The Sunlight Dialogues Read Online Free PDF Page A
Author: John Gardner
down at the station, but they’d waited this long, he decided. They could wait one day more. It was a day for inspections, and for trying to talk with that lunatic, and this afternoon was Albert Hubbard’s funeral. (Flowers for Paxton, he reminded himself.) As a man got older he spent more and more of his time at funerals, or sending out funeral flowers, or standing in the hush where old friends were laid out in their livingrooms or at Turner’s or Burdett’s or Bohm’s.
Fred Clumly enjoyed funerals. It was a sad thing to see all one’s old friends and relatives slipping away, one after the other, leaving their grown sons and daughters weeping, soberly dabbing at their eyes with their neat white hankies, the grandchildren sitting on the gravestones or standing unwillingly solemn at the side of the grave while they lowered the coffin. But it was pleasant, too, in a mysterious way he couldn’t and didn’t really want to find words for. There stood the whole family—three, four generations—the living testimonial to the man’s having been; all dressed in their finest and at peace with one another; and there stood his business acquaintances and his friends from the church, the schoolboard he’d once been a member of, all quarrels forgotten; and there stood his friends from the Dairyman’s League or Kiwanis or the Owls or the Masons. The coffin rolled silently out of the hearse, and his friends, brothers, sons took the glittering handles and lowered him slowly onto the beams across the hole and then stood back, red-faced from their life’s work as truckers or farmers, or sallow-faced from the bank or grocery store or laundry. And there it was, a man’s whole life drawn together at last, stilled to a charm, honored and respected, and the minister took off his black hat and prayed, and Clumly prayed, with tears in his eyes and his police cap over his fallen chest, and so, with dignity, the man’s life closed, like the book in the minister’s hands.
Poor Albert Hubbard. He’d inherited his nursery business from his father and he’d built it up little by little for years, and then, maybe fifteen years ago now, he’d taken in his oldest son and, soon after that, his second oldest. The youngest had moved to Syracuse. Some kind of engineer. The sons had big ideas, and it must’ve been hard on poor old Albert. They filled up two acres with their greenhouses, and they bought up farmland for a half-mile in either direction. They could no more pay for it than fly. It’s the twentieth century, they said. They’d been away to college and learned about economics. You just keep up the interest, they said, don’t you worry about the principal. Old Albert got crankier and crankier. When Clumly would stop by he’d be potching along among the bins of plants, more plants than any ten nurseries could sell, and he’d be wearing the same old felt hat he’d worn twenty-five years ago, or it looked the same, and he’d have on the same old overalls and hightop shoes and his applepicker’s bib.
“Don’ you worry your head about them aphids,” he’d squeak, mimicking his sons, tipping his head down and looking up from under his shaggy eyebrows at Clumly. “We spray around here by the schedule, see, and if the aphids don’t know what the schedule is, don’t you worry, them plants is insured.”
“Well, times change,” Clumly would say.
“Pah! Times change! Why this next Depression’s gonna make that last one look like Heaven’s own feast for the blessed.” He’d move down a plant, shaking his head. “Wal, mebby I’ll be dead by then. I hope so.”
Now he was. Soul rest in peace.
A jay walked up to the porch steps as though Clumly were not there. “Morning, young fella,” Clumly said. The bird looked at him, intelligent, about to speak. Then Esther called, and Clumly went in to eat.
“You look fresh as a daisy,” Esther said. Even when she spoke cheerfully, it was a whine.
“I still get around,” he
Fred Clumly enjoyed funerals. It was a sad thing to see all one’s old friends and relatives slipping away, one after the other, leaving their grown sons and daughters weeping, soberly dabbing at their eyes with their neat white hankies, the grandchildren sitting on the gravestones or standing unwillingly solemn at the side of the grave while they lowered the coffin. But it was pleasant, too, in a mysterious way he couldn’t and didn’t really want to find words for. There stood the whole family—three, four generations—the living testimonial to the man’s having been; all dressed in their finest and at peace with one another; and there stood his business acquaintances and his friends from the church, the schoolboard he’d once been a member of, all quarrels forgotten; and there stood his friends from the Dairyman’s League or Kiwanis or the Owls or the Masons. The coffin rolled silently out of the hearse, and his friends, brothers, sons took the glittering handles and lowered him slowly onto the beams across the hole and then stood back, red-faced from their life’s work as truckers or farmers, or sallow-faced from the bank or grocery store or laundry. And there it was, a man’s whole life drawn together at last, stilled to a charm, honored and respected, and the minister took off his black hat and prayed, and Clumly prayed, with tears in his eyes and his police cap over his fallen chest, and so, with dignity, the man’s life closed, like the book in the minister’s hands.
Poor Albert Hubbard. He’d inherited his nursery business from his father and he’d built it up little by little for years, and then, maybe fifteen years ago now, he’d taken in his oldest son and, soon after that, his second oldest. The youngest had moved to Syracuse. Some kind of engineer. The sons had big ideas, and it must’ve been hard on poor old Albert. They filled up two acres with their greenhouses, and they bought up farmland for a half-mile in either direction. They could no more pay for it than fly. It’s the twentieth century, they said. They’d been away to college and learned about economics. You just keep up the interest, they said, don’t you worry about the principal. Old Albert got crankier and crankier. When Clumly would stop by he’d be potching along among the bins of plants, more plants than any ten nurseries could sell, and he’d be wearing the same old felt hat he’d worn twenty-five years ago, or it looked the same, and he’d have on the same old overalls and hightop shoes and his applepicker’s bib.
“Don’ you worry your head about them aphids,” he’d squeak, mimicking his sons, tipping his head down and looking up from under his shaggy eyebrows at Clumly. “We spray around here by the schedule, see, and if the aphids don’t know what the schedule is, don’t you worry, them plants is insured.”
“Well, times change,” Clumly would say.
“Pah! Times change! Why this next Depression’s gonna make that last one look like Heaven’s own feast for the blessed.” He’d move down a plant, shaking his head. “Wal, mebby I’ll be dead by then. I hope so.”
Now he was. Soul rest in peace.
A jay walked up to the porch steps as though Clumly were not there. “Morning, young fella,” Clumly said. The bird looked at him, intelligent, about to speak. Then Esther called, and Clumly went in to eat.
“You look fresh as a daisy,” Esther said. Even when she spoke cheerfully, it was a whine.
“I still get around,” he