Роберт Уоррен - All the king's men

Alex came in with a fellow with him, and I knew my little conversation was not promising. My mission was of some delicacy, not fit for the ear of a stranger. I figured that might be the reason Alex had his friend in tow. Maybe it was, foe Alex was cagey in an amateurish sort of way. In any case, he had the Boss with him.

Only it was not the Boss. Not to the crude eye of the _homme sensuel__. Metaphysically it was the Boss, but how was I to know? Fate come walking through the door, and it is five feet eleven inches tall and heavyish in the chest and shortish in the leg and is wearing a seven-fifty seersucker suit which is too long in the pants so the cuffs crumple down over the high black shoes, which could do with a polishing, and a stiff high collar like a Sunday-school superintendent and a blue-stripe tie which you know his wife gave him last Christmas and which he has kept in tissue paper with the holly card ("Merry Xmas to my Darling Willie from your Loving Wife") until he got ready to go up the city, and a gray felt hat with the sweat stains showing through the band. It comes in just like that, and how are you to know? It comes in, trailing behind Alex Michel, who is, or was before the piano player got him, six-feet-two of beautifully articulated bone and gristle with a hard, bony, baked-looking face and two little quick brown eyes which don't belong above that classic torso and in that face and which keep fidgeting around like a brace of Mexican jumping beans. So Fate trails modestly along behind Alex Michel, who approaches the table with an air of command which would deceive no one.

Alex shook my hand and said, "Hi, pal," and slapped me on the shoulder with a palm that was tough enough to crack a black walnut, and paid proper obeisance to Mr. Duffy, who extended a hand without rising; and then, as a sort of afterthought, Alex jerked a thumb toward his trailing companion and said, "This is Willie Stark, gents. From up home at Mason City. Me and Willie was in school together. Yeah, and Willie, and he was a bookworm, he was teacher's pet. Wuzn't you, Willie?" And Alex whickered like a stallion in full appreciation of his own delicious humor and nudged the teacher's pet in the ribs. Then, controlling himself, he added, "And he's still teacher's pet, ain't you, Willie, ain't you?"

And he turned to Duffy and me, and explained, before mirth again took him and Slade's back room again resounded with the cheerful note of the breeding paddock, "Willie–Willie–he married a school-teacher!"

That idea seemed monstrously funny to Alex. Meanwhile, Willie, unable to complete the amenities of the situation, bowed to the blast and stood there with the old gray felt hat in his hand, with the sweat showing around the band outside where it had soaked through. Willie's large face, above the stiff country collar, didn't show a thing.

"Yeah–yeah–he married a school-teacher!" Alex reaffirmed with undiminished relish.

"Well," said Mr. Duffy, whose experience and tact were equal to any situation, "they tells me school-teachers are made with it in the same place." Mr. Duffy lifted his lips to expose the gold, but made no sound, for, Mr. Duffy being a man of the world and serene in confidence, his style was to put forth his sally and let it make its way on its intrinsic worth and to leave the applause to the public.

Alex provided the applause in good measure. I contributed only a grin which felt sickly on my face, and Willie was blank.

"Gawd!" Alex managed, when breath had returned to him, "Gawd, Mr. Duffy, you are a card! You shore-Gawd are." And again he vigorously nudged the teacher's pet in the ribs to spur his laggard humor. When he got no result, he nudged again, and demanded flatly of his ward: "Now ain't Mr. Duffy a card?"

"Yes, Willie replied, looking at Mr. Duffy innocently, judicially, dispassionately. "Yes," he said, "Mr. Duffy is a card." And as the admission was made, albeit belatedly and with some ambiguity of inflection, the slight cloud which had gathered upon Mr. Duffy's brow was dissipated with no trace of rancor left behind.

Willie took advantage of the momentary lull to wind up the ritual of introduction which Alex's high spirits had interrupted. He transferred his old gray hat to his left hand and took the two steps necessary to bring him to the table, and gravely extended his hand to me. So much water has flowed beneath the bridges since Alex has jerked his thumb toward the stranger from the country and said. "This is Willie Stark," that I had almost forgotten I hadn't known Willie all my life. So I didn't catch on right away that he was out to shake hands. I must have looked at his outstretched hand inquiringly and then given him a blank look, and he just showed me his dead pan–it was just another pan, at first glance anyway–and kept on holding his hand out. Then I came to, and not to be undone in courtesy of the old school, I hitched my chair back from the table and almost stood all the way up, and groped for his hand. It was a pretty good-sized hand. When you first took it you figured it was on the soft side, and the palm a little too moist–which is something, however, you don't hold against a man in certain latitudes–then you discovered it has a solid substructure. It was like the hand of a farm boy who has not too recently given up the plow for a job in the crossroad store. Willie's hand gave mine three decorous pump-handle motions, and he said, "Glad to meetcha, Mr. Burden," like something he had memorized, and then, I could have sworn, he gave me a wink. Then looking into that dead pan, I wasn't sure. About twelve years later, at a time when the problem of Willie's personality more imperiously occupied my rare hours of speculation, I asked him, "Boss, do you remember the time we first got acquainted in the back room of Slade's joint?"

He said he did, which wasn't remarkable, for he was like the circus elephant, he never forgot anything, the fellow who gave him the peanut or the fellow who put snuff in his trunk.

"You remember when we shook hands?" I asked him.

"Yeah," he said "Well, Boss," I demanded, "did you or didn't you wink at me?"

"Boy–" he said and toyed with his glass of scotch and soda and dug the heel of one of his unpolished, thirty-dollar, chastely designed bench-made shoes into the best bed-spread the St. Regis Hotel could afford. "Boy," he said, and smiled at me paternally over his glass, "that is a mystery."

"Don't you remember?" I said.

"Sure," he said, "I remember."

"Well," I demanded "Suppose I just had something in my eye?" he said.

"Well, damn it, you just had something in your eye ten."

"Suppose I didn't have anything in my eye?"

"Then maybe you winked because you figured you and me had some views in common about the tone of the gathering."

"Maybe," he said. "It ain't any secret that my old schoolmate Alex was a heel. And it ain't any secret that Tiny Duffy is as sebaceous a fat-ass as ever made the spring groan in a swivel chair."

"He is an s. o. b.," I affirmed.

"He is," the Boss agreed cheerfully, "but he is a useful citizen. If you know what to do with him."

"Yeah," I said, "and I suppose you think you know what to do with him. You made him Lieutenant Governor." (For that was in the Boss's last term when Tiny was his understudy.)

"Sure," the Boss nodded, "somebody's got to be Lieutenant Governor."

"Yeah," I said, "Tiny Duffy."

"Sure," he said, "Tiny Duffy. The beauty about Tiny is that nobody can trust him and you know it. You get somebody somebody can trust maybe, and you got to sit up nights worrying whether you are the somebody. You get Tiny, and you can get a night's sleep. All you got to do is keep the albumen scared out of his urine."

"Boss, did you wink at me that time back at Slade's?"

"Boy," he said, "if I was to tell you, then you wouldn't have anything to think about."