Marguerite would be sitting there right now, of course, worrying where on earth he was, and it was a week yet before his trial. It wasn’t healthy, a man that was fifty-five years old, with a known bad ticker, lying in a drafty jail cell not getting his sleep and worried sick. And what if they should find him guilty this time? It seemed impossible, they had nothing on him, nothing that would stick. But he was worried. The man with the beard, that was the thing. Benson, he had said. Boyle shuddered.
The bearded one said now, scornfully, as if set off by something the Indian had said, “Pain! Let me tell you about pain, boy. You get inside my skin for one week, you go live for just one day with my blind, crippled mother with her ‘Bruce did you this’ and ‘Bruce did you that‘—or you talk for one hour with my poor palsied father, or watch him—pitiful!—sweeping the sewers of Dallas, Texas, with his knobby knees bumping and his shrunken head bobbing—an heir to the crown of Poland once!—then maybe you’ll know something about pain! O Father, forgive them! They know not whom they screw.”
Boyle clamped his eyes shut and pressed his hands to his ears. Still the voice ranted on, but it was faint now, and it seemed to come from behind him instead of in front. He could feel his pulse against the heels of his hands and could hear it thumping like a streetcar hitting rail joints. It frightened him. He heard the Indian laugh shortly, full of scorn. Then, for a while, it was quiet. He tried to sleep, but he couldn’t for a long time. The bed was narrow and hard as a rock, and a wrinkle in his shirt, underneath him, poked into his flesh. He thought of Marguerite lying like a mountain in the middle of their queen-size bed, her mouth collapsed with the teeth out, her legs wide apart and her arms thrown out to the sides. How good it would feel to crawl up beside her, nudge her great bulk over with his back (his feet braced against the cool wall) and give himself up to that mattress! Even the fold-down seat in the Rambler would be fine compared to this. All sensation had gone out of his arms and legs now, so that he had a feeling of falling, possibly dying. To help check his fear he imagined himself stretched out in the Rambler with his shoes in the open glove-compartment and the doors of the car locked. He usually parked just off the main street of whatever little town he was passing through. Back streets made him nervous. If there was a Y.M.C.A. or a cheap hotel where he was working or in any of the towns within driving distance, he stayed there. He had seen things in his time all right. Poor people, sick people, crazy people. The world was getting worse. That was why he and Marguerite were childless. It was criminal to bring children to a world like this. But he could get along, of course, himself. When he finished for the day he would settle with a paper and would pass his eyes along the words, or he would memorize poetry by Edgar A. Guest, or would doze. At home he would sit in his yard with a bottle of orange pop (he was not a drinker) or would water the flowers or, rarely, watch television, and he could not really say he was dissatisfied.
When his wife Marguerite entered his thoughts, cutting a large mimeographed paper into tiny, irritating scraps and smiling at something he couldn’t see, he realized he was asleep. “Thank God,” he thought, and was awake again for an instant, but only for an instant.
After that he heard nothing at all until, hours later, it seemed, the anarchist gave a kind of gasp, not loud but somehow chilling. “Go ahead,” he whispered, “touch it. It’s blood all right. Taste it. In remembrance of Me.”
“What’s he doing?” the younger Indian said. He sounded as if he’d been asleep.
“Opened up his wrist somehow,” the older one said. “It’s to prove how great he is.”
“It’s blood,” the bearded one said. He sounded wild now, angry, or maybe frightened. “Taste it, go ahead.”
“Is he killing himself?” the younger one said, growing interested.
The older one grunted.
“I could,” the Sunlight Man said, proudly. “I’d never bat an eye.” He laughed wildly, and Boyle thought, dead sure he was right: Faking. Why?
They said nothing. Boyle began to sweat.
“Mother Jesus, he really is loopy, you know that? I mean somebody must’ve spun him around too much in the swing.”
“Free, not loopy!” the Sunlight Man exclaimed. “Capable of gratuity!” He laughed with delight. “Also loopy, however. A difficult matter to define. A withdrawal from reason.”
“Yeah, sure,” the younger of the Indians said. “That’s neat. Keep it up.”
After a minute the bearded man’s laughter changed to whimpering. “It hurts,” he said. “Ow.” Finally he was quiet. Now Boyle could smell the blood. He wrung his fingers.
The older one said in the thick silence, “He is crazy.” He seemed to muse on it. In his mind, Boyle could see the older Indian lying on his back staring up into the dark, turning it over. “But also he’s pretending.”
In the morning they saw there was a long, clotted gash on the anarchist’s left arm, from his elbow to his wrist, and there was blood spattered on his already filthy trousers. He showed it off to the guard and did his shuffling dance and gave Walter Boyle the finger. Boyle turned away.
The guard was uneasy, probably about what the Chief would say. He said, “What happened? You, Boyle, you see it?”
“I was asleep,” he said.
“Since the day he was born,” the Sunlight Man yelled. He clapped his hands, his elbows going out, and leered at them. “Asleep since the day he was born.”
“Shut up, Mac,” the guard said. He went to get the Chief and, after that, the doctor. That afternoon they took the bearded one away. When he was leaving, he said, “I’ll be back, my friends. If I’m not, think of me when they’re strapping you into the chair.”
The one called Miller said, “You. Can it.”
The Chief of Police had his hand on his chin, and his eyes were narrowed to needles of icy blue.
They went out with the prisoner.
7
At ten-thirty that night the woman died. Nick and Verne Slater knew already by the time Luke Hodge came to tell them, the following morning. The guard had heard it on the radio and gave them the news with their breakfast. Luke stood with his hands in the pockets of his old bib-overalls and looked past them while he talked. He had a deep, resonant voice, like all the Hodges, but unlike the others he was thin, almost girlish, with big, lean ears, so that the voice was ridiculous, as though he had a loudspeaker in his chest. His ears stuck straight out from his deeply tanned, girlish face.
Verne said, “I guess that makes it worse for us?”
“Sorry,” Luke said.
Nick said, “Where’s your old man been? We need us a lawyer.”
He pretended to know nothing about it. He lifted his eyebrows, still looking past them and reached with two fingers for the Kents in his shirt pocket. “He’ll be in, probably. You know how he is. Busy all the time.”
“Like shit,” Nick said.
“Don’t look at me,” he said. “I didn’t even know he hadn’t been in.” He lit the cigarette and shook out the wooden match without offering them a smoke. Verne grew sullen.
“Nobody been here at all,” Verne said. “It’s more than a fucking week. You’d think the whole town was in Florida having vacation. I wouldn’t minded too much for my brother. But me, I’m just a baby.”
“I can see it must’ve been rough,” Luke said. He looked at his feet, the corner of his mouth drawn back, letting smoke out.
Nick said, “How come you came now?”
“I thought you’d want to hear.”
Nick nodded, squinting and snapping his fingernail lightly, again and again, at one of the polished nickel bars. “It must be unpleasant for you, having to tell us.”
Luke glanced at him for a second, then away. “Not too bad,” he said.
Nick smiled, fighting the fear building up inside. “No, not too bad, I guess.”
“Sorry,” Luke said, and this time it was not ironic. He’d pulled back inside himself; his face seemed to close up, and you might as well be standing in some other room.
br /> Verne said, “Hey, look. Give a bastard a puff, will you?”
Luke stared right through him, deaf, and Verne looked surprised.
“It’s all right,” Nick said, touching Verne’s arm. Then to Luke: “There’s a guy says they’ll give us the chair. Is that true? Can they?”
“You’ll have to talk to Dad. I got no idea.”
“If he shows,” Nick said.
Again Luke swept his glance toward him and past, uneasy, and no doubt they were thinking the same thing. The deal was off. Ben Hodge had nothing to do with it now. There was no more question of waiting out the probation. And so Luke Hodge was out from under, it was done with.
Nick’s legs were unsteady. When Luke was scraping the cow manure off, Nick had leaned back on the whitewashed stone cowbarn wall and had laughed till he could hardly see. It wasn’t as if it would kill him, a little cow manure. And Luke had asked for it, he knew that himself. What about all those other times—running their asses off in the haylot to get in the bales before the rain came, or combining wheat till eleven at night because tomorrow there might be wind? But that had been back in the beginning. A lot had happened.
“Ok,” Nick said, “thanks for coming by.” Strange to say, he felt relieved, in a way, as if the breaking of the lifeline were not so much a failure of hope as a release into wide, calm drifting. He was on his own, with nobody to turn to. He was partly glad.
Still Luke didn’t leave. He said, talking to the floor, “Take it easy. I’ll tell the old man to come talk to you.”
“We’d really like that,” Verne said. “We really would enjoy it.”
Nick said nothing, exploring the weird sensation, a pleasant numbness of emotion. He felt taller.
Then, not looking at either of them, Luke relented and handed the pack of cigarettes and the matches through the bars and turned to go.
Nick ignored it. He went and sat on the pallet, after Luke was gone, and hung his head between his knees and waited for the feeling to die. Later he said, “I’ll tell you something. We got to break out.” He glanced over at the thief. Boyle seemed to be paying no attention, studying his paper.
“Don’t be crazy,” Verne said. “Just take it easy. The old man’ll fix it.” After a moment, “He’s done it before.”
“Just keep quiet, will you?” Nick said. “There is no old man. Christ, don’t you get anything?”
“Quiet as a mouse,” Verne said, eyes wide. “Watch me.—What you mean?”
It was at noon, when Salvador brought them their lunch, that they learned that the Sunlight Man had escaped. In the end cell, Boyle jerked his head around, pale, and smiled as though he were responsible for it all.
8
Short-handed. So to Kozlowski he said—Kozlowski in the act of checking out for the night—“Kozlowski, you! Hold up.” The Sunlight Man stood with his hands handcuffed behind his back, his head thrown forward, chin up, beard jutting out.
“You want something, Chief?”—Kozlowski.
“Correct,” he said.
And so they were in Car 19, Kozlowski at the wheel, Chief Clumly beside him, in the back seat Figlow and the prisoner. It had rained again last night, but the rain had left no coolness: a thickness of muggy air like the thickness in a cellblock.
“Vets’ Hospital,” said Clumly.
“Positive,” Kozlowski said.
Clumly shot him a look, then let it pass. It was hell running a police department. Element of personalities. Pure hell. He said, sitting forward, screwing up his eyes, “Hell of a thing, Kozlowski. See the cut on that man’s arm?” Very serious, bringing Kozlowski into it. That was the way.
Kozlowski twisted his head around; then he looked back where he was going. “Can’t see it. He’s sitting on it,” he said.
“It’s a grave indignity, having to sit on your hands,” the Sunlight Man said. “Abandon fingers, all ye who enter here.”
“Can’t you keep that man quiet?” Clumly said.
Figlow hit him in the ear.
And so they went through the high brick gates of the Veterans’ Hospital and shot up the long driveway to the hospital front door.
“Ok, buster. Out”—Figlow.
“Don’t hit me”—the Sunlight Man—”I’m obeying you. Look!”
Figlow hit him.
“You wait here, Kozlowski,” Clumly said. “I’ll check him in, and then Figlow can stay and stand guard. Check?”
“Positive,” Kozlowski said.
Clumly bit his lips. Out of patience, he shook his finger and said, “Quit that.” He turned on his heel and went to the door, where Figlow was waiting with the rifle in the Sunlight Man’s ribs.
“In, buster,” Figlow said.
The Sunlight Man walked ahead of them and his head bobbed slowly up and down in time with his steps. And now a room with half-dead rubber plants, a black formica-topped coffee table (round) with six-month-old magazines in plastic covers and pamphlets: Your Social Security, The Older Veteran. An old man with no teeth, dressed in pajamas and a dirty, sagging bathrobe, stood watching, working his mouth. His hair was wiry and uncombed as blown-down wheat.
“Wait here,” said Clumly.
When Clumly was back again with the room number, Figlow said, “Will somebody spell me later, Chief? I forgot my lunch.”
“God damn,” Clumly said. He thought a minute. “Go see if there’s some kind of machine or something. You got money?” He gave Figlow fifty cents.
And so they waited, Clumly and the old man in the pajamas and bathrobe and Sunlight.
The old man said, chomping his loose lips, “Some kind of crimnul?” Squinting like a citizen.
“That’s right,” Clumly said.
The old man walked around them. Stood. “Dangerous?” he said.
Clumly scowled at him and decided to ignore him. He nodded the Sunlight Man to a chair and sat down across from him, the rifle pointed casually at the prisoner’s head.
“He stinks,” the old man said. A matter of fact. Clumly glanced at his watch.
The Sunlight Man said meekly, “Is it really necessary that I sit on my hands?”
Clumly glared at him but considered. At last, against his better judgment, he said, “Ok, up.” He got up himself. When the Sunlight Man’s hands were cuffed in front of him, they sat down again. Clumly glanced at his watch. “Aren’t you supposed to be somewhere?” he said to the old man.
Nothing.
Again they waited. The Sunlight Man said, leaning closer, so that his head bumped Clumly’s shoulder, “I’m sorry it’s been hard on you. A lot of police get the wrong idea when they arrest me. The way I figure, we do this business together, the cops and the robbers. This is a democracy. You follow me?”
Clumly tapped the rifle barrel nervously, his heart quaking, but he couldn’t make out what it was that frightened him. “No talking,” he said.
The Sunlight Man nodded meekly. “I just wanted to tell you before we part that I understand your position. I have very great respect for you.” He patted Clumly’s knee with his cuffed-together hands. “I wish you the best. I mean that.” His voice was vibrant with sincerity, but when Clumly shot him an alarmed glance, the Sunlight Man was leering at him, showing his yellow teeth. Clumly leaped up and crossed to the door to look down the hallway for Figlow. Still no sign.
“Also,” the Sunlight Man said, behind him, “I want to give you something, before we part.” He was standing now.
Clumly turned his head.
“First, this.” He held out Clumly’s wallet. Chief Clumly’s heart stopped cold. When Clumly didn’t reach for the wallet, the Sunlight Man dropped it on the coffee table.
The old man in pajamas pursed his loose lips and scratched his head. His eyes grew larger.
“And now this.” He held out Clumly’s old brass whistle.
Clumly covered his mouth with his hand. It came to him that his time had run out, but even now he could not make out what it was that was going to happen.
“This.
” The bullets from Figlow’s rifle.
“This.” His keys.
“This.” His pistol.
“And this.” Figlow’s pistol.
“And finally, sir, this.” He gave him the handcuffs.
The bearded man turned to leave.
Suddenly Clumly found his voice. “Don’t try it,” he roared. He aimed the pistol at the Sunlight Man’s back, dead on, but the man kept walking. Clumly’s heart was hammering. “Figlow!” he yelled. He tipped up the pistol and fired at the ceiling. Click. The Sunlight Man turned, smiling, scratching his hairy ear. “Ah yes,” he said, “I forgot.” He held out his empty hand, closed it, opened it again. There lay the bullets. Calmly, he held them out to Fred Clumly. Cunningly—a sudden flash of genius—Clumly caught hold of the bearded man’s hand, squeezed with all the force he had and hurled the man clumsily to the floor. They rolled, bellowing, blowing like horses. Clumly raised his fist, murderous, to hit him in the neck, but he caught himself just in time. It was as if he’d gone crazy. He felt outraged and terrified. A whooping noise began to come from his mouth, uncontrollable. The man underneath him, staring up with bugging eyes, was the old man in the bathrobe.
How? Chief Clumly would ask himself later, distraught, raising his clenched fists in the blackness of his bedroom. How did he do it? A tortured cry as old as mankind, the awed and outraged howl of sanity’s indignation: for there is more to a magician’s tricks than the lightning of his hands, hands softer, gentler on your shoulder than the wind stirred by a butterfly’s passing, yet surer than a knife. The great deceiver has no heart. He neither loves nor hates unless, conceivably, he loves himself. And why he comes to us again and again to amaze and mock us, no mortal man can guess.
Kozlowski jumped.
“All hell’s broke loose,” Figlow yelled. “Give me that radio.”
“What happened?”
“The prisoner’s escaped,” he said, “and the boss has flipped his lid.”
“You’re kidding!”
“See how I’m laughing.”
In a matter of minutes there were five more cars at the hospital, Kozlowski waiting at the front door, Clumly and Figlow around in back. But he must have been out already. It was only the beginning. They waited half the night, standing with their rifles in their arms on the searchlight-gray lawn, and inside, they tore the place apart. A little after midnight the Mayor arrived, and Wittaker with him.