John Gardner - The Sunlight Dialogues

“That must be hard, yes.”

“And then the few real criminals you can catch these days, the judges let them off. Or the laws do, I mean.”

“That’s too bad,” she said sadly.

“Well, win a couple, lose a couple,” he said.

“Yes, that’s so,” she said.

“It’s a funny world,” he said.

He sounded, that instant, exactly like Fred. It was Fred’s favorite expression, in fact: It’s a funny world. Had the boy learned it from his father, and his father from Fred? She felt sadder and sadder. Furtively she wiped her cheek with the back of her right hand.

For a moment there was silence.

“Where are we?” she said.

“Ellicott,” he said. “I thought I’d go up to North and then down Oak.”

She nodded. It wasn’t the shortest way, but even her hurry to get home did not prevent her from feeling glad that the ride would be longer.

“Hey,” he said suddenly, “there’s his car.” He was slowing down.

“Whose?” she said.

“Your husband’s,” he said. “The Chief’s. It’s parked.” He brought his own car to a stop, very gently, and then began backing up.

“Is he in it?” she asked.

“I don’t see him. Wonder what he’s doing?”

“Where are we?” she said. An uneasiness began to rise in her, a kind of premonition. Was he all right? Six-thirty, they’d said. That was when he’d left. It came to her now, finally, that it had been six-thirty when he’d called to say he’d be late.

The boy said, “I don’t know. In front of a house, lot of trees. I can’t see the number.”

“He’s not in the car?”

“Nope. Funny, isn’t it.”

They mused. There was a pain in her throat, as though her heart were lodged there and hurting.

“Well, I guess I may as well take you on home.” But he didn’t start up. The motor went off.

“Do you see something?” she said. She steamed her ears.

“He’s behind us, up the street aways, standing in some bushes.”

Now she was shaking. “What do you suppose—”

“He’s just standing there in the shadows. He doesn’t look at us. I don’t know if he’s even noticed we’re here.”

“What bushes? What kind of house?”

“The bushes under the front window. He’s listening or something. It’s a big white house with shutters.”

“Oh,” she said.

“Oh-oh,” the boy said. “There’s somebody coming to the door, opening it. He’s turned the light on.”

“Does he see him?”

“Not yet. No, the Chief’s ducked down, he’s out of sight. The man’s turning. Thinks he made a mistake.”

“We’d better leave,” she said. He was starting the car already.

“Funny,” he said. “It’s the Mayor’s place.” The car started forward with a jerk.

1

The Oliver Cleatrac howled and popped and whined and Ben Hodge sang, plowing up, the way it looked from where he sat, a field as big as the world. It was close to eleven at night; he plowed by the lights on the tractor. Where the hill rimmed, ahead of him, it looked like the edge of the flat earth; beyond it stretched immeasurable sky, in the center of it, poised like a dancer on one foot, towering Orion. The steel cleats slipped along at each side of him, gleaming and quiet as flowing oil, and against the light of the dashboard gauges the gloved fists closed on the left- and right-wheel brake handles, thumbs pointing upward, were huge and solid as churches. He came to the rim of the hill and dipped over, and the roar of the tractor lightened for a moment then steadied again, urging the five plows onward, hammering like a fast, steel and diesel-fuel heart in the tractor chest. He could see from here the security lights around Jim Hume’s barns and silos, beyond that the silver of the highway and the shaggy back of the woods. As he neared the lane fence a paintless and dented panel truck moved into the aura of his headlights. Merton Bliss.

Hodge stopped singing. The night went gloomy. When he came to the lane he pulled back hard on the left-wheel brake, pivoting sharply, tipped the plow out of the ground the same instant, and heaved in the clutch. He shut down the motor. Even idling it was too loud to talk above. He was deaf for a moment. Then he began to hear, faintly, the sound of frogs. He pressed the sides of his head, popping his ears open, and suddenly the sound of frogs, of light wind passing through the weeds, a sound of ducks far away were clear and pure. Bliss stood leaning on the fence in his loose bib-overalls.

“Od do,” Hodge said.

“Evening. Yer workin late.”

“Just ketchin up,” Hodge said. He leaned his forearms on the wheelbrake handles. It would take Merton Bliss a long time to get to what he’d come for.

“How’s the wife?” Hodge said.

“She’s fine, jest fine. Little spell of asthma this last few weeks. You can count on it, this time of year.” He talked about her asthma, told one of his stories, shook his head as if he too could barely believe it. They talked then of politics, in the age-old style of Western New York farmers, arguing shades of a point of view no longer remembered, much less believed, in most of the world; spoke, sorrowful and incredulous, of all that was falling apart in the world; to Bliss an outrage, a matter of plots and stupidity; to Hodge a subtle mystery. It was against his faith that the bulk of humanity was stupid or indifferent or selfish. Why the world was going as it was he could not fathom, but he could not think it was treachery. “Well yes, but then again,” Hodge said. He leaned into his right shoulder, pointing his huge gloved fist at his neighbor’s chest.

They spoke of Hodge’s sermon at the Bethany church.

“You make ’em sit up and take notice,” Bliss said, “and that’s the truth.”

Which was good, coming from Bliss. He too knew storytelling.

Hodge was having a hard time lately getting pulpits to speak in. It’s the ministers, he said. Bliss nodded, understanding. It was good to have a man you could speak to about it.

“They don’t preach the old way,” Bliss said. “It’s all full of reasoning, don’t you know. There’s too much of that in the world, that’s my opinion. You listen to one of those ministers, it’s all like multiplying fractions. It makes your head ache.”

“That’s the truth,” said Hodge. He said, “Been working out a sermon about punishing.” He slid his jaw forward, thinking. “I was thinking of telling the stories of some people that were stoned to death, in old Greek times, and what they were stoned for, and then some stories about people that were burned, and then some about hanging and electrocuting. I thought I’d mention what we do to people that write obscene books, and just mention some things you find written in the Bible, or in Shakespeare. I’ve been toying with it.”

Bliss shook his head. “You can’t get away from it though. Evil is evil. A man has a child—”

“That may be,” Hodge said. “I don’t know.”

They talked about next year’s crops, about the Cleatrac.

“That boy Luke,” Bliss said.

Hodge grinned. “Seems to me you got it in for that boy, some reason.”

“Ding right,” he said. “That boy’s owed me twenty-four dollars for going on a year. I sold him a ewe.”

“That’s too much for a ewe,” Hodge said.

“Mebby so, but he took the price.”

“You’ll burn in hell, Merton Bliss, and that’s God’s truth.” He grinned.

“Wal I’ll tell you, though. I went over to his house, place all lit up like Santa was coming, and that boy wouldn’t come to the door.”

“He’s not well,” Hodge said. “Passes out sometimes.” The night’s gloom came back.