All the king's men

by Роберт Пенн Уоррен

  "You keeping a dog?"

  "No," he said, and led the way into the vestibule, and up the wooden stairs.

  "What is George, then? A parrot?"

  "No," he said, wheezily, for the steps were steep, "George is an unfortunate."

  That meant, I remembered, a bum. An unfortunate is a bum who is fortunate enough to get his foot inside a softy's door and stay there. If he gets a good berth he is promoted from bum to unfortunate. The Scholarly Attorney had, on several occasions before, taken in unfortunates. One unfortunate had popped the organist down at the mission where the Scholarly Attorney operated. Another unfortunate had lifted his watch and Phi Beta Kappa key.

  So George was another unfortunate. I looked at the bread, and said, "Well, he must be pretty unfortunate if that's what he's got to eat.

  "He eats some of it," the Scholarly Attorney said, "but that is almost accidental. He uses it in his work. But some of it slips down, I am sure, and that is why he is never hungry. Except for sweets," he added.

  "How in God's name does he use bread crusts in his work and the bread crusts slip down his throat?"

  "Do not take the name of the Lord in vain," he said. And added, "George's work, it's very clever. And artistic. You will see."

  I saw. We got to the top of the second flight, turned in the narrow hall under cracked skylight, and entered a door. There was what I took to be George, in one corner of the big, sparsely furnished room, sitting tailor-fashion on a piece of old blanket, with a couple of big mixing bowls in front of him., and a big piece of plywood about two feet by four lying on the floor by him.

  George looked up when we came in and said, "I ain't got any more bread."

  "Here it is," the Scholarly Attorney said, and took the brown bag to him.

  George emptied the crusts into one of the bowls, then stuck a piece into his mouth and began to chew, soberly and purposively. He was a fair-sized, muscular man, with a hell of a strong-looking neck, and the tendons in his neck worked and pulled slickly while he chewed. He had yellow hair, almost gone, and a smooth, flat face with blue eyes. While he chewed he just looked straight ahead at a spot cross the room.

  "What does he do that for?" I asked.

  "He's making an angel."

  "Well," I said. And just then George leaned forward over one of the bowls and let the thoroughly masticated bread drop from his mouth into the bowl. The he put another crust into his mouth.

  "There is one he has finished," the Scholarly Attorney said, and pointed at another corner of the room, where another piece of plywood was propped up. I went to examine it. At one end, the figure of an angel, with wings and flowing drapery, had been executed in bas-relief in what looked like putty. "That one is just drying," the Scholarly Attorney said. "When it gets good and dry, he'll color it. Then he'll shellac it. Then the board will be painted and a motto put on it."

  "Very pretty," I said.

  "He makes statues of angels, too. See," and he went to a kitchen safe, and opened it, to expose a shelf of dishes and pots and another with an array of gaudy angels.

  I examined the angels. While I did so, the Scholarly Attorney took a can of soup, a loaf of bread, and some soft butter out of the safe, put them on the table in the center of the room, and lighted one of the burners on the two-burner plate in the corner. "Will you join me in my supper?" he asked.

  "No, thanks," I said, and continued to stare at the angels.

  "He sometimes sells them on the street," he said, pouring out his soup into a stewpan, "but he can't bear to sell the best ones."

  "Are these the best ones?" I asked.

  "Yes," the Scholarly Attorney replied. And added, "They are pretty good, aren't they?"

  I said, "Yes," for there wasn't anything else to say. Then' looking at the artist, asked, "Doesn't he make anything but angels? What about Kewpie dolls and bulldogs?"

  "He makes angels. Because of what happened."

  "What happened?"

  "His wife," the Scholarly Attorney said, stirring the soup in the stewpan. "On account of her he makes angels. They were in a circus, you know."

  "No, I didn't know."

  "Yes, they were what you call aerialists. She did the angel act. She had large white wings, George said."

  "White wings," George said through the bread, but it was a sound like _wite whungs__, and he fluttered his big hands like wings, and smiled.

  "She fell down a long way with white wings which fluttered as though she were flying," the Scholarly Attorney continued, explaining patiently.

  And one day the rope broke," I affirmed.

  "Something went wrong with the apparatus. It affected George very deeply."

  "How about the way it affected her?"

  The old man ignored my wit, and said, "He got so he could not perform his act."

  "What was his act?"

  "He was the man who got hanged."

  "Oh," I said, and looked at George. That accounted for the big neck, no doubt. Then, "Did the apparatus go wrong with him and choke him or something?"

  "No," the Scholarly Attorney said, "the whole matter simply grew distasteful to him."

  "Distasteful?" I said.

  "Yes, distasteful. Matter came to such a pass that he could not perform happily in his chosen profession. He dreamed of falling every time he went to sleep. And he would wet his bed like a child."

  "Falling, falling," George said through the bread, with a sound like _fawing, fawing__, but still smiled brightly in the midst of the chewing.

  "One day when he got up on his platform with the loop around his neck, he could not jump. In fact, he could not move at all. He sank down on the platform and crouched there weeping. They had to remove him bodily, and bring him down," the Scholarly Attorney said. "Then for some time he was completely paralyzed."

  "It sound," I said, "like that hanging act must have got pretty distasteful to him. As you so quaintly put it."

  "He was completely paralyzed," he repeated, ignoring my wit. "Through no physical cause–if–" he pause–"anything ever comes to pass from a physical cause. For the physical world, though it exists and it existence cannot be denied without blasphemy, is never cause, it is only result, only symptom, it is the clay under the thumb of the potter and we–" He stopped, the gleam which has started up fitfully in the pale eyes flickered out, the hands which lifted to gesticulate sank. He leaned above the gas plate and stirred the soup. He resumed, "The trouble was here," and he laid a finger to his own forehead. "It was his spirit. Spirit is always cause–I tell you–" He stopped, shook his head, and peered at me before he said sadly, "But you do not understand."

  "I reckon not," I agreed "He recovered from the paralysis," he said. "But George is not exactly a well man. He cannot bear high places. He will not look out the window. He covers his eyes with his hands when I lead him downstairs to go on the street to sell his artistic work. So I take him down only rarely now. He will not sit on a chair or sleep in a bed. He must always be on the floor. He does not like to stand. His legs simply collapse and he begins to cry. It is fortunate he has always had his artistic bent. It helps him to take his mind off thing. And he prays a good deal. I taught him to pray. That helps. I get up and pray and he says the prayers after me. When he wakes at night with the dreams and cannot sleep."

  "Does he still wet the bed?" I asked.

  "Sometimes," the Scholarly Attorney replied gravely.

  I looked at George. He was weeping silently, the tears running down his smooth, flat cheeks, but his jawbone was not missing a beat on the bread. "Look at him," I said.

  The Scholarly Attorney looked at him. "Stupid, stupid," he muttered fretfully, shaking his head, so that an additional flake or two of dandruff floated down to the black serge collar, "stupid of me to be talking that way with him listening. Stupid–I'm an old man and I forget–" and clucking and muttering and shaking his head in that same fretful fashion he poured some soup into a bowl, took a spoon, and went to George. "Look, look," he said, leaning, with a sp
oon of soup thrust toward George's face, "good, it's good soup–soup–take some soup."

  But the tears continued to flow out of George's eyes, and he didn't open his mouth. But the jaws weren't working on the bread now. They were just shut tight.

  The old man set the bowl on the floor, and with one hand still holding the spoon to George's mouth, with the other he patted George on the back soothingly, all the while clucking with that distraught, henlike, maternal little noise. All of a sudden he looked up at me, the spectacles hanging over, and said, peevishly like a mother, "I just don't know what to do–he just won't take soup–he won't eat much of anything but candy–chocolate candy–I just don't know–" His voice trailed off.

  "Maybe you spoil him," I said.

  He put the spoon back into the bowl, which was on the floor beside him, then began to fumble in his pockets. He fished out, finally, a bar of chocolate, somewhat wilted form the heat, and began to peel back the sticky tinfoil. The last tears were running down George's cheeks, while he watched the process, with his mouth open in damp and happy expectation. But he did not grab with his chubby little mitts.

  Then the old man broke off a piece of chocolate and placed it between the expectant lips, and peered into George's face while taste buds, no doubt, glowed incandescent in the inner dark and gland with a tired, sweet, happy sigh released their juices, and George's face took on an expression of slow, deep, inward, germinal bliss, like that of a saint.

  _Well__, I almost said to the old man, _you said the physical was never cause, but a chocolate bar is physical and look what it's causing, for to look at that face you might think it was a bite of Jesus and not a slug of Hershey's had done. And how you going to tell the difference, huh?__

  But I didn't say it, for I was looking there at the old man, who was leaning over with his spectacles hanging and his coat hanging and his belly hanging from the leaning, and who was holding out another morsel of chocolate and who was clucking soft, and whose own face was happy, for that was the word for what his face was, and as I looked at him I suddenly saw the man in the long white room by the sea, the same man but a different man, and the rain of the squall driving in off the sea in the early dark lashed the windowpanes but it was a happy sound and safe because the fire danced on the hearth and on the windowpanes where the rain ran down to thread the night-black glass with silver, to mix the silver with the flames caught there, too, and the man leaned and held out something and said, "Here's what Daddy brought tonight, but just one bite now–" and the man broke off a piece and held it out–"just one bite, for your supper's near ready now–but after supper–"

  I looked at the old man over there and my guts went warm and a big lump seemed to dissolve in my chest–as though I had carried a big lump around in there for so long I had got used to it and didn't realized it had been there until suddenly it was gone and the breath came easy. "Father," I said, "Father–"

  The old man looked up at me and said querulously, "What–what did you say?"

  _Oh, father, father!__ but he wasn't in the long white room by the sea any more and never would be, for he had walked out of it–why? why? because he wasn't enough of a man to run his own house, because he was a fool, because–and he had walked a long way and up the steps to this room where an old man leaned with the chocolate in his hand and happiness–if that was what it was–momentarily on his face. Only it wasn't on his face now. There was just the faint peevishness of an old person who hasn't quite understood the faint peevishness of an old person who hasn't quite understood something said.

  But I had come a long way, too, from that long white room by the sea, I had got up off that hearthrug before the fire, where I had sat with my tin circus wagon and my colored crayons and paper, listening to the squall-driven rain on the glass, and where Daddy had leaned to say, "Here's what Daddy brought tonight," and I had come to this room where Jack Burden leaned against the wall with a cigarette in his mouth. Nobody was leaning over him to give him chocolate.

  So, looking into the old man's face, answering his querulous question, I said, "Oh, nothing." For that was what it was. Whatever it had been was nothing now. For whatever was is not now, and whatever is will not be, and the foam that looks so sun-bright when the wind is kicking up the breakers lies streaked on the hard sand after the tide is out and looks like scum off the dishwater.

  But there was something: scum left on the hard sand. So I said, "Yeah, there was something."

  "What?"

  "Tell me about Judge Irwin," I said.

  He straightened up to face me, blinking palely behind the spectacles as he had blinked at me upon coming from light into the darkness of the Mexican restaurant below.

  "Judge Irwin," I repeated, "you know–your old bosom pal."

  "That was another time," he croaked, staring at me, holding the broken chocolate in his hand.

  "Sure, it was," I said, and looking at him now, thought, _It sure-God was__. And said, "Sure, but you remember."

  "That time is dead," he said.

  "Yeah, but you aren't."

  "The sinful man I was who reached for vanity and corruption is dead. If I sin now it is in weakness and not in will. I have put away foulness."

  "Listen," I said, "it's just a simple question. Just one question."

  "I have put it away, that time," he said, and made a pushing gesture with his hands.

  "Just one question," I insisted.

  He looked at me without speaking.

  "Listen," I said, "was Irwin ever broke, did he ever really need money? Bad?

  He stared at me from a long way off, across the distance, beyond the bowl of soup on the floor, over the chocolate in his hand, through time. Then he demanded, "Why–why do you want to know?"

  "To tell the truth," I burst out without meaning to, "I don't. But somebody does, and that somebody pays me the first of the month. It is Governor Stark."

  "Foulness," he said, staring across whatever it was between us, "foulness."

  "Was Irwin ever broke?" I said.

  "Foulness," he affirmed.

  "Listen," I said, "I don't reckon Governor Stark–if that is what all this foulness stuff is about–takes it to the Lord in prayer, but did you ever stop to think what a mess your fine, God-damned, plug-hatted, church-going, Horace-quoting friends like Stanton and Irwin left this state in? At least the Boss does something, but they–they sat on their asses–they–"

  "All foulness!" the old man uttered, and swept his right arm wildly before him, the hand clutching the chocolate hard enough to squash it. A part of the chocolate fell to the floor. Baby got it.

  "If you meant to imply," I said, "that politics, including that of erstwhile pals, I not exactly like Easter Week in a nunnery, you are right. But I will beat you to the metaphysical draw this time. Politics is action and all action is but a flaw in the perfection on nonbeing. Which is God. For if God is perfection and the only perfection is in nonbeing, then God is nonbeing. Then God is nothing. Nothing can give no basis for the criticism of Thing in its thingness. Then where do you get anything to say? Then where do you get off?"

  "Foolishness, foolishness," he said, "foolishness and foulness!"

  "I guess you are right," I said. "It is foolishness. But it is no more foolish than all that kind of talk. Always words."

  "You speak foulness."

  "No, just words," I said, "and all words are alike."

  "God is not mocked," he said, and I saw that his head was quivering on his neck.

  I stepped quickly toward him, stopping just in front of him. "Was Irwin ever broke?" I demanded.

  He seemed about to say something, his lips opening. Then they closed.

  "Was he?" I demanded.

  "I will not touch the world of foulness again," he said, his pale eyes looking steadily upward into my face, "that my hand shall come away with the stink on my fingers."

  I felt like grabbing him and shaking him until his teeth rattled. I felt like shaking it out of him. But you can't grab an old man and
do that. I had gone at the thing wrong. I ought to have led up to it and tried to trick him. I ought to have wheedled him. But I always got so keyed up and on edge when I got around him that I couldn't think of anything but getting away from him. And then when I had left I always felt worse until I got him out of my mind. I had muffed it.

  That was all I got. As I was going out, I looked back to see Baby, who had finished the piece of chocolate dropped by the old man, meditatively moving his hand about on the floor to locate any stray crumbs. Then the old man leaned slowly and heavily toward him, again.

  Going down the stairs, I decided that even id I had tried to wheedle the old man I would probably have learned nothing. It wasn't that I had gone at it wrong. It wasn't that I burst out about Governor Stark. What did he know or care about Governor Stark? It was that I had asked him about the world of the past, which he had walked away from. That world and all the world was foulness, he had said, and he was not going to touch it. He was not going to talk about it, and I couldn't have made him.

  But I got one thing. I was sure that he had known something. Which meant that there was something to know. Well, I would know. Sooner or later. So I left the Scholarly Attorney and the world of the past and returned to the world of the present.

  Which was: An oblong field where white lines mathematically gridded the turf which was arsenical green under the light from the great batteries of floodlamps fixed high on the parapet of the massive arena. Above the field the swollen palpitating tangle of light frayed and thinned out into hot darkness, but the thirty thousand pair of eyes hanging on the inner slopes of the arena did not look up into the dark but stared down into the pit of light, where men in red silky-glittering shorts and gold helmets and spilled and tumbled on the bright arsenical-green turf like spilled dolls, and a whistle sliced chillingly through the thick air like that scimitar through a sofa cushion.

  Which was: The band blaring, the roaring like the sea, the screams like agony, the silence, then one woman-scream, silver and soprano, spangling the silence like the cry of a lost soul, and the roar again so that the hot air seemed to heave. For out of the shock and tangle and glitter on the green a red fragment had exploded outward flung off from the mass tangentially to spin across the green, turn and wheel and race, yet slow in the out-of-timeness of the moment, under the awful responsibility of the roar.