John Gardner - The Sunlight Dialogues

In her abstracted state she hardly noticed, at first, the bearded man walking up the driveway out of the shadow of the trees into the sunlight of the yard. When she awakened to his approach she was struck by something familiar in his walk — strikingly familiar — but when she tried to place it her mind seemed to shy from what she knew and she could not explain to herself the sense of sudden discovery. He came to the door and let himself in. When he saw her he paused, flustered, but at last nodded to her, the stocking still drawn down over his face, and then, without a glance at the inert Luke, he went on upstairs.

2

He paced. She heard him going back and forth over her head and she remembered dreams of someone walking on her grave. Luke was awake now, sitting with his head in his hands, his face white, saying nothing. Nick sat on the couch, the gun in his lap, cleaning his fingernails with the greatest possible concentration. She too sat silent and almost motionless, waiting. The footsteps overhead went slowly back and forth, from one end of the house to the other, loud on the hardwood of the hallway over the kitchen, softer when he came to the wide old boards of the bedroom floors or the Runians’ throw-rugs. She lit a cigarette, and Nick looked at her. The Sunlight Man had told her not to smoke. She sat with the cigarette hanging between her fingers, waiting for Nick to decide, and finally he looked down. “You want one?” she said. He glanced up, then away again. When he’d thought about it a minute he nodded and she reached one toward him, then lit her own and threw him the matches. Then silence again. Two o’clock. She closed her eyes, thinking nothing in particular, wondering if Luke would be better off if he ate something, and when she opened them again — after nearly an hour, she would have sworn — only twelve minutes had passed. She sighed and closed her eyes again. Seven minutes later, Luke said, “I’m going out.” “You can’t,” Nick said. “That’s what you think,” Luke said. But when he moved toward the door Nick leaned forward, half-standing, aiming the pistol directly at him, and Luke was afraid. As for Millie, she was terrified; it was as if all her insides had turned to loose pudding. “For the love of God, stop it, Luke,” she said. “Nick, put that damned gun down.” They obeyed, both of them, instantly, grateful to escape the test. She wiped sweat from the bridge of her nose, and again for a long time they all sat silent.

The police arrived at four. As the black and white car turned in at the driveway the bearded man came down the stairs lightly, the stocking still over his face, his hands in the pockets of his suitcoat, and nodded to Nick. “Come with me,” he said. And then, to Millie, “Don’t say a word. Be sensible. Show them whatever they ask to see, and remember—” He curled his fingers at her, like claws, as though it were all some joke. “—I’ll be right here beside you, invisible.” The police car had gone around to the back now. The Sunlight Man made a quick inspection of the kitchen, then went down the cellar steps, pushing Nick in front of him. The knock came, and she breathed deep, trying to think. She heard the cellar door opening again and knew he was somewhere behind her.

“Afternoon, Mrs. Hodge,” the policeman said. He slid his hat off. It was the one called Miller.

“Afternoon,” she said. Her voice was very faint, and she was sure she had given it all away. She couldn’t tell whether she was glad of it or not.

“Everything all right here?” he asked. He was looking at her closely, and she realized she must be pale.

She wet her lips. “Oh yes, fine,” she said. Then, hastily, “Luke’s been ill. My son. He has — these headaches.”

The policeman glanced at Luke, and the shorter policeman with him nodded, sympathetic. “It’s a hell of a thing all right,” the short one said. “My first wife had headaches. Migraine.”

“These are histamine,” Luke said stupidly.

Miller said, “Mrs. Hodge, you seen anybody around here? I guess you know—” He let it trail off, and she nodded.

“I heard. It was terrible.”

“We thought he might head for here.”

“That’s what we thought too,” she said. “I could hardly sleep last night. And that storm, on top of it.” Her shudder was real enough.

He slid his lower lip over his upper and looked at his boots.

“Would you like to come in, officers?” she said. She tried to think of some way of signalling to them.

“Yes, thank you.”

Luke sat down in the chair by the fireplace and covered his face with his hands.

“You’re sure everything’s all right?” Miller said.

She nodded, faint with indecision.

“You don’t mind if we look around?”

“No, of course not. We’d be grateful.”

He was moving toward the kitchen, his eyebrows lowered, and she had a feeling he was straining his ears, listening. Suppose they found him on their own and she had nothing to do with it. Would the Sunlight Man blame her, in that case? If, say, he escaped them — shot his way out of it, as they said on TV — would he turn on her then, if she’d done nothing? Dear God, please let them find him, she thought. The second policeman had gone to the diningroom and stood now at the window looking out.

“We’ve been so frightened,” she said.

He studied her, smiling with only his mouth. “You look guilty as hell. Been up to something?”

She knew her alarm showed. A wink would tell him, she thought, but she did nothing.

Still he was looking at her, but with another part of his mind he was listening to something far away. Could he hear them, down in the cellar? He said, “What is it? Come out with it.”

“Really,” she said. She gave a little laugh. “I can’t imagine …”

The other policeman had gone into the downstairs bathroom to look there. He came out holding a bottle. “Look at this,” he said.

Miller unscrewed the cap and smelled the pills, then broke a little piece off between his fingernails, watching her as he did it. He ground the powder between his thumb and first finger and tasted a little.

“What you think?” the other policeman said.

Miller screwed the cap back on and shrugged. “I think the druggist’s label came off,” he said. “Get back to work. Don’t get sidetracked.” The other man went back through the livingroom toward the stairs, and Miller leaned toward her. “Look, we got bigger fish than that to fry, right now, so you’re in luck. But throw it away or something. Understand?”

She managed a sickly smile.

Miller studied her.

“What’s in here?” he said.

“That’s the door to the cellar.”

He opened it and looked down. “There a lightswitch?”

“It’s here.” She reached in past him and turned the stairway light on. The stairway was crooked and worn and had no railing. She could see the dim, cobwebbed stone of the wall, and on the floor two inches of water from seepage and last night’s rain.

“Stinks,” he said.

She nodded.

“These old cellars always stink,” he said thoughtfully, looking at her. “You should smell mine. Rats?”

“Hundreds of them,” she said. “Sometimes at night you can hear them swimming around.”

Miller made a face. He went halfway down the stairs and leaned over to look around. There would be nothing to see, she was sure. The shelves of ancient mason jars full of long-ago rotted tomatoes and peaches and pears, all black now; the old wood furnace with its side caved in; the cobwebbed pipes leading out from the furnace; the chutes for wood, the doors to the apple bins, empty for years. He came back up the stairs and called to the other one. They both went down. They were there for a long time, but they found nothing. They found nothing upstairs either. Was it possible that he really had become invisible? The shorter one went out to look in the barn. Again, nothing.