John Gardner - October Light

“Aunt Sally,” Dickey said.

“Run along, dear,” she said.

He mumbled something — she couldn’t quite hear it — then retreated toward the head of the stairs.

“Thank you, honey!” she called after him. She folded her arms, feeling guilty but nevertheless victorious. If she was wrong then very well she was wrong, she could pay in the Afterlife.

Just then wind made the door rumble, and she started. When she glanced out the window she saw branches swaying and leaves brightly tumbling. The wind had come up suddenly, out of nowhere, as it seemed. There were curious noises in the attic above her, and though she knew it was only wind, she felt, welling up more strongly than before, the superstitious alarm she would sometimes feel lying all alone in bed staring into darkness, or had felt, long ago, alone in her bed except for Horace, who could guard her no longer. She crossed to the white wicker table and picked up her paperback book. She stood undecided for a moment, looking out into the night, listening to the hum of the party rising through the walls of the house, keeping it alive, and the groan of the windswept darkness outside. It seemed a long time since James had driven off in his pick-up. For an instant she had an image of her brother as a child, bull-necked and petulant, holding her hand. According to the onyx clock on the desk it was quarter to eleven. She’d never known him to stay away so late.

And now an even stranger sensation came over her, so that her hackles rose in fear. Out by the mailbox, standing perfectly still, there was an old, old man in a long, dark coat, bearded like a rabbi. He stood looking at the house, unaffected by the wind. Her heart leaped in her chest painfully, and she bent closer to the glass. The man was still there, quiet as a statue, alien. She took her blue plastic glasses off and polished them on the front of her bathrobe, then replaced them and quickly looked again. There was no one now. Had it been pure illusion? Someone getting ready for Halloween? Her feeble eyes darted from car to car, shadow to shadow. He’d vanished from the face of the earth.

Below her — though it sounded, at first, far away — someone began playing a French horn.

7

“Somehow it doesn’t seem right,” Estelle said, “poor Sally up there suffering and James off heaven knows where, fuming, and here we are having a good time!” We should do something, she meant; the plan to coax Sally from her room was getting nowhere. But they chose not to understand her, or the hint was too subtle, or perhaps what she’d really meant, she reflected with a sigh, was to excuse her own inaction, keep up the party. She could hardly deny she was enjoying herself. How could she help it, with dear friends around her, Ruth looking larger and more glorious than ever, though she sagged some, these days, if she let herself get overtired — Ruth’s husband and Dr. Phelps laughing noisily together, pounding each other’s shoulders over stories of the old days — Ruth’s handsome red-headed grandson DeWitt hunkered against the wall by the kitchen door singing mournful songs, softly picking his guitar, entertaining the two small boys — and in the back room, James’ sitting room and bedroom, Estelle’s nephew Terence and Dr. Phelps’ granddaughter Margie playing duets on the French horn and flute. How she wished her Ferris could be here now to see it!

Estelle had retreated from the piano some minutes ago. She too tired quickly — they were none of them spring chickens — and it was hard for her to sit for very long on a bench. She’d settled on the couch now, surrounded by pillows, her two canes leaning against her knee. The Mexican priest was on the couch beside her, smelling pleasantly of cologne, and Lane Walker was in the chair by the fireplace, in front of her and to her left.

“Suffering always makes parties more interesting,” Lane Walker said, and grinned. He had a habit of speaking mysteriously, perhaps impishly, and smiling like a sphinx. It was flattering in a way, and Estelle enjoyed it — it was pleasant to be treated as one of the knowing — but the truth was, she seldom had the faintest idea what he was talking about. With that cherubic face and that hair-brush beard below his chin, he had the look of an elf, and it would have come as no great surprise to Estelle if she’d learned that all he said was some prank — not irreligious or irreverent: his delight in the ministry was as obvious as his perpetually startled, sky blue eyes, but astonishing and unthinkable all the same, as if Halloween dummies with jack-o-lantern heads should suddenly leap down from their porches — children in disguise! — and begin to frolic. Even his talks to her Sundayschool class left her baffled, though none of her students seemed to mind. It was the same with his sermons. He was fond of building up elaborate, merry structures of logic and Biblical or secular quotation — not so much sermons as prose poems, you might say — and ending with a sudden, quite striking allusion or an echo of something he’d said earlier, so that your heart leaped with pleasure, exactly as it would at some wonderful insight, but when you asked yourself just what it meant you had no idea. Fortunately, tonight Rafe Hernandez was here to help.

“Yes, good point!” he said, and laughed. “It’s easy to take a dark view of such things—” He leaned graciously toward Estelle — his scent became stronger — and explained to her quickly, as if she’d just now stepped in on their conversation, “It’s often been observed that suffering has a tendency to give pleasure a special bite, especially, of course, if the suffering is someone else’s and not unduly great.” His grin was Indian — black eyes, shining teeth — and made her notice that, like other priests she’d met, he had an effeminate, or anyway small-boyish streak. It made her like him more — though it must be said of Estelle that if the man had revealed himself as especially masculine, or even, perhaps, as a disguised chimpanzee, she would also suddenly have liked him more. “We enjoy suffering, at least in small doses,” he continued happily. “I saw it in Selma, I’ve seen it in the lettuce strikes. It makes us feel alert, wide awake. And of course it gives happiness definition.”

“Dear me,” Estelle said, and laughed nervously. If that was all Lane Walker had meant, she of course understood it. For years she’d been teaching the odes of John Keats. It had probably been someone like Estelle, in fact who had first made them, Lane Walker and Rafe Hernandez, see the meaning of “crush Joy’s grape.” But she continued to play the surprised innocent, for good fellowship’s sake and to make sure that was all Lane had intended.

The priest smiled kindly, exactly like a fat, gentle cat with a human brain, perhaps some protector-beast from the old days. “A cynic might imagine that we enjoy the suffering of others. Possibly we do, on occasion — but as a rule it’s much simpler. We understand our own well-being by comparison only. What a party it is, inevitably, when the guests are brought together by trouble!”

Ed Thomas sang out from across the room, “My favorite have always been bahn-fire pahties.” He held his cigar out dramatically, awaiting the priest’s question.

“Barn-fire parties?” Hernandez asked.

“Yes sirree!” he said. To Estelle, his face seemed abnormally bright, and glancing at Dr. Phelps she got the distinct impression that he was watching his friend Ed Thomas as he might a patient. Ed’s cigar wasn’t lighted; she couldn’t remember that he’d lighted one all night. “Bahn-fire parties!” Ed Thomas sang. “Whenever some poor devil’s bahn burns down we always have a pahty just like this one. True, Ruth?” He pointed the cigar at his wife, in the armchair by the piano, demanding confirmation.