John Gardner - October Light

“I quit,” she said. She felt reckless, suddenly pure and invulnerable. Astonishingly, the stranger really had become her redeemer, had brought her proud, wicked heart to submission. She stood up, radiantly beautiful, she knew — it was exactly like a thing she’d seen on the Wednesday Night Movie. She was free of him. As free — even if he whipped out his pistol and shot her dead—

“Sit down,” he hissed. “Don’t be stupid.”

“Never!” she said. Then, glancing at his eyes, she reconsidered; it might be best not to overdo it. “I need to go to the ladies’,” she said, and slipped her glasses off.

As soon as the ladies’ room door closed behind her she was up on the sink in a flash and climbing out the window. It opened onto a flat roof high above the street. The lights were beautiful, below: deep reds, sharp blues and greens. It was as if she were seeing the neon signs for the first time, all transmuted to a new beauty by the harsh ugliness of the roof with its clumsy chimneys and antennae, desert plants on a strange planet. She slipped her shoes off, to cross the roof more quietly. She felt light, as if born again. She’d gone only two steps when a blocky shape detached itself from the chimney.

“Good evening,” a voice said. She couldn’t see the man’s face, but his bow was Oriental. He had on a turban, or an incongruous silver Afro. She put on her glasses. In his right hand, casually stretched toward her, he had a knife. She went back to the Captain.

“Ah,” he said, “you’re back. As you see, dinner’s served.”

She sat down. “I’m not really hungry,” she said. She put her hands on the table, getting herself steady.

The Captain smiled. His teeth were like a carp’s. “Ah well,” he said.

It was still more than an hour before they could return to the boat. She thought frantically, snatching about for some stratagem; but there was no possibility of escape, he had her cold. Surely Mr. Goodman would never allow … But he would never know, she realized. He was as innocent as a baby. She would rush back, go below at once, and she would find … nothing. The body would be gone. Her eyes filled with tears. The poor man, she thought; but she was weeping for herself, the Nebraska farmgirl that was lost — ah, lost forever!

“You should read more philosophy,” Captain Fist said.

She listened to the queer, half-musical noises that were coming through the restaurant wall. Drums. Gongs. Tinkles. A long human wail. It sounded to her, in her troubled state, like some weird blood-sacrifice.

“Personally, I read philosophy all the time,” Captain Fist remarked. “Ask me about Hegel.”

She met his dusty, soulless eyes, as close together as shotgun barrels. “Evil man,” she whispered. “Wicked demon!”

“Eat your seaweed,” Captain Fist said. “Or whatever it is.” He sighed.

~ ~ ~

It was the end of a chapter.

Sally Abbott smiled. The book had improved, it seemed to her, though perhaps it was just that her mind was fresher, her brother’s attack on her receding in time and the morning clear and beautiful, crisp. She hadn’t spent a morning in bed reading since heaven knew when. She’d been missing something! Also, the battered old paperback was oddly comforting, though she couldn’t exactly put her finger on why. The impishness of it; perhaps it was that. The delicate way the writer mocked all those foolish things her brother James, among others, set such store by. The flag in Wong Chop’s restaurant — that was a wonderful touch! — and all those government spies! Or the stupid false piety of the girl from Nebraska! Ah, but hadn’t she known such people!

She smiled again, blessing the fine weather, the sunlit room. James would be livid, if he could know what she was reading, know what wickedness she was thinking. James was a Veteran — had gone off to World War II though he was nearly middle-aged and didn’t even have to, as a farmer. “Duty,” he said. He’d been a Seabee in the South Pacific. She poked her chin out, mimicking him, and saluted, then smiled at her antics and at James. Every Veterans Day, there he’d be in his ridiculous VFW cap — it was all that still fit, now that he was old and shrunken. He and Henry Stumpchurch would lead the parade, James, as the oldest, carrying the Colors of the United States of America (she saluted again), his eyes smouldering as if he imagined he was marching it through China. Henry Stumpchurch, a huge man, looking equally stern, would carry the flag of the VFW — he had enormous curling eyebrows and a round, bald head, sun- and windburnt below the sharp line of his normal wide, floppy hat; the skin above — revealed in near nakedness under the gray VFW service cap — was as pale as your bottom, boiled looking, like a cabbage. Behind them, grimly on the watch for Jews and Democrats, came William Peabody Partridge, Jr., and Samuel Denton Frost, and then the younger men, mostly Irishmen and Italians (Democrats!). The old ones thought of themselves as descendants of Vermont’s Green Mountain Boys. Her Horace had smiled. “That’s odd,” he’d said, all innocence. Round faced, cherubic. “I’d understood they were nearly all killed.” He’d wisely gone no further — James had come alert and was prepared to pounce — but she knew her husband’s full opinion, which he’d read in some book: after the Revolution, there was practically not a man left in all the East except cowards and Tories and, here and there, an Indian. Ethan Allen himself ended up with only twenty live men.

Oh yes, he was your True American, her brother James. He could be downright dangerous if you got him on the subject of immigrants, or workmanship, or almost anything else. More than once she and Horace had fallen silent before James Page’s wrath. More than once they’d had to sneak and lie to save young Richard from his opinions, especially when he’d been courting the Flynn girl—“an Irish and a Catholic,” as James had called her, his eyes bugging out with indignation. It was a tragic story; her brother would never know the half of it. It was mostly at their house, or at Horace’s office, that the two would tryst. She was eighteen, a tall, frail looking slip of a thing, with large, strange eyes and some queer Irish name — a beautiful girl except perhaps just a little bit knock-kneed — and when they met it was like iron and a magnet, you could feel the pull.

He was tall and shy, her nephew Richard. One year older than the girl. They would sit on the couch in the living room (Sally’s living room), far apart but holding hands, listening to the music, Horace smiling and nodding to the beat, and after a while her Horace would yawn and say, “I don’t know why I’m so tired tonight,” shaking his head as if it baffled him; and then, not long after, “Well, I give up. Sally, you ready for night-night?” Richard would lean forward, as if willing to go home, though you could see his reluctance all over his face, and as for the girl, she looked downright panicky. “No, no,” Horace would say, “don’t let me drive you off! It’s early yet.”

Once, when they were up in their room, sitting up in bed, side by side, Horace reading, she at her knitting, Sally had said: “Have you thought what would happen if James should come by some night and find them?”

He’d looked up over his glasses, staring straight ahead, and the strength of resolve she’d glimpsed that instant had frightened her. “I’ve considered it,” he said.

She’d breathed a little prayer that his resolve need not be tested.

She knew for certain, as it happened — Horace only guessed — what it was that they did down there alone. One night when she’d gone down for a glass of milk she’d glanced in at the two, half by accident — the music was still playing, the lights were turned low — and she’d seen that Richard was lying on top of her, she had her legs spread for him, though they both had all their clothes on. Her skirt was hiked up, just a foot or so, so that her knees showed. Richard’s face had been turned away, blond hair shining, so that he hadn’t seen her looking in. The Flynn girl hadn’t seen her either, at first. Her eyes were closed, her mouth slightly open. She was breathing heavily. If they weren’t making love Sally Abbott was hard put to find a better word. Then the Flynn girl’s eyes had popped open and stared straight at her, as wide and dark as the eyes of a deer. Her face was expressionless, helpless and resigned, her eyes like those of an animal surprised by a hunter and no place to turn, no course but surrender. Their eyes had met for a long moment, hers and the Flynn girl’s, and a mysterious emotion had passed through Sally, a recognition for which she had no words — a sudden hushed knowledge. Frail as she was, the Flynn girl was a woman, exactly as Sally was — for an instant it was as if they were the same woman — and Sally felt a thrill of, what? — perhaps love mixed with terror. Though he hadn’t been moving, so far as she could see, Richard seemed all at once more still than before, as if by some means, through the girl’s body, he’d become aware of her. Quickly, without a sound, Sally had fled like an evil shadow — that was how she felt — from the doorway.