John Gardner - October Light

“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.”

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-in-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.