As she was passing the police station she frowned and her lips stopped moving and she stopped to think. Then, abruptly, she turned up the walk to go in. Why not? She would stay for just a moment. A nice surprise.
As she touched the door it opened away from her as if by itself, and she was startled.
“Well look who!” a cheerful voice boomed at her. Miller, she realized after an instant. “Hey Shorty! Look what the cat dragged in.” Again he laughed, and Esther felt, suddenly, like Esther the Queen. She heard Figlow coming around his desk to greet her. Behind him the police radio was crackling and spitting as usual, and overhead the old-fashioned fan was mumbling softly. The room smelled of smoke and linseed oil—the oil on the floor.
“Hello there, Mrs. Clumly. Long time no see,” Figlow said. He took her hand and squeezed it, like a gentleman. “To whatta we owe the occasion of this honor?”
“I thought I’d just drop in and say hello,” she said. “I was passing by, you know. Is Fred in?”
“The boss?” Miller said. “He went home.”
She could imagine him smiling at her, winking perhaps.
“Home?” she said.
“Yuh, home,” Miller said. “Six-thirty and pazooey! he’s out.” He talked very fast and it made her a little confused.
“Well, when he called,” she said. She smiled uncomfortably. “He said he might be—late.”
“You see the ole man around, Figbar?” Miller said.
“Gee I’m sure he went home,” Figlow said.
“I see,” she said. He’d changed his mind then. What a fool she’d been. When he found the house empty he’d be worried sick. She should have known better. “Well, I guess there’s nothing for me to do but—”
“Hole up,” Miller said, “lemme see’f I can getcha ride. Eh pisan!” He was calling beyond Figlow to someone else. The one he called to came toward them.
“My kid,” Miller said. He sounded proud, and again she was filled with a kind of warmth. “Thomasa, meet the boss’s old lady.” He laughed, and a young, strong hand took hers.
“I’m very pleased to meet you,” the boy said. He was sixteen or so, and his voice was very nice, very refined.
“Name’s Tommy,” Miller said, “but we call him Einstein. He’s smart, see? Gets it on Jackie’s side—his mother’s.”
They both laughed, and Esther smiled tentatively, feeling shy, then abruptly joined the laughter.
“Got him down here to help with some papers and stuff. You won’t tell, eh? Big secret, see. We get behind as all hell, and the hurrier we go the behinder we get, like they say in Pennsylvania. So we figured we’d bring down Tom. Call him a consultant.”
“I’m glad to meet you,” Esther said. “Fred’s mentioned you often.” It wasn’t true.
“Thank you,” he said.
“Hey listen, drive Mrs. Clumly home for me, will you? Take the prowlcar.”
He did something with keys.
Figlow was turning away, going back to his work. “It’s good to see you, Mrs. Clumly,” he said. “Long time.”
“It’s good to see you too, Sergeant Figlow,” she said.
“There you go,” Miller said. “And hey, baby, please, watch the stop-signs, for the citizens’ sake?”
“No siren?” the boy said. She had a feeling they were joking, but she couldn’t be sure.
“Not if you can help it,” Miller said.
They laughed. Then the boy took her arm and turned her gently toward the door. He smelled of shaving lotion, and she would have liked to put her fingertips to his face to see what he looked like. She believed he must be handsome. At the top step he squeezed her arm lightly, and she’d already responded, stepping down, before it struck her that he must have guided blind people before—he knew the signals. No wonder his father was proud of him. Such a good boy, he was. She felt tears coming.
“It’s really nice out,” he said.
“Yes it is,” she said. “I wonder what time it is?”
“Oh, nine, nine-thirty maybe.”
She nodded, thinking in horror, that late?
At the sidewalk he said, “Here’s the car. Excuse the cigarette holes in the seat.”
Esther laughed. She really did feel like a queen.
She had no idea where they were going. She always lost all sense of direction in a car. She knew only that he drove as beautifully as he did everything else—drove like his father, in fact. She’d ridden with Miller now and then and had always liked the feeling. When Fred drove, you were sure you would go through the windshield any minute, unless you went through the back of the seat first, when he started up. Even her worry about what Fred would be thinking, sitting in the house alone at this hour, did not prevent her from enjoying the smooth comfort of Tommy’s driving.
After a moment he began to talk. “I certainly admire your husband,” he said. “Dad does too. He says your husband’s the finest police chief in New York State.”
“Why thank you,” she said.
“It’s true.” He sounded serious, troubled. “It’s getting hard to keep up with police work in a town like Batavia. Dad says it’s darn near impossible to operate except in the big cities, with things changing the way they are. And of course the big cities have plenty of problems of their own.”
She thought about it. At last she ventured, “Changing?”
“Well, technology, you know? Bureaucracy. I guess that sounds silly—big words always do.”
Why yes, she thought. Yes. Like poems. He is very bright.
“Anyway, you just don’t have the equipment in a town like this, and yet law enforcement is as complicated in a little town as in a city, in a way. I mean, the State puts the same demands on a town as on a city. It’s the same as the grocery business.—I used to work for Perkowski, in the grocery store. They make laws for grocers, health laws and things, they make you put in open-top freezer cases and then they make you take ’em out and put in a different model, because there’s a possibility of gas escaping from the old model or something like that, and the corner grocer has to go along with it just as if he could afford it. Or farming. I talked to a guy once. It was really something. On a dairy farm they have these milk inspectors, and they made a rule that all the dairy farmers had to put in Pyrex tubing that took the milk from the barn to the milkhouse. It cost thousands of dollars to install—I don’t remember how much he said, exactly. And then they discovered there was no way of cleaning the things—though actually that was stupid too, of course: in chem labs they clean tubing with steam, but the State’s never heard of that, I guess. Anyway, they found there was no way of cleaning the tubing, so they made the farmers rip it all out. Naturally, you couldn’t sell the stuff, once the State had come out against it. All over New York State there are barns with Pyrex tubing hanging on the wall like old harness leather. Just one thing after another like that. No wonder all the small businesses break down. At Perkowski’s grocery they have to pay the same wage as Loblaws’ pays, and yet all Perk’s got working for him any more is his own family. Isn’t it crazy? Buck-sixty an hour they pay. When I left there they hired a Negro kid named Ronald for ninety cents an hour, the same as I got, and if you ever saw the inside of Perk’s house you know darn well he’s paying more than he can afford to, even at that. So along comes the minimum, and the kid’s out of work and Perk’s doing one more man’s work alone. It’s the same down at the station, only worse. Perk can at least go out of business when he wants. You can’t very well put a police station out of business. It makes you think you ought to go into politics.”
She thought about it. Yes.
“What do you plan to go into?” she said.
“Ministry, I guess.”
“That’s very good. Your mother must—”
“It’s Dad, really. Or, really, it’s my own thing. But Dad’s funny. Big brute like that, used to be a Marine, looks like he oughtta be a prize fighter. But he’s a funny guy, really. He thinks nowadays—” He let it pass away.
> “You like your father very much, don’t you.”
“He’s a good man.”
“I’m so happy for you,” she said. She could not hold back tears.
“Well,” he said, but again he retreated, and her heart went out to him.
“What were you going to say?” she said.
“He really would like to be a minister himself. You know how it is. He’s sorry for those guys he takes in—old drunks and kids mostly—and yet he has to take them in, naturally. He even has to realize that in a way they can be dangerous. You may understand why some tough little hood feels the way he does about a cop, but it doesn’t mean it’s safe to turn your back on him or let him think you’re his friend.”
“That must be hard, yes.”
“And then the few real criminals you can catch these days, the judges let them off. Or the laws do, I mean.”
“That’s too bad,” she said sadly.
“Well, win a couple, lose a couple,” he said.
“Yes, that’s so,” she said.
“It’s a funny world,” he said.
He sounded, that instant, exactly like Fred. It was Fred’s favorite expression, in fact: It’s a funny world. Had the boy learned it from his father, and his father from Fred? She felt sadder and sadder. Furtively she wiped her cheek with the back of her right hand.
For a moment there was silence.
“Where are we?” she said.
“Ellicott,” he said. “I thought I’d go up to North and then down Oak.”
She nodded. It wasn’t the shortest way, but even her hurry to get home did not prevent her from feeling glad that the ride would be longer.
“Hey,” he said suddenly, “there’s his car.” He was slowing down.
“Whose?” she said.
“Your husband’s,” he said. “The Chief’s. It’s parked.” He brought his own car to a stop, very gently, and then began backing up.
“Is he in it?” she asked.
“I don’t see him. Wonder what he’s doing?”
“Where are we?” she said. An uneasiness began to rise in her, a kind of premonition. Was he all right? Six-thirty, they’d said. That was when he’d left. It came to her now, finally, that it had been six-thirty when he’d called to say he’d be late.
The boy said, “I don’t know. In front of a house, lot of trees. I can’t see the number.”
“He’s not in the car?”
“Nope. Funny, isn’t it.”
They mused. There was a pain in her throat, as though her heart were lodged there and hurting.
“Well, I guess I may as well take you on home.” But he didn’t start up. The motor went off.
“Do you see something?” she said. She steamed her ears.
“He’s behind us, up the street aways, standing in some bushes.”
Now she was shaking. “What do you suppose—”
“He’s just standing there in the shadows. He doesn’t look at us. I don’t know if he’s even noticed we’re here.”
“What bushes? What kind of house?”
“The bushes under the front window. He’s listening or something. It’s a big white house with shutters.”
“Oh,” she said.
“Oh-oh,” the boy said. “There’s somebody coming to the door, opening it. He’s turned the light on.”
“Does he see him?”
“Not yet. No, the Chief’s ducked down, he’s out of sight. The man’s turning. Thinks he made a mistake.”
“We’d better leave,” she said. He was starting the car already.
“Funny,” he said. “It’s the Mayor’s place.” The car started forward with a jerk.
VII
The Dialogue
on Wood
and Stone
1
The Oliver Cleatrac howled and popped and whined and Ben Hodge sang, plowing up, the way it looked from where he sat, a field as big as the world. It was close to eleven at night; he plowed by the lights on the tractor. Where the hill rimmed, ahead of him, it looked like the edge of the flat earth; beyond it stretched immeasurable sky, in the center of it, poised like a dancer on one foot, towering Orion. The steel cleats slipped along at each side of him, gleaming and quiet as flowing oil, and against the light of the dashboard gauges the gloved fists closed on the left- and right-wheel brake handles, thumbs pointing upward, were huge and solid as churches. He came to the rim of the hill and dipped over, and the roar of the tractor lightened for a moment then steadied again, urging the five plows onward, hammering like a fast, steel and diesel-fuel heart in the tractor chest. He could see from here the security lights around Jim Hume’s barns and silos, beyond that the silver of the highway and the shaggy back of the woods. As he neared the lane fence a paintless and dented panel truck moved into the aura of his headlights. Merton Bliss.
Hodge stopped singing. The night went gloomy. When he came to the lane he pulled back hard on the left-wheel brake, pivoting sharply, tipped the plow out of the ground the same instant, and heaved in the clutch. He shut down the motor. Even idling it was too loud to talk above. He was deaf for a moment. Then he began to hear, faintly, the sound of frogs. He pressed the sides of his head, popping his ears open, and suddenly the sound of frogs, of light wind passing through the weeds, a sound of ducks far away were clear and pure. Bliss stood leaning on the fence in his loose bib-overalls.
“Od do,” Hodge said.
“Evening. Yer workin late.”
“Just ketchin up,” Hodge said. He leaned his forearms on the wheelbrake handles. It would take Merton Bliss a long time to get to what he’d come for.
“How’s the wife?” Hodge said.
“She’s fine, jest fine. Little spell of asthma this last few weeks. You can count on it, this time of year.” He talked about her asthma, told one of his stories, shook his head as if he too could barely believe it. They talked then of politics, in the age-old style of Western New York farmers, arguing shades of a point of view no longer remembered, much less believed, in most of the world; spoke, sorrowful and incredulous, of all that was falling apart in the world; to Bliss an outrage, a matter of plots and stupidity; to Hodge a subtle mystery. It was against his faith that the bulk of humanity was stupid or indifferent or selfish. Why the world was going as it was he could not fathom, but he could not think it was treachery. “Well yes, but then again,” Hodge said. He leaned into his right shoulder, pointing his huge gloved fist at his neighbor’s chest.
They spoke of Hodge’s sermon at the Bethany church.
“You make ’em sit up and take notice,” Bliss said, “and that’s the truth.”
Which was good, coming from Bliss. He too knew storytelling.
Hodge was having a hard time lately getting pulpits to speak in. It’s the ministers, he said. Bliss nodded, understanding. It was good to have a man you could speak to about it.
“They don’t preach the old way,” Bliss said. “It’s all full of reasoning, don’t you know. There’s too much of that in the world, that’s my opinion. You listen to one of those ministers, it’s all like multiplying fractions. It makes your head ache.”
“That’s the truth,” said Hodge. He said, “Been working out a sermon about punishing.” He slid his jaw forward, thinking. “I was thinking of telling the stories of some people that were stoned to death, in old Greek times, and what they were stoned for, and then some stories about people that were burned, and then some about hanging and electrocuting. I thought I’d mention what we do to people that write obscene books, and just mention some things you find written in the Bible, or in Shakespeare. I’ve been toying with it.”
Bliss shook his head. “You can’t get away from it though. Evil is evil. A man has a child—”
“That may be,” Hodge said. “I don’t know.”
They talked about next year’s crops, about the Cleatrac.
“That boy Luke,” Bliss said.
Hodge grinned. “Seems to me you got it in for that boy, some reason.”
r /> “Ding right,” he said. “That boy’s owed me twenty-four dollars for going on a year. I sold him a ewe.”
“That’s too much for a ewe,” Hodge said.
“Mebby so, but he took the price.”
“You’ll burn in hell, Merton Bliss, and that’s God’s truth.” He grinned.
“Wal I’ll tell you, though. I went over to his house, place all lit up like Santa was coming, and that boy wouldn’t come to the door.”
“He’s not well,” Hodge said. “Passes out sometimes.” The night’s gloom came back.
“Not this time, by gol. I could see him setting there, and his mother too. They never batted an eyelash.” He pushed his head forward over the fence. “Gol ding, let me tell you. I went home all right, but I got to thinkin, and this mornin I went over to his mother’s place, going to lay it on the line. Wal, whattia think?”
Hodge waited.
“Not there. Wasn’t nobody there. I looked all around, and pretty soon I just happened to notice that cellar door was open. You want to know something, Hodge? There’s somebody been living there.”
“No,” he said.
“Wal I know what it could be, all right. People know pretty well how it is with her. No offense to your family. Just the same, it’s mighty ding strange, somebody living in a divorced woman’s cellar. You got to admit it.”
Hodge nodded.
“I was you, I’d look into it. That’s all I’ve got to say.”
Hodge took it in, no longer meeting Bliss’s eyes. “What kind of things were down there?” he said.
“Canned food, some little boxes with padlocks, shoes.”
“I’ll look into it,” he said. “Could be she doesn’t know.”
“Could be,” Bliss said doubtfully.
“Well, thanks for letting me know,” Hodge said.
“Sure thing. Just thought it’s my duty, being a friend of the family and that.” He drew back a little, preparing to leave.
“Thanks,” Hodge said.
“Sure thing.”
If there was something he’d come to borrow, he forgot to say.