All the King's Men - Robert Penn Warren [248]
“Do you?” I asked.
“I don’t have any notion,” she said.
“No?”
“No,” she said, still not looking at me, “and I don’t have to have any. Because, you see, I know.”
“Who?” I demanded. “Who?” And came up out of my chair.
“Duffy,” she said.
“I knew it!” I exclaimed, “I ought to have known it! It had to be.”
“If you knew it,” she said, “what the hell you come messing around me for?”
“I had to be sure. I had to know. Really know. I–” I stopped and stood there at the foot of the chaise longue and looked down at her averted face, which the sunlight lay across. “You say you know it was Duffy. How do you know?”
“God damn you, Jack Burden, God damn you,” she said in a tired voice, and turned her head to look up at me. Then looking at me, she thrust herself up to a sitting position, and burst out in a voice which all at once wasn’t tired any more but angry and violent, “God damn you, Jack Burden, what made you come here? What always makes you mess in things? Why can’t you leave me alone? Why can’t you? Why?”
I stared down into her eyes, which in the pain-contorted face were burning now and wild.
“How do you know?” I demanded softly.
“God damn you, Jack Burden, God damn you,” she said like a litany.
“How do you know?” I demanded, more softly than before–I was almost whispering–and leaned down toward her.
“God damn you, Jack Burden,” she said.
“How do you know?”
“Because–” she began, hesitated, and tossed her head in a desperate tired way like a fevered child on a pillow.
“Because?” I demanded.
“Because,” she said, and let herself fall back on the cushions of the chaise longue, “I told him. I told him to do it.”
That was it. That was it, and I hadn’t guessed it. My knees gave slowly down, like a pneumatic jack letting down the weight of a car to the floor, and I was back in my chair. There I was and there Sadie Burke was, and I was looking at her as though I had never seen her before.
After a minute, she said, “Stop looking at me.” But there wasn’t any heat in what she said.
I must have continued to look, for she said, as before, “Stop looking at me.”
Then I heard my lips saying, as though to myself, “You killed him.”
“All right,” she said, “all right, I killed him. He was throwing me over. For good. I knew it was for good that time. For that Lucy. After all I had done. After I made him. I told him I’d fix him, but he turned that new sick smile of his on me like he was practicing to be Jesus and took my hands in his, and asked me to understand–understand, Jesus!–and just then like a flash I knew I’d kill him.”
“You killed Adam Stanton,” I said.
“Oh, God,” she breathed, “oh, God.”
“You killed Adam,” I repeated
“Oh,” she breathed, “and I killed Willie. I killed him.”
“Yes,” I agreed, and nodded.
“Oh, God,” she said, and lay there staring up at the ceiling.
I had found out what I had come to find out. But I kept on sitting there. I didn’t even light a cigarette.
After a while she said, “Come over here. Pull your chair over here.”
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.