All the King's Men - Robert Penn Warren [11]
How did Slade get the license so quickly? How did he get the lease when half the big boys in the business were after that corner? How did he get the jack for the leather chairs and the string ensemble? Slade never confided in me, but I figure Slade got his reward for being an honest man.
Anyway, Slade’s statement of principle about the beer question closed the subject that morning. Tiny Duffy lifted a face to Slade with the expression worn by the steer when you give it the hammer; then, as sensation returned, he took refuge in his dignity. Alex permitted himself the last luxury of irony. Says Alex: “Well, maybe you got some orange pop for him.” And when the whicker of his mirth had died away, Slade said: “I reckin I have. If he wants it”
“Yes,” Willie said, “I think I’ll take some orange pop.”
The beer came, and the bottle of pop. The bottle of pop had two straws in it. Willie lifted his two hands out of his lap where they had decorously lain during the previous conversation, and took the bottle between them, and affixed his lips to the straws. His lips were a little bit meaty, but they weren’t loose. Not exactly. Maybe at first glance you might think so. You might think he had a mouth like a boy, not quite shaped up, and that was the way he looked that minute, all right, leaning over the bottle and the straws stuck in his lips, which were just puckered up. But if you stuck around long enough, you’d see something a little different. You would see that they were hung together, all right, even if they were meaty. His face was a little bit meaty, too, but thin-skinned, and had freckles. Hs eyes were big, big and brown, and he’d look right at you, out of the middle of that thin-skinned and freckled and almost pudgy face (at first you would think it was pudgy, then you would change your mind), and the dark brown, thick hair was tousled and crinkled down over his forehead, which wasn’t very high in the first place, and the hair was a little moist. There was little Willie. There was Cousin Willie from the country, from up at Mason City, with his Christmas tie, and maybe you would take him out to the park and show him the swans.
Alex leaned toward Duffy, and said confidingly, “Willie–he’s in poly-tics.”
Duffy’s features exhibited the slightest twitch of interest, but the twitch was dissipated into the vast oleaginous blankness which was the face of Duffy in response. He did not even look at Willie.
“Yeah,” Alex continued, leaning closer and nodding sideways at Willie, “yeah, in poly-ticks. Up in Mason City.”
Mr. Duffy’s head did a massive quarter-revolution in the direction of Willie and the pale-blue eyes focused upon him from the great distance. Not that the mention of Mason City was calculated to impress Mr. Duffy, but the fact that Willie could be in politics anywhere, even in Mason City, where, no doubt, the hogs scratched themselves against the underpinnings of the post office, raised certain problems which merit passing attention. So Mr. Duffy gave his attention to Willie, and solved the problem. He solved by deciding that there wasn’t any problem. Willie was not in politics. Not in Mason City or anywhere else. Alex Michel was a liar and the truth was not in him. You could look at Willie and see that he never had been and never would be in politics. Willie could look at Willie and deduce the fact that Willie was not in politics. So he said, “Yeah,” with heavy irony, and incredulity was obvious upon his face.
Not that I much blame Duffy. Duffy was face to face with the margin of mystery where all our calculations collapse, where the stream of time dwindles into the sands of eternity, where the formula fails in the test tube, where chaos and old night hold sway and we hear the laughter in the ether dream. But he didn’t know he was, and so he said, “Yeah.”
“Yeah,” Alex echoed, without irony, and added, “Up in Mason City. Willie is County Treasurer. Ain’t you, Willie?”
“Yes,” Willie said, “County Treasurer.”
“My God,” Duffy breather, with the air of a man who discovers that he has built upon sands and dwelt among mock shows.