John Gardner - The Sunlight Dialogues

Silence stood in the room like a barn owl watching, and then, little by little, the whispers began. He raised both arms. “Please,” he said, “please!” And once more it was silent. “Ladies and gentlemen,” he said, “tonight, a little more than ten minutes ago, the Sunlight Man that we’ve all been reading in the papers about—” Again he raised his arms for silence and it came, “—the Sunlight Man was shot tonight, dead.” It was as if the silence grew in pitch and power until it roared. In any case, the people were all talking now, and after he’d held up his hands for a full minute, to no avail, he let his hands fall and bowed his head and waited for them to calm down. At last they did.

“I have the notes to a speech here,” he said, “which I don’t know whether I should give or not.” He leaned on the table looking down at where, somewhere in all that blur, he knew the notes would be lying, and, sad of heart, he waited for a sign. Someone coughed, out in front of him, and he took it for one and said gravely, “If it’s all right with you, I’d like to depart from my subject somewhat—” He stopped to think it out. “I’d like to deviate from my subject somewhat in order to communicate with you all here tonight, this crowd of friends and neighbors I’ve known all my life, good people, all of you, the kind of people that can sympathize with whoever gives them a fair chance, if you follow me, and can give the Devil his due, good farm people, the salt of the earth, as the Good Book says—” He frowned and stammered, trying to get the thread again. But he was grieved, he was grieved deeply, crying out in his mind “My God, my God! The injustice of it!” and the word injustice (printed like a headline in his mind) had a power over him even greater than the thing itself, as is the way of words, and tears brimmed over and fell on his cheeks and his throat tightened to a whimper. He whispered, “Friends,” and waited for control, for the help of the Lord, then said again, “Friends, I said I’d talk to you about Law and Order, but that’s a hard subject for me right tonight. It’s hard.” He bent over, put his hands to his wide mole’s nose and, unable to stop himself longer, sobbed. Someone put his hand on Clumly’s shoulder, he would never learn who. He knew very well how absurd he must look, oh yes, yes, he understood their bafflement — the Chief of Police standing there weeping, crying his heart out, for a man he’d been hunting Like a wild animal for days and days and days. Yes. He raised one hand, still standing with his head down. “Sometimes,” he said and paused and little by little knew he was in command again, would be able to speak like a responsible being. “Sometimes it seems as if there is no justice. A man dies — shot through the heart, the message said — a man dies and you think, Lord, Lord, where is your justice? Was that what he was born for? Or any of us was born for — to be mortally shot through the heart and killed? Do you think when he was a little baby they supposed he was going to be shot through the heart like that, mortally, and killed? Do you think when he was a child of say five or six years old he wasn’t just as fine looking and lovable as your children or mine, if I had any? Listen: We see people that are lucky and that live their whole lives in the shelter of Law and Order and the whole community looks up to them, and they work like any decent person and they start their family and buy a house pretty soon and they mature and prosper before Man and God, and one of these days they die and we go to their funeral, and we all say, ‘Rest in peace, Sam,’ or Henry, or whatever the case may be. And we go out there to the cemetery with his last remains and we stand by the graveside and our hats are off to him, and the minister opens his book and prays for him. You know what it’s like, all of you. Our hearts are full of sorrow, a time like that, but there’s a calm in it too, you all know that. All the man’s family there, standing around the grave, and his grandchildren standing there all dressed up, and his friends standing around crying and wringing their hankies and remembering all he ever said to them or did for them. That’s order. That’s right to the heart of what Order is. Because all his life he obeyed the law. And now all the people that ever knew him come together and give him the dignity of that last final order. That’s what it’s all about, you know. Order. Correct. It’s a beautiful thing, the order in a man’s life, and sometimes you wonder if that’s not the only time it’s visible, after he’s dead and it’s there beside his grave.”

Fred Clumly put his hands on the table and he looked out at them but not at them, over their reasonable, patient heads, as if he were reading it all on the wall, from the angel’s hand, cut in the plaster like runes from a stylus. They sat motionless as rocks and stumps, as if they too were aware that the angel was there, or the angel’s hand, outrageously condemning them for doing nothing wrong. Clumly drew his breath. “Well this man won’t get such a funeral as that, and we all know why. He didn’t obey the laws. Our laws that we’ve put on the books for the benefit of all, or anyway the benefit of almost all, all of us, anyway. And in all fairness to the people who do obey the laws, or anyway don’t get caught disobeying, or got forgiven in time, at least, we can’t honor him with the kind of order we give those others. If he had any family (I don’t say he did and I don’t say he didn’t, because what will be will be, and you’ll find it in the papers the same as I will), if this Sunlight Man, as he called himself, had a family, they won’t lay him away in the earth with ceremony; they’ll be too ashamed. But I’ll tell you this: they’ll be sorry, some of them, or sorry in some ways, some of the time. It might be he was of good stock, as people say. It might be he was from one of the best old families in the country, maybe some family right here in Batavia, who knows? I can say this, anyway. I talked to him, and it was the finest mind I ever talked to, some ways. Sometimes you could hardly understand him when he talked, and sometimes you could understand him just fine and you grieved in your heart to hear the terrible way he was talking, so disrespectful of everything. I’ve seen that man do magic tricks as good as any magician I ever yet saw on the stage in all my life, and I’ve seen more than two or three, I can tell you that. And I’ve heard him quote foreign languages just as if he was born talking ’em, even dead languages that nobody knows how to speak any more or whether he’s saying the words correct or not. I don’t know if he was saying it right, I’ll admit that to you, but I’ll say this: if you heard him you’d believe him. That’s the kind of authority he spoke with. But now he’s dead with a bullet in his heart, mortally killed. Where was justice? you might ask. Well, I can’t answer.

“I can say this: I’m proud of my boys that tracked him down, insofar as they did, and I wouldn’t have it otherwise. They have a public trust, your police department, and I’m as proud of those boys as I could be of my own sons, if I had any. I know they did the best they could to see true justice triumphed, and justice did triumph, and we can be proud that we live in this great free country where that can happen. Yes! But also justice didn’t triumph, in a way, of course. I can’t explain that if you don’t see it in your heart, it’s just the way it is, maybe always was and always will be. You have to have laws, the best you can, and this is democracy, as we all know, and we’re dedicated to the idea of liberty …”

He paused again, muddled for the moment. “The boys in your police department are the Watchdogs of Society,” he said.