King Cole (13 page)

“…to say that we were shocked is to put it mildly. Your son especially… I can hardly talk about it. Drinking whiskey; meddling with those really awful loose girls. Incredible! We’ve always been proud of John Cole. He is a very talented young man, a little sullen, a little brusque; difficult sometimes; but in the last analysis a fine specimen of American young manhood…”

The Colonel began to remind Read of Senator Greeley; he had the same unction, the same essential emptiness. Why didn’t he come to the point? Read pictured Johnny’s precociously intelligent, satirical face. The Colonel was certainly not the man to advise or instruct Johnny, who was already an enemy of sham.

The Colonel glanced at Read, feeling that his attention had wandered. Clearing his throat loudly, he went on:

“I won’t go into detail. Captain Davies’ letter, I think, conveyed all that was necessary. I know you must be tired and under a great strain, Governor, after the deplorable events of last night; your being here at all speaks volumes. How you must love your son. I really didn’t expect you. Captain Davies and I were talking it over and…”

There was a knock.

“Yes? Come in.”

A tall angular man with a big bony face opened the door and stepped in. He was in uniform. He bowed slightly and took off his cap.

“Captain Davies, our Commandant, Governor Cole. Captain Davies is a West Pointer.”

“How do you do, Governor. It’s a great pleasure.”

“Anything to report, Captain?”

“Well, Cadet Simpson seems to be weakening. His mother is a widow, you know, Colonel. She hasn’t much money. It’s a sacrifice for her to send her boy here. I’m using that angle. I think he may tell.”

Read glanced away, veiling his contempt.

“I’ll want Cadet Cole in a minute, Captain.”

“Yes, Colonel. Right away. I’ll have him in the hallway.” The Captain went out.

“Here is our plan, Governor,” said the Colonel. “We’ve promised absolute immunity to the boy who tells where the liquor was procured. No punishment. The rest must be disciplined. I’ll be frank and say that if your son weren’t involved all would be expelled. But that is out of the question, of course. Governor, please prevail upon your son to tell us where the liquor was bought. I’d rather have him tell. I hate punishing him. Cadet Simpson doesn’t matter. He’s a troublemaker. Comes from very ordinary people.”

“Have the Captain bring Johnny in.”

“Wouldn’t you like to talk to him alone?”

“No.”

The Colonel glanced at Read, puzzled, then he rang. In a moment, the door opened and Read glanced up. There was his son Johnny, looking big and strong in his khaki uniform. His black hair was smoothly combed and parted nicely. His rather heavy face was pale and sullen. Read was surprised at the size of his son. Why, he must be over six feet and big in the shoulders, a typical athlete except for the rather sulky, sharply intelligent face.

Johnny brought his heels together smartly and saluted the Colonel, then he turned and smiled slightly at his father.

“Hello, Johnny. In trouble, I see.”

“Hello, Dad.”

“Sit down, Cadet Cole,” boomed the Colonel.

Johnny sat down, lounging for a moment; then he remembered; he sat bolt upright and folded his arms across his chest. Captain Davies came in and closed the door, standing with his back against the wall; his blue eyes cold and inquisitorial.

“Cadet Cole,” said the Colonel, “we are giving you one last chance. You understand what is expected of you. Your father, the Governor, has come all the way down here, hoping that you’ll do your duty as you should and tell us the name of the monster who was low enough to procure whiskey for young boys…”

Read pitied Johnny and sympathized with him. He understood Johnny’s dilemma if these martinets didn’t. Johnny was facing a crucial test. According to the code of boys and young men everywhere, there was nothing worse than a snitcher. You could steal and lie and bully and brag, and still retain the respect of your companions. But if you had that streak known as yellow and snitched under compulsion, you were beyond the pale.

Read saw Johnny wetting his lips and glancing up first at the Colonel, then at his father. Was he wondering at the obtuseness and conventionality of adults? Was he sneering inwardly at the Colonel’s gross exaggeration of a trivial incident? Was he bewildered by the clash of inimical points of view, the Colonel’s and the school’s?

After all, no matter how intelligent, he was just a boy going it alone, faced by constituted authority in the person of the Colonel, the Commandant, and his own father!

Read got a little anxious and stared off across the brown, melancholy country, wanting a cigarette badly, but knowing that the Colonel would silently disapprove. He didn’t know exactly what to do. He knew that he had greatly disappointed the Colonel by refusing to urge Johnny to clear the matter up. He also knew that Johnny was very much puzzled by his noncommittal attitude. Both the Colonel and Johnny expected him to interfere and guide the course of the interview. But he just couldn’t do it. So far as he was concerned, the Colonel and the peccadillo didn’t matter at all. Johnny’s reaction to this affair, however, mattered very much. Read was afraid that, if he spoke, he’d influence Johnny unduly. It was one of the most trying moments of Read’s life. He fidgeted and twice reached absent-mindedly for his cigarette case, stopping halfway.

The Colonel glanced at Read questioningly, as if asking for his help, then he continued: “Haven’t you anything to say, Cadet Cole? You’re an intelligent boy; one of our best, scholastically. You know right from wrong as well as we do. Do you want hours of quad? Do you want to have your liberty restricted for the rest of the year? Do you want to see yourself at the bottom of the merit list when you’ve always been at or near the top?’’ The Colonel leaned forward. “Do you want to be excluded indefinitely from participation in all extracurricular activities, including athletics?”

Johnny squirmed.

“This and more will happen to you, my boy, if you don’t do your duty. Look at your father: Governor of our great State. Do you suppose he wasted his time drinking whiskey and… and associating with low, immodest girls? Do you suppose, putting him in your place by some superhuman stretch of the imagination, he’d let some silly childish scruples deter him from doing his duty? He’d know it was to the best interests of the school and the student body for him to tell. A man who will get liquor for boys and pander to their worst instincts is no better than a snake. He's your enemy and mine. Why protect him?”

Johnny squirmed, raised his eyes to his father’s face as if looking for encouragement or condemnation, then in a husky voice he asked:

“You mean, Colonel, that I can’t play basketball, or baseball, or be on the track team next year?”

“That’s what I mean. We simply can’t grant favors to boys who won’t cooperate.”

Johnny looked at his father again. Read avoided his eyes.

“No,” said Johnny.

“You mean,” said the Colonel, gaping, “that in spite of everything, and with your father here, you decline to help us?”

“I won’t tell.”

“That’s final?”

“Yes, sir.”

Read cleared his throat.

“Johnny,” he said, “are you sure you know what you’re doing? Take a little time now. This is serious. Are you absolutely certain you haven’t got anything to say to the Colonel?”

Johnny hesitated, staring uneasily at the floor.

“Yes,” said the Colonel; “think how your father must feel about all this.”

Read again avoided Johnny’s eyes. He felt that he wasn’t playing fair, that he was piling it up on Johnny; but it had been absolutely necessary that he say something.

“I’m sorry, Dad,” said Johnny with an effort. “I just won’t tell.”

“Captain Davies, see that Cadet Cole is confined to quarters. That’s all,” said the Colonel, sharply.

When Johnny and the Captain had gone, Read said:

“He’ll never do any good here now, Colonel. He loves athletics. Send him home on sick leave Wednesday. Then we’ll see what can be done.”

The Colonel got up stiffly. He was very much disappointed in the Governor.

“As you wish.”

Later, Read climbed the stairs to Johnny’s room in the dormitory. Read was so pleased that he could hardly contain himself. Johnny had stood the gaff like a man. This school was no place for him. Johnny already had more sense than either the Colonel or the Commandant.

Read knocked. Johnny opened the door. Read saw another cadet sitting doubled up on the bed, crying.

“Hello, Dad,” said Johnny, glancing a little timidly at Read. “I wanted to tell on your account. But I couldn’t. I just couldn’t.”

“What’s the matter with that boy?”

“That’s my roommate, Simp Simpson. He squealed. They talked to him about his mother and he squealed.”

Read glanced hurriedly at his watch.

“I’m sorry, Johnny,” he said, “but I’ve got to go. You’re coming home Wednesday. We’ll find a better school for you.”

“What! You hear that, Simp? I’m going home! Good Lord, Dad; you’re all right. I thought you were mad at me. I thought you wanted me to tell old Pom-Pom… the Colonel, I mean…” Johnny blushed heavily.

“No; I don’t like snitchers any better than you do. But I want to have a serious talk with you, Johnny, when you get home. This kind of thing won’t do at all. You ought to know better.”

“I know. I’m sorry. I’ll never do it again. Really, I won’t. It wasn’t even fun. It was disgusting.”

On the way back Read sat smiling.

“Wait till I tell Gregg about this,” he crowed.

Read ate his dinner quickly at a big restaurant and roadhouse at the edge of town. The proprietor, Tom Biggs, was prominent in the American Legion, a big fat rugged ex-topsergeant, a friend of Sullavan’s and an energetic Read Cole man. On state occasions he sometimes served on the Governor’s Staff, and would appear in an immaculate uniform studded with medals. In uniform he was very martial, as stiff and domineering as the goose-stepping Germans he had hated so some years back. In civilian clothes, surrounded by the patrons of his big and popular restaurant, he was all smiles and geniality.

His eyes had popped when Read appeared, followed by Barney, who was carrying two guns now and was as nervous as Read was calm.

“I’m in a hurry, Tom,” Read had said.

“Yes, sir. Right this way, Governor. We’ll fix you up in a private room. Nobody will know you’re here. I don’t think anybody noticed…”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“Fix me up a table in the hall, Mr. Biggs,” Barney had said, and had shrugged when Read laughed.

Now Read was through with his dinner and sat glancing at the papers the waiter, overawed and nervous, had brought him. One paper had a long crowing article entitled: Exodus of Radicals. It irritated Read and he flung it aside. Why must people be such asses? In another paper he read that Asa Fielding had gone into hiding; that there had been serious rioting in Youngstown; that the Mayor of a northern city had declared openly his sympathy with the so-called Vigilantes; and that the election of Read Cole was now almost certain. A Cincinnati paper, always conservative, said that now all the ”better element” could sit back with a sigh of relief; Read Cole was as good as re-elected, and so peace and prosperity would be assured for Ohio.

Read laid the paper aside and stared at the smoke rising from his cigarette. It was not as easy as that, he meditated. He was not elected yet, far from it. And if he was elected, things would be about the same. There would be no great upheaval; no overnight change for the better; things would go along as before and pretty soon the very papers now shouting so loudly for him would be putting him on the pan, forgetting that “peace and prosperity were now assured.”

Men, Read had found, lived by their passions, their instincts, their prejudices. They were not rational animals at all. Read had few illusions. He expected the worst from men. Consequently, he was hard to shock; was able to retain his balance through events that would seriously upset other men. He had seen “idealists” and reformers crumple up all around him. He had had a surfeit of them when he was working on the progressive legislation which he had finally jockeyed through an indifferent House and Senate by methods known to all politicians, great and small: vote trading, sandbagging, even mild forms of blackmail. The reformers had quailed at the unmistakable signs of venality and selfishness they had discerned in the legislators; the reformers had their heads in the clouds; they would never try to deal with reality until it hit them in the face. They were no good on earth; pretentious and even dangerous windbags almost to a man. Read disliked the lot of them.

There was a knock at the door. Barney came in.

“You told me to tell you when it was eight o’clock, Governor,” he said.

“Thanks. We’ll get started. I want you to drive me to Major Bradley’s.”

Tom Biggs came in, smiling and rubbing his hands together.

“How was your dinner, Governor?”

“Excellent.”

“Fine. Fine. The chef almost fainted when I told him who was here. He was afraid he couldn’t fix you up anything good enough. Now, now. Put your money right back in your pocket. You can’t pay for anything here. It won’t work. Golly, Governor, but you surely stood them on their, ears up at Steelton. Boy, I’ll say the gang at our Post was delighted. Know what they did? They took a flag the Rainbow Division brought back from France and draped it around your picture. Was they sure enough coming up over the seats after you?”

“It looked like it.”

Barney cut in.

“They was, and here he goes driving around all over the country with just me along. It’s too much responsibility for me, Governor. I could hardly eat my dinner.”

“Control yourself, Barney. A good Irishman like you!”

“Don’t think I’m scared. There never was a man could scare me. But I don’t like the responsibility, that’s all.”

“Say the word, Governor,” said Biggs, “and I’ll send you over a real bodyguard. The boys from the Post would get a big kick out of seeing you didn’t get hurt. And you wouldn’t, with that bunch of Indians around!”