John Gardner - October Light

By now the pink had nearly faded from the clouds, and the mountain had settled to the various reds, yellows, purples, dark greens, and browns of high autumn in Vermont. She did love autumn. Always had.

She could last on apples — they were big, juicy Winesaps — as long as he could last, too stupid or set in his ways to cook a vegetable or nibble at a fruit. She remembered how sorry she’d felt for him when she came, seeing him doubled over with the constipation cramps. Sally smiled.

She found her place in the book, got her pillows adjusted, and settled down serenely to her reading.

3

IN WONG CHOP’S RESTAURANT

Captain Johann Fist was a terrifying old man. Sometimes at night when he climbed into an occupied taxi by mistake people would glance at him once and have a stroke. Jane did not like him, by any means, but she was not so childish as to blame him for things he couldn’t help. He was an Aries, born with Saturn in the ascendent. “He’s an unfortunate man,” she’d written to her mother, feeling it was better not to give too much detail. “He has no family, no friends, not even a pet — though he used to have a parrot, he tells me, but it bit him. I pray for his soul, but I don’t really think it will help much.”

Jane was a wonderful letter writer, for which her mother was grateful. Every time she got a chance, relaxing out at sea, she would write a good long letter to her mother or, sometimes, as they called him, Uncle Fred. She never said what she was thinking; just loving chat and news. She would put all her letters in envelopes and stamp them, and the first time the Indomitable put in, she would mail them all off — all she could still find. Sometimes there were nearly a hundred in a shipment. Her mother was right to cherish them. Since it would be awkward to tell what the real news was, Jane made things up. Sometimes, when she was tired, she copied things from books.

Tonight, walking with the Captain toward Chinatown (he had a habit of hurrying from doorway to doorway, peering around corners before daring to step out), Jane’s mind was troubled. Perhaps she had made a mistake somewhere, she was beginning to think. She had been all her life a decisive girl, quick to think and act, though she fooled people by her casual smile and the innocence of her large blue eyes. She had come to California and had sized up the situation instantly: Aeronautics, that was where the future was at. You could tell by just glancing at the black, roaring sky. She’d gone to a place where they gave flying lessons, had craftily extracted two twenty-dollar bills from the hundred dollars Uncle Fred had given her — a whole lot of money for a hired man to have put by in Nebraska — and she had set the forty dollars on the counter and said to the man, “Can you teach me to fly for that much? It’s all I’ve got.” The man had grinned. “Not a chance, lady.” He was a red-headed, freckle-faced man with a dimple. She’d looked at him like a lost child, letting her innocent blue eyes do their work — besides he was the kind of man you couldn’t help but like — then had slowly drawn back the money from the counter and, like a lady she’d seen in the movies one time, had tucked it in her bosom, giving him a little glimpse. She let a tear slide down her cheek. “Oh hell,” he’d said. She’d let him put his arm around her when he was talking about buttons and gauges, and once or twice she’d made no remark when his gloved hand came to rest, as if accidentally, on her thigh. She’d proved no ordinary student. Breaking horses in Nebraska, she’d developed one especially valuable trait: she never panicked. She was looping the loops in no time, and he’d given in to her every new, more outrageous demand — instrument training, multi-engine … She’d paid him well enough. As soon as he’d agreed to let her go to twin engines, she’d let him initiate her sexually, so to speak. She owed him at least that. He was a Sagittarius. She’d been eighteen when all this happened — four years ago now. It was two days after she’d gotten her air-transport rating that she’d met Captain Fist.

She was leaving the airport, walking toward the bus stop, when she saw a billfold lying on the sidewalk, the edges of some bills showing. She bent down, hardly thinking, and just as she was about to close her hand on the billfold, it moved. It moved about four feet, off the sidewalk into the grass, and stopped again. She felt her face going beet red: someone was pulling it by a string, children no doubt, as a joke on her. Any minute she’d hear their laughter. But though she waited, grinning at the bushes where she knew they must be, no laughter came. Cautiously, tentatively, secretly baffled though she continued to smile, she went over to the billfold and reached down for it again. Again it moved. “Now look here,” she said to the bushes. Still nothing. She got a brilliant idea. Quickly, but as if indifferently, she walked over to where the billfold was now, glanced up at the sky as if to see if it might rain, and, faster than a rattlesnake, stamped her foot down beside the billfold where the string would have to be. Sure enough, the billfold bumped into her foot and stopped. She reached down to grab it.

“Your name’s Jane, I believe,” a voice said. The voice was so horrible she felt faint. It was the kind of voice cobras would have if they talked. Every leaf of the bush was suddenly distinct, every branch sharply outlined. She stared in stark terror, perfectly certain by the prickling of her skin that in a minute she was going to die. The birds had stopped singing. There was no sound anywhere. She saw herself as she would be shown in the newspaper photograph, naked in the bushes, or headless, lying in a pool of blood. In a few short seconds, she had crossed from the world of people to whom nothing ever happens into the world of perverts, maniacs, murderers — and she, she was the victim!

Then her heart stopped dead. She was staring straight into two pale eyes, unmistakably the eyes of a serpent — unblinking, dusty.

“Don’t be frightened,” the horrible voice said. “You’re a lovely girl. Nobody’s going to hurt you!”

She wanted to get up, run from him; but her muscles wouldn’t move. “What do you want?” she whispered.

“I want to make you an offer,” the voice said. “My name’s Johann Fist. I’d like to make you rich.”

She said nothing, breathing hard. She was giddy.

“I want you to fly my airplane. You wouldn’t believe how well I’m willing to pay you.”

“Why?” she said. “Where?”

“To Mexico and back, on regular runs. It’s Paradise, Mexico. I’ll pay you a thousand dollars a run. You’ll be richer than God.” He laughed, a heavy rippling sound like sewers overflowing.

She thought about it. It was a lot of money. She was young, beautiful, full of ambition; also, she had her relatives to think about. They’d scrimped and saved all their lives for her. If God hadn’t meant for her to take this opportunity, why would He have sent it? Also, a thousand dollars was a lot of money. She peered into the dusty, unblinking eyes. “Is it illegal?”

“Come, come, my dear.”

She was satisfied. It would be different, she reflected, if she agreed to it knowing it was illegal. “I’ll do it,” she said. She laughed.

And so she had done it. It was a fat brown World War II cargo plane so big you could drive huge trucks up into it. It creaked and shuddered with every gust, and the engines were so noisy she had to wear ear-plugs; but it flew. Or flew until one awful night over the Mojave. It was their fourth run. Some noise came over the radio — it didn’t work — and the next thing she knew the United States Air Force was shooting at them. “Keep driving,” Captain Fist said, his revolver at her head. All four engines were on fire. “I can’t,” she said. “Look out the window.” He looked out, saw the engines, sighed, and put the gun away. They parachuted down, Captain Fist, Mr. Goodman, Mr. Nit, and Jane. The plane crashed a half-mile upwind of them, and as they stood, then sat, then lay, smelling the burning marijuana, they became close friends, for the time being, and told each other the stories of their lives and in the end made love. She told of Uncle Fred — sweet fat old Italian who’d been derailed on the way to the California vineyards and refused, after that, to budge from Tomb City, Nebraska. “Dis America, she’s-a beautiful! She da rock of Ages,” Uncle Fred liked to say. He had a suitcase full of Caruso records. Her mother made him play them in the chicken house. Toward morning, as they were stumbling hand in hand across the Mojave, startling bats and tortoises and owls, Captain Fist said, “What we really need is a boat.” They’d gotten the boat, for two thousand dollars, from the California Salvage Corporation.