October Light

by John Gardner

  Ginny said, “Why doesn’t Lewis get you a chair, Estelle.”

  “That’s a good idea,” Estelle said, “yes, Lewis, do.”

  Lewis turned and went down. He was back in a moment with one of the chairs from the kitchen. He helped Estelle sit.

  “You know, Sally,” Estelle called, “I’m surprised at you!”

  They waited. Estelle looked over at them, eyes atwinkle, and gave a little nod as if dismissing them. Lewis squatted over his cardboard box of tools, picking out a scraper, trying to decide whether or not it would be right to get back to work. Ginny backed away toward the head of the stairs and, after watching a moment longer, went down. As she reached the door into the kitchen she heard Aunt Sally say in a feeble little voice, “Is that you, Estelle? Why, I must’ve drifted off!” Ginny shook her head, rolling her eyes up, and came out into the kitchen. She closed the stairway door behind her, and without a word to her father went into the living room to check on Dickey. He was fast asleep by the fireplace, plastic building blocks closed in his hands and scattered all around him, green and yellow and red.

  4

  For half an hour Estelle did her best to talk sense into her friend, but with no success. It was an impasse, simply. They were both, James and Sally, stubborn idealists, and there was never any hope, she’d learned as a teacher, when you were dealing with stubborn idealists. “Well my my,” she would say from time to time, shaking her head, glancing over at where Lewis was scraping the paint off the bathroom door. He would give his head a morose little shake in return and go on working. Lewis had the right idea, of course. Simply be there, on the chance that sooner or later you’d be of use.

  She leaned toward the bedroom door again and called, “Sally, why don’t you come out and at least get some food in your stomach? It might be you’d see things differently.”

  “That’s all very well for you to say, Estelle,” the old woman called back, “but there are some things a person can’t just forgive and forget. When a situation’s downright intolerable, what good is it to throw up your hands and just leave it to the bees? Too many people in this country have been doing that too long.”

  Estelle sighed. “Oh Sally dear, what’s the country got to do with it?”

  Sally’s voice was haughty. “Don’t you fool yourself, Estelle. The country’s got everything to do with it. It’s the haves and the have-nots, that’s what it is. James was here in the house first—that’s his whole argument—so when I move in, I’ve got to do exactly as he says, and no matter if it kills me.”

  “Oh Sally, really!”

  “Don’t you Sally-really me, Estelle. It’s the truth and you know it. It should’ve been my house, if the truth be told. I was the oldest. But everything goes to the men in this country—always has. We might as well be Negroes. I changed that boy’s didies and carried him on my back, I taught him to tie his shoelaces, I led him by the hand back and forth from school, even saved him from Dad’s cussed johnny-bull once, and this is the recompense I get! He’s got his opinions, and I grant you he’s got a right to ’em; but I’ve got my opinions too, and it’s no way to settle it chasing an old woman with a piece of stovewood and locking her up in her bedroom.”

  “Sally, he didn’t!” Estelle exclaimed, merely to show her sympathy. The charge had, Lord knows, the ring of truth. She saw it all as clearly as a picture in a book, and in spite of herself she had to smile.

  “Yes he did,” Sally said, “and a good deal worse. Threatened my life with a shotgun. He’s a drinker, you know.”

  “No!” Estelle said. It sounded unlikely, he hadn’t been known to get drunk in years, but that was unimportant. Sally believed her charges, that was what mattered. Nevertheless, she glanced over at Lewis to see what he thought. He shook his head denying it all, but said nothing, merely scraped on. He had the whole molding finished now, and part of the bathroom door.

  Sally said, “It’s no use making peace with tyranny. If the enemy won’t compromise, he gives you no choice; you simply have to take your stand, let come what may.”

  “Oh dear,” Estelle said. She didn’t like at all the direction in which the conversation was steering. Not that she didn’t believe in principles. Principles were one of the things that made life meaningful—cleanliness, punctuality, a willingness to try to see the other person’s side … But she’d been down this road too many times; she knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that it led nowhere. “That’s all true, I suppose,” she said. “But we have to make it possible for the other person to compromise, you know. We all have our pride. We have to try to be reasonable and ‘do unto others.’”

  Even as she said it, her palsied head trembling, her hands clasped together on her knees, Estelle knew it was a useless argument, though a true one. Sally’s voice became more adamant than ever. “Let James be reasonable,” she said. “It’s always up to the one in power to be reasonable. It’s like the United States after World War II. When Germany and Japan unconditionally surrendered, we reached out and gave them a helping hand, helped them to their feet, like the great nation and model for the world that we’re supposed to be, and now Germany and Japan are two of the most decent, most prosperous countries in the world. That’s how things should be. That’s the Christian way. But of course that’s not how James sees it—heavens no! He’s just like the United States after the war in Viet Nam, stingy and full as a tick with guilt and grudges. He won’t turn loose of so much as one thin dime. You’ll see what comes of it! You mark my words! Viet Nam will turn elsewhere—and so will Africa and heaven knows who else—and what might have been markets and healthy competitors will be pigs in the parlor.”

  “Sally, what on earth are you talking about? How can you compare poor James with the whole United States?”

  “You’ll see,” Sally said.

  Long as she’d known her, Estelle had never quite realized that Sally was a crank—as much a crank as her brother, it seemed. Perhaps it was something that had come over her since she’d moved back to the farm with James, or perhaps it had been there all along and had simply never come up. When they’d played bridge in the old days, Sally and Horace, Estelle and Ferris, there had been wonderful talk of politics, education, religion—talk about everything under the sun, in fact, or at any rate everything decent people had talked about in those days—but it had been mainly the men who had talked about politics. Sally, whenever she’d taken a side, had taken it firmly, Estelle remembered, thinking back to it now—once, in fact, Sally had surprised them all by becoming quite passionate, even throwing down her cards—but it was rare for things to get that far out of hand when Ferris and Horace were there. Ferris, elegant and handsome, would tell jokes if the evening began to turn serious; and Horace had had a delightful, almost comic gift for seeing and believing both sides.

  Sally was saying, increasingly intense, “People think they can go on exploiting and exploiting forever, and the developing countries will simply have to put up with it, but believe you me that’s wrong! There was a program on television, made your hair stand on end. I forget the whole argument—just as clear as two plus two is four—but I remember part of it.” Her tone became dogmatic, tinged with self-pity—exactly the tone of the one and only Communist Estelle had ever met—and though Estelle now opened her mouth to object she said nothing, on second thought, but listened in something like amazement. “The handful of plutocrats in the third and fourth world countries,” Sally was saying, “the only ones with any money to spend, want nothing but luxury items and bombs, which they get from the first world countries at terrible prices, so the poor people there in the developing countries get poorer and poorer and work harder and harder, and as their countries buy bombs their life becomes more and more dangerous.” Estelle glanced at Lewis, who stood, head tipped far over, listening with no expression, like a cat. The voice became more strident. “The situation in the developing countries gets more and more dangerous, so the plutocrats take on more and more power, suspending constitutional government
and so forth, just to keep order and protect themselves, oppressing the poor people more and more and buying more and more from the outside world, until it seems there’s nothing that can break the—” She paused a moment, hunting for the word. “Spiral. But the plutocrats forget two crucial facts.”

  “Why Sally,” Estelle said, “I never knew you knew about all that!”

  “Two crucial facts,” Sally said.

  “Sally Abbott, you should have been a teacher,” Estelle said. “Listen to this, Lewis! Were you aware that Sally had made a study of all this?”

  “Aunt Sally’s nobody’s fool, I’ve always said that,” Lewis said.

  “Two facts,” said Sally, belligerent.

  Estelle sighed and resigned herself. The lecturing voice seemed to be moving around behind the bedroom door, as if Sally were pacing, perhaps keeping track of the two crucial facts on her fingers. Lewis continued to stand with the paint-scraper dangling, all attention on the argument.

  “First, just as Walter Cronkite says, they forget the amazing power of ‘the Idea of Freedom.’ Once people have heard about freedom it’s like seventeen seventy-six all over again, they just won’t settle for anything less, they’d rather die. It’s an idea all the wealth and power in the world can’t stop—I can testify to that myself, believe you me!”

  “Are you saying—” Lewis began. But she wouldn’t be interrupted.

  “And the other thing the plutocrats forget is the nature of an army. The plutocrats build up their powerful armies to protect their own interests, but an army’s their own worst enemy. In an army people learn discipline, and they learn to be willing to die for what’s right. They get educated, more or less—more than they would have back in their villages anyway. And that’s the least of it. That many young men brought together in one place makes a natural whatchamacallit for ideas—such ideas as freedom and people’s natural rights. And pretty soon, just as in Russia and Tanzania and Portugal, poof!, revolution!—the dawn of reality and truth!—and all started by the army. You tell James Page and all his kind to just give that some thought.” The bed creaked. She’d apparently seated herself.

  “Aunt Sally,” Lewis said, but then he reconsidered and merely picked at his moustache and shook his head.

  Estelle stared at the bedroom door with an expression of distress, her head jittering and her eyebrows lifted. She wondered if Horace had ever seen poor Sally in such a state. Probably not. These weren’t the kinds of thoughts that came up in times of happiness. “My my,” Estelle whispered. Whatever the truth might be about James and the United States, or Sally and radicalized armies (or whatever), the truth here in this house was that Sally must be coaxed out of her room before things got worse. An atmosphere of peace and cooperation must be established or they’d never get anywhere. How she wished Ruth Thomas were here! Ruth had always had a way about her. She recited funny poems, told anecdotes, filled every room she entered with such warmth and good feeling it was almost impossible for a person to keep his mind on his grudges. Estelle looked at her watch. My goodness, only quarter to eight! She remembered, the same moment, that Terence, her great-nephew, was still out in the car. “Oh dear,” she said aloud.

  “Sally,” she called, “it doesn’t seem right to keep your door locked even against your friends.”

  “I know it, Estelle,” Sally answered. “But I haven’t got much choice, do I? I sometimes think—” Her voice became slightly theatrical, the self-pity more distinct, as if she were speaking lines out of Shakespeare or Tennyson: “I sometimes think we’re all characters in some book. It’s as if our whole lives are plotted from start to finish, so that even if the end should be happy it’s poisoned when we get to it.”

  Estelle’s eyes widened. “Sally Abbott, what on earth’s got into you?” she said. “Why, that’s the silliest thing I ever heard!” She looked over at Lewis. A decision was building in her. “Lewis, dear, help me downstairs,” she said. “I need to use the telephone.”

  He looked alarmed but at once put down the scraper and came to help.

  5

  James Page stared out his kitchen window in a fury of indignation. “What the hell?” he said. He rolled the October Saturday Evening Post in his hands as if making it a weapon, his spectacles hanging cockeyed down his nose.

  “Company’s coming,” Dickey called excitedly from the living room.

  It was a quarter past eight. James Page’s front yard was lit like the parking lot at Mammoth Mart, and pretty near as filled with cars, or so it looked to James.

  “Good heavens, I’d better put cocoa on,” Virginia said, bursting into the kitchen, cigarette in hand. She’d puffed up her hair and put lipstick on and powder on her cheeks to try to hide the dark circles. Halfway to the pots and pans she stopped. “No,” she said, and the cigarette in her hand began wobbling violently, “I’d better see them in.” She was thinking, in fact, of the lilac bushes, thinking perhaps she could steer the company off the path and away from them so no one would know.

  “I’d like to know what in tunkit’s goin on here,” her father said.

  “Oh, Dad, for heaven’s sakes calm down!” she said. She had the door open now, waving and carrying on, yelling “Hi there! Hi there! Over this way!”

  Lewis appeared at the foot of the stairway, paint-chips all over him. “Looks like somebody’s drove up,” he said. He looked guilty as sin.

  Estelle Parks said, leaning on both canes, peeking out from the living room—she’d taken her coat and hat off now—“Why, who in the world can that be?”

  “You ought to know, you meddlin old buzzard,” James Page said, white with anger. “You called ’em youahself, in there on the telephone.”

  “Why, James!” she said, and then quickly, as if just remembering, “That’s true, so I did.”

  “If that just don’t beat hell,” he said. He raised the rolled-up Saturday Evening Post as if to hit something, found nothing to hit, and lowered it again. A loud crack came from his pipestem. He’d bit clear through it. He spit and put the pipe in his shirt pocket.

  “This way! Yoo hoo! This way!” Virginia was calling. She was off the porch now, herding them away from the lilacs. The car lights were off and the yard was full of happy voices and the sound of feet. He recognized Ed Thomas’s hefty Welsh laugh.

  James leaned his head toward Estelle, his wide mouth twitching. “Just what in the world you think you’re doin?” he said.

  “Now easy there, Dad,” Lewis said mildly, looking not at his father-in-law but at the painted cap where the stovepipe had once gone. “It’s a dahn good idea and you’d ought to go along with it. We’ll just have a few people in, that’s ah, have a little singin and story-tellin—little ahguin, mebby, about politics“—he grinned, “—little sweet smellin food. Ye never know, Aunt Sally might just decide ‘Shoot!’ and come on down and join us.”

  “It’s an Indian remedy,” Estelle said, and smiled. It was a pretty smile, apologetic and kindly, and James was for a moment disconcerted. “When an Iroquois Indian had a tapeworm in him, the medicine doctor would starve the man and then brace the man’s jaws open and put out some broth. Pretty soon, out popped the tapeworm.”

  James’ eyes widened. “Great Peter,” he barked, and slammed the Saturday Evening Post against his leg, “Sally’s no tapeworm! She does a thing, she’s got reasons for it.” His hands were shaking at the indignity of it all—or so it seemed to Estelle and Lewis, who were suddenly filled with remorse over what they’d done. But the matter was a little more complex than they understood. He was indeed indignant at their treating his sister—however outrageous her behavior might be—as some mindless creature that could be coaxed through fire with a graham cracker. But the thing that had mainly gotten into James Page was Estelle’s smile. Old fool that he was—so he put it to himself—for an instant James had felt powerfully attracted to her, emotion rising in his chest as sharp and disturbing as it would in any schoolboy. Even now he was upset and surprised by it. Metaphysically up
set, in point of fact, though the word was not one James Page would have used. They were old and ugly, both of them, and the body’s harboring of such emotions so long past their time was a cruel affront, a kind of mockery from heaven.

  “I’m sorry, James,” Estelle said—and damned if the thing didn’t leap in him again. But he didn’t have long to think about it, or endure it, rather, for now the company was sailing through the door, little Dickey standing there holding it open, grinning like a duck, as if he thought it had suddenly turned Christmas.

  “What are you doing up, you little whippersnapper?” Ruth Thomas—née Jerome—said, tousling Dickey’s hair and making her eyes cross. Then, pivoting her three hundred pounds like a dancer, she threw out her arms and embraced the room. “Happy October one and all!” she cried. Her puffy, spotted hands came, graceful as the hands of an actress, to her lips and she blew them all a kiss. From the elbows to the shoulders, her arms were exceedingly fat. Ruth Thomas was, in the old sense, mad. She had a voice like music, for all her years—as remarkable a voice as this world has ever heard, a study in contradictions. It was a clear, ringing voice—or so nature had intended it—a voice built for sweetness and volume, the voice of a singer. For years, indeed, she’d lent her rich, somewhat breathy alto to the Congregational Church Choir in North Bennington, and she’d given more recitals at the McCullough Mansion than anyone now living could remember, including Ruth Thomas. At the same time, her many years as head librarian in the John G. McCullough Free Library—or possibly some other cause—had given her voice a not-quite dulcet, artificial throatiness that seemed at once studiously cultured and seductive, or at any rate intended to have that effect, unless it was mockery, or self-mockery, or something else. She spoke, or sang, or did both at once, like an unsubmergeably strong piano with the soft pedal pressed to the carpet. She enjoyed good talk—she talked constantly—and had a powerful laugh.