All the King's Men - Robert Penn Warren [16]
But the dog didn’t show a thing.
“Here, Buck,” the Boss called.
Tom Stark prodded the dog with his toe for a little encouragement, but he might just as well have been prodding a bolster.
“Buck is gitten on,” Old Man Stark said. “He ain’t right spry any more.” Then the old man went to the steps and stooped down with a motion which made you expect to hear the sound of old rusty hinges on a barn door. “Hi, Buck, hi, Buck,” the old man wheedled without optimism. He gave up, and lifted his gaze to the Boss. “If s hongry now,” he said, and shook hid head. “If he was hongry we could guile him. But he ain’t hongry. His teeth gone bad.”
The Boss looked at me, and I knew what I was paid to do.
“Jack,” the Boss said, “get the hairy bastard up here and make him look like he was glad to see me.”
I was supposed to do a lot of different things, and one of them was to lift up fifteen-year-old, hundred-and-thirty-five pound hairy white dogs on summer afternoons and paint an expression of unutterable bliss upon their faithful features as they gaze deep, deep into the Boss’s eyes. I got hold of Buck’s forelegs, as though I were girding myself to shove a wheelbarrow, and heaved. It didn’t work. I got his front end up for a second, but just as I got him up, he breathed out and I breathed in. One gust of Buck was enough. It was like a gust from a buzzard’s nest. I was paralyzed. Buck hit the porch boards and lay there like the old polar-bear rug he resembled.
Then Tom Stark and one of the reporters shoved on the tail end and I heaved on the front end and held my breath and we got Buck the seven feet to the Boss. The Boss braced himself, and we heaved up the front end, and the Boss got a gust of Buck.
That gust was enough.
“God’s sake, Pappy,” the Boss demanded as soon as he had mastered his spasm, “what you been feeding this dog?”
“He ain’t any appetite,” Old man Stark said.
“He ain’t any appetite for violets,” the Boss said, and spat on the ground.
“The reason he fell,” the photographer observed, “was because his hind legs gave down. Once we get him propped we got to work fast.”
“We?” the Boss said. We! What the hell you mean we. You come kiss him. One whiff would curdle milk and strip pine tree. We, hell!”
The Boss took a deep breath, and we heaved again. It didn’t work. Buck didn’t have any starch in him. We tried six or seven times, but it was no sale. Finally the Boss had to sit down on the steps, and we dragged Buck up and laid the faithful head on the Boss’s knee. The Boss put his hand on Buck’s head and looked at the photographer’s birdie. The photographer shot it, and said, “It is the nuts,” and the Boss said, “Yeah, the nuts.”
The Boss sat there a few seconds with his hand on Buck’s head. “A dog,” the Boss said, “is man’s best friend. Old Buck, he’s the best friend I ever had.” He scratched the brute’s head. “Yeah, good old Buck,” the Boss said, “the best friend I ever had. But God damn it,” he said, and stood up so quick that Buck’s head slid off his knee, “he don’t smell a bit better’n the rest of ’em.”
“Is that for the record, Boss?” one of the reporters asked.
“Sure,” the Boss said. “He smells just like the rest of ’em.”
Then we cleared Buck’s carcass off the steps, and the photographer settled into the grind. He took the Boss and the family in every possible combination. Then he got his rig together, and said: “Governor, you know we want a picture of you upstairs. In the room you used to have when you were a kid. It will be nuts.”
“Yeah,” the Boss said, “the nuts.”
That was my idea. It would be nuts all right. The Boss sitting there with an old schoolbook in his hands. A good example for the tots. So we went upstairs.
It was a little room, with bare board floor and tongue-and groove beaded walls, which had been painted yellow one time, but had the paint crazing off the wood now in sections where any paint was left. There was a big wooden bed with a high head and foot standing somewhat off the perpendicular, and a white counterpane on the bed. There was a table