Роберт Уоррен - All the king's men

"All right," he said. Then, with his eyed fixed on an imaginary spot on the floor about ten feet from his toes, he stuck his tongue out again and began to caress his lips. "I'm thirsty," he said.

"You are dehydrated," I said. "The result of alcohol taken in excess. But that is the only way to take it. It is the only way to do a man any good."

But he wasn't listening. He had pulled himself up and padded off into the bathroom.

I could hear the slosh of water and the gulping and inhaling. He must have been drinking out of the faucet. After about a minute that sound stopped. There wasn't any sound at all for a spell. Then there was a new one. Then the agony was over.

He appeared at the bathroom door, braced against the doorjamb, staring at me with a face of sad reproach bedewed with the glitter of cold water.

"You needn't look at me like that," I said, "the likker was all right."

"I puked," he said wistfully.

"Well, you didn't invent it. Besides, now you'll be able to eat a great big, hot, juicy, high-powered slab of barbecued hog meat."

He didn't seem to think that that was very funny. And neither did I. But he didn't seem to think it was especially unfunny, either. He just hung on the doorjamb looking at me like a deaf and dumb stranger. The he retired again into the bathroom.

"I'll order you a pot of coffee," I yelled in to him. "It'll fix you up."

But it didn't. He took it, but it didn't even take time to make itself at home.

Then he lay down for a while. I put a cold towel on his forehead and he closed his eyes. He laid his hands on his breast, and the freckles on his face looked like rust spots on polished alabaster.

About eleven-fifteen the desk called up to say that a car and two gentlemen were waiting to drive Mr. Stark to the fairgrounds. I put my hand over the receiver, and looked over at Willie. His eyes had come open and were fixed on the ceiling.

"What the hell do you want to go to that barbecue for?" I said. "I'm going to tell 'em to hist tail."

"I'm going to the barbecue," he announced from the spirit world, his eyes still fixed on the ceiling.

So I went down to the lobby to stall off two of the local semileading citizens who'd even agreed to ride in the gubernatorial hearse to get their names in the paper. I stalled them. I said Mr. Stark was slightly indisposed, and I would drive him out in about an hour.

At twelve o'clock I tried the coffee treatment again. It didn't work. Or rather, it worked wrong. Duffy called up from out of the fairgrounds and wanted to know what the hell. I told him he'd better go on and distribute the loaves and fishes and pray God for Willie to arrive by two o'clock.

"What's the matter?" demanded Duffy.

"Boy," I said, "the longer you don't know the happier you'll be," and hung up the phone.

Along toward one, after Willie had made another effort to recuperate with coffee and had failed, I said, "Look here, Willie, what you going out there for? Why don't you stay here? Send word you are sick and spare yourself some grief. Then, later on, if–"

"No," he said, and pushed himself up to a sitting position on the side of the bed. His face had a high a pure and transparent look like a martyr's face just before he steps into the flame.

"Well," I said, without enthusiasm, "if you are hell-bent, you got one more chance."

"More coffee? he asked.

"No," I said, and unstrapped my suitcase and got out the second bottle. I poured some in a tumbler and took it to him. "According to the old folks," I said, the best way is to put two shots of absinthe on a little cracked ice and float on a shot of rye. But we can't be fancy. Not with Prohibition."

He got it down. There was a harrowing moment, then I drew a sight of relief. In ten minutes I repeated the dose. Then I told him to get undressed while I ran a tub of cold water. While he was in the tub I called down for the desk to get us a car. Then I went to Willie's room to get some clean clothes and his other suit.

He managed to get dressed, taking time out now and then for me to give a treatment.

He got dressed and then sat on the edge of the bed wearing a big label marked, _Handle with Care–This End Up–Fragile__. But I got him down to the car.

Then I had to go back up and get a copy of his speech, which he'd left in his top bureau drawer. He might need it, he said after I got back. He might not be able to remember very well, and might have to read it.

"All about Peter Rabbit and Wallie Woodchuck," I said, but he wasn't attending.

He lay back and closed his eyes while the tumbril bumped over the gravel toward the fairgrounds.

I looked up the road and saw the flivvers and wagons and buggies ranked on the outskirts of a grove, and the fair buildings, and an American Flag draped around a staff against the blue sky. Then, Duffy was soothing the digestion of the multitude.

Willie put out his hand and laid it on the flask, "Gimme that thing," he said "Go easy," I said, "you aren't used to this stuff. You already–"

But he had it to his mouth by that time and the sound of it gargling down would have drowned the sound of my words even if I had kept on wasting them.

When he handed the thing back to me, there wasn't enough in it to make it worth my while putting it in my pocket. What collected in one corner when I tilted it wouldn't make even a drink for a high-school girl. "You sure you don't want to finish it?" I asked in mock politeness.

He shook his head in a dazed sort of way, said, "No, thanks," and then shivered like a man with a hard chill.

So I took what was left, and threw the empty pint bottle out of the window.

"Drive in as close as you can," I told the boy at the wheel.

He got pretty close, and I got out and gave Willie a hand, and paid the kid off. Then Willie and I drifted slowly over the brown and trodden grass toward a platform, while the crowd about us was as nothing and Willie's eyes were on far horizons and the band played "Casey Jones."

I left Willie in the lee of the platform, standing all alone in a space of brown grass in a strange country with a dream on his face and the sun beating down on him.

I found Duffy, and I said, "I'm ready to make delivery, but I want a receipt."

"What's the matter with him?" Duffy wanted to know. "The bastard doesn't drink. Is he drunk?"

"He never touches the stuff," I said. "It's just he's been on the road to Damascus and he saw a great light and he's got the blind staggers."

"What's the matter with him?"

"You ought to read the Good Book more," I told Duffy, and led him to the candidate. It was a touching reunion. So I melted into the throng.

There was quite a crowd, for the scent of burning meat on the air will do wonders. The folks were beginning to collect around in front of the platform, and climb up in the grandstand. The local band was standing over to one side of the platform, now working over "Hail, Hail, the Gang's All Here." On the platform were the two local boys who didn't have any political future, who had come to the hotel that morning, and another fellow who was by my guess a preacher to offer up a prayer, and Duffy. And there was Willie, sweating slow. Thy sat in a row of chairs across the back of the platform, in front of the bunting-draped backdrop, and behind a bunting-draped table on which was a big pitcher of water and a couple of glasses.

One of the local boys got up first and addressed his friend and neighbors and introduced the preacher who addressed God-Almighty with his gaunt rawboned face lifted up above the blue serge and his eyes squinched into the blazing light. Then the first local boy got up and worked around to introducing the second local boy. It looked for a while as though the second local boy was the boy with the button after all, for he was, apparently, built for endurance and not speed, but it turned out that he didn't really have the button any more than the first local boy or the preacher or God-Almighty. It just took him longer to admit that he didn't have it and to put the finger on Willie.