John Gardner - The Sunlight Dialogues

8

Short-handed. So to Kozlowski he said — Kozlowski in the act of checking out for the night—“Kozlowski, you! Hold up.” The Sunlight Man stood with his hands handcuffed behind his back, his head thrown forward, chin up, beard jutting out.

“You want something, Chief?”—Kozlowski.

“Correct,” he said.

And so they were in Car 19, Kozlowski at the wheel, Chief Clumly beside him, in the back seat Figlow and the prisoner. It had rained again last night, but the rain had left no coolness: a thickness of muggy air like the thickness in a cellblock.

“Vets’ Hospital,” said Clumly.

“Positive,” Kozlowski said.

Clumly shot him a look, then let it pass. It was hell running a police department. Element of personalities. Pure hell. He said, sitting forward, screwing up his eyes, “Hell of a thing, Kozlowski. See the cut on that man’s arm?” Very serious, bringing Kozlowski into it. That was the way.

Kozlowski twisted his head around; then he looked back where he was going. “Can’t see it. He’s sitting on it,” he said.

“It’s a grave indignity, having to sit on your hands,” the Sunlight Man said. “Abandon fingers, all ye who enter here.”

“Can’t you keep that man quiet?” Clumly said.

Figlow hit him in the ear.

And so they went through the high brick gates of the Veterans’ Hospital and shot up the long driveway to the hospital front door.

“Ok, buster. Out”—Figlow.

“Don’t hit me”—the Sunlight Man—”I’m obeying you. Look!”

Figlow hit him.

“You wait here, Kozlowski,” Clumly said. “I’ll check him in, and then Figlow can stay and stand guard. Check?”

“Positive,” Kozlowski said.

Clumly bit his lips. Out of patience, he shook his finger and said, “Quit that.” He turned on his heel and went to the door, where Figlow was waiting with the rifle in the Sunlight Man’s ribs.

“In, buster,” Figlow said.

The Sunlight Man walked ahead of them and his head bobbed slowly up and down in time with his steps. And now a room with half-dead rubber plants, a black formica-topped coffee table (round) with six-month-old magazines in plastic covers and pamphlets: Your Social Security, The Older Veteran. An old man with no teeth, dressed in pajamas and a dirty, sagging bathrobe, stood watching, working his mouth. His hair was wiry and uncombed as blown-down wheat.

“Wait here,” said Clumly.

When Clumly was back again with the room number, Figlow said, “Will somebody spell me later, Chief? I forgot my lunch.”

“God damn,” Clumly said. He thought a minute. “Go see if there’s some kind of machine or something. You got money?” He gave Figlow fifty cents.

And so they waited, Clumly and the old man in the pajamas and bathrobe and Sunlight.

The old man said, chomping his loose lips, “Some kind of crimnul?” Squinting like a citizen.

“That’s right,” Clumly said.

The old man walked around them. Stood. “Dangerous?” he said.

Clumly scowled at him and decided to ignore him. He nodded the Sunlight Man to a chair and sat down across from him, the rifle pointed casually at the prisoner’s head.

“He stinks,” the old man said. A matter of fact. Clumly glanced at his watch.

The Sunlight Man said meekly, “Is it really necessary that I sit on my hands?”

Clumly glared at him but considered. At last, against his better judgment, he said, “Ok, up.” He got up himself. When the Sunlight Man’s hands were cuffed in front of him, they sat down again. Clumly glanced at his watch. “Aren’t you supposed to be somewhere?” he said to the old man.

Nothing.

Again they waited. The Sunlight Man said, leaning closer, so that his head bumped Clumly’s shoulder, “I’m sorry it’s been hard on you. A lot of police get the wrong idea when they arrest me. The way I figure, we do this business together, the cops and the robbers. This is a democracy. You follow me?”

Clumly tapped the rifle barrel nervously, his heart quaking, but he couldn’t make out what it was that frightened him. “No talking,” he said.

The Sunlight Man nodded meekly. “I just wanted to tell you before we part that I understand your position. I have very great respect for you.” He patted Clumly’s knee with his cuffed-together hands. “I wish you the best. I mean that.” His voice was vibrant with sincerity, but when Clumly shot him an alarmed glance, the Sunlight Man was leering at him, showing his yellow teeth. Clumly leaped up and crossed to the door to look down the hallway for Figlow. Still no sign.

“Also,” the Sunlight Man said, behind him, “I want to give you something, before we part.” He was standing now.

Clumly turned his head.

“First, this.” He held out Clumly’s wallet. Chief Clumly’s heart stopped cold. When Clumly didn’t reach for the wallet, the Sunlight Man dropped it on the coffee table.

The old man in pajamas pursed his loose lips and scratched his head. His eyes grew larger.

“And now this.” He held out Clumly’s old brass whistle.

Clumly covered his mouth with his hand. It came to him that his time had run out, but even now he could not make out what it was that was going to happen.

“This.” The bullets from Figlow’s rifle.

“This.” His keys.

“This.” His pistol.

“And this.” Figlow’s pistol.

“And finally, sir, this.” He gave him the handcuffs.

The bearded man turned to leave.

Suddenly Clumly found his voice. “Don’t try it,” he roared. He aimed the pistol at the Sunlight Man’s back, dead on, but the man kept walking. Clumly’s heart was hammering. “Figlow!” he yelled. He tipped up the pistol and fired at the ceiling. Click. The Sunlight Man turned, smiling, scratching his hairy ear. “Ah yes,” he said, “I forgot.” He held out his empty hand, closed it, opened it again. There lay the bullets. Calmly, he held them out to Fred Clumly. Cunningly — a sudden flash of genius — Clumly caught hold of the bearded man’s hand, squeezed with all the force he had and hurled the man clumsily to the floor. They rolled, bellowing, blowing like horses. Clumly raised his fist, murderous, to hit him in the neck, but he caught himself just in time. It was as if he’d gone crazy. He felt outraged and terrified. A whooping noise began to come from his mouth, uncontrollable. The man underneath him, staring up with bugging eyes, was the old man in the bathrobe.

How? Chief Clumly would ask himself later, distraught, raising his clenched fists in the blackness of his bedroom. How did he do it? A tortured cry as old as mankind, the awed and outraged howl of sanity’s indignation: for there is more to a magician’s tricks than the lightning of his hands, hands softer, gentler on your shoulder than the wind stirred by a butterfly’s passing, yet surer than a knife. The great deceiver has no heart. He neither loves nor hates unless, conceivably, he loves himself. And why he comes to us again and again to amaze and mock us, no mortal man can guess.

Kozlowski jumped.

“All hell’s broke loose,” Figlow yelled. “Give me that radio.”

“What happened?”

“The prisoner’s escaped,” he said, “and the boss has flipped his lid.”

“You’re kidding!”

“See how I’m laughing.”

In a matter of minutes there were five more cars at the hospital, Kozlowski waiting at the front door, Clumly and Figlow around in back. But he must have been out already. It was only the beginning. They waited half the night, standing with their rifles in their arms on the searchlight-gray lawn, and inside, they tore the place apart. A little after midnight the Mayor arrived, and Wittaker with him.