John Gardner - October Light

Peter Wagner smiled blissfully and said nothing. They too were silent. At last he opened his eyes. The sea was serene; the sun directly overhead. Mr. Goodman’s look was full of idiotic woe.

Captain Fist said, “You’re a philosopher! ‘Metaphysically,’ you said. I’m a philosopher myself — phenomenologist!” He put his pistol away in clumsy haste, as if to cancel his ever having drawn it. He had his hands around Peter Wagner’s shoulders, pulling him up. “Help him up,” he hissed to Mr. Nit, “he’s a philosopher!”

Mr. Goodman looked reverent. His children were forgotten.

Peter Wagner sat up.

“We’ll do anything, sir,” Mr. Nit said. There were tears in his eyes. “Just tell us what to do!”

Peter Wagner sighed again. The sea was serene. “Fix the radio,” he suggested. “Take the compasses apart, to the last little screw, and clean them.” Mr. Nit jumped like a monkey and darted to the bridge.

“You’ll do it, then! You’ll save us!” Mr. Goodman cried.

Peter Wagner got to his feet slowly and shook his head. Impossible as it might seem, he felt peaceful, joyful, thinking of Jane — it was as if she had become the sea-smell, the sunlight, the rumbling and shuddering of the ship — and at the same time, he felt he had never been more depressed. Perhaps even that, it crossed his mind, was genetic. He was thinking again of those chimpanzees, generously giving food, and of the soldier throwing himself on the grenade, genetically chosen. “Kin selection,” it was called by sociobiologists. The family of the sacrificial lamb survived, saved by him, passing on his genes — the brothers and sisters, if the lamb had no daughters or sons — and so, little by little, the world grew more sublime and pathetic. And so now he had been chosen saviour of this groaning, floating little Eden. Saviour, not leader, there was no mistaking that, “Captain” him and “sir” him as they might. Pride and Damnation were their leader; agent: J. Faust. It was the Fausts of this world that the genes chose for kings and generals, black-hearted and soulless, infinitely cunning, cruel and selfish as bulls. And yet he’d chosen, or accepted the choice of his genes, Peter Wagner saw. He would take them to Mexico, to confront whatever law or competitive outlaws he must face there — had chosen just like that, without a flicker of thought, as it seemed he always chose. Fool! he thought, and thought no further.

In two hours the radio was fixed. Four hours later the compasses were clean and Mr. Nit was working on an electro-magnet which would remagnetize the compasses and serve as a compass itself in case of emergency. There was no point in fixing the engine room telegraph. Any message that came would be Greek to the gold-winged angel down below. There was a speaking tube, not very effective since it had an obstruction of some kind — seaweed, bird manure, he couldn’t tell — but it worked if Jane kept close to it. They were no longer headed west. His first order had been to turn the old can around.

A little before dark he decided he’d better give the ship a few tests. God only knew what he’d be required to demand of her — or it: for all his time at sea, it was hard to think of the reeking, patched up hulk as a she. (“Rapist,” his wife said, crying, in his mind.) He called down through the tube, “Dead Slow, Jane.” The Indomitable slowed down. Eyes drawn to slits, ear close to the tube, he listened to the engines. He jumped when Jane said, standing at his elbow on the bridge, “Was that right?”

“Holy cow,” he said.

“Was that what you meant by ‘Dead Slow’?” She smiled, full of love, and touched his arm.

“Yes, fine,” he said. She moved her hand softly, sweetly on his arm. He seized her by the elbows and kissed her, dizzy with joy, then, gravely, said, “Get back down there, Jane. It’ll be dark soon.” She nodded, radiant, kissing him again and pressing her body close, then ran down the bridge steps quick as a boy, one lovely hand holding on her patriotic cap, and danced over to the hatch. When he was sure she was back in the engine room he called down through the tube, “Take back the revolutions till we’re barely ticking over.” She did so and called up through the tube, “Was that right?” “That’s fine,” he called back, stupidly proud. Then, to Mr. Goodman in the wheelhouse: “Take her up a point.” And then again to Jane: “Ring her up to Full.” They obeyed. “Steady as you go!” he yelled to Mr. Goodman.

After dark he took an easy reading of bearings — not a cloud in sight — set his course, and put Mr. Nit on watch, letting Mr. Goodman rest. At the door of the Captain’s cabin he said, “All ship-shape, sir. Relatively.” He smiled.

At the radio cubicle he paused and, after a moment, went in to look the old instrument over. He switched it on, playing with the tuner. For a full minute he got nothing but static. It wasn’t much of a radio, and they were still a long way out. Rut for some reason he kept at it, the old nautical sixth sense, perhaps. And then, quite suddenly, loud and clear a voice came through. “Indomitable. Calling Indomitable.” His mouth was open to answer before he remembered and switched off the mike. Captain Fist appeared behind him, eyebrows lifted. A second later Mr. Nit was there, and then Mr. Goodman and Jane.

“Don’t answer!” Captain Fist whispered.

“I knew we should never have fixed it,” Mr. Nit moaned.

Jane pressed her head in, cocked as if to listen to the radio tubes. “Who could it be?” she whispered. “The Coast Guard, you think?”

“Not way out here.”

“Then who?”

They looked at one another.

“We’ll never know unless we answer,” Peter Wagner said. Line from some novel.

Captain Fist put a finger to his lips.

“We had a plane once,” Jane whispered. “We heard some static on the radio, and the next thing we knew the United States Air Force was shooting us down on the Mojave.”

“Could be the Navy, all right,” Mr. Goodman said.

“Calling the Indomitable,” the radio said. “Come in Indomitable!”

Peter Wagner flicked the switch. “This is the Indomitable,” he said. “We read you. Identify.”

Captain Fist leaned hard on his cane with one hand and hard on the bulkhead with the other.

“Hello Indomitable,” the radio said. “This is your old pal the Militant, baby! We’ll see you in somethin like a hour, you dig?”

Then static.

Captain Fist’s cane went out from under him and he went down like a fat, greenish baby. “Get the lights out!” he croaked, still sitting.

“You giving the orders?” Peter Wagner said. He drew Jane toward him, for some reason, as if to shield her.

“I tell you get those lights out!”

“You said I was Captain,” Peter Wagner said. The familiar churn of anger bloomed up in him. The smell of Jane’s hair in his nostrils gave the anger strength. “Divide …

Sally Abbott had come to another large gap. She sighed and closed the book.

She was not a fast reader. She liked to take her time and savor what she read, even when she knew what she was reading was hardly worth a speck. Moreover, whether it was because of the softness of the pillows behind her back, or the crispness of the bright, October day, or the unimportance of the writing — Horace, she knew, would have wondered at her continuing on with such a book: life was too precious to be idled away, he’d always said — her mind kept wandering and from time to time she would nod and drop off; and so, when she laid the book aside, not yet half finished, and looked over at the clock on the desk, it was mid-afternoon.