All the King's Men (60 page)

She said, “It’s about Tom.”

“Yes,” I said.

She said, “I know something is wrong.”

I nodded

She said, “Tell me.”

I inhaled the dry air and the faint closed-parlor odor of furniture polish, which is the odor of decency and care and modest hopes, and squirmed on my seat while the red plush prickled my pressed-down palm like a nettle.

She said, “Jack, tell me the truth. I’ve got to know the truth, Jack. You will tell me the truth. You’ve always been a good friend. You were a good friend to Willie and me–back yonder–back yonder–when–”

Her voice trailed off.

So I told her the truth. About Marvin Frey’s visit.

Her hands twisted in her lap while I spoke, and then clenched and lay still. Then she said, “There’s just one thing fro him to do.”

“There might be a–a settlement–you know, a–”

But she broke in. “There’s just one right thing,” she said.

I waited.

“He’ll–he’ll marry her,” she said, and held her head up very straight.

I squirmed a little, then said, “Well–well, you see–it looks like–like there might have been–some others–other friends of Sibyl–others who–”

“Oh, God,” she breathed so softly I could scarcely tell it was more than a breath she uttered, and I saw the hands clench and unclench on her lap again.

“And,” I went on, now I was in it, “there’s another angle to it, too. There’s some politics mixed up, too. You see–MacMurfee wants–”

“Oh, God,” she breathed again, and rose abruptly from the chair, and pressed her clenched hand together in front of her bosom. “Oh, God, politics,” she whispered, and took a distracted step or two away from me, and said again, “Politics.” Then she swung toward me, and said, out loud now, “Oh, God, in this too.”

“Yes,” I nodded, “like most things.”

She went to one of the windows, where she stood with her back to me and the parlor and peered through a crack between the curtains out into the hot, sun-dazzled world outside, where everything happened.

After a minute she said, “Go on, tell me what you were going to tell.”

So not looking at her as she peered out the crack into the world but looking at the empty chair where she had been sitting, I told her about the MacMurfee proposition and how things were.

My voice stopped. Then there was another minute of silence. Then, I heard her voice back over by the window, “It had to be this way, I guess. I have tried to do right but it had to be this way, I guess. Oh, Jack–” I heard the rustle as she turned from the window, and swung my head toward her, as she said–”Oh, Jack, I tried to do right. I loved my boy and tried to raise him right. I loved my husband and tried to do my duty. And they love me. I think they love me. After everything I have to think that, Jack. I have to.”

I sat there and sweated on the red plush, while the large, deep-brown eyes fixed on me in a mixture of appeal and affirmation.

Then she said, very quietly now, “I have to think that. And think that it will be all right in the end.”

“Listen,” I said, “the Boss stalled them off, he’ll think of something, it’ll be all right.”

“Oh, I didn’t mean that, I meant–” but she stopped.

But I knew what she had meant, even as her voice, lower and steadier now, and at the same time more resigned, resumed to say, “Yes, he’ll think of something. It will be all right.”

There wasn’t any use to hang round longer. I got up, rescued my old Panama off the carved walnut table, where the Bible and stereoscope were, walked across to Lucy, put out my hand to her, and said, “It’ll be all right.”

She looked at my hand as though she didn’t know why it was there. Then she looked at me. “It’s just a baby,” she almost whispered. “It’s just a little baby. It’s a little baby in the dark. It’s not even born yet, and it doesn’t know about what’s happened. About money and politics and somebody wanting to be a senator. It doesn’t know about anything–about how it came to be–about what that girl did–or why–or why the father–why he–” She stopped, and the large brown eyes kept looking at me with appeal and what might have been accusation. Then she said, “Oh, Jack, it’s a little baby, and nothing’s its fault.”

I almost burst out that it wasn’t my fault, either, but I didn’t.

Then she added, “It may be my grandbaby. It may be my boy’s baby.”

Then, after a moment, “I would love it.”

Her hands, which had been clenched into fists and pressed together at the level of her breast, opened slowly at the words, and reached out, supine and slightly cupped, but with the wrists still against her own body as though expectation were humble or hopeless.

She noticed me looking down at the hands, then quickly let them drop.

“Good-bye,” I said, and moved toward the door.

“Thank you, Jack,” she said, but didn’t follow me. Which suited me down to the ground, for I was really on my way out.

I walked out into the dazzling world and down the prideful patch of concrete and got into my car and headed back to town, where, no doubt, I belonged.

The Boss did think up something.

First, he thought that it might be a good idea to get in touch with Marvin Frey, directly and not through MacMurfee, to feel out the situation there. But MacMurfee was too smart for that. He didn’t trust Frey or the Boss, either, and Marvin had been whisked off, nobody knew where exactly. But, as it developed later, Marvin and Sibyl had been carried off into Arkansas, which was probably the last place they wanted to be, on a farm up in Arkansas, where the only horses were mules and the brightest light came from a patented gasoline pressure lamp on the parlor table and there weren’t any fast cars and people went to bed to sleep at eight-thirty and got up at dawn. Of course, they had some company along, and could play three-handed poker and rummy, for MacMurfee had sent along one of his boys, who, I was to learn, kept the car keys in his pants pocket by day and under his pillow by night, and practically stood outside the door of the backhouse, leaning on the trellis of honeysuckle, with a derby on the side of his head, when one of them went there, just to be sure there weren’t any shenanigans like cutting across the back lot in the direction of the railroad ten miles off. He was also one who thumbed through the mail first, for Marvin and Sibyl weren’t supposed to be getting any mail. Nobody was supposed to know where they were. And we didn’t find out. Not until a long time after.

Second, the Boss thought about Judge Irwin. If MacMurfee would listen to sense at al, he would listen to sense from Judge Irwin. He owed Irwin a lot, and there weren’t so many legs left to MacMurfee’s stool he could afford to loose one. So, the Boss thought, there was Judge Irwin.

He called me in and said, “I told you to dig on Irwin. What did you get?”

“I got something,” I said.

“What?”

“Boss,” I said, “I’m going to give Irwin a break. If he can prove to me it isn’t true, I won’t spill it.”

“God damn it,” he began, “I told you–”

“I’m giving Irwin a break,” I said. “I promised two people I would do it.”

“Who?”

“Well, I promised myself, for one. The other doesn’t matter.”

“You promised yourself, huh?” He looked hard at me.

“Yeah, I did.”

“O. K.,” he said. “Do it your way. If it’ll stick, you know what I want.” He surveyed me glumly, then added, “And it better stick.”

“Boss,” I said, “I’m afraid it will.”

“Afraid?” he said “Yeah.”

“Who you working for? Him or me?”

“Well, I’m not framing Judge Irwin.”

He kept on studying me. “Boy,” he said then, “I’m not asking you to frame him. I never asked you to frame anybody. Did I?”

“No.”

“I never did ask you to frame anybody. And you know why?”

“No.”

“Because it ain’t ever necessary. You don’t ever have to frame anybody, because the truth is always sufficient.”

“You sure take a high view of human nature,” I said.

“Boy,” he said, “I went to a Presbyterian Sunday school back in the days when they still had some theology, and that much of it stuck. And–” he grinned suddenly–”I have found it very valuable.”

So our conversation ended, and I got into my car and headed for Burden’s Landing.

The next morning, as soon as I had my breakfast, which I ate alone, for the Young Executive had left for town and my mother wouldn’t get up till pushing noon, I strolled down the beach. It was a fine morning, but not as hot as usual. The beach was deserted at that hour, except for some kids playing in the bright shallows a quarter of a mile off, thin-legged little kids like sandpipers. I wandered on down past them, and as I passed they paused an instant in their leaping and splashing and gyration to favor me with an indifferent stare from their brown, water-slick faces. But it was only for an instant, for I obviously belonged to that dull and purblind race which wears shoes and trousers. You do not even walk on the sand and get sand in your shoes if you can avoid it. But at least I was walking on the sand and getting it liberally into my shoes. I wasn’t too old for that. I reflected on that with satisfaction, and moved on toward the cluster of pines and the big oak and the mimosas and myrtles, just back from the beach, where the tennis courts were. There were some benches there in the shade, and I had the unread morning paper in my hand. After I had read the paper, I would begin to think about what would happen later on the day. But I wasn’t even thinking about it yet.

I found the bench near the vacant court and lighted my cigarette and began to read. I read the front page, every word, with the mechanical devotion of a padre working over the missal, and didn’t even think of all the news which I knew and which wasn’t on the front page. I was well into the third page, when I heard voices and looked up to see the pair of players, a boy and girl, approaching on the other side of the courts. After an idle glance at me, they took possession of the farther court, and began to beat the little white ball back and forth, just idly to loosen up their muscles.

You could tell by the first exchange that they knew what they were about. And you could tell that their muscles didn’t need much loosening up. He was of medium height, perhaps a shade under, with a deep chest and big arms and nothing extra around the waist. His red hair had a crew cut, crinkly red hair showed on his chest above the underwear vest he was wearing instead of a shirt, and his skink was an even baby-pink except for the big blotches of brown freckles on his face and shoulders. In the middle of the freckles his face was all white-toothed grin and the glint of blue eyes. She was a brown lively girl, short brown hair that snapped when she pirouetted, and brown arms and shoulders above the white halter tied over her breasts, and brown legs flashing above white shoes and socks, and a little brown flat tummy between the white shorts and the white halter. They were both pretty young.

They began the game right quick, and I watched them over my newspaper. Maybe the red-headed felloe wasn’t trying his hardest, but she was handing them back to him well enough and could make him move around the court. She was even taking a game from him now and then. She was a pretty thing to watch, so light and springy and serious-faced and flashy-legged. But not as pretty as Anne Stanton had been, I decided. I even meditated on the superior beauty of a white skirt which could flow and whip with the player’s motion as compared to shorts. But shorts were good. They were good on the lively brown girl. I had to admit that.

And I had to admit, as I watched, that I had a knot in my stomach. Because I wasn’t out there on the court. With Anne Stanton. It was a terrific and fundamental injustice that I wasn’t out there. What was that red-faced, crop-headed fellow doing there? What was the girl doing there? I suddenly didn’t like them. I felt like going there and stopping the game and saying, “You think you’ll be here playing tennis forever, don’t you. Well, you wont.”

“Why, no,” the girl would say, “not forever.”

“Hell, no,” the fellow would say, “we’re going swimming this afternoon, then tonight we’re–”

“You don’t get it,” I would say. “Sure, I know you’re going swimming, and you’re going out somewhere tonight and you’ll stop the car on the way home. But you think you’ll be here this way forever.”

“Hell, no,” he would say, “I’m going back to college next week.”

“I’m going off to school,” she would shay, “but Thanksgiving I’ll see Al, won’t I, Al–and you’ll take me to the big game–won’t you, Al?”

They wouldn’t get it worth a damn. There was no use in giving them the benefit of my wisdom. Not even of the great big piece of wisdom which I had learned on my trip to California. They didn’t know the wisdom of the Great twitch, but they would have to find it out for themselves, for there was no use to tell them. They might listen politely, but they wouldn’t believe a word of it. And watching the brown girl dance and flash over there against the myrtles and the brilliant sea, I wasn’t so sure for the moment that I believed it myself.

But I did believe it, of course, for I had had my trip to California.

I didn’t see out the first set. The score was five to two when I left, but it seemed that she might make it five-three, for the crop-headed fellow was feeding them to her, not too obviously, and grinning out of the freckles when she’d whang them back.

I went to the house, changed, and took a swim. I idled out a long way, and floated around in the bay, which is a corner of the Gulf of Mexico, which is a corner of the great, salt, unplumbed waters of the world, and got back in time for lunch.

My mother had lunch with me. She kept giving me a chance to tell her why I had come down, but I just skirted round the subject till we got to the desert. Then I asked her if Judge Irwin was at the Landing. I hadn’t asked that yet. I could have found out the night before. But I hadn’t asked. I had postponed finding out.

He was at the Landing, all right.

My mother and I went out on the side gallery and had coffee and cigarettes. After a while I went upstairs to lie down for a spell and digest. I lay up there in my old room for an hour or so. Then I figured I had better get on with my work. I eased downstairs and started out the front door.