John Gardner - October Light

“Well, I’ve had a wonderful time,” Dr. Phelps sang heartily, “and so has my Margie, if I mistake not.” He winked at her and she blushed. “Come come, my birdy,” he said, reaching toward her from across the room. With his red face, his long green scarf wrapped around and around and trailing past his shoulder, he looked like a greetingcard caricature of Christmas. Whispering something — perhaps just “Goodnight”—Margie detached herself from Terence.

“Well, boys?” Ed Thomas said, turning to his grandsons. They shifted slightly to show that they were ready. He turned back to Ruth and slipped his arm around her, preparing to help her walk. “Lewis, my boy,” he called out as if casually, “let’s don’t forget, eh?”

“Yessir,” Lewis said, helping Estelle to her feet from the chair by the table.

“Don’t call us, we’ll call you,” Ed Thomas sang out, and laughed.

When Dr. Phelps opened the door it pushed him back a step and wind came bounding into the room like a horse. “Great Christ!” he exclaimed. Whether it was the wind or something darker, a chill went through them, as if the old doctor’s cry had in fact been a prayer.

“Wintah’s just around the cohner,” Lewis Hicks said. No one else spoke.

“Get outta here, you guys!” Ruth Thomas said, addressing the wind, “you think it’s Halloween already?” No one laughed. She stood tall as a Druid, her head thrown back.

With the door still blown open, the kitchen nearly hushed, there came from somewhere below them on the mountain, surely not more than a half mile away, a sound like the explosion of a bomb.

“What was that?” Estelle whispered.

Virginia put her hand on Dickey’s shoulder, her eyes very still.

“Sounds like he didn’t make the cohner,” Lewis mentioned to the night.

The minister and priest were out the door now, running toward their car.

Sally Abbott, in her room, did not hear the explosion, or if she heard, did not register. She knew only that the house had become quiet, there were just a few people in the kitchen, talking. She couldn’t make out what they were saying or even who was there. She listened at the door and then, when she heard cars starting up, went over to look out the window. “They’re certainly in a hurry to get away,” she said aloud. She went back to the bedroom door to listen, but the voices were quieter than ever now. She went to the edge of the bed and sat down, trembling, feeling strangely alarmed — it was the howling wind, perhaps — and looked at the clock. Past midnight!

She should try to sleep, she knew; but it was out of the question. She glanced at the paperback book and, after a moment’s thought, picked it up and found her place. Staring at the page, she saw, as clearly as she had at the time, the ghostly intruder by the mailbox. She leaned back, pulling her feet up into bed with her, and reached clumsily behind her for the pillow. When it was adjusted, no easy matter, she rested her head against it and, with the book still open to her page, closed her eyes. Again she saw the ghost, but mixed with that image, overwhelming it, was the sound of Lane Walker’s voice, her sense of the hallway filled with people, above all her embarrassment at having seemed a racist to the Mexican. She opened her eyes and the room was abruptly linear and solid, everything in place. She glanced at the book. Without quite meaning to, she began, once again, to read.

11

ART AND FREEDOM

Eighteen miles off the Mexican coast, Lost Souls’ Rock rose sharply from the Pacific like a black, partly fallen natural castle or dark-towered factory from an abandoned civilization. A nautical mile out, a single greenish spire like a stalagmite rose from the sea, a welcoming emblem, a Statue of Liberty without features or torch. It was an island strangely hairy, yet bare in patches, like an animal with mange. Its vegetation was all drab brown or gray, fruitless and nameless — here and there an unsightly, twisted cactus, elsewhere low thickets of wiry brush hiding dangerous crevasses, reptile bones, old beer cans.

“An unsightly place,” Santisillia observed, “but a good place for thinking. Nothing to lay demands on you, providing you’re well provisioned. Nothing to confuse you in the way Spinoza mentioned.”

“Spinoza?” Jane said politely, looking over her glasses.

Santisillia moved his hand as if to touch her, then thought better of it. “Spinoza speaks of how a hungry man or an angry man is not free to think clearly. Only the free man is in a position to be wise.”

“Oh, that,” she said. She tipped back her red, white, and blue cap, slid her arm through Peter Wagner’s, and looked up at the sky as if fixing it in her mind. They were nearing the dark, covered channel mouth.

“It’s an ideal place for getting your head straight,” Santisillia continued. “Makes you think of Patmos where the man wrote Revelations.” His smile became rueful. “Of course we never make use of the opportunity.”

“You make use of it, surely,” Jane said, still looking at the sky.

“Maybe this time,” he said.

Suddenly a startled look came over her face. “Look!” she cried out, pointing straight up.

Santisillia looked, shading his eyes, but saw nothing. “What is it?”

She was silent for a moment; then: “I’m not sure.”

She smiled, unsettled. “I must have imagined it.”

“What was it?” he asked.

She shook her head.

Darkness slid over their faces. They had entered the channel.

Chained together, the Militant and the Indomitable scraped through the winding, covered trough, the clearance, at some points, less than a foot, Peter Wagner maneuvering by torchlight and echo and the help of his friends — slowly, laboriously — to where the channel quit abruptly in a still, roofed-over pool. From there, taking only necessities, they clambered up by toe-holds and hand-holds through a shaft like that of an abandoned mine to a high, sunlit basin where there was still, fresh water, cupric green and uninviting. Jane held one of Peter Wagner’s arms, the silent Indian held the other. The only sounds were lizard-eating birds’ low, dissatisfied grunts. The air was warm and sugary.

Peter Wagner sat with his chin on his fists, his eyes on nothing. For all he needed, he depended without knowing it on Jane and the Indian. His mind was not working; the blow Santisillia had given him had left him with a concussion, and now, three whole days were as blank as a mushroom, though second by second he could function well enough if given continual instruction on what he was to do. The gap in his consciousness — the one thing he was steadily conscious of — made him jumpy. “A good place for thinking,” he mumbled darkly. “We must all try to think.” Jane picked up his hand and kissed it.

As the hours passed, Jane glanced at him from time to time, sorry for him but no more sorry now than at other times. She was writing cheerful letters — little works of art, in a certain sense — to her mother and Uncle Fred. We’ve put in at a fascinating little Mexican port that’s hardly been spoiled at all by tourists. Each time she glanced at Peter Wagner again, he hadn’t moved. Neither had the Indian sitting like a boulder just beyond him. Luther Santisillia stood down by the stream in his white shirt and tie, still wearing his dark glasses, smoking. Just tobacco. Cigars. Dancer lay in the shadow of the cave, half buried in lizards, smiling in his sleep. He was stoned out of his mind. So was Mr. Goodman, lying among the black rocks by the stream, unaware of the lizards all over him. He was trying to make a large spackled lizard climb a stick. Mr. Nit, if he was still awake, was on watch up on the jutting of rock called the Tower. As for Captain Fist, he sat as he’d been sitting all day, tugging at his ropes and chewing at his gag and rolling his eyes in fury. Poor Captain Fist, she thought. According to Dancer, they were going to try the Captain for war crimes.