John Gardner - October Light

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.

He’d remembered all that, standing in the attic when he’d found his son, and he’d thought of the empty whiskey bottle on the table downstairs, the whiskey Uncle Ira hadn’t needed, as of course Richard knew. If his son could come back — if some magic could happen in the world just once, and his son could slip back through the secret door — he would say to him: “Richard, never mind about the whiskey. It’s all right.”

But there was, of course, no secret door; that was the single most important fact in the universe. Mistakes were final — the ladder against the barn, the story about the death of Uncle Ira that he shouldn’t have told. He felt himself fingering the snake’s head again, scraping the tip of his bobbed finger against the one remaining tooth, and a brief flush of some queer emotion went through him — not anger, exactly; perhaps a brief flicker of understanding. There was a wastebasket standing by the table in the corridor ahead of them, and he drew out the snake’s head and, when he came to the wastebasket, dropped it in. “Thorry,” he said aloud. Lewis glanced at him.

Ed Thomas’s door was partly closed. Lewis, after a moment’s thought, leaned over toward it and lightly knocked.

“Come in!” someone called, possibly Ed Thomas’s voice gone light.

Lewis pushed the door a little, stepping back from it as if he thought it might have a crate on top. “I’ll go see about Ginny,” he said.

James sucked his mouth in, his eyes darting in alarm once more, then nodded. “Ay-uh,” he said. “Well … I be here.”

Far down the corridor there was a middle-aged red-headed woman he thought he knew. She was heavy, rumpled from sleeplessness. She did not seem to see him.

3

(Ed’s Song)

No one had prepared him for how Ed Thomas looked. He was better, Lewis had said, and it was true he was out of the oxygen tent — it was over by the wall, ready to be used again if he should need it — but he was no better than he might be. His skin had gone transparent, the blood in his veins looked the blue of snowy shadows in January, his eyes had sunken, and one got the impression that in a few hours he’d lost weight. Though he was weak — his voice, above all, had lost energy — he lit up with pleasure as James came in. It was an effect difficult to pin to any physical particulars: though he was weak as a baby, too feeble even for a full-fledged smile, his mind, perhaps spirit, seemed as lively as ever, locked inside.

“James, boy,” he said, almost a whisper. “Hi golly there!”

“Mahnin, Ed.” He approached the bed timidly, his cap in the two hands in front of him like a rabbit’s, chin arching over it, meek as Ethan Allen when Jedediah Dewey got through with him for shootin at the churchbell, before Ticonderoga.

It was a single room — a chest, a lamp, a standing bed-table, some closets, a door to a bathroom, one chair, and one long window looking out at the Bennington Monument and the mountain beyond. Ed was in pajamas Ruth had brought him, dark red with black collar, Japanese-looking. His white hair was cocked up at curious angles; along the hairline there were tiny beads of sweat. He held out his hand for James to shake, though neither one of them was a hand-shaker, and both would have thought it, any other time, affected, citified, and morally dubious, like the smiles of a salesman. Ed made an effort to squeeze heartily; the effect showed only on his face.

“Hi golly,” he said again. “Lewis told me he’d trick you up here!”

“Didn’t take him no trickin, Ed. Ith good to thee you better.”

“Sorry bout the way I went and crumpled there.” Ed smiled feebly and slightly shook his head. “Own damn fault. Thirty years they been tellin me to quit those cigars.”

James met his eyes, tasted his lips, getting courage up, then changed his mind and looked down.

“Damned embarrassin to be sick,” Ed said. “Raises hob with the fahmwork. But then—” He rolled his eyes toward the window without turning his head. “I guess if I ain’t made a fortune by now, I might’s well tell it to the bees.”

“You know how it ith in Vermont,” James said. “Mebby neth year.”

Ed nodded, half-smiled. “Mebby.” For a moment he closed his eyes. When he opened them he said, “I spose you’re hopin that boy Lewis will take over the fahm for you, one day.”

“I dunno. Don’t much matter. I put him in my will — after Thally.” He smiled, seeing the irony in that, and glanced at Ed. “I thould have cut off that ole woman without a thin dime.”

Ed smiled back. “It’s a funny world,” he said.

James nodded thoughtfully, pushing his hands into his overalls pockets, then abruptly shook his head. “That Thallyth the Devilth own thtepmother,” he said.

As if he’d heard something completely different — or as if he knew James had meant something different — he said, “She was a beautiful woman all right.” His voice all at once had turned surprisingly sad. He rolled his head sideways to look more comfortably at the monument and mountain. James said nothing, hardly knowing what to say, and after a time Ed said, “I’ll be sorry to miss the elections on TV.”