October Light (39 page)

“Oh, that,” she said. She tipped back her red, white, and blue cap, slid her arm through Peter Wagner's, and looked up at the sky as if fixing it in her mind. They were nearing the dark, covered channel mouth.

“It's an ideal place for getting your head straight,” Santisillia continued. “Makes you think of Patmos where the man wrote
Revelations.”
His smile became rueful. “Of course we never make use of the opportunity.”

“You
make use of it, surely,” Jane said, still looking at the sky.

“Maybe this time,” he said.

Suddenly a startled look came over her face. “Look!” she cried out, pointing straight up.

Santisillia looked, shading his eyes, but saw nothing. “What is it?”

She was silent for a moment; then: “I'm not sure.”

She smiled, unsettled. “I must have imagined it.”

“What was it?” he asked.

She shook her head.

Darkness slid over their faces. They had entered the channel.

Chained together, the
Militant
and the
Indomitable
scraped through the winding, covered trough, the clearance, at some points, less than a foot, Peter Wagner maneuvering by torchlight and echo and the help of his friends—slowly, laboriously—to where the channel quit abruptly in a still, roofed-over pool. From there, taking only necessities, they clambered up by toe-holds and hand-holds through a shaft like that of an abandoned mine to a high, sunlit basin where there was still, fresh water, cupric green and uninviting. Jane held one of Peter Wagner's arms, the silent Indian held the other. The only sounds were lizard-eating birds' low, dissatisfied grunts. The air was warm and sugary.

Peter Wagner sat with his chin on his fists, his eyes on nothing. For all he needed, he depended without knowing it on Jane and the Indian. His mind was not working; the blow Santisillia had given him had left him with a concussion, and now, three whole days were as blank as a mushroom, though second by second he could function well enough if given continual instruction on what he was to do. The gap in his consciousness—the one thing he was steadily conscious of—made him jumpy. “A good place for thinking,” he mumbled darkly. “We must all try to think.” Jane picked up his hand and kissed it.

As the hours passed, Jane glanced at him from time to time, sorry for him but no more sorry now than at other times. She was writing cheerful letters—little works of art, in a certain sense—to her mother and Uncle Fred.
We've put in at a fascinating little Mexican port that's hardly been spoiled at all by tourists.
Each time she glanced at Peter Wagner again, he hadn't moved. Neither had the Indian sitting like a boulder just beyond him. Luther Santisillia stood down by the stream in his white shirt and tie, still wearing his dark glasses, smoking. Just tobacco. Cigars. Dancer lay in the shadow of the cave, half buried in lizards, smiling in his sleep. He was stoned out of his mind. So was Mr. Goodman, lying among the black rocks by the stream, unaware of the lizards all over him. He was trying to make a large spackled lizard climb a stick. Mr. Nit, if he was still awake, was on watch up on the jutting of rock called the Tower. As for Captain Fist, he sat as he'd been sitting all day, tugging at his ropes and chewing at his gag and rolling his eyes in fury.
Poor Captain Fist,
she thought. According to Dancer, they were going to try the Captain for war crimes.

It was terrible, for the men at least, this waiting. That was always the worst part of these trips. Each time they came, Captain Fist—or, this time, Santisillia—went over to the mainland to arrange the deal, and then they'd all wait—and wait and wait—until the Mexicans came out some night with the load, and then the crew would fill the hold of the
Indomitable,
and they'd ship out before dawn.
Let it be tonight,
she thought.

She stole another look at Peter Wagner. She wished she could remember better the night he'd made love to her. Did he remember it? He'd touched her sometimes, since that night, had even held her in his arms and kissed her, but it wasn't the same. Of course he'd been in a stupor most of the time since then. Nevertheless when he was near she felt hungry and betrayed and a little angry. God, how she needed to be balled! She put down her pen to light a joint. Almost at once the marijuana made her calm, made things sensible. How sad he looked! He reminded her of Uncle Fred the night he had to shoot the ducks. Was that true?, she wondered suddenly. Did he really shoot the ducks, or was that just one of the stories she'd made up, talking in, say, some espresso place in San Francisco?

Peter Wagner stirred out of his daze for a moment, shaking his head and pressing his fingertips to his eyes. The Indian turned his head to watch him. Peter Wagner said, as if desperately, “We've got to get things clear.” He nodded, and the nodding went on and on, mechanical. Jane bit her lip, then began to write more rapidly.

Dear God, Mama, I'm so lonely and scared! I'm in love with this man who's suicidal. He's tried to commit suicide several times

She crumpled up the page and began again.

Dear Mama—dear, dear Uncle Fred—I'm so happy! How can I
…

Mr. Goodman came toward them, staggering slightly, holding out the stick with the lizard on it. He looked absurdly proud, as if he'd just tamed a dinosaur.

“Very good,” Jane said.

Mr. Goodman nodded. He looked at Peter Wagner and, little by little, his smile went away.

Jane said, “He thinks too much.” Immediately, she felt confused. He was thinking nothing at all, of course. Just blinking and wincing, struggling to get his wits together. For no reason, she felt dizzy. It was true, what Santisillia had said, and Peter Wagner after him: they should think, here where they had time. Get things straight. But when she tried to think, all that came to her was an image of Nebraskan plains, with windmills. She remembered a sky full of dark clouds and lightning, the windmills standing out white as bones, Uncle Fred hurrying to tack down tarpaulins, shouting to her, “Jane, get the horses in!” A great cloud of dust came sweeping toward them, black rain behind it. The sky was full of thunder. The horses were wheeling around her like pinwheels, and though she knew the dog was barking, driving the horses toward the open barn door, she couldn't hear a sound. She ran, breasts bouncing painfully, and her throat was on fire from shouting and hard breathing. All life, that moment, was important, full of meaning. Her mother stood by the kitchen door banging a saucepan with a wooden spoon, every line of her body revealed, stark, under the drab gray dress flattened hard against it by wind. When the last horse ran in, with the dog at his heels, Jane followed, legs wobbly, and, fighting the wind, slid the big door shut. She leaned against it, shaking from head to foot, sucking in big breaths, and then, hearing the rain hit the tin roof, making it roar, she ran through the barn and out the front and across the golden, glowing lawn to the entrance of the shelter, where Uncle Fred stood waiting like a relay runner to grab her and pull her in. She half fell down the stairs. He slammed the door behind her and bolted it. Her mother was waiting there, fists under her chin, face wild as if with joy. The lightbulb flickered, then suddenly went out, and the three of them stood there hugging each other in the musty storm-cellar, and all at the same moment they began to laugh. Rain slammed against the roof, the wild wind howled, and they hugged each other like conquerors.

“It's true of all of us,” Mr. Goodman said slowly, bogged down by pot. “We think too much.” He touched her hand, then carefully put down the stick, setting the lizard free, and stretched himself out on the ground beside her. He borrowed her matches to relight his pipe, breathed the smoke in and held it in his lungs. They listened to the birds' grunts and watched their winged shadows flit lightly across the stones. So they remained, hardly moving except to smoke, until there were no more shadows and the western wall of rock was jagged black against a red, red sky. Santisillia was fishing, sitting against a rock. Mr. Goodman lay with his eyes closed. She let her hand rest lightly on his stomach and smiled at his chins.

“You must wonder how a person like me ever got in such a business,” he said.

Peter Wagner turned his head to look at him, and Jane saw that he was managing to follow at least some of Mr. Goodman's thought. She saw him looking at her hand on Mr. Goodman's belly and felt a pang of guilt but decided not to move it.
Better,
she thought,
to be completely honest.
She
liked
being high, didn't she? She liked having her hand on Mr. Goodman's stomach.

“I grew up more-less middle class,” Mr. Goodman said, “and I had what you might call a pretty good job. Detective agency. I guarded things—old factories, museums. Then the kids came along. That changes things, I'll tell you. I had what you'd call a decent salary, but you look at your kids, you see what they could do if they had a little opportunity … Lot of people live for the present, I guess. But that's hard to do if you're a thinking man. What
is
the present, anyway? The minute it comes it's already almost gone. You have to live for the future.”

Mr. Goodman closed his eyes, thoughtfully nodding, and put the pipe to his lips, sucking in again. “The present moment is for animals,” he said. “Life's nothing. It's only the future that counts. I'd do anything for those kids.”

Peter Wagner raised his head. The rings under his eyes made him look like a raccoon. Above his right ear there was a horrible purple lump and a broken place. “When'd you last see 'em?” he said.

Mr. Goodman's stomach moved, tightening under her hand. She moved her fingers farther. “Yes, I know,” he said. “I've thought about that.”

Peter Wagner shot a look at her, then glanced at the Indian, who turned his face away, looking off into the darkness. He looked at the Indian's knees, his big, still hands, then down and seemed startled to see lizards crawling over his shoes, darting away in all directions when he moved his foot. He rubbed his temples as if trying to stimulate the blood-flow, switch his brain on, and when his fingertips came to the broken place, she saw him wince. He looked up again, first at Jane's hand, then high above her head, at the wide, empty sky where this morning she'd thought for a moment she'd seen a UFO. Her scalp tingled again at the memory. Peter Wagner reached down beside the Indian for something, and his hand came up with a gin bottle. He unscrewed the top and took a sip from it—raw, warm gin—and after a moment he began to talk, as slowly and tortuously as Mr. Goodman had talked. She lay back, carefully, giving the lizards time to scatter, and closed her eyes.

He said: “When I was a kid I sometimes used to visit this individual called my uncle Morton in New York State. He was in sugar-beets, like my father, but he wasn't worth a dime. I admired him for it, but in the end he went crazy—wrote a book about the great Negro-Jewish conspiracy. In the place where he lived, just south of Lake Erie, there were terrible blizzards, sometimes forty below. When the blizzards came they would fill up the roads and make drifts ten, fifteen feet deep over people's yards.” He took another swig. “If people were out driving they'd get stuck beside the road and it might be days before the county could get them out. Uncle Morton had a tractor with this big unique iron home-welded snowplow on it. As soon as he'd finished whatever work he had that day, he'd start up the tractor and start clearing out his driveway and then his road, and then he'd start on the neighbors' driveways, and he'd work his way to the county blacktop and he'd start clearing that, because that would be where groups of people would be stuck, maybe freezing to death. I remember how the snow blew like icy dust—I'd be riding beside him on the tractor fender—you couldn't see more than ten feet ahead of you: big trees would suddenly loom up beside you, just dark shadows, letting you know for a minute where you were. He didn't look human, bundled up in coats and three pair of overalls and big wool mittens, and the scarf and hat he had covered his whole face. Me the same. We'd find a car and this crazy individual would stop and get down from the tractor, climb down like a Martian, and he'd shovel to the door and break it open and the people would get out and they'd walk like stiff dolls, you couldn't see their faces, thanking him and hugging him, or swearing at him, asking him where he'd been so long. I must have been twelve or so. They'd come toward the tractor through the whistling wind and the swirls of white dust and they'd get on with me—a crowd of them would get up beside me on the fenders, a crowd would stand on the drawbar, faceless … We'd take them to a house and go back again. The road stretched on and on, no way to get to all of them, and nobody trying to help but my poor crazy uncle. ‘You want me to send you in to get warm?' he'd yell at me when we came to a house. I'd shake my head, though I was freezing, couldn't move my face. I thought I was part of something wonderful, something heroic and important. We'd plow on, the roar of the tractor deafening in all that white desolation. He looked like a clown, getting off and on, shoveling, jerking the gearshift. He made me think of the clowns in the circus trying to imitate the acrobats. It's as if they're not people, their bodies are stuffed with old rags and straw, you know what I mean?—no minds, no feelings. Ha. God knows what my uncle was imitating. It would get dark, and I'd be hungry, but he couldn't stop. One man couldn't get them all out. He knew it. Other people with tractors should've helped. Then it would be all right. But they didn't. Why should they? They paid taxes for that kind of thing. They stuck together. What could they do, the citizens? They weren't tough or crazy, like my uncle Mort. They weren't heroes. They'd be risking their lives, and for what? Maybe a court case like my uncle Mort's. But I'm ahead of myself.”