The Sunlight Dialogues by John Gardner Read Free Book Online Page B

with one hand laid over the other in front of him, looking down at the powdered, painted face, or through it into the white silk cushions or the cold dirt under the house. Vanessa was beside him, with her pink-gloved hand hanging on to the tight arm of his suitcoat and her upside-down-milkpail-shaped flowered pink hat tipped queerly above the hair that had been bright red once but was now like old cotton fluff. She was short and wide and walked the way a domino would. When they came away from the casket, Vanessa hobbling on her two gimpy legs and smiling crookedly, like an alligator, Clumly nodded to them.
    “Lo there,” Hodge said, loud as a plank breaking in the hush of the funeral parlor. But before they could get to Clumly, an old lady he didn’t know went up to them, shaking and clutching at Vanessa with one white, liver-spotted claw.
    Clumly wiped his forehead with his handkerchief (it was ninety in the shade, and though it had been cool in the mortuary when he first came in, the crowd had warmed it by now) and moved over to stand nearer Hubbard’s sons. They’d be talking about Vietnam, he expected, or about unions ruining the country (which they were; he’d said so himself a hundred times). He leaned toward them a little, listening, pretending to watch the friends and relatives filing past the casket. He’d guessed wrong. They were talking about houses.
    “It’s that old gray house on the Lewiston Road,” the older one of the brothers was saying. “Used to be the Sojda place, next to Toals’.”
    “On the hill,” the other one said.
    “That’s it. With the big gray barn and the stonewall fence.”
    “I know the place.”
    “Arson, they think.” The older one shook his head. He was small and lean and sharp-nosed, foreign-looking; a little like a Spaniard, or like an old-time alchemist wasted away to pure alum and sharp bits of bone. He was the brains of the nursery business. The other one was short and soft, with a purplish cast to his face and hands. Looked like he belonged in a feedstore, sitting, in the middle of winter, by the stove. There was no sign of the third son. The two older boys’ wives were with them, but neither of them spoke. People said the two wives had terrible fights, at home. In public, they were like stones.
    “Been a lot of arson lately,” the younger one said. “Naturally, the cops never catch the ones that did it.”
    The older one shook his head crossly. “Beats all,” he said. “Cops wouldn’t catch ’em if they came in and locked themselves up.”
    Clumly shrank away. The floral smell which he always thought pleasant at funerals now seemed cloying. It thickened the air and made it hard for him to breathe. He fumbled for a cigar, then remembered he mustn’t smoke here. When he glanced up, the younger Hubbard’s wife was staring straight at him. He nodded and threw a confused, ghastly smile which he vaguely intended as consolation for the bereaved. He meant to leave and took one step, but the younger Hubbard saw him and said, “Chief Clumly,” and stretched out his hand. Clumly turned, caught at the hand and shook it. “So sorry,” Clumly said. “Fine man, your father.”
    “A blessing,” the boy said. It struck Clumly that the young man’s eyes were red-rimmed. He was disconcerted.
    “Blessing, yes,” he said. “Poor devil.”
    The older brother reached over sadly—as if irritably, as well—and shook Clumly’s hand. “So glad you could get away,” he said.
    The smell of the flowers was overwhelming, and the softness of the carpet made Clumly feel unsteady. “I’m sorry,” he said. “Your father was—”
    Both sons nodded. Their wives stood with their arms stiffly at their sides, watching.
    “Hear about the fire last night?” the older one said. “The old Sojda place. Arson, according to the State Police. Right to the foundation, they say.” His eyes narrowed. “I guess you people been having your hands full too.”
    It seemed to Clumly an