All the King's Men - Robert Penn Warren [231]
He sank down into the chair. She turned away and went back to her own chair.
He was looking at her, not at the artificial logs now. Finally, he said, “He’ll be all right.”
“God grant it,” she replied.
He was silent for two or three minutes, still looking at her. Then he said, violently, “He will, he’s got to.”
“God grant it,” she said, and met his gaze until his eyes fell away from hers.
By that time I had had enough of sitting there. I got up and went out and down the hall to the nurse who was on the floor desk. “Any chance of getting some sandwiches and coffee brought up here for the Governor and his wife?” I asked.
She said she would get some brought up, and I told her just to have them brought to her desk, that I would take them in. Then I wandered down to the lobby again. Sadie was still there, spooking in the shadows. I told her about the operation and left her there. I hung around at the floor desk upstairs until the sandwiches arrived, then took the tray down to the waiting room.
The grub and coffee, however, didn’t do much to change the atmosphere there. I put a little table by Lucy with a sandwich on a plate and a cup of coffee. She thanked me, and broke a piece of the sandwich and put it to her mouth two or three times, but I could not see that she was doing it much damage. But she took some coffee. I put some food and coffee handy to the Boss. He looked up out of himself and said, “Thanks, Jack.” He did not even make a pretense, however, of eating. He held the cup in his hand for a few minutes, but I didn’t notice that he even took a sip. He just held it.
I ate a sandwich and had a cup of coffee. I was pouring myself a second cup, when the Boss reached to set his cup down, sloshingly, on the little table beside him.
“Lucy,” he said, “Lucy!”
“Yes,” she answered.
“You know–you know what I’m going to do?” He leaned forward, not waiting for an answer. “I’m going to name the new hospital for him. For Tom. I’m going to call it the Tom Stark Hospital and Medical Center. It’ll be named for Tom, it’ll–”
She was slowly shaking her head, and his words stopped
“Thos things don’t matter,” she said. “Oh, Willie, don’t you see? Those things don’t matter. Having somebody’s name cut on a piece of stone. Getting it in the paper. All those things. Oh, Willie, he was my baby boy, he was our baby boy, and those things don’t matter, they don’t ever matter, don’t you see?”
He sank back into his chair, and the silence picked up where it had left off. The silence was still going full blast when I got back from taking the dishes and uneaten food down to the desk. It gave me an excuse for getting out. It was twenty minutes to six when I got back
At six o’clock Adam came in. He was pretty gray and stony in the face. The Boss got to his feet and stood there looking at Adam, but neither he not Lucy uttered a sound.
Then Adam said, “He will live.”
“Thank God,” Lucy breathed, but the Boss still stared into Adam’s face.
Adam stared back. Then he said, “The cord was crushed.”
I heard a gasp from Lucy, and looked over to see her with her head bowed on her breast.
The Boss didn’t show a sign for a moment. Then he lifted his hands, chest-high, with the fingers spread as though to seize on something. “No!” he declared. “No!”
“It was crushed,” Adam said. And added, “I am sorry, Governor.”
Then he left the room.
The Boss stared at the closed door, then slowly sank back into the chair. He kept on staring at the door, his eyes bulging and the moisture gathering in drops on his forehead. The he jerked upright and the sound wrenched out of him. It was a formless, agonized sound torn raw right out of the black animal depths inside of the bulk there in the chair. “Oh!” he said. Then, “Oh!”
Lucy Stark was looking across at him. He was still staring at the door.
Then the sound came again: “Oh!”
She rose from her chair and went across to him. She didn’t say anything. She simply stood by his chair and laid a hand on his shoulder.
The sound came again, but it was the last time. He sank back, still staring at the door, and breathed heavily. It must have been like that for three or four minutes. Then Lucy said,