All the King's Men - Robert Penn Warren [94]
He didn’t touch but he looked hard. I saw his Adam’s apple jerk a couple of times; then he removed his cigar from his mouth (a good cigar, two-bit at least, by the smell) and said, “Fake.”
“The signatures are supposed to be genuine,” I said, “but if you aren’t sure you might ring up one of your boys whose name you see on here and ask him man to man.”
He pondered that thought a moment, and the Adam’s apple worked again, harder now, but he was taking it like a soldier. Or he still thought it was a fake. Then he said, “I’ll call your bluff on that,” and walked over to the telephone.
Waiting for his number, he looked up and said, “Have a seat, won’t you?”
“No, thanks,” I said, for I didn’t regard the event as social.
Then he had the number.
“Monty,” he said into the telephone, “I’ve got a statement here to the effect that the undersigned hold that the impeachment proceedings are unjustified and will vote against them despite all pressure. That’s what it says–‘all pressure.’ Your name’s on the list. How about it?”
There was a long wait, then Mr. Lowdan said, “For God’s sake, quit mumbling and blubbering and speak up!”
There was another wait, then Mr. Lowdan yelled, “You– you–” But words failed him, and he slammed the telephone to the cradle, and swung the big, recently jovial-looking face toward me. He was making a gasping motion with his mouth, but no sound.
“Well,” I said, “you want to try another one?”
“It’s blackmail,” he said, very quietly, but huskily as though he didn’t have the breath to spare. Then, seeming to get a little more breath, “It’s blackmail. It’s coercion. Bribery, it’s bribery. I tell you, you’ve blackmailed and bribed those men and I–”
“I don’t know why anybody signed this statement,” I said, “but if what you charge should happen to be true then the moral strikes me as this: MacMurfee ought not to elect legislators who can be bribed or who have done things they can get blackmailed for.”
“MacMurfee–” he began, the fell into a deep silence, his flowered bulk brooding over the telephone stand. He’d have his own troubles with Mr. MacMurfee, no doubt.
“A small detail,” I said, “but it would probably be less embarrassing to you, and especially to the signers of this document, if the impeachment proceedings were killed before coming to a vote. You might try to see about getting that done by late tomorrow. That should give you time to make your arrangements, and to figure out as graceful a way as possible. Of course, it would be more effective politically for the Governor to let the matter come to a vote, but he is willing to let you do it the easy way, particularly since there’s a good deal of unrest in the city about the matter.”
He wasn’t paying any attention to me, as far as I could tell. I went to the door, opened it, and looked back. “Ultimately,” I said, “it is immaterial to the Governor how you manage the matter.”
Then I closed the door and went down the hall.
That had been the night of the fourth of April. I was almost sorry, the next day as I looked out the high window at the mass of people filling the streets and the wide sweep of lawn beyond the statues in front of the Capitol, that I knew what I knew. If I hadn’t known, I could have stood there in the full excitement of the possibilities of the moment. But I knew how the play would come out. This was like a dress rehearsal after the show has closed down. I stood there and felt like God-Almighty brooding on History.
Which must be a dull business for God-Almighty, Who knows how it is gone to come out. Who knew, in fact, how it was going to come out even before He knew there was going to be any History. Which is complete nonsense, for that involved Time and He is out of Time, for God is Fullness of Being, and in Him the End is the Beginning. Which is what you can read in the little tracts written and handed out on the streets corners by the fat, grubby, dandruff-sprinkled old man, with the metal-rimmed spectacles, who used to be the Scholarly Attorney and who married the girl with the gold braids and the clear, famished-looking