John Gardner - The Sunlight Dialogues

They said nothing. All four sat considering the tabletop, and Ben seemed as sunk into his thoughts as the Negro boy. Outside, the sky had turned greenish golden now. Storm weather. The tamaracks on the lawn looked darker, and space had taken on a new intensity, like space in a three-dimensional slide viewer. Ben’s Holsteins were standing by the barn door at the foot of the slope. It was choretime.

Vanessa said, “The poor Paxtons!”

Even before he had made the adjustment or knew that the subject had suddenly changed, Will Hodge started inwardly, feeling the connection before he knew he was seeing it. That was all years behind them, the Paxton trouble, but for Will Hodge the misery of that time was still alive, however far buried under layers of days. Even now he would sometimes awaken in a sweat, as he’d done then, though his brother Tag’s bills were long since paid, and Kathleen Paxton long since hidden away. He never saw the Paxtons any more. Almost no one saw them, for that matter, except Vanessa. Vanessa Hodge saw everyone: she had a hide like an elephant, and she could not tolerate bad blood, broken friendships. So that for all Clive Paxton’s dislike for the Hodges, Vanessa had kept touch. She would talk for hours on the telephone with Elizabeth Paxton — not regularly, not more than twice or three times a year, but regularly enough. And at the time of old Paxton’s first stroke she had gone to the house with her sympathy and some beans. It was a wonder to Will Hodge Sr that it hadn’t killed the old man. But no doubt she had wept and held his hand and overwhelmed him. Her emotions were like a child’s, as swift and intense and as innocent, however absurd; as irrational as the emotions of a sheep.

Ben was cleaning his glasses again. The conversation was painful to him, too.

“Elizabeth says there wasn’t any will. Clive was superstitious about it, she says. It was as if as long as he hadn’t had a will drawn up he didn’t believe he could die. And after all those attacks! I imagine you heard how they found him.”

“Well now,” Ben said.

But Vanessa was a freight train, once she got started. She even forgot to eat. “He was sitting at his desk in the study. Silting bolt-upright, with his eyes open. He’s been practically living in his study, this past year. He couldn’t go up and down stairs any more, so he slept in his study on the couch and took his meals there, off a TV tray — so Elizabeth says. They had an oxygen tent right there for him, and all those things they use. She had a terrible time getting him to eat anything, he was so sick. But he still kept busy. He was working on his memoirs — all those trips they used to take through the Genesee Valley, the interesting characters they’d met, and so on. And he still kept his diary. Clive had a record of every day of his life, except for his time in the hospital. But the entries got shorter and shorter, the last few days. And the last night—” She shook her head and rubbed her fingers together. “He seemed to know he was going. On the last page he was just writing ‘The End,’ Elizabeth said. It was an awful scribble. If only he’d had the sense to write a will!”

Will Hodge scowled. She made it sound like a soap opera.

Ben cleared his throat.

“Poor Elizabeth,” she said. “He was sitting in his pajamas and bathrobe, bolt-upright behind his desk. He was so shrivelled his face was like a skull. He was like a child in a grown-up’s red bathrobe, she says. How awful it must have been for her, coming in on him like that! Well, there’s sure to be trouble enough! It never was a happy family, Heaven knows, and you can be sure there’ll be a court case over the money. And how on earth they’ll manage to look after Kathleen—”

Will Hodge snorted.

“I wonder if Taggert knows,” she said.

Again no one answered. A pain forked up through Will’s belly and chest. Even if he did know, what was he to do? Kathleen wouldn’t know him — she no longer recognized anyone, as far as they could tell. And the family had no love for him. Even his relationship with the rest of the Hodges was touch and go. It came to him in a flash that Tag did know. That’s the reason for all this. He knows. Half out of his mind. He gave an involuntary jerk, and they looked at him. He made himself calm.

Before Will Hodge was fully aware that he’d stopped thinking about his brother, he found himself toying cautiously, as if at arm’s length, with a new idea. Clumly would be at the funeral. Fred Clumly made them all. It was one of his oddities. A man could see him there. Why it was that Hodge wanted to see him, watch him from a distance, was not clear to him; nevertheless, he felt the desire rising like a madness. He felt again the sting of the Salvador woman’s accusation and felt again the urge he’d felt then to defend himself, for once in his life take some bull by the horns, strike out, be rid of confusion. Tag, Luke, Will Jr. He saw him fixing the chair in the chickenhouse, hair light as down. The child’s face was a blur. With surprising clarity he saw himself standing in the crowd as he imagined Ben and Vanessa had stood at the cemetery, observing the wrinkled grub-white policeman at the side of the grave, police cap resting on his belly. It was like an image from the Devil, dreamlike, full of some unhealthy pleasure. So he’d felt — it must be three weeks ago now — sitting by the road in his car late at night, with fog spreading out from the marsh between the tarpaper house and the woods, his car full of the stink of old cigarettes, as he watched for the sordid lover of his client’s wife to come creeping to the house. He saw Tag sitting at the desk across from his own, feet up, expensive shoes polished like dark brown piano wood. Kathleen had a desk to the left of his. She worked on income tax forms. Will closed his eyes tight.

“Well,” Ben said loudly, in a tone that might have been Will Hodge’s own, except that Ben’s voice was musical, like a voice that might come from a big silver cup, and Will’s was like the voice of an empty barn at night, “time to milk the cows.” He stood up. Though the Negro didn’t move, his eyes came partway to life.

Will got up too. “I’d better get back to town. Thanks for the coffee.” His knees were weak.

Now Vanessa got up, awkwardly, as always. She almost knocked Will’s cup from the table. “Pooh!” she said. The near-accident upset her.

“Let’s go, boss,” Ben said. The Negro got up. And now, all standing, they were embarrassed. A calf bawled, down by the barn.

“What on earth made them do it?” Vanessa said. “Why did they have to kill?” Her eyes filled with tears, and she took one last cookie for comfort.

Ben mused.

Will, too, understood what she meant. It was fear, no doubt, that made them kill the guard. Not malice, exactly — but more like malice than what went before, the wreck of the Volkswagen. What next? And where would Nick Slater run? And Tag? He almost slipped and said it.

“They were such strange boys,” Vanessa said, weeping. “Nick especially. You never knew what he was thinking.”

“Time will tell,” Ben said.

Will Hodge looked at his vest-pocket watch. The numbers, even the hands, were too blurry to read. The face was all gray. “I better run,” he said. A whisper. He stepped back to reach behind the Negro to shake his brother’s hand. It was an awkward handshake. It wasn’t Ben Hodge’s nature to shake hands, nor Will’s either, for that matter, which was why Ben was looking at him.

“It’s just awful,” Vanessa said. “You keep wondering—” She limped to the sink with her cup, lips clamped together with grief, and turned the water on. The pump started up in the cellar, thudding like a heart.