John Gardner - October Light

“Good evening,” the leader said, more urgently, as if aware that his charm was unconvincing, frightening — or, rather, frightening because convincing.

Mr. Nit couldn’t answer, tiny eyes darting. Mr. Goodman merely whispered.

“Inside, please,” the leader said. He took a flashlight from his suitcoat pocket, switched it on, and motioned with it toward the Captain’s cabin, automatically leading with his wrist, again like an actor. The crew of the Indomitable went in, single file. The leader of the militants nodded them toward the bunk, then came in, shadows flying out around him like birds, and sat, himself, in the Captain’s chair. He laid the gun across his lap and shined the flashlight up and down, helping the fat, quiet Indian look for the lightswitch. When they found that the lights were dead — they depended on the engine — the leader set his flashlight on the Captain’s desk. The shadows, settling at last, took on weight. At a nod from the leader, the Indian went back out onto the bridge and stood with the other man, watching the door. The leader called to them, “Perhaps you gentlemen would go below and check out those engines.” They disappeared.

“Now,” the leader said, getting himself comfortable. He sounded, just this moment, like a diplomat or a minister high in the establishment. He picked off the sunglasses and dropped them into his inside suitcoat pocket. He had large, handsome eyes, remarkably like a Pharaoh’s. He smiled — warmly, or so it seemed at first — at Captain Fist. Captain Fist trembled, white as chalk, and said nothing. His hatred of the black man was as evident as a smell.

Peter Wagner squinted, thinking about that, thinking about the black man’s exaggerated caution, his finger never straying from the trigger of the gun, the fingertip trembling, a tremor just visible, like that of, say, a plucked guitar string.

The man said, “Call me Luther — Luther Santisillia.” As he spoke he turned sociably toward Peter Wagner, but only for an instant; then his eyes were back on Fist. “These people know me well enough. As for you, it’s a pleasure to meet you.”

He nodded.

“And your name?” Santisillia asked, and glanced at him.

“Excuse me. Peter Wagner.” He was sorry to give it — sorry to give Santisillia any clue.

“Good. Excellent. How do you do.” Then he was silent, watching Fist, mouth smiling, large eyes veiled. It was clearer and clearer, the fear of him, buried in the act. He was a mere man on a stage, fleshy sweating mortal in the costume of effortless heroics. Santisillia said: “I believe you were going to propose a deal?”

“Just this,” Peter Wagner said, watching him. “We get the Indomitable running for you, and then you let us go.”

The black man pretended to consider it a while. With a smile like a child’s, he said, “Man, I’d have to be crazy.”

“Why?” Jane said. She put her hand on Peter Wagner’s arm.

“We could’ve returned your fire,” Peter Wagner said. (Re turned your fire, he thought. Television talk.) “We showed our good faith.” (We showed our good faith.)

“You jivin me, man.” He laughed, dropping into the Harlem language. He spoke it as if it amused him, pleased him like a toy. “We’d have sunk you sure, so you decided you’d just play it cool and come rip me off later.” Then, returning to the elegant English, still smiling gently: “You have nothing with which to deal, it seems.”

“You think you can get this boat going yourself?”

The black man smiled, head tilted, and considered it. The five of them, huddled in the bunk, waited. The water lapped softly, the gunnels of the two boats crunched together, a sound like garbage cans scraping on concrete. Outside the cabin there was dull red light; Peter Wagner could see a few large stars beyond, filtered. Then the tall, lean black blocked out the door, the Indian just behind him. Santisillia turned slowly. The black man shook his head, and after a moment Santisillia turned back to them and sighed.

“Ok,” he said. He touched the machine gun. “You, mechanic — go down there, please.”

“It’s no use, Santisillia,” Peter Wagner said. “He won’t work out of fear if he knows you’ll kill him anyway.”

“Why would I kill a mechanic?” he said and smiled.

Mr. Nit got up from the bunk. Ok, Peter Wagner thought. His chest filled with misery. “Eels,” Peter Wagner whispered to Mr. Nit. “We’re on a wooden bunk.”

Mr. Nit looked, puzzled, at the bunk.

“What’s that?” Santisillia said.

“He can’t fix it anyway,” Peter Wagner said. “It’s the electricity.” He pushed the word crazily, hoping the idea would hammer down into Mr. Nit’s frightened head. “The electricity,” he said again.

“What you tellin the cat?” the lean black said. His rifle moved to aim at Peter Wagner’s chest. The man’s earrings jiggled.

“He’d have to hook up to a secondary source,” Peter Wagner said. His heart beat wildly. It was clear that his plan was hopeless; it depended on Mr. Nit. He tensed, half believing he would jump the bearded black. Impossible, of course. Mr. Nit had half turned, looking wildly at Peter Wagner as if only Peter Wagner’s madness threatened him.

“It would take a live source,” Peter Wagner said, and then, to the man in the Tyrolean, “Interesting animal, electricity. Cheap to feed, it can live in either air or water—”

Mr. Nit backed away, but light was dawning.

“Take him down,” Santisillia said. The lean man pulled Mr. Nit out the cabin door and they were gone. At a sign from Santisillia, the Indian stayed.

“Let me help him,” Peter Wagner said. He started to get up.

Santisillia smiled. “Not a chance, baby.”

They sat for perhaps five minutes, silent. Peter Wagner was limp now, unnaturally calm, still watching, cold as a machine. Jane’s hand was on his arm. Captain Fist’s breathing was uneven and hard, a sound like an old man’s snoring.

Then, from somewhere in the belly of the ship, there came a boom like the noise of a cannon. Santisillia’s face turned quickly for once, and the Indian vanished from the doorway, padding down the bridge steps and over to the hatch. A moment later the Indian reappeared. “Knocking a hole in the bulkhead,” he said. His voice was like an adolescent’s, soft, even girlish. “Man says got to run a wire to a secondary source. Be done in five minutes. Man says to give him a signal when you’re ready.”

Santisillia smiled. “Tell him I’ll thump the deck.”

The Indian gave a nod and vanished.

Santisillia said, “You were mistaken about your Mr. Nit, it seems.” He turned his gentle smile toward Peter Wagner.

Peter Wagner nodded, closed his hands tight on the wood of the bunk frame and stretched his legs out, then lowered his feet slowly to the metal again.

Then the lean Negro was at the door. “Comin fine,” he said.

Santisillia’s smile was distant. He was thinking. He came out of it for a moment to say, “This is Dancer.” The lean man bowed and came in a step. Santisillia’s mind returned to whatever it was working on. The lean man, Dancer, watched him and occasionally glanced at Peter Wagner or Captain Fist. The lean man, too, Peter Wagner saw, was hypertense; a veritable walking bomb. It was curious that people so frightening should be afraid. Finally, Santisillia grinned. He’d showed no real sign that he was unsure of himself, for all his nervousness; no sign that, in secret, he had feared that Peter Wagner or, more likely, Captain Fist, might possess some advantage he couldn’t penetrate; but now suddenly — no doubt having mentally bolted every door from which attack might come — he’d decided to be confident, expansive. “I’ve been telling our friends they were wrong,” he told Dancer. “Wrong from the beginning!”