John Gardner - The Sunlight Dialogues

“Don’ you worry your head about them aphids,” he’d squeak, mimicking his sons, tipping his head down and looking up from under his shaggy eyebrows at Clumly. “We spray around here by the schedule, see, and if the aphids don’t know what the schedule is, don’t you worry, them plants is insured.”

“Well, times change,” Clumly would say.

“Pah! Times change! Why this next Depression’s gonna make that last one look like Heaven’s own feast for the blessed.” He’d move down a plant, shaking his head. “Wal, mebby I’ll be dead by then. I hope so.”

Now he was. Soul rest in peace.

A jay walked up to the porch steps as though Clumly were not there. “Morning, young fella,” Clumly said. The bird looked at him, intelligent, about to speak. Then Esther called, and Clumly went in to eat.

“You look fresh as a daisy,” Esther said. Even when she spoke cheerfully, it was a whine.

“I still get around,” he said. He began on his eggs.

Prowlcar 19. Kozlowski. Father had a farm out on Tinkham Road. Clean little house, clean little barn, Holstein cows and sheep and a couple of work-horses standing around the willow trees by the pond behind the barn. The old woman had expected her son to take over when the old man had died — buried alive when a pea-vine wagon turned over on him, six months ago now — another poor mortal ground under by the load — but Kozlowski had other ideas. He hated farming. Hated being tied down to the milking three-hundred-and-sixty-five days every year, hated trying to outguess the weather, hated more than anything else the everlasting tedium of setting out fenceposts, cleaning stables, unsnarling rope and old harness leather and baling twine, or mending bags, or crawling out of bed to run after the cows when they got through the fence and took off at a run through some neighbor’s cornlot, no more knowing where they were going than how to spell. He was a small man, with a red face and small red hands and hair the color of dust. He hardly ever spoke. Thoughtful. He sat in the prowlcar, sheepish-looking as usual, waiting for Clumly to catch up.

Clumly locked his car door and hurried to the back drive gate where Kozlowski waited. “Morning, Stan.”

Kozlowski grinned.

“Mind if I ride around?” Clumly asked. He felt exhilarated, like a man slightly drugged.

“That all you got to do?”

Clumly laughed grittily and went around the front of the car to the rider’s side, patting the fenders as he passed. Kozlowski watched him get in and smiled dutifully when the door slammed shut, but he was thinking his own thoughts.

“How’s it going?” Clumly said.

Kozlowski shrugged. He pulled out onto the street. The radio sputtered. He stopped for the Main Street light.

“Lot of the boys get annoyed when I come ride around with them,” Clumly said. The car smelled richly of new gas. He’d just been to the pump, Clumly deduced. He sat back more and reached inside his jacket for a cigar. “They get the wrong idea, you know. Cigar?”

Kozlowski shook his head. The light changed. He started up.

Clumly chuckled. “I drove prowlcar for seventeen years. You cognizant of that?”

“No fooling,” Kozlowski said.

“Yessir. Well, I was younger then. But I’ll tell you one thing. We worked like the devil in those days. Eight P.M. till eight A.M. in the morning, that was my hours for I don’t know how long. And the pay? Son, you couldn’t get a garbage man for the pay we got then. Nine dollars a day. Just as true as I’m setting here.” He opened the glove-compartment and looked inside, then closed it again.

“Garbage men make a lot of money,” Kozlowski said.

A car shot past them and abruptly slowed down, no doubt noticing that they were police. Clumly leaned forward to watch the driver, then leaned back, letting it go. “Well, I kept my nose clean,” Clumly said, “and I put in an hour’s work for an hour’s pay. I worked up through the ranks.”

Kozlowski nodded.

“Life’s been good to me,” Clumly said. It was a good cigar. The day would be another scorcher, but the breeze coming in through Clumly’s window still had the scent of morning in it, even here in the middle of town. He said: “But I miss the old days, that’s the truth. I don’t say I’d give up what I’m making and go back to patroling — both jobs have their remunerations. But you’re freer out on patrol, I will say that. Nobody watching you all the time, keeping you honest.” He shot a glance at Kozlowski.

“I don’t mind it,” Kozlowski said.

“Of course you don’t,” Clumly said heartily. He shifted in the seat, trying to get more comfortable, then closed his eyes a minute. “Well, a lot of the boys get the wrong idea,” he said. “The way I figure, we do this job of ours together. A man can’t run a police force if he doesn’t trust his men.”

Kozlowski nodded again. He turned down Jackson and crossed the one track remaining from the days when the New York Central depot used to be here in the center of town. Clumly pointed to the square brick house on the left. “Know that place? It used to be Edna’s. House of ill repute.”

“I’ve heard that,” Kozlowski said.

“That’s it,” Clumly said. “We run her out of business a dozen times. Maybe two dozen times. Sent her up the river and I don’t know what all. But she always came back, just as regular as tomorrow. It was a kind of joke around town for a good long while. Lot of people used to think it was a good thing to have a place like that, and I know cops that would turn their heads and not notice when she was set up again till sooner or later a complaint come in. They weren’t crooks, you know. They weren’t taking bribes, nothing like that. They just had a theory, that was all. Well, takes all kinds.”

They came to the end of South Jackson and began the loop back in. Kozlowski said, “What kind were you, Chief?”

“Eh?”

“You close her down?”

Clumly inspected his cigar. “Son, I closed her out.”

Kozlowski smiled ruefully.

“Wouldn’t you done the same thing in my place?” Clumly said.

“Sure,” Kozlowski said seriously. “That’s my job.”

“Correct,” Clumly said. But he smiled ironically. He looked at the radio speaker, paying no attention. After a moment he said, “I don’t know if you’d close her or not, Kozlowski. But I’ll tell you this. Lot of times when things are pushing the way they are, more work to get done than an ordinary human can do in the hours he’s got, a man can slide into thinking there’s nothing to watch for but what he sees posted on the board. I don’t mean the board’s not important. What you see on that board is unusually important, that’s why it’s posted there. It’s like—” He paused, half-closing his eyes, crafty. “It’s like a farmer,” he said. “When a man’s got wheat to get in before the rain, he gets his wheat. But it don’t mean he forgets about his milking for a while.”

“Yes sir,” Kozlowski said.

Clumly studied him. “Put it this way,” he said. “How come you don’t close down that house on Harvester?”

The blush was unmistakable and, in spite of himself, Clumly smiled again. Kozlowski waited, maybe thinking he hadn’t heard right. Clumly threw the cigar out the window and folded his hands. “Turn right,” he said. Kozlowski turned.

“I guess it surprises you,” Clumly said happily. (There’s a dance or two in the old dame yet, he thought.) “Maybe scares you a little. I imagine I’d feel the same way, if I was in your place. I imagine you wonder how the old bastard knows. You see all those papers piled up on my desk, you hear how I have to get around to the schools and make speeches to the kids about crossing the street, you see I’ve got worries coming out of my ears — that damned trouble with the dogs, and this plague of stealing this past two months, and now these fires, and the Force in need of men so bad it’s a wonder we don’t every one of us throw up our hands. Well I’ll tell you something. My job is Law and Order. That’s my first job, and if I can’t get that one done, the rest will just have to wait. You get my meaning? If there’s a law on the books, it’s my job to see it’s enforced. I’m personally responsible for every cop in my Department, and for every crook in the City of Batavia. That’s my job. I’m aware as you are there are differences of opinion about some of the laws we’re paid to enforce, but a cop hasn’t got opinions. Don’t you forget it. Some fool makes a law against planting trees and you and me will be out there, like it or not, and we’ll shut down Arbor Day.”