The Sunlight Dialogues (60 page)

“Wake up, Fred,” she said, “it’s almost ten. They want you on the phone.”

The room beyond her gray face was toneless and drab.

“A minute,” he said. He struggled to clear the images out of his brain, but against the undertow of his weariness his effort was paltry. “Later,” he said. He scowled, forcing himself to think. “Tell them—” He let himself relax.

“Well all right, Fred,” she said doubtfully. He heard her drawing away.

“Half an hour,” he said.

She gave no answer. The door closed and he felt himself sinking, a little sickeningly, as though it were the earth itself that was falling toward sleep. If he dreamed, this time, he could not remember it later. He knew only that all at once he was wide awake, though lying with his eyes closed. Were the stories true? Had the man really kept a Negro boy locked in his cellar all that time? Impossible! And yet Clumly had half-believed it—half-believed it yet. The image of the horrified white woman leaning toward the windshield, the image of the purse in the grass—convincing. He would telephone St. Louis. And then San Francisco. Yet clearly
both
stories couldn’t be true. Was one of them a lie, a joke? Both? It came to him that what was convincing was less the details than the mockery, the godlike indifference of the man. What in the world could make a man so indifferent? Was
that
the lie, after all? The dreams came back into Clumly’s mind and shocked him.
He insists on calling me his friend,
Clumly thought. He was suddenly angry, but in the same motion of his mind he felt himself drawing back, spying on himself—it was as if he crouched at the foot of his own rumpled bed peeking at himself, or sat on the red asbestos shingled porch roof outside his window, peering suspiciously in.
What makes me so angry, then?
he thought. But there was no time, always no time, always the pressure of events: trouble at the station, they wouldn’t have phoned him otherwise, and something else—he struggled to remember, then placed it: some unlikely story Esther had told him when he came up to bed, or when she got up, it wasn’t clear: a visitor last night, some weird message on a paper airplane. Was that, too, just a dream? But the message was there on the dresser, waiting: he must meet the Sunlight Man again this afternoon. He wouldn’t do it, of course. His foolishness was over; he’d send in Miller and Kozlowski to arrest him, and any talk they had from now on would be down at the station. Anything else would be asking for disaster. No question.

But if he did decide to meet the Sunlight Man this afternoon, which he wouldn’t, he had work to do first. He got out of bed and called down to Esther. While she worked on his breakfast, he looked over the mysteriously delivered note—a map and instructions—then stuffed it in his pocket with the other slips of paper and carried the box wrapped in chains out to the garage, where he had a hacksaw. When he’d sawed the chain through and sawed off the lock he opened the box and found another inside it, wrapped in binding twine, old and dirty, wound round and round and repeatedly knotted—it would have taken an ordinary man a good hour to tie up—and when he’d cut the twine and sawed the second lock he found the pistol. It was still loaded. He hurried back into the house.

Esther said absently while he ate, “Miss Buckland phoned. She noticed you weren’t out on the porch this morning, and she wondered if you were all right.”

“Mmm,” Clumly said.

Esther talked on, mere words, as if her mind were far away, but he scarcely heard her. Nothing was secret, a town like this. Had anyone seen him outside the Mayor’s house, bent to the windowsill? A chill went through him.
Have to watch that,
he thought. He’d known at the time it was not quite sane, and he’d known very well that he’d hear nothing. And yet it had been oddly exhilarating, to tell the truth. The absolute silence of the street, the surprising distance of lawn between the shelter of shrubs along the sidewalk and the shelter of bushes below Mayor Mullen’s window. He’d felt alive, more awake than he’d felt in years, and bending over the hose faucet projecting from the stone foundation of the house—a smell of mint all around him, the earth a little soggy beneath his shoes, lilac leaves scratching at his ear and cheek—he had felt, all at once, indestructible, as if it no longer mattered that if he was caught he would be ruined. There was nothing on earth that could ruin him. It was like standing lightly balanced on the prow of the S. S.
Carolina,
looking down, far down, at his perfect shadow on a sea as smooth as glass. He remembered the time he’d gone off the road in his breadtruck, years ago, and had broken through the guardrail and plunged into the Tonawanda Creek. As the car settled slowly he’d thought “I’m a goner!” and he had felt, to his astonishment and delight, no fear—it was only later he’d felt fear, and even then not real terror: a kind of memory of fear that he might have felt. It had been just like that, crouched outside Mayor Mullen’s window, listening to the subdued, tinny noise of the Mayor’s television. The news.
The murderer reportedly took the nurses from the room one by one, threatening them with a knife.
He listened with the indifferent curiosity of a visiting Martian. And then for some reason the Mayor was at the door—not because of any sound from Clumly but from some mysterious jungle intuition that someone was there, spying. But looking straight at where Clumly crouched, the Mayor could not see him, and he did not trust his jungle feeling, and he looked the other way, then cleared his throat and went back inside. Clumly had smiled. He had crouched there for fifteen minutes, and now it was as if he’d forgotten why he’d come. When the Mayor and his wife talked, Clumly scarcely bothered to listen. He bathed in the feeling of leaves against his face, the ache of his cramped knees, the smell of mint and moist earth. It was something that had happened outside time and space, or so it had seemed then. But time and space were always there, reaffirmed like shrubs and flowers every spring, like birds flitting down to the night crawlers on the lawn with every sunrise. Nothing went unseen. He could almost remember, in fact, that someone had seen him—that he had felt eyes watching him critically, perhaps amused or scornful. He said, breaking into his wife’s vague monologue, “Who phoned?”

She paused. After a moment: “Miss Buckland.”

“No, from the station.”

“Oh. It was Miller. He says Mayor Mullen—”

“All right,” Clumly said. He spoke too quickly, unwilling to hear how much Esther knew. He wiped his mouth and stood up. “I’ll be late again tonight,” he said.

“Very late?”

“No telling.”

Esther sighed. “Be careful,” she said.

As he stepped out onto the porch he saw the fat old lawyer, Will Hodge Sr, just getting out of his car to mail a letter at the box on the corner. Clumly knew at once that something was fishy. “Morning, Will,” Clumly said.

Will Hodge nodded and waved. When he’d dropped the letter he returned to his car and switched on the motor. Clumly had come down the steps now. The morning was already too warm, stuffy as an overheated room in some cheap hotel far from home. Will Hodge said, “Getting a late start, aren’t you?”

“Little bit,” Clumly said. He covered his chin with his hand and watched Hodge pull away from the curb, the rattling old car smooth and dutiful as a lawyer’s reasoning; he drove toward Lyon Street. Clumly shook his head, denying the butterflies under his belt, and went toward the garage.

When he slipped the key into the lock on his office door he found the door already open. The Mayor stood with his arm on the file cabinet, waiting. Back in the cells there was commotion, Miller chewing someone out, and boys’ voices, someone crying.

“All right, Clumly,” the Mayor said, straightening up, “what the devil do you mean?” His face was red as fire, the jaw muscles tight.

“Mean?” Clumly said. He took his cap off slowly, turned half-away from the Mayor, and hung the cap on the rack.

“I’ve been waiting down here for two hours. I’m a busy man.”

“I’m sorry,” Clumly said. “The men will tell you—”

“The men have told me as much as I want to hear. You’re in trouble, Clumly. You think about that.”

Clumly moved over to the window to look out, scowling. The Mayor said behind him, “I asked you over to my office for a friendly chat. Gave you every opportunity. Result?
No
result! All right, what’s the matter over here, I ask myself. Who’s throwing a monkeywrench in the works? Somebody’s not doing his job, I say to myself. By God, it’s time for a look-see. I come over and I sit here for two whole hours, a busy man, and where are you—”

“If all you’ve got on your mind—” Clumly started.

“Fred, you hear me out. I’ve got plenty on my mind.” He was pacing now. “I’ve got murder—two murders—on my mind. Thievery. Prowlers out there in my own goddamn yard. Found the footprints. Right. No kid’s footprints, either. Are you aware this thing’s cast a horror over the whole entire city of Batavia? People can’t sleep! I get phonecalls from morning to night, and your man out at the desk—well, ask him! And what are you doing? Have you got so much as a shred of a clue?”

His head came suddenly to Clumly’s shoulder. The face had gone gray. “Right outside my window, you hear? Right outside my own window!”

“We’ve been doing—” He paused, compressing his lips, tempted to smile.

The Mayor looked startled. But he said: “And now I get a call from the District Attorney. You won’t cooperate, he says. ‘Walt,’ he says, ‘what the devil’s come over Fred Clumly?’ You had a man here, he says, and you had him dead to rights, but you let him slip through your fingers. I talk to Miller. ‘Yes it’s true,’ he says, ‘we could’ve nailed him.’ Course he doesn’t come out with it quite like that. Out of pity, you know; sorry to see the Old Man losing his grip. But push him a little, he admits it. You let the man off. Why?” He jerked his head away. After a moment: “Because the man’s your friend,
that’s
why. You had him dead to rights, but it turns out the man was your friend.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Clumly said.

“Is it?
Is
it? You were seen out walking the streets with him.”

It was a great stroke, the Mayor seemed to think. He beamed malevolently.

Clumly sneered. “Idiotic,” he said. “You tend to your business, I’ll tend to mine.”

“Oh I will,” Mayor Mullen said, “I promise you. And my business is you.” His face was red again now, the ashen look gone completely. “I’m here to tell you you’re in for a formal investigation. You understand that? I give you until tomorrow morning to give me your explanation for all this fol-de-rol—in writing.”

Clumly nodded, touching the sash of the window though he felt no need to steady himself.

“In writing,” the Mayor said again.

Clumly nodded. Then: “How long will this take?”

“What take?”

“The investigation.”

The Mayor sneered, trembling a little with anger. “Not long, you’ll see. A day, two days …”

Clumly nodded. The Mayor walked away. With his hand on the doorknob he stopped and considered a moment, perhaps getting control of himself.

“Listen,” Mayor Mullen said then, forcing himself. “I’m sorry, you hear? I’m God damned sorry about this.”

Clumly nodded. It came to him that he was rattling the little white stones in his pocket, pleasantly clicking them together.

“You’ve been a good cop,” Mayor Mullen said, “and God knows I’m sorry we couldn’t—”

Once again Clumly nodded. “You have to do your duty,” he said. And again he almost smiled but forced a scowl. He looked out the window. Across the street they were washing the firetrucks. They often did that in hot weather. Uphill supervising it, very official. A couple of men stood talking to Uphill, looking over something on a clipboard. The firetrucks shone like Christmas tree balls in his childhood. (He would go swimming with his cousins, hot days like this. He would hold his hand up and let himself sink, showing the others how deep it was, and he would bend his knees and crouch to make them think it was over their heads.)

“Yes,” Mayor Mullen said, grim all at once, “my duty.”

Clumly hardly heard him. It was as though he too were across the street or farther, miles and centuries away. “So long, Walt,” he said. The Mayor said something more, and Clumly said nothing. He thought of the dreams he’d had and fell deeper into reverie. Now he distinctly remembered the door he’d gone through: the front door at Woodworths’, but the door as it had been long ago, when he was younger.

Poor old hags. No wonder no minister came to call on them! What did they do when there was no one there to visit? Not talk, probably; that was too laborious, and the older one would hear nothing. And not walk from room to room; too painful. They sat, then. Silent, patient as corpses. What would the old buzzard Willby say to that—the cop of the soul? Prying into their secret thoughts for their own good, would he find anything there at all? Memories of swimming or dancing or worshipping in pretty-ribboned hats a hundred years ago? Shadows, more likely. Indefinite sorrow and hate. Thank God it was Willby’s responsibility, not his own.—Except that they were Baptists, not Willby’s responsibility but that of the man who made no calls. Someone else’s responsibility then; some neighbor’s. Merciless God! The Reverend Woodworth, dead for half a century now, was remembered as a great caller on the poor and enfeebled—there was a plaque on the Baptist church lawn that told about it. Yet he too had had his building programs, his politics, not to mention his precious collections of paintings and silver and Seneca artifacts, now gone black, crumbling to dust.

Clumly! Clumly! Where are the Woodworth sisters?

Am I their keeper?

He shuddered. They came across the ocean from England and Scotland or over from Holland and up from Pennsylvania, and they cajoled the Indians, sometimes shot them, took the woods and the sloping meadowland and made an Eden out of it—and then moved on. And those who were guiltless of the cruel invasion came in behind them and bought from the Holland Land Office with honest cash, nursed what remained of the Indian nations, the old ones, the drunk and spineless, too sick of body and soul for defiance, much less flight, and they possessed the milk-and-honey land and were known for highborn saints.