All the King's Men - Robert Penn Warren [161]
“I understand some things,” Adam said grimly, and the jaw set.
“And some you don’t, just like I don’t, but one thing I understand and you don’t is what makes the mare go. I can make the mare go. And one more thing, now we are taking down our hair–” The Boss suddenly stopped, cocked his head, leered at Adam, then demanded, “Or are we?”
“You said there was one more thing,” Adam replied, ignoring the question, sitting straight in his chair.
“Yeah, one more thing. But look here, Doc–you know Hugh Miller?”
“Yes,” Adam said, “yes, I know him.”
“Well, he was in with me–yeah, Attorney General–and he resigned. And you know why?” But he went on without waiting for the answer. “He resigned because he wanted to keep his little hands clean. He wanted the bricks but he just didn’t know somebody has to paddle in the mud to make ’em. He was like somebody that just loves beefsteak but just can’t bear to go to a slaughter pen because there are some bad, rough men down there who aren’t animal lovers and who ought to be reported to the S.P.C.A. Well, he resigned.”
I watched Adam’s face. It was white and stony, as though carved out of some slick stone. He was like a man braced to hear what the jury foreman was going to say. Or what the doctor was going to say. Adam must have seen a lot of faces like that in his time. He must have had to look into them and tell them what he had to tell.
“Yeah,” the Boss said, “he resigned. He was one of those guys wants everything and wants everything two ways at once. You know the kind, Doc?”
He flicked a look over at Adam, like a man flicking a fly over by the willows in the trout stream. But there wasn’t any strike.
“Yeah, old Hugh–he never learned that you can’t have everything. That you can have mighty little. And you never have anything you don’t make. Just because he inherited a little money and the name Miller he thought you could have everything. Yeah, and he wanted the one last damned thing you can’t inherit. And you know what it is?” He stared at Adam’s face.
“What?” Adam said, after a long pause.
“Goodness. Yeah, just plain, simple goodness. Well you can’t inherit that from anybody. You got to make it, Doc. If you want it. And you got to make it out of badness. Badness. And you know why, Doc?” He raised his bulk up in the broken-down wreck of an overstuffed chair he was in, and leaned forward, his hands on his knees, his elbows cocked out, his head outthrust and the hair coming down to his eyes, and stared into Adam’s face. “Out of badness,” he repeated. “And you know why? Because there isn’t anything else to make it out of.” Then, sinking back into the wreck, he asked, softly, “Did you know that, Doc?”
Adam didn’t say a word.
Then the Boss asked, softer still, almost whispering, “Did you know that, Doc?”
Adam wet his lips and said, “There is one question I should like to ask you. It is this. If, as you say, there is only the bad to start with, and the good must be made from the bad, then how do you ever know what the good is? How do you ever recognize the good? Assuming you have made it from the bad. Answer me that.”
“Easy, Doc, easy,” the Boss said.
“Well, answer it.”
“You just make it up as you go along.”
“Make up what?”
“The good,” the Boss said, “What the hell else are we talking about. Good with a capital G.”
“So you make it up as you go along?” Adam repeated gently.
“What the hell else you think folks been doing for a million years, Doc? When your great-great-grandpappy climbed down out of the tree, he didn’t have any more notion of good or bad, or right and wrong, than the hoot owl that stayed up in the tree. Well, he climbed down and he began to make Good as he went along. He made up what he needed to do business, Doc. And what he made up and got everybody to mirate on as good and right was always just a couple of jumps behind what he needed to do business on. That’s why thing change, Doc. Because what folks claim is right is always just a couple of jumps short of what they need to do business. Now an individual, one fellow, he will stop doing