John Gardner - October Light

James’ eyebrows lifted.

“Never live to see ’em,” Ed said, not making much of it. “Man knows about these things, sometimes. Got no reason to complain, never said I do, but I always enjoyed a good election.”

“Now wait a minute, Ed—”

He waved it away, half smiling. “No, never mine that. They’ll let me inta Heaven. Only real sin they can lay on me is I never did a dollar’s worth of sin in my life.” He smiled again. “Oh, I’ve thought a few. Maybe they’ll count that.”

The Bennington Monument was creamy white, with the sunlight falling full on it. On the crest of its high hill, surrounded by mountains, it ruled the valley. Despite its pure color, its imposing height, it was an ugly structure, most people with a modicum of sense maintained. James Page was among them, though he loved the thing anyway, patriot that he was, and in fact thought it fitting — massive, countrified, a towering but somewhat orotund obelisk constructed not of Vermont marble but of New York State limestone, plain and raw as the people memorialized: Col. Stark, for instance, one of James’ ancestors, famous for standing on a farmer’s pair of fence-bars and sighting the enemy and yelling to his men: “There’s the British, and they’re ours, or tonight Molly Stark sleeps a widow!” Mount Anthony was grayish blue to the west of it, here and there a patch of green, or a single tree with yellow leaves still on it, a poplar maybe, among the last to go. Overhead, the sky was bright blue.

Ed rolled his head back — lying with it turned to look out was too much strain — and closed his eyes. He went on talking, and James Page listened, unable to think of a word he could say except lies, and it wasn’t a good time for lies.

“I always enjoyed a good election,” he said. “It was better in the old days, when you and I was young. There’d be bunting in the villages, streets full of buggies, some fancy politician come to hammer on our ears. You remember the election of nineteen twelve? Teddy Roosevelt came and made a speech there in Bennington, that was the year of the Bull Moose campaign. I dunno what he said, I was too young to listen, but I remember, by tunkit, that man was big. You look at his picture, you’d think he was some little bespectacled doctor or college professor, and you read all the stories of how he overcame sickness and what-not, you might get the idea he was one of those little Napoleons proving his stuff. But hi golly, that man stood a whole head taller than John G. McCullough in his prime, and more solid than one of George Ellis’s Marmons. I member that same year President William Howard Taft came to Manchester, fat as a hippopotamus — played golf with my uncle — I member the President had a floppy white hat. He was no good, that Taft. See it in his eyes. Back-slappin hand-claspin stogie-puffin bandit, so fat if you’d put a wick in him, you could have burned him for a candle.” He smiled.

“I member one year at election time there was a man came to town had a white bear.”

“I remember that!” James Page said, startled.

“You oughtta remember it,” Ed said with a laugh — his eyes remained closed—“it was dahn near the end of your Ariah.”

James frowned. “Now that pot I don’t remember.”

“You don’t? Why son of a dog! Ariah was thirteen years old at the time. Prettiest thing in all the Shires. Eyes blue as skies in October and yellah yellah hair. Got darker later, but when Ariah was thirteen, it was still about the color of thrashin straw. She was over at her aunt’s on the Monument Road, there by the Drake place, and she got it in her mind she’d take a ride in the buggy. Hoss they had was skittish, but Ariah was pretty good at handlin the thing, and her aunt never gave it two thoughts, I guess. So they hitched up the buggy and away she went.

“Half an hour later, just about time it was gettin down toward dark, aunt was out in the yahd and what should she behold but that man with that cussed white bear go by, bear sittin there in the buggy-seat just like a human, right next to the man. Well the aunt knew pretty well what that hoss was gonna think when he looked at that bear, so she goes flyin down the road yelling ‘Ha-a-a-lp! Ha-a-a-lp!’ and every neighbor from far or near come flyin to the rescue. Happened my father was there in the vicinity in his trap, and me there beside him, and as soon as he leahnt what was happenin, away we flew to overtake ’em.

“Well we never saw the bear, as it happened; all we saw was that hoss and little Ariah come flyin down the road towahds us, and my father whipped around and went fast he could go in the same direction as that runaway hoss, and finally he captured it. Found out later what happened was, the man had heard Ariah’s hoss comin, when she was comin through the shale line on Monument Road, and he’d run his buggy up in some weeds and got the bear down and sat on the thing till the hoss went by. But Ariah’s hoss had smelled the bear, and that was ah it took. You fahgot that story?”

“No,” James said, “I remember now.” His eyes had filled with tears, though he was not aware of any feeling.

“Those was fine elections,” Ed Thomas said and nodded, still not opening his eyes. “But they’s too many people for such elections now. I don’t begrudge it. I like those TV elections too. Believe you me! I member the John F. Kennedy election. First time I ever understood what was really goin on at those things — cameras pokin out every cranny and nook, talkin to delegates when they was drunk and half crazy — it was an eye-opener. Demonstrations on the floor, they would’ve fooled me easy, but there was Walter Cronkite explainin what was happenin, or Huntley or what-have-you, and I tell you it made me more excited than I ever was before about a public election. People groan abut the modahn world, but let me tell you, I’ve been proud, sometimes, watchin the elections.

“People scoff at TV. I b’lieve you do, James. But let me tell you, we don’t vote like we use to. Whole country could be swayed by a tame white bear, or one time three hosses that supposably could talk. It was fun, by tunkit, but it’s over; the world’s grown up. People are thinkin and ahguin like they never did previous to this present age, and it’s the idiot-box more’n ennathin else that made it happen.

“Well, I’ll miss the election.” He shook his head, opening his eyes for a moment, then letting them close again. James gazed out at the monument, waiting, hoping for something, he could hardly have said what. He wiped his wet eyes.

“I’ll tell you some other things I’ll miss, if you ask me.”

James stirred himself to ask, but Ed went on:

“I’ll miss walkin out these last days of October, when the land’s dyin and the sky’s oversharp, and findin where the deer are on their hind legs pickin wild apples. And I’ll miss winter, by guard. I’ve never gotten over how much snow can fall in just five short months of winter. Never mind November, stot with the dark time, December. Blackest month of the year it is, and steadily increasin in blackness as the month draws on. Vermont’s a lot farther north than most people realize, ye know. A man I knew left the State a few years ago and moved south. Where he went was Canada, city of London, Ontario, to be precise, which is a hundred and twenty-five miles south of where he stotted, which was St. Albans, Vermont. If he’d gone on to Kingsville, he would’ve been two hundred miles south, swelterin in the sun.

“But the dahkness at least increases in a known and predictable way, and furthermore, by the end of the month the days reach their shottest and stot growin again. The cold’s trickier. Month begins gently, but one day — I’ve known it to be as early as the fifth and as late as the twentieth — you wake up cold and pull up another blanket. No use — you’re still cold. In the mahnin you look at the thehmometer and it’s eight below. Yestehday the Walloomsac was open water; today it’s solid ice. Then January. That’s the month of the snow. I don’t mean more snow falls, because it doesn’t — so cold that even the clouds lock up tight — but there’s snow there always, not a speck of bare ground, nothin alive but some deer and rabbits and snowmobiles.” He opened his eyes to meet James’. “Lot of people don’t care much for snowmobiles,” he said accusingly, “and I grant you they’re loud, besides nocturnal. But I tell you this: I use to go lookin at the scenery round my place on skis or snowshoes. Now I just walk in the snowmobile tracks. Funny thing about snowmobiles. They’re stupid little animals, but they know where the sights are, better than a deer.