All the King's Men

by Robert Penn Warren

  “There are two lines of action possible.” he resumed. “One is conservative, the other radical. The conservative line would be to put the patient in traction, in a heavy cast, and wait for some resolution of the situation. The radical line would be to resort to surgical procedure immediately. I want to emphasize that this is a difficult decision, a very technical decision. Therefore I want you to understand the situation as fully as possible.” He paused again, but there was no sign, and the gaze did not relax.

  “As you know,” he began again, and now his tone carried a hint of the lecture room, of academic precision, “the plate showed in lateral view a fracture and dislocation of the fifth and six cervical vertebrae. But the X-ray cannot show the condition of the soft tissue. Therefore we cannot know at this moment the condition of the spinal cord itself. We can learn that only by surgical action. If upon operating we discover that the cord is crushed, the patient will remain paralyzed for the rest of his life, for the cord has nor regenerative power. But it is possible that a displaced segment of bone is merely pressing upon the cord. In that case we can, by performing a laminectomy, relieve the pressure. We cannot predict the degree of benefit from such procedure. We might restore some or we might restore almost all function. Of course, we should not expect too much. Some muscle groups might remain paralyzed. You understand?”

  This time, Adam scarcely seemed to expect any response, and this pause was only momentary. “I must emphasize one consideration. This operation is very near the brain. It may be fatal. And the chances of infection are greater with the operation. Dr. Burnham and I have discussed the matter at length and are in agreement. I myself take full responsibility for advising the operation. But I want you to know that it is radical. That it is the outside chance. It is the gambler’s chance.”

  He stopped, and in the silence, the Boss’s breath rasped two or three times, in and out. Then he said, gratingly, “Do it.”

  He had taken the outside chance, the gambler’s chance. But that was no surprise to me.

  Adam was looking inquiringly at Lucy Stark, as though he wished corroboration from her. She turned her eyes from him and looked at her husband, who had walked over to the window to look out over the black lawn. For a moment, she studied the hunched shoulders, then returned to Adam Stanton. She nodded her head slowly, while her hands worked together on her lap. Then she whispered, “Yes–yes.”

  “We shall operate immediately,” Adam said. “I had ordered arrangements made. It does not have to be done immediately, but in my judgment it is better so.”

  “Do it,” the grating voice over the window said. But the Boss did not turn around, not even when the door closed behind Adam Stanton.

  I went back to my picture magazines, but I turned the pages over with the greatest care as though I couldn’t afford to make a sound in the special kind of devouring stillness there was in the room. The stillness lasted a long time, while I kept on looking at the pictures of girls in bathing suits and race horses and scenes of natural beauty and long files of erect, clean-faced youths in some kind of shirt or other lifting their arms in a salute and detective stories acted out in six photographs with the answer on the next page. But I wasn’t paying much attention to the pictures, and they were always alike anyway.

  Then Lucy Stark got up from her chair. She walked over to the window, where the Boss stood and stared out. She laid her hand on his right arm. He drew away, without even looking at her. But she took him by the forearm and drew him, and after a momentary resistance he followed her. She led him back to the big chintz-covered chair. “Sit down, Willie,” she said, very quietly, “sit down and rest.”

  He sank down into the chair. She turned away and went back to her own chair.

  He was looking at her, not at the artificial logs now. Finally, he said, “He’ll be all right.”

  “God grant it,” she replied.

  He was silent for two or three minutes, still looking at her. Then he said, violently, “He will, he’s got to.”

  “God grant it,” she said, and met his gaze until his eyes fell away from hers.

  By that time I had had enough of sitting there. I got up and went out and down the hall to the nurse who was on the floor desk. “Any chance of getting some sandwiches and coffee brought up here for the Governor and his wife?” I asked.

  She said she would get some brought up, and I told her just to have them brought to her desk, that I would take them in. Then I wandered down to the lobby again. Sadie was still there, spooking in the shadows. I told her about the operation and left her there. I hung around at the floor desk upstairs until the sandwiches arrived, then took the tray down to the waiting room.

  The grub and coffee, however, didn’t do much to change the atmosphere there. I put a little table by Lucy with a sandwich on a plate and a cup of coffee. She thanked me, and broke a piece of the sandwich and put it to her mouth two or three times, but I could not see that she was doing it much damage. But she took some coffee. I put some food and coffee handy to the Boss. He looked up out of himself and said, “Thanks, Jack.” He did not even make a pretense, however, of eating. He held the cup in his hand for a few minutes, but I didn’t notice that he even took a sip. He just held it.

  I ate a sandwich and had a cup of coffee. I was pouring myself a second cup, when the Boss reached to set his cup down, sloshingly, on the little table beside him.

  “Lucy,” he said, “Lucy!”

  “Yes,” she answered.

  “You know–you know what I’m going to do?” He leaned forward, not waiting for an answer. “I’m going to name the new hospital for him. For Tom. I’m going to call it the Tom Stark Hospital and Medical Center. It’ll be named for Tom, it’ll–”

  She was slowly shaking her head, and his words stopped “Thos things don’t matter,” she said. “Oh, Willie, don’t you see? Those things don’t matter. Having somebody’s name cut on a piece of stone. Getting it in the paper. All those things. Oh, Willie, he was my baby boy, he was our baby boy, and those things don’t matter, they don’t ever matter, don’t you see?”

  He sank back into his chair, and the silence picked up where it had left off. The silence was still going full blast when I got back from taking the dishes and uneaten food down to the desk. It gave me an excuse for getting out. It was twenty minutes to six when I got back At six o’clock Adam came in. He was pretty gray and stony in the face. The Boss got to his feet and stood there looking at Adam, but neither he not Lucy uttered a sound.

  Then Adam said, “He will live.”

  “Thank God,” Lucy breathed, but the Boss still stared into Adam’s face.

  Adam stared back. Then he said, “The cord was crushed.”

  I heard a gasp from Lucy, and looked over to see her with her head bowed on her breast.

  The Boss didn’t show a sign for a moment. Then he lifted his hands, chest-high, with the fingers spread as though to seize on something. “No!” he declared. “No!”

  “It was crushed,” Adam said. And added, “I am sorry, Governor.”

  Then he left the room.

  The Boss stared at the closed door, then slowly sank back into the chair. He kept on staring at the door, his eyes bulging and the moisture gathering in drops on his forehead. The he jerked upright and the sound wrenched out of him. It was a formless, agonized sound torn raw right out of the black animal depths inside of the bulk there in the chair. “Oh!” he said. Then, “Oh!”

  Lucy Stark was looking across at him. He was still staring at the door.

  Then the sound came again: “Oh!”

  She rose from her chair and went across to him. She didn’t say anything. She simply stood by his chair and laid a hand on his shoulder.

  The sound came again, but it was the last time. He sank back, still staring at the door, and breathed heavily. It must have been like that for three or four minutes. Then Lucy said, “Willie.”

  He looked up at her for the first time.

  “Willie,” she said, “it’s
time to go.”

  He stood up from the chair, and I got their coats off the couch by the wall. I helped Lucy on with hers, and then she picked up the other and helped him. I didn’t interfere.

  They started for the door. He had drawn himself erect now and looked straight ahead, but her hand was still on his arm, and if you had seen them you would have got the impression that she was expertly and tactfully guiding a blind man. I opened the door for them, and then went on ahead to tell Sugar-Boy to get the car ready.

  I was there when the Boss got into the car and she got in after him. That surprised me a little, but it didn’t hurt my feelings if Sugar-Boy drove her home. Despite the coffee, I was ready to drop.

  I went back inside and up to Adam’s office. He was just about ready to pull out. “What is the story?” I asked.

  “What I said,” he said. “The cord is crushed. That means paralysis. The prognosis is that for a time the limbs will be absolutely limp. Then the muscle tone will come back. But he will never use arms or legs. The bodily function will continue but without control. He’ll be like a baby. And the skin will be inclined to break down. He will get infections easily. The respiratory control will be impaired, too. Pneumonia will be likely. That’s what usually knock off cases like this sooner or later.”

  “It sounds to me the sooner the better,” I said, and thought of Lucy Stark.

  “Maybe so,” he said, tiredly. He was sagging now, all right. He slipped on his coat and picked up his bag. “Can I drop you somewhere?” he asked.

  “Thanks, I’m in my car,” I said. Then my eyes fell on the telephone on his desk. “But I’ll make a call, if I may,” I said. “I’ll pull the door to.”

  “All right,” he said, and went to the door. “Good night,” he added, and went out.

  I dialed outside, and got Anne’s number, and told her the news. She said it was horrible. She kept saying that into the telephone–”It is horrible”–in a low bemused voice, three or four times. Then she thanked me and hung up.

  I left the office. I had one more errand to do. I went down to the lobby. Sadie was still there. So I told her. She said it was pretty tough. I agreed.

  “It will be tough on the Boss,” she said.

  “It will be tough as hell on Lucy,” I said, “for she is the one who will have to fix the baby. Don’t forget that while you’re giving out the free samples of sympathy.”

  She must have been pretty tired or something for that didn’t make her mad. So I asked her if I could take her into town. She had her car, too, she said.

  “Well, I am going home and sleep forever,” I said, and left her in the lobby.

  By the time I got out to my car, the sky was curdling blue with dawn.

  The accident occurred on Saturday afternoon. The operation was performed just before dawn on Sunday. The big pay-off was on Monday. It was the Monday before Thanksgiving.

  That day, there was a gradual piling up of events, then the rush to the conclusion, as when a great weight that has been grinding and slipping suddenly breaks the last mooring and takes the plunge. As I experienced that day, there was at first an impression of the logic of the events, caught flickeringly at moments, but as they massed to the conclusion I was able to grasp, at the time, only the slightest hints as to the pattern that was taking shape. This lack of logic, the sense of people and events driven by impulses which I was no able to define, gave the whole occasion the sense of a dreamlike unreality. It was only after the conclusion, after everything was over, that the sense of reality returned, long after, in fact, when I had been able to gather the pieces of the puzzle up and put them together to see the pattern. This is not remarkable, for, as we know, reality is not a function of the event as event, but of the relationship of that event to past, and future, events. We seem here to have a paradox: that the reality of an event, which is not real in itself, arises from other events which, likewise, in themselves are not real. But this only affirms what we must affirm: that direction is all. And only as we realize this do we live, for our own identity is dependent upon this principle.

  Monday morning I got to the office early. I had slept all day Sunday, getting up only in time for a bite of dinner and then some silly movie, and being back in bed by ten-thirty. I came into the office with that sense you get after a lot of sleep of being spiritually pure.

  I went back to the Boss’s office. He hadn’t come in. But while I was there one of the girls came in carrying a big tray piled up with telegrams. “They are all about his boy getting hurt,” she said, “and they keep coming in.”

  “They’ll be coming in all day,” I said.

  That would be true, all right. Every pinfeather politician, county-courthouse janitor, and ambitious lickspittle in the state who hadn’t seen the story in the Sunday paper would see it in this morning’s paper and get off his telegram. Getting that telegram off would be like praying. You couldn’t tell that praying would do any good, but it certainly never did anybody any harm. Those telegrams were part of the system. Like presents for the wedding of a politician’s daughter or flowers for a cop’s funeral. And it was part of the system, too, for the flowers, now that we are on the subject, to come from Antonio Giusto’s flower store. A girl in the flower store kept a record in a special file of all the orders that came in for a cop’s funeral, and then Tony just ran through the file after the funeral and checked the names by his master list of perennially bereaved friends and if your name was on the master list it had sure-God better be in the file for Murphy’s funeral, and I don’t mean any bunch of sweet peas, either. Tony was a good friend of Tiny Duffy.

  It was Tiny Duffy who came into the office just as the girl flounced out with a cute little twitch of her skirt. He mooned in with a face full of professional sympathy and mortician’s gloom, but as soon as he took in the fact that the Boss was not present he relaxed a little, showed his teeth, and said, “How’s tricks?”

  I said tricks was O. K.

  “You seen the Boss?” he asked.

  I shook my head.

  “Gee,” he said, and the sympathy and gloom appeared magically on his face, “it is sure tough. It is what I always calls tragic. A kid like that. A good clean square-shooting kid like that. It is tragic, and no mistake.”

  “You needn’t practice on me,” I said.

  “It will be tough on the Boss,” he said, and shook his head.

  “Just save your fire till he gets here.”

  “Where is he?”

  “I don’t know.”

  I tried to get hold of him yesterday,” Tiny said, “but he wasn’t at the Mansion. They said they didn’t know where he was, he hadn’t been home. He was out to the hospital a while, but I missed him there. He wasn’t in a hotel, either.”

  “You seem to have been thorough,” I said.

  “Yeah,” Tiny said, “I wanted to tell him how us boys all felt.”

  Just then Calvin Sperling, who was Commissioner of Agriculture, came in with a couple of other fellows. They were wearing crepe on their faces, too, till they saw the Boss was not in. Then they eased off and began to snap their bubble gum. “Maybe he won’t be coming.” Sperling suggested.

  “He’ll come,” Tiny pronounced. “It won’t faze him. The Boss is tough.”

  A couple more of the fellows came by, and then Morrisey, who had followed Hugh Miller a long time back as Attorney General, after Miller’s resignation. The cigar smoke began to get thick.

  Once Sadie stopped at the door, laid one hand on the jamb, and surveyed the scene.

  “Hi, Sadie,” one of the boys said.

  She did not respond. She continued her survey for a moment longer, then said, “Jesus Christ,” and moved on. I heard the door of her own office shut.

  I drifted over to the window back of the Boss’s desk and looked out over the grounds. It had rained during the night and now in the weak sunlight the grass and the leaves of the live oaks, even the trailing moss, had a faint sheen, and the damp concrete of the curving drives and
walks gave off an almost imperceptible, glimmering reflection. The whole world, the bare boles of the other trees, which had lost their leaves now, the roofs of the houses, even the sky itself, had a pale, washed, relieved look, like the look on the face of a person who has been sick a long time and now feels better and thinks maybe he is going to get well.

  That wasn’t exactly the look on the Boss’s face when he came in, but it gives some idea of what that look was. He wasn’t really pale, but he was paler than usual, and the flesh seemed to hang a little loose at the jawbone. There were a couple of razor nicks along the bone. Under his eyes were grey circles, as though the flesh had been bruised but was just about well now. But the eyes were clear.

  He had come across the reception room without making any noise on the thick carpet, and for an instant he stood in the doorway of the office before anybody noticed his arrival. The chatter didn’t die; it was frozen in mid-syllable. Then there was a kind of noiseless scurry and fumble to adjust the funeral faces which had been laid aside. Then, with the faces in place and only a little askew, they crowded around the Boss and shook his hand. They told him they wanted to tell him how they felt. “You know how us boys all feel, Boss,” they said. He said, yes, he knew, very quietly. He said, yes, yes, and thank you.

  Then he moved toward the desk, the boys falling away from him like water from the prow of a ship when it is first warped out from the pier and the screw makes the first revolutions. He stood before the desk, handling the telegrams, looking at them, letting them drop.

  “Boss,” somebody said, “Boss–those telegrams–that shows you now–that shows you how folks feel about you.”

  He said nothing.

  Just then the girl came in with another batch of telegrams. She set the tray on the desk in front of him. He fixed her with his glance. Then he laid his hand on the pile of yellow paper and gave it a slight shove and said, in a quiet, matter-of-fact voice, “Get this muck out of here.”

  The girl got that muck out of there.