All the King's Men (9 page)

“Just wanted to hear you say it, Judge. Somebody told me, but you know how rumor hath a thousand tongues, and how the newspaper boys tend to exaggeration, and the truth ain’t in ‘em.”

“There was no exaggeration in this case,” the Judge said.

“Just wanted to hear you say it. With your own silver tongue.”

“Well, you’ve heard it,” the Judge said, standing straight in the middle of the floor, “an in that case, at your leisure–” the Judge’s face was the color of calf’s liver again, even if the word did come out cold and spaced–”if you have finished your drink–”

“Why, thanks, Judge,” the Boss said, sweet as chess pie, “I reckon I will take another spot.” And he heaved himself in the direction of the bottle.

He did his work, and said, “Thanks.”

When he was back in the leather chair with the fresh load in the glass, he said, “Yeah, Judge, I’ve heard you say it, but I just wanted to hear you say something else. Are you sure you took it to the Lord in prayer? Huh?”

“I have settled the matter in my own mind,” the Judge said.

“Well, if I recollect right–” the Boss ruminatively turned the glass in his hands–”back in town, when we had our little talk, you sort of felt my boy Masters was all right.”

“I made no commitment,” the Judge said sharply. “I didn’t make any commitment except to my conscience,”

“You been messing in politics a long time, Judge,” the Boss said, easy, “and–” he took a drag from the glass–”so has your conscience.”

“I beg your pardon,” the Judge snapped.

“Nuts,” the Boss said, and grinned. “But what got you off Masters?”

“Certain features of his career came to my attention.”

“Somebody dug up some dirt for you, huh?”

“If you choose to call it that,” the Judge said.

“Dirt’s a funny thing,” t he Boss said. “Come to think of it, there ain’t a thing but dirt on this green God’s globe except what’s under water, and that’s dir too. It’s dirt makes the grass grow. A diamond ain’t a thing in the world but a piece of dirt that got awful hot. And God-a-Mighty picked up a handful of dirt and blew on it and made you and me and George Washington and mankind blessed in faculty and apprehension. It all depends on what you do with the dirt. That right?

“That doesn’t alter the fact,” the Judge said from way up there where his head was, above the rays of the desk lamp, “that Masters doesn’t strike me as a responsible man.”

“He better be responsible,” the Boss said, “or I’ll break his God-damned neck!”

“That’s the trouble, Masters would be responsible to you.”

“It’s a fact,” the Boss admitted ruefully, lifting his face under the light, and shaking his face in fatalistic sadness. “Masters’d be responsible to me. I can’t help it. But Callahan–now take Callahan–it sort of seems to me he’s gonna be responsible to you and Alta Power and God knows who else before he’s through. And what’s the difference? Huh?”

“Well–”

“Well, hell!” The Boss popped straight up in the chair with that inner explosiveness he had when, all of a sudden, he would snatch a fly out of the air or whip his head at you and his eyes would snap open. He popped up and his heels dug into the red carpet. Some of the liquor sloshed out of his glass onto his Palm Beach pants. “Well, I’ll tell you the difference, Judge! I can deliver Masters and you can’t deliver Callahan. And that’s a big difference.”

“I’ll have to take my chance,” the Judge said from way up there.

“Chance?” And the Boss laughed. “Judge,” he said, and quit laughing, “you haven’t got but one chance. You been guessing right in this state going on forty years. You been sitting back here in this room and nigger boys been single-footing in here bringing you toddies and you been guessing right. You been sitting back here and grinning to yourself while the rest of ‘em were out sweating on the stump and snapping their suspenders, and when you wanted anything you just reached out and took it. Oh, if you had a little time off from duck hunting and corporation law you might do a hitch as Attorney General. So you did. Or play at being a judge. You been a judge a long time. How it would feel not to be a judge any more?”

“No man,” Judge Irwin said, and stood up there straight in the middle of the floor, “has ever been able to intimidate me.”

“Well, I never tried,” the Boss said, “yet. And I’m not trying now. I’m going to give you a chance. You say somebody gave you some dirt on Masters? Well, just suppose I gave you some dirt on Callahan?–Oh, don’t interrupt! Keep your shirt on!”–and he held up his hand. “I haven’t been doing any digging, but I might, and if I went out in the barn lot and stuck my shovel in and brought you in some of the sweet-smelling and put it under the nose of your conscience, then do you know what your conscience would tell you to do? It would tell you to withdraw your endorsement of Callahan. And the newspaper boys would be over here thicker’n bluebottle flies on dead dog, and you could tell ‘em all about you and your conscience. You wouldn’t even have to back Masters. You and your conscience could just go off arm in arm and have a fine time telling each other how much you think of each other.”

“I have endorsed Callahan,” the Judge said. He didn’t flicker.

“I maybe could give you the dirt,” the Boss said speculatively. “Callahan’s been playing around for a long time, and he who touches pitch shall be defiled, and little boys just will walk barefoot in the cow pasture.” He looked up at Judge Irwin’s face, squinting, studying it, cocking his own head to one side.

The grandfather’s clock in the corner of the room, I suddenly realized, wasn’t getting any younger. It would drop out a
tick
_, and the
tick
_ would land inside my head like a rock dropped in a well, and the ripples would circle out and stop, and the
tick
_ would sink down the dark. For a piece of time which was no long or short, and might not even be time, there wouldn’t be anything. Then the
tock
_ would drop down the well, and the ripples would circle out and finish.

The Boss quit studying Judge Irwin’s face, which didn’t show anything. He let himself sink in the chair, shrugged his shoulders, and lifted the glass up for a drink. Then he said, “Suit yourself, Judge. But you know, there is another way to play it. Maybe somebody might give Callahan a little shovelful on somebody else and Callahan might grow a conscience all of a sudden and repudiate his endorser. You know, when this conscience business starts, ain’t no telling where it’ll stop, and when you start the digging–”

“I’ll thank you, sir–” Judge Irwin took a step toward the big chair, and his face wasn’t the color of calf’s liver now–it was long past that and streaked white back from the base of the jutting nose–”I’ll thank you, sir, to get out of that chair and get out of this house!”

The Boss didn’t lift his head off the leather. He looked up at the Judge, sweet and trusting, and then cocked his eyes over to me. “Jack,” he said, “you were sure right. The Judge don’t scare easy.”

“Get out,” the judge said, not loud this time.

“Those old bones don’t move fast,” the Boss murmured sadly, “but now I have tried to do my bounden duty, let me go.” Then he drained his glass, set it on the floor beside the chair, and rose. He stood in front of the Judge, looking up at him, squinting again, cocking his head to one side again, like a farmer getting ready to buy a horse.

I set my glass on the shelf of the bookcase behind me. I discovered that I hadn’t touched it, not since the first sip.
Well, to hell with it
_, I thought, and let it stand. Some nigger boy would get it in the morning.

Then, as though he had decided against buying the horse, the Boss shook his head and passed around the Judge, as though the Judge weren’t a man at all, or even a horse, as though he were the corner of a house or a tree, and headed for the hall door, putting his feet down slow and easy on the red carpet. No hurry.

For a second or two the Judge didn’t even move his head; then he swung round and watched the Boss going toward the door, and his eyes glittered up there in the shadow above the lamp.

The Boss laid his hand on the doorknob, opened the door, and then, with his hand still on the knob, he looked back. “Well, Judge,” he said, “more in pain than wrath I go. And if your conscience decides it could gag at Callahan, just let me know. In, of course–” and he grinned–”a reasonable time.”

Then he looked over to me and said, “Let’s haul ass, Jack,” and started down toward the front door, out of sight.

Before I could get into lower gear, the Judge swung his face in my direction, and focused his eyes on me, and his upper lip lifted under that nose to form a smile of somewhat massive irony, and he said, “Your employer is calling you, Mr. Burden.”

“I don’t use any ear trumpet yet.” I said, and pulled off toward the door, and thought to myself:
Christ, Jack, you talk like a snot, Christ, you are a smart guy
_.

I had just about made the door, when he said, “I’m dining with your mother this week. Shall I tell her you still like your work?”

Why won’t he lay off?
_ I thought, but he wouldn’t, and that lip lifted up again.

So I said, “Suit yourself, Judge. But if I were you I wouldn’t go around advertising this visit to anybody. In case you changed your mind, somebody might figure you had stooped to a low political deal with the Boss. In the dark of night.”

And I went out the door and down the hall and out the hall door and left it open but let the screen door slam.

God damn him, why hadn’t he laid off me?
_

But he hadn’t scared.

We left the bay, and lost the salt, sad, sweet, fishy smell of the tidelands out of our nostrils. We headed north again. It was darker now. The ground mist lay heavier on the fields, and in the dips of the road the mist frayed out over the slab and blunted the headlights. Now and then a pair of eyes would burn at us out of the dark ahead. I knew that they were the eyes of a cow–a poor dear stoic old cow with a cud, standing on the highway shoulder, for there wasn’t any stock law–but her eyes burned at us out of the dark as though her skull were full of blazing molten metal like blood and we could see inside the skull into that bloody hot brightness in that moment when the reflection was right before we picked up her shape, which is so perfectly formed to be pelted with clods, and knew what she was and knew that inside that unlovely knotty head there wasn’t anything but a handful of coldly coagulated gray mess in which something slow happened as we went by. We were something slow happening inside the cold brain of a cow. That’s what the cow would say if she were a brass-bound Idealist like little Jackie Burden.

The Boss said, “Well, Jackie, it looks like you got a job cut out for you.”

And I said, “Callahan?”

And he said, “Nope, Irwin.”

And I said, “I don’t reckon you will find anything on Irwin.”

And he said, “You find it.”

We bored into the dark for another twenty miles and eighteen minutes. The ectoplasmic fingers of the mist reached out of the swamp, threading out from the blackness of the cypresses, to snag us, but didn’t have any luck. A possum came out of the swamp and started across the road and might have made it, too, if Sugar-Boy hadn’t been too quick for him. Sugar-Boy just shaded the steering wheel delicately to the left, just a fraction. There wasn’t even a jounce or twitch, but something thumped against the underside of the left front fender, and Sugar-Boy said, “The b-b-b-b-bas-tud.” Sugar-Boy could thread a needle with that Cadillac.

At about the end of that eighteen minutes and twenty miles, I said: “But suppose I don’t find anything before election day?”

The Boss said, “To hell with election day. I can deliver Masters prepaid, special handling. But if it takes ten years, you find it.”

We clocked off five miles more, and I said, “But suppose there isn’t anything to find?”

And the Boss said, “There is always something.”

And I said, “Maybe not on the Judge.”

And he said, “Man is conceived in sin and born in corruption and he passeth from the stink of the didie to the stench of the shroud. There is always something.”

Two miles more, and he said, “And make it stick.”

And that was all a good while ago. And masters is dead now, as dead as mackerel, but the Boss was right and he went to the Senate. And Callahan is not dead but he has wished he were, no doubt, for he used up his luck a long time back and being dead was not part of it. And Adam Stanton is dead now, too, who used to go fishing with me and who lay on the sand in the hot sunshine with me and with Anne Stanton. And Judge Irwin is dead, who leaned toward me among the stems of the tall gray marsh grass, in the gray damp wintry dawn, and said, “You ought to have led that duck more, Jack. You got to lead a duck, son.” And the Boss is dead, who said to me. “And make it stick.”

Little Jackie made it stick, all right

Chapter Two

The last time I saw Mason City I went up there in that big black Cadillac with the Boss and the gang, and we burned up that new concrete slab, and it was a long time ago–nearly three years, for it is now into 1939, but it seems like forever. But the first time I went up there it was a lot longer time ago, back in 1922, and I went there in my Model-T, hanging on to the steering post to stay in the saddle when I sideslipped in the gray dust, which plumed out behind for a mile and settled on the cotton leaves to make them gray too, or when I hit a section of gravel, holding my jaws clamped tight to keep the vibration from the washboard from chipping the enamel off my teeth. You’ll have to say this for the Boss: when he got through you could drive out for a breath of air and still keep your bridgework in place. But you couldn’t that first time I went to Mason City.

The managing editor of the
Chronicle
_ called me in and said, “Jack, get in your car and go up to Mason City and see who the hell that fellow Stark is who thinks he is Jesus Christ scourging the money-changers out of that shinplaster courthouse up there.”

“He married a school-teacher,” I said.

“Well, it must have gone to his head,” Jim Madison, who was managing editor of the
Chronicle
_, said. “Does he think he is the first one ever popped a school-teacher?”