All the King's Men - Robert Penn Warren [259]
Then I heard my lips saying, as though to myself, “You killed him.”
“All right,” she said, “all right, I killed him. He was throwing me over. For good. I knew it was for good that time. For that Lucy. After all I had done. After I made him. I told him I’d fix him, but he turned that new sick smile of his on me like he was practicing to be Jesus and took my hands in his, and asked me to understand–understand, Jesus!–and just then like a flash I knew I’d kill him.”
“You killed Adam Stanton,” I said.
“Oh, God,” she breathed, “oh, God.”
“You killed Adam,” I repeated
“Oh,” she breathed, “and I killed Willie. I killed him.”
“Yes,” I agreed, and nodded.
“Oh, God,” she said, and lay there staring up at the ceiling.
I had found out what I had come to find out. But I kept on sitting there. I didn’t even light a cigarette.
After a while she said, “Come over here. Pull your chair over here.”
I hitched my chair over by the chaise longue, and waited. She didn’t look at me, but she reached out her right hand uncertainly in my direction. I took it and held it while she continued to stare at the ceiling and the afternoon light struck cruelly across her face.
“Jack,” she said, finally, still not looking at me.
“Yes?”
“I’m glad I told you,” she said. “I knew I had to tell somebody. Sometime. I knew it would come, but there wasn’t anybody for me to tell. Till you came. That’s why I hated you for coming. As soon as you came in the door, I knew I’d have to tell you. But I’m glad I told. I don’t care who knows now. I may not be noble and high-toned like that Stanton woman, but I’m glad I told you.”
I didn’t find much to say to that. So I continued to sit there for quite a while, holding Sadie’s hand in the silence she seemed to want and looking across her down toward the bayou, which coiled under the moss depending from the line of tattered cypresses on the farther bank, the algae-mottled water heavy with the hint and odor of swamp, jungle, and darkness, along the edge of the expanse of clipped lawn.
I had found out that Tiny Duffy, who was now Governor of the state, had killed Willie Stark as surely as though his own hand had held the revolver. I had also found out that Sadie Burke had put the weapon into Duffy’s hand and had aimed it for him, that she, too, had killed Willie Stark. And Adam Stanton. But what she had done had been done hot. What Duffy had done had been done cold. And, in the end, Sadie Burke’s act had somehow been wiped out. I did not exist for me any more.
And that left Duffy. Duffy had done it. And strangely, there was a great joy and relief in that knowledge. Duffy had done it, and that made everything clear and bright as in frosty sunshine. There, over yonder, was Tiny Duffy with his diamond ring, and over here was Jack Burden. I felt free and clean, as when you suddenly see that, after being paralyzed by ignorance or indecision, you can act. I felt on the verge of the act.
But I did not know what the act was to be
When I went back out to see Sadie–she had asked me to come back–she told me, without me saying a word on the subject, that she would make a statement if I wanted her to. I told her that that was wonderful, and I felt that it was wonderful for I still felt clean and free, on the verge of an act, and she was putting the thing into my hand. I thanked her.
“Don’t thank me,” she said, “I’m doing myself a favor. Duffy–Duffy–” she rose to a sitting position on the chaise longue and her eyes had the old flash–“you know what he did?”
Before I could answer she plunged on, “Afterwards–after it had happened–I didn’t feel a thing. Not a thing. I knew that night what had happened, and I didn’t feel a thing. And next morning Duffy came to me–he was grinning and puffing–and he said, ‘Girlie, I’ll sure hand it to you, I’ll sure hand it to you.’ I still didn’t feel a thing, not even when I looked in his face. But then he put his hand around my shoulder and sort of patted and rubbed my back between the shoulder blades, and said, ‘Girlie, you sure stopped his clock and I ain’t forgetting you,