John Gardner - October Light

It came to her then that perhaps her brother had gone to sleep after all. He’d be sitting up waiting, that was how it was, trying to surprise her when she sneaked into the kitchen — trying to starve her to submission as did all those tyrants of old — and before he’d known it he’d nodded off. She could just walk right down and …

That was it, yes, certainly: he was trying to lay an ambush. He’d done that with his poor son Richard, she remembered. Spied on the boy and jumped him when he was guilty. If he skimped on cow-feeding, as boys will do when it’s fifteen below out and Jack Armstrong is playing on the radio, one day suddenly there James L. Page would be, stepping out grimly from behind some beam, pointing like an Angel of Judgment at the job left half done. If Richard came home late after an evening with the Flynn girl and tried to sneak into his bedroom with his shoes off, there James L. Page would be, waiting like the sheriff. “Your watch workin, Richahd?”

It was true of course that Richard had a tendency to sneak and play twice and was not always “forthright in his story-telling,” as Horace used to say, and true too that Ariah was far too soft on him, spoiled that child rotten, as a matter of fact; but after all, as Horace also said — Horace had been especially fond of Richard— no one was as forthright as James L. Page, “not even God,” as Horace put it, “or He’d never have given us the word in such a language as Hebrew.” Horace was furious whenever he heard of those ambushes her brother would lay for the boy, and though he knew well enough it was none of his business how James raised Richard, it was all poor Horace could do to keep from bringing it up, letting James know his mind.

She stared at the open book in her hand as if reading it, but her eyes went through the print, still studying what James had done to Richard. She didn’t mean to say — she would be the last to say — that James was responsible for what that poor boy had done, how he’d gotten himself drunk and hanged himself. As well lay the blame on that silly, whimpery Ariah, meek as a fieldmouse all her life, and plain besides — all the Blackmers were plain, though hardly one in a century was ever simple as a nit, like Ariah. Not that Sally hadn’t been fond of her, and pleased that she could make James happy. She shook her head, remembering how proud — and openly skeptical — her parents had been the day James got engaged to a Blackmer. Her father had flatly refused to believe it. He’d said nothing, as usual, glancing at Uncle Ira, who also said nothing, as usual — two peas in a pod, her father and Uncle Ira, glint-eyed and bearded, still as a pair of Stoughton bottles when they weren’t out working — and then finally her father had said, as if someone had mentioned to him blizzards in July: “Don’t b’lieve it.” Her mother had said, puzzled, “How old is this Ariah?” When they’d told her which one of the Blackmers it was, she’d had nothing more to say. It was clear that she too would believe in the marriage when the rings passed. But the Blackmers had known a good thing when they saw it. With a girl as plain and simple-minded as Ariah, it was either a Page or some African, and after the engagement had gone on a while it was the Blackmers who’d bought them a house of their own, later Richard’s little house across the road and down the mountain a bit, the one James had drunkenly burned that night, God knew why, not even for insurance.

Poor Richard! He could have been a glorious boy, if James had just let him be. Besides handsome, he’d been wonderfully quick, and charming — though never around James, which was a pity. James might have liked him better if he’d allowed himself to know him. Everyone liked Richard. Little Ginny had downright worshipped him, which was why she’d renamed her adopted boy Richard — much to Lewis’s disgust. On that matter, actually, Sally had to side with Lewis Hicks for once. It was a dreadful thing, changing a boy’s name from John to Richard when he was six years old. It was somehow unnatural, a kind of bad magic. All of them had thought so, in fact, except Virginia. There had been a great thundering row about it between Ginny and her father, or so she’d heard up at Arlington. The woman next door had heard the shouting. She knew no details, or at any rate, being a close-mouthed Vermonter, chose not to tell them. No wonder if James had been upset, of course. He’d never admit it this side of the grave, but everyone knew he’d detested that boy. Blamed him for his second son’s death among other things — it had been Richard left the ladder against the roof of the barn. (Richard blamed himself even more for it. Horace had once tried to talk to him about it, hoping to set him straight; but no chance, the chance of a hankie in a hurricane. Richard had treasured his guilt, as Horace told her. It was the one thing his father had taught him and he’d got down pat.) But it was long before the death of little Ethan that the trouble had started. It was as if James had taken a dislike to the boy when he was still a little mite in his cradle. “Don’t be a cry-baby!” James was always saying.

Absently, she smoothed the gritty pages of her book.

They’d gone sleigh-riding once, she remembered, and it was cold. Richard was just seven; little Ginny wasn’t born yet, Ariah was pregnant with her—“Big as a bahn,” James Page said proudly. It must have been zero if not ten below, so biting cold that the snow squeaked when you walked on it. The horses were flying, the big sleigh rushing along the slant without a sound, and even snuggled up between Horace and herself, with the blanket up over his face, little Richard was freezing. She and Horace were freezing too, though they had too much sense to say so. Richard called out, “Mommy, I want to go home! I’m cold!” James turned just enough to call past his shoulder — he’d been a big man then, beefy, his face red and raw from the wind, but of course he didn’t mind it, not James—“Don’t be a cry-baby! Blow on your hands!”

Meek little Ariah said, “I’m cold too, James. Let’s do start back.”

“Hell,” he said, and reached over to slap her leg — he was always slapping her, mauling her, hugging her; no doubt she was better than you’d have thought up in bed—“don’t always stick up for him. When I was Richard’s age—”

Sally had glanced over at Horace, whose face was pink and white, like a turnip, and whose glasses looked to be frozen to his skin. His scarf was wrapped around and around him, and his stocking cap was pulled down as far as it would go, but both the scarf and the hat were storebought, not terribly substantial — not at all like the bright red home-made things James wore — so no wonder if Horace had had enough of this January fun, though he was damned if he was saying so. He merely bit his lips together, staring hard at James’ head. He cried out, as if he meant it as a joke, “When I was Richard’s age I nearly died of pneumonia.”

“Darling, it is cold,” Ariah meeped, and put her mitten on his.

“Hell,” he said, but he leaned far left in his seat and yelled Haw! at the horses, and around they came.

In the house, she remembered — or perhaps this was some other time — Richard had whimpered, sitting with his feet in the ice-water, so he wouldn’t get chilblains, and his mother rubbed his back and ran her hand through his hair and petted him like a dog, singing to him in a kind of half-wit voice (or such was Sally’s opinion; to hear Horace tell it, Ariah sang like an angel out of heaven), and suddenly James had said, jokingly, but his eyes were angry, “When I was his age, I was out laying bob-wire for spring fencing with Uncle Ira. If I cried because my feet got cold, Uncle Ira would just say, ‘Putty soon they’ll freeze hard and stop huttin.’”