All the King's Men (61 page)

But my mother was in the living room and called to me. It was a strange place for her to be at that time of the day, but there she was. She had waited to waylay me, I decided. I stepped inside and leaned against the wall, waiting for her to speak.

“You’re going down to the Judge’s” she asked.

I said, yes, I was.

She was holding up her right hand, the back to her, the fingers spread, to inspect the polish on her red nails. Then with her brow ruffled as though the inspection were not satisfactory, she asked, “Oh, politics, I suppose?”

“Sort of,” I said.

“Why don’t you go later on?” she asked. “He hates to be bothered this time of day.”

“There isn’t any time, day or night, when he wouldn’t hate to hear what I’m going to tell him.”

She looked sharply at me, her hand with the spread fingers forgotten in the air.

Then she said, “He is not very well. Why do you have to bother him? He isn’t at all well now.”

“I can’t help that,” I said, feeling the stubbornness grow inside me.

“He’s not well.”

“I cant’ help it.”

“You at least might wait till alter.”

“No, I’m not waiting,” I said. I felt that I couldn’t wait. I had to go on and get it done. The obstacle, the resistance, had confirmed me in that. I had to know. Quick.

“I wish you wouldn’t,” she said, and lowered the hand which she had held up, forgotten, in the air the time we had been talking.

“I can’t help it.”

“I wish you wouldn’t get mixed up in–in things,” she complained “I’m not the one mixed up in this something.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’ll know when I’ve put it up to Irwin,” I told her, and went out of the room, and the house, and walked up the Row toward the Irwin place. At least, I would walk, hot as it was, and that would give the old bugger a little extra time before I popped the question to him. He deserved the extra few minutes, I reckoned.

The old bugger was upstairs lying down when I got there.

That was what the black boy in the white coat said. “The Jedge, he upstairs layen on the baid, he resten,” he said, and seemed to think that that settled something.

“All right,” I said, “I’ll wait till he comes down.” An without invitation I drew open the screen door, and entered into the shadowy gracious coolness of the hall, like the perfect depth of time, where the mirrors and the great hurricane glasses glittered like ice, and my image was caught as noiselessly as velvet or recollection in all the reflecting surfaces.

“The Jedge, he–” the black boy began again to protest.

I walked right past him saying. “I’ll sit in the library. Till he comes down.”

So I walked past the eyes of which the whites were like peeled hard-boiled eggs and past the sad big mouth which didn’t know what to say now and just hung open to show the pink, and walked on back to the library, and entered into the deep, shuttered shadow which depended from the high ceiling and the walls of books laid close like stone and which lay on the deep-red Turkey carpet like a great dog asleep and scarcely breathing. I sat down in one of the big leather chairs, dropped by the chair the big manila envelope I had brought, and lay back. I got the notion that all the books were staring meaninglessly down at me like sculptured stone closed eyes, in a gallery. I noticed, as before, that all the old calf-bound law books there gave the room the faint odor of cheese.

After a while, there was some movement upstairs, then the tinkle of a bell in the back of the house. I guessed that the Judge had rung for the boy. A moment later I heard the boy’s soft feet padding in the hall, and guessed that he was headed upstairs.

In about ten minutes the Judge came down. His firm tread came toward the library door. He paused an instant at the threshold, a tall head above a black bowtie and white coat, as though to adjust his eyes to the shadow, then moved toward me with his hand out. “Hello, Jack,” he was saying, in the voice I had always known, “damned glad you came by. I didn’t know you were at the Landing. Just get in?”

“Last night,” I said briefly, and rose to take the hand.

He gave me a firm grasp, then waved me back into the chair. “Damned glad you came by,” he repeated, and smiled out of the high, tired, rust-colored old hawk’s head up there in the shadow. “How long you been in the house? Why didn’t you make that rascal rout me out instead of letting me sleep all afternoon? It’s a long time since I’ve seen you, Jack.”

“Yes,” I agreed, “it is.”

It had been a long time. The last time had been in the middle of the night. With the Boss. And in the silence after my remark I knew that he was remembering, too. He was remembering, but after he had said it. Then I knew that he had put the memory away. He was denying the memory. “Well, it is a long time,” he said as he settled himself, as though he had remembered nothing, “but don’t let it be as long next time. Aren’t you ever coming to see the old fellow? We old ones like a little attention.”

He smiled, and there wasn’t anything I could say into the face of that smile.

“Damn it,” he said, popping out of his chair without any audible creaking of joints, “look at me forgetting hospitality. I bet you are dry as Andy Jackson’s powder. Little early in the day perhaps for the real thing, but a touch of gin and tonic never hurt anybody. Not you and me, anyway. We’re indestructible, aren’t we, you and me?”

He was halfway across to the bellpull before I managed to say anything.

“No, thanks,” I said.

He looked down at me, the faintest shade of disappointment on his face. Then the smile came back, a good, honest, dog-toothed, manly smile, and he said, “Aw, come on, and have a little one. This is a celebration. I want to celebrate your coming to se me!”

He got in another step toward the bellpull before I said, “No, thanks.”

For a moment he stood there looking down at me again, with his arm lifted for the pull. Then he let his arm drop and turned again toward his own chair, with the slightest slackening visible–or I imagined it–in his frame. “Well,” he said offering something which wasn’t quite the smile, “I’m not going to drink by myself. I’ll get my stimulation out of your conversation. What’s on your mind?

“Nothing much,” I said.

I looked at him over there in the shadow and saw that something was keeping the old shoulders straight and the old head up. I wondered what it was. I wondered if what I had dug up were true. I looked across at him, and didn’t want it to be true. With all my heart, I discovered, I didn’t want it to be true. And I had the sudden thought that I might have his drink of gin and tonic, and talk with him and never tell him, and go back to town and tell the Boss that I was convinced it was not true. The Boss would have to take that. He would pitch and roar, but he would know it was my show. Besides by that time I would have destroyed the stuff from Miss Littlepaugh. I could do that.

But I had to know. Even as the thought of going away without knowing came through my head, I knew that I had to know the truth. For the truth is a terrible thing. You dabble your foot in it and it is nothing. But you walk a little farther and you feel it pull you like an undertow or a whirlpool. First there is the slow pull so steady and gradual you scarcely notice it, then the acceleration, then the dizzy whirl and plunge to blackness. For there is a blackness of truth, too. They say it is a terrible thing to fall into the Grace of God. I am prepared to believe that.

So I looked across at Judge Irwin, and liked him suddenly in a way I hadn’t liked him in years, his old shoulders were so straight and the dog-toothed smile so true. But I knew I had to know.

So, as he studied me–for my face must have been something then to invite a reading–I met his gaze.

“I said there wasn’t much,” I said. “But there is something.”

“Out with it,” he said.

“Judge,” I began, “you know who I work for.”

“I know, Jack,” he said, “but let’s just sit here and forget it. I can’t say I approve of Stark, but I’m not like most of our friends down the Row. I can respect a man, and he’s a man. I was almost for him at one time. He was breaking the windowpanes out and letting in a little fresh air. But–” he shook his head sadly, and smiled–”I began to worry about him knocking down the house, too. And some of his methods. So–” He didn’t finish the sentence, but gave his shoulders the slightest shrug.

“So,” I finished it for him, “you threw in with MacMurfee.”

“Jack,” he said, “politics is always a matter of choices, and a man doesn’t set up the choices himself. And there is always a price to make a choice. You know that. You’ve made a choice, and you know how much it cost you. There is always a price.”

“Yes, but–”

“Jack, I’m not criticizing you,” he said. “I trust you. Time will show which of us is wrong. And meanwhile, Jack, let’s don’t let it come between. If I lost my temper that night, I apologize. From my heart. It has cost me some pain.

“You say you don’t like Stark’s methods,” I said. “Well, I’ll tell you something about MacMurfee’s methods. Listen, here is what MacMurfee is up to–” And I lurched and ground on like a runaway streetcar charging downhill and the brakes busted. I told him what MacMurfee was up to.

He sat and took it.

Then I asked him, “Is that pretty?”

“No,” he said, and shook his head.

“It is not pretty,” I said. “And you can stop it.”

“Me?” he demanded.

“MacMurfee will listen to you. He’s got to listen to you, for you are one of the few friends he’s got left, and he knows the Boss’s breath is hot on his neck. If he really had anything of more than nuisance value, he would go on and try to bust the Boss and not haggle. But he knows he hasn’t got anything. And I’ll tell you that if it comes to a pinch the Boss will fight in the courts. This Sibyl Frey is a homemade tart, and we can damned well prove it. We’ll have an entire football squad in there, plus a track team, and all the truckers who run Highway 69 past her pappy’s house. If you talk MacMurfee into sense, there might be some chance of saving his shirt when the time comes. But mind you, I can’t promise a thing. Not now.”

There was nothing but shadow and silence and the faint odor like old cheese for a spell, while what I had just said all went through the hopper inside that handsome old head. Then he shook the head slowly. “No,” he said.

“Look here,” I said, “there’ll be something in it for Sibyl, the tart. We can take care of that side of it, unless she’s got ideas of grandeur. She’ll have to sign a little statement, of course. And I won’t conceal from you that our side will have a few affidavits from her other boy-friends salted away just in case she ever gets gay again. If you think Sibyl isn’t getting a square deal, I can reassure you on that point.”

“It isn’t that,” he said.

“Judge,” I said, and caught the tone of pleading in my own voice, “what the hell is it?”

“It’s MacMurfee’s affair. He may be making a mistake. I think he is. But it is his affair. It is the sort of thing I am not mixing in.”

“Judge,” I begged, “you think it over. Take a little time to think it over.”

He shook his head.

I got up. “I’ve got to run,” I said. “You think it over. I’ll be back tomorrow and we can talk about it then. Give me your answer then.”

He put the yellow agates on me and shook his head again. “Come to see me tomorrow, Jack. Tomorrow and every other day. But I’m giving you my answer now.”

“I’m asking you, Judge, as a favor to me. Wait till tomorrow to make up your mind.”

“You talk like I didn’t know my own mind, Jack. That’s about the only thing I’ve learned out of my three score and ten. That I know when I know my own mind. But you come back tomorrow, anyway. And we won’t talk politics.” He made a sudden gesture as though sweeping off the top of a table with his arm. “Damn politics anyway!” he exclaimed humorously.

I looked at him, and even with the wry, humorous expression on his face and the arm flung out at the end of its gesture, knew that this was it. It wasn’t the dabble of the foot in the water, or even the steady deep pull of the undertow or the peripheral drag of the whirlpool. It was the heady race and plunge of the vortex. I ought to have known it would be this way.

Looking at him, I said, almost whispering, “I asked you, Judge. I near begged you, Judge.”

A mild question came on his face.

“I tried,” I said. “I begged you.”

“What?” he demanded.

“Did you ever hear,” I asked, my voice still not much more than a whisper, “of a man named Littlepaugh?”

“Littlepaugh?” he queried, and his brow wrinkled in an effort of memory.

“Mortimer L. Littlepaugh,” I said, “don’t you remember?”

The flesh of the forehead drew more positively together to make the deep vertical mark like a cranky exclamation point between the heavy, rust-colored eyebrows. “No,” he said, and shook his head, “I don’t remember.”

And he didn’t. I was sure he didn’t. He didn’t even remember Mortimer L. Littlepaugh.

“Well,” I questioned, “do you remember the American Electric Power Company?”

“Of course. Why wouldn’t I? I was their counsel for ten years.” There wasn’t a flicker.

“Do you remember how you got the job?”

“Lt me see–” he began, and I knew that he didn’t for the moment remember, that he was in truth reaching back into the past, trying to remember. Then, straightening himself, he said, “Yes, of course, I remember. It was through a Mr. Satterfield.”

But there had been the flicker. The barb had found meat, and I knew it.

I waited a long minute, looking at him, and he looked straight back at me, very straight in his chair.

“Judge,” I asked softly, “you won’t change your mind? About MacMurfee?”

“I told you,” he said.

Then I could hear his breathing, and I wanted more than anything to know what was in his head, why he was sitting there straight and looking at me, while the barb bled into him.

I stepped to the chair which I had occupied and lean down to pick up the manila envelope on the floor beside it. Then I moved to his chair, and laid the envelope on his lap.

He looked at the envelope, without touching it. Then he looked up at me, a hard straight look out of the yellow agates, with no question in them. Then, without saying a word, he opened the envelope and read the papers there. The light was bad, but he did not lean forward. He held the papers, one by one, up to his face. He read them very deliberately. Then he laid the last, deliberately, on his lap.