The Sunlight Dialogues (7 page)

“He’ll be missed,” Chief Clumly said. He began to weep, and Mrs. Hubbard took his hand.

It wasn’t until after the prayer at the cemetery that he saw Ben Hodge again. He and Vanessa were standing by the fieldstone gateposts, listening from there. The gravel cemetery drive would have been hard going for Vanessa, with those bad knees. When Clumly went up to them, Hodge said, “You still got my boys down there?”

“Slater boys? The Indians? They’re there all right. We been expecting you to come down and post bail for ’em.”

“Not me. I’ve done all I can for those boys. You can ship ’em away to Elmira, it’s the only course left.” He smiled unhappily.

“Blooey!” Vanessa said. “We quit.”

“Listen here,” Hodge said. He tapped Clumly’s chest gently, as if absent-mindedly, the way his father the Congressman used to tap a neighbor’s chest when he wanted his vote. “Those boys have had homes. Good homes. I don’t mean just ours, which may or may not be what you’d call good. They got forty dollars a month spending money when they were at our place, and for dang little work, too. And the place they were before, over there in Byron, that woman had the patience of a saint. You wonder what gets into them.”

“You heard what the younger one said to the social worker,” Vanessa said. “She asked him what he wanted to be and he said—he’s honest, you’ll have to say that!—he said, ‘I just want to hang around.’” Vanessa laughed,
mp, mp!
slapping Ben Hodge’s shoulder. She was old, but when she laughed she was pretty for a moment. Bill Churchill was passing them, leaving the cemetery, and when he nodded hello she drew him into the group and told him the same story she’d just told Clumly, in the same words, and laughed, and slapped Hodge’s shoulder.

“Honest!” Hodge said, “why you know what that little monkey did? The County got him a room at the Y, right after he’d decided he was fed up with us, and they gave him fifty dollars for it. For some reason they can’t pay the rent direct—I don’t know what the technicality is. Anyway, he spent twenty-five dollars on clothes and lost the rest of it shooting craps, and you know what that boy did? He went back to the County and told them exactly what had happened and asked for more.”

They all laughed except Bill Churchill, who was outraged. “Welfare!” he said. “It’s sucking the blood out of this country! How many people
are
there, I wonder, that all they want is just to ‘hang around’? They can do it, too. That’s what burns me. ‘Gimme, gimme, gimme!’” He was still jabbing at Hodge’s chest. Hodge reached out with his own, gentler tap, like a man absent-mindedly keeping time to music on Bill Churchill’s tie. “It’s a complicated thing, though, isn’t it.”

“Faw!” Churchill said.

Vanessa said, “What bothers me is the fact that those boys will buy a new shirt every day, but they’ll never shell out for socks and underwear.” She turned to Clumly and smiled. “They’ll buy shocks—
blooey!—”
She batted away the mistake with both hands. “They’ll buy
shirts,
but do you think they’ll buy socks?”

Clumly shook his head.

“No!” she said, pleased with him for being alert. “Shocks,” she said. “That’s a good one.” She laughed. “Hmpf.”

Clumly laughed too and Hodge smiled sociably. Churchill excused himself and hurried down the road toward where his car was parked. Clumly and the Hodges watched people leave, most of them people Fred Clumly had never seen before, relatives from far-off places, perhaps, or friends of the family who’d moved away from Batavia years ago. The sight of so many strangers was for Clumly faintly distressing. “Times change,” he said aloud, accidentally.

“Well, yes and no,” Hodge said.

The Hodges started down the driveway, and Clumly went along beside them, mopping his forehead and the back of his neck. “You heard about our bearded fellow?” he said. “The one we’ve got locked up for defacing public property.”

Hodge looked puzzled, then lighted up. “The one that wrote
love
on the Thruway? He’s still in jail?”

“Yessir,” Clumly said. “Order of the court. He’ll be transferred over to the Veterans’ Hospital as soon as it’s convenient, for a mental check-up, you know. Meanwhile, he’s with us.” He glanced over his shoulder and leaned toward Hodge. “Between you and me, it’s understood that we’ll question him a little, from time to time, see if we can’t find out what he’s really up to.”

“Ah,” Hodge said.

It sounded noncommittal, merely polite, weighted with some reservation, and again Clumly felt on the spot. “Oh, I know, it looks like just another prank to a complete outsider. But there may be one or two aspects of this case you’re not aware of.” He gave Hodge a meaningful look.

“Hmm,” Hodge said. They’d come to the Hodge truck, an old hay-green Chevy pick-up, and Hodge went around to Vanessa’s side to help boost her in. Clumly followed.

“Oops!” Vanessa said. But Hodge caught her and lifted again, and after a moment she was sitting at ease, fanning herself and panting, saying “Hoo!” Even with the windows open (the key was in the ignition, too, he noticed) it would be hot as an oven in the cab of that track. When Vanessa’s door was shut, Hodge turned, found Clumly at his back, and shook his hand. “Keep up the good work,” Hodge said. “Give ’em heck.”

“I’ll do that,” Clumly said. He followed Hodge around to his side. Hodge shook hands with him again, then opened his door and climbed in. “Hot,” he said, closing the door.

Clumly nodded. “Listen.” He put his hands on the window-frame. Hodge waited with his fingers on the ignition key, his teeth resting on his drawn-in lower lip, and Clumly tipped his head and squinted at him. “What do you think made him burn all the papers in his billfold?”

“Him?”

“The bearded one.”

Hodge gazed through the windshield and thought about it—not as seriously, Clumly saw, as he’d have had to do if he were wearing Clumly’s shoes. Vanessa sat looking at them wearily, like an old woman waiting for a bus.

“What’s
your
theory?” Hodge said.

“Well, I don’t think he’s crazy, if that’s what you mean,” Clumly said.

Hodge switched on the ignition and started the truck. “Well, I guess time will tell,” he said.

“Here,” Clumly said. “Look. Look at this.” He searched through his pockets and found among his various notes to himself the folded yellow paper and shook it under Hodge’s face. Hodge studied him, frowning, then took the paper, held it away a little, and looked at it. Clumly got up on the narrow strip of running board and poked in his head and looked too.

“That’s what we got when we examined him,” Clumly said. “Not just me. Miller was there too. Those are the answers he gave us. You can’t tell
me
he’s insane. Too pat. Look.” Clumly leaned closer to the paper and read aloud, pointing with his finger.

MILLER:
What’s your name?

PRISONER:
Puddin Tane.

MILLER:
Look, don’t be smart. It makes us irritable, and when your supper comes, no Jell-O.

CLUMLY:
Do you know your social security number?

PRISONER:
Pick-up-sticks shut-the-door gone-to-heaven …

MILLER:
Come on, Chief, nobody knows their social security number.

CLUMLY:
You think not? My number’s 287–40–0839.

MILLER:
Mister, you’ve committed a serious crime. You aware of that?

CLUMLY:
What have you to say for yourself?

PRISONER:
The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.

MILLER:
Mine too. Praise. Now tell us who you are and where you live, and maybe I’ll take it back about the Jell-O.

PRISONER:
I’ve told you. I’m Captain Marvel.

MILLER:
Right. But we got a lot of them. What are you for short?

PRISONER:
I’m called the Sunlight Man.

MILLER:
Good. Now we’re getting places. You spread sunlight in the world, that it?

PRISONER:
No.

MILLER:
Are you self-employed?

PRISONER:
Definitely not.

CLUMLY:
Miller, this is stupid.

PRISONER:
You ask the wrong questions.

MILLER:
Get him out of here.

Hodge was smiling, but thoughtfully.

Clumly said, “What do you think?”

“Is this a joke?” Hodge asked. He gave the paper back.

“A joke?” Clumly exclaimed. “You can
call
it a joke, if you think it’s funny. I don’t, myself. I’ve seen wiseguys before—but this one, he can’t be
broken.
He’s an educated man, you can see. Could be he’s a college professor.” He got down off the running board. Hodge was still watching him, and Vanessa had her fingertips over her mouth, the other hand over her heart. Clumly said, “You can make them talk sense, most of them. We have our ways. But with him, nothing.”

“Miller doesn’t seem worried,” Hodge said.

Chief Clumly dismissed it with a wave. “Miller can make mistakes too.” It sounded pointlessly bitter, and he regretted saying it.

“If you want my advice, Chief,” Hodge began. Clumly waited, absurdly eager to hear what Ben Hodge would advise. But Hodge thought better of whatever it was he had intended to say. Or perhaps his mind wandered.

“I think he comes from California,” Clumly said.

Hodge mused on this, too. “I have a boy in California,” he said. “Adopted son.” Finally he nodded, noncommittal as ever, and shifted into low. “Wal, getting towards choretime,” he said. “Take care of yourself, Chief.” He spoke too kindly. It sounded faintly ominous to Clumly.

“Same to you,” he said. He stood back, resting his hands on his hips, and watched the truck pull out onto the highway and draw away. Then, his leather shoes slipping a little on the hillside along the road, he hurried back to his car. Late, he thought. Towards choretime, in fact. His chest filled with panic. He’d wasted almost another whole day. The pile of papers on his desk was as high as ever, unless Miller had done some of the work, as he did now and then. There was a letter from the Jaycees, he remembered suddenly, that had come to him May 16th—three months ago. Something about the parking situation, wanted statistics from him, or some fool thing. He ought to have slapped them down right off:

17 May 1966

Gentlemen:

      
It has come to my attention that

Too late. Couldn’t do that now. Short-handed, that’s the thing. And the men available mostly new, no dedication, no sense of the dangers or difficulties. He suddenly remembered he’d agreed to speak to the Dairyman’s League. When was it? Had he missed it? He bent over the car door, unlocking it, thinking again of the bearded man from California. Was he making a mountain of a molehill? He started violently. There was a dry cowplop on the seat. Kids. Jokers. But how had they gotten it there? He’d locked the door. He got out his handkerchief and mopped his forehead, trying to think. His head ached from the muggy August heat, and his shortsleeved shirt was pasted to his skin with sweat. Open window, he thought, sick at heart. Locked the door but left the window open. Must be losing my marbles.

He stood very still, looking over his shoulder toward the cemetery. He was frightened for an instant. What would they be saying about him at City Hall? Would they have heard about his crazy mistake this morning with Kozlowski?

But the cemetery stood serene in the shadow of its hemlock trees, the tombstone markers solemn and patient and indifferent to the bug-filled heat, the field flowers encroaching on the graveyard grass, indifferent to what City Hall would think, neither troubled nor amused by the joke that had been played on the Batavia Chief of Police. To the left of the cemetery, beyond the iron fence, cows and calves lay chewing in the calm, dry grass, facing toward Nelson St. John’s big red barns, dreaming vaguely of grain and water. Chief Clumly screwed up his face, calmer now, and picked up the dry cowplop with two fingers and threw it in the weeds. He dusted the seat.

“Think you’re smart, don’t you,” he said. He slid in behind the wheel and sighed. Quarter-to-four. If he hurried he could get in his talk with the Woodworth sisters. He sighed again, more deeply, sucking to get more than mere heat inside his lungs. “A funny business,” he said. Poor Hubbard. An image of the casket returned to his mind, the white flowers on the lid already wilting in the cemetery’s heat. There had been someone whispering behind Clumly while the minister prayed. It ruined it. What was the matter with people? Clumly gritted his teeth.

4

On the eleventh of July, 1966, Miss Editha Woodworth, who was said to be aged one hundred and eight and who lived with her younger sister Octave, aged ninety-seven, the only surviving descendants of the Reverend Burgess Woodworth, original pastor of the First Baptist Church of Batavia, New York, had been burgled in broad daylight, when both ladies were at home (they were always at home) by “a wild-looking man,” as they told the police, who had gained access by knocking out a pane of the back-porch door with a hammer and reaching to the latch. The back porch of the Woodworth home, like all the back porches on Ross Street, was glassed in, and had been for fifty years. It was used, or had been long ago, as a potting shed. It was now a clutter of old crates and boxes, broom handles, porcelain, ancient calendars, books—
Four Feathers; In the Name of a Lady—so
rotten from dampness that they crumbled in your fingers like cake. The porch looked out on what had once been a garden.

The Woodworth sisters could describe the burglar in detail. So could the neighbors. He had knocked at one door after another, asking nervously for a man named Day. At the Woodworth house no one had answered his knock, though he waited for perhaps five minutes. He could not know, of course, that neither of the sisters could speak above a whisper, that the elder was unable to leave her chair, and that the younger moved so slowly on her two black canes that, watching her, you could not have told whether she was going toward the door or resting for a moment. She was standing in the middle of the parlor when the burglar came in through the kitchen, still holding the hammer. He stopped in his tracks, and cunning Miss Octave (as everyone said) whispered, “Don’t murder us, young man. We’re blind as bats. We couldn’t possibly identify you later. Just go about your business and be gone.” They delivered up their handbags to him, told him where he’d find the silverware (the second-best, however; they said nothing of the cherrywood box tucked under the bed), and even let him know there were oatmeal cookies in the yellow crock on the sink. Most of their money, luckily (since there wasn’t much), was in the bank drawing interest for them. He took what he wanted (he left the cookies) and ran away through the garden and the back lawn of the Episcopal church, where another neighbor saw him and shouted to him. The burglar had on a baggy sweater and an old dirty cap, the neighbor said. His arms were loaded with a large sack and some china and old silver pitchers and lamps, and there were beadlike things hanging out of his pockets. He was unshaven and ran awkwardly, with his head thrown forward, like a horse, the neighbor said. The Rector had seen him too. He’d been watering his hydrangeas at the time. Nobody’d seen him before in Batavia. Apparently he had a car parked somewhere, because nobody had seen him since, either. The Woodworths had insurance, luckily. And so the police had made a routine check, knowing the case hopeless and, anyway, not the kind of case that warranted an all-out effort. Perhaps the stolen goods would eventually turn up, in some junkstore in Lockport, or in a garage somewhere a year from now. They had written their reports, expressed their sympathy to the burgled ladies, and filed the case—having no choice in the matter—and they’d forgotten it.