John Gardner - October Light

“‘But what,’ I hear you interject, ‘of the sexes?’—for cunning animal that you are, you remember the outline I gave you when I started.”

“The sexes?” Estelle said, just starting into the bathroom. Virginia raised her finger to her lips, then waved Estelle on. Estelle went in and closed the bathroom door.

“My friends,” the minister said, “in every species in which labor is divided as it was for centuries among creatures of our race — by which I mean the one, sole, indivisible human race — we discover a tendency for the female to become small and quick — quick of foot and quick-witted — and highly emotional, and for the male to become large and a trifle slow-witted (consider the gorilla, the orang-utang), for in farmwork and war, to say nothing of hunting, there are certain advantages to — if you will forgive me, gentlemen — stupidity. What male with any sense would be tricked by a small, coy creature’s wiles into carrying boulders for a wall to keep her children safe? What crafty Odysseus would stand like a tower against the Trojans, dull-wittedly defending his genetic heritage, as did that huge slow-witted ox Ajax?” A look of confusion came over his face — possibly mere theater. “But then, of course, Odysseus’ line also survived, and, unlike Ajax, Odysseus eventually, after a good deal of monkeying around, made it home to his wife. Hmmm.”

He pursed his lips and pulled at his beard, and his great slanted eyebrows lowered. The congregation waited with keen interest. It might now quite legitimately be called a congregation. The hallway was so crowded he could no longer pace. There was DeWitt in the corner at the head of the stairs, Virginia and Dr. Phelps beside him, there were the two small boys on the stairway, holding their jack-o-lanterns, there were Lewis and the priest, Sally Abbott behind the door, and there was Estelle, just emerging from the bathroom, leaning on her canes.

Now the minister raised one finger and smiled as if enlightened, making a show of having seen a new angle in the mystery of Ajax and Odysseus. “Let us try putting it another way,” he said. “Which is more primitive? — the broad range of tendencies in the X chromosome, or the broad range of tendencies in the Y? In the days when Neanderthals killed with clubs and our own progenitors used spears and darts, a skull of bone solid as a football helmet was an enormous advantage to the Neanderthal fighting a Neanderthal; and a light skull easily jerked from place to place, and easily expanded to make room for more brain, was of similar advantage to Homo sapiens when he had to dodge a brother’s spearcast. Times change, however, and ice makes men wander. With what sad surprise must the mightiest and bravest of all Neanderthals have faced his first feather-light, dancing Homo sapiens! ‘Oof!’ the great Ajax among men said mournfully, as the spear slipped lightly through his tank of a body, and with a last, apologetic wave to heaven, the grand beast sank clattering into darkness.

“Times change, then; that is the lesson of our text, God’s first great book, as Aquinas called it, ‘The Book of Nature.’ The carrying of boulders can be done these days by a trim little creature with a gift for pushing buttons, and the creature with the quickest reactions will be queen of the piano, the typewriter, and the jumbo jet. ‘Ah ha!’ you say, ‘I smell here a female-supremacist!’ But not so! As we saw in the case of the sickle cell, even when a thing seems no longer of use, Nature is careful of her old spare parts. We carry, at least in genetic potential, all we ever carried from the time we were Devonian fish. Every man is part female, every woman part male, every mixture of the gene-pool a mixture for the better. Survival in a constantly evolving universe makes no petty-minded distinctions between primitive and advanced. In a word—”

The minister raised his right hand grandly, turning once again to Sally Abbott’s door. “In a word, Mrs. Abbott, Apes — or at least the more primitive apes — can and do make jack-o-lanterns!”

So saying, he turned to his little congregation in the hallway and on the stairs, bowing and smiling gently, and said, “Amen.”

“Amen, amen,” said the Mexican priest, and signed the air with a gesture more soft than any butterfly could have made, sitting in the sun, and, smiling and benevolent, fat as a Buddha and light as a balloon, “Ite, missa est,” he intoned, and then, in another voice, “Deo gratias!”

“Bless you, Reverend,” Sally Abbott called from behind her door, and judging by her voice, she was deeply moved. “May all these terrible prejudices be driven from the earth!”

“Then you’ll come out of your room?” Lane Walker said, delighted.

“Heavens no!” she said. “Why should I?”

Ed Thomas called up from the foot of the stairs, “Hi golly, so that’s where everybody’s gone to! Am I missing something?”

9

While his great-aunt Estelle was thinking of Notre Dame, Terence Parks stood in the old man’s sitting room-bedroom, turning the French horn around and around, emptying water from the tubing. He was as shy a boy as ever lived, as shy as the girl seated now on the sagging, old fashioned bed with her hands on the flute in her lap. She, Margie Phelps, gazed steadily at the floor, her silver-blonde hair falling straight past her shoulders, soft as flax. Her face was serious, though she was prepared to smile if he should wish her to. She wore a drab green dress that was long and (he could not know) expensive, striped kneesox, and fashionably clunky shoes. As for Terence, he had brown hair that curled below his ears, glasses without which he was utterly helpless, and a small chin. He had, at least in his own opinion, nothing to recommend him, not even a sense of humor. He therefore dressed, always, with the greatest care — dark blue shirts, never with a shirttail hanging out, black trousers, black shoes and belt. He fitted the mouthpiece back into the horn and glanced at Margie. He had had for some time a great, heart-slaughtering crush on her, though he hadn’t told her that, or anyone else. In his secret distress, he was like the only Martian in the world. As if she’d known he would do it, Margie looked up for an instant at exactly the moment he glanced at her, and immediately — blushing — both of them looked down.

He set his horn down carefully on the chair and went over to the window at the foot of the bed to look out. A noisy, blustering wind had come up, pushing large clouds across the sky, a silver-toothed wolf pack moving against the moon, quickly consuming it, throwing the hickory tree, the barn and barnyard into darkness. He could hear what sounded like a gate creaking, metal against metal.

“Is it raining yet?” she asked, her voice almost inaudible.

As she came up timidly behind him, Terence moved over a little to give her room at the window.

Her hand on the windowsill was white, almost blue. He could easily reach over and touch it. In the living room behind them — the door was part way open — the grown-ups were laughing and talking, DeWitt Thomas still picking his guitar and singing. You couldn’t hear the words. He looked again at her hand, then at the side of her face, then quickly back out at the night.

“Rain scares me,” she said. Though her face turned only a little, he could feel her watching him.

The moon reappeared, the black clouds sweeping along like objects in a flood. Terence put his hand on the windowsill near hers, as if accidentally. He listened for the sound of someone coming into the room and realized only now that the door to his left went to the back entryway and, beyond that, the kitchen. He felt panic, thinking they might go out that door unmissed. Something white blew across the yard, moving slowly, like a form in a dream.