All the King's Men - Robert Penn Warren [40]
But Mason County was Exhibit Number One. On account of Willie. He gave the touch of drama to the sordid tale. He became symbolically the spokesman for the tongue-tied population of honest men. And when Willie was licked at the polls of Mason County, the Chronicle ran his picture, and under it the lines KEEPS HIS FAITH. And under that they printed the statement which Willie had given to me when I went back up to Mason City after the election and after Willie was out. The statement went like this:
“Sure, they did it and it was a clean job which I admire. I am going back to Pappy’s farmer and milk the cows and study some more law for it looks like I am going to need it. But I have kept my faith in the people of Mason County. Time will bring all things to light.”
I had gone up there to see what he had to say, but didn’t have to go out to the farm. I ran into Willie on the street. He had been building some fence and had busted his wire stretcher and had come in to town to get a new one. He was wearing and old black felt hat and overalls which hung down around his can as though he were little Droopy-Drawers smiling up from the play pen.
He went to the drugstore and had a coke. He stood in front of the soda fountain and I put may pad in front of Willie by his old hat and gave him a pencil. He licked the point and his eyes glazed as though he were getting ready to do sums on his slate, and then leaning up against the marble, with his overall drooping, he wrote out the statement in his big round, scrawly hand.
“How’s Lucy making out?” I asked him.
“Fine,” he said. “She likes it out there and she’s company for Pappy. It suits her all right.”
“That’s fine,” I said.
“It suits me, too,” he said, not looking at me but across the fountain at his own face in the big mirror. “The way it is it all suits me just fine,” he said, and looked at the face in the mirror, which was freckled and thin-skinned over the full flesh but under the saggy forelock was untroubled and pure like the face of a man who tops the last rise and looks down at the road running along and straight to the place where he is going.
As I said, if a man like Willie can be said to live in the world of luck, Dolph Pillsbury and the Sheriff were his luck. They ran it over Willie and got the new schoolhouse built by J. H. Moore. J. H. Moore used the brick out of the kiln owned by the distant relative of Pillsbury. It was just another big box of a schoolhouse with a fire escape at each end. The fire escapes weren’t the kind which looks like a silo and which has corkscrew-shape chute inside for the kiddies to slide down. They were iron stairs attached to the outside of the building.
There wasn’t any fire at the schoolhouse. There was just a fire drill.
About two years after the place was built, it happened. There was a fire drill, and all the kids on the top floors started to use the fire escapes. The first kids to start down on the fire escape at the west end were little kids and they couldn’t get down the steps very fast. Right after them came a batch of big kids, seventh and eighth graders. Because the little kids held up the traffic, the fire escape and the iron platform at the top got packed with kids. Well, some of the brickwork gave and the bolts and bars holding the contraption to the wall pulled loose and the whole thing fell away, spraying kids in all directions.
Three kids were killed outright. They were the ones that hit the concrete walk. About a dozen were crippled up pretty seriously and several of those never were much good afterward.
It was a piece of luck for Willie.
Willie didn’t try to cash in on the luck. He didn’t have to try. People got the point. Willie went to the triple funeral the town had for the kids who got killed, and stood modestly in the background. But old Mr. Sandeen, who was the father of one