose himself. She watched with distaste and fascination, but the man did nothing, merely stared with an expression of storekeeper-annoyance at the rabbi’s huge ears, then at length turned his head and watched, as he would a potential shoplifter, the street.

  The picture had been as sharp as a vision all this time—it was like a conscious and intentional dream—but now it dimmed, and she was seeing, just as clearly, as if it came from the same queer back room of her mind, an image of the crowd of Mexicans at Captain Fist’s trial, and Dancer with his machine gun.

  Abruptly, Sally stooped for the book. She put the applecore on the dresser, found the place where she’d left off, and, pursing her lips with disapproval, began walking back and forth between the window and the door to the attic, continuing her reading.

  Meanwhile on Lost Souls’ Rock, the vast crowd—all but invisible in smoke, a cloud of marijuana as thick as London fog—was deliberating on the case of Captain Fist, though he was nowhere to be seen. Perhaps they assumed he’d show up, in time; perhaps, high as the moon, they saw the case as academic.

  “He’s an eloquent speaker,” Santisillia said, sprawled on the ground, laboring to keep his eyes open. Slowly he brought out, “Be a shame to kill a man who can orate like that, even though we know it’s all bullshit. Captain’s an artist.”

  “I say blow him away,” Dancer said, smiling and wagging both hands. “That’s what we had this trial for, isn’t it?”

  Peter Wagner sighed.

  “Man, what’s the difference?” Dancer said. “Everybody knocks off, sooner or later. That’s the thing none of you dudes will face. The ultimate death rate of the human animal is fantastic.”

  Jane said, “You know what? I’m tired of this, I don’t know about you people. Anyway, we’ve got to hang around all day. Why can’t we decide it later? Let’s ball.” She relit her pipe and unfastened the top buttons of her shirt. Mr. Goodman watched her, thought about things, and then relit his pipe too. “Do unto others—that’s what I say,” he said. The eyes of the Mexicans came to life and they all relit their pipes, though most of them were still going. Children and toothless old women, smiling, passed through the crowd with torches.

  Dr. Alkahest opened his eyes for an instant, smiled, tongue lolling, and fainted. His moneybelt and all his moneybags were empty. Except Dr. Alkahest, who’d already experienced it, everyone in the crowd was rich.

  The volcano basin filled still more thickly with smoke. There was laughter and lovemaking on every hand, everyone doing what he liked to do. Some were having knife fights. Peter Wagner, profoundly at peace, gazed inward, savoring images of poison-bottles, hanging-ropes, knives, guns, razors, vats of acid. He saw golden-winged angels, all female. Vaguely, though it seemed to him his mind was clear, he mused on the Captain’s speech. It was a queer thing that the Captain, vicious as he was, could express such wonderful sentiments. One of the angels pressed her cool, wet lips on Peter Wagner’s, then pushed her tongue into his mouth.

  Santisillia recited dramatically:

  When I consider Life, ’tis all a Cheat;

  Yet, Fool’d by Hope, men favour the Deceit,

  Trust on, and think Tomorrow will repay!

  Tomorrow’s falser than the former Day …

  It was that instant that the earthquake broke loose in earnest. Peter Wagner rolled blindly, a fissure opening directly underneath him, sending up a roar from the earth’s twisted guts. He snatched Jane’s slick, naked body and rolled her with him—he wasn’t even sure that the body was Jane’s—instinctively driving toward what ought to be the safety of the cave and the basin’s only exit. Lizards flew back and forth crazily, flopping and hissing like snakes.

  “Stay down! Stay down!” Santisillia yelled. He slammed himself over them, locking them cruelly to the shuddering, booming floor. In a split second they realized why. Dancer was firing the machine gun crazily; they were never to know what it was that set him off. The Indian, hit in the stomach and enraged, seized the barrel—more bullets now slamming into his chest—and tore the weapon from Dancer’s hands. “I’m sorry!” Dancer howled, making out at last, through the thick smoke, who he’d shot. The Indian, staggering, was turning the gun around to let loose at Dancer, steamy blood gushing out of his belly and chest, but by the time he had his hand on the trigger he was blind, in fact dead, though still standing, and it was into the legs and belly of old Dr. Alkahest that he emptied the gun. Dr. Alkahest opened his eyes in stark terror, suddenly cold sober, and bawled like a goat.

  Despite the roar, the trembling and cracking and grinding of the rocks, despite the smoke and now billowing steam, the leaping, spinning, stampeding lizards, the Mexicans made out that the gringos were shooting, and in terror for their lives snatched out pistols and rifles and started firing. Dancer screamed, flesh flying from his hip, then his chest, and then the side of his head. Mr. Goodman, buck naked, ran six feet, yelling, before his arms flew out sideways with a mechanical jerk, his back arched sharply, and he slammed down face first into the lizards and lay still as a rock. “Not me! Please, not me!” Mr. Nit screamed, covering his face with his left hand, his penis with his right. Something knocked his head off, hand and all, and he fell backward, twitching.

  “Don’t move,” Santisillia kept whispering, soothing as a parent: “Don’t move!”

  Old Alkahest screeched above the roar of the earthquake, the Mexicans’ guns, “I’m a cripple! Please, I’m innocent! I’m a cripple!” But they understood no English. Volley after volley they emptied into him, the old man screaming till they shot out his throat, his wheelchair bucking and spinning with every hit.

  The Mexicans had now all run past Santisillia, Peter Wagner, and Jane, pouring toward the cave and the exit. “This way—quick!” Santisillia said urgently, pulling Peter Wagner and the girl to their feet, Jane naked except for her patriotic cap, and dragging them away from the cave toward the cracking outer wall: “It’s our only chance!” They reached the wall unseen and scrambled upward toward the blood-red sky, the Mexicans’ screams of terror and confusion echoing behind them. All at once the screams stopped. The cave roof had fallen.

  The sky became redder now, less filtered by marijuana smoke. As they climbed still higher, the smoke and the sick-sweet smell dropped away entirely. They reached the top, the rim of the basin, the thin shelf jarring and jumping with each shudder of the earthquake. Behind them the basin was a hell of fire and smoke. Ahead of them … They gasped and flinched back, dizzy.

  “Dead end,” Santisillia whispered. “We’re finished!”

  The rock wall fell stra
ight as a plumbline, impossible to scale, for a thousand feet.

  Peter Wagner stood up on the narrow rim and helped Jane up beside him, protectively clamping his arm around her naked waist. Santisillia, a few feet to their left, stood up too. Like Peter Wagner, he had on only his shirt and shoes.

  Then they saw the planes. The whole northeast was full of them, like an invasion force. They stared in disbelief.

  “B-fifty-two’s,” Santisillia said. “Bombers!”

  “It can’t be,” Jane whispered, tightening her arms around Peter Wagner’s waist. “Peter,” she wailed, tears rushing down her cheeks, “I don’t want to die! I’m young!”

  “Be quiet,” he commanded, closing his arm still more tightly around her.

  Her eyes widened. She too had heard it: a gentle hum like music, just above their heads. They looked up and saw it the same instant: an enormous, perfectly still flying saucer.

  “I don’t believe it,” Santisillia whispered.

  “My God,” Peter Wagner breathed.

  Jane cried out wildly, “Hey, wow! We’re saved!”

  They began to wave frantically.

  “Help!” Jane cried. “Help us! Please!”

  “Beam us up!” Peter Wagner shouted. “Beam us up!”

  The saucer lowered toward them a little, as if shyly.

  That moment, the island gave a violent shudder like the spasm of an enormous, dying animal, and without a sound, as it seemed to Peter Wagner, a vast stretch of the wall to their left sank crashing toward the sea. Luther Santisillia, without so much as a cry of alarm, had vanished—he seemed simply to vanish into air.

  The planes were much nearer now, absolutely silent, coming at well above the speed of sound. The two survivors looked up hungrily at the saucer.

  “They’ll save us, Peter,” Jane whispered earnestly, gazing at the hushed, silver stranger. “Don’t worry, my darling, they’ll save us!”

  “Save us!” Peter Wagner shouted. “We’re innocent! Beam us up!”

  ~ ~ ~

  So the book ended. Sally Abbott shook her head and put it down. She turned to the window, staring at her reflection and the darkness beyond.

  “Horace,” she said wearily, “that’s the kind of thing this world’s come to.”

  “The play, Sir, is over.”

  Marquis de Lafayette, October, 1781

  7

  The Old Woman Relents and Unlocks Her Door

  1

  When Lewis found him, the old man was out by the beehives, the shotgun propped up against the nearest of the group—brought along, Lewis knew, on the chance that there might be a skunk on the prowl, hunting some bees for his supper. The old man had no guards on; he claimed the bees knew him. It was true enough that he rarely got stung, and maybe they did know his smell, his endless mutterings to them, all his troubles and all the world’s troubles. On a wooden tray near his feet he had bottles of sugar-water. He stood hunched over, arms covered with bees like living gloves, drawing out the combs, replacing them with sugar-water, then corking up the hives. The hives were dingy, cocked left and right by years of ground-swell; they reminded you some of old tombstones.

  “Winterin the bees then, are ye?” he said.

  “Ay-uh,” the old man said, not looking up.

  “Seems eahly,” Lewis said. “Last year it want till November ye sealed up the hives.”

  The old man worked on, apparently assuming the remark required no comment.

  “Ye think it’ll be an eahly winter, then?”

  James nodded. After a time: “Oak-appleth theem to think tho. Woolly-bearth too.” He added, after a little thought: “My Dad uthe to thay, ‘Only the Good Lord knowth about the weather, and therth timeth when I wonder if even He ith real thertain.’” He straightened up a little, arms held out from his sides. “Howth Ginny?”

  “That’s what I come up about,” Lewis said. “I’m pickin her up at the hospital this mahnin. Thought you might like to come along.”

  James studied him, then glanced at the hives. “Lot of work here yet.”

  “You don’t wanna come then?”

  “I didn’t thay that.” He pursed his lips, looked down at the coating of bees on his arms. “Let me clean up here a little,” he said. “You go up and thay hello to Aunt Thally.”

  Lewis smiled, not enough for the old man to catch it. “Ay-uh,” he said. “I’ll do that.” He stood watching a moment longer, then started toward the house.

  Leaning toward Aunt Sally’s door he said, “You awake, Aunt Sally?”

  “Good morning, Lewis,” she answered brightly. “What are you doing here so early? How’s Virginia?”

  “Ginny’s fine,” he said. “Mind’s still fuzzy, might be she’ll stay that way for days, but nothin serious wrong with her, so they tell me. May come out of it any time.”

  “Thank God for that!”

  “Thank somebody,” he said.

  “My goodness but you are stubborn,” she said. “When you get to Heaven and find there’s a good Lord that all this time you should’ve thanked for your blessings, and now, woe is you—”

  “You think he’s really all that petty?” Lewis asked, ever mild.

  She said nothing and Lewis smiled, uneasy, pulling again at his moustache. He said “Aunt Sally?”

  “I’m still here,” she said. The cheerfulness with which she’d first greeted him was now gone utterly. “You think I jumped out the window?”

  It crossed his mind what she’d land in if she did, but he said only: “I come up to ask you if you want to ride in with me to town. I got to pick up Ginny at the hospital.”

  “You’re bringing her up here?”

  “I thought I might. Few little things I got to do around the place.”

  Again she was silent, and again, uncomfortably, he smiled. He could imagine her pursing her lips, sorely tempted, though he knew pretty well she’d say no.

  “No,” she said. “I realize nobody understands—”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t say that.”

  “If James would just show some respect for my rights—”

  “Well, you do what you think’s best,” he said.

  “Poor Ginny,” she said. “It’s good you’re bringing her here. I’ll be glad to see her.”

  Below, the woodshed door opened. A chicken squawked. The old man was coming in, grumbling something at the dog.

  “Well, I got to go now,” Lewis said. He took a step toward the stairs.

  “Do drive carefully, Lewis,” she said. The old woman’s voice was both cranky and urgent, as if she had no idea herself what she felt or meant.

  “I will,” he said.

  From the foot of the stairs the old man called, “We thtill goin, Lewith, or did you change your mind?”

  “I never knew a soul in this family to change his mind,” Lewis mentioned to the air.

  All the way to town, the old man sat with his lips sucked in and kept mum.

  2

  When they’d parked the car and were walking up the steps to the hospital, Lewis said, “Whant you visit Ed Thomas while I see if Ginny’s ready?”

  James had been afraid he’d say that. But immediately, as if he’d already decided it, he said, “Thath a good idea.”

  They stopped at the desk, and Lewis made sure Ed Thomas’s room number was the same as before. They’d talked of moving him to a double, let him have more company to pick up his spirits.

  James Page, bent forward, his face unshaven, his cap in his hands, said cautiously to the nurse, “Ith all right if he hath vithitorth, then?”

  “Perfectly all right,” she said, and smiled.

  James nodded, glanced at Lewis. “I thought tho,” he said.

  They walked to the elevator, Lewis Hicks fiddling at his moustache with two fingers as usual, the old man nervously chewing on his mouth. They reached the elevator—stainless-steel doors—and Lewis pushed the button. They put their hands behind their backs and waited, the old man from time to time glancing at his son-i
n-law, once even clearing his throat to speak; but when the elevator arrived and the doors hummed open, neither of them had yet broken silence. Two doctors of some sort were on the elevator already, coming up from the basement, a tall blond doctor and a short Oriental one, both in green outfits with green caps and little green masks hanging loose below their chins. “The really hard part,” one of them said, “is keeping yourself from saying ‘Woops!’ when you slice through a nerve.” They both laughed. The door hummed open and they got off. James started to follow. “We go one more, Dad,” Lewis said. James came back in, eyes darting like an animal’s. Lewis looked up at the ceiling, hands behind his back. They reached their floor.

  Such guilt was coursing through the old man’s veins he could hardly breathe. He felt as he’d felt when his son had killed himself, or, long years before, when he’d found his uncle Ira in the woods. It was a little while after his parents’ funeral—they’d been killed in a car wreck when Richard was something like nine years old and Ginny was still small enough to sit in a highchair. Why Ira had done it he would never know; there was no telling with Uncle Ira, even for James, who had probably known him better than anyone else except possibly James’ father. Perhaps, though he showed nothing, it was sorrow that had done it, old Ira rattling around in the suddenly empty house; or perhaps it was anger at their leaving the house to James and Ariah, not him; or perhaps it had been what he took, in his crazy, half-animal mind, for a kindness to them: if he was dead, they could move up from the smaller house Ariah’s parents had bought them and take the family place. Whatever it was, there the old man lay, everything above his beard shot to hell, his right foot bare—with the barrels in his mouth he’d pulled the triggers (he’d rammed down both of them) with his toe. On a stump right beside him sat the snake’s skull, an ash stick, and the claw of a bear. James, though a grown man, had kneeled beside the body, crying in great whoops. He’d pointed the place out to Richard, years later, when Richard was maybe twenty. James had mentioned, without making too much of it, how he’d wept. Richard had asked, “What was Uncle Ira like?” James had shook his head and had been close to tears again. “He was crazy,” he’d said and, remembering, had smiled. “He was the bravest, toughest man I ever knew. Man shot him one time, some drunken Irish. Shot him in the chest. Tracked that man nine miles through the snow, it was the dead of December, and would have killed him for sure but luckily he lost so much blood he passed out. My father caught up to him and dragged him home, and two days later Uncle Ira was back at the chores.” Richard had said, “He never talked much, they say.” “No, that’s true,” James said. “I guess most people talk because they’re lonely or there’s somethin they’re not clear on. That wasn’t his case, or if it was he never knew it.” Richard had asked, looking up into the trees, “Was his mind clear when he—shot himself?” James had glanced at his son, wanting to reach out and touch him but holding back, half sick with love for his big, handsome child and confused by the feeling, as he’d always been, though he’d never had trouble showing love to little Ginny; and then he’d looked down at the ground thoughtfully, fingering the snake’s head in his pocket as if thinking of giving it to the boy. “I suppose he must’ve thought his mind was clear,” he at last brought out.