John Gardner - The Sunlight Dialogues

They nodded, slow and formal. Clumly got out a cigar. Their heads turned and they looked at him and he quickly changed his mind.

The Mayor pursed his lips and moved around the side of the desk and behind them, so that they had to — turning slowly — crane their necks. “Now one problem,” he said, “has been partly taken care of, and that is the problem of communications. As I explained to you gentlemen before the Chief arrived, for a while there the Chief wasn’t speaking to me. But I got three letters from him this very morning, delivered in person by one of his own men to avoid any needless further delay, and I’m grateful for that.”

Clumly kept his face blank, but he knew he had not signed the letters.

“That’s good,” Peeper said. The uneasy smile.

“But we don’t know the improvement’s permanent, do we,” Moss said. He shrugged, and his mouth hung down at the corners, trying to smile, sorrowfully failing. “I’m just asking,” he said.

“That’s a point,” Mullen said. “And also, of course, exactly why he chose to write those letters right now, with the whole town in an uproar from all these robberies and murders and I don’t know what — is a mystery, frankly. But no doubt there’s some explanation.”

“Surely,” Peeper said.

Moss said, neither kind nor unkind, “There’s never a right time, is there. Wait for the right time and you could be dead before it came, right? I only speak from my own limited experience.” The tragic smile. “It’s like the lady who kept hoping to be raped, right?” He dismissed the untold joke with a mournful wave.

They all laughed; all but Uphill and Clumly. It was as if the whole fool room were laughing — the dead flowers, the chairs, the desk, the Silex on the hotplate. Peeper, to Clumly’s left, said grimly, “Nyeh heh heh heh!” Mullen said, “He he he he!” Clumly scowled.

“Well all right,” the Mayor said. “No harm in a little joke, ha ha.”

“Nyeh heh heh.”

“He he he.”

Uphill glared.

“Well all right,” the Mayor said. His face grew sober. “Hurry on, then. We got to hurry along with this. Ah! Coffee’s ready.” He poured five cups, still talking. “So as to the first complaint, we can more or less forget it, it’s all in the family, so to speak, and the Chief’s shown he’s willing to do better, or so it appears.

“The second complaint — I’m saying all this very frankly, so we can get someplace, not just set here jawing around, if you see what I mean — the second complaint is that the police department has not been fully cooperating with our other facilities, such as the fire department, for example. Not yet Fred. You can answer the complaints in a minute. Cream and sugar? Ah.” He passed them around.

“Look here,” Uphill said.

“The third complaint is, the Chiefs not always where he’s supposed to be, and where is he? He’s out checking up on his men or—” He paused significantly. The cobras hung poised, on target. “Or worse,” Mullen said. “Let’s let that one ride for a minute. Can’t delegate authority, then. So his men say. Whole lot of unrest and bad morale, if we want to face facts.

“Which brings me to the next problem. The crimes just isn’t getting solved. I have a chart on my desk. …” He drew it toward him. “Now. What was I saying? Ah! I have a chart. Crime’s up thirteen per cent over last year, here in Batavia. It makes you stop and wonder, don’t it. And it’s getting to have a professional look — you agree with that, Fred? Francis and Mead’s Jewelry Store, for instance? Or that Boyle fellow you let go from jail, few days ago. You figure those are signs of professionals coming in?”

“You asking my opinion?” Clumly said.

“Not yet. I’ll give you time to say your piece.”

“We’ve got all day, right?” Moss said despairingly. He sucked in his cheeks and looked down at his sharp, crossed knees.

Clumly nodded. He sipped the coffee, not really intending to drink it. He got out his cigar again and, this time, lit it. Moss, two seats over, on his right, turned his head slowly, looking, then lit a cigarette.

“Just one more remark,” Mayor Mullen said. “We talked with your subordinate, Sangirgonio. We asked him some straight-from-the shoulder questions. I’ll tell you frankly what it comes to. He doesn’t trust you. There it is.”

Clumly squinted.

“I’d just as soon not release the details on that, right at this time,” the Mayor said.

“No need,” Moss said. “Mere instances.” Lip slightly curled, sad, he looked at each of them for confirmation. “Distrust is universal, right?”

The Mayor looked down at his cup. “Well all right,” he said, “let’s hear your side of it, Fred. What about all that mail, the speeches you forget to go to? What about the questions people ask you and you don’t even hear them, or that crazy little escapade out by the railroad trestle — pictures in the paper and everything, no rhyme or reason, made the whole dang town a laughingstock. What about those tapes? And what about what’s going on at the firehouse right now, those men standing in their underwear, I heard, being searched like thieves? What about it?”

The red of Uphill’s face darkened.

“You’re changing the charges,” Clumly said. His hands shook.

“Don’t you go logic-chopping with me, Clumly. I’m asking you to explain to us why we should let you go on with this confounded circus, not ask for your resignation.”

“Times are changing,” Clumly said. He said nothing more.

They sat leaning forward, necks craned, motionless, watching him with beady, dusty eyes.

At last the Mayor said, “Is that all you got to say?”

Clumly thought about it. “Times are changing,” he said.

The Mayor and the three men waited, unimpressed.

“That may seem like nothing to you,” Clumly whispered. “I’m not surprised. You’re well-off, no real dealings with troubled people — poor people, people with bad tempers, people sick to death of their life.” He thought of Elizabeth Paxton and the Professor. “You’re responsible for it, if you want the truth: it’s because of your kind I have to deal with the other kind, but you don’t know it, you don’t know they exist. That’s your advantage. You’re responsible, but you’re not responsible. It’s your laws they hang by, and if one of you slips over from your side to their side, it’s your laws he hangs by. You, for instance. Peeper. Say you suffer reverses. Your wife commits suicide, sick to death of your stink of fat. You find out she’s been playing the ponies for fifteen years. Hundred thousand dollars in debt. Your money. You say you won’t pay it. ‘Hell no,’ you say, ‘I’ll take it to court!’“

“I certainly would,” he said. His mouth seemed to move much too slowly for the words that shot out.

“Correct. Your house burns down mysteriously. And your son gets kicked out of college, they say he’s a fairy, been sleeping with his teachers.” (It could happen.) “All right, you slip over to their side. These gentlemen here will be sorry, correct? But sooner or later they’ll send me after you. The responsible one. And I don’t have to think about it any more than they do. No sir! I enforce the law — whichever of their laws you broke — I pull you in, I leave it to the court. And they don’t have to think about it either, right? The lawyers can look up their precedents, they can hang you because they hung some poor devil in 1866. And after I’ve turned you over to the courts I can go on making speeches about law and order, and after they’ve hung you, there in court, they can go home and work on speeches about law and order, and nobody has to think. Nobody! That’s democracy, you follow me? Like a huge aluminum dome made out of a million beams, and not a single beam is responsible, everything hanging on something else. And if an earthquake comes, or a tidal wave, or a good fat tornado, what’s it to beam number nine-hundred-seventy-two? Ha!” The room was bright, their figures dark, like a negative.