October Light (40 page)

Peter Wagner paused, staring as if his eyes were frozen. Santisillia had come up from the stream with some fish—black with white squiggles, horrible creatures—and was hunkered down now, a few yards away from him, listening. Mr. Goodman was asleep under Jane's hand. Mr. Nit was still on watch, probably out cold.

Peter Wagner said: “One night we were ramming through heavy drifts, coming to an overpass. He'd been at it all day, getting people out of cars. All of a sudden we hit something—there was a crunch and a sound of glass breaking, and suddenly the tractor tires were spinning and the tractor was skittering sideways. I saw his foot hit the clutch and his mittened paw hit the gearshift at the same time, and the tractor spun back. In the white of the headlights, swirling in the snowstorm like pure white fire, we saw a smashed in car-door, smashed in so far you could see the darkness inside. Everything except the inside of the car was unnaturally bright. After a minute, in the snow underneath where the door was smashed, there was blood. I saw him walking toward it, hands out for balance, wide and awkward as a clown or a bear in the glitter of circus lights, every movement comical, as if somebody was guiding him with long sticks.”

He fell silent. No one offered comment. He continued to take pulls at his bottle, though surely it must be burning his mouth out, to say nothing of his brain. Sometimes he passed it to the Indian. Peter Wagner's lips were puckered up as if the taste was terrible, but maybe that was from the story he'd told.

He said, “All books agree. We're wrong for this place. We move through the world like anti-matter, ready to blow up on contact.”

When Jane looked over at Dancer she saw that he wasn't asleep after all. He was watching. Overhead the stars were needlesharp bits of ice. She found herself scanning the sky carefully and more or less systematically, looking for that object.

Peter Wagner said—he was rubbing the front of his forehead now, and he no longer had the bottle, the Indian had taken it: “I've read books of all kinds—poetry, anthropology, religion, science—I've read more books than most of the doctors and lawyers I know. And I'll tell you something. There are only two kinds of books in the world—” He raised one finger, a little drunkenly, it seemed to Jane. “There are books that desperately struggle to prove there's some holy, miraculous meaning to it all and desperately deny that everything in the world's mere belts and gears—” he shook out the second finger “—and there are books that say the opposite. After you've read a few, each kind of book is as boring as the other.”

“Come now,” Luther Santisillia said.

But Peter Wagner was adamant. The Indian beside him grew more still and morose. Except for the movement of his arm and throat, his body was motionless. His eyes were filled with rage. Peter Wagner said: “It's all craziness. Hasn't changed in ten thousand years, people still making up gods and devils, out of nothing, not a scrap, nothing but their scrawny need.”

“Come now,” Santisillia said again. “People don't have to have gods to go on living.”

“Not if they're lucky,” Peter Wagner answered, “and after you count out the early mortalities and suicides, most people are lucky. That's statistics.” He grinned unpleasantly. “Some people aren't, though. Lucky, I mean. I had a sister—or have. I don't mean to make too much of it. Once she was pretty and more or less smart, and rich besides—real catch, you'd say—but she got hit by this fellow who didn't see the light, and now she's ugly and has the brains of a potato, can't even pee without instruments. Such things are common—wrecked promise, obscenity, injustice. Not so common as to make you believe in a god who's evil. Even a man like Chairman Mao, with his sixty million murders—most people survived it. It was just a little ripple, statistically. But if it happens to be you that the bad luck hits, that's different, brother! You reel and stagger and clutch at your head, and if you mean to get up again, you quick make up one kind of idiotic book or the other. You make up some god who can make it all right, or you tell the truth, which takes your mind off it. They'll drive you to suicide in the end, books.”

He fell silent. The lizards stood like dogs, looking up at him.

“I'm sorry about your sister,” Santisillia said.

Peter Wagner glanced at him, his eyes as sharp and angry as the Indian's. “Fuck it, man. I made it up.”

Then for a long time no one spoke. There were fewer lizards now, though still too many, and those that were left moved more slowly, cooling with the night. At last Santisillia said, almost crossly, “Why don't one of you people make a fire?”

“Good idea,” Jane said, and though her lethargy was so heavy she was sure she couldn't move, she found herself getting up.

Captain Fist watched them like an old wolf peeking through trees.

• • •

Jane cooked, working a sweat up. The men hunkered around the fire doing nothing, hardly talking—all but Captain Fist, still sitting, tied up, near the cave mouth. Mr. Nit was peevish because no one had come to take over the watch. He sat with his legs crossed, feet under him, elbows on his knees, and glared at the fire. Peter Wagner sat against a rock, smoking pot, gazing at the western rim of stone, or at the stars perhaps, or at nothing.

Santisillia poked the fire, making it flare up, lighting all their faces. “Peter,” he said, “let me tell you about Captain Fist.”

Peter Wagner turned his head.

“I tell you the story partly because you'll be interested,” Santisillia said, “partly because it has a moral. At least I think it does.”

Mr. Nit held the marijuana pipe toward him. Santisillia shook his head and looked over at the Captain, then back at Peter Wagner, and smiled. He said:

“Some people get their souls beaten out of them—bad luck, the pressure of events, and so forth. Some lose their souls through carelessness, neglect. But once in a while you have the honor of meeting a man who's sold his soul outright, made a deal with the Devil. Now there's a man worth knowing! And such a man is Captain Fist.” He pointed. Fist's eyes squeezed shut. Santisillia grinned, drew out a plastic-tipped cigar, and lit it. “Our Captain Fist is a man deeply versed in philosophy. A stupid man, perhaps, and a vile toad even among stupid men, but nevertheless, well read. He has discovered beyond any shadow of a doubt that all life is mechanics, that faith, hope, and charity are the desperate stratagems of people who would blind themselves to truth. All men, he has come to understand, are victims, objects in fact no more rational than planets; good men, he's discovered by his books, are as much the victims of random concussions in the universe as are bad. All this he will tell you in the greatest detail, quoting the best authorities. And every word he says is in some sense true.”

Jane frowned, waiting, then spatula'd the fish and corn meal out of the pan onto their plates and passed them around. Only Dancer thanked her. The others were too intent on Santisillia, or—except for Santisillia—too drugged. She glanced at Captain Fist. He couldn't eat with the gag on, and if they took it off, the night would go black with his obscenities. She decided to let him starve. Mr. Goodman poured and passed out coffee. Santisillia carefully scraped off his cigar, set it on a flat rock beside him, and began to eat.

He said: “I'll tell you how we met. We happened to be in Mexico, at the same time at the same place, on a buying trip. We took it out by road, in those days. Since Dusky's capital was limited, all we had was a car—built-up fenders and so forth, you understand. As for Captain Fist—” He smiled, rolled his eyes up. “Ah, Captain Fist! He had, of all things, a nitro-glycerin truck.”

Dancer shook his head. “Lovely.”

Santisillia smiled on. “It used to be, in those days, there'd be convoys of the things, taking the nitro to someplace in Colorado. Fist knew the schedule. There we were, loading up, me and Dusky and Dancer cramming the stuff up in tight little holes, Fist and his apes throwing it in by the forkful, brazen as hell. I just stood there, all amazement. I didn't know what kind of truck it was, he had a canvas on it at the time he loaded. He drives away in front of us, before it's even good and dark, and we think we've seen the last of him in this Vale of Tears—at least Dancer and me do. Dusky's not talking, as usual. Bout ten o'clock we pull out and start north. We drive fifteen minutes, with Dusky taking a little nap in back—cool old man with this long woolly hair—he looked like a sheep was growing out of him—and all of a sudden you'd think the whole Mexican army was on us.
Blam blam blam!
Old car of ours slams into the ditch with fire coming out of her, ready to blow any second, and we jump like a couple of rabbits and yell ‘Hey you got us! Señors, you got us! Surrenderons!' And we stand on the road with our hands on our heads. Dusky's gone. No sign of him. He was always like that. Maybe he'd slipped off miles ago. When trouble was around he could smell it. Show up weeks later, and someway talk us into working for him again. So
boom,
goes the car, and it knocks us fiat on our faces.

“Then out of the bushes comes Fist and his two apes. ‘Get in,' says Fist, and now I see his truck's parked under the trees. We start over, both of us, myself and Dancer, but Fist says, ‘Just you,' and points the heat at me. We stare at him, his face all lit up from our burning car, crazy looking. I look at Dancer. ‘Hey man,' he says, ‘it's twenty miles from noplace.' Far as you can see all there is is those desert bushes and pricklypears and maybe a half-dead burro. ‘Get in,' Fist says, and he waves the gun. Since I got no choice, I do it. I hear him say behind me, ‘Start runnin, boy.' I'm scared as hell and I look at the apes. They shake their heads, and when I start to climb out, they grab me. Then I hear the shot and I do climb out, and Fist's there with the muzzle in my belly. So I got to go with him, and I don't know if Dancer's alive or dead. Maybe they've finally snuffed even Dusky. As for Dancer, I find out later old Fist just winged him; so crooked he can't even shoot.

“But I don't know that then. All I know is we go about fifty kilometers and then Fist pulls into some trees again, and we sit waiting. The apes pull the canvas off the truck and shove it down inside with the pot. Along comes the nitro convoy, pretty soon after that, and now they've got me behind the wheel, with the pistol in my ribs, and they make me pull in behind like we're part of the group. He doesn't tell me what's happening—I don't ask; I'm too scared. ‘Just drive, boy,' he tells me. ‘Misbehave and I'll blast your top half off.' I know he'd do it. He's decided he needs me because there's not many white men drive that load. Just Mexicans and blacks. Any time we come near anybody, these three hombres duck down under the dashboard. I decide he's crazy. Sometimes he even laughs. ‘What do I do when they stop me at the border?' I say. ‘They won't,' he tells me. I think about it. It makes no sense. We drop back from the convoy, Fist's orders.

After a while, about five kilometers short of the border, we come to a town where something's happening—crowd of people in the street, lot of broken out windows, some smoke from a fire, bodies and parts of bodies all around, some of 'em children, and of course a big detour. Everybody runs from the truck, screaming and waving. Old Fist peeks through the window, smiles like crazy, ducks down again. When we come to the border, about five kilometers farther on, Fist tells me ‘Talk nice.' I'm ready. They don't even put the gate down in front of us, just wave us through. I'm hip by now. How'd you arrange it?' I say. ‘That truck that blew up.' ‘Never mind,' he says. ‘I arranged it.' Man, I believe him.”

Santisillia stopped, smiling as if with admiration, and finished off his coffee. He reached down for the cigar he'd started before.

“Is all this true?” Peter Wagner said, looking over at Fist as he would at, say, a dead animal bloated for a week. He looked at Mr. Goodman. “You went along with it?” He glanced at Jane.

I wasn't there,
she thought of saying.

“You're crazy, all of you,” Peter Wagner said. There was sweat on his forehead. “I mean, innocent people, harmless villagers—You know that about him and—”

“Now, now,” Santisillia said. He lit the cigar. “They had no choice, you see—Mr. Nit, that is, and Mr. Goodman. They were accessories and, from a narrow, legalistic point of view, horrible vicious smugglers. They had families to think of. Their children's future. And then too, if they were to turn on their leader and then he should somehow escape the constabulary—vindictive old bastard that they knew him to be …” He smiles as if the whole thing delighted him. “And of course we must understand Captain Fist's point of view. A ghastly accident of consciousness in an accidental universe …” He let it trail off.

“He should kill himself,” Peter Wagner said.

Santisillia laughed. “Ah, but that was not the direction in which he was predetermined.” He tipped his head back, blew tobacco smoke at the stars.

Peter Wagner leaned forward a little, studying Jane as if to understand Santisillia by means of her expression. She smiled unhappily to herself and she knew she could be no help—indeed, had no wish to be. She'd stopped thinking about it. Men were forever worrying unanswerable questions. She got up to get their plates, ducking away from the smoke of the fire, and, when she'd collected them, carried them back to scrape into the flames. She kneeled, set the plates in a pile—she'd wash them later—and poured herself another cup of coffee. The fire troubled the rock walls with shadows like bad dreams.

Peter Wagner said to Santisillia, “You don't believe all this. You said yourself, he sold his soul to the Devil.”