October Light (31 page)

Estelle drew herself up a little. “Well my goodness,” she said. She began to struggle to get out of her chair. Automatically, looking worried, Lewis came around beside and a little behind her to see if he could help.

“You'll never make it up the stairs,” James stated flatly.

“We'll see about that,” Estelle said. “Thank you, Lewis.” She gave him a slightly absentminded smile, standing now, fussing with her canes. She seemed unaware that she still had her coat and hat on. “Ginny,” she said, “be a dear and come over beside me here. That's it, yes, good. Just steady me a little, like that, yes. And Lewis, you come over on this side.” Before they could protest, they found themselves laboring up the stairs with her, Estelle Parks smiling with a look of slight alarm, telling them what to do, tortuously climbing toward Aunt Sally's room, calling ahead once or twice, “Yoo hoo! Sally!”

When they reached the top (the gun and the strings of the trap had vanished, nothing remained but the tack-holes in the wall), Estelle called more brightly than ever, “Sally, are you there?”

They waited.

“Sally?” Estelle called again.

Still no answer. Estelle—tiny and absurd in the hallway, standing, bent with age, in her blue coat and hat—looked over at Ginny, pursed her lips and then, all at once, smiled impishly. “Well, I'll just talk with her anyway, keep the poor dear company, you know, let her see that she's still got friends.” She turned back to the door. “May I come in, Sally?” She tried the knob, then shook her head, smiling again as if delighted, but squinting, thinking. To the door she said, “Well my my.”

Ginny said, “Why doesn't Lewis get you a chair, Estelle.”

“That's a good idea,” Estelle said, “yes, Lewis, do.”

Lewis turned and went down. He was back in a moment with one of the chairs from the kitchen. He helped Estelle sit.

“You know, Sally,” Estelle called, “I'm surprised at you!”

They waited. Estelle looked over at them, eyes atwinkle, and gave a little nod as if dismissing them. Lewis squatted over his cardboard box of tools, picking out a scraper, trying to decide whether or not it would be right to get back to work. Ginny backed away toward the head of the stairs and, after watching a moment longer, went down. As she reached the door into the kitchen she heard Aunt Sally say in a feeble little voice, “Is that you, Estelle? Why, I must've drifted off!” Ginny shook her head, rolling her eyes up, and came out into the kitchen. She closed the stairway door behind her, and without a word to her father went into the living room to check on Dickey. He was fast asleep by the fireplace, plastic building blocks closed in his hands and scattered all around him, green and yellow and red.

4

For half an hour Estelle did her best to talk sense into her friend, but with no success. It was an impasse, simply. They were both, James and Sally, stubborn idealists, and there was never any hope, she'd learned as a teacher, when you were dealing with stubborn idealists. “Well my my,” she would say from time to time, shaking her head, glancing over at where Lewis was scraping the paint off the bathroom door. He would give his head a morose little shake in return and go on working. Lewis had the right idea, of course. Simply be there, on the chance that sooner or later you'd be of use.

She leaned toward the bedroom door again and called, “Sally, why don't you come out and at least get some food in your stomach? It might be you'd see things differently.”

“That's all very well for
you
to say, Estelle,” the old woman called back, “but there are some things a person can't just forgive and forget. When a situation's downright intolerable, what good is it to throw up your hands and just leave it to the bees? Too many people in this country have been doing that too long.”

Estelle sighed. “Oh Sally dear, what's the
country
got to do with it?”

Sally's voice was haughty. “Don't you fool yourself, Estelle. The country's got everything to do with it. It's the haves and the have-nots, that's what it is. James was here in the house first—that's his whole argument—so when I move in, I've got to do exactly as he says, and no matter if it kills me.”

“Oh Sally, really!”

“Don't you Sally-really me, Estelle. It's the truth and you know it. It should've been my house, if the truth be told. I was the oldest. But everything goes to the men in this country—always has. We might as well be Negroes. I changed that boy's didies and carried him on my back, I taught him to tie his shoelaces, I led him by the hand back and forth from school, even saved him from Dad's cussed johnny-bull once, and this is the recompense I get! He's got his opinions, and I grant you he's got a right to 'em; but I've got my opinions too, and it's no way to settle it chasing an old woman with a piece of stovewood and locking her up in her bedroom.”

“Sally, he didn't!” Estelle exclaimed, merely to show her sympathy. The charge had, Lord knows, the ring of truth. She saw it all as clearly as a picture in a book, and in spite of herself she had to smile.

“Yes he did,” Sally said, “and a good deal worse. Threatened my life with a shotgun. He's a drinker, you know.”

“No!” Estelle said. It sounded unlikely, he hadn't been known to get drunk in years, but that was unimportant. Sally believed her charges, that was what mattered. Nevertheless, she glanced over at Lewis to see what
he
thought. He shook his head denying it all, but said nothing, merely scraped on. He had the whole molding finished now, and part of the bathroom door.

Sally said, “It's no use making peace with tyranny. If the enemy won't compromise, he gives you no choice; you simply have to take your stand, let come what may.”

“Oh dear,” Estelle said. She didn't like at all the direction in which the conversation was steering. Not that she didn't believe in principles. Principles were one of the things that made life meaningful—cleanliness, punctuality, a willingness to try to see the other person's side … But she'd been down this road too many times; she knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that it led nowhere. “That's all true, I suppose,” she said. “But we have to make it
possible
for the other person to compromise, you know. We all have our pride. We have to try to be reasonable and ‘do unto others.'”

Even as she said it, her palsied head trembling, her hands clasped together on her knees, Estelle knew it was a useless argument, though a true one. Sally's voice became more adamant than ever. “Let
James
be reasonable,” she said. “It's always up to the one in power to be reasonable. It's like the United States after World War II. When Germany and Japan unconditionally surrendered, we reached out and gave them a helping hand, helped them to their feet, like the great nation and model for the world that we're supposed to be, and now Germany and Japan are two of the most decent, most prosperous countries in the world. That's how things should be. That's the
Christian
way. But of course that's not how James sees it—heavens no! He's just like the United States after the war in Viet Nam, stingy and full as a tick with guilt and grudges. He won't turn loose of so much as one thin dime. You'll see what comes of it! You mark my words! Viet Nam will turn elsewhere—and so will Africa and heaven knows who else—and what might have been markets and healthy competitors will be pigs in the parlor.”

“Sally, what on earth are you talking about? How can you compare poor James with the whole United States?”

“You'll see,” Sally said.

Long as she'd known her, Estelle had never quite realized that Sally was a crank—as much a crank as her brother, it seemed. Perhaps it was something that had come over her since she'd moved back to the farm with James, or perhaps it had been there all along and had simply never come up. When they'd played bridge in the old days, Sally and Horace, Estelle and Ferris, there had been wonderful talk of politics, education, religion—talk about everything under the sun, in fact, or at any rate everything decent people had talked about in those days—but it had been mainly the men who had talked about politics. Sally, whenever she'd taken a side, had taken it firmly, Estelle remembered, thinking back to it now—once, in fact, Sally had surprised them all by becoming quite passionate, even throwing down her cards—but it was rare for things to get that far out of hand when Ferris and Horace were there. Ferris, elegant and handsome, would tell jokes if the evening began to turn serious; and Horace had had a delightful, almost comic gift for seeing and believing both sides.

Sally was saying, increasingly intense, “People think they can go on exploiting and exploiting forever, and the developing countries will simply have to put up with it, but believe you me that's wrong! There was a program on television, made your hair stand on end. I forget the whole argument—just as clear as two plus two is four—but I remember part of it.” Her tone became dogmatic, tinged with self-pity—exactly the tone of the one and only Communist Estelle had ever met—and though Estelle now opened her mouth to object she said nothing, on second thought, but listened in something like amazement. “The handful of plutocrats in the third and fourth world countries,” Sally was saying, “the only ones with any money to spend, want nothing but luxury items and bombs, which they get from the first world countries at terrible prices, so the poor people there in the developing countries get poorer and poorer and work harder and harder, and as their countries buy bombs their life becomes more and more dangerous.” Estelle glanced at Lewis, who stood, head tipped far over, listening with no expression, like a cat. The voice became more strident. “The situation in the developing countries gets more and more dangerous, so the plutocrats take on more and more power, suspending constitutional government and so forth, just to keep order and protect themselves, oppressing the poor people more and more and buying more and more from the outside world, until it seems there's nothing that can break the—” She paused a moment, hunting for the word. “Spiral. But the plutocrats forget two crucial facts.”

“Why Sally,” Estelle said, “I never knew you knew about all that!”

“Two crucial facts,” Sally said.

“Sally Abbott, you should have been a teacher,” Estelle said. “Listen to this, Lewis! Were you aware that Sally had made a study of all this?”

“Aunt Sally's nobody's fool, I've always said that,” Lewis said.

“Two facts,” said Sally, belligerent.

Estelle sighed and resigned herself. The lecturing voice seemed to be moving around behind the bedroom door, as if Sally were pacing, perhaps keeping track of the two crucial facts on her fingers. Lewis continued to stand with the paint-scraper dangling, all attention on the argument.

“First, just as Walter Cronkite says, they forget the amazing power of ‘the Idea of Freedom.' Once people have heard about freedom it's like seventeen seventy-six all over again, they just won't settle for anything less, they'd rather die. It's an idea all the wealth and power in the world can't stop—I can testify to that myself, believe you me!”

“Are you saying—” Lewis began. But she wouldn't be interrupted.

“And the other thing the plutocrats forget is the nature of an army. The plutocrats build up their powerful armies to protect their own interests, but an army's their own worst enemy. In an army people learn discipline, and they learn to be willing to die for what's right. They get educated, more or less—more than they would have back in their villages anyway. And that's the least of it. That many young men brought together in one place makes a natural whatchamacallit for ideas—such ideas as freedom and people's natural rights. And pretty soon, just as in Russia and Tanzania and Portugal,
poof!,
revolution!—the dawn of reality and truth!—and all started by the
army.
You tell James Page and all his kind to just give
that
some thought.” The bed creaked. She'd apparently seated herself.

“Aunt Sally,” Lewis said, but then he reconsidered and merely picked at his moustache and shook his head.

Estelle stared at the bedroom door with an expression of distress, her head jittering and her eyebrows lifted. She wondered if Horace had ever seen poor Sally in such a state. Probably not. These weren't the kinds of thoughts that came up in times of happiness. “My my,” Estelle whispered. Whatever the truth might be about James and the United States, or Sally and radicalized armies (or whatever), the truth here in this house was that Sally must be coaxed out of her room before things got worse. An atmosphere of peace and cooperation must be established or they'd never get anywhere. How she wished Ruth Thomas were here! Ruth had always had a way about her. She recited funny poems, told anecdotes, filled every room she entered with such warmth and good feeling it was almost impossible for a person to keep his mind on his grudges. Estelle looked at her watch. My goodness, only quarter to eight! She remembered, the same moment, that Terence, her great-nephew, was still out in the car. “Oh dear,” she said aloud.

“Sally,” she called, “it doesn't seem right to keep your door locked even against your friends.”

“I know it, Estelle,” Sally answered. “But I haven't got much choice, do I? I sometimes think—” Her voice became slightly theatrical, the self-pity more distinct, as if she were speaking lines out of Shakespeare or Tennyson: “I sometimes think we're all characters in some book. It's as if our whole lives are plotted from start to finish, so that even if the end should be happy it's poisoned when we get to it.”

Estelle's eyes widened. “Sally Abbott, what on earth's got into you?” she said. “Why, that's the silliest thing I ever heard!” She looked over at Lewis. A decision was building in her. “Lewis, dear, help me downstairs,” she said. “I need to use the telephone.”