The Just And The Unjust (25 page)

From a coign of vantage, unreachable, withdrawn behind his pale wise opaque eyes, Jesse inquired suddenly, 'Want to run for district attorney in the fall, Ab?'

It was not that Abner couldn't answer; but, exactly like Leming on the stand this afternoon when Harry hounded him, the answer was demanded before there was time to get it ready. Here was a trick of Abner's own trade, the calm but sudden devastating question. Abner knew all its dangers and he also knew the defence. Judge Coates often said, and indeed it was not only his saying, but the wisdom of the ages, that when you were not sure what to answer, then keep your mouth shut. This was advice so simple and clear that nobody could doubt or mistake it. What anybody could do, and what most people did do, was forget to remember it. The impact of surprise and embarrassment opened Abner's mouth, and before he could stop, he had said 'Well, that depends —'

'What's it depend on?' said Jesse, sitting back farther in his chair. Jesse's tone, the tone of the much-tried man who asked a plain question and could not get a plain answer, suggested that Jesse was resigned to beating about the bush (but did not see why he had to), and Jesse's movement, which was that of settling himself as comfortably as possible to wait out the explanations, made Abner say sharply, 'Well, for one thing, it depends on Marty, of course.'

Abner saw at once that this was another mistake. Either Marty had told him of his plans, or Marty hadn't. If Marty had, what was Abner's idea in pretending he didn't know them? If Marty hadn't, did the answer mean that Abner was ready to be sounded out behind his boss's back? Abner repaired it as well as he could. 'Marty told me he was thinking of resigning,' Abner said, 'but until he does —'

'Look, Ab,' Jesse said patiently, 'every now and then you say funny things. Marty's one of the best district attorneys in the state. You know what his record is. He could keep the job just as long as he wanted it. You don't have to worry about that. When he quits, you're naturally in line for it. If you want to run, that is.'

'Frankly —' said Abner. He paused; for, frankly, what he wanted was to get out of this, to end the discussion (how, hardly mattered). After all, he had one advantage over a hapless defendant on the stand. If he wanted to get down, he didn't have to wait until Jesse said he might. Abner said, 'As a matter of fact, I don't know how good a candidate I'd make.'

'Well,' said Jesse dispassionately, 'your name's worth something. A lot of people know you; but practically everybody in the county knows your family. You've had this experience working with Marty. He thinks you're the man. The Judges would be satisfied. From what I hear, we 'll have Art Wenn running against us again. He won't be hard to beat.'

Art Wenn was a lawyer from Warwick, a big cheerful back-slapper. Most people liked Art, and he was widely acquainted. His politics were loud and vigorous —at the last election, when he ran against Bunting, half the fence posts and telephone poles in the county had come out with red, white and blue cardboard squares bearing simply the words: SAY WENN. This quip was much appreciated; but, on counting the votes, three-quarters of them, more than the normal majority, were for Bunting. It was safe to guess that Art's exuberance and hearty ways, while they made people like him, won him little support. He was not taken seriously.

Abner said, 'Well, if Marty thinks I ought to run, I don't mind.'

'You don't mind,' said Jesse. 'If you aren't any keener about it than that, do you know what I think? I think we'd better get somebody else, if we can. It's an important job, and the man who has it ought to feel that. He ought to be willing to give all he's got to it; not just say he doesn't mind if he has it.'

Put thus entirely in the wrong, Abner searched for words. A resentment, all too impotent, but rising, at the idea of Jesse reading him a lesson in principles filled him with a certain heat. 'I think it's an important job,' Abner said slowly. The thought came to him that since he had made such a mess of it, a little more wouldn't hurt — would, in fact, be a relief. 'That's why I wouldn't take it, if I found I was going to be — well, obligated to someone.'

Jesse said, 'I don't quite get you, Ab. Do you mean that you think Marty's obligated to someone?'

'No, I don't mean that,' Abner said, 'and you know damned well I don't!'

'Well, what do you mean?' Jesse said. 'Say it. You can say anything you like.'

'Thanks!' said Abner. 'Well, I'll tell you this. If I were district attorney and anyone called me up about some friends of his —' He necessarily paused. 'Sure,' said Jesse. 'Go on, go on.'

'No,' said Abner. 'I won't. I guess what I mean is this. I don't like politi — politics, so I guess you're right; you'd better get somebody who does.'

'Well,' said Jesse, 'we can do that.'

'O.K.,' said Abner, 'good night.' He got up and walked over to the open door.

'Just a minute, Ab,' Jesse said.

Abner turned, and Jesse went on, 'You're a young man and I'm an old one, so suppose I give you some advice. I don't know who said it first, but it's been a lot of use to me. Old Senator Perkins said it to me once. He said, "You wouldn't worry so much about what people were thinking of you, if you'd just remember that most of the time they're not."'

'What is that supposed to prove?' said Abner.

'Well, go along, Ab,' Jesse said, 'I can't explain it to you.'

Abner went through the shadowed ante-room and closed the ground glass doors after him. The Childerstown Building & Loan office was shut now and in dead air and echoing silence he went downstairs and out on to the shadowed street. His mind felt sore all over. He had not exactly had a row with Jesse — what he said didn't amount to a row.
So I
told him he'd better get someone else; I simply said to him
,
I
don't like politics
— in short, he rejected the proposals; only, as it happened, no proposals were made him. If he rejected anything, he rejected the possibility of proposals. Jesse had asked his 'advice' about who would be a good justice of the peace; and then asked him if he wanted to run in the fall; and Abner answered that he didn't like politics; and that if he were district attorney and anyone asked for favours he would — he implied — refuse them. A connection did exist; but it wasn't strong or cogent. Could he say that confronted by a certain situation he had taken on principle certain steps? He had in fact acted on impulse, in a mood or state of mind in which instead of doing what he meant to do, he did what he meant to avoid, refused what he really wanted, and with unprovoked pique, out of hand, in a minute, came to new and definite decisions that might — more than might, must! — affect his whole life.

Walking up to where his car was parked behind the courthouse, Abner did what he could to adjust himself to such a great change of plan. It would certainly be a load off his mind. When you were in the district attorney's office they kept you on a sort of treadmill. Quarter Sessions were sure as death and taxes. You cleaned up the term's trial list, and as soon as you were through, indeed, before you were through, it began all over again. Night and day, people (and often old familiar ones) were busy with projects considered or unconsidered, which would suddenly collide with the law and become public. In advance you could count on case after case — always fifteen or twenty — of operating a motor vehicle while under the influence of intoxicating liquor. Boys were swiping things because they had no money; and some of them were going to be caught and held for burglary, larceny, and receiving stolen goods. There would be forcible entries here and felonious assaults there. Somebody would wantonly point a firearm; and somebody else would sell malt beverages on premises without licence. Fornication had duly resulted in bastardy, and the Commonwealth was charged with seeing that the disgruntled father supported his little bastard. Heretofore respectable, an old man would feel indescribable urges to expose himself to women, and this was open lewdness. Forged instruments would be uttered, fraudulent conversions attempted; and, in passion or liquor, somebody might seek to kill a man or rape a woman.

And so the indictments piled up. The district attorney's office saw the prisoners, and talked to witnesses and listened to complaints. They arraigned the guilty pleas in Miscellaneous Court; and prepared the others for the grand jury. The county officers brought in to them the non-support and desertion cases; prisoners became eligible for parole, and the parole violators were picked up. Keeping step with it all (or sometimes a little behind) the papers to be signed and the forms to be filled kept accumulating — recognizances; petitions for appointment of counsel, for approval of bills of expense, for attachment, for condemnation and destruction of contraband, for support and to vacate support, for writs of habeas corpus ad prosequendum and ad testificandum; the criminal transcripts; the warrants; the waivers of jury trial — anyone ought to be glad to get rid of all that. Not to mention the endless hours in court while you asked formal tedious questions to foregone conclusions, while you waited for juries to make up their rambling minds, for his Honour to get through in chambers, for absent witnesses to be found and produced, for court to open and court to adjourn — 'My God!' thought Abner. 'What a way to spend your life!'

Abner drove home. As he left the car at the front steps he heard Lucius, calling from the stables, 'Say, Mr. Abner, you come here just a minute?'

'No, I can't!' Abner said. 'What do you want?'

'See this mower, see here?'

'Do you think I have telescopic sights?' Abner called. 'What did you do, break it?'

'No, sir!' said Lucius. 'It wasn't getting enough spark. I just —'

'I'll bet you did!' Abner said. He walked down the path through the clumps of overgrown spirea. Lucius had the old lawn mower, powered with a gasoline engine, out on the flagstones before the stable doors. He lifted one greasy hand and scratched the tight fuzz on his head. 'Go on; turn it over,' Abner said.

'It don't do no good,' Lucius said. 'I been working on it all afternoon. They electrocuted those men yet?'

'Not quite,' Abner said. 'I see in the paper yesterday where you said —'

'Go on; turn it over!'

Lucius gave the lanyard a jerk. The flywheel went around; the exhaust coughed. 'Got any gas in it?' Abner said. 'If you have, the feed line's choked.'

'Yes, sir —' said Lucius. He paused and said, 'Perhaps I don't have quite enough in. It goes better, you don't fill it too full.' Turning, he went toward the stable door. 'Get a little bit more,' he said.

Abner bent down and unscrewed the cap of the fuel tank. It was empty. To Lucius, coming with a gallon glass jug of gasoline, he said, 'So hot to-day, it must have all evaporated^ Goon. Fill it up, and it'll go all right. But you won't have time to cut any grass now.'

'Well, that beats all!' Lucius said. 'I put some in there the first thing I did. Mr. Abner, that man those gangsters kill, I guess he struggled some?'

'He never knew what hit him,' Abner said. He crossed over and went in the back door and through the kitchen. Honey said, 'You be here for supper?'

'Not to-night,' Abner said. 'Did you get my shirts done?'

'No, to-day I didn't. 1'll do them this evening. We're doing downstairs to-day.'

'I've got to have one right now.'

'There!' said Honey. 'I knew you would! I seen this morning you hadn't no shirts left in your chest of drawers! Then Miz' Boorse wanted I should —'

'Well, just do one now, will you? I've got to get away. I've got to get a bath —'

'If I can I will,' Honey said. 'Lucius hammered something with my new electric iron. I think he broke it. I have to use that old one. It's a long time heating; but I guess I can use it —'

'Well, will you please hurry up?' Abner went through the pantry into the back hall.

A radio voice, in the middle of a news broadcast, came from the side porch. It was five minutes of six, and if he were going to pick up Bonnie at six-thirty he hadn't much time. Speaking louder than the radio, Mrs. Boorse said, 'I'm sure I heard a car, Philander. It must have been Ab.'

With a feeling of compunction or guilt — he had not come home to luncheon, and now he was going out again — Abner, who had planned to dress first, hesitated. There was no reason why he shouldn't go out; and there was nothing he could do; and if he stayed, his father would soon fret, preferring to be left alone rather than to feel that Abner or anyone else was obliging himself to sit there. Just the same, the thought of the old man waiting all day; and, it was plain from Mrs. Boorse's remark, asking if Ab hadn't come home yet, was — his father would have hated the word and hated the fact; but it was touching. In his present turmoil of mind, Abner would as soon have avoided his father; but he went through the living-room and out the doors to the porch.

'Now! There he is!' said Mrs. Boorse. She arose with her customary blunt obtrusive tact. 'I'd better see what Honey's doing about supper—'

'See what she's doing about ironing a shirt of mine, will you, Aunt Myrt?' Abner said. 'I've got to go out.'

'Oh,' said Mrs. Boorse. 'You won't be here?'

'I've got a date,' Abner said. To his father, he added, 'I told Bonnie I'd take her out.' Since this was something the Judge would presumably approve of, Abner tried to feel less inconsiderate. 'How do you feel?' he said.

'All right,' Judge Coates said. He snapped off the radio. 'Hot, to-day. Must have been hot in the courtroom. Getting on?'

'We had Leming. He did all right. Harry climbed all over him, but he couldn't shake him any. It's pretty much in the bag, I think.'

'Never know about a jury,' Judge Coates said.

'That's right,' Abner agreed. 'We'll keep our fingers crossed; but I wouldn't give a great deal for their chances.' With his own problems at the front of his mind it was hard to find things to speak casually about. He said, 'John Clark wanted to know if he could come to see you, by the way —'

'I know. He came. What's this about Marty resigning? What I thought?'

'Yes,' said Abner. 'He told me at lunch.' He added quickly, 'I'll have to get a move on.'