Some Came Running (67 page)

“Oh, pretty good, Clark. Can’t complain.”

“Now where’s that damn bartender?” Clark said. “He hasn’t been in here for half an hour.”

“Pretty busy out the main bar, I guess,” Frank said.

“I imagine so. I guess I shall have to mix my own damned drink,” Clark said, but he did not get up off his stool. Instead he waited for several moments, watching Frank thoughtfully, which Frank ignored.

“Some poker game,” he said without looking at Clark. No. Harry Shotridge was always having ideas, but little ideas, not big ones like this one.

“It certainly is,” Clark said. He sighed. “Well, I shall never get my drink sitting here,” he said and got up and went around behind the empty bar. “Since it appears I must make mine, I might as well make you another, too. How about it?”

Frank pretended to shake himself and stretched and yawned before he turned around on his stool. He grinned. “Like to fell asleep, by God. Yes. Mine’s about empty.”

“Bourbon and branch water, I take it?” Clark said.

Frank grinned at his little joke and nodded. Clark had affected that precise semi-English accent of his ever since he had come home from Yale with that PhD of his in English literature and it always irritated Frank. It rather made Clark Hibbard look rather somewhat of an ass, he thought.

But you didn’t want to make the mistake of thinking he
was
an ass. Any more than Tony Wernz. No, sir. His family had been good Republicans since the days of Abe Lincoln. Before they founded the
Oregonian
even. And playing ball with all those Cook County Democrats up in Springfield on all the sugar bills didn’t make a good Republican a Democrat; it was just the only way he could get along. Frank had fiddled with politics and politicians too long to still believe there was any real difference between Republicans and Democrats, even to themselves. There was only the guys in office and the guys out. The Elected, and the Unelected. One side played up to the Labor Vote in the cities and the other played up to the Farm and Small Business Vote in the country, that was all.

The trouble was—unfortunately—Clark Hibbard was too astute and well trained a politician to ever take sides and lose one vote when he could compromise and gain two. If anybody else
had
been talking to him about the bypass, he certainly wasn’t going to take Frank Hirsh’s side against theirs. He would play all sides.

“There you are!” Clark said, and set the two glasses up on the bar with a flourish.

Frank yawned elaborately. “Thanks,” he smiled. “I really need this.”

Clark smiled his own thin smile. “And so do I. That makes two of us.”

“Yeah, I see you’re out doin a little early campaignin already.” He nodded his head sideways, toward the door where Harry Shotridge had gone out.

Clark looked at him keenly from behind the bar. Then he pulled the corner of his mouth down and shrugged. “You know how it is. Someone’s always wanting a favor. A person does what he can, and hopes he gets a vote. But probably they go right off and vote against you,” he said and they both laughed.

“Yeah, I imagine it does get pretty rank sometimes,” Frank said with a grin.

“Of course, you understand, I wasn’t referring to Old Harry there, when I said that.”

“Harry?” Frank said. “Of course not.”

“I was thinking more of all the ordinary run-of-the-mill. The Dumbjohns” (Clark had been in the Navy a year in ’42 and ‘43, as a full lieutenant) “who think they own you just because you’re elected to office. Someone with a boy in the pen who’s up for parole; someone else with a son they want to get into West Point; somebody’s daughter they want to get a job for in Springfield.” He paused. “They never leave one alone.” Frank grinned. “You ought to retire from it all, Clark.”

“By God! You have no idea how really close I am to it!”

“What about all those Washington ambitions we used to talk about?”

Clark looked guilty-faced. “Well, that’s the only thing that has stopped me, you know. And I have rather about given that up.”

Frank shook his head. “You might,” he said.

“Might still make it? Well, that is what I keep on telling myself,” Clark said. He came around from behind the bar and got his drink and sat down on the stool again.

“Seriously, Frank, I’ve about begun to wonder if all this helping-the-people business isn’t more of a drain on us politicians than the good we do,” he said, and leaned forward on the bar looking embarrassed. “I’ve about begun to think the people don’t really want to be helped.” His face looked as if he were confessing a secret sin.

“Well, that’s somethin every man must decide for himself, I guess,” Frank said.

“Yes—” Clark said. “Yes, I suppose that’s true.”

“But for myself, I’ll always believe in helping people,” Frank said.

“Well, you always were that kind, Frank,” Clark said. He took a sip of his drink. “Old Bob,” he smiled in his thin way. “It does look like Bob is rather on another of his poker rampages. Doesn’t it?” He was still waiting for whatever it was.

Frank grinned. “Sure does,” he said. The slick bastard. He had no more intention of retiring from politics than he himself had of retiring from business. His wife’s father had all kinds of influence up in Springfield and with the Chicago crowd, and Clark had right away moved upstairs into a different bracket the minute he married her. Of course, he still had to get the vote in his home counties; but he was handling that all right. Yep, Clark was moving out and away from his old small-time buddies. “When Bob’s like that, he always wins,” he grinned.

“Yes, I expect he does,” Clark Hibbard smiled. “He does it almost entirely by psychology, you know. It always appears to me as though he is doing it only just to prove to himself just exactly how dumb most people really are.”

“That’s just exactly the way I’ve always felt about it,” Frank grinned. “Though I never worded it just like that.”

“No, probably not,” Clark said. From a case in his inside coat pocket, he pulled a pair of heavy tinted dark-horned-rimmed glasses and put them on and stared at Frank. “It’s very strange, you know. Here we have a really celebrated man right here in our midst. The most celebrated man we of Parkman here shall probably ever have. And how do we treat him?”

“Oh. but he’s not really all that famous now, is he,” Frank protested.

“Oh, but he is! There, you see? You yourself can’t accept that Old Bob’s that famous. The trouble is, we expect him to live up to his reputation, you see; and here he is, very common, no more brilliant than ourselves, the prey of his emotions apparently just like we are, as vain and egotistical as we are, and so we cannot accept that he is famous. He doesn’t
act
famous, you see. So we are forced to assume that he is not. And yet I know Europeans and Frenchmen who consider him one of the greatest philosophical poets of this era.” Clark took another sip from his glass, adjusted his glasses with his finger, and stared down at the bar broodingly.

“Well, whether he’s famous or not, I like him,” Frank said, feeling bored but patient. He had been through these things of Clark’s before and had been expecting one tonight. “Bob’s a very nice fellow,” he said, “and I’m sure everybody in Parkman feels that and likes him.”

“You know, I wanted to be a poet once,” Clark said; “I was going to take the literary world by storm.” He sipped at his drink again.

“Yes, I know,” Frank said, without sarcasm. “I remember. You’ve told me about it before.”

“Yes, well,” Clark said. The narrow eyes behind their glasses flickered. He straightened up a little on his stool. “How’s everything with you, Frank?”

“How’s your wife?” Frank said.

“Ah. Betty Lee? Just fine. She’s having the time of her life since she moved down here. She really loves Parkman. . . .

“Right now, I expect she is out in the bar beating the slot machines to death,” Clark smiled. The narrow eyes studied Frank. “And how are Agnes and Dawn, Frank?”

“Oh, they’re fine,” Frank said, and looked back down at the bar and his drink. “You know, Clark, whether you retire from politics or not you can always be proud of what you’ve done for your home counties up there in Springfield,” he said.

Beneath the still-searching eyes, Clark gave him a brilliant smile. “Well, thanks, Frank,” he said. “Thanks a lot.”

“You’ve done an awful lot of good for us home folks up there,” Frank said. “It ought to give you a real feelin of satisfaction.”

“Well, thanks,” Clark said. “You know, it really does. Except when I’ve got the blues. But it helps a lot sometimes, to know some of the people who voted for you feel like that.”

“Well, a lot of them do,” Frank said. “And I just wanted to let you know how I felt.” With this, he suddenly swung himself around on his stool until he was facing the room and the poker table. After a full minute of silence, he said, “Say, that was a hell of a wreck out at the highway junction the other night, wasn’t it?”

The highway junction out east of town was where the new road from the bridge at Israel stopped and turned back onto the old road that still ran through Parkman west and it was a dangerous spot, and would be one until the new road was extended and the bypass built. There was at least one wreck a month out there, but this last one had been an especially bad one.

“Yes, it was,” Clark said, eyeing him. “Yes, it certainly was.” He shook his head.

“I guess we’ll all heave a sigh of relief when that bypass is built,” Frank said.

“Yes, I expect we will,” Clark said.

“I hate to see people get killed like that. For no good reason, you know?” Frank said.

Clark nodded, his narrow eyes still watching Frank. “Yes, it’s bad.”

There was a sort of respectful silence, and the two men looked at each other for a moment, each one trying to figure out what the other was thinking.

“I wonder when they’ll get it built?” Frank said.

“Well, it probably won’t be this summer, Frank. They’re only just beginning to buy up their right of ways now.”

“You’d think they would have bought up all the right of way before they started the road at Israel,” Frank said.

Clark shrugged. “Sometimes they figure to do it by sections, I guess . . . They might get it graded and the roadbed laid this summer, if the weather holds off, but they wouldn’t be able to pour till the next summer.”

“As I see it,” Frank said, “there’s only about three places where it can go.”

Clark grinned. “That’s right. There isn’t much room between the railroad and the college. Less than half a mile. Of course,” he said, his face sobering, “the state doesn’t like to have to go through the procedure of condemning the land and forcing people to sell, unless they absolutely have to.” He took another sip of his drink, the narrow eyes probing Frank from above it.

“Of course, they always could run it around to the south.”

Clark looked as if he was about to shake his head. “Yes, of course, they could always do that,” he said, and took another sip.

“Or build one of those new modern-style overpasses over the railroad,” Frank said, “and run it north of there.”

“They could. You have a farm out there north of the railroad, don’t you, Frank?”

Frank made a face. “Just a little one. I took it in on a mortgage once. It’s really more of a liability than an asset,” he said.

“I don’t think you’ll have to worry about the bypass cutting your farm in two,” Clark said.

“Well, that’s good,” Frank said. He took a deep drag on his cigar and then a swallow of his drink. “You have any idea just where it
will
run?” he said.

Clark eyed him with those narrow eyes. It was impossible to tell what the bastard thought from that face of his.

“Well, the plans,” Clark drawled, “the tentative plans, you understand—were originally drawn to run it right through the center of the strip between the college and the railroad. I’m interested myself in it being as it was from my district, you know. But of course, it’s a very flexible program and subject to change. Especially, where it concerns the bypasses, which will be breaking virgin ground where no road ever ran before.” He stopped and took another sip of his drink and looked at Frank, having said exactly nothing.

Frank nodded at him and waited for him to go on but he didn’t. “Of course, someday they’ll have to make it a four-lane,” Frank said.

“Yes, of course, someday they will,” Clark said and stopped again.

“You know, it’s surprising how little interest there has been in this bypass in town,” Frank said.

Clark made a wry face. “Well, I wouldn’t say there had been no interest,” he said. “I remember that the Jaycees and Chamber of Commerce and Rotary all got together and took
me
to task for letting the state build a bypass around Parkman.”

“I didn’t mean that. I know a lot of the local businessmen were against it, but I was never one of them.”

“I know you weren’t,” Clark said with his thin smile.

“I think that bypass could be a fine thing for Parkman,” Frank said. “What I meant was that nobody seems to have any interest in any kind of development out there after it goes through.”

“Well, I expect business will eventually build up out there around it.”

“I reckon so, but it’s a funny thing. I ain’t heard a single word about anybody buildin out there, Clark. Have you?” Frank was looking at the poker game, casually. He felt Clark turn his head a little and eye him even more narrowly.

After a moment, he said, “No. No, as a matter of fact I haven’t, Frank.”

“I imagine Harry Shotridge probly has some such idea. He usually does,” Frank said still watching the poker game. “But if he does, I ain’t heard anything about it.”

“If he has,” Clark said, “he hasn’t said anything to me about it.”

“Well?” Frank said; “I ’spect they’ll all get around to figurin it out eventually,” he said, watching Bob French uncover a winning hold card. “But it seems a shame to do it that way,” he added.

“I don’t think I’m following you,” Clark said.

“Well, you know. When they do finally get the idea, they’ll all go about it all haphazard like, competin with each other; and there’ll be a great big bunch of jerry-built tourist cabins and tacky fillin stations all clustered up and down the road which will all be just one big eyesore and won’t probly get much business anyway. That’s what I mean.”