John Gardner - October Light

Ginny looked at her watch. Where was he so long?

“Well, Ginny,” Dr. Phelps said behind her, “I guess we better be moseyin on.”

“Oh!” Ginny said, and snatched up a towel to dry her hands.

11

When Ed Thomas got to go up to the bathroom — he had to step back for the descending crowd — he found Lewis Hicks standing at Sally’s door scraping off the paint. “Hi gol, Lewis,” he said, “you ain’t goin down with the others?” He pointed past his shoulder with his partly cut off thumb. “Ye’ll be missin the party, boy! Won’t last much longer, I can tell ye that fer certain. Ye better get in on it!”

“Well,” Lewis said, pausing a moment to reflect on the matter, “I got to get this paintin done, and pahty or no pahty, I hate to drive all this way and just leave it set.”

“That’s the spirit, boy,” Ed Thomas said, and laughed. “Say, what was all that goin on up here?” He pointed past his shoulder again toward where the crowd had gone.

“Talk about apes and women,” Lewis said.

“Jokes, ye mean?” Ed asked, squinting, mouth slightly open.

Lewis went on with his scraping. “Not really,” he said.

Ed Thomas lowered his head and chuckled. “Apes and women,” he said. “Hi golly.” He went to the bathroom, and while he was using the toilet, his chest going empty and ringing as if with panic as he urinated, the pain coming out for a look like a woodchuck in February, he got to thinking. When he’d zipped himself up and washed his hands and face and looked himself over in the oval mirror — half the buttons were missing from his washed-out workshirt, missing from the middle toward both ends, as usual, popped by the vast generosity of his belly, but never mine, he was a handsome old dog, as his wife Ruth told him (hair white as sugar, cheeks and nose pink) — he stepped out into the hallway and said, “Doggone it, Lewis, you’re a dahn good workman!”

“Thank you, Mr. Thomas,” Lewis said. “I always do the best I can.”

“That’s the truth. I’ve noticed it. By golly but it’s hahd to find a worker these days!”

Lewis nodded and held out the scraper to pick away a few bits of grit. “Yes it is,” he said. “It makes you wonder, the way things’re goin. People don’t seem to have much pride ennamore.”

“No pride at all. It’s a cryin shame.” The Welshman tipped his head, holding up his stomach with his interlaced fingers, and asked pointedly: “That your work, that wall at Peg Ellis’s place in Old Bennington, there by the church?”

“Done that this summer, that’s right,” Lewis said. He added, apologetic, “Hadda use a book. Don’t get much oppahtunity to lay stone walls.”

Ed Thomas shook his head in admiration. He began to move cautiously, like a fisherman with a bite. He leaned on the banister and looked approvingly at the newly scraped bathroom door. There was not a gouge, and not a scrap of paint left. It was a job on which some men would have taken days, yet Ed knew it had taken Lewis Hicks no such span; he’d seen how Lewis swept that scraper down Sally Abbott’s door. “I imagine you get plenty to keep you busy, a man like you.”

Lewis nodded again, but said, “Never make me a tycoon, I guess.” He continued to stand dandling the scraper, awkward. He’d never been a man to lounge around, and that was especially true when things had him nervous. His father-in-law had been gone a good long time. It was now, by Lewis’s pocketwatch, eleven twenty-five. The people downstairs were making noises about leaving. As they’d gone down after the minister’s talk, they’d most of them bade Lewis goodnight.

Ed Thomas pointed at Lewis’s chest. He looked him straight in the blue eye, then shifted to the brown one. “Let me ask you somethin straight out, Lewis. How’d you like to come work for me?”

“For you, Mr. Thomas?” He smiled, uneasy, and ran the index finger of his left hand down the side of Aunt Sally’s door. He’d have to persuade her to open the thing or he’d never be able to finish, he thought. He looked at the fingertip, dusty as if with sawdust from a coping saw, and casually, as if speaking to his finger, he said, “No sir, I don’t b’lieve I could.”

Ed Thomas stood with his mouth open. Not from surprise, necessarily. He usually stood with his mouth open. “Why not?” he said.

“Wal, I got a lot of things lined up,” Lewis said. “Can’t really affoahd to let my customahs slide.” He took another swipe at the door with the scraper. He’d made his point as plain as he cared to. Ed Thomas was famous for being slow to pay. If possible he’d get out of it altogether. That was all right, maybe. Farming wasn’t easy for anyone these days. But Lewis would prefer to keep out of it. He listened to the voices coming up from the kitchen. They were definitely moving toward the door, he thought. Ed Thomas would do him a kindness if he’d do that too. He took another swipe at the paint. The scraper snagged; old nail-head. Lewis got out his jackknife.

But Ed stood firm, leaning on the banister, pursing his lips, breathing shallowly and frowning. He said suddenly, “I don’t mean just handyman jobs, Lewis. I want you to be my Number One.” He reached into his shirt pocket, got out a cigar, and began peeling off the cellophane. Then, some trouble occurring to him, he changed his mind and left the wrapper on.

“I can’t deny that’s a good offer,” Lewis said, “but I’m no dairyman. I grew up in town.” He smiled again.

“Hell, I’d tell you what to do, Lewis. You’re young yet. You got brains. You’ll learn the whole business in no time. And I’ll tell you what else: If there’s one thing a dairyman needs more’n anything else it’s an ability to handle any kind of trade — electrician, carpenter, mason, plumber, veterinarian, accountant—”

He shook his head. “Cows bite me, Mr. Thomas. They always have.”

“Pshaw,” Ed Thomas scoffed. “Cows don’t bite. They might bunt, they might kick, but in all my years I never seen a cow bite.”

“I been bit, though. And by cows. I never been near a cow that he didn’t bite me.”

“Then I’ll teach ye how to deal with it. You just hit ’em in the nose.”

Lewis shook his head. “I appreciate the offer, but no thanks, sir. What about your son?”

“Never do it,” Ed said matter-of-factly. “Cholly hates fahmin. So do his boys, though I get a bit of help from ’em when they visit — especially DeWitt. But my boy Cholly, he won’t even help when he comes visitin, that’s the truth. It’s understandable, of course. Cholly’s got a good job in Boston, ye know. No reason to get his good shoes dirty.” He smiled. “Cholly likes that kind of thing — mowin the lawn, cookin itty-bitty chickens on the backyard bobbycue. But you now, Lewis, you’re a Vahmonter. You don’t need that sort of a life. I b’lieve it’d kill ya.”

“That may be so,” Lewis said. “All the same, I’m like Cholly. I ain’t no fahmer.”

“You ain’t tried it, though.”

All at once Lewis grinned like one of those jack-o-lanterns the boys had carved, for just that instant Ed Thomas looked exactly like the man that had sold him that Chevy. “I ain’t tried cyanide either, yet,” he said.

The Welshman laughed. He seemed persuaded at last that Lewis meant it. He turned away in the direction of the stairs. “Well, think about it though. You could just about name your terms, I can tell you.” He took two steps down, his left hand spread over the top of the newel post. The bedroom and bathroom doors rumbled, catching a sudden draft — the storm outside was getting fiercer by the minute — and abruptly, as if the rumble of the doors had told him something, Ed Thomas stopped and looked up and said, “Truth of the matter is, I could use you, Lewis. I got to get off that fahm or I’m a dead man.” His face was serious, redder than usual. He pointed at his chest with the cellophane-wrapped cigar. “It’s my ticker,” he said. “Doc Phelps’ll tell ye.” He smiled as if absentmindedly and shook his head. “I work half an hour and by tunkit I got to go in and lie down again. Chores every mornin and night — wrastlin bales, cleanin out gutters — I can’t do it anymore, that’s the long and the short of it. Doctor asked me, ‘You feel pain in your chest, Ed?’ ‘No sir,’ I says, ‘just a little discomfit.’ ‘Well now,’ he says ‘how much discomfit?’ ‘Well, I wouldn’t call it pain,’ I says. Well, Doc Phelps looks at me and says, ‘People have different ideas about what’s pain, Ed.’ I says to him, ‘What I call pain is when you jump right out of your chair.’ ‘I’d call what you’ve got pain, then,’ says he. ‘But I’ll tell you this,’ he says, ‘once winter comes, you might’s well just throw that chair away.’ By golly it was the truth, too. Here it’s only October and the damn thing won’t let me sit down. If I work that dairy I’m a dead man sure as I’m standin here.” He grinned as if, more than anything else, it was an embarrassment.