The Sunlight Dialogues (16 page)

We thank Thee, Lord, for all Thy care,
For strength to earn, the chance to share,
For laughter, song, and friendships deep
And all the memories we keep.

It did not seem to Clumly very poetic, but he was no judge.

She and the minister sat across from one another in the livingroom, talking. Clumly shook the man’s hand more or less politely, and exchanged a few words, then walked on in to the kitchen to get his supper from the oven. He carried the gray stew to the dining-room table and sat with his back to them where, though he couldn’t help hearing what they said, he didn’t have to see them. After the hamburger he felt stuffed to the throat, yet his chest was still sending up anxious signals of hunger, like a lover’s. He was halfway through the meal before he realized he still had his hat and gun on. He got up, paused a moment, cautiously broke wind, then put the hat on the top shelf of the clothespress and hung the gun on the nail where it belonged. When he turned to the table again the minister was standing there in his black coat and hat, getting ready to say good-bye.

“It’s so good of you to come, Reverend,” she said.

“Don’t you mention it,” he said. He was old, emaciated, a simperer with false teeth that whistled.

“Good night, Chief,” he said. He stretched out his hand.

“Good night, sir,” Clumly said. He shook hands with the man, furtively broke wind again, and sat down.

“God bless you,” the minister said.

“Same to you,” Clumly said. He nodded as if thoughtfully, smelling gas.

Still the man hovered at his elbow. “You know,” he said, “I have the strangest feeling.” He smiled. His dimple flickered into sight then faded into his cheek. “I feel—” he began. He looked at the ceiling, smiling. “There’s a great deal of love in this house,” the minister said. “One can sense these things. So many homes, you know, have no love in them at all, poor things. An absence of the Holy Spirit.” His teeth whistled sharply. She stood behind him with her head meekly tipped. She was high.

“Mmm,” Clumly said. He dabbed at the stew with his bread.

“I imagine you’re very busy down there at the police station these days. You look tired, to tell the truth. I can sense that too. But confident.” He beamed. “I like a man of confidence.”

“Gets harder every year,” Clumly said. He pursed his lips.

“I imagine it
does.”

Clumly tilted his head to look at him. Like a skinny buzzard in glasses he looked, and a black hat in his claws. More gas escaped. Hurriedly Clumly went on, as if absurdly hoping to distract them. “It’s a funny business, police work.” He squinted. “It’s the times, partly. Everything in transition. Sometimes you feel like you’re flying by the seat of your pants.” He felt a blush stirring in his neck. “Excuse me.” Then, quickly: “I’m talking about hunches, funny feelings you get.” He turned his chair a little to face the man more directly. He pointed at the minister’s hat over his breast, and said like a lecturer (he had an odd sense of standing back listening to himself, dispassionate and critical, and with another fragment of his mind he waited for more trouble behind him), “We’ve got a man down there now, an ugly bearded fellow we picked up for a prank. Trifling little thing you’d never think about twice, nine times out of ten. But I’ll tell you something. I’ve got a
feeling
about this man. A feeling in my belly.”

The minister looked sympathetic. “The poor soul,” he said.

“They want you to run a tight ship, get your paperwork done, delegate authority to the men below you, put in so much time and no more on any one certain case. Well I’ll tell you something. I’m responsible. I’m directly responsible for every man in my department, and for the welfare of every man, woman, and child in the City of Batavia.” Esther looked bored. He got up to pace, poking the air with his cigar, and made it to the far end of the room in the nick of time.

“A grave responsibility,” the minister said.

“Correct.”

She came nearer.

“Now this bearded man, he may be nothing but a tramp, for all I know. But I have this
feeling
about him. It’s like a creature working up from the center of the earth, scratching and scratching. You follow me?” He could feel the pressure building up again in his abdomen, and wondered if the man would ever leave.

The minister’s eyes widened a little and he drew the chair beside the table closer to where Clumly now stood and sat down.

“Well then what’s my job?” Clumly said. “You see the question? The Mayor wants one thing, the men underneath me want another. You follow me?”

“Yes. Yes. Terrible.” Clumly’s wife, coming up behind him, put her hand on Clumly’s shoulder, and the minister noticed. He smiled and showed his dimple. “But your good wife is with you.”

“Mmm,” Clumly said. “So here’s what it comes to. If my hunch is right, the most important thing I can do is stop that man before he makes his move. But if I’m
wrong—”

“Horrible,” the minister said.

“Poor Fred,” she said. “Was the stew all right?”

“Mmm,” Clumly said. “Well I don’t mind telling you it’s giving me the shakes. The man can read minds.”

“You don’t say!”

“Sure as hell. Excuse me, Reverend.” He squinted, listening carefully to what he was saying.

“Oh no, not at all.”

“And what’s more,” Clumly said, “we can turn that power of his to good use. We can
harness
it. Like the atom.”

“No!”

“Yessir. But
should
we? It’s like voodoo. It’s a moral problem.” He paused, struggling to control his own problem, but also squinting at the minister to see what he thought.

The minister frowned, his whole face drawing in to give intensity to his eyes, and at last he saw it. “Like wire-tapping!” he said.

Clumly sat back and set his fist on the table. “Correct!”

The minister rubbed the bridge of his nose to a shine. At length he said, “What will you do, Chief?”

“I’m not sure yet,” Clumly said, cagey. His jaw grew firmer. “I have to think it out.”

The minister slid his hat onto the table and pressed his hands together. He closed his eyes and prayed, “Dear Heavenly Father, fount of all wisdom and abundant mercy, we pray Thee that Thou wilt shed Thy light on this Thy humble servant in his hour of dilemma, and that Thou wilt guide him and minister unto him and lead his steps aright in the name of Thy beloved Son, Our Saviour, Jesus Christ. Amen.”

“Amen,” Clumly’s wife said softly, her face tipped up. It shone like the face of a saint.

“Amen,” said Clumly. His jaw was set like rock.

A long silence.

“Well,”
the minister said. “So this man can read minds!”

“That’s not half of it, Reverend,” Clumly said. He leaned closer. “He knows the future!”

“No!” said the minister.

“Yessir.”

“Well, I’ll be darned,” the minister breathed.

BARROOOM,
roared Chief Clumly’s rear end. Neither his wife nor the minister batted an eye.

“That’s Nature,” said Clumly with a terrible smile. “Washington, Jefferson, Franklin, Lincoln—Nature is no respecter of persons. Fact.”

They laughed loudly, like people at a wake.

After that he talked solemnly, pedantically, of the Sunlight Man’s uncanny powers, and the more he talked the surer he was that all he was saying (and all they said, too) was nonsense. The thing was a trick. Their gullibility seemed now to Chief Clumly almost dangerous, and his responsibility weighed on him more heavily than before.

He dreamed that night that he was back at sea, standing on the bridge plotting his ship’s course by the stars. It was a wooden ship that rode low in the water, perhaps because its planks were heavy as boards that have lain in the earth for years. But the sea was calm as oil in a barrel, and all was in control. The crew was restless, below and behind him, darting here and there like shadows on the deck and below the deck, or staring up at him anxiously out of their lifeboats. He knew well enough what their trouble was. Unbelievers, heretics, usurers, perverts, suicides. But he had them in control, everything in control. All was well. However, there was a storm coming, he knew by the fact that, one by one, the stars were going out. Far in the distance he could hear a mighty wind rising, a sound of sighs and wails and shrieks reverberating in the blackness, a babble of languages. “Steady on course,” he said soberly. “Full speed ahead.” Now the struggling winds were like groans of pain and there were thudding noises as the winds buffeted the sea, sounds like clubs banging on backs, sometimes cracking bones, an ungodly racket. It was closer now—he kept his ship steady on—exhilaration filling his chest—and the howls like agony and rage rained down on him and up from his sailors like pebbles and sand before a whirlwind. “Steady on!” he roared. And now he could see the other ship, not approaching, as he’d thought, but fleeing like a pirate toward the calmer water he saw glowing, deep red-gold, on the horizon. The captain in black was bent forward like an ape, whipping his sailors, urging them to still greater effort, and the speed of his flight made his beard whip over his shoulder. His red eyes rolled. Clumly cupped his mouth between his hands and howled, “Beware, beware, you guilty souls!” He raised his pistol, steady on, and fired. The bearded man sank like a shadow through the ship and down into the sea. It was suddenly daylight, and both ships’ crews were singing. He felt serene. The round-backed old sailor at his side, bearded and scarred from many wars and many wives, was smiling. “What sea is this?” asked Clumly, with a comfortable sense of authority. The sailor looked down, inspecting its texture. He smiled again, a man perhaps not to be trusted. He said thoughtfully, “Metaphysics.”

Clumly sat up in the blackness of the bedroom, wringing his hands. “What’s the meaning of this?” he asked crossly. Then, understanding, he whispered to himself, “A dream. Just a damned dream!” He was hungry as the devil, and the room stunk like an outhouse. His wife slept on.

At the hospital, just then, a boy fifteen was being admitted through Emergency with multiple lacerations. He’d been drinking with his friends and had been pushed through a glass door during a fight. Later an old woman named Rohn poisoned a neighbor’s dog.

5

On the evening of the sixth day, the police brought in a drunk-and-disorderly, an oldish man named Bob Boas. They put him in the cell beyond the thief, and he sang. The bearded man sat in a brown study, ignoring the man, only now and then throwing an irritable glance in his direction. Then something made the bearded man change. Maybe there was someone listening in the hall. Nick Slater couldn’t tell from where he was, but Boyle, over in position to see, had the look of an animal being watched. The bearded man began to sing with the drunk, falsetto, waving his arms and shuffling around obscenely in his stocking feet in the cell. He called the drunk Herr Robert. The drunk—he was pale and effeminate and quick to wrath—would stop singing at this, as though the name Herr Robert had some meaning the others didn’t catch. He would sink into violent, bristling gloom. Then suddenly the song would break out again by itself, like a howl of rage.

Mm lady come in, mmm assed for a cake,
Mm assed er wat kine she’d adore,
Mmm “layer” she said, mmm layer I did,
An I don’t work there any more.

While the drunk sang, the Sunlight Man whispered to him earnestly, and after a moment the singing stopped again.

“Look out!” the Sunlight Man suddenly yelled, and he pointed to the floor at the drunk’s feet. There was something there—even Nick saw it, but he didn’t catch what it was. The same instant it appeared it vanished. The drunk clung to the bars, throat convulsing, then vomited. The Sunlight Man dusted his hands.

“Holy Christ,” Verne said.

It was a full five minutes before it was really clear in Nick’s mind that it had all been a trick, some kind of illusion. But it was amazing, just the same. Then it came to him that the most amazing thing of all was the bored calm of the thief, Walter Boyle. He lay on his pallet with his skinny legs crossed and his hands behind his head, seeing nothing.

Verne, too, noticed it. “He’s something else,” he said, nodding toward Boyle.

Nick sat with his chin on his fists.

“How’d they catch him—you hear?” Verne asked.

Nick shook his head.

The Sunlight Man was playing with those tiny stones of his again. It was as if he’d completely forgotten about the drunk. He was mumbling something, mumbo-jumbo of some kind. They watched him for a while.

“Must be waiting for his trial, like us,” Nick’s brother said, looking at Boyle again. He pursed his lips and thought about it, then nodded. Neither of them felt easy talking about the Sunlight Man or his magic. “That’s what it is, he’s waiting for his trial.” He bit the tip of his tongue.

“Mr. Hodge defend him, you think?” Nick asked. It came out by accident, merely because it had flitted into his mind. He was wondering, really, why Will Hodge Sr had not yet come to talk to them. Had the Sunlight Man told them the truth? Will Hodge hadn’t been at the hearing, even, though they’d phoned his office the first thing in the morning, after the night they were arrested. Maybe he was waiting to see if the woman would die. None of them had come, even to visit, not Will Hodge the lawyer or Luke or even Ben. Not even Vanessa.

The smell of the vomit in the end cell was terrible, but the drunk was singing again. Nick struggled to ignore it. As abruptly as it had started the singing stopped, and the bearded man yelled, “Excellent, mein herr!” and clapped his hands together smartly. The hallway door opened as if at the Sunlight Man’s command, and the guard stuck his head in. “Keep it down.” The one watching in the hallway said something to him, very quiet.

The bearded man bowed to the drunk. The scar tissue and the bushy beard made his eyes seem smaller than they were. The guard went out, and the drunk began talking, tortuously reasoning with the Sunlight Man, who ignored him.

Later, the drunk vomited again, this time without help from the bearded man, and the thief groaned and sat up and pressed his hands to the sides of his bald head as though he were afraid he would explode. He looked at the mess but remained expressionless, then sat with his elbows on his knees and stared at his feet.