sometimes i think about this and i have to lie down
and it’s so important to me that all of this happens after hayward’s introductory episode, where mr. finch, the farmer whose life he’s about to ruin via the inevitable and inevitably tragic narrative mechanisms set in motion by his mere presence… calls him out on exactly what he’s doing. and says, plainly, that his being nice about it only makes it worse.
because the machine hayward is part of as long as he’s a member of the police force is capable of taking this lonely, dreaming man’s enormous kindness and turning it into, at best, good customer service he’ll provide while he gets down to the business of ruining your life.
i also think about the fact that he runs, when he knows he’s been marked for death by the stink. he tells so many stories and lies, but when the narrative is posed to close a final curtain down on him, he doesn’t play along with the story as he’d told it to us. “they never run…” he’d said about the stink’s ritual sacrifices. so, he runs. he doesn’t obey the story’s rules. because investigating officer hayward knows too much about using stories to snare other people to not recognize when it’s happening to him.
he knows he’s rowing stanton out to something even less than an unmarked grave. he knows he can’t actually promise carpenter anything more than his own good intentions if she cooperates. and the fact that he means the kindness, the gentle strokes as he pulls the rowboat along, the mellow conversation with what he imagines might be left of stanton, the cappuccinos… until he’s no longer acting on behalf of the great and terrible machine, his kindness makes it worse. but it’s still there.
