John Gardner - The Sunlight Dialogues

Then he heard the shot and thought Millie! and in the same instant was running up the driveway, farm shoes thudding and crunching on the stones that lay spattered on the driveway like mountain scree. He was gulping as if he’d been running for hours (trees still motionless, house unmoved, as if only Ben Hodge, no one else, were alive). With his eyes on the door he was aware of the motionless limbs yawing over, above his head, black against starlight, and when he came to the door it fell open an instant before he touched it, and he saw the gun, then felt it in his belly and knew, calm and cold, that he was finished. He met the bearded man’s eyes and, though they were murderous, knew them, and at the same time, without looking away, he saw Luke and Nick and Millie on the couch, white but safe, and a gaudy magician’s table, goldfish bowl, something hanging from the far wall, and he understood that the shot was part of a magic trick, though now that understanding did not matter. He waited for the shot that would kill him and in parting grief saw Millie’s change: the gray that mocked the dye in her hair, on her puffy face black bruises. Bags under her eyes, chapped lips, no lipstick. But Nick and Luke looked worse. They were broken, like old men; Millie, just battered. She’d never be broken, chances were; would merely vanish one of these days, or her wrecked body would be found sitting upright and severe, abandoned like a house. Now again he was meeting his brother’s eyes, the face he had known now sunken to hair and scar, and no longer was he sure that the eyes had murder in them. Still Taggert said nothing, and the gun poking into Ben Hodge’s belly was firm. Millie said — a whisper—“Who is it?” Ben glanced at her, then once again met his brother’s eyes, and he understood, perhaps at the same time Taggert did, that he was standing in darkness; they could not see him from inside the room. The pressure of the gun lessened.

At last Taggert said, directly to Ben, as if speaking to him, not the others, “There’s nobody here. Not a sign.” And then, slowly, as planets pass, he turned away from Ben and closed the door.

“I heard running,” Nick said, low.

Then Tag’s voice. “It must have been a deer, or a cow, maybe. There’s nothing there.”

Ben stood in the darkness rubbing his arms.

2

One of the prisoners was singing, in the cells in back. Figlow leaned on his elbows, dark eyebrows low with wrath. Tom Sangirgonio sat on the railing beside Figlow’s desk, relaxed, long-boned, his small round head tilted to listen.

“Shit,” Figlow said, tightening his fists, and the boy glanced at him, smiling.

“You need a vacation,” the boy said.

A few words came through. Ah got mah mah jawwng wuk-kin. .

“Vacation hell. It’s worse at home,” Figlow said. “My kid in school with you?”

“I know her,” Tommy said, and smiled again. His smile was like his father’s, warm and at the same time ironic. His eyes, like his father’s, were sharp and black as an Indian’s.

“Little bitch is somethin else,” Figlow said. It was a joke, but his mouth jerked over to the right, and the boy knew he meant it.

He shrugged. “She seems ok though. I don’t know.”

“At you all the time,” Figlow said. “I mean it.”

“Yeah, well. You know. Girls.”

“Madonna mia!”

The singing stopped for a moment, and they waited. It started again.

“Shit,” Figlow said. “People are somethin else. You see that wreck this mornin? Them showdogs? Shit. Dead dogs all over the fuckin street, or draggin theirselves around with broken legs and heads tore open. I went past it. I wasn’t on duty yet. I seen the truck-driver, talkin with Pieman and Lewis — they were the first ones there. He didn’t look happy, I can tell you. Expensive dogs.” He jerked his lip as if with scorn. “You could tell. Other guy got killed. Some guy from Pennsylvania. Man, he hit that thing like a bat out of hell, I mean he was driving at a high rate of speed. Shit.”

“I didn’t see it,” Tommy said.

Figlow shook his head, wincing, maybe seeing dead showdogs in his mind. After a minute he said, “What they say about her, kid?” He winked.

Tommy smiled again. “Whom?”

“Come on, whom-shmoom, my kid, that’s whom. She pretty cute, eh?” He winked and moved his shoulder a little.

Tommy pursed his lips, thought of teasing, and then changed his mind. “They say she’s a really nice girl.”

“Shhhhtt!” Figlow said, pleased, suspicious. He tipped his head, raised two fingers to motion Tommy nearer, but Tommy merely smiled. Figlow winked again. “In the showerroom, boy, with their hard-ons in their hands.”

He blushed, smiled, shrugged. A chill went through him.

“‘She’s a really nice girl,’ that’s what they say. Eh?”

Panicky, he smiled on and nodded.

Figlow rolled his eyes up. “This generation!”

And when his father was there, coming out of Clumly’s office with papers in his hand. “Hey, Figlow, how you like to go kill a few those bastards back there, hey?”

Figlow lit up with mock pleasure, grabbing for his gun.

Miller said, “He’d do it, yeah?”

Tom grinned.

Figlow got up from his desk and went back to the cellblock. When he was out of sight, they laughed.

“You need help, Dad?” Tommy said.

“Not now. I’ll be with you in a minute, providing nobody runs over anybody the next ten minutes, or shoots up a movie house.” He let his eyes rest a moment on Tom, then grinned and turned away. “Hold the fort,” he said. Then, looking out the front door, he went still all over, and instinctively Tommy moved closer.

A heavy Negro woman with gray hair was coming up the walk, alone, moving slowly, like a burned-out star. She stared straight ahead of her but did not seem to see them. When she came into the light thrown from the office they saw blood on her arms and all over the front of her dress. Miller went down to her and took her elbow without a word, and helped her up the steps. She came through the door, and Tommy turned his face away. Her forehead was torn open.

She took a deep breath. “I killed a gentleman,” she said.

3

The Sunlight Man sat rubbing his palms on his shirt. Luke lay on the couch in the livingroom, unconscious. He’d been out when he’d gone down to untie him. The Sunlight Man had stood racking his brains, leering obscenely for Millie’s benefit and Nick’s, but he’d thought: Enough. No more. It has to stop. He’d said, “Ah! Out like a light! That simplifies matters. Carry him up, boy. I’ll bring Granny Goodwitch.” And gave a laugh. But her eyes showed nothing, no anger, no hope, and he’d had to look away, thinking: Even you, Millie? Then everything in the world can be broken, can’t it. As he untied her he’d let his hands rest a moment cupped around her breasts and he’d pressed his face close, smiling at her, showing his teeth; but her eyes showed nothing, she stared straight ahead. Like one of those damned Jews, he’d thought. And then: Cheer up, they build weapons later, and use the blitz against the Arabs. He said solemnly, “He he ho ha, Millie. How sad you look! We must try and remember to get you a comb, the kind they use for horses’ tails. And some paint, by all means! What color lips would you like, old sweetie? Black, maybe? Bright black to match your heart?” When he pushed his face forward to kiss her she half-turned her head and the eyes turned with it. For an instant he believed she’d gone mad. But he calmed himself. She was all right.

She would still say nothing, sitting at the table, head bowed, eating the hamburger he’d fixed her. Even when he poured himself bourbon she merely looked at it, then down, and kept her silence. “You’re a crafty old bitch, Millie,” he said. “You watch and wait, like a Christian.” She showed no sign that she heard. Nick ate with his head close to the plate, fork upside down, scraping it in, and never looked up at them. “And our brother the murderer, he too watches and waits. Astute! He studies his teacher’s every move”—he took a bite, then continued with his mouth full—“except that his manners are bad, of course. That’s unfortunate. Draws attention.” He leaned toward Nick, pointing with his fork. “The first rule is, be inconspicuous. Like me!” Nick glanced at him, full of hate, then down.