John Gardner - The Sunlight Dialogues

Clumly changed his mind. “Suppose I told you I know for a fact that this Sunlight Man once ran someone down in St. Louis, Missouri — ran him down with a diaper truck, in cold blood, and then picked him up off the grass and locked him up in a grimy cellar. He was crippled for life.”

“How?”

“How do I know? Because—” He studied Kozlowski’s eyes, then changed his mind. “I know, that’s all. Never mind how.”

“You’ll get killed,” Kozlowski said. “And you’ll deserve it. Start busting out on your own like that, acting like a vigilante …”

Chief Clumly’s small eyes glinted. “I’ve tried your way. You’re forgetting something. I’m responsible for this town, you follow that? Responsible! It’s like a king. I don’t mean I’m comparing myself to a king, you understand, but it’s like a king. If a king’s laws get tangled up and his knights all fail him, he’s got to do the job himself. They’re his people. He’s responsible. Or take God — not that I compare myself to God, understand. If the world gets all messed up He’s got to fix it however He can, that’s His job.”

Kozlowski shook his head and rolled his eyes up.

“This spaghetti’s all grease,” Clumly said. “Hey, Miss!”

“You gonna arrest her, boss?” Kozlowski said.

Clumly ignored it. When the girl came he said, “This spaghetti’s all grease.”

She looked at the plate. “You get what you pay for.”

He pushed the plate away. He said suddenly, “Listen, Kozlowski, come to the funeral with me this afternoon. For Salvador.”

He shook his head. “Miller said—”

“Forget it! Is Miller the Chief?”

“Look. We all been by there, paid our respects. You can’t just shut down the police department for a funeral.”

“True. But I want you there, see?” He added, crafty-looking, “I’ve got a hunch.”

Kozlowski sighed. Clumly had finished his root-beer now, and they both got down off their stools. The waitress looked at Clumly’s check. “Ninety cents,” she said. He paid her and she rang it up. Kozlowski paid nothing. Clumly thought about it.

At the door, Clumly squinted at him and said, “You got some deal cooked up between you, you and her? How come no charge?”

Kozlowski blushed. “What kind of deal could we have?”

“I don’t know,” Clumly said. He thought: book-making, petty extortion, prostitution, health code, fire code … “I don’t know,” he said again. “You’re a riddle, Kozlowski.” He grinned, watchful.

Kozlowski looked up at the sky and slid his cap on. It must be a hundred out now. The sheen of wax on the police car top was blinding.

“You drive,” Clumly said. “We’ll stop by afterward and pick up my car again.” He closed his hand around the little white stones in his pocket.

Kozlowski got in, switched on the ignition, and waited while Clumly came around the front to his side.

For all the heat, it was a good funeral, one of the best he’d seen. Almost all the people there were Italian, and most of them he didn’t know. Nobody talked. They stood motionless in their dark suits, even the children motionless, and when they bowed or knelt or crossed themselves — all but the half-dozen Protestants there — they did it together, as though by a single impulse in their hearts. Everyone wept, including Clumly, and even Kozlowski had water in his eyes. Beside the open grave the priest spoke English, sadly, with Italian feeling.

“God lift this boy to Heaven,” he said. He wrung his hands. “And forgive him his sins. He had much, much good in him, as you know, Lord, and what faults he may have had were the faults of any mortal child on the threshold, only the threshold, of his manhood. Even to our limited mortal sight it seemed only a day or two ago that he laughed and played on the sidewalk in front of his mama’s house, and only a matter of hours ago that he distinguished himself as a football player in our high school. He was gentle and kindly, and he gave his life for the defense of peace and justice. Have mercy on his spirit, and give comfort to his mother and his brothers and sisters who have lost him in all the great beauty of his youth. When they come home to the house now suddenly emptied, You be there in his stead. When they hear a young voice they mistake for his, in that first tragic instant, You be there to give them peace.” He shifted to Latin, or maybe Italian.

An untimely end, but the funeral was fitting, and all the dignity of Mickey Salvador’s life was there — his mother, weeping, the younger children, the relatives heavy of body and heart, the school friends. We all go sometime, Clumly thought. At last, whatever tensions, uncertainties, joys and sorrows warred in the heart, law and order were restored, and there was peace.

He looked out at the field where cows lay weary from the heat and two dogs stood sniffing a fencepost. Life goes on, he thought. It was beautiful. He gave himself up to the pleasure of weeping.

When he wiped his eyes the first thing he saw was the enormous back of Will Hodge Sr, moving toward the cemetery gate. Poor devil, Clumly thought, remembering the scene with Salvador’s mother in Clumly’s own office. Well, they’d made up now. She walked beside him. That was odd, he thought the next minute. Unsettling. Hodge turned to glance back, and his eyes fell instantly, as if he’d meant them to, on Clumly.

But he got no time just then to think about it. There was a commotion over at the edge of the crowd, an argument perhaps, or a purse lost, or some accident. He pressed toward the place, Kozlowski just behind him. When he got there the small crowd fell away to give him room. There was an old Italian woman sitting on the ground, her legs splayed out, skirt hiked up to reveal the terrible gray of her thighs above the rolled stocking-tops. A boy was pulling at her, trying to help her to her feet. She was blind and seemed dazed. When Clumly bent over her she drew back as if alarmed, saying something in Italian “—uno stormo d’uccelli.”

“What?” Clumly said. He glanced at the boy for help.

“Storm of birds,” the boy said. In answer to Clumly’s look of bafflement he merely shrugged. He was so thin he looked made out of sticks.

“Voli di colombi,” she said.

“Flights of pigeons,” the boy said dully, looking down.

“What’s this mean?” Clumly said, but no one answered. The crowd drew nearer to listen.

“La morte,” she said.

“Death,” said the boy.

She was speaking directly — unmistakably — to Clumly. She began to whisper, and the boy went on translating, quick, toneless, indifferent. “Some will die for uncontrol and animalness and for cruel mastering. Some for violent kindness.”

She touched Clumly’s face — her hands ice-cold — and said a word which the boy did not translate. She repeated it. “Disanimata.”

“What does it mean?” Clumly said.

The boy looked blank and sullen.

The others would not say either.

“Let me help you up,” Clumly said. He took her two hands. “All right you people, make room there.” Kozlowski put his hands under her armpits.

He had an hour yet before it was time to leave for his appointment with the Sunlight Man.

“You’re home early,” Esther said. “You said you were going to be late.”

He nodded. “Work to do. See I’m not disturbed.”

Without another word he proceeded up the stairs to the second floor and then on to the third. Here the house was above the shade of the trees, and the bare, unfurnished rooms were full of light. He got out the tape recorder from the closet where he’d left it, threaded the tape in, and bolted the door behind him. He straightened up and got a cigar out, then stood at the high, narrow window to smoke and listen. He felt again the heavy-hearted weariness he’d felt last night in the church, but he felt something else now, too. A kind of joy, almost the kind of joy he’d felt years ago, going over and over a letter from his nearly blind sweetheart, on the ship. His head was clear now, as it always was up here where he could look out on half the city. As the tape spoke he cocked his head and bent nearer.