October Light (54 page)

“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.”

“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?

“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—”