John Gardner - The Sunlight Dialogues

We thank Thee, Lord, for all Thy care,

For strength to earn, the chance to share,

For laughter, song, and friendships deep

And all the memories we keep.

It did not seem to Clumly very poetic, but he was no judge.

She and the minister sat across from one another in the livingroom, talking. Clumly shook the man’s hand more or less politely, and exchanged a few words, then walked on in to the kitchen to get his supper from the oven. He carried the gray stew to the dining-room table and sat with his back to them where, though he couldn’t help hearing what they said, he didn’t have to see them. After the hamburger he felt stuffed to the throat, yet his chest was still sending up anxious signals of hunger, like a lover’s. He was halfway through the meal before he realized he still had his hat and gun on. He got up, paused a moment, cautiously broke wind, then put the hat on the top shelf of the clothespress and hung the gun on the nail where it belonged. When he turned to the table again the minister was standing there in his black coat and hat, getting ready to say good-bye.

“It’s so good of you to come, Reverend,” she said.

“Don’t you mention it,” he said. He was old, emaciated, a simperer with false teeth that whistled.

“Good night, Chief,” he said. He stretched out his hand.

“Good night, sir,” Clumly said. He shook hands with the man, furtively broke wind again, and sat down.

“God bless you,” the minister said.

“Same to you,” Clumly said. He nodded as if thoughtfully, smelling gas.

Still the man hovered at his elbow. “You know,” he said, “I have the strangest feeling.” He smiled. His dimple flickered into sight then faded into his cheek. “I feel—” he began. He looked at the ceiling, smiling. “There’s a great deal of love in this house,” the minister said. “One can sense these things. So many homes, you know, have no love in them at all, poor things. An absence of the Holy Spirit.” His teeth whistled sharply. She stood behind him with her head meekly tipped. She was high.

“Mmm,” Clumly said. He dabbed at the stew with his bread.

“I imagine you’re very busy down there at the police station these days. You look tired, to tell the truth. I can sense that too. But confident.” He beamed. “I like a man of confidence.”

“Gets harder every year,” Clumly said. He pursed his lips.

“I imagine it does.”

Clumly tilted his head to look at him. Like a skinny buzzard in glasses he looked, and a black hat in his claws. More gas escaped. Hurriedly Clumly went on, as if absurdly hoping to distract them. “It’s a funny business, police work.” He squinted. “It’s the times, partly. Everything in transition. Sometimes you feel like you’re flying by the seat of your pants.” He felt a blush stirring in his neck. “Excuse me.” Then, quickly: “I’m talking about hunches, funny feelings you get.” He turned his chair a little to face the man more directly. He pointed at the minister’s hat over his breast, and said like a lecturer (he had an odd sense of standing back listening to himself, dispassionate and critical, and with another fragment of his mind he waited for more trouble behind him), “We’ve got a man down there now, an ugly bearded fellow we picked up for a prank. Trifling little thing you’d never think about twice, nine times out of ten. But I’ll tell you something. I’ve got a feeling about this man. A feeling in my belly.”

The minister looked sympathetic. “The poor soul,” he said.

“They want you to run a tight ship, get your paperwork done, delegate authority to the men below you, put in so much time and no more on any one certain case. Well I’ll tell you something. I’m responsible. I’m directly responsible for every man in my department, and for the welfare of every man, woman, and child in the City of Batavia.” Esther looked bored. He got up to pace, poking the air with his cigar, and made it to the far end of the room in the nick of time.

“A grave responsibility,” the minister said.

“Correct.”

She came nearer.

“Now this bearded man, he may be nothing but a tramp, for all I know. But I have this feeling about him. It’s like a creature working up from the center of the earth, scratching and scratching. You follow me?” He could feel the pressure building up again in his abdomen, and wondered if the man would ever leave.

The minister’s eyes widened a little and he drew the chair beside the table closer to where Clumly now stood and sat down.

“Well then what’s my job?” Clumly said. “You see the question? The Mayor wants one thing, the men underneath me want another. You follow me?”

“Yes. Yes. Terrible.” Clumly’s wife, coming up behind him, put her hand on Clumly’s shoulder, and the minister noticed. He smiled and showed his dimple. “But your good wife is with you.”

“Mmm,” Clumly said. “So here’s what it comes to. If my hunch is right, the most important thing I can do is stop that man before he makes his move. But if I’m wrong—”

“Horrible,” the minister said.

“Poor Fred,” she said. “Was the stew all right?”

“Mmm,” Clumly said. “Well I don’t mind telling you it’s giving me the shakes. The man can read minds.”

“You don’t say!”

“Sure as hell. Excuse me, Reverend.” He squinted, listening carefully to what he was saying.

“Oh no, not at all.”

“And what’s more,” Clumly said, “we can turn that power of his to good use. We can harness it. Like the atom.”

“No!”

“Yessir. But should we? It’s like voodoo. It’s a moral problem.” He paused, struggling to control his own problem, but also squinting at the minister to see what he thought.

The minister frowned, his whole face drawing in to give intensity to his eyes, and at last he saw it. “Like wire-tapping!” he said.

Clumly sat back and set his fist on the table. “Correct!”

The minister rubbed the bridge of his nose to a shine. At length he said, “What will you do, Chief?”

“I’m not sure yet,” Clumly said, cagey. His jaw grew firmer. “I have to think it out.”

The minister slid his hat onto the table and pressed his hands together. He closed his eyes and prayed, “Dear Heavenly Father, fount of all wisdom and abundant mercy, we pray Thee that Thou wilt shed Thy light on this Thy humble servant in his hour of dilemma, and that Thou wilt guide him and minister unto him and lead his steps aright in the name of Thy beloved Son, Our Saviour, Jesus Christ. Amen.”

“Amen,” Clumly’s wife said softly, her face tipped up. It shone like the face of a saint.

“Amen,” said Clumly. His jaw was set like rock.

A long silence.

“Well,” the minister said. “So this man can read minds!”

“That’s not half of it, Reverend,” Clumly said. He leaned closer. “He knows the future!”

“No!” said the minister.

“Yessir.”

“Well, I’ll be darned,” the minister breathed.

BARROOOM, roared Chief Clumly’s rear end. Neither his wife nor the minister batted an eye.

“That’s Nature,” said Clumly with a terrible smile. “Washington, Jefferson, Franklin, Lincoln — Nature is no respecter of persons. Fact.”

They laughed loudly, like people at a wake.

After that he talked solemnly, pedantically, of the Sunlight Man’s uncanny powers, and the more he talked the surer he was that all he was saying (and all they said, too) was nonsense. The thing was a trick. Their gullibility seemed now to Chief Clumly almost dangerous, and his responsibility weighed on him more heavily than before.