John Gardner - The Sunlight Dialogues

He’d kept driving, of course. The men with black armbands weren’t people to get mixed up with. And half a mile farther on he’d pulled into the woods and switched off the motor and lights and had waited. And he heard a car coming and saw that it was Nuper’s but had the fleeting impression that Nuper was not diving. Then the other car passed. He’d sat thinking a long time; then, cautiously, he’d gone back to the place. Nuper was sitting on a stump, naked, blindfolded. He’d been shot through the back of the head. A car passed on the road, and he thought The police! If anyone had seen him here — had seen Benson, that is, or Boyle — there would be hell to pay. They’d discover the body, put two and two together … What could he do? What would any grown man who’d seen a thing or two in this wicked world … And it was of course not exactly a murder, all things considered. An execution. He was sweating rivers.

At last she turned her prying eyes away. After a moment she put her puffy hands to the sides of her blurred face and shook her head. “I wonder what ever happened to Mr. Nuper,” she said. “Sometimes I think—”

He laughed, startling himself. “He’ll turn up. They always do,” he said.

Much later, suddenly opening his eyes wide in the darkness, he thinks, “I was one of them, yes. We were digging for something, a deep, deep hole, and it was dark as pitch. And one of the workmen said, ‘Here it is! A hand!’ We scraped the dirt off the arm and shoulder and then the head, and we looked at the dead face (and yet it was still dark, I think — a strange dream; illogical) and someone said, ‘Why it’s him!’ and the others all looked and nodded and shook their heads the way you would at a funeral, but I looked and looked and I couldn’t make out who it was. ‘Who?’ I said. ‘I don’t recognize him.’ And then they were all looking at me in the darkness and — then I woke up. What can it mean?”

Nevertheless, he felt no guilt, as far as he could tell. One can get used to anything, it came to him. In a week, a month, the whole thing would no doubt be almost drowned out of his mind. Such things happen, no doubt. He felt again the momentary sensation of nausea he’d felt that night when he first saw Ollie’s body sitting white as a young girl’s on the stump. Fssss, he thought, and— horriblel! He closed his eyes and almost instantly he was dreaming again, walking very carefully on the glass roof of a greenhouse. Down below him, in the dim, aqueous light, fronds moved back and forth slowly, like thinking creatures. It was perhaps all just as it should be; he was of two minds. And there will I keep you forever, he thought.

Forever and a day,

Till the wall shall crumble to ocean,

And moulder in dark away.

His heart sped up. It was a beautiful poem. Beautiful.

6

“It’s damned foolishness, that’s all,” Kozlowski said. “You don’t need me there, and this is a hell of a night to tie up a man that might be some use.”

“Maybe so,” Clumly said. He was in no mood to be giving out explanations, not that he had one. “Turn the radio up.” Kozlowski obeyed, but they were saying nothing important now. It was five minutes ago that word had come through that the Indian had given up. They were still out there, beating the bushes for the Sunlight Man, but you could see they were already beginning to get it: he’d given them the slip, as usual. Maybe he was right there with them, helping them hunt. It was a thought. It was the kind of thing he’d think funny. Clumly took the cigar out of his mouth and held it up toward the windshield to look at it. “Maybe he’s right there with them,” he said, “helping ’em hunt.”

Kozlowski thought about it, chin tucked down, mouth wry. At last he said, “Should I call ’em?”

Clumly shook his head. “Let it go. Bad guess.” He studied the cigar again.

“It might be worth a try.”

But Clumly was sure now. “No, not tonight. If my hunch is right—”

“Well?”

“Nothing.” Then: “Get Figlow back.”

“Again?”

Clumly nodded, and Kozlowski called in, but there was nothing. They hadn’t come in yet with the Indian — had a car on the way — and the place was like a tomb. “Well, keep your cool, Figlow,” Kozlowski said, and signed off.

“Cool?” Clumly said.

“Figure of speech,” he said. “Spade talk, or something.”

“Spade?”

Kozlowski nodded. “Like in poker.”

Clumly frowned, full of gloom, but he let it go. The squad car swung into the alley, fenders slipping past the gray-black bricks on either side as smoothly as the walls of a boat in a dark, narrow channel, and after a moment they came out in the dead-white brightness of the parking lot like a stagnant sea. There were a lot of cars, on the far side, and the front door of the Grange, where the Dairyman’s League was meeting, stood open. The light in the entryway was yellow, as if it were lit up by candlelight, and you could see the beginning of the stairway. “Park up in front,” Clumly said, and Kozlowski slid past the glinting rows of cars and pulled in at the No Parking sign where the sidewalk began. He turned off the motor, the radio still on, crackling, and they sat.

Clumly said, “You ever listen to that Oswald stuff?”

Kozlowski looked bored. “No sir.”

“You know what I mean,” Clumly said. “What’s-his-name Oswald, the one that shot President Kennedy. It’s very interesting. You realize all ten of the newspaper reporters or whatever they were that interviewed Ruby — all ten of ’em are dead now? Car accidents, things like that? It’s very interesting.”

“That part of your speech?” Kozlowski said.

“I was just mentioning it, that’s all. Not in the speech. Listen.” He leaned forward and partly turned in the seat, to face him better. “What do you make of those three frames of that movie that are in there backwards? Somebody turned ’em around, I mean. J. Edgar Hoover himself says so. They make it look like he was shot from behind, but if you put ’em in frontwards — in the right order, I mean — it appears he was shot from in front.”

“What’s the difference?”

“Well hell you know what’s the difference. It means Oswald didn’t—”

“No, I know that. I mean what’s the difference if Oswald did it or not? I mean, you drag me here to be your bodyguard or something, and the troopers are out hunting for the Sunlight Man, and you sit there and talk about Oswald.”

“It’s interesting, that’s all.” He sulked.

“Sure.”

“Suppose it was a conspiracy,” he said. He could see well enough in Kozlowski’s face how absurd it was to be sitting here stewing about such a thing tonight. But the urge was on him, and he was not in a mood to shake it off. “Suppose it was,” he said again.

“I’m supposing.”

“Who would it all be pointing to, in that case? The way it was all done so smooth, I mean. The way not even the F.B.I. can figure it out. And the What’s-its-name Commission, the way they just called in certain witnesses and not the others, so people say. That look like the Russians to you? They can’t all be Russian spies — the whole U.S. Congress. So who does it point to?”

“You’re off your damn rocker.” He pushed back in his seat a little, getting out a cigarette.

“Tell me the truth, that’s all,” Clumly said. Two men and a woman went up the steps and into the hall. Four or five more were standing under the trees around the side, smoking cigarettes. “I just want truth. I’m too old for all the rest. Who?” Clumly said.

Angrily, Kozlowski said, “You want me to say it was Johnson, right? Ok. It was President Johnson. Ok?”