John Gardner - The Sunlight Dialogues

“K’out the way!” the Sunlight Man said, coming at her, and he had the gun in his right hand now. She flattened against the refrigerator and he went past her and jerked at the door, and then Nick Slater was beside him, going out after him too. “You wait here,” Taggert said.

“No,” Nick said.

“Don’t!” she yelled, “Please!”—but she wasn’t sure afterward whether she’d yelled it aloud or only in her mind.

Luke came staggering to the kitchen and over to the window, eyes screwed up tight, and he looked out into the darkness with his hands at each side of his head like blinders to cut out the windowpane reflections.

“They’re going to kill him!” she said.

It came to her that his footsteps had gone toward the chicken-house, to the south of the garage, but the Sunlight Man had gone north, toward the barn. She could hear them out there shouting, Nick and he, circling through the burdocks so that if he was in the barn he wouldn’t get away. It wasn’t more than forty feet to the chickenhouse from the garage back door, and it was dark there. Beyond the chickenhouse, the grove began; from there you could make it to the road without being seen. Before she knew she would do it, she kicked off her shoes, slipped out into the garage and through the back door, and began to run. The grass was wet and deep and her feet weren’t making a sound. When she got to the high weeds along the side wall she dropped to her knees and pressed into the wall’s darkness. She could still hear them, calling to each other. She inched around to the rear wall and whispered through the cracks, “Mr. Hardesty.” He’d be gone already, she realized then. There was nothing to stop him from running on through the woods and out to the road. But she whispered again, “Mr. Hardesty, it’s me. Millie.”

His answer came from so close it made her jump. “In here.”

She could peek through the chicken-run door, but she couldn’t get in. It was dark as a pit inside. Then her eyes began to adjust. He had his head bent down on the other side of the wall to look out. Beyond him she could see straw and cobwebs and part of a cornplanter someone had stored here, and on the wall a darker place that she knew must be nestboxes.

“You should have run for the grove,” she said. “Come around.”

“There’s no back door,” he whispered.

“You have to come out the front, the way you got in, and come around.”

“They’ll see me sure.”

“No they won’t. They’re by the barn. But hurry.”

But they weren’t by the barn. She heard Luke’s car starting up. They had figured it out and were heading toward the road to cut him off.

“They’re leaving,” she whispered. “You can cut through the back lot.”

But that was wrong too. Only one of them had left: the back door of the garage opened, and through the cracks in the chickenhouse wall opposite her she could see light. After a moment she could feel him coming toward them.

“He’s coming,” Hardesty said.

“Sh!”

She lay still, feeling the cold softness of the dirt. She dug her hands into it, and it felt good. The lines of light coming through the barn wall looked soft and alive, and where the light touched old straw and dust it made everything sharp and distinct. He took forever to cross the grass place — taking a step, listening a minute, taking another step, it must be. She remembered sleeping in the mow at her grandfather’s when she was a child. There were mice and rats there. There would be mice and rats here too, probably. She would sleep in the softness of earth and dew-wet grass and not notice them.

The hinges of the chickenhouse door creaked and Nick said quietly, “Mr. Hardesty?”

It seemed to her that she could hear Hardesty’s breathing on the other side of the wall. She tried to breathe without a sound. Then his feet and something he was holding, a pipe maybe, came into view, inside the chickenhouse, and it came to her with a jolt that he would see her. She didn’t move. Right now, she knew, he was seeing Hardesty.

Hardesty said softly, “Don’t. Please.”

She heard him move a little, only his arms perhaps. Nick stood still, directly facing him.

“Please,” Hardesty said again.

He won’t do it, she thought. There’s no reason for him to. Beside Nick’s foot there was a pail and a mess of something, old burlap. Light from one of the wall cracks made two little glows on the rim of the pail, like a pair of sights. Her neck ached from holding her head rigid in the same position and she wanted to lean on her arm, but she stayed as she was. He’ll tell him to get up and come with him, and it will be over, she thought. He’ll take him back to the house with him and that will be all.

Hardesty said, “I was startled, that’s all. It was crazy to run away like that.” He tried to laugh.

He said nothing, and again she could feel him thinking, and then she heard a crack, like the sound a bat makes. Hardesty was screaming, and then she heard the crack again, and she remembered her name was Millie Jewel and Gil was in the barn with his hands tied to the wagon wheel and her grandfather puffing her name Millie Jewel and Gil was in the barn with his hands tied to the wagon wheel and her grandfather puffing her name was Millie Jewel and his hands were tied to the wagon wheel; her grandfather puffing. Gil was her brother. His hands were tied to the wheel spinning in the dark were tied to the wheel her grandfather puffing

The Sunlight Man said, “Come back in the house, Millie.” His feet were far apart, and his trousers were wet.

5

“Ahem,” said Clumly.

Esther was working on the dress she’d been working on for years, sewing and unsewing and sewing.

“I have to go out tonight,” he said.

Her lips stopped moving and she turned her face toward him. She sighed. “Will you be late?”

“I don’t know.” He sucked at the cigar — it had gone out again — then removed it from his lips and glared at it, focusing on it the whole force of his anger. “I imagine I won’t be too long. There’s no telling, I guess.”

She nodded and said nothing. He was grateful for that. The case was making him an old man, cutting the wrinkles of his jowl deeper, darkening the bags under his eyes, wasting his flesh away. She couldn’t help but see it, and no doubt it seemed to her her business to worry about it. He’d lost nine pounds in the past two weeks. And it wasn’t just the stewing or the physical exhaustion. There was something wrong with him. He ate like a hog, had the trots all the time, and he went on losing weight. Ate from sickness, not love of food. The very smell of food was revolting to him. He felt as if he had lead in his stomach, and when that confounded speech for the Dairyman’s League came into his mind, or the thought of Miller standing in a doorway watching him, or the memory of the papers piling up on his desk, or Will Hodge Sr forever turning up in unexpected places, staring at him, Clumly’s whole chest filled up, or so he imagined, with greenish gas.

Esther said, as if to herself, “When will it be over?”

“Not long now,” Clumly said heartily, and added, “one way or another.” And then, because that sounded ominous: “We pretty well got it wound up, Kozlowski and me.” The thought of Kozlowski, like everything else, stirred the green gas feeling in his chest. He’d felt free at first, a kind of joyful release, letting Kozlowski in on it. Kozlowski was a man who stood back from things, looked them over, so to speak, and came up with his own private judgments. That was exactly what Clumly had thought he needed. It wasn’t even that he wanted Kozlowski to corroborate his own suspicions. The man’s presence was enough, gave Clumly something to hang on to, as you might say. And best of all, Kozlowski was no talker. Whatever his private opinions might be about Clumly’s manhunt, he would say nothing to the others. He was safe as a bank. Or so it had all seemed then, when Clumly had made his decision to let him in. Not now. Because this afternoon when Clumly had come out of his office to go home, Kozlowski and Miller were talking by the desk, and at sight of him they stopped talking. Kozlowski had nodded his greeting to Clumly, and Miller had called with exaggerated cheerfulness, “Cutting out, boss?” “Going home, yes,” Clumly had said. “Say hello to the wife,” Miller said, and showed his grin. Clumly had nodded. They’d watched him out the door. At his car, Clumly had stood fiddling with his keys, heart racing in his chest, a belch forming, inexorable, and he’d wanted desperately to sneak back and spy and find out what they were saying. Crazily, he’d looked along the ledge below the window. He could climb up the corner of the building, where the crossed corner blocks formed a kind of natural ladder, and he could get up on the ledge and inch across. … He’d be out in plain sight, where anybody driving up Main Street couldn’t help but see him, and the next day, who knew? he might open the paper and see a picture of himself crawling on the jailhouse ledge, and some lunatic caption: CHIEF TRIES TO BREAK INTO JAIL, CLAIMS HE LOST HIS KEYS. And so he’d climbed into his car, nerves twitching, and had driven slowly home. Trust nobody, he thought. But the thought brought a ghastly smile. He was beyond that now, had no choice but to trust Kozlowski. He’d told him to come pick him up here at nine, to go with him to his appointment with the Sunlight Man. It was now five minutes to.