John Gardner - October Light

“Thank heavens,” Sally called. “Is Ed Thomas better?”

“Edth better too,” he said, and took another step.

“I’m glad to hear it.”

He took another step down.

She called, “James?”

He waited.

“What you going to do about that truck? You can’t get through the winter without a truck.”

“I’ll worry about that.” There were always the horses.

“Well we can’t just set here on the mountain all winter long, ye know. And what about your teeth? How you going to pay for new teeth?”

“Maybe jith ath well,” he said crossly, “I don’t get no teeth I can’t bite nobody.”

“Thath right,” she mimicked. “You can drown ’em to death in thpit!”

He went angrily down the stairs — she could smell his fried eggs burning — and from the way he grunted with every step she knew he was bent like a gorilla. She was doing none too well herself. She’d brought the bedpan back down from the attic, not just because now that the cars were gone she could empty it out the window, but also because she had to use it every fifteen minutes or so — she kept it with her in the bed — and every time she used it her diarrhea was worse. She was so sore and stinging that doing her business made her eyes well up. If anything broke her spirit, she knew, it would be the pain of those bowel movements. If it weren’t for the pain she knew he was in, tied in knots by constipation, she’d have abandoned the fort long since. She would run out of Kleenex in another day, but she’d manage. She could tear up sheets.

For half an hour she walked back and forth from the window to the attic door to the window, keeping herself in shape. She bent twenty times to touch her knees, put her hands behind her head and wagged her elbows back and forth, clapped her hands above her head until her arms were tired, then climbed up in bed and ate an apple and, at last, settled to her book. She’d been looking forward to it. She was close to the end, where you expected some excitement. And what did they give you? A long, boring chapter full of some queer irony, the whole thing preachy, preachy, preachy! Luckily, much of it was missing. She looked up from time to time in angry indignation, feeling cheated, fiddled with. “Oh!” she cried out once, clapping the book shut and half inclined to tear out more pages. She read on, in the end, only to find out how far these people would dare go.

14

THE TRIAL OF CAPTAIN FIST

Again the earth rumbled and a tremor went through the rocks. “It’s nothing,” said Mr. Nit. “—I think.”

Dancer stood on a table of rock near the entrance to the cave, with Captain Fist bound and gagged on his right, and all the people seated in front of him and to his left, a great, dark multitude watching and listening, though none of the Mexicans knew English. The barren basin of Lost Souls’ Rock was full of the deep red flicker of torches. Santisillia, the Indian, and the crew of the Indomitable sat in front, looking at neither Dancer nor the Captain.

“Brothers and sisters,” Dancer said, “we gathered together this day for the purpose of blasting this here Captain Fist. But first we gonna give him a fair trial and see if he’s guilty. Now I’m gonna tell you in the first place, since I’m the prosecution, I’ve had some experience with this man myself, and in my experience he’s a shit-eatin, motherfuckin, baby-killin, lady-rapin faggot.” He whirled to point at Fist. “He’s a lowborn unprincipled traitor against humanity, and a false ideal for youth, if you understan me. He’s a subhuman animal that stinks worsen shit or even hair burning. He’s murdered people and he’s buggered people, and all he is is putrefaction, and I mean he ain’t fit to commingle with even damn vermin, so we’re here to justice the dude.” He paused, chin lifted, dark glasses in his hand, his violent black eyes flashing. Abruptly, he pointed at Santisillia. “Firs witness!”

Santisillia stood up, smiling a little oddly, marijuana in his pipe.

“Raise your hand,” Dancer said. “You swear to tell the truth the whole truth and nothin but the truth so help you God?”

Santisillia shrugged. “Man, who wants truth?”

“Truth and the whole truth,” Dancer said. “Start talkin.” He sat down, furious, watching like a wolf. The firelight turned his dark glasses red.

Santisillia turned toward the people and stood looking, shaking his head as if this couldn’t be happening. At last he spoke. He put on the stage accent like a ceremonial mask.

“I read in a book once, ‘Let a man be either a hero or a saint. In between lies, not wisdom, but banality.’”

He smoked and seemed to think about it, looking at the Captain.

“But what is a hero? If there were truths independent of the currents of being, there could be no history of truths. And what is a saint? If there were one single eternally right religion, religious history would be an inconceivable idea. However well developed a man’s consciousness may be, it is nevertheless something stretched like a membrane over his developing life, perfused by the pulsing blood, even betraying the hidden power of cosmic directness. It is the destiny of each moment of awareness to be a cast of Time’s net over Space.”

Dancer half rose, aiming the machine gun in Santisillia’s direction. “Hey, quit that. Lay down what he done.”

Santisillia nodded.

“I don’t mean that eternal truths don’t exist,” he said. “Every man possesses them — a thousand of them — to the extent that he exists and exercises the understanding faculty in a world of thoughts, in the connected ensemble of which they are, in and for the instant of thought, unalterable fixtures — ironbound as cause-effect combinations in hoops of premises and conclusions. Nothing in this disposition …

There was a gap of several pages.

… influence. Captain “Fist is Lucifer himself, the ultimate revolutionary. Or worse. — Or better. — Depending on your point of view. He does not revolt in the name of good. He denies the system, rejects its laws, reduces its history to nothingness by a resounding Deus sum! Behold the true Son of Liberty! There are no laws but the laws of Captain Fist. There can be no just and lawful judgment but the judgment handed down by Captain Fist! Would you try a man by a system he never subscribed to, never believed in for a minute? How can you call a man guilty except by the laws he acknowledged and broke? Is a lion guilty? A scorpion? Killing is the work of animals. Why should I philosophize the bestiality of a certain society’s ‘justice’ into ‘reasonable’ law? Much that was criminal a hundred years ago is not criminal in the same society today. Much that is criminal today will be legal, I assure you, the day after tomorrow. God’s laws are not our laws.”

He stood as if awaiting an answer. At last, he took a puff from his pipe, shook his head, and sat down.

Dancer said, “What the fuck?” Then: “How come you on his side, you crazy Luther? Man, this is beautiful!”

He turned to the people angrily, as if Santisillia’s speech were entirely their fault.

“Listen! This Captain Fist shot me, understand? He blown up this here nitro-glycerin truck and they was peoples laid out like it was wartime, man, and Russians was throwing round atomic bombs. He wrecked our car one time, another time he sunk this boat we had. He got us arrested one time, and another time he come up and got us in a alley and beat us black and blue and made us go wif him, all except Dusky, because Dusky got away, like he always does, and Fist made us go help him bail out his mother-fucking boat. It’s beautiful, man! He makes people do his work and he makes ’em slave till their noses bleed, and if they die of it, man, he don’ give a damn purplegreen shit. Now you gonna tell me that ain’t against the law?