John Gardner - The Sunlight Dialogues

It was true enough. The trouble with the theory was that the Congressman had been right about free will. It was a matter of fact, a thing not worth bothering to deny, to Will Hodge Sr, that freedom had limits, both within and without, which is to say merely that a man engaged in throwing a tantrum or a man starving is incapable of perfectly objective reason. Hodge’s father had written once to his minister brother: “A passionate man may feel overwhelming pangs of guilt, but only a reasonable man, sir, can achieve the high distinction of going to Hell.” Oh, the Congressman had been free, all right. Only a mind released from all passion could roll out such unashamedly grandiose prose.

That, too, his father’s freedom, Hodge had no doubt been aware of long before he understood it. He’d been aware of it, perhaps, as a young man, newly married, standing between the high iron gates of Stony Hill Farm and looking up past the shaded lawn at the porch where his father sat, grossly obese, white-haired, calmly blind, surveying the universe inside his skull. When it came to the Old Man that there was someone at the gate, he called down sharply, “William, is it you?”

“Yes sir,” he had answered. But he had not gone on for a moment. It was late afternoon, the shadows were long and the hills had a yellow cast, unreal, like hills in a painting. There was a smell of winter in the air, but the breeze was warm, as soft as January thawwind. The trees, the lawn, the fields, the long knolls sloping away toward the town of Alexander were all motionless and utterly silent. Signs of a change coming.

His father called, “Come up.”

When he stood before the Old Man on the porch he realized that something had happened, perhaps knew even what it was, though he had no words for the thing as yet. His father, too, had perhaps read something in the weather, he imagined. He did not at first notice his youngest brother in the shadows at the end of the porch, leaning on the wall with his hands in his pockets and his face as gray as ashes. Tag was fifteen now, still pale and gentle as a girl.

Hodge said, not because he believed it but in hopes of escaping a scene with Millie, “You ought to be inside, Dad. You’ll catch cold out here. A man your age—”

“Sit down,” he said. He continued to stare with his blind eyes at where he knew the front fence was, and the road beyond. The snowwhite hair above his ears was brittle and uncombed, as wiry as a dog’s hair, but someone — Ruth, not Millie, God knew — had trimmed the hair in his nostrils and ears. He sat as Hodge had seen him sit a thousand times — as Hodge, too, sat, and as his sons would sit — teeth closed lightly, lower jaw extended out beyond the upper, his elbows on his knees, fists locked together.

“Listen,” he said. “It’s come to me that I’ve made a mistake. Somewhere in the course of—” He tightened his lips, concentrating. “All of us, or the times, mebby. No matter who made it. We have troubles coming. Troubles coming. Be ready, suffer them philosophically. Trust the Lord.”

Hodge squinted, panicky. Only later would he realize that he was afraid, that moment, that he was seeing his father’s first lapse into real senility. He said, hoping Millie was out of earshot, “Money troubles, Dad?”

The old man half-turned his head toward him impatiently. “Who knows what kind of troubles?” he said. “Germany.”

Hodge laughed — it was like barking — and it was now that he noticed Tag standing with his hands over his face, very still.

But his father was saying, as if thinking it out for the first time, “There are always politicians. Good politicians. The people all flounder this way and that way, unsure what they want, unsure how to get it, unsure whether it’s good for them, and the politician comes along to distinguish for them what they want more clearly than they want it yet, shows them the disadvantages …” He stopped. He’d been down that road many times. More and more he repeated himself, struggling for the old clearheadedness in a stifling attic of increasingly baffling, antiquated opinions. He turned his head more, the blind eyes staring at Will as though they could see him. “Suppose we were to have war with Hitler, and suppose Hitler were to win?” he said.

“Dad, you’re stewing again,” Hodge said. “Let me help you inside.” Uncomfortably, he glanced again at Tag.

“Will, is that you out there?” Millie called.

Hodge jumped.

“No!” his father roared. “Not stewing. Thinking. Hitler could win. If not this one, the next one, or the next. From this point forward there’ll be Hitlers for a thousand years.” He thumped the porch with his cane.

“Well, we won’t be here to see it,” Hodge said. And then, in spite of himself: “What do you mean?”

“Will,” Millie called.

“I mean America,” he said. In his mouth the word was local, familiar. He might have been talking about the country. “I mean—” But the lucid moment was gone. “The devil,” he grumbled.

“You think we’re all Hitlers?” Hodge said, grinning, self-conscious because of his brother’s presence. He had no clear idea what he meant by a Hitler; he asked it from the wish of one part of his divided mind to keep the talk going until he understood.

“I mean — righteousness,” the Old Man said. “Insufficient failure — or too much failure — loss of the balanced vote. Unreason — or an excess of reason. The plots theory—”

Exasperated, Hodge said, “I was right the first time. You’re not thinking, you’re stewing. Let’s go in.”

But again he said no, and now, directly challenged, he straightened out his mind. “Listen,” he said. “You believe in reason. You believe in democracy. Reflection of Natural Law, you think. But suppose people stopped being reasonable. Suppose they got spread too far apart to know what the balance of the country was thinking, or the balance of the world. E pluribus unum. Hah. Can India grow reasonable? China? I don’t say suppose the right side goes under, I say suppose all sides are right as it seems to them and they all blur together and their beliefs grow confused and the pluribus becomes so complicated and, more important, so dense that no human mind or even group of minds can fathom the unum. Religion declines, and patriotism; law and justice become abstruse questions of metaphysics; the younger generation grows dangerous and irrational, shameless, selfish, anarchistic. Then someone steps up with some mad idea that’s just simple enough to look sensible, simple enough that busy shoemakers can know the affairs of the world are in competent hands, they needn’t concern themselves — as in Plato’s Republic. Hah! What if?”

Millie appeared in the doorway. The Old Man turned his head, then went on, merely raising his voice a little, to avoid interruption.

“I say this: What keeps this country sailing on an even keel is not mortality or divine favor: nothing of the kind. What keeps it going is the professionals, the professional politicians who know that after this vote there’s going to be another and another, for all the rumpus; you don’t put all your inheritance on one horse, no matter how it looks in the ring. However bitter the fight may look, among the professionals nobody’s hitting with all his might. That’s what makes continuity. If the professionals fail — if the people with all their indifference and all their monstrous opinions, or their no-opinions … There are always politicians. Good politicians. The people all flounder this way and that, unsure what they want. …” The vague look was back. To hide his confusion he thumped the porch again.

“Dad,” Tag said.