All the King's Men - Robert Penn Warren [230]
He stood there under the heavy, flushed face, no doubt feeling the hot, alcoholic breath rasp on his own face, and waited. Then the Boss released his hold. He simply opened his hands in mid-air, fingers spread, and stepped back. He turned his back and walked away from the spot as though it were vacant. His sock-feet made no sound, and his head swayed ever so little as he moved.
He sat on the couch and leaned forward with his elbows on his spread knees, the forearms hanging forward, and stared into the embers on the hearth as though he were absolutely alone.
Larson, without a word, walked to the door, opened it, and went out, leaving it ajar. Tiny Duffy, with the peculiar impression of lightness, the lightness of a drowned bloated body swaying slowly upward on the ninth day, which a fat man can give when he tiptoes, moved toward the door, too. Once there, with his hand on the knob, he looked back. As his eyes rested on the unregarding Boss, the fury flashed again into the face, and just for that instant I thought, By God, he’s human. Then he caught my gaze on him, and looked back at me with a kind of suffering, mute appeal which asked to be forgiven for everything, asked for my understanding and sympathy, asked for everybody to think well of poor old Tiny Duffy, who had done what he could according to his lights and then they threw stuff in his face. Didn’t he have his rights? Didn’t poor old Tiny have his feelings?
The he followed Larson off into the night. He managed to close the door without a sound.
I looked at the Boss, who hadn’t stirred. “Glad I got here for the last act,” I said, “but I got to toddle now.” There certainly wouldn’t be any talk about the tax bill.
“Wait,” he said.
He reached down for the bottle and took a drag out of it. He was down to essentials now.
“I told him,” he said, glaring up at me, “I told him, I said, if you leave off a window latch, I said if you leave one iron out of the concrete, I said if you–”
“Yeah,” I said, “I heard you.”
“–if you put one extra teaspoon of sand, you do a thing, a single thing, and I’ll rip you wide open, I’ll rip you!” He got up and came toward me. He stood very close to me. “I’ll rip him,” he said, and breathed heavily.
“So you said,” I agreed.
“I told him I would, and I will. Let him do one thing wrong.”
“All right.”
“I’ll rip him anyway. By God–” he flung his arms out wide–“I’ll rip him anyway. I’ll rip all of ’em who put their dirty hands on it. They do the job and when it’s over I’ll rip ’em. Every one. I’ll rip ’em and ruin ’em. By God, I will! Putting their dirty hands on it. For they made me, they made me do it.”
“Tom Stark had something to do with it,” I said.
That stopped him, as far gone as he was. He stared at me with a look that made me think he was about to lay hands on me. Then he turned from me, and moved back toward the couch. But he didn’t sit down. He leaned over for the bottle, did it some direct damage, stared at me again, and said, indistinctly, “He’s just a boy.”
I didn’t say anything to that. He took another try at the bottle.
“He’s just a boy,” he repeated, dully.
“All right,” I said.
“But the others,” he burst out, swinging his arms wide again, “the others–they made me do it–I’ll rip ’em–I’ll ruin ’em!”
He had quite a lot to say along that line before he took his dive into the sofa. After he got there he made a few more muffled remarks along the same line and about how Tom Stark was just a boy. Then the one-side conversation died away, and there wasn’t anything but the heavy draw and puff of his breathing. I stood there and looked down at him and thought about the first time, God knows how many years before, when he got drunk in my hotel room at Upton and passed out. He had come a long way. And it wasn’t the chubby boy face of Cousin Willie I looked down into now. Everything was changed now. It