All the King's Men - Robert Penn Warren [209]
“So,” I finished it for him, “you threw in with MacMurfee.”
“Jack,” he said, “politics is always a matter of choices, and a man doesn’t set up the choices himself. And there is always a price to make a choice. You know that. You’ve made a choice, and you know how much it cost you. There is always a price.”
“Yes, but–”
“Jack, I’m not criticizing you,” he said. “I trust you. Time will show which of us is wrong. And meanwhile, Jack, let’s don’t let it come between. If I lost my temper that night, I apologize. From my heart. It has cost me some pain.
“You say you don’t like Stark’s methods,” I said. “Well, I’ll tell you something about MacMurfee’s methods. Listen, here is what MacMurfee is up to–” And I lurched and ground on like a runaway streetcar charging downhill and the brakes busted. I told him what MacMurfee was up to.
He sat and took it.
Then I asked him, “Is that pretty?”
“No,” he said, and shook his head.
“It is not pretty,” I said. “And you can stop it.”
“Me?” he demanded.
“MacMurfee will listen to you. He’s got to listen to you, for you are one of the few friends he’s got left, and he knows the Boss’s breath is hot on his neck. If he really had anything of more than nuisance value, he would go on and try to bust the Boss and not haggle. But he knows he hasn’t got anything. And I’ll tell you that if it comes to a pinch the Boss will fight in the courts. This Sibyl Frey is a homemade tart, and we can damned well prove it. We’ll have an entire football squad in there, plus a track team, and all the truckers who run Highway 69 past her pappy’s house. If you talk MacMurfee into sense, there might be some chance of saving his shirt when the time comes. But mind you, I can’t promise a thing. Not now.”
There was nothing but shadow and silence and the faint odor like old cheese for a spell, while what I had just said all went through the hopper inside that handsome old head. Then he shook the head slowly. “No,” he said.
“Look here,” I said, “there’ll be something in it for Sibyl, the tart. We can take care of that side of it, unless she’s got ideas of grandeur. She’ll have to sign a little statement, of course. And I won’t conceal from you that our side will have a few affidavits from her other boy-friends salted away just in case she ever gets gay again. If you think Sibyl isn’t getting a square deal, I can reassure you on that point.”
“It isn’t that,” he said.
“Judge,” I said, and caught the tone of pleading in my own voice, “what the hell is it?”
“It’s MacMurfee’s affair. He may be making a mistake. I think he is. But it is his affair. It is the sort of thing I am not mixing in.”
“Judge,” I begged, “you think it over. Take a little time to think it over.”
He shook his head.
I got up. “I’ve got to run,” I said. “You think it over. I’ll be back tomorrow and we can talk about it then. Give me your answer then.”
He put the yellow agates on me and shook his head again. “Come to see me tomorrow, Jack. Tomorrow and every other day. But I’m giving you my answer now.”
“I’m asking you, Judge, as a favor to me. Wait till tomorrow to make up your mind.”
“You talk like I didn’t know my own mind, Jack. That’s about the only thing I’ve learned out of my three score and ten. That I know when I know my own mind. But you come back tomorrow, anyway. And we won’t talk politics.” He made a sudden gesture as though sweeping off the top of a table with his arm. “Damn politics anyway!” he exclaimed humorously.
I looked at him, and even with the wry, humorous expression on his face and the arm flung out at the end of its gesture, knew that this was it. It wasn’t the dabble of the foot in the water, or even the steady deep pull of the undertow or the peripheral drag of the whirlpool. It was the heady race and plunge of the vortex. I ought to have known it would be this way.
Looking at him, I said, almost whispering, “I asked you, Judge. I near begged you, Judge.