John Gardner - The Sunlight Dialogues

Esther said absently while he ate, “Miss Buckland phoned. She noticed you weren’t out on the porch this morning, and she wondered if you were all right.”

“Mmm,” Clumly said.

Esther talked on, mere words, as if her mind were far away, but he scarcely heard her. Nothing was secret, a town like this. Had anyone seen him outside the Mayor’s house, bent to the windowsill? A chill went through him. Have to watch that, he thought. He’d known at the time it was not quite sane, and he’d known very well that he’d hear nothing. And yet it had been oddly exhilarating, to tell the truth. The absolute silence of the street, the surprising distance of lawn between the shelter of shrubs along the sidewalk and the shelter of bushes below Mayor Mullen’s window. He’d felt alive, more awake than he’d felt in years, and bending over the hose faucet projecting from the stone foundation of the house — a smell of mint all around him, the earth a little soggy beneath his shoes, lilac leaves scratching at his ear and cheek — he had felt, all at once, indestructible, as if it no longer mattered that if he was caught he would be ruined. There was nothing on earth that could ruin him. It was like standing lightly balanced on the prow of the S. S. Carolina, looking down, far down, at his perfect shadow on a sea as smooth as glass. He remembered the time he’d gone off the road in his breadtruck, years ago, and had broken through the guardrail and plunged into the Tonawanda Creek. As the car settled slowly he’d thought “I’m a goner!” and he had felt, to his astonishment and delight, no fear — it was only later he’d felt fear, and even then not real terror: a kind of memory of fear that he might have felt. It had been just like that, crouched outside Mayor Mullen’s window, listening to the subdued, tinny noise of the Mayor’s television. The news. The murderer reportedly took the nurses from the room one by one, threatening them with a knife. He listened with the indifferent curiosity of a visiting Martian. And then for some reason the Mayor was at the door — not because of any sound from Clumly but from some mysterious jungle intuition that someone was there, spying. But looking straight at where Clumly crouched, the Mayor could not see him, and he did not trust his jungle feeling, and he looked the other way, then cleared his throat and went back inside. Clumly had smiled. He had crouched there for fifteen minutes, and now it was as if he’d forgotten why he’d come. When the Mayor and his wife talked, Clumly scarcely bothered to listen. He bathed in the feeling of leaves against his face, the ache of his cramped knees, the smell of mint and moist earth. It was something that had happened outside time and space, or so it had seemed then. But time and space were always there, reaffirmed like shrubs and flowers every spring, like birds flitting down to the night crawlers on the lawn with every sunrise. Nothing went unseen. He could almost remember, in fact, that someone had seen him — that he had felt eyes watching him critically, perhaps amused or scornful. He said, breaking into his wife’s vague monologue, “Who phoned?”

She paused. After a moment: “Miss Buckland.”

“No, from the station.”

“Oh. It was Miller. He says Mayor Mullen—”

“All right,” Clumly said. He spoke too quickly, unwilling to hear how much Esther knew. He wiped his mouth and stood up. “I’ll be late again tonight,” he said.

“Very late?”

“No telling.”

Esther sighed. “Be careful,” she said.

As he stepped out onto the porch he saw the fat old lawyer, Will Hodge Sr, just getting out of his car to mail a letter at the box on the corner. Clumly knew at once that something was fishy. “Morning, Will,” Clumly said.

Will Hodge nodded and waved. When he’d dropped the letter he returned to his car and switched on the motor. Clumly had come down the steps now. The morning was already too warm, stuffy as an overheated room in some cheap hotel far from home. Will Hodge said, “Getting a late start, aren’t you?”

“Little bit,” Clumly said. He covered his chin with his hand and watched Hodge pull away from the curb, the rattling old car smooth and dutiful as a lawyer’s reasoning; he drove toward Lyon Street. Clumly shook his head, denying the butterflies under his belt, and went toward the garage.

When he slipped the key into the lock on his office door he found the door already open. The Mayor stood with his arm on the file cabinet, waiting. Back in the cells there was commotion, Miller chewing someone out, and boys’ voices, someone crying.

“All right, Clumly,” the Mayor said, straightening up, “what the devil do you mean?” His face was red as fire, the jaw muscles tight.

“Mean?” Clumly said. He took his cap off slowly, turned half-away from the Mayor, and hung the cap on the rack.

“I’ve been waiting down here for two hours. I’m a busy man.”

“I’m sorry,” Clumly said. “The men will tell you—”

“The men have told me as much as I want to hear. You’re in trouble, Clumly. You think about that.”

Clumly moved over to the window to look out, scowling. The Mayor said behind him, “I asked you over to my office for a friendly chat. Gave you every opportunity. Result? No result! All right, what’s the matter over here, I ask myself. Who’s throwing a monkeywrench in the works? Somebody’s not doing his job, I say to myself. By God, it’s time for a look-see. I come over and I sit here for two whole hours, a busy man, and where are you—”

“If all you’ve got on your mind—” Clumly started.

“Fred, you hear me out. I’ve got plenty on my mind.” He was pacing now. “I’ve got murder — two murders — on my mind. Thievery. Prowlers out there in my own goddamn yard. Found the footprints. Right. No kid’s footprints, either. Are you aware this thing’s cast a horror over the whole entire city of Batavia? People can’t sleep! I get phonecalls from morning to night, and your man out at the desk — well, ask him! And what are you doing? Have you got so much as a shred of a clue?”

His head came suddenly to Clumly’s shoulder. The face had gone gray. “Right outside my window, you hear? Right outside my own window!”

“We’ve been doing—” He paused, compressing his lips, tempted to smile.

The Mayor looked startled. But he said: “And now I get a call from the District Attorney. You won’t cooperate, he says. ‘Walt,’ he says, ‘what the devil’s come over Fred Clumly?’ You had a man here, he says, and you had him dead to rights, but you let him slip through your fingers. I talk to Miller. ‘Yes it’s true,’ he says, ‘we could’ve nailed him.’ Course he doesn’t come out with it quite like that. Out of pity, you know; sorry to see the Old Man losing his grip. But push him a little, he admits it. You let the man off. Why?” He jerked his head away. After a moment: “Because the man’s your friend, that’s why. You had him dead to rights, but it turns out the man was your friend.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Clumly said.

“Is it? Is it? You were seen out walking the streets with him.”

It was a great stroke, the Mayor seemed to think. He beamed malevolently.

Clumly sneered. “Idiotic,” he said. “You tend to your business, I’ll tend to mine.”

“Oh I will,” Mayor Mullen said, “I promise you. And my business is you.” His face was red again now, the ashen look gone completely. “I’m here to tell you you’re in for a formal investigation. You understand that? I give you until tomorrow morning to give me your explanation for all this fol-de-rol — in writing.”

Clumly nodded, touching the sash of the window though he felt no need to steady himself.