opinion of the court, that he might be mad. “I am the Rock,” he said thoughtfully, nodding. “I am Captain Marvel.”
None of the other prisoners listened to him much when he first came, and except for young Mickey Salvador, neither did the guards. No one could help seeing that there was a kind of cleverness, even genius, in some of what he said and did. He could quote things at great length (there was no way for them to know whether he was really quoting or inventing) and he had an uncanny ability to turn any trifling remark into an abstruse speculation wherein things that were plain as day to common sense became ominous, uncertain, and formidable, like buttresses of ruined cities discovered in deep shadow at the bottom of a blue inland sea. You could not tell whether he was speaking to you or scoffing at you for your immersion in the false; whether he was wrestling with a problem of immense significance to him or indifferently displaying his hodge-podge of maniac learning. Only this much was sure (it was Miller’s observation, long afterward): whatever he was up to now, in the beginning he must have gone to those books of his hungrily, hunting for something. One could see that he had bent desperately over his books late at night, night after night and day after day, prayerfully even, keeping like a hermit to his no doubt cluttered, filthy room, poring over the print as though his soul’s salvation depended on it. It is unusual, to say the least, to encounter such men in a small-town jail. No wonder Chief Clumly was troubled.
There were those in Batavia who would gladly have listened to him later, would eagerly have searched out, if it weren’t too late, as much as could be known of the Sunlight Man’s thought, hunting down the secrets of his interwoven innocence and violence. But in the jail, at least in the beginning, he had no real audience but Clumly, as he knew. The truth was simple, at that time. First, he smelled. Second, he was an outrageously self-centered, tiresome man, however talented in his odd, unsettling way. No doubt deep down he had two or three of the usual human virtues, but it was not the business of the police to notice either virtues or defects, now that he was jailed. Their business was to keep him in his cell, feed him, and, with professional indifference, see that he stayed alive. As for his fellow prisoners, they had no time for either genius or madness. All three of his fellow prisoners had been in jail before and might have been expected to endure their confinement with some resignation; but two, the Indians, were in serious trouble, and the third, though he knew he would be found not guilty (although he was guilty), had reasons of his own for gloom.
The Sunlight Man seemed to have no sense of how the others felt. He’d never been in jail before, he said, and he apparently believed himself set apart by nature from the others—as if by that perhaps unjust and unwarranted, meaningless brand, like the mark of Cain—so that his punishment was more cruel than theirs, downright absurd, in fact. When the guard shoved him in and closed the door the Sunlight Man leaped back at the bars and clung to them, mouth gaping. Bearded, peering out with those small, close-set, wounded eyes burning deep in the ashes of his face, he looked like some pirate’s minor crewman marooned for half a century, still outraged but deeply befuddled now, near despair. The Indians to his left sat unmoving on their pallets merely looking at him. The middle-aged man to his right had his back turned.
“Guard!” the Sunlight Man howled. The echo boomed at him from all around and he cringed, gorillalike, looking over his shoulder. The Indians said nothing. He gripped the bars tightly and his plump fists went white. He stood silent a moment, like a timid child, returning the calm stare of the Indians, then he began once more to howl for the guard.
At last one of the Indians said, “You get him, you’ll wish you
None of the other prisoners listened to him much when he first came, and except for young Mickey Salvador, neither did the guards. No one could help seeing that there was a kind of cleverness, even genius, in some of what he said and did. He could quote things at great length (there was no way for them to know whether he was really quoting or inventing) and he had an uncanny ability to turn any trifling remark into an abstruse speculation wherein things that were plain as day to common sense became ominous, uncertain, and formidable, like buttresses of ruined cities discovered in deep shadow at the bottom of a blue inland sea. You could not tell whether he was speaking to you or scoffing at you for your immersion in the false; whether he was wrestling with a problem of immense significance to him or indifferently displaying his hodge-podge of maniac learning. Only this much was sure (it was Miller’s observation, long afterward): whatever he was up to now, in the beginning he must have gone to those books of his hungrily, hunting for something. One could see that he had bent desperately over his books late at night, night after night and day after day, prayerfully even, keeping like a hermit to his no doubt cluttered, filthy room, poring over the print as though his soul’s salvation depended on it. It is unusual, to say the least, to encounter such men in a small-town jail. No wonder Chief Clumly was troubled.
There were those in Batavia who would gladly have listened to him later, would eagerly have searched out, if it weren’t too late, as much as could be known of the Sunlight Man’s thought, hunting down the secrets of his interwoven innocence and violence. But in the jail, at least in the beginning, he had no real audience but Clumly, as he knew. The truth was simple, at that time. First, he smelled. Second, he was an outrageously self-centered, tiresome man, however talented in his odd, unsettling way. No doubt deep down he had two or three of the usual human virtues, but it was not the business of the police to notice either virtues or defects, now that he was jailed. Their business was to keep him in his cell, feed him, and, with professional indifference, see that he stayed alive. As for his fellow prisoners, they had no time for either genius or madness. All three of his fellow prisoners had been in jail before and might have been expected to endure their confinement with some resignation; but two, the Indians, were in serious trouble, and the third, though he knew he would be found not guilty (although he was guilty), had reasons of his own for gloom.
The Sunlight Man seemed to have no sense of how the others felt. He’d never been in jail before, he said, and he apparently believed himself set apart by nature from the others—as if by that perhaps unjust and unwarranted, meaningless brand, like the mark of Cain—so that his punishment was more cruel than theirs, downright absurd, in fact. When the guard shoved him in and closed the door the Sunlight Man leaped back at the bars and clung to them, mouth gaping. Bearded, peering out with those small, close-set, wounded eyes burning deep in the ashes of his face, he looked like some pirate’s minor crewman marooned for half a century, still outraged but deeply befuddled now, near despair. The Indians to his left sat unmoving on their pallets merely looking at him. The middle-aged man to his right had his back turned.
“Guard!” the Sunlight Man howled. The echo boomed at him from all around and he cringed, gorillalike, looking over his shoulder. The Indians said nothing. He gripped the bars tightly and his plump fists went white. He stood silent a moment, like a timid child, returning the calm stare of the Indians, then he began once more to howl for the guard.
At last one of the Indians said, “You get him, you’ll wish you
Similar Books
