John Gardner - October Light

Was it possible he’d arrived too late, missed all the fucking? But they were young, yes, wonderful! Surely … “I’m here to buy your shit,” he cried out.

The bearded black man handed the machine gun to the brown-haired man and went to the flat rock near the fire to snatch up his clothes.

“Who knows you came?” he demanded.

“Not a soul!” Dr. Alkahest said, leaning forward in his chair. “Nobody but the old Negro gentleman who brought me. An old fisherman, he told me. Great silver, woolly head of hair. He’s been fishing these waters since nineteen hundred and five.” He chuckled. “He’s nobody’s fool, I can tell you. Charged me two hundred dollars.”

“Dusky,” Santisillia whispered. Some thought teased his brain …

There was another gap in the novel, a dozen or more pages, and Sally stared at it in dismay, reaching out toward the wicker table with her left hand for an apple exactly as Ginny, in distress, would reach for her cigarettes, or Richard, in his last years, would have reached for his glass. It didn’t matter to the old woman that she was missing the adventures of Dr. Alkahest. She disliked the character and did not believe in him — recognized him, without knowing the term, as a gothic cliché, one more version of the age-old mad scientist, here put to use for some satirical purpose which she grasped only dimly and felt no sympathy with. But she did feel concern about Dr. Alkahest’s cleaning woman, Pearl. Already too much of Pearl’s story had been lost to missing pages. How, she wondered, could they accuse Pearl of murder? It made no sense! Sally Abbott of course knew perfectly well that one could not ask too much of a novel, a weightless trifle even in comparison to what was happening right here in this house tonight; but her dismay refused to be driven away by reason. Did all turn out well with Pearl Wilson or didn’t it?

As she thought back over the story, hoping to find a clue — knowing that quite possibly it would all be revealed in the part she hadn’t read yet, but knowing too that, given all those missing pages, she’d do well to be prepared to catch the slightest hint — she noticed an odd pattern. Pearl Wilson was frightened by animalness, which had gotten mixed up in her mind with movies of African savages with bones in their noses, with the jungle-like quality of her life in the ghetto, and with love. The intruder who’d broken into her apartment had become related in her mind with the white man who’d raped her, until in the end all intrusions, even the innocent words “What’s happenin?” were alarming to her. The more Sally Abbott thought about it, glancing back now through the earlier pages, making sure she was right, the more elaborate the pattern became. She doubted that the author had intended it, but that was unimportant; it was definitely there, and vaguely, only half aware that she was doing it, Sally began to muse on it. It was a kind of puzzle, tantalizing because she had a curious feeling that it had crept into the book from the real world, so that to solve it would be to know something — reach some point of wisdom she had perhaps reached already in dim intuition; otherwise why this curious feeling of distress?

There was no one in this world, however mighty of will — her own life was proof — not capable of being robbed, or raped, or murdered, not capable of being attacked from nowhere, for no real reason, by the mindless bestiality of things — her drunken brother with his shotgun. And also there was no one not capable of slipping toward the bestial himself, as Pearl had done when she considered taking the money from Dr. Alkahest, or as the people who frightened Pearl did, stealing or breathing obscenities to some stranger on the phone. It was that — both those things — that made it terrible to be alone: one’s potential for becoming an innocent victim, and one’s potential for becoming a destroyer. One had to be a kind of mad hero, like Peter Wagner’s old uncle with the snowplow, to go it alone, and even he had been a destroyer — though not from bestiality. Was Pearl, then, a hero? — acting all alone, by the highest code she knew, the behavior of women in movies and books, and a version of Christian righteousness? Her way of acting hadn’t saved her — unless it was yet to come. Would any heroic way of acting save her? Sally did not believe one bit in the character of the Missing Persons man or in that of the fat Police Commissioner, but she’d lived around James

L. Page too long to have complete confidence in regulations, impersonal agencies, officials. Better for Pearl, then, to huddle safe with the ordinary people, better to have phoned Leonard, submitting to commonness, the touch of bestiality in the life she’d escaped. Why not?

She looked hard at the crate above her bedroom door and frowned. No! she thought. As soon say that she, Sally Page Abbott, should come out of her room and let all she had fought for be a joke at her expense and a glory to James because his violence had won! As soon say Horace had been wrong to give Richard support in his rebellion against his father! No, no, no, no siree! But if submission was wrong …

She glanced at the page beyond the gap, took a bite from her apple, and uneasily, decided to read on.

… life evil. What I mean — when my moment of Conversion came …” He jerked his head around, as if he were seeing something strange in the heavens. Mr. Goodman, just about to hand him the pipe, reconsidered, smoking it himself, looking up.

“What’s that?” Dr. Alkahest cried out, pointing.

They all had the solid impression, for an instant, that directly above them hung a huge flying saucer. It vanished. “Did you see what I saw?” they all said at once. They couldn’t believe they’d really seen it. “The pot,” they said. “It must be.” But they talked in hushed voices, awed by a whole new world of possibility.

Dr. Alkahest told them he wanted to buy their pot. Not just a little. All of it.

“Man, you are a gas,” Dancer said.

“I’m in earnest, young man,” Dr. Alkahest said. “Look.” He fumbled with his moneybelt, then dipped his fingertips in and drew out a thousand-dollar bill.

Dancer snatched it, held it over the fire where he could see it. His eyes bugged. “It’s real!” He looked from one to another of them. His face became indignant. “What you doin, carrying around thousan’ dollar bills? What if I was a thief or somethin? You tryin to lead me to temptation?” He put the money in his pocket.

Dr. Alkahest watched with a startled grin. He’d been robbed — they’d all seen it. Perhaps he’d be beaten — perhaps he’d bestripped and bound and gagged, perhaps even made a human sacrifice. “He he he!” Dr. Alkahest laughed ecstatically. What a place! What a company! No limits!

“Don’t laugh,” Santisillia said, misunderstanding, “he really is a thief. Grew up in Harlem. Can’t help himself. They made him a transom man when he was four.”

Dr. Alkahest trembled, dizzy with happiness. The bearded man was a moralist. All the better! “Don’t you people have any standards?” he cackled, and crazily flopped his head from side to side. They hadn’t yet noticed that he was seated on a cushion of moneybags.

They all looked at him, a little puzzled. Dancer said, as if trying it out, “You’re rich, I’m poor.” He poked his white-T-shirted chest with his big black thumb. “You got a responsibility for me.”

Dr. Alkahest squealed with laughter, and Dancer looked around at his friends again, hoping for clarification. Gradually the doctor got control of himself. He’d remembered that he must settle the arrangements while he still had the wit. With a quick little jerk, he got out his flask and drank. He said, “When does the shipment arrive?”