All the King's Men (41 page)

P. S. I could do what I am going to do easier if I were not trying to get the insurance for you. I have paid for the insurance and you ought to have it.

So the poor bastard had gone to the Other Shore, where Mother and Father would dry away every tear, immediately after having instructed his sister how to defraud the insurance company. There it all was–all of Mortimer Lonzo–the confusion, weakness, piety, self-pity, small-time sharpness, vindictiveness, all of it in the neat, spidery, old-fashioned bookkeeper’s sort of hand, a little shakier than ordinary perhaps, but with all the t’s crossed and the i’s dotted.

I replaced it in the envelope and put it in my pocket. “I am going to have it photostated,” I said, “and you may have it back. I’ll have the photostat certified. But you must make a statement before a notary about you visit to Governor Stanton. And–” I went over to the table and picked up the two bills and handed them to her–”there will be another one coming to you after you make your statement. Get you hat.”

So I had it after all the months. For nothing is lost, nothing is ever lost. There is always the clue, the canceled check, the smear of lipstick, the footprint in the canna bed, the condom on the park path, the twitch in the old wound, the baby shoes dipped in bronze, the taint in the blood stream. And all times are one time, and all those dead in the past never lived before our definition gives them life, and out of the shadow their eyes implore us.

That is what all of us historical researchers believe.

And we love truth.

Chapter Six

It was late March in 1937 when I went to see Miss Littlepaugh in the foul, fox-smelling lair in Memphis, and came to the end of my researches. I had been on the job almost seven months. But other things had happened during that period besides my researches. Tom Stark, a sophomore, had made quarterback on the mythical All Southern Eleven and had celebrated by wrapping an expensive yellow sport job around a culvert on one of the numerous new speedways which bore his father’s name. Fortunately, a Highway Patrol car, and not some garrulous citizen, discovered the wreck, and the half-empty bottle of evidence was, no doubt, flung into the night to fall in the dark waters of the swamp. Beside the unconscious form of the Sophomore Thunderbolt lay another form, conscious but badly battered, for in the yellow expensive sport job Tom had had with him a somewhat less expensive yellow-headed sport job, named, it turned out, Caresse Jones. So Caresse wound up in the operating room of the hospital and not in the swamp. She obligingly did not die, though in the future she never would be much of an asset in a roadster. But her father was less obliging. He stamped and swore that he was going to have blood, and breathed indictments, jail, publicity, and lawsuits. His fires, however, were pretty soon banked. Not that it didn’t cost some nice change. But in the end the whole transaction was conducted without noise. Mr. Jones was in the trucking business, and somebody pointed out to him that truck ran on state road and that truckers had a lot of contacts with certain state departments.

Tom wasn’t hurt a bit, though he lay up in hospital unconscious for three hours while the Boss, pale as a starched sheet, and with his hair hanging and his eyes wild and sweat running down his cheeks, paced the floor of the waiting room and ground one fist into the palm of the other hand while his breath made a labored sound like the breath of his son in the room beyond. Then Lucy Stark got there–it was about four in the morning then–her eyes red but tearless and a stunned look on her face. They had quite a row. But that was after the word had come out that Tom was all right. Up till then he had paced the floor breathing hard, and she had sat and stared straight into the blankness. But when the word came, she got up and went over to stand before him, and say, “You must stop him.” Her voice was scarcely above a whisper.

He stood there staring heavily, uncomprehendingly into her face, then put one hand out to touch her, like a bear touching something with a clumsy exploratory paw, and said, through dry lips, “He’s–he’s going to be all right, Lucy. He’s all right.”

She shook her head. “No,” she said, “he’s not all right.”

“The doctor–” he took a lurching step toward her–”the doctor said–”

“No, he’s not all right,” she repeated. “And won’t be. Unless you make him.”

The blood suddenly flushed heavily into his cheeks. “Now look here, if you mean stopping football–if you–” That was an old story between them.

“Oh, it’s not just football. That’s bad enough, thinking he’s a hero, that there’s nothing else in the world–but it’s everything that goes with it–he’s wild and selfish and idle and–”

“No boy of mine’s going to be a sissy, now. That’s what you want!”

“I would rather see him dead at my feet than what your vanity will make him.”

“Don’t be a fool!”

“You will ruin him.” Her voice was quiet and even.

“Hell, let him be a man. I never had any fun growing up. Let him have some fun! I want him to have some fun. I used to see people having fun and never had any. I want him to–”

“You will ruin him,” she said, with her voice as quiet and even as doom.

“God damn it!–look here–” he began, but by that time I had sneaked out the door and had closed it softly behind me.

But Tom’s accident wasn’t all that happened that winter.

There was Anne Stanton’s project of getting state money for the Children’s Home. She got a good handout, and was pleased as punch with herself. She claimed she was about to get a two-year grant, which was badly needed, she said, and was probably right, for the springs of private charity had nigh dried up about 1929 and weren’t running more than a trickle even seven years or so later.

There were stirrings down in the Fourth District, where MacMurfee still had things by the short ones. His representative got up in Congress in Washington, which was far off but not as far off as the moon, and aired his views about the Boss and made headlines over the country; so the Boss bought himself a big wad of radio time and aired his views of Congressman Petit and treated the nation to a detailed biography, in several installments, of Congressman Petit, who, it developed from the work of the Boss’s research department, had thrown a grenade in a glass house. The Boss didn’t answer anything Petit had said, he simply took care of the sayer. The Boss knew all about the so-called fallacy of the
argumentum ad hominem
_. “It may be a fallacy,” he said, “but it is shore-God useful. If you use the right kind of
argumentum
_ you can always scare the
hominem
_ into a laundry bill he didn’t expect.”

Petit didn’t come off too well, but you had to hand it to MacMurfee, he never quit trying. Tiny Duffy didn’t quit trying, either. He was hell-bent on selling the Boss on the idea of throwing the basic contract for the hospital to Gummy Larson, who was a power in the Fourth District and would no doubt persuade MacMurfee, or, to speak more plainly, would sell him out. The Boss would listen to Tiny about as attentively as you listen to rain on the roof, and say, “Sure, Tiny, sure, we’ll talk about it some time,” or, “God dam it, Tiny, change your record.” Or he may say nothing in reply, but would look at Tiny in a massive, deep-eyed, detached, calculating was, as though he were measuring him for something, and not say a word, till Tiny’s voice would trail off into silence so absolute you could hear both men’s breathing, Tiny’s breath sibilant, quick, and shallow for all his bulk, the Boss’s steady and deep.

The Boss, meanwhile, was making that hospital his chief waking thought. He took trips up East to see all the finest, biggest ones, the Massachusetts General, the Presbyterian in New York, the Philadelphia General, and a lot more. “By God,” he would say, “I don’t care hoe fine they are, mine’s gonna be bigger, and any poor bugger in this state can go there and get the best there is and not cost him a dime.” When he was off on his trips he spent his time with doctors and architects and hospital superintendents, and never a torch singer or bookmaker. And when he was back home, his office was nothing but a pile of blueprints and notebooks full of his scribbling and books on architecture and heating systems and dietetics and hospital management. You would come in, and he would look up at you and begin talking right in the middle of a beat, as though you had been there all the time, “Now, up at the Massachusetts General they’ve got–” It was his baby, all right.

But Tiny wouldn’t give up.

One night I came into the Mansion, saw Sugar-Boy, who was lounging in the high, chastely proportioned hall with a sheet of newspaper across his knee, a dismantled.38 in his hand, and a can of gun oil on the floor, asked him where the Boss was, watched him while his lips tortured themselves to speak and the spit flew, realized from the jerk of his head that the Boss was back in the library, and went on back to knock on the big door. As soon as I opened the door I ran right into the Boss’s eyes like running into the business end of a double-barreled 10-gauge shotgun at three paces, and halted. “Look!” he commanded, heaving his bulk up erect on the big leather couch where he had been propped, “look!”

And he swung the double-barrel round to cover Tiny, who stood at the hearthrug before him and seemed to be melting the tallow down faster than even the log fire on the bricks would have warranted.

“Look,” he said to me, “this bastard tried to trick me, tried to smuggle that Gummy Larson in here to talk to me, gets him all the way up here from Duboisville and thinks I’ll be polite. But the hell I was polite.” He swung to Tiny again. “Was I, was I polite?”

Tiny did not manage to utter a sound.

“Was I, God damn it?” the Boss demanded.

“No,” Tiny said, as from the bottom of a deep well.

“I was not,” the Boss said. “I didn’t get across that doorsill.” He pointed at the closed door beyond me. “I told him if I ever wanted to see him I’d send for him, and to get the hell out. But you–” and he snapped out a forefinger at Tiny–”you–”

“I thought–”

“You thought you’d trick me–trick me into buying him. Well, I’m not buying him. I’m going to bust him. I’ve bought too many sons-of-bitches already. Bust ‘em and they’ll stay busted, but buy ‘em and you can’t tell how long they’ll stay bought. I bought too many already. I made a mistake not busting you. But I figured you’d stay bought. You’re scared not to.”

“Now, Boss,” Tiny said, “now, Boss, that ain’t fair, you know how all us boys feel about you. And all. It ain’t being scared, it’s–”

“You damned well better be scared,” the Boss said, and his voice was suddenly sweet and low. Like a mother whispering to her child in the crib.

But there was new sweat on Tiny.

“Now get out!” the Boss said in a more positive tone.

I looked at the door after it had been closed upon the retreating form, and said, “You certainly do woo your constituency.”

“Christ,” he said, and sank back on the leather of the couch and shoved some of the blueprints aside. He reached up and tried to unbutton his collar, fumbled, got impatient and snapped off the button and jerked the tie loose. He twisted his heavy head a little from side to side, as though the collar had been choking him.

“Christ,” he said, almost pettishly, “can’t he understand I don’t want him messing round with this thing? And he shoved at the blue prints again.

“What do you expect?” I asked. There’s six million dollars involved. Did you ever see the flies stay away from the churn at churning time?”

“He better stay away from this churn.”

“He’s just being logical. Obviously, Larson is ready to sell out MacMurfee. For a contract. He is a competent builder. He–”

He lunged up to a sitting position, stared at me and demanded, “Are you in on this?”

“It is nothing to me,” I said, and shrugged. “You can build it with your bare hands for all of me. I merely said that, given his premises, Tiny is logical.”

“Can’t you understand?” he demanded, searching my face. “Damn it, can’t you understand either?”

“I understand what I understand.”

“Can’t you understand?” he demanded, and heaved up from the couch, and the instant he was on his feet, from the slight sway of his posture, I knew he had been drinking. He stepped to me and seized my lapel, and shook me a little, fixing his eyes upon my face–now close to him, I could see that they were bloodshot–and saying, “Can’t you understand either? I’m building that place, the best in the country, the best in the world, and a bugger like Tiny is not going to mess with it, and I’m going to call it the Willie Stark Hospital and it will be there a long time after I’m dead and gone and you are dead and gone and all those sons-of-bitches are dead and gone, and nobody, no matter he hasn’t got a dime, can go there–”

“And will vote for you,” I said.

“I’ll be dead,” he said, “and you’ll be dead, and I don’t care whether he votes for me or not, he can go there and–”

“And bless your name,” I said.

“Damn it!” he shook me hard, crumpling my lapel in his big hand, “you stand there grinning like that–get that grin off your face–get it off or I’ll–”

“Listen,” I said, “I’m not any of your scum, and I’m still grinning when I please.”

“Jack–hell, Jack–you know I don’t mean that–it’s just you stand there and grin. Damn it, can’t you understand? Can’t you?” He held the lapel and thrust the big face at me, his eyes gouging into mine, saying, “Can’t you? Can’t you see I’m not going to let those bastars muck with it? The Willie Stark Hospital? Can’t you see? And I’m going to get me the damned best man there is to run it. Yes, sir! The best there is. Yes, sir, up in New York they told me to get him, he was the man. And, Jack, you–”

“Yeah?” I asked.

“You’re going to get him.”

I disengaged myself from the grasp on my lapel, straightened it, and dropped into a chair. “Get who?” I asked.

“Dr, Stanton,” he said “Dr. Adam Stanton.”

I almost bounced right out of the chair. The ash off my cigarette fell down my shirt front. “How long have you been having these symptoms?” I asked. “You been seeing any pink elephants?”

“You get Stanton,” he said.