John Gardner: October Light

1

THE DROWNED MAN

“Snuff it, baby,” he’d hissed at the world, but the world dragged on.

After thirty-three years of insipid debauchery — balling and whiskey and dreary books (poetry and novels, philosophy and science), more foreign ports than he could now remember and, between them, endless weeks at sea, where he shoveled his head fuller yet with books — Peter Wagner had come to the end of his rope or, rather (this time), the center of his bridge. All life, he had come to understand, was a boring novel. Death would be boring too, no doubt, but you weren’t required to pay attention.

“Isn’t it the truth!” Sally Abbott said aloud, head lifting as if someone had spoken to her. Why she said it she could hardly have told you — except that it was something she’d occasionally said to her late husband Horace when he’d read to her, years and years ago. The truth in the novel she was looking at now was a trivial one at best, she was partly aware — even downright silly. But she wasn’t thinking with any care just now. She wasn’t really thinking at all, in fact, merely hovering between fury at her brother and escape into the book. Edging back toward fury, she held her breath and listened past the ticking of the clock for some sound from downstairs. Everything was silent — from outside the house not a cluck, not a whinny, not the grunt of a pig, and from the living room below, not a murmur. James was no doubt reading some magazine, little Dickey fast asleep. Heartless, both of them. She sighed bitterly, glanced down with distaste at the paperback book, then raised it again into reading range.

His death was to be a grand act, however senseless. He’d drop without a sound through pitch-dark night to be swallowed by the Old Symbolic Sea. He’d read the grisly tales — suicides gruesomely, foolishly impaled on the radar antennae of passing ships or splattered obscenely on pilings or rocks — and had planned ahead. He had examined the span by daylight and had marked his spot with an unobstructive X in light green paint. Now the hour was at hand, in a sense the toughest of his life. He was extremely drunk and had to walk the bridge three times to find his X. By the time he found it, there were red and yellow lights flashing on and off at both ends of the bridge — they had found his car — and the suicide squad had its sirens going. He climbed over the rail where the X was and hung there waiting for the squad cars to pass. They didn’t. They too knew the perfect place. For a panicky second, he thought of dropping immediately, but good sense prevailed, as it always did with him, or he wouldn’t be here committing suicide. What could they do when they saw him there, hanging by his fingertips? Shoot him?

“Ha,” Sally laughed, tentatively amused. But she at once changed her mind. It wasn’t funny, it was irritating, and again she raised her eyes, listening past the clock, focusing on a door panel, lips pursed. She had half a mind to throw down the book and forget it, half a mind even to throw it out the window, where it couldn’t contaminate her bedroom. It was base, unwholesome. That nonsense, especially about suicide proving a man’s “good sense.” People might say such stupid, irresponsible writing did no harm, but you could bet your bottom dollar, no one who’d experienced the tragedy of the suicide of someone near and dear would ever in this world dream of saying such a thing. If anyone had dared even hint such a notion, back when Richard had died, a man still young, everything still ahead of him — a young man so gentle that it simply broke your heart — well, she hated to think what she’d have done to him.

Her heart churned and for an instant she remembered how everywhere she’d looked, just after her nephew had taken his own life, the world had seemed inert, like a half-fallen, long-abandoned barn on a still, cold day. She remembered the feeling, though not the details, of how she’d flown up the mountain in her late husband’s Buick, after James had phoned, and how he’d stood in the doorway stunned to vagueness. When she’d reached to take his hand — trying to protect him as she’d done when they were children, she the big sister and he the poor helpless little boy with darting eyes — she’d been painfully aware of how cold the hand was, and rough from farmwork, unresponsive. Ariah, his wife, was behind him in the kitchen, watching from the sink, moving the dishcloth around and around a cup, in her cheeks no life.

“He hanged himself,” Ariah said; then her throat constricted and she could say no more.

Sally had looked back at her brother and moaned, “Oh, James!” tightening her grip on his hand. There was no response.

She gave her head a little shake now, freeing herself from the flicker of memory — enemy to her perfectly reasonable anger at her brother’s insane and savage ways. She at once raised the book. She’d been making a mountain of a molehill, no doubt. She’d never liked loose talk of suicide; but it wasn’t as if the book was in earnest. She was on edge, that was all, and who could blame her? She hunted for her place.

… sense prevailed, as it always did with him, or he wouldn’t be here committing …

… do when they saw him there, hanging by his fingertips? Shoot him?

Sally Abbott nodded; that was where she’d stopped.

With the intense vision of the very drunk, he watched the door of the white car fly open and saw two booted feet hit the pavement. “There he is!” someone shouted, and the sound seemed, amusingly, to reach him from behind, from the thick night and fog. It came to him that if he were hanging from the bottom girder of the bridge, as he’d meant to be, he couldn’t see the squad cars. Gripping tightly with his right hand, he let go with his left and groped for something lower. It was farther down than he would have expected, but large, with wonderful flanges. He gripped it with all his might, and lowered his right hand. He swung, or else the bridge yawed — by mathematics he could support either theory — but the grip of both hands held. He made his legs into dead weights to stop the swinging.

Sally Abbott read without commitment at first, just a hint of curiosity and a tentative willingness to perhaps be amused. But quite imperceptibly the real world lost weight and the print on the page gave way to images, an alternative reality more charged than mere life, more ghostly yet nearer, suffused with a curious importance and manageability. She began to fall in with the book’s snappy rhythms, becoming herself more wry, more wearily disgusted with the world — not only with her own but with the whole “universe,” as the book kept saying — a word that hadn’t entered Sally’s thoughts in years. Life became larger, in vibration to such words, and she, the observer and container of this universe, became necessarily more vast than its space, became indeed (though she would not have said so) godlike. By degrees, without knowing she was doing it, she gave in to the illusion, the comforting security of her vantage point, until whenever she looked up from the page to rest her eyes, it seemed that the door, the walls, the dresser, the heavy onyx clock had no more substance than a plate-glass reflection; what was real and enduring was the adventure flickering on the wall of her brain, a phantom world filled with its own queer laws and character. She read — at first doubtfully, but with increasing abandon:

He could see all San Francisco now. It was beautiful, rising, slightly bleary, out of fog. Interestingly enough, his whole body felt limp, muscleless, yet he was hanging by, essentially, only three fingers of each hand, only two knuckles involved on each finger, or six knuckles in all, approximately. It was incredible. Also, it was incredible that they’d found his car so quickly. Civilization was a marvelous thing. He thought of the Babylonians, the Romans. “Hang on!” someone yelled. He hung on, for reasons of his own. There was great commotion now on the bridge above him.