John Gardner: October Light

Aboard the Indomitable, Mr. Goodman turned with a jerk. “Man overboard!” he yelled, though it was not quite fitting. Whatever it was that fell, six inches from the larboard bow, went down like a boulder, throwing almost no splash. Choong, it went, and he yelled, “Full speed backwards!” A strange command. “You’re crazy,” Mr. Nit hissed. “If the Captain hears—” “It was a man,” Mr. Goodman said. “I saw it.” It wasn’t quite true. He knew it was a man; he saw nothing, merely heard it come screaming like a bomb. The boat jerked and shuddered, then backed up as Jane reversed the engine. “There!” Mr. Goodman yelled. Jane cut the engine and the Indomitable was silent except for the trickle of a few small leaks.

“Jesus,” Mr. Nit said, and glanced back at where the Captain would emerge if he emerged. But he could see the thing floating, sweeping out to sea, and, in his confusion, he threw a line to it. The Coast Guard cutter was turning, coming back. “Jesus,” he said again. The Indomitable was loaded to the gunnels with marijuana.

“Switch off the lights,” Mr. Goodman said.

“Switch off the lights,” Mr. Nit called. The lights went off. The cutter crossed to starboard, the wrong side. Mr. Goodman had his shoes off now. He snapped back the rope and dived. He thrashed in the water, blind as one of Mr. Nit’s eels, and in three, four minutes, absurdly, he found the body. It was certainly dead, but he clutched it by the hair and yelled, “Pull the rope!”

Mr. Nit was already pulling, though in the cacophony of foghorns and shouts from the bridge he heard nothing. Mr. Goodman, with the corpse, came up to the hull and understood that Mr. Nit could not pull them both up — could hardly have pulled up one of them alone, since Mr. Nit was a tiny man, fragile and quick as a monkey but no more substantial. Mr. Goodman looped the rope around the drowned man’s waist, then shinnied. When he reached the rail he dug in and hauled. The drowned man came over the side; still no sign of the Captain.

“Jesus,” Mr. Nit said.

Mr. Goodman lay down on the deck, panting like a whale.

“Jesus,” Mr. Nit said, “what do we do with him now?”

“He’s a human being,” Mr. Goodman gasped. “We couldn’t just let him die.”

The Coast Guard cutter had passed and was circling back.

“Terrific,” said Mr. Nit. “Human being. Terrific.”

He did not look like one, it was true. His suit, striped shirt and tie were unsightly, and his shoes had come off. His hair hung over his face like seaweed, and whenever you moved him or pushed down on his stomach — neither Mr. Goodman nor Mr. Nit had had lessons in artificial respiration, though they were doing their best — water came out of him like juice from an overripe pumpkin. He looked like one of those pictures called Descent from the Cross (Mr. Goodman had once been a museum guard).

“Is he breathing yet?” Mr. Nit asked anxiously of Mr. Goodman’s ear.

Mr. Goodman pushed hard on the stomach again. “Not that I can see.”

Mr. Nit leaned still closer. “That cutter’s coming right up our asshole, Jack.”

Mr. Goodman sighed, pushed up from the body, hunching his shoulders in the cold wet salt-smelly shirt, and seized the drowned man’s feet. “We better get him out of sight,” he said. “Grab hold.”

Mr. Nit grabbed hold and they rolled him into the fish hatch with the pot. “Now let’s get out of here,” said Mr. Goodman.

The cutter horn boomed and Mr. Nit jumped like a rabbit. “Yes sir,” he said, as if the horn had spoken English, and he yelled, “Full speed frontwards!”

The Indomitable churned up white water a moment, then moved. The cutter’s searchlight came over them like the eye of God — the cutter looked a mile long — and a man on the cutter yelled down at them through a bullhorn. Rowrrrowrrow!

“Yes sir!” Mr. Nit yelled, cupping his hands. “Yes sir! Sorry sir!”

“Get the lights back on,” said Mr. Goodman.

“Lights!” yelled Mr. Nit.

They came on.

The bullhorn growled again, something about a drowning man. Mr. Nit and Mr. Goodman cupped their hands and yelled: “No sign of him. We been looking.” The Indomitable was now running full speed ahead, bobbing up and down in the sea’s heavy waves like a fisherman’s cork; the cutter was standing still, the white eye of God staring after them as if baffled and slightly hurt. Mr. Nit and Mr. Goodman continued yelling until fog blanked out even the searchlight.

And now, riding easy in the quiet of the bay, bobbing more gently, the engine no longer groaning in spasms as it did in the waves of the open Pacific, the Indomitable slowed and Mr. Goodman struggled to figure out his bearings. He made out at last the on-off-on flashing of the beer sign.

“Christ,” said Mr. Nit, “what’d we have done if the Captain come up, back there?”

They both turned at once. The Captain came out in his old black coat and his old black hat, his face greenish white from his sea-sickness. He steadied himself on the rail and inched toward them. He was barefoot, like the drowned man, and the crotch of his pants hung low. He was whiskered and bruised like one of those bums on Third Street. He had long white hair.

“What’s going on?” he said.

“Drowned man, sir,” Mr. Goodman said. “We pulled him aboard.”

The old man’s eyes widened and his lips sucked in and he decided not to believe it.

“It’s true, sir,” Mr. Nit said. “He was a human being, sir.”

Captain Fist leaned over the rail and vomited. Then, turning as slowly as a ship, he went back to his cabin and to bed.

Half an hour later, after they’d docked, Mr. Nit and Mr. Goodman dragged the body from the fish hatch, scraped off the marijuana, and, failing to notice that it was breathing already, though fast asleep and possibly unconscious, tried to revive it. Jane came from the wheel to help, slipping off her glasses as she came. She was pretty, but rugged as a saw. “Jesus Christ,” she said, and pushed them away. She pulled the drowned man’s tongue out and sat down on his belly. About a spoonful of water came dribbling from his mouth. She pumped on his belly with her buttocks and moved his elbows up and down like wings. “It’s useless,” she said. “He’s been like this for an hour by now.” Nevertheless, she went on pumping. Mr. Nit and Mr. Goodman squatted beside her, watching, and after a long time the drowned man groaned. She put her mouth over his.

When Peter Wagner opened his eyes it was the story of his life. By habit, he closed his arms around her and returned the kiss. She seemed surprised, and struggled. He humped upward a little and her pelvis moved down to meet his. He remembered the bridge then, and his eyes came wide open. Beyond the girl he could make out two men, hunched down, one broad-chested and sad of face, with arms like a boxer’s, a mouth oddly meek, the other small as a boy, with an axe-shaped head and the eyes of a coyote. In the greenish-yellow light behind them stood a man with an old black overcoat reaching to his shoetops and, on his shaggy, snow-white head, a wide-brimmed hat. His heavily knuckled hand leaned hard on a cane. Peter Wagner pulled his mouth away and the girl straightened up.

“Well,” she said, “he’s alive,” and she swung up off him and put on her glasses.

It was the wrong thing to say. He jerked up, groping with his hands and feet, and made for the rail. Without expression, the old man brought up his cane and then brought it down. It felt like being clubbed by a baseball bat. He saw stars; then he saw nothing.

~ ~ ~

2

ALKAHEST’S CONVERSION

John F. Alkahest, sitting in his wheelchair