All the King's Men - Robert Penn Warren [127]
The old man looked up at me and said querulously, “What–what did you say?”
Oh, father, father! but he wasn’t in the long white room by the sea any more and never would be, for he had walked out of it–why? why? because he wasn’t enough of a man to run his own house, because he was a fool, because–and he had walked a long way and up the steps to this room where an old man leaned with the chocolate in his hand and happiness–if that was what it was–momentarily on his face. Only it wasn’t on his face now. There was just the faint peevishness of an old person who hasn’t quite understood the faint peevishness of an old person who hasn’t quite understood something said.
But I had come a long way, too, from that long white room by the sea, I had got up off that hearthrug before the fire, where I had sat with my tin circus wagon and my colored crayons and paper, listening to the squall-driven rain on the glass, and where Daddy had leaned to say, “Here’s what Daddy brought tonight,” and I had come to this room where Jack Burden leaned against the wall with a cigarette in his mouth. Nobody was leaning over him to give him chocolate.
So, looking into the old man’s face, answering his querulous question, I said, “Oh, nothing.” For that was what it was. Whatever it had been was nothing now. For whatever was is not now, and whatever is will not be, and the foam that looks so sun-bright when the wind is kicking up the breakers lies streaked on the hard sand after the tide is out and looks like scum off the dishwater.
But there was something: scum left on the hard sand. So I said, “Yeah, there was something.”
“What?”
“Tell me about Judge Irwin,” I said.
He straightened up to face me, blinking palely behind the spectacles as he had blinked at me upon coming from light into the darkness of the Mexican restaurant below.
“Judge Irwin,” I repeated, “you know–your old bosom pal.”
“That was another time,” he croaked, staring at me, holding the broken chocolate in his hand.
“Sure, it was,” I said, and looking at him now, thought, It sure-God was. And said, “Sure, but you remember.”
“That time is dead,” he said.
“Yeah, but you aren’t.”
“The sinful man I was who reached for vanity and corruption is dead. If I sin now it is in weakness and not in will. I have put away foulness.”
“Listen,” I said, “it’s just a simple question. Just one question.”
“I have put it away, that time,” he said, and made a pushing gesture with his hands.
“Just one question,” I insisted.
He looked at me without speaking.
“Listen,” I said, “was Irwin ever broke, did he ever really need money? Bad?
He stared at me from a long way off, across the distance, beyond the bowl of soup on the floor, over the chocolate in his hand, through time. Then he demanded, “Why–why do you want to know?”
“To tell the truth,” I burst out without meaning to, “I don’t. But somebody does, and that somebody pays me the first of the month. It is Governor Stark.”
“Foulness,” he said, staring across whatever it was between us, “foulness.”
“Was Irwin ever broke?” I said.
“Foulness,” he affirmed.
“Listen,” I said, “I don’t reckon Governor Stark–if that is what all this foulness stuff is about–takes it to the Lord in prayer, but did you ever stop to think what a mess your fine, God-damned, plug-hatted, church-going, Horace-quoting friends like Stanton and Irwin left this state in? At least the Boss does something, but they–they sat on their asses–they–”
“All foulness!” the old man uttered, and swept his right arm wildly before him, the hand clutching the chocolate hard enough to squash it. A part of the chocolate fell to the floor. Baby got it.
“If you meant to imply,” I said, “that politics, including that of erstwhile pals, I not exactly like Easter Week in a nunnery, you are right. But I will beat you to the metaphysical draw this time. Politics is action and all action is but a flaw in the perfection on nonbeing. Which is God. For if God is perfection and the only perfection is in nonbeing, then God is nonbeing. Then God