John Gardner - October Light

There was no denying that she could be, at times, an embarrassment. “Ruth, you should be on the stage!” Estelle had told her once. “Or somewhere,” Ferris had added dryly. Yet she was, for all that, a tender-hearted, gentle and well-meaning woman, a lover of books, though her taste was odd. She loved “Chaucer,” though she had not read him in a while, and she read in modern English; the name “William Shakespeare” she always pronounced in full, with some sort of vaguely British accent; and she would have to think twice, she often said, before choosing between Milton and the gas chamber.

“James,” she called out now, bending toward him — she was very tall—“you look like a dog who’s eaten fence-nails!”

He shrank back a little. Her breath smelled powerfully of Ovaltine.

The kitchen was now bursting. Behind Ruth Thomas, his hand around her waist, helping to support her, was Ruth’s husband Ed Thomas, red-faced, white-haired, cigar-smoking, eighty-year-old Welshman. He looked considerably older than Ruth, partly because of her dyed hair. He was a farmer, a rich one, as large as his wife around the waist and about two-thirds as tall. “Evenin James,” he said, “evenin Estelle! Hi there, Lewis, Dickey! Evenin! Evenin!” He swept the unlighted cigar from his mouth and with the same hand took his hat off. Behind him stood his eighteen-year-old grandson DeWitt, carrying a guitar, and behind DeWitt came Roger, close to Dickey’s age. Both of the Thomas boys had freckles and dark red hair. “Brought the boys along, ’Stelle,” Ed Thomas said. His l’s had a kind of click to them, his tongue hitting the teeth on either side. “Witt’s in from college for the weekend.” He turned to the tall boy: “You remember ’Stelle?” The boy with the guitar bowed formally, shyly. “Roger,” Ed Thomas said, “take off yer hat and say How.”

Ruth was already plunged deep in conversation with Virginia, who’d just come in.

“Can I see your guitar?” Dickey said.

DeWitt Thomas winked at him, edging away toward the living room, and Dickey followed, glancing apprehensively at his father. Roger moved tentatively after Dickey.

“Well I be damned,” James said, whether in anger or in pleasure it was hard to tell.

“Is that you, Ruth?” Sally Abbott’s voice called down the stairs.

Reverend Lane Walker was next into the room, his hand on the arm of a stranger, a wicked looking Mexican with a moustache like a cat’s. He was fat, with what seemed — to James Page at least — unnaturally and offensively short legs. He wore a brownish green suit that made him look like a frog and had highly polished shoes, the kind of wide-winged shoes you’d expect to be worn, in James’ opinion, by an abortionist. Lane Walker was young, maybe thirty, thirty-five. He was Sally’s minister in North Bennington, a shy, intellectual sort of man with a horsey wife — wore jodhpurs and carried a ridingwhip even in the grocery store — and three adopted children, Vietnamese. The hair on the top of Rev. Walker’s head was cut off like a prisoner’s, and under his chin —under it, not on it — he had a scraggle of hair like a billygoat’s beard or the beard on some Irish elf.

“I asked Lane to come over,” Ruth told Estelle. She swept her arm back toward the Mexican, as if to draw him farther in. “Father—” she began, then made a quick face. “Now isn’t that silly! I’ve forgotten your name!” She threw a girlish look at him. He drew back slightly, smiling.

Lane Walker said, bowing and smiling, edging toward James with his hand on the elbow of the Mexican, “Mr. Page, let me introduce an old friend of mine, Father Rafe Hernandez.”

“Father, is it,” James said unsociably, making no attempt to hide his dislike of foreigners. He had no intention of shaking the man’s hand. The Mexican, to James’ intense annoyance, did not offer it.

“Rafe will be sufficient,” the Mexican said. His voice was oily, soft as a cat’s voice, full of insinuation. He slid his black eyes toward the kitchen window as if thinking of stealing it. “Thees is a beautiful setting for a farm,” he said.

“S’prised you can see it so well in the dahk,” James said.

“Now James,” Estelle said.

James smiled acidly, pleased to see that someone had noticed his inhospitality. “You must be one of them new-style priests,” he said. He pointed toward his own throat, moving the finger from left to right in a gesture meant to indicate the absence of a clerical collar, but suggesting a throat-cutting.

“Sometimes I wear it, sometimes not,” the priest said, impossible to offend.

Lane Walker said, “We were marchers together, Rafe and I.” He grinned at the Mexican.

The Mexican nodded. “Selma.”

“Is that you, Ruth?” Sally Abbott called down the stairs.

Virginia was over at the stove now, putting on milk, preparing to fix cocoa. In the doorway old Dr. Phelps was calling, leaning on his cane, “Anybody home?”

“Come in, come in and shut the door!” Ruth Thomas bellowed.

“Lo, Doctor!” Ed called grandly waving his cigar. “’Sthat Margie with you?”

Dr. Phelps’ granddaughter was peeking shyly past the door-jamb. She had long blonde hair and timid, faded looking eyes. Dr. Phelps had a face even redder than the Welshman’s, and tightly curled white hair. When his granddaughter was in — she seemed to float in her long gray coat like a stick on a stream — Dr. Phelps reached behind him to close the door.

“Don’t close it yet!” the Mexican called out, then giggled like a Japanese.

Estelle’s grand-nephew Terence was in the doorway, smiling sheepishly, blue with cold.

“Terence!” Estelle cried. “Heavens to Betsy! Come in, child, come in!” She looked at Ruth, smiling and horrified. “He’s been out there all this time. I forgot all about him!”

“I was listening to the concert,” Terence said, smiling at the floor. “WAMC.”

“That’s right,” Ruth Thomas said, towering near the doorway to the living room. “The Boston Symphony was on. Who won?”

Estelle explained to Rev. Walker, “Terence is a French horn player. He’s very good.”

“French horn player?” Dr. Phelps asked joyfully, head thrown back like a swordsman’s. “Margie here plays the flute. You children know each other?”

They both grinned shyly. They played in the same school orchestra, the same school woodwind quintet.

“You bring your flute tonight, Margie?” Dr. Phelps asked. He was an organizer, also an avid musician.

“It’s in the cah,” she said. A whisper.

“By cracky, we’ll have a concert here, before we’re through. I saw DeWitt in there with his guitar. James, we’re gonna make your house a concert hall!” He turned around, beaming, to look at James. He wasn’t there.

“James?” Estelle said.

“Well don’t that beat heck,” Dr. Phelps said merrily, lifting his wild white eyebrows and poking his thumbs in his vest.

“Is that you, Dr. Phelps?” Sally Abbott called down.

“Where on earth can he have gone to?” Ruth exclaimed.

In all the commotion, no one had heard the truck start up, but they saw the lights now, careening out toward the road.

“Why that snake in the grass!” cried Ruth Thomas, and made a face.

6

It was a terrible temptation for Sally Page Abbott — as they meant it to be. It reminded her of a thousand happy times, Estelle’s piano playing drifting up the stairs, Estelle and the Thomases and Dr. Phelps all singing —They asked me how I knooooo —and the glorious smell of cocoa and cinnamon-toast, and in the kitchen people talking, Rev. Walker and some young people and possibly, she couldn’t be sure, a stranger. It was the kind of thing she wouldn’t have missed for the world, ordinarily, and she was half inclined to think she was a fool to be missing it now, but still she hesitated, standing with her ear to the door-crack, trying to determine what was right, pursing her lips, her palsied old head slightly trembling, her heart full of trouble. If there were a fire, it occurred to her, they’d break her door down and find her looking a sight. Better fix her hair, put on her good bathrobe and slippers just in case.