John Gardner - The Sunlight Dialogues

“Home?” she said.

“Yuh, home,” Miller said. “Six-thirty and pazooey! he’s out.” He talked very fast and it made her a little confused.

“Well, when he called,” she said. She smiled uncomfortably. “He said he might be — late.”

“You see the ole man around, Figbar?” Miller said.

“Gee I’m sure he went home,” Figlow said.

“I see,” she said. He’d changed his mind then. What a fool she’d been. When he found the house empty he’d be worried sick. She should have known better. “Well, I guess there’s nothing for me to do but—”

“Hole up,” Miller said, “lemme see’f I can getcha ride. Eh pisan!” He was calling beyond Figlow to someone else. The one he called to came toward them.

“My kid,” Miller said. He sounded proud, and again she was filled with a kind of warmth. “Thomasa, meet the boss’s old lady.” He laughed, and a young, strong hand took hers.

“I’m very pleased to meet you,” the boy said. He was sixteen or so, and his voice was very nice, very refined.

“Name’s Tommy,” Miller said, “but we call him Einstein. He’s smart, see? Gets it on Jackie’s side — his mother’s.”

They both laughed, and Esther smiled tentatively, feeling shy, then abruptly joined the laughter.

“Got him down here to help with some papers and stuff. You won’t tell, eh? Big secret, see. We get behind as all hell, and the hurrier we go the behinder we get, like they say in Pennsylvania. So we figured we’d bring down Tom. Call him a consultant.”

“I’m glad to meet you,” Esther said. “Fred’s mentioned you often.” It wasn’t true.

“Thank you,” he said.

“Hey listen, drive Mrs. Clumly home for me, will you? Take the prowlcar.”

He did something with keys.

Figlow was turning away, going back to his work. “It’s good to see you, Mrs. Clumly,” he said. “Long time.”

“It’s good to see you too, Sergeant Figlow,” she said.

“There you go,” Miller said. “And hey, baby, please, watch the stop-signs, for the citizens’ sake?”

“No siren?” the boy said. She had a feeling they were joking, but she couldn’t be sure.

“Not if you can help it,” Miller said.

They laughed. Then the boy took her arm and turned her gently toward the door. He smelled of shaving lotion, and she would have liked to put her fingertips to his face to see what he looked like. She believed he must be handsome. At the top step he squeezed her arm lightly, and she’d already responded, stepping down, before it struck her that he must have guided blind people before — he knew the signals. No wonder his father was proud of him. Such a good boy, he was. She felt tears coming.

“It’s really nice out,” he said.

“Yes it is,” she said. “I wonder what time it is?”

“Oh, nine, nine-thirty maybe.”

She nodded, thinking in horror, that late?

At the sidewalk he said, “Here’s the car. Excuse the cigarette holes in the seat.”

Esther laughed. She really did feel like a queen.

She had no idea where they were going. She always lost all sense of direction in a car. She knew only that he drove as beautifully as he did everything else — drove like his father, in fact. She’d ridden with Miller now and then and had always liked the feeling. When Fred drove, you were sure you would go through the windshield any minute, unless you went through the back of the seat first, when he started up. Even her worry about what Fred would be thinking, sitting in the house alone at this hour, did not prevent her from enjoying the smooth comfort of Tommy’s driving.

After a moment he began to talk. “I certainly admire your husband,” he said. “Dad does too. He says your husband’s the finest police chief in New York State.”

“Why thank you,” she said.

“It’s true.” He sounded serious, troubled. “It’s getting hard to keep up with police work in a town like Batavia. Dad says it’s darn near impossible to operate except in the big cities, with things changing the way they are. And of course the big cities have plenty of problems of their own.”

She thought about it. At last she ventured, “Changing?”

“Well, technology, you know? Bureaucracy. I guess that sounds silly — big words always do.”

Why yes, she thought. Yes. Like poems. He is very bright.

“Anyway, you just don’t have the equipment in a town like this, and yet law enforcement is as complicated in a little town as in a city, in a way. I mean, the State puts the same demands on a town as on a city. It’s the same as the grocery business. — I used to work for Perkowski, in the grocery store. They make laws for grocers, health laws and things, they make you put in open-top freezer cases and then they make you take ’em out and put in a different model, because there’s a possibility of gas escaping from the old model or something like that, and the corner grocer has to go along with it just as if he could afford it. Or farming. I talked to a guy once. It was really something. On a dairy farm they have these milk inspectors, and they made a rule that all the dairy farmers had to put in Pyrex tubing that took the milk from the barn to the milkhouse. It cost thousands of dollars to install — I don’t remember how much he said, exactly. And then they discovered there was no way of cleaning the things — though actually that was stupid too, of course: in chem labs they clean tubing with steam, but the State’s never heard of that, I guess. Anyway, they found there was no way of cleaning the tubing, so they made the farmers rip it all out. Naturally, you couldn’t sell the stuff, once the State had come out against it. All over New York State there are barns with Pyrex tubing hanging on the wall like old harness leather. Just one thing after another like that. No wonder all the small businesses break down. At Perkowski’s grocery they have to pay the same wage as Loblaws’ pays, and yet all Perk’s got working for him any more is his own family. Isn’t it crazy? Buck-sixty an hour they pay. When I left there they hired a Negro kid named Ronald for ninety cents an hour, the same as I got, and if you ever saw the inside of Perk’s house you know darn well he’s paying more than he can afford to, even at that. So along comes the minimum, and the kid’s out of work and Perk’s doing one more man’s work alone. It’s the same down at the station, only worse. Perk can at least go out of business when he wants. You can’t very well put a police station out of business. It makes you think you ought to go into politics.”

She thought about it. Yes.

“What do you plan to go into?” she said.

“Ministry, I guess.”

“That’s very good. Your mother must—”

“It’s Dad, really. Or, really, it’s my own thing. But Dad’s funny. Big brute like that, used to be a Marine, looks like he oughtta be a prize fighter. But he’s a funny guy, really. He thinks nowadays—” He let it pass away.

“You like your father very much, don’t you.”

“He’s a good man.”

“I’m so happy for you,” she said. She could not hold back tears.

“Well,” he said, but again he retreated, and her heart went out to him.

“What were you going to say?” she said.

“He really would like to be a minister himself. You know how it is. He’s sorry for those guys he takes in — old drunks and kids mostly — and yet he has to take them in, naturally. He even has to realize that in a way they can be dangerous. You may understand why some tough little hood feels the way he does about a cop, but it doesn’t mean it’s safe to turn your back on him or let him think you’re his friend.”