John Gardner - October Light

“Good evening, Lewis,” Estelle said brightly. She’d always been especially fond of the Hicks boys. They’d patched screens and painted and mowed lawns for her for years.

Lewis nodded. “G’devenin, Mrs. Parks.” He picked with two fingers at his moustache.

“What a mix-up!” Estelle said, and gave a little headshake.

“Yes’m,” Lewis said. He looked over at Ginny for signals, but she was staring sullenly at the center of the table — or perhaps at Estelle’s folded, liver-spotted hands — and didn’t even glance at him for a sign that he’d taken the gun down. It was as if she’d turned everything over to Estelle, though she showed no great confidence that Estelle could do better than she’d done. Head bowed, Lewis glanced over at James. The old man looked as mean and firmly planted as an old white-headed billygoat.

Estelle was asking, “Why do you say it won’t work here, James?” She asked it gently, and though it was clear she was trying to manage him, it was clear, too, that she would listen fairly and thoughtfully to whatever he might answer.

The old man seemed to consider whether or not he ought to speak. His eyes tightly narrowed, he took a puff from his pipe, then abruptly brought out, “Because she stotted it, that’s why. It’s all very well to say we’ll lay no blame, but Sally knew the rules when she come here, and she wouldn’t abide by ’em. It’s all very well to say we’ll stot right here from where we are, as if they want no past to the matter. But the fact is they do be a past to it. I told her the rules as plain as day and she wouldn’t abide by ’em.”

“I can see how you feel,” Estelle said. She moved her left hand across the table as if to touch his hand and comfort him, though he was standing and too far away, his left hand hooked in his pocket, the other on his pipe. “Of course none of us likes to obey rules he didn’t help make,” she added.

He said nothing — not for lack of an answer, Estelle Parks knew. We’re all born subject to laws we have no say about, starting with gravity. He was wrong all the same, but there was no point arguing that now. “It hasn’t been easy for you, James,” she said. “That we all know.”

Ginny said, blushing suddenly, glancing at Estelle and then down again, “It has been terrible for Dad, that’s true.” Tears came to her eyes. She was remembering his tirade in the barn, discovering again the emptiness and bitterness of her father’s life, his anger at the shoddiness of everything these days, at least as it seemed to him. “I know how Aunt Sally loved her television, but you have to see it from my father’s side. Here he’s worked all these years, living by his convictions—”

“Of course he has,” Estelle said. It was all even clearer to her, it seemed, than to Ginny. “Perhaps if I could just talk with Sally—”

“She won’t talk,” Lewis said, then quickly shut his mouth and raised two fingers to his moustache.

“She won’t talk?” Estelle echoed, not at all judging, simply interested.

Ginny said reluctantly, flustered and annoyed that Lewis had mentioned it, “When we try to talk to her she won’t answer. I guess her feelings are hurt.”

Estelle drew herself up a little. “Well my goodness,” she said. She began to struggle to get out of her chair. Automatically, looking worried, Lewis came around beside and a little behind her to see if he could help.

“You’ll never make it up the stairs,” James stated flatly.

“We’ll see about that,” Estelle said. “Thank you, Lewis.” She gave him a slightly absentminded smile, standing now, fussing with her canes. She seemed unaware that she still had her coat and hat on. “Ginny,” she said, “be a dear and come over beside me here. That’s it, yes, good. Just steady me a little, like that, yes. And Lewis, you come over on this side.” Before they could protest, they found themselves laboring up the stairs with her, Estelle Parks smiling with a look of slight alarm, telling them what to do, tortuously climbing toward Aunt Sally’s room, calling ahead once or twice, “Yoo hoo! Sally!”

When they reached the top (the gun and the strings of the trap had vanished, nothing remained but the tack-holes in the wall), Estelle called more brightly than ever, “Sally, are you there?”

They waited.

“Sally?” Estelle called again.

Still no answer. Estelle — tiny and absurd in the hallway, standing, bent with age, in her blue coat and hat — looked over at Ginny, pursed her lips and then, all at once, smiled impishly. “Well, I’ll just talk with her anyway, keep the poor dear company, you know, let her see that she’s still got friends.” She turned back to the door. “May I come in, Sally?” She tried the knob, then shook her head, smiling again as if delighted, but squinting, thinking. To the door she said, “Well my my.”

Ginny said, “Why doesn’t Lewis get you a chair, Estelle.”

“That’s a good idea,” Estelle said, “yes, Lewis, do.”

Lewis turned and went down. He was back in a moment with one of the chairs from the kitchen. He helped Estelle sit.

“You know, Sally,” Estelle called, “I’m surprised at you!”

They waited. Estelle looked over at them, eyes atwinkle, and gave a little nod as if dismissing them. Lewis squatted over his cardboard box of tools, picking out a scraper, trying to decide whether or not it would be right to get back to work. Ginny backed away toward the head of the stairs and, after watching a moment longer, went down. As she reached the door into the kitchen she heard Aunt Sally say in a feeble little voice, “Is that you, Estelle? Why, I must’ve drifted off!” Ginny shook her head, rolling her eyes up, and came out into the kitchen. She closed the stairway door behind her, and without a word to her father went into the living room to check on Dickey. He was fast asleep by the fireplace, plastic building blocks closed in his hands and scattered all around him, green and yellow and red.

4

For half an hour Estelle did her best to talk sense into her friend, but with no success. It was an impasse, simply. They were both, James and Sally, stubborn idealists, and there was never any hope, she’d learned as a teacher, when you were dealing with stubborn idealists. “Well my my,” she would say from time to time, shaking her head, glancing over at where Lewis was scraping the paint off the bathroom door. He would give his head a morose little shake in return and go on working. Lewis had the right idea, of course. Simply be there, on the chance that sooner or later you’d be of use.

She leaned toward the bedroom door again and called, “Sally, why don’t you come out and at least get some food in your stomach? It might be you’d see things differently.”

“That’s all very well for you to say, Estelle,” the old woman called back, “but there are some things a person can’t just forgive and forget. When a situation’s downright intolerable, what good is it to throw up your hands and just leave it to the bees? Too many people in this country have been doing that too long.”

Estelle sighed. “Oh Sally dear, what’s the country got to do with it?”

Sally’s voice was haughty. “Don’t you fool yourself, Estelle. The country’s got everything to do with it. It’s the haves and the have-nots, that’s what it is. James was here in the house first — that’s his whole argument — so when I move in, I’ve got to do exactly as he says, and no matter if it kills me.”

“Oh Sally, really!”

“Don’t you Sally-really me, Estelle. It’s the truth and you know it. It should’ve been my house, if the truth be told. I was the oldest. But everything goes to the men in this country — always has. We might as well be Negroes. I changed that boy’s didies and carried him on my back, I taught him to tie his shoelaces, I led him by the hand back and forth from school, even saved him from Dad’s cussed johnny-bull once, and this is the recompense I get! He’s got his opinions, and I grant you he’s got a right to ’em; but I’ve got my opinions too, and it’s no way to settle it chasing an old woman with a piece of stovewood and locking her up in her bedroom.”