John Gardner - October Light

“A fact,” Mr. Nit said.

“An’ I say shit.”

“Take it easy, Dancer,” Santisillia said. “Mr. Nit’s right enough, far as he goes. What’s physically knowable, science will sooner or later know.”

Peter Wagner bowed his head. “I’ve heard all this,” he said dully.

“Everybody has,” Santisillia said. “But nobody understands it.

Listen. Nothing’s knowable but the present and the past. That’s the bucket of ashes.”

Peter Wagner sighed. “Terrific. Maybe tomorrow there will be gods.”

“Exactly!”

Jane looked at Dancer and thought him handsome. Maybe she’d saved his life that night; no telling. Maybe he’d have come around anyway. She got up on one elbow to get her pipe and plastic bag of grass from her tight jeans pocket. Pipes had more oomph.

Santisillia said: “Think about it, though. It disgusts you that Fist blows up Mexican villagers he doesn’t even know.”

“I understand all that,” Peter Wagner broke in impatiently. “‘I assert for all men for all time ta-dum-ta-dum.’”

“Wrong,” Santisillia snapped. “It’s not some arbitrary, private assertion, like Bluebeard’s assertion that murdering wives would be the meaning of his life. Those Mexican villagers were innocent, vulnerable, like everything alive — like your imaginary sister crossing the street when some fat-head wasn’t watching the light.”

Peter Wagner pressed his hands to his head, avoiding the sore place. “Say it again. I don’t follow.”

Dancer said, pretending he understood, “Break it down for him, Luther.”

Jane leaned upon her elbow again, holding the lighted pipe out toward Dancer. “You want some?”

“Grass?” he said.

She nodded.

He took the pipe, held one hand over the bowl and drew in. When he started to hand it back she nodded toward Mr. Nit, and Dancer passed it on. Mr. Goodman got out his own pipe, loaded it, and lit it. When he’d drawn in, he passed it to Santisillia. Santisillia waved it off. “Man, I can’t smoke and think,” he said. “Shall I be tempted to infringe my vow in the same time ’tis made?”

Dancer smiled. He said, “Hey, Luther, we still gonna try the Captain for atrocities?”

Santisillia shrugged. “How can we? We just finished proving that nobody’s responsible for anything.”

Dancer looked doubtful. “Maybe we could figure something out, if we once got into it.”

Mr. Goodman said soberly, holding out the pipe again, “I think we should try him.”

Again Santisillia laughed, and this time it sounded, to Jane at least, downright sorrowful. “Try him, don’t try him, what’s the difference?” he said. “Better to shoot him, or let Injun Joe here strangle him. We were supposed to be talking about something more important — justice for the future, how to make gods that exist.”

Peter Wagner continued to sit with his head down. If he tried to walk, Jane saw, he would be sick.

Mr. Goodman said, “The future’s all there is.” “Mr. Goodman,” Santisillia said, “you’re stoned.” It was true, she saw. He hadn’t gotten down from the last one, and was rising again like a balloon at the Zoo. She felt her mind crinkling open like wadded up paper. Maybe she was stoned herself. She tried to remember if she’d ever seen a leprechaun. Whenever she was able to remember it clearly, it was a sign that she was stoned.

They sat for another half hour, or two hours, she had no idea, drifting like a glider, a leaf on a brook. Santisillia kept trying to talk philosophy. She smiled, and eventually even he understood that it was useless. Dancer lay with his head in her lap. She put her feet on Mr. Goodman’s chest, her free hand on Dancer’s. The bare skin was hairless as a boy’s. Peter Wagner looked over at her and suddenly, drunkenly, got to his feet and staggered out to find more sticks. They laughed at him, too high to be bothered by his anger — all but Santisillia — and like a devil, a misanthrope from the woods, he laughed back. After a moment Luther got up, cold sober and graceful, and went to help him. She inched her hand down under Dancer’s belt and under the elastic of his underpants. Peter Wagner and Santisillia came back — hours later, it seemed — with their arms loaded, dropped their loads with a crash by the fire, put on a few sticks, and poked it back to life. Then they stretched out on the cool rock a little way away from her, judgmental. Even now Santisillia was trying to make Peter Wagner talk philosophy. Dear God save us from fanatics, she thought. “It’s a matter of life and death,” he was saying. Peter Wagner was rubbing his aching head, watching her. Dancer’s hair, under her fingertips, was soft as silk. Her desire was an ache — for Peter and Luther especially. She would, she knew, have to be the one to act, but she was so dopey she could hardly think. She unbuttoned the top buttons of her blouse, smiling sleepily toward Peter and Luther, to show she was theirs if they wanted her, then put her hand back down inside Dancer’s pants. She said softly, just loud enough for him to hear, “Peter, come be close to me!” He didn’t move at first. Then suddenly, making up his drunken mind, he came to her, took her shoulders in his hands, and kissed her forehead and cheek. She smiled, then lazily raised her head to kiss him on the mouth. She felt as if she were floating, one hand sliding down to close gently on Dancer’s enormous crooked penis, the other sliding to Mr. Goodman’s. “Luther!” she called softly. “Oh God, Luther, come help!” He thought a moment, then threw his cigar away and crawled toward her, his expression half hunger, half anger.

Quickly Luther and Peter finished unbuttoning her blouse. She felt her breasts tensing more. Their fingertips rang like church-bells on her skin. Peter’s lips came to her right nipple, then Luther’s to her left. She groaned, then laughed, and in a moment they too were laughing, finally even Luther and Peter. Mr. Nit, over by the fire, was bent like a monkey, jerking frantically, pulling off his pants. Dancer was sliding her jeans and panties off. The laughing gave way to a great, silent tenderness that seemed to her almost holy. She felt herself opening like the Grand Canyon and pulling as if to draw in the whole calm night. She gave herself to them, hardly knowing who was where, as though she were, say, a field of wheat. They hugged each other like lovers as they took her. She felt beautiful, unspeakably alive, loved like a saint in a passionate vision. This is my body … She thought of poor somber, stiff-necked, ridiculous Nebraska. Take, eat. . She kissed the drunken Indian’s tear-stained cheeks.

Then, piled like alligators, they slept. Mr. Nit, small as a boy in her arms, moaned, troubled by bad dreams. She patted his head. Suffer the little children …

Hours later, Peter Wagner sat up suddenly. There was the drone of an engine — a plane, a boat, he couldn’t tell.

“Luther!” he whispered.

Santisillia sat up, shaking his head to clear it. Jane sat up too and snatched about wildly, hunting for her clothes. There were lights and noises over by the shaft that led down to where the boats were hidden. Near the cave, Santisillia hunted naked for the guns. At last Santisillia found the machine gun. “Come on,” he called. Peter Wagner followed, jumping as in a sack-race, trying to get into his pants as he ran. On the flat rock at the mouth of the shaft they found a trembling, wild-eyed old man in a wheelchair. There was no one else. Whoever had brought him and the wheelchair was gone.

“My name is John F. Alkahest,” the old man whimpered, sniffing the air like a mouse. The eyes behind the thick glasses looked terrified.

Santisillia aimed the machine gun at him but did nothing. “Man, this isn’t happening,” he said. “This has got to be that grass.”