John Gardner - October Light

“Sally, he didn’t!” Estelle exclaimed, merely to show her sympathy. The charge had, Lord knows, the ring of truth. She saw it all as clearly as a picture in a book, and in spite of herself she had to smile.

“Yes he did,” Sally said, “and a good deal worse. Threatened my life with a shotgun. He’s a drinker, you know.”

“No!” Estelle said. It sounded unlikely, he hadn’t been known to get drunk in years, but that was unimportant. Sally believed her charges, that was what mattered. Nevertheless, she glanced over at Lewis to see what he thought. He shook his head denying it all, but said nothing, merely scraped on. He had the whole molding finished now, and part of the bathroom door.

Sally said, “It’s no use making peace with tyranny. If the enemy won’t compromise, he gives you no choice; you simply have to take your stand, let come what may.”

“Oh dear,” Estelle said. She didn’t like at all the direction in which the conversation was steering. Not that she didn’t believe in principles. Principles were one of the things that made life meaningful — cleanliness, punctuality, a willingness to try to see the other person’s side … But she’d been down this road too many times; she knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that it led nowhere. “That’s all true, I suppose,” she said. “But we have to make it possible for the other person to compromise, you know. We all have our pride. We have to try to be reasonable and ‘do unto others.’”

Even as she said it, her palsied head trembling, her hands clasped together on her knees, Estelle knew it was a useless argument, though a true one. Sally’s voice became more adamant than ever. “Let James be reasonable,” she said. “It’s always up to the one in power to be reasonable. It’s like the United States after World War II. When Germany and Japan unconditionally surrendered, we reached out and gave them a helping hand, helped them to their feet, like the great nation and model for the world that we’re supposed to be, and now Germany and Japan are two of the most decent, most prosperous countries in the world. That’s how things should be. That’s the Christian way. But of course that’s not how James sees it — heavens no! He’s just like the United States after the war in Viet Nam, stingy and full as a tick with guilt and grudges. He won’t turn loose of so much as one thin dime. You’ll see what comes of it! You mark my words! Viet Nam will turn elsewhere — and so will Africa and heaven knows who else — and what might have been markets and healthy competitors will be pigs in the parlor.”

“Sally, what on earth are you talking about? How can you compare poor James with the whole United States?”

“You’ll see,” Sally said.

Long as she’d known her, Estelle had never quite realized that Sally was a crank — as much a crank as her brother, it seemed. Perhaps it was something that had come over her since she’d moved back to the farm with James, or perhaps it had been there all along and had simply never come up. When they’d played bridge in the old days, Sally and Horace, Estelle and Ferris, there had been wonderful talk of politics, education, religion — talk about everything under the sun, in fact, or at any rate everything decent people had talked about in those days — but it had been mainly the men who had talked about politics. Sally, whenever she’d taken a side, had taken it firmly, Estelle remembered, thinking back to it now — once, in fact, Sally had surprised them all by becoming quite passionate, even throwing down her cards — but it was rare for things to get that far out of hand when Ferris and Horace were there. Ferris, elegant and handsome, would tell jokes if the evening began to turn serious; and Horace had had a delightful, almost comic gift for seeing and believing both sides.

Sally was saying, increasingly intense, “People think they can go on exploiting and exploiting forever, and the developing countries will simply have to put up with it, but believe you me that’s wrong! There was a program on television, made your hair stand on end. I forget the whole argument — just as clear as two plus two is four — but I remember part of it.” Her tone became dogmatic, tinged with self-pity — exactly the tone of the one and only Communist Estelle had ever met — and though Estelle now opened her mouth to object she said nothing, on second thought, but listened in something like amazement. “The handful of plutocrats in the third and fourth world countries,” Sally was saying, “the only ones with any money to spend, want nothing but luxury items and bombs, which they get from the first world countries at terrible prices, so the poor people there in the developing countries get poorer and poorer and work harder and harder, and as their countries buy bombs their life becomes more and more dangerous.” Estelle glanced at Lewis, who stood, head tipped far over, listening with no expression, like a cat. The voice became more strident. “The situation in the developing countries gets more and more dangerous, so the plutocrats take on more and more power, suspending constitutional government and so forth, just to keep order and protect themselves, oppressing the poor people more and more and buying more and more from the outside world, until it seems there’s nothing that can break the—” She paused a moment, hunting for the word. “Spiral. But the plutocrats forget two crucial facts.”

“Why Sally,” Estelle said, “I never knew you knew about all that!”

“Two crucial facts,” Sally said.

“Sally Abbott, you should have been a teacher,” Estelle said. “Listen to this, Lewis! Were you aware that Sally had made a study of all this?”

“Aunt Sally’s nobody’s fool, I’ve always said that,” Lewis said.

“Two facts,” said Sally, belligerent.

Estelle sighed and resigned herself. The lecturing voice seemed to be moving around behind the bedroom door, as if Sally were pacing, perhaps keeping track of the two crucial facts on her fingers. Lewis continued to stand with the paint-scraper dangling, all attention on the argument.

“First, just as Walter Cronkite says, they forget the amazing power of ‘the Idea of Freedom.’ Once people have heard about freedom it’s like seventeen seventy-six all over again, they just won’t settle for anything less, they’d rather die. It’s an idea all the wealth and power in the world can’t stop — I can testify to that myself, believe you me!”

“Are you saying—” Lewis began. But she wouldn’t be interrupted.

“And the other thing the plutocrats forget is the nature of an army. The plutocrats build up their powerful armies to protect their own interests, but an army’s their own worst enemy. In an army people learn discipline, and they learn to be willing to die for what’s right. They get educated, more or less — more than they would have back in their villages anyway. And that’s the least of it. That many young men brought together in one place makes a natural whatchamacallit for ideas — such ideas as freedom and people’s natural rights. And pretty soon, just as in Russia and Tanzania and Portugal, poof! revolution! — the dawn of reality and truth! — and all started by the army. You tell James Page and all his kind to just give that some thought.” The bed creaked. She’d apparently seated herself.

“Aunt Sally,” Lewis said, but then he reconsidered and merely picked at his moustache and shook his head.

Estelle stared at the bedroom door with an expression of distress, her head jittering and her eyebrows lifted. She wondered if Horace had ever seen poor Sally in such a state. Probably not. These weren’t the kinds of thoughts that came up in times of happiness. “My my,” Estelle whispered. Whatever the truth might be about James and the United States, or Sally and radicalized armies (or whatever), the truth here in this house was that Sally must be coaxed out of her room before things got worse. An atmosphere of peace and cooperation must be established or they’d never get anywhere. How she wished Ruth Thomas were here! Ruth had always had a way about her. She recited funny poems, told anecdotes, filled every room she entered with such warmth and good feeling it was almost impossible for a person to keep his mind on his grudges. Estelle looked at her watch. My goodness, only quarter to eight! She remembered, the same moment, that Terence, her great-nephew, was still out in the car. “Oh dear,” she said aloud.