John Gardner - October Light

“If you had any sense, you’d drop the silly book and get some sleep,” she said, more or less to her reflection.

The trees in the front yard were motionless and dark — rather strangely dark considering that by daylight they were all in their brightest autumn foliage. Over by the fence something moved. She jumped. It was nothing, just a chicken, yet even after she’d identified the movement she was uneasy, as if like her crazy uncle Ira, long years ago, she believed an animal might be more than it seemed. She considered reading on, never mind the two pages, then decided to get into her nightie first. She started for the bathroom to wash her hands and face, and remembered only when she pulled at the knob that her brother had locked her door. She stood motionless, sudden hot anger flushing through her, then breathed deeply and drew back her hand. She needed to use the toilet, but she was a woman of stronger than average will, as her mother had been, and her grandmother; she could last all night, if necessary. And in any case, when her niece came home all this foolishness would end.

She undressed, slightly trembling, holding in her wrath, hung her dress in the closet, put her nightie on, tucked her hankie in her sleeve, put her teeth in the waterglass, and got back into bed with her book. She breathed deeply again. Still no sound downstairs. She read:

… two figures on the deck of the fishingboat, waving, pointing at the water. While they were still shouting, their boat began to move. Soon the searchlight picked out nothing but tumbling fog.

Then something happened. It felt at first, to Dr. Alkahest, like sunstroke, or like one of those attacks one gets sometimes when one is short of vitamins, or unduly keyed up. The canvas hoses and polished brass fittings, the studded bulkhead, the too-clean deck, the rail, the Guardsmen’s uniforms, took on an intensified, unnatural “presence,” in the painter’s special sense — the not quite alarming but startling thereness of normal vision in early childhood. He snatched at his flask, believing he might faint, but even as he did so his refined senses closed on the delicate impression as an ordinary man would take hold of an axe. Then, like a violent eruption in his mind, the whole thing came clear. It was the smell of cannabis! It churned up out of the sea beside the ship as if the whole belly of the world had disgorged it. It lifted him heavenward like a scent of new-mown hay. It brought back his childhood, his first kiss, his Summa Cum Laude. It made him want to sing. He made a tentative peeping noise and, after a moment, crazed by the narcotic, he did, in fact, sing. His head fell back, his mouth gaped wide. Io Pagliacci! Sailors up near the bow turned and looked at him. He wavered. He bit off the note, apologetically leered. He hummed to himself, choked off even that, fumbled with the cap of the flask, and drank. He hummed again. He giggled, then immediately put on a sober face. His whole reason for coming on the cutter had dropped out of his mind. “I’m so happy!” he thought. He shook his head — his hands shook too — in amazement. But now the officer was coming toward him, looking rather odd, and he got hold of himself in earnest. He put away the flask. “Dee dee dee DUM” he sang, then finally, irrevocably, stopped himself. Even so, the scent was everywhere, that beatific smell. He could smell it through his pores. It was incredibly like hay — but hay transmuted, glorified, dubbed Knight. Surely they too must notice! He’d smelled pot before, of course, and had thought it quite pleasant, as the smell of weeds went. But this was something else. They must have had tons of it aboard, those “fishermen.” God bless them, he thought. God bless them every one! To his right and behind him, out toward the sea, foghorns moaned, and, somewhere toward land, a bell clinked four times. Tears filled his eyes. Pot was in the wind! God was in his glory! What sport for the Sons of Liberty! He wept.

The officer with the bullhorn approached him, coming slowly, sliding his hand on the rail as would a child. He seemed not quite sure what to say, if anything, about old Dr. Alkahest’s behavior. The officer was a big, burly man, an Italian or Greek, but in his confusion he looked like a shy, self-conscious boy. Dr. Alkahest dabbed away tears with his hankie. He thought of mentioning the scent, then, suddenly shrewd, thought he’d wait. The officer stopped in front of the wheelchair, shook his head, leaned on the railing, thought a moment, then shook his head again. He jerked his head toward the bridge, finally, and said: “Suicide.”

Dr. Alkahest nodded, then remembered to look grave.

The man shook his head. “We get hundreds of ’em off that bridge, ye know.” He had a muscular face, small squinting eyes, a dimple. He pressed the bell of the bullhorn against his beer-drinker’s stomach, squinting harder, and cocked his head. “You believe in flying saucers?” he asked.

“I beg your pardon?” Dr. Alkahest said. He smiled. The merest flicker.

“It all ties up,” the man said. He pursed his lips, then nodded.

Dr. Alkahest tapped his fingertips soundlessly on the arms of his wheelchair. His skull eye-holes in their steel-rimmed glasses looked past the man’s head into the drifting fog, and in what sounded in his own ears like a faraway voice, as if he were reciting some poem he’d learned many years ago, he said, “The sea, in its infinite gentleness, carries all things, good and evil, shit or otherwise.”

The officer glanced at him.

Dr. Alkahest smiled, breathed deep. “It submits to all gods.”

The officer glanced down, this time pursing his lips so hard it made his nose move.

But Dr. Alkahest smiled on, frail, fragile fingertips tapping the silver opera glasses that rested on the purple lap rug. He moved his head forward and down slowly, pursuing anfractuous questions of philosophy. He resisted with all his might the temptation to hum a little ditty, though it boomed in his head: Have some Madeira, my dear! It’s really much nicer than beer! “I’ve often reflected,” he said gently, thoughtfully, “that we should all of us try to be more tolerant. Close our noisy mouths and accept divergent lifestyles. After all, that’s America! Truth has many faces, even changes her mind. We organize, you know, we establish splendid laws, but—” He paused, breathed more deeply, nostrils trembling. “New men will come, and not improbably with new ideas; at this very instant the causes productive of such change are strongly at work.”

The officer mulled it over a moment, peering into the fog. At last he said …

More pages were missing. Sally Abbott looked up, listening, eyes narrowed, then sighed irritably and looked back at the book. “We’re our own worst enemies,” Horace had often said. (Now what on earth had brought that to mind?) She discovered that a line from the book was idly repeating itself in her head. Close our noisy mouths and accept divergent lifestyles. Horace would no doubt have agreed with that, though for reasons not quite pure. (She was no child; she could accept impurity of motivation. All of us hold back. We all “hedge our bets,” as her friend Estelle’s husband Ferris used to say.) As he grew into middle age — though he’d once been a talkative man — Horace had fallen more and more into the habit of silence, especially with her. When he came home from the office he’d do nothing but listen to his music and read, though perhaps inside his mind he talked endlessly to himself. Not that he’d been sullen! She’d never known a more contented man. He was quiet, merely. Men frequently grew more quiet and withdrawn as they got older. It had been the opposite with her. She’d started out a quiet one, but now in her old age she liked nothing better than a little conversation when the mailman came, or the insurance man, or when she met old friends at Powers’ Market.