John Gardner - The Sunlight Dialogues

“Who was that?” Vanessa said.

Will Hodge blushed. “Who was who?” he said.

“Friend of the family, likely,” Ben said. He studied the ground and mused.

3

Will Hodge sat alone in his car, a block from the police station. Freeman had set off for Critic’s to get them some supper. They’d be able to drop their vigil soon. The light was still on in Clumly’s office, but any time now, unless he had still more lunacy plotted, he’d be going home to bed. If Freeman had his way, they’d have dropped the vigil already. He’d sat staring at the dashboard, shaking his head — refusing to look out at where Clumly crouched in the bushes like a toad, beneath Mayor Mullen’s window and he’d said, “I dunno,” and scratched his ear. “If I was in charge we’d cut out. Man starts falling apart, like, it seems to me you should let him do it in private. You got no pity?” But Hodge had said, “Do what you like,” and set his jaw. “You’re free to go when you choose.” Freeman had stayed, shaking his head. Hodge thought: No pity! A lifetime of pity was what he’d had, pity like a rope around his neck, and all of them tugging it — Will Jr, Millie, Ben, Luke. … What would you know, a mere child, about pity? It was dark now. Main Street was stinging with neon. There was a crowd in front of the Dipson Theater, the late show about to start. The Russians Are Coming! The traffic light over the middle of the street a little ahead of where Will Hodge was parked went mindlessly from red to green again and again, and in his memory of its changes time became as palpable as the shiny-topped cars passing under it or the dark upper stories of the buildings on each side of the street. On the sidewalk to the right of his parked car people walked past saying words to one another that Hodge couldn’t catch. Their heels clicked sharply for a time in the darkness and then grew faint, drawing away toward the cheerfully lighted fire-house with its dark red trucks, where there were firemen sitting on the sidewalk in front, on wooden folding chairs. Chief Uphill was there, standing with his hands folded in back of him, chin thrust forward, gazing toward the police station. Beyond him a tractor-trailer came onto Main Street, off the Walnut Street Bridge, brakes whooshing, motor growling at the stoplight like a tiger. On the door Hodge saw a white word he recognized without being near enough to read it: PAXTON.

No pity. He who had watched their world falling board by board, who had patched toggled wheedled bullied wept in secret, cursed, had paid through the nose and gotten nothing. No pity.

He was a man who had understood too much, if anything, though not in Millie’s way or for that matter his father’s: not in words not in myths but by common sense and by that eldest-brother love and justice that ran in his veins instead of blood. He deserved nothing as far as he could know, and therefore he could not fight for his rights. They too deserved nothing, as far as he could know, but he loved them and so he must fight for them, raise them up when they fell, eternally forgive. Had gone to Paxton full of wrath knowing Paxton no more in the wrong than Taggert but undaunted by that because Taggert was his brother, and not even Millie’s predictable conviction that she’d forced him to go there could keep him from it (she’d be wrong, clear as it might seem to her; her scorn at his failure to go earlier had not driven him to it but had merely made it occur to him for the first time that he could go) and had stood in old Paxton’s office like a boulder, jaw slung forward, thumbs in his suspenders. “I’m bringing suit against you, Mr. Paxton,” he said. Clive Paxton, seated at his desk, still clean and efficient as an axe at sixty-one, showed only the faintest trace of irritation. The window to his right was bright with the snow’s reflection. He did not bother to ask what Hodge was suing him for. “You’ll have to talk to my lawyer.”

Hodge nodded. “I will. I also plan to ask for an injunction to keep your trucks off State Street Road after five p.m.”

Paxton’s white eyebrows lowered slightly. “You’ll never get it.”

Again Hodge nodded. “Maybe, but you’ll have to fight. And one thing more. I’m suing your wife for libel, and that one I’ll win for sure.” Elizabeth Paxton had told a woman named Briggs that all the Hodges were crazy, something congenital, and the Briggs woman had told half the people in the Presbyterian church. “I’ll have you tied up in the courts for the rest of your life,” Hodge said. He waited.

Paxton leaned back in his chair slowly and turned his head a little to look out the window (a view of big quonset huts, red and white gas pumps, a stack of old tires half-hidden in snow, flatbed trucks, big tractor-trailers, dirty green oil drums with snow mounded on the tops) and even now he showed no anger except that he was pale. It was sign enough. Will Hodge knew where he stood. He grew calm and ready as a switchblade fighter (or so he imagined in his overconfidence). He’d say this for Millie: live with that woman for five, ten years and you could take on God Himself.

But Paxton knew that he was ready (whatever else — private sorrows, weariness, righteous indignation — might be stirring behind that iron mask), and at last he said, “What are you after, Hodge?”

“Nothing but justice,” he said, and forced a rueful grin. “You trying to make me look like an extortionist?”

“All right all right,” he said. And now his anger rang clearly in his voice. He was tighter than new-stretched fence.

“It’s no joke,” Hodge said. “My complaints are legitimate; they’ll stand up in court. You’ll see. That’s all I came to say.” He turned then, abruptly, as if to leave.

Without hurry, Paxton stood up. “But you’ll settle out of court.” Not a question, a statement. The old man understood the game. He’d played it all his life, both fair and foul. If he was lucky he might get away without paying Will Hodge a red cent — and old Paxton would rather pay blood than money: his mediocre fortune was his love and his chilly god — but win or lose he would pay through the nose for the battle. He could afford it all right — and Hodge could too, as his own lawyer. Paxton could choose to fight, if he wanted, for righteousness’ sake. But when he’d won he’d have new fights to face, for Law is never spent, and when a man has decided to tie up your life in court contention he will kill you in the end, though he may perhaps kill himself as well. If the man means business, enough to devote a lifetime to it, you have only three choices: to settle, to murder, or to commit yourself to a tedious and unendable war of attrition. Paxton would not murder, though possibly he might have once, in the days when he was hiring scabs or trucking black-market hogs; and despite his anger at all Hodge’s house, he would not commit his old age to futile war, not even for righteousness’ sake. His predictable move was to try for the least painful settlement he could get.

“Only if the terms are fair,” Hodge said.

Paxton bent his head, looking at the desktop, touching it lightly with the tips of two fingers. Without looking up, still thinking, he said, “I ought to fight you.”

Hodge said nothing. He understood, but he wasn’t budging. If Hodge gave an inch, the old man would no doubt boast of it later, would believe like Millie that he’d won by craft what had fallen to him as a gift. Face reddening to flame, Paxton opened the desk drawer — for an instant Hodge had the ludicrous fear that like one of those villains on television he was reaching for a gun — and took his checkbook from it. Then he slid the drawer shut and sat down again. The redness of his face faded. He looked up. He seemed totally emotionless now. “How much?”