Роберт Уоррен - All the king's men

So I never did know.

But I did see Willie shake hands that morning with Tiny Duffy and fail to wink at him. He just stood there in front of Mr. Duffy, and when the great man, not rising, finally extended his hand with the reserved air of the Pope offering his toe to the kiss of a Campbellite, Willie took it and gave it the three pumps which seemed to be regulation up in Mason City.

Alex sat down at the table, and Willie just stood there, as though waiting to be invited, till Alex kicked the fourth chair over a few inches with his foot and said, "Git off yore dogs, Willie."

Willie sat down and laid his gray felt hat on the marble top in front of him. The edges of the brim crinkled and waved up all around off the marble like a piecrust before grandma trims it. Willie just sat there behind his hat and his blue-striped Christmas tie and waited, with his hands laid in his lap.

Slade came in from the front, and said, "Beer?"

"All round," Mr. Duffy ordered.

"Not for me, thank you kindly," Willie said.

M Duffy, with some surprise and no trace of pleasure, turned his gaze upon Willie, who seemed unaware of the significance of the event, sitting upright in his little chair behind the hat and the tie. Then Mr. Duffy looked up at Slade, and jerking his head toward Willie, said, "Aw, give him some beer."

"No, thanks," Willie said, with no more emotion that you would put into the multiplication table.

"Too strong for you?" Mr. Duffy demanded.

"No," Willie replied, "but no thank you."

"Maybe the school-teacher don't let him drink nuthen," Alex offered.

"Lucy don't favor drinking," Willie said quietly. "For a fact."

"What she don't know don't hurt her," Mr. Duffy said.

"Git him some beer," Alex said to Slade.

"All round," Mr. Duffy repeated, with the air of closing an issue.

Slade looked at Alex and he looked at Mr. Duffy and he looked at Willie. He flicked his towel halfheartedly in the direction of a cruising fly, and said: "I sells beer to them as wants it. I ain't making nobody drink it."

Perhaps that was the moment when Slade made his fortune. How life is strange and changeful, and the crystal is in the steel at the point of fracture, and the toad bears a jewel in its forehead, and the meanings of moments passes like the breeze that scarcely ruffles the leaf of the willow.

Well, anyway, when Repeal came and mailmen had to use Mack trucks to haul the application for licenses over to the City Hall, Slade got a license. He got a license immediately, and he got a swell location, and he got the jack to put in leather chairs kind to the femurs, and a circular bar; and Slade, who never had a dime in his life after he paid rent and protection, now stands in the shadows under the murals of undressed dames in the midst of the glitter of chromium and tinted mirrors, wearing a double-breasted blue suit, with what's left of his hair plastered over his skull, and keeps one eye on the black boys in white jackets who tote the poison and the other on the blonde at the cash register who knows that her duties are not concluded when the lights are turned off at 2:00 A.M., and the strains of a three-piece string ensemble soothe the nerves of the customers.

How did Slade get the license so quickly? How did he get the lease when half the big boys in the business were after that corner? How did he get the jack for the leather chairs and the string ensemble? Slade never confided in me, but I figure Slade got his reward for being an honest man.

Anyway, Slade's statement of principle about the beer question closed the subject that morning. Tiny Duffy lifted a face to Slade with the expression worn by the steer when you give it the hammer; then, as sensation returned, he took refuge in his dignity. Alex permitted himself the last luxury of irony. Says Alex: "Well, maybe you got some orange pop for him." And when the whicker of his mirth had died away, Slade said: "I reckin I have. If he wants it"

"Yes," Willie said, "I think I'll take some orange pop."

The beer came, and the bottle of pop. The bottle of pop had two straws in it. Willie lifted his two hands out of his lap where they had decorously lain during the previous conversation, and took the bottle between them, and affixed his lips to the straws. His lips were a little bit meaty, but they weren't loose. Not exactly. Maybe at first glance you might think so. You might think he had a mouth like a boy, not quite shaped up, and that was the way he looked that minute, all right, leaning over the bottle and the straws stuck in his lips, which were just puckered up. But if you stuck around long enough, you'd see something a little different. You would see that they were hung together, all right, even if they were meaty. His face was a little bit meaty, too, but thin-skinned, and had freckles. Hs eyes were big, big and brown, and he'd look right at you, out of the middle of that thin-skinned and freckled and almost pudgy face (at first you would think it was pudgy, then you would change your mind), and the dark brown, thick hair was tousled and crinkled down over his forehead, which wasn't very high in the first place, and the hair was a little moist. There was little Willie. There was Cousin Willie from the country, from up at Mason City, with his Christmas tie, and maybe you would take him out to the park and show him the swans.

Alex leaned toward Duffy, and said confidingly, "Willie–he's in poly-tics."

Duffy's features exhibited the slightest twitch of interest, but the twitch was dissipated into the vast oleaginous blankness which was the face of Duffy in response. He did not even look at Willie.

"Yeah," Alex continued, leaning closer and nodding sideways at Willie, "yeah, in poly-ticks. Up in Mason City."

Mr. Duffy's head did a massive quarter-revolution in the direction of Willie and the pale-blue eyes focused upon him from the great distance. Not that the mention of Mason City was calculated to impress Mr. Duffy, but the fact that Willie could be in politics anywhere, even in Mason City, where, no doubt, the hogs scratched themselves against the underpinnings of the post office, raised certain problems which merit passing attention. So Mr. Duffy gave his attention to Willie, and solved the problem. He solved by deciding that there wasn't any problem. Willie was not in politics. Not in Mason City or anywhere else. Alex Michel was a liar and the truth was not in him. You could look at Willie and see that he never had been and never would be in politics. Willie could look at Willie and deduce the fact that Willie was not in politics. So he said, "Yeah," with heavy irony, and incredulity was obvious upon his face.

Not that I much blame Duffy. Duffy was face to face with the margin of mystery where all our calculations collapse, where the stream of time dwindles into the sands of eternity, where the formula fails in the test tube, where chaos and old night hold sway and we hear the laughter in the ether dream. But he didn't know he was, and so he said, "Yeah."

"Yeah," Alex echoed, without irony, and added, "Up in Mason City. Willie is County Treasurer. Ain't you, Willie?"

"Yes," Willie said, "County Treasurer."

"My God," Duffy breather, with the air of a man who discovers that he has built upon sands and dwelt among mock shows.

"Yeah," Alex iterated, "and Willie id down here on business for Mason Country, ain't you, Willie?"

Willie nodded.

"About a bond issue they got up there," Alex continued. "They gonna build a schoolhouse and it's a bond issue."

Duffy's lips worked, and you could catch the discreet glimmer of the gold in the bridgework, but no words came forth. The moment was too full for sound of foam.

But it was true. Willie was the County Treasurer and he was, that day long ago, in the city on business about the bond issue for the schoolhouse. And the bond were issued and the schoolhouse built, and more than a dozen years later the big black Cadillac with the Boss whipped past the schoolhouse, and then Sugar-Boy really put his foot down on the gas and we headed out, still on the almost new slab of Number 58.