John Gardner - October Light

“Listen! People’s got hopes and aspirations, that’s only natural. And a man comes along and he stands in the way there, and he won’t let ’em get at their hopes and aspirations — well that ain’t natural. We all in this together, you understand? And this man sets himself up like God, you dig? and he says, ‘All you people here’s working for me, and you got no rights and privileges, dig? Because I’m God, Jack, and you people just human beings, worsen animals, right? and you’re all crazy slobberin sex maniacs and lazy good-for-nothings and you ain’t no better than dogshit.’ We gonna take that, brothers? You gonna say that’s the law? Now I want you people to get yourself together and make some sense. I’m gonna call my next witness.” He turned on Peter Wagner. “You!”

Peter Wagner looked grieved, faintly dopey, like a man roused out of sleep. He stretched his hands out helplessly. “Why don’t you just go ahead and shoot him?”

Dancer waited.

Peter Wagner stood up, silent, puffing at his pipe. The Mexicans all smiled, clapping, stomping their feet, encouraging him. He glanced at Dancer’s machine gun, then at Jane. “Very well,” he said. He put one hand on his hip and extended the other.

“Luther’s told you the Captain’s an existentialist,” he said, “a man who defines the whole universe by the fact that he happens to be in it. He’s told you the only laws the Captain knows are the ones he makes up. You all understand, of course, that we could fix that. Simple. We could all vote and make up a set of laws and demand that the Captain obey them or get out. In other words, we could start the whole process of civilization over. It’s an amusing idea.” He smiled, showing his teeth. He didn’t look amused. “That’s how the whole thing probably started in the first place — a bunch of outlaws in some prehistoric jungle or valley, bored to tears by always getting their stuff swiped, their children getting killed, certain people doing all the talking … But we’ve been through all that now, we understand the problem. Societies evolve. The freedom that law hands out is always yesterday’s freedom. Freedom for the few, or the freedom of a horse with blinders, otherwise called blinkers: he’s free to look straight ahead. The only real free state is the one governed, second by second, exactly as each man within it wants it to be governed that second. Which is impossible. So you and I, sensible people, have become anarchists. Outlaws. Or rather we have become, like everyone else, scoff-laws. You people more or …

Another gap.

… a world so feminized that revolutionaries with slogans of death and home-made atomic bombs are softly analyzed, generously understood. Imagine a whole planet of big-boobed girl Congressmen—”

“That’s enough!” Santisillia broke in. He was on his feet, angrily shaking his fist. “He’s crazy. His testimony’s useless. He’s got a woman thing.”

“That’s not true,” Peter Wagner shouted. “I’m presenting Captain Fist’s point of view.”

Dancer scratched his head. “Man, somebody got to present the other side.”

“I’m saying he hates women,” Peter Wagner said. “I’m saying he only had two choices, to turn on them and on everything that reminded him of them with rage and scorn, or accept them, be swallowed up like the rest of us in effeminate softness and confusion — give in to a world where ‘The best lack all conviction, while the worst—’”

“I still say he’s got a woman thing,” Santisillia said.

“You’re crazy,” Peter Wagner shouted. “Women are my gods, my eternal torment. You, you got a theology thing!”

Dancer thought about it, scowling intensely. Finally he made his decision. “Sit down, you faggot.”

Peter Wagner sat down.

Mr. Nit’s testimony was short and to the point. “The whole thing is a matter of mechanics,” he said. He popped his knuckles, suffering from stage-fright. “The Captain was born ugly, which got him into fights, which left him uglier and uglier, by perceptible degrees. Finally he was so horrible he had to live by his wits. As a general proposition, it is safe to say that all causes and effects are physical, and that every so-called moral cause can eventually be factored to a willow switch or a pat on the cheek. This has been shown in laboratories. It is possible to teach the highest pitch of religious zeal to a war ant, or something indistinguishable from tender affection to a fruitfly. I might take, for example, the example of eels—”

“That won’t be necessary,” Dancer said. He pushed him away. “You all crazy. You’re God damn fuckheads!” He called Jane to the stand.

She said, after a moment’s hesitation, “Listen, Dancer, why don’t we simply ask Captain Fist if he’s guilty?” She asked it so innocently, so sweetly, her comic-book blue eyes so wide, that Dancer was stopped.

“That’s stupid,” he said without conviction. “You’re as crazy as they are! He’d just lie.”

“What’s the difference?” she said. “It’s his trial, after all. How would you feel if it was your trial, and they kept you tied up like that all the way through it and never even let you speak?”

“If that man goes and contempts this court—” Dancer said.

“Oh come on, Dance,” she said. She put her hand on his shoulder.

He glanced at the others. The Mexicans all smiled and clapped. He took a deep breath. His face squeezed.

“Somebody go take the gag off the motherfucking Captain and drag his ass over.”

Tears of perhaps gratitude rolled down the Captain’s cheeks.

The people stirred approvingly as Santisillia and Mr. Nit carried the Captain forward, bound hand and foot, tied up from end to end like a bundle of rags. The women whispered among themselves or hushed their crying babies. (As soon as his face had come out of the shadows, the babies had all begun to cry.) The men said nothing. They’d had dealings with him and regretted that he wasn’t in more pain. At last he was standing on the speaker’s rock, his bound hands clinging to the head of his cane, leaning on it slightly. His feet were so tightly tied together that he couldn’t move an inch. Santisillia threw more wood on the fire. It flared up, lighting the underside of Captain Fist’s jaw and his tumor-fat belly. The crowd fell silent.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” Captain Fist said, “I thank you for this opportunity.” His voice was a whisper, full of emotion. His whiskered, horrible face twitched and jerked as if the muscles were fish in a sack. Tears streamed down his cheeks, his shaggy eyebrows glistened with sweat. People hissed. He endured it in silence, with a pained, dignified smile, tears streaming down his cheeks and nose. At last the crowd was still again.

“I have been deeply moved by these men’s defense of me.” People booed. Again he waited.

“Excuse me,” he said, looking mournfully at Dancer, “might I get you to untie my feet? I like to pace when I talk. When I can’t pace I can’t think. Actually, it’s not fair, in a sense. It’s like asking a man to defend himself when he’s drunk.”

Dancer stood still, as if he hadn’t heard, but he was thinking about it. At last, with a ferocious jerk, he crossed to the Captain and, in the spirit of fair play, flipped his switchblade from his pocket, and cut the ropes that bound the foul old man from the waist to the feet. Then he went back to his place without a word and stood waiting, casually aiming the machine gun at Captain Fist’s head.

“Thank you,” Captain Fist said, a catch in his voice.

“I’ve been very interested in all that these gentlemen have said. They make me feel humble, that’s the truth. They make me feel I’m part of a great movement — the whole progress of man. They make me stop and think. I’m always grateful to a man for that. They’ve made me see this Vale of Tears from a whole new perspective.