John Gardner - The Sunlight Dialogues

Clumly nodded. “Listen.” He put his hands on the window-frame. Hodge waited with his fingers on the ignition key, his teeth resting on his drawn-in lower lip, and Clumly tipped his head and squinted at him. “What do you think made him burn all the papers in his billfold?”

“Him?”

“The bearded one.”

Hodge gazed through the windshield and thought about it — not as seriously, Clumly saw, as he’d have had to do if he were wearing Clumly’s shoes. Vanessa sat looking at them wearily, like an old woman waiting for a bus.

“What’s your theory?” Hodge said.

“Well, I don’t think he’s crazy, if that’s what you mean,” Clumly said.

Hodge switched on the ignition and started the truck. “Well, I guess time will tell,” he said.

“Here,” Clumly said. “Look. Look at this.” He searched through his pockets and found among his various notes to himself the folded yellow paper and shook it under Hodge’s face. Hodge studied him, frowning, then took the paper, held it away a little, and looked at it. Clumly got up on the narrow strip of running board and poked in his head and looked too.

“That’s what we got when we examined him,” Clumly said. “Not just me. Miller was there too. Those are the answers he gave us. You can’t tell me he’s insane. Too pat. Look.” Clumly leaned closer to the paper and read aloud, pointing with his finger.

MILLER: What’s your name?

PRISONER: Puddin Tane.

MILLER: Look, don’t be smart. It makes us irritable, and when your supper comes, no Jell-O.

CLUMLY: Do you know your social security number?

PRISONER: Pick-up-sticks shut-the-door gone-to-heaven …

MILLER: Come on, Chief, nobody knows their social security number.

CLUMLY: You think not? My number’s 287–40–0839.

MILLER: Mister, you’ve committed a serious crime. You aware of that?

CLUMLY: What have you to say for yourself?

PRISONER: The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.

MILLER: Mine too. Praise. Now tell us who you are and where you live, and maybe I’ll take it back about the Jell-O.

PRISONER: I’ve told you. I’m Captain Marvel.

MILLER: Right. But we got a lot of them. What are you for short?

PRISONER: I’m called the Sunlight Man.

MILLER: Good. Now we’re getting places. You spread sunlight in the world, that it?

PRISONER: No.

MILLER: Are you self-employed?

PRISONER: Definitely not.

CLUMLY: Miller, this is stupid.

PRISONER: You ask the wrong questions.

MILLER: Get him out of here.

Hodge was smiling, but thoughtfully.

Clumly said, “What do you think?”

“Is this a joke?” Hodge asked. He gave the paper back.

“A joke?” Clumly exclaimed. “You can call it a joke, if you think it’s funny. I don’t, myself. I’ve seen wiseguys before — but this one, he can’t be broken. He’s an educated man, you can see. Could be he’s a college professor.” He got down off the running board. Hodge was still watching him, and Vanessa had her fingertips over her mouth, the other hand over her heart. Clumly said, “You can make them talk sense, most of them. We have our ways. But with him, nothing.”

“Miller doesn’t seem worried,” Hodge said.

Chief Clumly dismissed it with a wave. “Miller can make mistakes too.” It sounded pointlessly bitter, and he regretted saying it.

“If you want my advice, Chief,” Hodge began. Clumly waited, absurdly eager to hear what Ben Hodge would advise. But Hodge thought better of whatever it was he had intended to say. Or perhaps his mind wandered.

“I think he comes from California,” Clumly said.

Hodge mused on this, too. “I have a boy in California,” he said. “Adopted son.” Finally he nodded, noncommittal as ever, and shifted into low. “Wal, getting towards choretime,” he said. “Take care of yourself, Chief.” He spoke too kindly. It sounded faintly ominous to Clumly.

“Same to you,” he said. He stood back, resting his hands on his hips, and watched the truck pull out onto the highway and draw away. Then, his leather shoes slipping a little on the hillside along the road, he hurried back to his car. Late, he thought. Towards choretime, in fact. His chest filled with panic. He’d wasted almost another whole day. The pile of papers on his desk was as high as ever, unless Miller had done some of the work, as he did now and then. There was a letter from the Jaycees, he remembered suddenly, that had come to him May 16th — three months ago. Something about the parking situation, wanted statistics from him, or some fool thing. He ought to have slapped them down right off:

17 May 1966

Gentlemen:

It has come to my attention that

Too late. Couldn’t do that now. Short-handed, that’s the thing. And the men available mostly new, no dedication, no sense of the dangers or difficulties. He suddenly remembered he’d agreed to speak to the Dairyman’s League. When was it? Had he missed it? He bent over the car door, unlocking it, thinking again of the bearded man from California. Was he making a mountain of a molehill? He started violently. There was a dry cowplop on the seat. Kids. Jokers. But how had they gotten it there? He’d locked the door. He got out his handkerchief and mopped his forehead, trying to think. His head ached from the muggy August heat, and his shortsleeved shirt was pasted to his skin with sweat. Open window, he thought, sick at heart. Locked the door but left the window open. Must be losing my marbles.

He stood very still, looking over his shoulder toward the cemetery. He was frightened for an instant. What would they be saying about him at City Hall? Would they have heard about his crazy mistake this morning with Kozlowski?

But the cemetery stood serene in the shadow of its hemlock trees, the tombstone markers solemn and patient and indifferent to the bug-filled heat, the field flowers encroaching on the graveyard grass, indifferent to what City Hall would think, neither troubled nor amused by the joke that had been played on the Batavia Chief of Police. To the left of the cemetery, beyond the iron fence, cows and calves lay chewing in the calm, dry grass, facing toward Nelson St. John’s big red barns, dreaming vaguely of grain and water. Chief Clumly screwed up his face, calmer now, and picked up the dry cowplop with two fingers and threw it in the weeds. He dusted the seat.

“Think you’re smart, don’t you,” he said. He slid in behind the wheel and sighed. Quarter-to-four. If he hurried he could get in his talk with the Woodworth sisters. He sighed again, more deeply, sucking to get more than mere heat inside his lungs. “A funny business,” he said. Poor Hubbard. An image of the casket returned to his mind, the white flowers on the lid already wilting in the cemetery’s heat. There had been someone whispering behind Clumly while the minister prayed. It ruined it. What was the matter with people? Clumly gritted his teeth.

4

On the eleventh of July, 1966, Miss Editha Woodworth, who was said to be aged one hundred and eight and who lived with her younger sister Octave, aged ninety-seven, the only surviving descendants of the Reverend Burgess Woodworth, original pastor of the First Baptist Church of Batavia, New York, had been burgled in broad daylight, when both ladies were at home (they were always at home) by “a wild-looking man,” as they told the police, who had gained access by knocking out a pane of the back-porch door with a hammer and reaching to the latch. The back porch of the Woodworth home, like all the back porches on Ross Street, was glassed in, and had been for fifty years. It was used, or had been long ago, as a potting shed. It was now a clutter of old crates and boxes, broom handles, porcelain, ancient calendars, books— Four Feathers; In the Name of a Lady — so rotten from dampness that they crumbled in your fingers like cake. The porch looked out on what had once been a garden.