John Gardner - The Sunlight Dialogues

“Too late for that,” Clumly said. “I think I can beat them.” He did not, suddenly; but he was indifferent to that, for the moment.

Miller glanced at him, uneasy, then away. He said, “You want some advice?”

Clumly felt a sudden, absurd leap of hope, and his face showed it. But the sensation of freedom passed instantly, or rather gave way to a different freedom, and his jaw grew stubborn. He shook his head.

“I was afraid of that too,” Miller said. He was going to say — Clumly could see it in his eyes— How long do you think we can cover for you? But that was not Miller’s way. He too took an obstinate look, and after a moment he came over to the desk. He lifted the folders and manilla envelopes from the stack of papers, revealing, beneath them, a dozen neatly typed letters. He said quietly, “If you don’t mind, sign these before you go.”

“Who wrote them?” Clumly said. “What are they?”

“They’re mail,” Miller said. “Me and Einstein been working on it, a little. Einstein’s my son. Good writer.”

Clumly looked at them. The top one began,

YOUR HONOR:

I sincerely regret that pressing duties have necessitated my postponing immediate answer to your questions concerning the budget submitted to you 12 May 1966. I shall seek to reply to your questions point by point. …

Clumly said, “You expect me to sign these things?”

Miller took a deep breath. “You better, boss,” he said. He turned away. Halfway to the door he paused, then turned back slowly. “Listen. No more poking around like a crazy old woman. You keep this up you’ll hang us all.” Miller turned his back.

He’d felt panicky, knowing how much there was to do, yet he sat reading the letters over and over, imagining the writing of them — Miller and his son running over his mail, wincing maybe, or maybe laughing, who could tell? like a couple of ladies at the laundry sorting undershorts. The letters were not his voice, nobody would be fooled; but that was not all. The letters were his responsibility, a stupid responsibility he should never have been saddled with in the first place and should never bend to now. And yet he would bend, he knew that. It was merely a question of time, of aging endurance.

It was twelve-fifteen when the call from Marsh Niemeyer came. A prattler, one of those farmers who worked like the devil when alone in the field or the cowbarn and then talked on and on as though he could never get enough when some neighbor came around or he met some friend at church or made a phonecall. He said at length, “Well, Chief, what I called for was, we’re printing up the programs for the program. Ha ha ha.”

“I see,” Clumly said.

“Well we wondered what the title of your speech was going to be. It’s next Wednesday, you know. Y’see we have to tell the printer—” He explained in detail.

Clumly said, “I thought I’d talk on Law and Order.”

“Law and Order,” Niemeyer said. He sounded doubtful. “Did you have a title?”

“Law and Order,” Clumly said. He smiled with considered malice.

“Good,” Niemeyer said. “That’s good. Direct, no running around Robin Hood’s barn.”

Clumly nodded at the phone. “That’s about it.”

The man talked on, and Clumly waited for it to end. His mind wandered vaguely to the Babylonian puppets, and he frowned. There was a connection, but he couldn’t make it out exactly. Ladies and gentlemen, my subject tonight … No. As the salesman said to the farmer’s daughter … He thought suddenly, with a shiver of mysterious anger, King Kong’s balls. And then: But seriously, folks. .

“Well thanks,” Niemeyer said. “It’s something to think about.”

“Mmm,” Clumly said.

A touch of megalomania. Don’t you think that may have certain dangers in it — political and social, I mean? Who had said that? The Sunlight Man? Refuses to renounce his human dignity … a Hell’s Angel of sorts, a rebellious lunatic …

The phone in his hand was dead.

Salvador’s funeral, he thought. He looked down, startled, at his watch. Where is my servant Mickey Salvador?

At the desk he said, “Where’s Kozlowski?”

“Having lunch, sir.”

“Where?”

“I dunno. Polkadot, probably.”

He hurried out to the street and made for his car.

3

“We’re in an age of violent change, Kozlowski,” Clumly said.

Kozlowski nodded, winding spaghetti around his fork with the help of his spoon. His face was redder than usual, as though it embarrassed him to be caught eating lunch with the Chief. But there was hardly anyone else there — a teenager with longish hair and his collar turned up, sitting at the counter to Clumly’s left, and around the corner a workman of some sort, maybe a welder, with thick glasses and thicker bubbles of glass in the middle. The waitress was telling the workman that he and his wife were tearing that poor boy apart. “Say it’s true,” the workman said, “let’s say I’m willing to grant that.” He pointed at her with his fork. “You think you and I had it better when we were kids? I give him the best home I can. It’s up to him too.” The waitress waved it off scornfully and turned to Clumly. “What’s yours?” she said.

He pointed toward Kozlowski’s spaghetti. “One of those and a cup of Sanka.”

“No Sanka.”

“Root-beer.”

She turned away.

“Violent change,” he said again. “I’m not against the future. Not for a minute, no sir! What I ask is, who’s conserving the values of the past? Who?”

Kozlowski shook his head and glanced at the waitress.

“It’s all very well to say the old order changes giving way to the new, or whatever the saying is, but where’s the new? That’s the question!”

Kozlowski poked the forkful into his mouth.

The man in thick glasses said, “A man has to look out for himself. If my parents are to blame for the way I turned out, then it must go back to Adam, for God’s sake, and who’s responsible for him?”

“All right,” Clumly said, “so take—” He leaned closer to Kozlowski. “Take the Sunlight Man. A dangerous criminal, right?”

“Right.”

“But how dangerous nobody knows, because we don’t know who he is, right?”

He nodded, poking in a forkful.

“So Miller and the boys may bring him in for the minor counts, but as for his real crimes—”

“Good thinking,” Kozlowski said.

Clumly scowled at him. “What side you on, Kozlowski?”

Clumly’s spaghetti came, and Kozlowski was spared the inconvenience of answering. Clumly took a mouthful and leaned toward him again. “All right,” he said, “what would you say if I told you I have a chance of meeting with this man alone, and talking? Suppose I knew how I could follow him around, but I had to do it all on my own. Well?”

Kozlowski said, “I’d say it was a crazy idea.” He chewed.

Clumly grinned. “Ah! Crazy. Why?”

Now, for just a moment, Kozlowski looked at him. “Because sooner or later the chances are he’d kill you. Even if killing’s not his usual way, what choice would he have, some cop following him around, pushing him in a corner?”

“And yet the other way we may never find out—”

Kozlowski said nothing.

“Well?” Clumly said.

“No difference. The reason you have what’s called a ‘force’ is when the cops outnumber the robbers fewer people get killed.” Still looking straight ahead, as if Clumly were merely some irritating stranger, Kozlowski began on his coffee.

“Suppose I told you—” Clumly whispered.

Now a muscle began to twitch in Kozlowski’s cheek. He set down the coffee and waited.