October Light

by John Gardner

  I have a little cat, and I’m very fond of that,

  But I never had a bow-wow-wow!

  Washing her armpit, she’d raise her arm so that her titty showed, and knowing he was watching she’d roll her eyes at him and wink. Their mother had had some sense of it. “James,” she’d snap as if the whole thing was his fault—he was five, maybe six—“get out there and bring in that kindlin!” James Page’s face was burning now, less at his old sister’s treachery than at his own pure damn stupidity. Lucky he hadn’t known it when he chased her up the stairs with the fireplace log. He’d’ve popped her one certain.

  “That’s nothin,” Merton said. He sighted down the hole in his beer bottle.

  James’ heart was hammering, painful.

  Stumpchurch slept on.

  Sam Frost took a breath, looked sadly at the ceiling. “Little woman was in charge of the fund raisin for the Republican Potty,” he said, and sighed again. “Called you up for help and it was Sally answered.”

  “Go on,” James said. His legs began to tremble.

  “Said you want home,” Sam Frost said, mournful. “It want the truth. Little woman could hear you hollerin in the background.”

  “She wouldn’t do that,” James said, eyes bugging.

  Sam looked at the table. “Mebby not, mebby not. Mebby the little woman heard wrong.”

  James Page turned his head away, shudders running over him like electric shocks. The Graham boy had his arm around the taller girl, his hand half an inch below her breast. “You know what I’d really like?” he said.

  “What would you?” she said.

  “I’d really like—” He moved up his hand. “I’d really like—”

  “We’re from different worlds, my darling,” she said, and closed her eyes.

  Bill Partridge lit his pipe. “Sister of mine did a thing like that, I’d shoot her,” he said.

  3

  James Page had no slightest intention of shooting his sister when he started up thhe mountain, though he did have—teeth chattering, legs and arms atremble—the fixed intention of knocking the door down and belting her one.

  Driving wasn’t easy. The truck kept wandering all over the road, lighting up weeds and trees and fences first on one side, then on the other, and the wind the wind hurled leaves and twigs at his windshield—the rain had stopped, for the time being—and every now and then a gust would catch hold of the truck and throw it sharply toward the ditch. He hung onto the steering wheel with all his might, his left foot riding the clutch, his right foot unsteadily pumping the accelerator, and he kept one eye squeezed tightly shut since the wine, besides souring his stomach and giging him a headache, made him see things in twos. for all his difficulty staying on the road, he was driving so fast he scared himself. The road leaped toward him as if the truck were doing ninety, and once when he went off the shoulder he cried out, yet he refused to slow down, driven on by anger, merely spit to the left and clenched his teeth all the harder and hung on more tightly ot the steering wheel. Just past the Crawfords place a motorcycle all at once came out of nowhere, roaring straight at him, so frightening the old man that his hair stood on end. he jerked the steering wheel and plunged off the road on the right-hand side, throwing up leaves left and right like snow, then jerked back just before he came to a tree and shot clear over off the left-hand side—the motorcycle wobbled crazily, slid, shot by him, then righted and steadied itself and roared on down the mountain—and in the nick of time the old man jerked the wheel again and got back onto the road unharmed, or almost unharmed, the left from headlight cocked at an angle, the fender acrumple from snapping off a post. “God damn son of a bitch!” he screamed, and he was shaking from head to foot, yet even now he drove faster than he dared, like a man gone insane.

  that, of course, James reflected, dubious. Mr. Rockwell put people in his pictures—real people, many of whom James Page had known: his cousin Sharon O’Neil a time or two, Lee Marsh’s wife and Mrs. Crofut, once or twice Grandma Moses herself. No harm. But of course Mr. Rockwell had always meant no harm, which was why he’d achieved it. He’d meant to paint the way things could be, he’d explained once to the schoolchildren, and to paint how some of the time, if people will stay awake, things actually are. People always thought of him as a happy man, and he had been, in a way—all his friends right there around him, and getting paid for doing what he would’ve done anyway—but there was another, less cheerful side to him, they said in Arlington; there were times he seemed weighed down with grief, they said, and James had some evidence that it was true.

  Perhaps all Vermonters were inclined to be pessimists, but the painter had not only expected the worst, he’d brooded on it. “The country’s ill,” he’d said one time, sitting on the porch at Pelham’s place, James Page standing below him with a glass of ice-tea. (James had come to Pelham’s delivering wood, and Mrs. Pelham had asked him if he’d mind a little tea.) “The country’s ill,” the man had said. “Christianity’s ill. Sometimes I feel a little shaggy myself.” They’d all laughed, including the painter. But a few minutes later, getting into his truck, James had looked at the tall, skinny artist, and he’d understood by the expression on the man’s face in repose that he’d been dead serious, at least about the country and Christianity: that for all his easy ways, his security in this safe, sunlit village in Vermont where they were still in the nineteenth century, he was worried, smoking day and night just like Ginny, and now and then frowning the way Ginny would sometimes do when she wasn’t aware you were watching her. The man had painted as if he had a devil in him, so people said that knew him, sitting or standing there legs akimbo, straight pipe clenched in his long, yellow teeth, small blue eyes glittering. Painted as if his pictures might check the decay—decay that, in those days, most people hadn’t yet glimpsed.

  “Tell me the story about the parson,” Dickey said.

  James turned, eyebrows lowered, shifting his gaze reluctantly from his daughter’s face. “Parthon?”

  It was a warning he should have heeded. On the hairpin curve half a mile from his house he gave a hard jerk to the steering wheel and nothing happened—rain had made the concrete pavement slick—and as if in slow-motion he saw the guardrail coming, white as old bone, and with his heart in his mouth, spitting to his left and yelling “Shit, shit, shit!” he felt himself going over, the guardrail parting like papier-mâché, and knew that, incredibly, it was curtains. Whether he was thrown from the truck or blown from it when it hit and exploded he would never know; all he knew was that when he came to, blinking, the truck was noisily burning, fifty feet below him, farther down the mountain, and he was sitting, with no damage but a bleeding nose, some bruises and cuts, in the crotch of an apple tree. He was still sitting there, whimpering and swearing—it was raining again, and cold as December—when Sally’s minister and the black-eyed Mexican came and found him.

  “Good God,” the minister said, not swearing but expressing a firm belief, shining the flashlight up into his eyes as if he were an owl on a rafter, “it’s a miracle!”

  “Miracle my God damn ath,” he said, crying. “Pure luck.” He felt his mouth with his hand and realized he’d lost his teeth.

  The priest was laughing—standing there with his arms hanging down, black eyes glittering from the glow of the fire—laughing at him. “Good luck or bad?” he said. When he thought back to it, later, James Page could see that the Mexican had meant no real harm by it. He must’ve looked a sight, sitting there in the rain with his shoes off—where they’d gone he had no idea—his false teeth missing, scratches going out from his mouth like a clown’s painted frown. Still laughing, the Mexican reached up toward him as his father had done, more than two-thirds of a century ago, inviting him to jump. “I can manage,” he said angrily, but found he could not and, in spite of himself, took help.

  When he was on the ground, standing in the ice-cold wet in his socks, tears still streaming down his face, he stared at the fire, his jaw working, his legs so trembly he cou
ld barely stand up, and saw his whole life there, going up in flames. “Damn truck want even paid for,” he wailed.

  “Oh come on now, James,” Sally’s minister said, “that truck’s as old as I am!”

  “Want paid for, I told you,” he said, turning on the man, enraged.

  “Well, you’re still alive. That’s all that counts.” “Ith it?” he yelled. “Ith it? Ith it? We’ll thee about that!” What he meant by it the blind fools had no idea. They understood merely that the accident had made him temporarily crazy, as indeed it had, he himself would know later. What he meant was that his heart had gone black as pitch, and for good reason: the truck was uninsured. He’d worked all his life like a God damn slave and he was poor as a churchmouse, too poor to buy insurance for a God damn used truck, and sick and old and full of pain besides; all that had once made him think life worthwhile was gone, vanished as if it never had been: he’d killed his own firstborn miserable son and would have shot himself then if it hadn’t been that others were dependent on him; and these smug, rich preachers could stand looking down at his life on fire, stand there in their God damn shiny shoes and their citified suitcoats, immigrants both of them—one of them for sure—living off their wholly fictitious God and the fat of the land, laughing while his God damn life burned up, and above them on the road people gawking like his ruin was a sideshow at the fair, carlights and a blue police-car flasher lighting up the mountain and the cemetery perched among the trees above, stones just the color of the guardrail he’d smashed—under every tombstone the remains of some poor, once-unhappy human being—think of it! think of it!—a thousand, thousand cemeteries, and under every stone in every one, some poor damn bastard who’d lived a life of, for the most part, misery, lied to and cheated and teased by false hopes … What he meant was: he had decided to shoot his sister.

  The Mexican said, “Let me carry you, Mr. Page. It’s steep and you’ve got no shoes on.”

  Ed Thomas yelled down from the road, “Is he all right?” The minister waved. “He’s fine! Few little cuts.” The Mexican was squatting like a frog-monster so James Page could climb up onto his back.

  “I’m fine!” the old man yelled crazily, waving his trembling, boneless arms, his blue eyes aglitter, on fire with hatred: “I’m fine!”

  4

  They drew back from him in horror, eyes and mouths wide open, squeezing toward the edges of the kitchen. Estelle, at the table, unable to get up, yelled, “Oh! Oh!” Her canes went clattering to the floor.

  The Mexican squinted, more Indian than ever; all you could see inside his eyeslits was midnight black. “Mr. Page,” he said, “give me the gun.”

  “Dad,” Ginny said, “for the love of Christ!”

  He stood firm, except shaking like a thrashing machine, shaking so badly he was afraid he’d pull the trigger by accident. He went on swinging the shotgun from side to side, warning them back, the whole room red, as if his eyes were full of blood. He was breathing hard and his lips were puffy, and his voice was so high he might have thought it was somebody else yelling. “Get out! Get out of my houth! All of you!”

  “Mr. Page,” the Mexican said, taking a step toward him.

  He jerked the gun up to his shoulder and aimed it straight at him. “You take one more thtep, you greathy bathtahd, and I’ll blow off your black-eyed head.”

  The Mexican considered and decided to believe him.

  “Dad, for Christ’s sake,” Ginny wailed, “you’re crazy!” She had her arms around Dickey, who stood staring wide-eyed as if his lids were frozen open.

  “He’s not crazy,” Ruth Thomas said, “he’s drunk.”

  “Don’t push him,” Sally’s minister commanded, stretching his arms out to each side as if to keep the others back. “He’s had a terrible experience. Once he’s calmed down—”

  Ed Thomas stood gulping for air, clutching his chest and groaning.

  “Dear heavenly father,” Estelle whispered, violently trembling, “it’s all my fault!”

  “What’s the matter?” the Phelps girl said, opening the door a little and timidly jumping, trying to see in.

  “Stay outside,” someone barked.

  Lewis Hicks said, “Get all the kids outside. Dickey, get outside!”

  “I haven’t got my coat on,” Dickey said.

  “You get outside, you little bastard,” Ginny hissed, pushing him. Then, to her father: “Dad, what’s the matter with you?”

  “Nothin the matter with me,” he yelled, forgetting and swinging his eyes in her direction, then instantly snapping them back to the Mexican, the only one in the room he was afraid of.

  “You should all go outside,” the Mexican said. He spoke without moving his eyes from James’ face, peering intently as if to see into the old man’s mind. “You people go,” he said. “Go quickly. Lane and I will stay and talk with him.”

  “Nobodyth thtayin,” James yelled. “Partyth ovah!”

  Lewis Hicks took a step toward him, and James swung the gun more or less in his direction.

  “I’m just gonna try and help Estelle,” Lewis said. He looked at James, making sure the words registered, then continued over to the table to help her get up. The Mexican moved his hand and James swung the gun at him, fast. With his left hand James groped toward the table to knock off the plates and jack-o-lanterns, making sure Lewis got no ideas.

  “Will you put away that gun if we leave?” Ruth asked. She was drawn up to her full height, and her eyes bulged with indignation, firing daggers.

  “I already told you what I’m gonna do,” he yelled. “I’m gonna kill Thally.” He turned his head and yelled up the stairs, “You hear that, Thally? I’m gonna kill you.” He laughed, fake-crazy—or so he intended it. No one but the old man had any doubts that he was crazy.

  “Then we’re staying,” Ruth said.

  There was a moment’s silence. Then Dr. Phelps said, “That’s not a good idea, Ruth. You better think about your husband.”

  She jerked her head around and saw how Ed was clutching his chest and struggling to get breath.

  “My God!” she whispered, and turned her face back to James. She’d gone white. “You fucker!” she said in icy rage. “You fucker!” The gun would not have stopped her if she’d decided to come at him. He could have emptied both barrels right into her heart and still, before she was stopped, she’d have torn out his windpipe. But Ruth was moving in the other direction, toward Ed. “DeWitt!” she screamed, “come help me!” the kitchen door opened, shoving against people, and DeWitt was there, as ashen as the rest of them, staring at James. He helped Dr. Phelps and Ruth Thomas get Ed out the door. Others were moving toward the door now. He encouraged them, wagging the shotgun. Soon he was alone with Lane Walker and the Mexican.

  “You too,” he said. “Out!”

  They stood six feet apart, the minister by the door, the priest over by the sink.

  Reasonably, gently, the Mexican said, “How will you shoot us both if we jump you the same time?”

  “You won’t,” he said, and smiled. “I’ll tell you why. If you jump me, I’m gonna fire at you firtht, Meckthican.” He jerked his left thumb at Lane Walker. “It’ll be the thame ath if he pulled the trigger.”

  “Foxy old bastard, ain’t he,” Lane said.

  Out in the yard, a car started up, taking Ed Thomas to the hospital, perhaps, or going for the troopers. He’d never have a chance with just a shotgun against pistols and rifles. He saw in his mind’s eye that picture on TV, the truck driver’s head exploding when the policeman shot him, and the rage that had begun to flag was back full force.

  “Get out,” he said. “I got no more time.”

  Lane Walker looked up at the ceiling, in the direction of Sally’s room. “Sally?” he called. There was no answer, and he called again. This time she called back, “I hear you.”

  “Sally, can you get your bed in front of the door till this maniac calms down? Can you block the door?”

  There was no answer.

&nbs
p; The minister called, “Did you hear me, Sally?”

  After a moment she called, “I hear you.”

  “Can you do it? He’s got a gun.”

  Again, no answer.

  “Thath enough,” James snapped. “Get out. I’ll count to five. One!”

  They hesitated, looking at each other.

  “Two!”

  “I think he means business,” the Mexican said. “Even if he doesn’t, by five he’ll have psyched himself into it.” He was looking around as if for something to throw. But his lip was trembling. For the first time, James Page understood that the man was scared to death.

  “Three!” he said.

  “What good will it do?” Lane Walker said. He was sweating like a blacksmith, and his voice was a whine.

  “Four!”

  “All right, all right!” the Mexican yelled, almost a squeal. He made a dash for the door. Lane Walker spun around like a basketball player, snatching at the doorknob, and was out ahead of him.

  “Five!” he screamed, and for pure manic glee he let loose at the top of the door as it slammed shut behind them.

  Up in her bedroom, Sally screamed.

  5

  “It’s happened, Horace,” Sally said. “You always predicted it would and now it has. He’s gone crazy.”

  She’d screamed in terror when the gun had gone off, but she was over that now. Which one of them he’d killed there was no telling—she hoped not Ginny, not Dickey, not Estelle or Ruth, though she might not mind if it was what’s-his-name (again when the old woman tried to think of the name of Ginny’s husband, all that would come was that character in her novel, Mr. Nit). After her scream at the sound of the shot, her first full recognition that he indeed meant to kill her, a strange calm had descended on her, and if someone had been there to see her as she set about her preparations—for a plan had come to her—he might have been amazed at how tranquil she was, how logically her mind worked, how her movements and gestures were almost queenly.