John Gardner - October Light

“James,” she said sternly, fiercely — though her wish was to keep him there.

“I got work to do,” he said. “Gotta thtot the furnace.” He continued down the hall. “Anytime you want to come out, you jith come out.” It was a whimper. She saw that she’d hurt him, and though she had meant to, she was distressed at having managed it so well.

She heard him reach the head of the stairs and start slowly down, and she thought, in brief panic, of calling to him again, then decided against it. She laid the book on the bed and rubbed her palms together in front of her chin, frowning, sharp-eyed, thinking of her grandmother. There was no reason she herself should not live that long — at very least that long, if James didn’t kill her. Despite the image of her niece fallen and stock-still in the doorway — on the hall floor behind her blood-spattered apples, blood pouring down from Ginny’s scalp as from a hose (but that had not frightened her, at least not unduly: there was always a good deal of bleeding with a scalp wound) — she must, she saw again, hold firm, stick tight to her principles. Days, months, years passed quickly when you were old, but even so, twenty years of life was a span worth getting decent terms for. She’d been cheated long enough.

When the telephone rang, James Page was in the kitchen, frying himself an egg. He jumped, not because it surprised him but because he’d been expecting it, turned off the heat under the pan, and hurried as fast as he could go to the living room to pick up the receiver. As he did so he drew out his watch and looked at it. Nearly four o’clock. He spit to his left.

“Ay-uh?” he called.

“H’lo,” Lewis called back — neither of the two had full confidence in wire—“this is Lewis.”

“H’lo,” he said. “I recognithed your voith.” He thought of asking What’s the news? but hesitated out of fear.

“You ah right up there?” Lewis asked.

“Fine. We’re jith fine. Howth everything down there?”

“Ginny’s ah right,” he said. “Doctor says she’s got a haihline fracture on her skull, but she’ll be fine.”

“Thath good newth!” he said. His hands shook.

“If you wanta come see her I’ll come get you,” Lewis said. He didn’t sound eager. You couldn’t blame him.

“Oh?” he said. “Can thee have vithitorth, then?” He realized that he was, strange to say, stalling. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to see her. Ever since he’d come in after finishing chores and had come upon the blood and apples in the upstairs hallway, he had wanted to see with his own eyes that she was alive and would be well — had wanted to hold her hand as he would when she was a child and feverish, wanted to watch till she came back to consciousness, be there when she opened her eyes. He’d called Putnam Hospital from time to time and had gotten reports — she’d regained consciousness a little after two — and he’d even gone so far as to consider calling some neighbor, maybe Sam Frost, and asking for a ride down to Bennington. But it was a long way, more imposition than he could bring himself to make, so he’d dismissed the idea, had gone up to the bathroom and had tried to ease his mind by talking with Sally — fool that he was! She was a pure hell-fire demon, always had been! The country could fall to the Communist Chinese and she’d still be settin there, locked in her bedroom, demandin her rights!

Lewis said, “Ay-uh, doctor says there’s no hahm in her havin visitors. She won’t recognize you, though. Little foggy from that bump on the head.”

“Foggy, ith thee?”

“What?” Lewis said.

“I thaid Ginnyth foggy.”

“Oh, foggy. Ay-uh.” Lewis seemed to consider. At last he said, “I could come on up and get you if you want me to. Ed Thomas is here in the hospital too, ye know.”

He bent his head more and pulled his arms against his chest, steadying them. “Howth Ed?”

“He’s better. Ruth’s gone home.”

“Thank God for that — that heeth better.”

“Thank somebody, ah right.” It was not meant to be ironic. It was merely that Lewis disbelieved in God. There was a silence. At length, Lewis said, “Well, what you think, Dad. You want me to come get you?”

“I don’ think tho, no,” he said, and frowned, feeling guilty. “Ginny wouldn’t know me, and Ed jith ath thoon not thee me, I gueth—”

“Ed what?”

He said it again.

“I wouldn’t worry about that,” Lewis drawled. “Ed don’t hold grudges. I talked to him some. He’s out of the oxygen tent, by the way.”

“Oh?” he said, and waited.

“They got him restin now.”

The old man could think of no way to ask right out what Ed might have said about his behavior last night. Every time he thought of it, the more intense his shame was. He’d be glad to get some idea how the others looked at it. Even to know that they hated him would be something. He’d had in his lifetime more than one or two that had hated him.

“Edth better, then, hey?”

“He’ll be ah right. They got him restin.”

James nodded to the phone. When he was sure Lewis would say no more about Ed Thomas, he asked, “You got Dickey there with you?”

“He’s at the sitter’s,” Lewis said.

“Thath good.” He nodded to the phone again. Finally he said,

“If ye’d come up and get me tomorrow, I’d be glad. Maybe I’ll have Thally out of her room by then.” He laughed.

“I wouldn’t bet my ahm on it,” Lewis said.

When they’d said good-bye and hung up, he sat looking out the window a while, his mind just drifting. The afternoon was as gray as the morning had been, no life but a few chickens in the yard, and he realized that this was the season he’d always forgotten, all his life, had neglected to prepare for until suddenly it was upon him, the gap between the glory of fall and the serenity of winter in Vermont, the deep soft snow of November and December, the long blue shadows of January … Though it was only last night that the storm had torn them off, the leaves seemed to have lost their vitality already, their yellow dulling to a yellowish gray, the red dimming down towards orange. It was the light, perhaps, that made the leaves seem half-rotted, but if the rot hadn’t really set in yet today, it would be there for sure tomorrow or the next day, and the gap of drab weather, no life but in the sky, would drag on and on, the days growing shorter, more uncomfortable, more unhealthy, no pleasure but a few butternuts the squirrels had missed — perhaps a glimpse of a fox — until getting out of bed was the hardest of his chores, and getting back into it at night was unconditional surrender. The gap might last for weeks — gray pastures, gray skies, even the crows in the birches looking up — and then when he began to believe he would never get through it alive, there suddenly, one morning, would be the world transformed, knee deep in snow, and even if the sky was gray, the farm would be beautiful.

He sat feeling his gums with his tongue-tip, tasting his mouth, then leaned forward in his chair, pressed down on his knees, and got up. He walked to the kitchen and remembered the egg he’d been frying. He turned the electric burner back on and, because it would be slow to heat, thought he’d go to the bathroom. When he did so, it was almost not worth the trouble; yet his stomach for some reason wasn’t paining him especially right now — the pains came and went, though mostly they were there, dug in good, either stabbing like hot spears or rumbling, burning on low, but burning. He rinsed off his hands, wiped them on the towel, and started back downstairs. He called to Sally as he took the first step down.

“That wath Lewith on the phone. Ginnyth all right. Little foggy from the bump.”