John Gardner - October Light

It wasn’t much, as captains’ cabins go. Between the head of the bunk and the washstand opposite, the communicating door to the chartroom swung open and shut with the motion of the boat.

Just as he was drawing back his head the Captain’s snoring changed, and a moment later Captain Fist jerked up. “Ah, Captain!” Captain Fist said. He stretched his eyes, tasted his mouth, coming the rest of the way up out of sleep.

“Now wait a minute,” Peter Wagner said. A merry, queerly boyish and indifferent indignation surged up in him, then dissolved in the general warmth and light, the end-to-end-of-the-universe dazzle of love. Now he was certain of what he’d suspected before: it was not mere good humor that had made the woman, and then Mr. Nit, call him “Captain.” Something curious was going on.

“Just dozed off for a minute,” Captain Fist said, “while I was waiting for you to awaken.” He chuckled, horselike, and whether it was evil or just apologetic, Peter Wagner couldn’t tell. The Captain threw his legs over the side of the bunk — he was fully dressed except for his shoes and hat — and pushed up into sitting position. He swept white hair away from his eyes and put his hat on. “Captain, let me show you around,” he said, and grotesquely smiled.

“Now hang on,” Peter Wagner said. Still half-grinning, he clenched one fist, then relaxed it. Though he knew better, he said, “What’s this ‘Captain’ business?”

“Why, my dear boy!” Captain Fist exclaimed. He got up and staggered to the door to take Peter Wagner’s hand. “You agreed! The whole crew shook hands to it!” His smile was like a snake’s. He even weaved a little, head thrown forward. It was true that they’d all shook hands on something. Peter Wagner smiled uncertainly and waited.

“Let me show you around the ship,” the Captain said.

Discounting the rotten smell and the dirt, the chartroom was standard: chart rack on the ceiling, chart table to the right with drawers underneath, etc. The two compasses were stuck, the protractor and parallel ruler on the chart table were museum pieces, and the ship’s sextant was so old its silver scale had been worn down to brass. The chronometer in its padded box was not running.

“Everything all right?” the Captain asked nervously.

For the first time in months — unless it had happened last night, when he was stoned — Peter Wagner laughed, without irony, from the heart. He went back through the connecting door to the Captain’s cabin and out onto the bridge. He was still laughing, like a boy, like a bridegroom. The Captain came behind him, worried, his fingertips stuck in his pockets. “Is everything all right?” he said again. His back was so crooked his head came straight out of his chest.

“Where are we?” Peter Wagner asked, still grinning, brimming with childish brainless joy.

“ I don’t know that,” the Captain said.

He laughed again. He took the binoculars from the shelf where they had been lying for, perhaps, years. They were so moldy they worked like tandem kaleidoscopes, but he wasn’t really looking for anything anyway, so he peered into them, facing first one direction, then another. “How in hell do you usually make it clear to Mexico?” he asked.

His smile was perhaps infectious. In any case, the Captain grinned back. “We stick close to shore, normally. But that’s dangerous, of course. Now that we’ve got you, Captain—”

As nearly as Peter Wagner could tell, without compass or stars, they were heading due west. He said, “How long we been out?”

“All night,” the Captain said, and smiled again.

“And you expect,” he said — but he couldn’t finish, because a fit of laughter took him once more, so severe that he had to bend double and hold out the binoculars to the Captain for fear of dropping them.

“Is everything all right?” the Captain said.

“Everything’s wonderful!” Peter Wagner said. “I’m going below.” Another laughing fit. “Let me know when we get to Japan.” He started for the hatch.

The Captain stared after him without a word, leaning on his cane with both hands, for perhaps three seconds. Then abruptly, angrily, he called out, “See here!”

Peter Wagner turned, looked at the furious old cockroach, and again bent over laughing.

“See here!” he said again — a roar, this time. “You’re the Captain of this vessel, boy! You’re responsible!”

Peter Wagner went on laughing, staring down the bore of the Captain’s pistol. Young male chimpanzees in love, he’d read somewhere, sometimes went without eating for days, in their jubilant stupor, until they fainted. The pistol was shaking; the Captain was in a fury. And that, for some reason, was so funny that Peter Wagner sank to his knees. “My dear Captain,” he gasped and, after thinking about it, went down on his hands and then over on his back, rolling like a bear. “My dear Captain, we’re all—” His body convulsed, and though at first he had been at least partly clowning, by now the laughter was in such earnest that he couldn’t catch his breath. “All dead men!” He hooted with laughter. The pistol hit his face. He laughed and laughed, though now he was crying too.

“He’s crazy,” Mr. Nit said. “We’re lost in the Pacific with a lunatic.”

Captain Fist hit him with the pistol again, but not as hard as before; he was feeling unsure of himself.

And now Mr. Goodman was there, Peter Wagner made out, peeking through weeping, nearly closed eyes.

“Let me talk to him,” Mr. Goodman said. No one answered, and Mr. Goodman kneeled down beside him. “Mr. Wagner?” he said.

Peter Wagner smiled, groaned, felt himself at the edge of another laughing or maybe crying fit, and caught himself.

“Mr. Wagner, sir,” Mr. Goodman said. “I understand your feeling, since you wanted to kill yourself anyway and we seem to be playing right into your hands. But Mr. Wagner, I beg you to think a minute. We’re family men, Mr. Nit and I. What will become of our children? Think about it, sir. And then too, there’s Jane, who’s a fine young woman and counting on you. If we go down, sir—” he paused, for some reason flustered. Peter Wagner smiled, or grimaced — he could hardly have said himself which it was — and the Captain moved his pistol to within inches of his nose. Mr. Nit bent over, holding out his billfold. There was a picture of a wall-eyed girl of six or seven. Mr. Goodman got out his billfold too. He had three boys, two girls, and two cats. He lived in Sausalito, up on the mountain. Even the headache where the old man had hit him couldn’t hold down Peter Wagner’s spirits. He was reminded, by the way they were holding out those snapshots, of something else he’d read about those chimpanzees. When the leader males had a fresh kill of monkeys and young baboons, the rest of the chimps would approach and beg for morsels. They’d touch the meat and the faces of the males, whimpering and hoo ing, holding out their hands, palms up, in supplication. Grandly (sometimes) the males would drop food into the outstretched hands. Such was life’s generosity.

Peter Wagner closed his eyes, and even now the dream that had proved no dream filled the world with dazzle. “We’re on the Ship of Death,” he said. “The Lord be with us.” Another line, he remembered, from the novel about the hoax.

Captain Fist cocked his pistol, but Mr. Goodman bent down closer. “Why?” he said. “Why?”

“Metaphysically,” Peter Wagner said, leering, tears still falling, “that’s a difficult question. But in practical terms, you’re way out at sea with no radio, no telegraph, no compass that works, no sailors, and no pilot.”

“You be our pilot!” Mr. Goodman said.