John Gardner - The Sunlight Dialogues

“Jesus,” she said.

He sat holding the cigarette ends in front of him, nothing moving now, not even his eyes. His shoulders sagged and the neck of the white shirt he’d taken from Luke’s drawer was open to show his collarbone and a small brown medal on a chain. The clothes they’d had before, the Sunlight Man had burned. “It was him that said about the three,” he said, “first the lady in the car by accident and then the guard and then last night. We walked out of the house like we owned it and went to where the car was parked—”

“What car?” she said.

“—and he got in and didn’t say a word, just drove off like nobody would think of stopping us, and when we were in the country he said about the three.”

“You’ve got to get away from him,” she said. This time it was no trick. “He’ll destroy you.”

He shook his head.

“Call the police,” she said. “He’ll be back soon. You have to do it now, before he comes.” Then: “Call Ben. Tell him what happened.” But the phone would be dead. If she let herself, she could laugh.

“He said he’d come back, when they took him out of the jail. I never gave it a thought, but he did.”

“Because he’s crazy,” she said. “Would you have done it?”

“I don’t know if he’s crazy.” He thought about it. “Ben Hodge would sit and talk with us, tell us all this shit and we would try to do better for a little while, but he give up on us. I would’ve given up on us.”

“You should call the police.”

He shook his head again. “Go sit in the livingroom,” he said. He glanced up, almost apologetic, but then his face hardened, took on a sullen, bloated look. “Go on.”

She turned away.

She stood at the window staring out at the drab, hot morning, waiting for some sound from Nick Slater in the kitchen, waiting for the bearded man to return, waiting for Luke to come to. A strange indifference had come over her. She knew for certain now that the phone was still dead — from the storm last night, possibly; or maybe they’d cut the wires. She’d tried it half an hour ago, when Nick ran out in the garage for a moment, startled by some sound there. But the phone was not her only hope. One scheme after another passed idly through her mind, and she watched them pass like images in a dream but remained aloof from them, abstracted. She was afraid, but it seemed more than mere fear. She felt withdrawn the way schizophrenics are withdrawn, indifferent to how it came out. She imagined herself darting out the livingroom door and around the house, across the thirty feet of lawn to the locust grove and then up the narrow, shaded road to the nearest neighbor’s; but she was sure she would not make it. She would turn to look back and the boy would be there, aiming the pistol at her, eyebrows lowered, as if lost in thought, conscious that this time it was on purpose, and to their mutual surprise he would fire and she would fall, faintly astonished. She imagined herself darting to the semi, to the pick-up, to the car; she saw herself hunting for the keys, finding the ignition empty, or turning the ignition on and grinding on the starter to no avail, and he came toward her with his eyebrows lowered, lost in thought, aiming the pistol at her head. She saw herself waiting at the livingroom door with the flimsy poker from the fireplace, and when he came through she struck and he fell, but the gun was still in his hand and he turned to look up at her and raised the pistol slowly, and, as in a nightmare, she could not move. It seemed to her that she’d been through it all before many times. She remembered standing in her room as a girl, looking out over the porch roof toward the yard in front and the well and the highway beyond, thinking how easy it would be and knowing she would not do it, at least not yet. She could hear the thump of the iron on the ironing board downstairs, and now and then her father’s racking cough. Instead, she had said in her mind again and again, “I need to talk to you, Will. It’s important. Please.” She could imagine how it would be, his look of distress and then the rueful smile meant to hide the distress. She knew exactly how it would be, but she could not get up her nerve for it. And then one night, amazed at herself, she had heard herself actually saying it: “Will, I need to talk to you.” It was apple-picking time, and she had come to buy apples from them. He stood in his picker’s bib beside the two-wheeled handcart loaded high with apples, and darkness was coming on. The others were down at the house. You could hear the sorter rumbling, and now and then you could catch their voices. The smell of the apples was beautiful, and she had ridden on the cart when she was a child and her father was here to help with the work, and she too had climbed the pointed ladder and felt its gentle give against the boughs. Tears came, and she felt one going down her cheek, and whether or not they were honest tears she could not have said herself. He looked at her, his squarish lips pursed, his coarse dark hair falling over his forehead, already beginning to recede. “Here now,” he said. “Now wait a minute!” He fumbled under the picker’s bib for his blue and white farmer’s handkerchief and held it out to her. “Millie,” he said. He thought about it, then clumsily laid his hand on her arm. “What’s the trouble?” She said: “I’m pregnant.” Suddenly she was sobbing, turning away from him in terrible shame, only partly a device. “Good Lord!” he said. Full of concern, for whatever else he might be he was a good man, compassionate, quick to forgive a fall. “What can I do?” he said. “How can I help you?” “You don’t understand,” she said, “I’m pregnant by your brother.” “No!” he said. He did not even ask which one. He knew well enough that Ben had been driving her to town night after night, that he had walked with her at times. After a moment he said, almost a whisper, “I’m sorry, Millie.” Then: “Have you told him?” She nodded. He said, “Does he … That is, are his intentions—” She shook her head. He stood blunt-faced and miserable, huge hands buried in the picker’s bib. “He denies it,” she whispered. His face grew stern. She had not judged him wrong. “I’ll talk to him,” he said. But she shook her head. “No, please. I beg you. If he doesn’t want me, I don’t want to burden him. Please, I’m serious.” And then, excitedly, “If I had dreamed you’d take it this way — I mean, think it was your duty to speak to him — oh, please, please, Will! I beg you!” And so he had asked, befuddled, “But then, what—?” She wiped her eyes and calmed her grief. “I just had to tell someone,” she said. “It’s such a terrible thing … all alone. And when I saw you here, and knew I could say — I’m sorry. Forgive me. Perhaps someone—” He waited, wringing his hands inside the bib. She sniffed and said, “I can find someone. I’m not ugly. Am I?” She looked at him. “Oh, Millie,” he said. “Poor, dear Millie! Lord knows you’re not ugly! If there’s anything in the world …”

She stood in the bedroom, hers, not her husband’s, looking out over the bare branches of the new orchard toward the old one where it all had started, gnarled and blasted trees bent like ancient cripples over the snow, icicles like old men’s beards hanging from the dying branches, and thought: I will leave in the spring. But she would not leave, she knew. It was all a stupid play.

He sat half-dozing beside her, beginning to snore, and she poked him with her elbow and hissed, “Pretend to be amused.” He glared. They were so far from the stage she could barely make out the expressions of the actors. He had said they were lucky to get seats at all, and perhaps it was true; he hadn’t the imagination for a lie. Nevertheless, she suspected he’d gotten these seats because he was cheap.