Chapter Eight 10 страница

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, and girlie, you and me, we might sure get along.' Then it happened. It happened right then. It was like it had all happened that second, right in front of me instead of up at the Capitol. And I clawed at him and jumped away. I ran out of the place. And three day later, after he died, I came here. It was the only place I could come."

"Well, thanks anyway," I said. "I reckon we can stop Duffy's clock."

"It won't stick in law," she said.

"I didn't reckon it would. What ever you said to him or he said to you doesn't prove a thing. But there are other ways."

She thought awhile. Then, "Any other way, law or not, and I reckon you know it drags that–" she hesitated, and did not say what she was about to say, then revised it–"drags Anne Stanton into it."

"She'll do it," I affirmed. "I know she would."

Sadie shrugged. "You know what you want," she said, "you all."

"I want to get Duffy."

"That suit me," she said, and again shrugged. Suddenly she seemed to have gone tired again. "That suits me," she repeated, "but the world is full of Duffys. It looks like I been knowing them all my life."

"I'm just thinking about one," I declared.

I was still thinking about that one about a week later (by this time it seemed that the only way was to break the thing through an antiadministration paper), when I got the note from that particular Duffy himself. Would I mind coming to see him, it said. At my convenience.

My convenience was immediately, and I found him imperially and porcinely filling his clothes and the great leather couch in the library at the Mansion where the Boss used to sit. The leather of his shoes creaked as he stepped forward to greet me, but his body swayed with the bloated lightness of a drowned body stirred loose at last from the bottom mud of the river to rise majestically and swayingly to the surface. We shook hands and he smiled. And waved me to a seat as the couch groaned to receive him.

A black boy in a white coat brought the drinks. I took the drink but declined a cigar, and waited.

He said how sad it was about the Boss. I nodded He said how the boys all missed the Boss. I nodded to that.

He said how things were getting done though. Just like the Boss would have wanted. I nodded to that.

He said how they sure missed the Boss, though. I nodded to that.

He said, "Jack, the boys sure miss you around here, too."

I nodded modestly and said that I sure missed the boys.

"Yeah," he resumed, "I was saying to myself the other day, just let me get settled into harness and I'm going to get hold of Jack. Yeah, Jack's the kind of fellow I like to have around. The Boss sure thought a lot of him, and what was good enough for the Boss is good enough for old Tiny. Yeah, I said to myself, I'm gonna get old Jack. The kind of guy I need. A square‑shooter. A guy you can trust. He'll speak the truth, fear nor fear. His word is his bond.

"Are you referring to me?" I asked.

"I sure am," he replied. "And I'm making you a proposition. I don't exactly know what arrangement you had with the Boss, but you just tell me straight what it was and I'll up it ten per cent."

"I had no complaints about my treatment."

"Now that's talking like a white man, Jack," he said, and added earnestly, "And don't get me wrong, I know you and the Boss was like that." He held up two large, white, glistening episcopal fingers as in benediction. "Like that," he repeated. "And don't get me wrong, I'm not criticizing the Boss. I just want to show you I appreciate you."

"Thanks," I said with some lack of warmth.

The lack of warmth was such, I presume, that he leaned slightly forward and said, "Jack, I'm going to make that twenty per cent."

"That's not enough," I said.

"Jack," he said, "you're right. That's not enough. Twenty‑five per cent."

I shook my head.

He showed a slight uneasiness and the couch creaked, but he rallied with a smile. "Jack," he said soothingly, "you just tell me what you think's right, and I'll see how we make out. You tell me what's enough."

"There ain't enough," I said.

"Huh?"

"Listen," I said, "didn't you just tell me that I am the guy whose word is his bond?"

"Yeah, Jack."

"So you'll believe me if I tell you something?"

"Why, yeah, Jack."

"Well, I'm telling you something. You are the stinkingest louse God ever let live."

I relished the moment of profound silence which followed, then plunged on, "And you think you can buy me in. Well, I know why you want to. You don't know how much I know or what. I was thick with the Boss and I know a lot. I'm the joker in the deck. My name is Jack and I'm the wild jack and I'm not one‑eyed. You want to deal me to yourself from the bottom of the deck. But it's no sale, Tiny, it's no sale. And it's too damned bad, Tiny. And do you know why?"

"Look here!" he said with authority. "Look here, you can't be–"

"It's too bad because I do know something. I know a lot. I know that you killed the Boss."

"It's a lie!" he exclaimed, and heaved on the couch and the couch creaked.

"It's no lie. And it's no guess. Though I ought to have guessed it. Sadie Burke told me. She–"

"She's in it, she's in it!"

"She _was__ in it," I corrected, "but not any more. And she'll tell the world. She doesn't care who knows. She's not afraid."

"She better be. I'll–"

"She's not afraid, because she's tired. She's tired of everything and she's tired of you."

"I'll kill her," he said, and the perspiration exuded delicately on his temples.

"You won't kill anybody," I said, "and this time there's nobody to do it for you. For you're afraid to. You were afraid to kill the Boss and you were afraid not to, but luck helped you out. But you gave luck a little push, Tiny, and I swear, I admire you for it. It opened my eyes. You see, Tiny, all those years I never thought you were real. You were just something off the cartoon page. With your diamond ring. You were just the punching bag the Boss used, and you just grinned your sick grin and took it. You were like the poodle I heard about. You ever hear about the poodle?"

I didn't give him time to answer. I watched his mouth get ready, then I went on. "There was a drunk had a poodle and he took him everywhere with him from bar to bar. And you know why? Was it devotion? It was not devotion. He took that poodle everywhere just so he could spit on him and not get the floor dirty. Well, you were the Boss's poodle. And you liked it. You liked to be spit on. You weren't human. You weren't real. That's what I thought. But I was wrong, Tiny. Somewhere down in you there was something made you human. You resented being spit on. Even for money."

I got up, with my half‑empty glass in my hand.

"And now, Tiny," I said, "that I know you are real, I sort of feel sorry for you. You are a funny old fat man, Tiny, with your heart getting bad and your liver nigh gone and sweat running down your face and a mean worry on your mind and a great blackness like water rising in a cellar inside you and I almost feel sorry for you but if you say a word I might stop feeling sorry for you. So now I'm going to drink up your whisky and spit in the glass and go."

So I drank off the whisky, dropped the glass on the floor (on the thick rug it didn't break), and started for the door. I had almost got there, when I heard a croak from the couch. I looked around.

"It–" he croaked, "it won't stand in a court."

I shook my head. "No," I said, "it won't. But you still got plenty to worry about."

I opened the door and walked through and left the door open behind me and walked down the long hall under the great, glittering chandelier, and walked out into the brisk night.

I took a deep drag of fresh air and looked up through the trees at the distinct stars. I felt like a million. I had sure‑God brought off that scene. I had hit him where he lived. I was full of beans. I had fire in my belly. I was a hero. I was St. George and the dragon, I was Edwin Booth bowing beyond the gaslights, I was Jesus Christ with the horsewhip in the temple.

I was the stuff.

And all at once the stars I was like a man who has done himself the best from soup to nuts and a Corona Corona and feels like a virtuous million and all at once there isn't anything but the yellow, acid taste which has crawled up to the back of the mouth from the old, tired stomach.

Three days later I got the registered letter from Sadie Burke. It read: Dear Jack: Just so you won't think I am going to welch on what I said I would do I am enclosing the statement I said I would make. I have got it witnessed and notarized and nailed down as tight as you can nail anything down and you can do anything with it you want for it is yours. I mean this. It is your baby, just like I said.

As for me I am getting out of here. I don't mean just getting out of this cross between an old folks' home and a booby‑hatch, but out of this town and out of this state. I can't stand it round here and I'm pulling out. I'll be gone a long way and I'll be gone a long time and maybe somewhere the climate will be better. But my cousin (Mrs. Sill Larkin, 2331 Rousseau Ave.) who is the nearest thing to a relative I got will have some kind of address for me sometime, and if you ever want to contact me just write me care of her. Wherever I am I'll do what you say. I'll come if you say come. I don't want you thinking I am going to welch. I don't care who knows anything. I'll do anything you say about that piece of business.

But if you take my advice about that piece of business you will let it drop. This is not because I love Duffy. I hope you will give him an earful and let him wet his pants. But my advice is to let it drop. First, you cannot do anything in law. Second, if you use it politically the best you can get will be to keep Duffy from being re‑elected, and you know as well as I do he will never get nominated even. The boys will never nominate him for they know he is a dummy even by their standards. He was just something the Boss kept around. Springing this stuff won't hurt the gang any. I will just give them an excuse to get rid of Duffy. If you want to get the gang you got to let them dig their own grave like they sure will now the Boss is gone. But third, it is sure going to be rough on that Stanton dame if you break this stuff. She may be so noble and high‑toned like you said that she will want you to do it, but you are a sap if you do. She has maybe had plenty to put up with already in her way, and you would be a sap to crucify her just because you got some high‑faluting idea you are an Eagle Scout and she is Joan of Arc. You would be a sap to tell her even. Unless you are so blabber mouthed you have done it already. Like you maybe have. I am not going on to say she is my best friend but she has had her troubles like I said and you might give her a break.

Remember I am not welching. I am just giving you my advice.

Keep your tail over the dashboard.

Sincerely yours,

SADIE BURKE

I read through Sadie's statement. It said everything there was to say, and each page was signed and witnessed. Then I folded up. It was no good to me. Not because of the advice which Sadie had given me. Her letter made sense, all right. That is, the part about Duffy and the gang. But something had happened. To hell with them all, I thought. I was sick of it all.

I looked down at the letter again. So Sadie had called me an Eagle Scout. But that wasn't news, either. I had called myself worse names than that the night after I had seen Duffy and was walking down the street under the stars. But it touched the sore place and made it throb. It throbbed the worse because I knew that it wasn't a secret sore place. Sadie had known about it. She had seen through me. She had read me like a book.

There was only one wry piece of consolation in the thought. At least, I had not had to wait for her to read me. I had read myself to myself that night walking down the street, full of beans and being an Eagle Scout, when the yellow, acid taste had all at once crawled up to the back of my mouth.

What had I read? I had read this: When I found out about Duffy's killing the Boss and Adam I had felt clean and pure, and when I kicked Duffy around I felt like a million because I thought it let me out. Duffy was the villain and I was the avenging hero. I had kicked Duffy around and my head was big as a balloon with grandeur. Then all at once something happened and the yellow taste was in the back of my mouth.

This happened: I suddenly asked myself why Duffy had been so sure I would work for him. And suddenly I saw the eyes of the little squirt‑face newspaperman at the cemetery gate on me, and all the eyes that had looked at me that way, and suddenly I knew that I had tried to make Duffy into a scapegoat for me and to set myself off from Duffy, and my million‑dollar meal of heroism backfired that yellow taste into my gullet and I felt caught and tangled and mired and stuck like an ox in a bog and a cat in flypaper. It wasn't simply that I again saw myself as party to that conspiracy with Anne Stanton which had committed Willie Stark and Adam Stanton to each other and to their death. It was more than that. It was as though I were caught in a more monstrous conspiracy whose meaning I could not fathom. It was as though the scene through which I had just lived had been a monstrous and comic miming for ends I could not conceive and for an audience I could not see but which I knew was leering from the shadow. It was as though in the midst of the scene Tiny Duffy had slowly and like a brother winked at me with his oyster eye and I had known he knew the nightmare truth, which was that we were twins bound together more intimately and disastrously than the poor freaks of the midway who are bound by the common stitch of flesh and gristle and the seepage of blood. We were bound together forever and I could never hate him without hating myself or love myself without loving him. We were bound together under the unwinking eye of Eternity and by the Holy Grace of the Great Twitch whom we must all adore.

And I heaved and writhed like the ox or the cat, and the acid burned my gullet and that was all there was to it and I had everything and everybody and myself and tiny Duffy and Willie Stark and Adam Stanton. To hell with them all, I said impartially under the stars. They all looked alike to me then. And I looked like them.

That was the way it was for quite a while.

I did not go back to the Landing. I did not want to see Anne Stanton. I did not even open a letter she wrote me. It lay on my bureau where I saw it every morning. I did not want to see anybody I knew. I hung around town and sat in my room or sat in bars which I had never frequented and sat in movies in the front row, where I could admire the enormous and distorted shadows which gesticulated and struck or clutched or clung and uttered asseverations which reminded you of everything which you had ever remembered. And I sat for hours in the newspaper room of the public library, the place like railway stations and missions and public latrines is where the catarrhal old men and bums go and where they sit to thumb the papers which tell about the world in which they live for a certain number of years or to sit and wheeze and stare while the gray rain slides down the big windowpanes above them.

It was in the newspaper room of the library that I saw Sugar‑Boy. It was such an improbable place to encounter him that at first I scarcely accepted the evidence of my eyes. But there he was. The rather largish head hung forward as though its weight were too much for the little stem of a neck, and I could see how thin and pink like a baby's the skin was over the skull in the areas where the hair had prematurely gone. His short arms in sleeves of wrinkled blue serge lay symmetrically out before him on the table, like a brace of stuffed sacks of country sausage laid on a butcher's counter. The pale, chubby hands curled innocently on the varnished yellow oak of the table. He was looking at a picture magazine.

Then one of the hands, the right hand, with the quick, flickering motion which I remembered, dropped below the level of the table–to the side pocket of his coat, I presumed–and returned with a cube of sugar which he popped into his mouth. The flickering motion of the hand reminded me, and I wonder if he was still carrying a gun. I looked at the left side toward the shoulder, but I couldn't tell. Sugar‑Boy's blue serge coat was always a size too big for him.

It was Sugar‑Boy all right, and I didn't want to see him. If he should raise his head he would look right at me. Now while he was sunk in the picture magazine I tried for the door. I edged over to one side easy and was almost past his natural area of vision when he lifted his head and our eyes met. He rose from the chair and came toward me.

I gave an ambiguous nod which might have served merely for recognition, a rather chilly and discouraging recognition, or for a signal to follow me out to the hall where we could talk. He took the latter interpretation, and followed me. I didn't wait just outside the door, but move some distance across the hall to the steps (those newspaper rooms in public libraries are always in a half basement, next to the men's latrine) which led up to the main lobby. Maybe he would read something into that extra distance. But he didn't. He came padding over to me, with his blue serge trousers bagging down low of his can and the tops crumpling over his black, soft‑leather box‑toed shoes.

"How‑how‑how–" he began, and the face began its pained, apologetic contortions, and the spit flew.

"I'm making out," I said, "How're you making out?"

"Aw‑aw‑aw‑right."

He stood there in the dingy, dimly lit basement hall of the public library with the cigarette butts on the cement floor around us and the door of the men's latrine behind us and the air smelling of dry paper and dust and disinfectant. It was eleven‑thirty in the morning and outside the gray sky dripped steadily like a sogged old awning. We looked at each other. Each one knew the other was there out of the rain because he had no other place to go.

He shuffled his feet on the floor, looked down to the floor, then back up at me. "I‑I‑I could‑a had a‑a‑a‑a job," he declared earnestly.

"Sure," I said, without much interest.

"I‑I‑I‑I just didn't wa‑wa‑wa‑want one. Not yet," he said. "I didn't fee‑fee‑feel like no job yet."

"Sure," I repeated.

"I‑I‑I got me some mo‑mo‑money saved up," he said apologetically.

"Sure."

He looked searchingly at me. "Y‑y‑y‑you got a job?" he asked.

I shook my head, but was about to say in my defense what he had just said, that I could have had one if I had wanted. I could have been sitting up in a nice office next door to Tint Duffy's office with my feet on a mahogany desk. If I had wanted. And as that crossed my mind, with the momentary flicker of weary self‑irony, I suddenly saw like a blaze of lightening and a clap of thunder what the Lord had put before me. Duffy, I thought, Duffy.

And there was Sugar‑Boy standing before me.

"Listen," I said, and leaned toward him in the empty hall, "listen, do you know who killed the Boss?"

The biggish head rolled a little to one side on the little stem of a neck as he looked up at me and the face began its painful twitching. "Yeah," he said, "yeah–the son‑of‑a‑bi‑bi‑bitch and I‑I‑I shot him."

"Yeah," I said, "you shot Stanton–" and I thought with an instantaneous stab of Adam Stanton alive a long time back and now dead, and I hated the malformed, sad little creature before me–"yeah, you shot him.

The head rolled slightly and tiredly on the neck, and he repeated, "I‑I‑I shot him."

But suppose you don't know," I said, leaning, "suppose there was somebody behind Stanton, somebody who framed him to do it."

I let that sink in, and watched his face twitch while no sound came.

"Suppose," I continued, "suppose I could tell you who–suppose I could prove it–what would you do?"

Suddenly his face wasn't twitching. It was smooth as a baby's and peaceful, but peaceful in the way that intensity can sometimes momentarily make a face look peaceful and pure.

"What would you do?" I demanded "I'd kill the son‑of‑a‑bitch," he said. And he had not stuttered at all.

"They'd hang you," I said.

"I'd k‑k‑k‑kill him. They couldn't h‑h‑h‑hang me before I killed him."

"Remember," I whispered, leaning closer, "they'd hang you."

He stared up at me, prying into my face. "Who‑who‑who is it?"

"They'd hang you. Are you sure you'd kill him?"

"Who‑who‑who–" he began. Then he clutched my coat. "Y‑y‑you know–" he said, "y‑y‑you know something you ain't t‑t‑t‑telling me."

I could tell him. I could say to him, meet me here at three o'clock, I want to show you something. I could bring the stuff from Sadie, the stuff that lay up in my room in a desk, and he would take one look. One look. It would be like touching a trigger.

His hands were clutching and clawing at my coat. "T‑t‑tell me," he was saying.

One look. It was perfect. I could meet him here in the afternoon. We could step into the latrine and he could take one look, and I would go home and burn the stuff. Hell, why burn it? What had I done? I even warned the little burger they'd hang him. They had nothing on me.

He was clawing at me, importunately and feebly, saying, "T‑t‑tell me, you better t‑t‑tell me now."

It would be too easy. It was perfect. And the perfect mathematical irony of it–the perfect duplication of what Duffy had done–struck me, and I felt like laughing out loud. "Listen here," I said to Sugar‑Boy. "Stop clawing on me and listen here and I'll–"

He stopped clawing and stood meekly before me.

He would do it, I knew he would do it. And it was such a joke on Duffy I almost laughed out loud. And as the name of Duffy flashed across my mind I saw Duffy's face, large and lunar and sebaceous, nodding at me as at the covert and brotherly appreciation of a joke, and even s I opened my lips to speak the syllables of his name, he winked. He winked right at me like a brother.

I stood there stock‑still.

Sugar‑Boy' face began to twitch again. He was going to ask again. I stared down at him. "I was kidding," I said.

There was absolute blankness on his face, and then an absolute murderousness. There wasn't any flare of fury. It was a cold and innocent and murderous certainty. It was as though his face had suddenly frozen in a split second in that certainty, and it looked like the face of a man who had been trapped and had died in the snow long ago, centuries ago–back in the ice age, perhaps–and the glacier brings it down all those centuries, inch by inch, and suddenly, with its primitive purity and lethal innocent, it stares at you through the last preserving glaze of ice.

I stood there for what seemed forever. I couldn't move. I was sure I was a goner.

Then the ice face wasn't there. It was just Sugar‑Boy's face on a head to big for the neck, and it was saying, "I‑I‑I durn near d‑d‑done it."

I ran my tongue over my dry lips. "I know it," I said.

"Y‑y‑you oughtn't d‑d‑d‑done me that way," he said in humble complaint.

"I'm sorry."

"Y‑y‑you know h‑h‑how I feel, and y‑y‑you oughtn't d‑d‑done me like that."

"I know how you feel," I said. "And I'm sorry. I really am."

"F‑f‑ferget it," he said. He stood there, seeming smaller than before, slumped and forlorn as though he were a doll that had lost some of his sawdust.

I studied him. Then I said, as much to myself as him, I suppose, "You really would have done it."

"It w‑w‑was the B‑B‑Boss," he said.

"Even if they'd hang you."

"They w‑w‑wasn't n‑n‑nobody like the B‑B‑Boss. And they k‑k‑killed him. They h‑h‑had to go and k‑k‑kill him."

He shuffled his feet on the cement floor and looked down at them. "He could t‑t‑talk so good," he half‑mumbled with his stuttering. "The B‑B‑Boss could. Couldn't nobody t‑t‑talk like him. When he m‑m‑made a speech and ev‑ev‑everybody y‑y‑yelled, it looked l‑l‑like something was gonna b‑b‑bust inside y‑y‑you." He touched his chest with his hand to indicate where something looked like it might bust inside you. Then he looked questioningly at me.

Дата добавления: 2015-10-28