John Gardner - The Sunlight Dialogues

Fred Clumly scowled out at him from page one, his white, wolfish face a mass of wrinkles, a long black smudge on his cheek. POLICE CHIEF CORNERS MADMAN. “Good Lord, they got him!” Ben Hodge said. But the first line of the article told him he was wrong. It said, “The escaped prisoner known to police only as ‘the Sunlight Man’ narrowly escaped capture this afternoon. In a daring, single-handed maneuver, Batavia Chief of Police Fred Clumly tracked the escaped man, officially described as armed and dangerous, to a tent-like structure suspended from a railroad underpass near here. …” He went back to the beginning and read the whole thing aloud to Vanessa and the boy. On page 9A there were more pictures. The stopped train, tent dangling just in front of it; trainworkers holding up the tent for the cameraman, showing the symbols on it; Fred Clumly peering over his shoulder as though he were the one who was crazy. Clumly himself had, he told reporters, “no comment at this time.”

“Armed and dangerous,” Vanessa said. “Gyuck!”

“Oh, anyone that’s got a gun is called armed and dangerous, honey. It’s just to be on the safe side.”

“After all those murders?” she said. She decided to try Millie again, but he said:

“Let it go, Vanessa. You’re stewing, working yourself up. Just let it go, and I’ll drive on over later. I’ll leave David here with you.” She did not insist on going. He was in luck.

The motorcycle hummed under him and roared when he accelerated and popped and crackled when he cut back the spark for a sharp curve or the crest of a hill. The swath of the headlight flew ahead of him, sharp against trees or the white, three-cornered posts on turns, and the motor’s echoes rang to either side of him, closing in suddenly when he passed a car or crossed a bridge with steel walls, falling away toward silence when the road pierced open countryside where the only trees were far away and the houses too were far away and the creek lay glassy and pale beneath the stars. He would rather ride than almost anything he knew. Wind in the sleeves of his old sheepskin coat, beating at his helmet, whipping away his voice if he happened to sing, which tonight he did not. He was alone on the road, he might have been the last man left in the world, and he was so much at peace with the dark hills, the trees, the lighted farmhouses, cow-barns gray in the hazy glow of their security lamps, that he could almost imagine he was the world, the scenery around him a projection of his mind. He came in view of the prison’s glow and a little later the prison itself, opening out below him as he rounded a turn overlooking the entire valley. He increased his speed and then, half a mile short of Luke’s place, switched off the motor and headlight, coasting in as far as he could get. The sudden hush was awesome, and his speed up the pale road seemed to leap so that, familiar as the illusion was, his heart ticked lightly for an instant. He began to lose speed. The steering grew clumsy, and it was an effort to keep the wheels on hard dirt between the small, loose stones that might throw him. At last, rods from Luke’s driveway, he eased the brake on, came almost to a stop, and swung off to walk the machine into the hedgerow coming at an angle to meet the road. He walked the rest of the way, hardly making a sound.

They were there, he saw when he reached the driveway mouth. He stood half-hidden behind a tamarack. The lights on the lower floor were on, and he could see people moving around. No one seemed to be watching for intruders. But he was afraid. He’d been afraid all along, but now he couldn’t keep his mind off it. Neither of them, he was fairly sure, would shoot him if they realized who he was. But everything depended on his seeing them first and making himself known. If one of them was watching from the woods to the right of Luke’s house (huge boles and branches, high brush in under the eaves, a flicker of lightning bugs within — the kind of woods he’d have run from in terror, in his childhood, and maybe could yet), then he was done for. He had no definite plan for what he would do when he got to the house, if he did. Something would come to him. No use just standing here, he thought. But he stayed. Chickens sat in the branches of the trees near the house.

He stood in the darkness at the mouth of the driveway for a long time, watching. If there was someone in the woods keeping lookout, sooner or later the one there would reveal himself; that was partly why he stayed where he was, Ben told himself. But there were other reasons too, and he began to face them. Who was in there, after all? Luke, Millie, the Indian, Tag, possibly Will. They were his flesh and blood, all but Nick, and it was true, he wouldn’t want harm to come to them. But surely neither Nick nor Tag would harm Luke: he’d be sick from the stress of all this, sure as day, and they wouldn’t hurt a boy half out of his mind with pain. And it was unthinkable that Tag would let any harm come to the brother who’d been his favorite. So that it was for Millie that Ben Hodge must go up to them, if he went. He merely stared at the recognition for a moment, then got down on one knee, squinting.

Maybe it had seemed to him that he loved her — once. It was so long ago now, and he’d been so young then, that he couldn’t tell for sure. He remembered standing in the horsebarn, combing his father’s old sorrel mare, his riding horse. One moment he was working alone (the light soft on the mare’s shiny coat, her smell and the smell of hay and molasses rich in his nostrils), and the next he had a feeling he was not. By the stirring of his blood he knew it was Millie, but he didn’t turn. He heard her come nearer. Her hands came onto his shoulders and he grew still, not moving the comb, in fact not breathing. After a long time she kissed him, light as a feather, on the back of his neck. Then he turned. “Don’t, Millie.”

Her eyes shone, and because she was beautiful, or because of his shame at what he’d almost done to her in the quarry that night, his heart raced. She smiled and flashed the dimple. “Why so petulant, lover?”

“I’m not your lover, Mil,” he said too softly, blushing.

“But petulant you are,” she said. “Well, cheer up. I bring good news.”

“What?” he said.

She turned away, coy, and walked around the back of the mare, running her hand lightly over its rump.

“You’ll get your ass kicked,” he said.

“Ooh! Shame on you!” she said. “And to a lady.”

Ben said nothing. As always, his mind turned in on him and filled him with bitter remorse. It was not her fault that he’d tried to seduce her or even that he might have succeeded, and not her fault that he was ashamed of himself — whether because he’d gone that far or because he hadn’t gone all the way, he couldn’t tell — and not her fault that he was wounded now by the sight of her. It was perhaps true that she loved him; he believed it. It might even be that she was the one he would love, finally, if he could get his feelings straightened out. But it was happening too fast, and he had meant it to be clean and beautiful, not like this. Yet her mockery showed pain. She teased him exactly the way Ruth would do when her feelings were hurt and she was damned if she would show it.

He said, “I’m sorry, Millie.”

She waved it off lightly. “Ah well, these things—” She was still moving her hands on the horse’s rump, smiling, brandishing the dimple. “Do horses feel sexy when you touch their you-know-whats?”

“For Christ’s sake, Millie.”

She laughed and went around to the other side like a dancer, then ducked down, putting her hands on her knees, to look under the horse’s legs at him. “Guess what,” she said.

“What?” Her collar hung open and he could see the hollow sweeping down from her throat, the smooth white rise on each side. He did not look away.