John Gardner - October Light

“Well it shouldn’t have been left to you,” she yelled, “it’s not fair and you know it. Why should one child get everything and the other one nothing?”

“Sally was rich. She had her dentist.” He sneered childishly.

“Well she don’t now, does she? If they’d known he’d die young and Aunt Sally would live on years and years past him, they’d have left it to you both. Fair’s fair.”

He was less confident, all at once. “Fair is fair and law is law,” he said.

“Shame on you!” she barked. She saw him wilt a little, puckering his wide, almost lipless mouth, glancing left and right like a cornered rabbit; and furious though she was, her heart went out to the old maniac. He’d never in his life been a man to defend the indefensible, and both of them knew she had him dead to rights. He noticed he was holding the door open, letting in October, and abruptly closed it.

“Go let her out, Dad,” she said. A muscle was jerking in her right cheek, and with a start she realized that the exact same muscle was jerking in his. It for some reason gave her heart a wrench. She wanted to cry, throw her arms around him as she’d done as a little girl. Oh God, she thought, things are so terrible! Tears squirted into her eyes. She thought then: Christ, where are my cigarettes?

He crossed his arms across his chest, fingers on each hand hanging over his elbows, thumbs hooked inside — crooked, stiff fingers, with huge, arthritic knuckles; a farmer’s fingers: knuckles barked and scratched, one finger cut off just below the fingernail, from an argument with a baler. She remembered when his hair, snow white, had been brown as shoepolish. He said nothing, biting his lips together and not meeting her eyes, staring a little cross-eyed at the yellow wall beside her. He could stand that way all year if he took a firm notion.

“Dad,” she said still more sternly, “go let her out.”

“No sir!” he said, and snapped up his eyes to meet hers. “Sides, she be asleep.” He turned and stalked straight across the room to the cupboard, practically stamping in those iron-toed shoes, and got a glass out. He looked at it critically, as if expecting Aunt Sally would have left it streaked and spotted, though a better housekeeper never lived, and he knew it. He took it to the icebox and got out ice from the blue plastic tray, then carried the ice-filled glass to the upright cupboard in the corner where his whiskey was.

“Don’t you think you’ve had enough?” she asked.

He tipped his head sideways and stared at her in rage. “I’ve had one damn glass ah night and that’s ah,” he said. It was true, she knew. For one thing he’d never told a lie in his life, and for another he was not a hard drinker; he’d been through it and he’d stopped. She bit her lips together, watching him pour the whiskey, then the water. What time is it? she wondered, and where the hell did I leave my cigarettes? She’d had them, she remembered, just before she went over to the couch to pick up Dickey to carry him to the car. She saw her hand putting them on the fireplace mantel. Without a word, she opened the living-room door and went to get them. Just as she was picking them up — Dickey was fast asleep — the phone rang. Lewis, she thought. Oh, Jesus.

“That’ll be fer you,” her father called from the kitchen.

The phone was on the murdered television. She shook out a cigarette as she picked up the receiver. “Hello?” she said. She got a match out and hurriedly struck it. On the cover there was a picture of the Boston Tea Party. Everywhere you looked, it was the Bicentennial. Did people have no fucking shame? “Hello?” she said again. Her hands were shaking.

“That you there, Ginny?” Lewis asked. He sounded baffled and only half awake, as if it were she who’d called him.

“Hi, Lewis,” she said. She took a quick suck at the cigarette. Thank God for cigarettes, she thought, and then, thinking of her father and Aunt Sally, Thank God for cancer! Softly, trying not to wake Dickey, she said, “Honey, I’m still up at Dad’s. There’s been a little trouble, and—”

“I can’t hear you too good,” Lewis called to her.

“There’s been a little trouble,” she said again, more loudly.

“Trouble?” he called.

“It’s nothing serious. Dad and Aunt Sally—” She stopped, a sudden chill running up her spine. It took her a moment to register the cause: out in the yard, the car had died.

“Ginny? You still there?” Lewis asked.

She took a deep drag on the cigarette. “Yes, I’m still here,” she said.

“Ginny, your cah’s died,” her father called in to her.

She clenched her left fist and rolled her eyes up.

Lewis asked, “Are you all right, Ginny?” Not exactly critical — that wasn’t his nature — more in the way of offering information that might be new to her, he said, “It’s half past one in the mahnin.”

“Yes, I know,” she said. “Look, sweetheart, I’ll be home just as quick as I can. You go to sleep.”

“Dickey’s not sick, is he?”

“No no, Dickey’s fine. You go on to sleep.”

“Well ah right, sweet-hot,” Lewis said. “Don’t be too long.” It was not, of course, an order; he never gave orders, even to his dogs. It was merely good advice. “Goodnight, then, sweet-hot.”

“Yes, goodnight, sweetie.”

When she replaced the receiver and glanced over at Dickey, he had his eyes open, watching her.

“You go back to sleep,” she said, and pointed at him. He clicked his eyes shut.

Back in the kitchen with her father, Ginny said, “Dad, are you going to unlock that door or am I?”

“Must be you are, if ennabody does,” he said. He pursed his lips and looked down into the glass in his hand. He swirled the ice around.

It wasn’t much but it was more than she’d hoped for. “Where’s the key?” she said.

“Likely as not it’s in there in the dish on the TV,” he said, “where it always is.”

She went and got the key, then came back into the kitchen and started for the door to the stairway. As she was opening it she paused and looked at him and asked, “What did she do that you thought was so terrible?”

“Talked,” he said.

“Talked,” she echoed. She waited. She listened to the hum of the clock over the stove.

“Said a lot of things not fit for a young child’s ears,” he said. He took a sip of the whiskey. He held the glass awkwardly, elbow straight out, as if he’d be a bit more comfortable with a dipper.

“Like for instance?”

“It’s not woth discussin.”

“I’d really be interested to know,” Ginny said, eyebrow cocked. She tossed the key in her hand, the same hand that held the cigarette. But she knew that smug, self-righteous look. Doomsday could come and go, and he’d stand in the wind like a cornshock and tell her no more.

“You can lead a hoss to water but you can’t make him drink,” he said.

“Or a mule,” she said. She started up the stairs. When she’d unlocked the door she turned the handle and gave it a tug, then pushed inward. Nothing happened. It was bolted on the inside.

“Aunt Sally?” she called softly.

No answer.

She thought a moment, then rapped lightly on the door. She tipped her head to listen. “Aunt Sally?” she called again.

“I’m asleep,” Aunt Sally called.

“Aunt Sally you’re not asleep, you’re talking.”

“I talk in my sleep.”

Ginny waited. Nothing. After a time she called, “Aunt Sally, your light’s on. I can see it under the door.” Again she stood with her head tipped, listening like a bird. She thought she heard the floor creak; otherwise nothing.

“You’re both crazy,” she said.