John Gardner - October Light

“What’s that?” she asked, startled, and put her hand on his. Her head came slightly closer and, despite the violence of the storm in his chest, he smelled her hair.

“Fertilizer bag, I think,” he said.

“What?” she said.

He said it again, this time loud enough to hear. She did not draw her hand away, though the touch was light, as if at the slightest sign she would quickly remove it. His mind raced almost as fast as his heart, and he pressed closer to the window, pretending to follow the white thing’s ghostly flight. Again he smelled her hair, and now her breath — a warm scent of apple.

As for Dr. Phelps’ granddaughter Margie, her heart thudded and her brain tingled; she half believed she might faint. Her friend Jennifer at school had told her weeks ago that Terry Parks had a crush on her, and she hadn’t doubted it, though it seemed to her a miracle. When he played his French horn in the school orchestra or at the Sage City Symphony, his playing gave her goosebumps, and when they had answering parts in the woodwind quintet, she blushed. Finding him here at the Pages tonight had been a kind of confirmation of the miracle, and when the grown-ups had suggested that the two of them might play duets together, and had sent them here, so that the adults could talk …

Now another cloud, larger than those before it, was swallowing the moon. The noise of the wind half frightened, half thrilled her. The barn stood out stark, sharply outlined. The white thing — fertilizer bag, that was right — was snagged in a fence, gray as bone, suddenly inert.

He moved his hand a little, closing it on hers. She drew her breath in sharply. Was someone coming?

“You kids want baked apples?” Virginia Hicks called from the doorway behind them.

They parted hands quickly and whirled around, frightened and confused.

“I’ll leave them here on the bedside table,” Virginia said, smiling. She seemed to have seen nothing. “You two make beautiful music together,” she said, and smiled again, with a wave of her cigarette.

Neither of them spoke, heads spinning, smiling at the floor. Virginia left them.

Something thudded hard against the house, a small limb, perhaps, but no window broke, the walls did not sway, and so they laughed, embarrassed by their momentary fear. As they laughed they walked toward the bedside table where the baked apples stood oozing juice.

“Mmm, baked apples,” Margie said softly. She picked up her plate and seated herself primly on the bedside, eyes cast down. Terence came and sat beside her.

“Listen to that wind,” he said. The night howled and thudded like an orchestra gone wrong, dissonant and senseless, dangerous, but Margie was happy, for once in her life utterly without fear, except of him. She laid her hand casually on the cover beside her, conscious of the laughter and talk in the next room and also now a sound like arguing, coming from upstairs. She glanced at Terence and smiled. Smiling back, secretive and careful, he put his hand over hers.

10

Virginia stood smoking a cigarette, filling the sink to wash dishes. People were gathering their coats in the living room, and the thought of their leaving — her father not yet home — filled her with such anxiety she could hardly catch her breath. Perhaps it was the anxiety that made her think of Richard. She thought of him often, though he’d been dead fifteen years. All grief, all trouble, all worry made her think of him, which was strange in a way; he hadn’t been all that unhappy, really, or if he had — his suicide made her wonder — she hadn’t known it. He’d been a living saint, just like Lewis. She smiled, slightly blushing, remembering the time he’d walked in on them. They’d gone to his house and found the door open, Richard away somewhere — she’d been something like eighteen — and they’d decided to sit on the couch and wait for him. One thing had led to another as it always did with them then, and when her brother walked in — they hadn’t heard him drive up — there they were on the couch, she with her legs spread wide and Lewis with his pants half off, down around his knees, and Richard had stepped into the dimly lit room, not seeing them at first, and then had seen them and blushed scarlet, as if he were the guilty one. “Hi!” he’d said quickly, and hurried through the room to the kitchen. They’d lain there giggling, hardly able to think what to do, and had been tempted to sneak out the door without a word. But it wasn’t as if he would yell at them; Richard had never yelled at anyone in his life — except once Aunt Sally when she said a little something about their mother. So they’d gotten themselves arranged — she must have been eighteen, because Richard was twenty-five, it was the last year he lived — and they’d gone in where he was sitting in the kitchen, drinking whiskey and reading the Banner. He’d looked up at them and grinned. “I didn’t even know you were engaged,” he’d said. “Fix you a snort?”

“Mommy, can I have a drink?” Dickey said beside her. Without even rising from her reverie, she took one of the newly washed cups from the drainer, filled it with cold water, and gave it to him.

“What do you say?” she said.

“Thank you,” he said and drank. After one swallow he poured out the rest, into her dishwater. She sighed.

She remembered how once when she was four or five Richard had frightened her with a bee. He’d known it was a drone and wouldn’t sting — smaller, darker than the rest of the bees; their father had often let Richard play with them — but she hadn’t known it couldn’t sting and of course had been terrified. She’d screamed, and with a look of alarm he’d grabbed her hand. “It won’t sting you, Ginny! Look, it’s just a drone!” he’d yelled, trying to make her stop before their father heard. He’d put the bee on her arm, yelling “See? See?” And then, coming around the corner of the barn, barrel-chested and terrible, carrying a milk-hose, was their dad.

“Oh God,” Richard had said, letting go of her, starting to cry already; and she’d understood she’d gotten him in trouble again. He was always in trouble, though he never did a thing; their father just somehow had it in for him.

“All right,” their father said.

“It was just a little drone,” he said, and then said no more — in her mind she could see him just as clear as day, a big gawky boy of eleven or twelve, golden-haired in the sunlight, face bright red with shame and anger, crying before he was even hit. All through her childhood, it seemed to her, her father had been beating him for one thing or another. “A lad born for hanging,” her father had called him, and again and again laid his belt to him, or a milk-hose, or a stick. She knew pretty well what it was in him that made their father furious. He was timid — exactly as their father had been, Aunt Sally said — afraid of the cows, the horses, even of the chickens; afraid of strangers; afraid of cold and of thunder; afraid of ghosts and nightmares; afraid, more than anything else, that one of them might die, or that his father might go crazy, as a man had done once down the road, and might shoot them with his gun. Perhaps if her father had been able to see …

Her brother had a wonderful sense of humor, though, even about himself. He knew he was a coward, and made a joke of it. If something made him jump, he’d exaggerate the jump and put mock terror on his face, so you couldn’t be sure if he’d really been startled or was just playing; and when he asked their mother for the keys to the car — their gentle, good mother of whom not even mice could conceivably be frightened — he would duck and cringe as if scared she meant to hit him, and she would laugh and catch hold of his hand. He’d once dressed up for a costume party in a horrible outfit — he had a beard and long hair made of white horse’s tail, and had a long black coat that had belonged to their father’s crazy uncle Ira, and he was carrying an axe with red paint splashed over it. When he came before the party to spring it on their mother, he’d seen himself in the mirror and actually jumped. Even their father had smiled, for once, but all he’d said was, “Don’t fahget to clean off that axe when you’re through with it.” He was something, her father. He was beyond belief! Yet he’d meant no harm. Whatever Uncle Horace and Aunt Sally might think, her mother saw the truth: “He loves that boy more than his own life. That’s why he frets so.”