John Gardner - October Light

The bed, fortunately, was on castors, and though it was heavy, and though the floor was slopy and the boards where they butted together not even, she managed to get it to a foot from the door, where, when the time came, she could stand on it. She lifted the applecrate up onto the bed, listened again, then unlocked the door, opened it almost to the bed, put a pair of shoes against it to keep it there, and stood back to inspect. It would do.

Carefully, still feeling the mysterious serenity, she climbed up onto the bed. It was almost impossible, as she’d known it would be, to stand up on the bed and lift the applecrate to the top of the door — it would be something, she thought, if she fell and broke her neck! — but at last, by some miracle, she managed it. Slowly, slowly, as when you put the top block on a tower of blocks, she drew her hands away from each side of the crate. It sat firm, though precarious, tilted from the top of the doorframe — the summerbeam — to the door, and, even when she’d lowered herself to the bed again, it did not fall. She got out of the bed and carefully rolled it to its place against the wall. She smiled. In the mirror above the desk, it seemed to her, she looked positively young.

“Now the lamp,” she said. She looked out the window. The cars were still there; no police car.

She moved the white wicker table over to behind the door, where James wouldn’t see it and the crate might possibly fall on it if it didn’t fall on James, and where in any case the door would bump it when he came barging in; then she went to the wash-stand for the kerosene lamp. It was nearly full, and the wick was white and new, rising from the brass and sinking into the clean glass bowl. As she picked it up, to carry it to the table, she realized, with a gasp, that she had no matches. At once, all her serenity fell away. She had a vision, clear as a nightmare, of James raising the gun to aim at her, his eyes not human. There would be a thunderous crash that rocked the room—“Oh dear God,” she whispered. Her heart was like a hot potato, pounding just behind her throat. She set down the lamp and hurried around the table to the dresser and opened the top draw, then the next and the next. No matches! She looked around wildly, trying to think, then remembered the desk. Of course. Ginny sometimes slept in this room, and Ginny would certainly have matches, she couldn’t be without a cigarette two minutes.

She tugged at the front of the desk. It seemed to be locked. She stared at the keyhole in disbelief, then tugged again. Nothing. She turned, listening, imagining she’d heard a footstep, but she’d been wrong, he was still in the bathroom — silent now. Still on the potty? She tugged again. The desk was locked. Then her mind cleared and she realized that for Ginny, too, it would be locked, so the matches must be somewhere else. She pulled at the handles of the desk’s top draw. It slid out so easily she almost fell down, and there, lo and behold! lay a dozen paper matchbooks. She snatched one up and without even closing the draw went back to the lamp on the table. It lit easily, at the first match. She adjusted the wick, then balanced the lamp on the edge of the table, so that the first good bump would send it crashing to the floor. She straightened and looked up at the applecrate — still motionless and dark, waiting for him — and nodded to herself, satisfied.

She knew, of course, that the plan had its risks. She refused to allow herself to think of them. If the applecrate fell on him it would probably kill him, or at very least knock him unconscious; but if he looked up before he came in, and saw it, or if it fell and missed, well, that would be tally-ho Sally, and James not dead with her! So she had no choice but to back up the crate with the kerosene firetrap, and pray that when they saw the flames, if she couldn’t get out past them, they’d come and save her. Perhaps they wouldn’t, of course, for fear of James’ gun … She wouldn’t think about it. She had lived a full life, a long one anyway. The plan was the only hope she had; it wouldn’t fail her; it couldn’t. It was like a gift from heaven — not her own plan at all but something that had come out of nowhere, like the plan Peter Wagner had had about knocking off his enemies with eels, in her novel. Not that she wasn’t sorry — as Peter Wagner had been — to have to do it. But the world was full of violence these days, nobody even thought twice about it. It wasn’t she who’d started this war. It was his tyranny that started it; she was willing enough to live and let live. It was just as Horace had always said, “Enemies in war, in peace friends.” Even if it was no one’s fault really, she must do what she must. That was simply how she was.

She sat on the edge of the bed, listening. Still no hint of a sound from James! She looked out the window, leaning close to the pane to see better. The cars were still there. By the road there was movement and, squinting hard over the tops of her glasses, she was able to make out a boy and a girl, walking in the rain, holding hands. She stepped from the window, checked her deathtrap one more time, then decided she needed to use the bedpan. She pulled the windowshade down and squatted above the pan. Her bowels were like water and made a terrible stink — and there was no place to put the mess, she realized in dismay: she could hardly throw it out the window with her friends all watching. She thought and thought, then carried the pan up to the attic.

When she came down again, bringing with her two apples, which she tossed into the bed, there was still no sign of James. She stood very still, listening, baffled, but there was nothing, no sound in all the house, only the rumble of rain on the attic roof and the howl of wind and then, very faint in the distance, a siren. She hurried to the window. She had, for an instant, an impression that the ghost was back, watching the house from the mailbox, but there was no one. The siren grew louder. A car door opened and someone got out, Ginny’s husband, Nit. He went up to stand by the mailbox and wait. Lights appeared down the road and then the state police car was sweeping in, stopping so suddenly it rocked, and the trooper who was driving leaned his head out. He and Mr. Nit talked; she couldn’t hear the voices. After a while the police car pulled in farther and parked among the other cars. They just sat there, watching the house, not doing a thing.

According to the onyx clock it was three in the morning. She realized, seeing the time, that she was tired, sick-tired, but not sleepy. Even though it was way up in the attic, and behind the closed attic door, she could smell that bedpan. It was the bedpan, she realized, that she ought to have propped over the door to fall on James.

Smiling like the wicked old witch she was — or so, that moment, she described herself — she got herself into her bed with her trashy book.

Unbeknownst to Sally, though she ought to have guessed, James sat fast asleep on the toilet, his bowels still hard as a Pharaoh’s heart, despite the little burst that had brought him here, his trousers at his ankles and his shotgun leaning against the wall.

Down in the yard the Mexican was saying — holding a newspaper over his head to keep the rain off—“What do you think?”

The older of the state policemen shook his head. “Hate to go in shootin if the man’s changed his mind.”

“Then again,” the younger policeman said, “time we hear somethin it might be too late.”

“That’s true,” the older one said but didn’t move. He looked around at the cars. “You people might’s well go on home, I guess. No use sittin here in the weather.”

“I’ll stay,” Virginia Hicks called, “I’m his daughter.”

“We’ll stay too, if you don’t mind,” Lane Walker said. “I’m a minister. My friend here is a priest.”