The Sunlight Dialogues (27 page)

“And then, judgment. Man works for years, he learns certain things, learns to get certain hunches, you might call it, he knows he can trust. But they don’t let him work from his hunches, y’ see. Pretty soon the hunches get confused.

“No, that’s not it either.” Again he fell silent.

“Well, this impatience. Talk about that. Men aren’t properly trained, they start running their job their own way, you can’t count on ’em. Things get out of hand, and you do all you can to get it all straightened out but all the time there’s new troubles coming behind you—kids robbing the meters, for instance, or drunken drivers, or somebody turning in false alarms, and old ladies groaning about this and that—pretty soon you’re out of patience and without meaning to you’ve broken somebody’s jaw.”

The Judge said mildly, “You broke the Indian’s jaw?”

“Mmm,” Clumly said, nodding slowly. He knew he had not told the Judge it was the Indian. “He saw that man come in and let him out. He could’ve said.”

“You knew though, in any case.”

“Correct. Yes. But he could have said. That’s it, right there. It’s not real problems, it’s the lack of cooperation, you might say. The general nuisance. All the same, it was a bad mistake, letting go. Bad for morale, for one thing. And for another thing, it’s dangerous. The whole fabric of Society—”

He mused.

The Judge smoked on.

“We get so many of ’em, in and out down there at the police station, we begin to stop noticing they’re people. When you think about it—” He paused again, all at once remembering the prostitute, Rosemary, on Harvester Avenue. That was what had gone wrong, all right. Because of Kozlowski, it might be, he had seen that she was human. “It makes your blood run cold,” he said.

The Judge said, “Sometimes a man needs to be cold-blooded.”

Clumly frowned, considering.

“When I was young,” Clumly said, “there was a man, a Chief of Police here in Batavia, by the name of Poole. They had a parade for him when he retired. It was something, really something. You may remember it. You see, they kept it a surprise from him. He goes down to the station, the last day, and he works all day and the men don’t so much as mention that he’s retiring today, unless he brings it up. He felt bad enough about that, all right. But then when he goes out through the front door that last afternoon, wham! There they are! ‘Surprise!’ they all yell, ‘Surprise! Surprise!’ And then the drum majorettes start dancing and twirling their sticks and the Batavia Junior-Senior High School Band begins to play, and St. Joseph’s Drum and Bugle Corps, and the people are all singing

For he’s a jolly good fellow
For he’s a jolly good fellow
For he’s a jolly good fellow
Which nobody can …”

Clumly cleared his throat. The room was blurred. “I don’t want anything like that, of course,” he said, blushing. “That’s not what I’m saying. All I’m saying is, when I step down I want people to know—a few people, anyway—I want ’em to know I was a man that did the best he could. He made mistakes, but he fulfilled his responsibilities as best he could.”

“Fulfilled,” the Judge said.

“Correct. That’s what I said.”

“You got the boy a doctor?” the Judge asked.

Clumly nodded. “We transferred him over to Vets. He’s there now. I realize you can’t hide a thing like that. I wouldn’t want to, come right down to it. If a man can’t do the job—”

The Judge set down his pipe. Clumly waited, but for a long time the old man merely thought about it. At last he reached his decision, or so it seemed, and leaned forward. “A singular ambition, distinctly American,” he said. He chuckled silently. “A Retirement Day parade.” Then he stood up and drank from the glass as if it were water.

Clumly said, “You’ll use your influence?—on the other matter, not the parade. As for that—”

Again the Judge chuckled. Experimentally he said, “Surprise!” He chuckled again.

Clumly had made another mistake, he could see. Again blood prickled up his neck.

But the Judge said, “Go in peace, Clumly. You’ll have worse news than this is, the next time I see you. That’s my prediction.”

Clumly bowed his head, compressing his lips.

The Judge put his hand on Clumly’s arm. “Cheer up, your lot’s no worse than mine, in the end. You get plenty of fresh air—” He waved in the direction of the curtained windows, “—and you haven’t got woman troubles.”

Chief Clumly glanced at him in perplexity.

The Judge put a finger to his lips. “As for the advice you wanted,” said the Judge, “I will say nothing at this time. That reminds me, though, I’ve got an article you might like to read. Tell me what you think.”

“An article,” Clumly said, uneasy.

The Judge hunted through the papers on his desk and at last found it. It had been cut from the magazine it came in and was held together with a paper clip. “Ah yes,” the Judge said. “Here.” He held it out.

“Thank you,” Clumly said. He glanced at the title, “Policework and Alienation.”

“Don’t thank me yet,” the Judge said, and smiled.

And so they parted.

5

Second only to William Hodge Sr, Merton Bliss was the bluntest man in the whole of Genesee County. He was shingling the wellhouse roof when Hodge drove up, late that afternoon. The sagging barn behind him was black with age, sunk in brightly blooming burdocks. Bliss pushed back his cap with the side of his hand then drew it back to where it was in the first place, as if his object were merely to let in some air, and sat on his irontoed shoes smiling like a halfwit. He was an odd-looking man. His nose was so narrow and flat at the sides it looked like he’d ironed it. Hodge pulled into the shadow of the wellhouse and looked up. “That how you observe the Sabbath?” he said. Meant to be a joke.

Merton considered it, looking up at the visor of his cap. “Idle hand is the Devil’s instrument,” he said. When he smiled, his mouth made a sharp and narrow V. “I hear that boy of yours killed somebody now.”

“Hah,” Hodge said. The feeling that his life was in ruins welled back. He opened the car door, swallowing, and slid his briefcase across the seat toward him. “We did what we could for those boys,” he said, evading the center of his grief. “There was no way we could know it would come to this.”

“Always does,” Merton said. He had the clearest Western-New York twang in all Western New York—
a’s
that stretched for a rod or more, and
r
’s as rich as elderberries. “It’s in their blood, them Indians. Bill Covert had one of ’m—it must be some forty years ago now. He was a goll-ding good worker, so Bill put up with him, don’t you know. But he was trouble, nothin but trouble. He use to set traps in the milkhouse for Bill—just foolin, of course. Old Bill, he’d walk in with a pail in each hand and when he stepped through the door he’d trip a lever the boy had, and by golly a great big ten-by-ten beam would come dropping on his head.
Aye-uh.
And then another time when Bill was climbing up the mow and he was no more’n a foot from the top of the ladder, why all of a sudden
whooey
down he went sir, tail over tincup. That Indian boy’d sawed that ladder more’n nine-tenths through. He had a sister, Bill did. That poor girl was drove halfway crazy by that goll-ding Indian. One night around the middle of February, it was so cold you had to fold your blankets with a hammer, that poor girl went out to that brick johnny they had behind the house, and that Indian boy snuck out behind her, and the minute she’d just got comfortable he hauled off and threw a pail of water at the door. Well it froze in two seconds. Sealed her up just as tight as a bankvault, and then he went back for more water and did it again. By golly, Hodge, it took us a week and four days to break her out. That’s God’s own truth.” Once more he looked at the visor of his cap, solemn.

“Hah,” Hodge said. He opened the briefcase, resting it against his huge stomach and looking down as well as he could by pulling in his chin. “I brought that deed by, Merton.”

“I thank you kindly. Them Indians of yours are the worst I ever seen though. That’s the truth. They’d be trouble no matter what, but living with that son of yours, why it’s lucky they didn’t scalp that man instead of jest blowing his head off. That Luke. I was driving down the road behind Hobe Dart one time—you know how Hobe drives, bat out of Hades and more’n half-sound-asleep at the wheel—well Hobe swerved over in the left-hand lane, not watching where he’s going, and as luck would have it there’s Luke bearing down on him ninety miles an hour in that semi truck of Paxton’s. Man, I thought, there’s a wreck for sure, and I just pulled on out in the field. Damn lucky I did. How they missed each other I never will know, but by golly they did it—why that whole goll-ding semi was up on two wheels! Whooey! Whooey! Well they no more missed each other than that son of yours throws on his air brakes and goes scootin off the road maybe sixty miles an hour and he drives in a circle around Brumsteads’ barn and then—
whoomm!—
he’s away after Hobe and I thought he’s going to kill him. I just set there in the field with Eleanor, and I says to her, ‘Eleanor, that Hodge boy’s crazy.’ I guess Hobe got away. I hope he did. What’s the matter that boy of yours, I wonder?”

Hodge said nothing, his chest full of dynamite. He was only half-listening. It was Tag who’d let out the Indian. He was through denying it to himself. What was he to do? As for Luke—

Luke’s young,
he could have said. And there was all that trouble he and Millie had had. That was hard on a boy, no question. And the trouble when he and Will Jr broke up, when they couldn’t see eye to eye on anything—“Damn country shyster,” Will Jr had said: but had apologized later, more hurt at having said it than Hodge had been at having had it said. And then Luke’s troubles in college after that, and then all the trouble with Mary Lou’s husband …

As though he were reading Hodge’s mind, Merton said, “And then that son-in-law yours. Lordy. I’ve said to Eleanor a hundred times, Something funny bout that boy. You go look at where he lives. The downstairs all more or less straightened up and clean, as much as you can hope for in a house with nine kids, but on that second story, not a sign of a shade or a curtain on the windows, old clothes piled up to the ceiling almost, and in one of those bedrooms—you know it’s a fact as well as I do—that boy’s got old motorcycle parts. I said to Eleanor, ‘He’s not right upstairs.’ Heh. I’d throw him out if I was Ben. What’s Ben want him there for anyways, big good-for-nothin boy like that? Why he don’t even carry insurance on his life, man with nine little kids. Don’t you worry how I know. They’d be out in the cold if it wasn’t for Will Jr.
He’s
the one buys their insurance for’m. That son-in-law yours, all he wants to do in this live-long world is go huntin with that yappin little beagle of his—it bites, too; I been bit by it myself—or go riding around out on one of them six, seven motorcycles. Rides in the hill-climbs, way I heard. Man with nine little kids and a wife. Lord. And then down in the cellar he does mechanic work. Why it’s criminal! I bet you that house must be a hundred and fifty years old. Worth a fortune if Ben fixed it up. Must have twenty-five rooms in it, ain’t that right? But that brother of yours just lets it slide, rents out the best half to that son-in-law yours for no more’n forty-five dollars a month, big old house, and lets him do mechanic’s work down-cellar. Shoot! I been by there at night, every light in the whole goll-ding house is on—must cost five hundred dollars a month just to light—and I hear those motorcycle motors down-cellar, and you look up there and it looks like the whole doggone house is on fire, just a great big blue cloud of that gasoline smoke all around it as thick as a fog. It’s poisoning the place. And with nine little kids! Seems to me like somebody’d
talk
to him.”

He could have explained. Mary Lou and her husband were good tenants for Ben. They didn’t complain when the well went dry or a crack opened up in the old brick wall, and they didn’t object to the wasps in the attic or the honeybees that lived in the bricks around the chimney. They fixed their own plumbing every time it went out, which was time after time, and put up with the leaks where the rain came in, and jacked up the floors when they sagged. Their boys helped out with the farm work, and if their father was lazy—which maybe he was and maybe he wasn’t—he was a downright genius with motors, and that was a fact. He could tear down one of Ben Hodge’s tractors in an hour and a half and put it together again—whether it was one of the new ones with the latest gadgets or some old Farmall or John Deere twenty years old—so that it was better when he got finished than when it was bought.

All right.

No reason Will Hodge should defend himself against Merton Bliss or Mickey Salvador’s mother or anybody else. “Never complain, never explain,” Millie used to say. Something she’d learned from a man she’d had an affair with once. Rich man, she thought. Lived with a wife and their one sickly daughter in a great big house in Amherst. Millie had told Hodge many a time about all the books her lover read, all the companies he had, how he couldn’t take a job because he was so “wealthy”—her word, not Hodge’s—that if he earned any more his taxes would run him bankrupt. Hah! “You think I’m lying?” she’d said. “I think you’re a little misled,” was how he put it. It progressed. She flaunted the thing, as she always flaunted those affairs of hers, knowing how deeply Will Hodge was shocked. On an impulse, he’d hired a detective, it cost him two hundred dollars. And he’d proved beyond any shadow of a doubt that the man was exactly what Will Hodge had guessed, a fraud. And what did she say to that? “You
monster!”
she said. He saw for a fact he was a monster.

Now, his wide chest bubbling with violent confusion, he was sick to death of it. Sick of being blamed for things, the faults of his sons, the crime of an Indian he hardly knew, the waste that teemed and rumbled around his brother. Blamed by all of them. Blamed by himself.

“Well I guess it’ll cost me plenty, talking to you the way I am,” Bliss said. “That’s how it is. A man gets too old for just sitting around with his mouth shut. Your father would turn in his grave if he saw it, old family place been sold to niggers, and Ben’s place turned to a motorcycle shop, that son of yours tearing down the Brumsteads’ wooden fences and the other son up there in Buffalo working with the Communists. Ding! Well, you just figure up your bill and I’ll pay it. Man can’t beat his attorney, Lord knows, I’m just tired, that’s why it gets my dander up. Seems like the whole darn world must be tired. Vietnam there, all them little yellow fish-head devils in the woods making traps for our boys out of poisonous snakes and nails with pee on them, the way I hear, and these people back at home having marches in praise of the Vietnams. And De Gaulle over there making friends with the Russians, no more grateful for all we been doing for him than a mad dog with the rabies, and the English no better with all their talk, pure Communists theirselves, just playing in the enemy’s hands. Well shoot. You can’t ask for common sense, Lord knows. It’s never been and it never will be. But when I think how it’s going I get sick to my stomach. Truth. Some the best families in Western New York going downhill by tail over tincup. And nobody cares. It makes you sick. How much this cost me, your work?”