All the King's Men - Robert Penn Warren [27]
The Judge didn’t sit down. He stood in the middle of the floor and looked down at the Boss, who had his legs stuck out on the red carpet. And the Judge didn’t say anything. Something was going on inside his head. You knew that if he had a little glass window in the side of that tall skull, where the one-time thick, dark-red, mane-like hair was thinned out now and faded, you could see inside and see the wheels and springs and cogs and ratchets working away and shining like a beautiful lot of well-kept mechanism. But maybe somebody had pushed the wrong button. Maybe it was just going to run on and on till something cracked or the spring ran down, and nothing was going to happen.
But the Boss said something. He jerked his head sideways to indicate the silver tray with the bottle and the pitcher of water and a silver bowl and two used glasses and three or four clean ones which sat on the desk, and said, “Judge, I trust you don’t mind Jack pouring me a slug? You know Southern hospitality.”
Judge Irwin didn’t answer him. He turned to me, and I said, “I didn’t realize, Jack, that your duties included those of a body servant, but, of course, if I am mistaken–”
I could have slapped his face. I could have slapped that God-damned handsome, eagle-beaked, strong-boned, rubiginous-hided, high old face, in which the eyes weren’t old but were hard and bright without any depth to them and were an insult to look into. And the Boss laughed, and I could have slapped his God-damned face. I could have walked right out and felt the two of them there, alone in that cheese-smelling room together till hell froze over, and just kept on walking. But I didn’t, and perhaps it was just as well, for maybe you cannot ever really walk away from the things you want most to walk away from.
“Oh, nuts,” the Boss said, and stopped laughing, and heaved himself up out of the leather chair, and made a pass at the bottle and sloshed out some whisky into a glass and poured in some water. Then he turned round, and grinning up to the Judge, stepped toward me and held out the glass. “Here, Jack,” he said, “have a drink.”
I can’t say that I took the drink. It got shoved into my hand, and I stood there holding it, not drinking it, and watched the Boss look up at the Judge Irwin and say, “Sometimes Jack pours me a drink, and sometimes I pour him a drink and–” he stepped toward the desk again–“sometimes I pour myself a drink.”
He poured the drink, added water, and looked again at the Judge, leering with a kind of comic cunning. “Whether I’m asked or not,” he said. And added, “There’s lots of things you never get, Judge, if you wait till you are asked. And I am an impatient man. I am a very impatient man, Judge. That is why I am not a gentleman, Judge.”
“Really?” replied the Judge. He stood in the middle of the floor and studied the scene beneath him.
From my spot by the wall, I looked at both of them. To hell with them, I thought, to hell with both of them. When they talked like that, it was to hell with both of them.
“Yeah,” the Boss was saying, “you’re a gent, and so you don’t ever get impatient. Not even for your likker. You aren’t even impatient for your drink right now and it’s likker your money paid for. But you’ll get a drink, Judge. I’m asking you to have one. Have a drink with me, Judge.”
Judge Irwin didn’t answer a word. He stood very erect in the middle of the floor.
“Aw, have a drink,” the Boss said, and laughed, and sat again in the big chair and stuck out his legs on the red carpet.
The Judge didn’t pour himself a drink. And he didn’t sit down.
The Boss looked up at him from the chair and said, “Judge, you happen to have an evening paper round here?”
The paper was lying over on another chair by the fireplace, with the Judge’s collar and tie on top of it, and his white jacket hung on the back of the chair. I saw the Judge’s eyes snap over there to it, and then back at the Boss.
“Yes,” the Judge said, “as a matter of fact, I have.”
“I haven’t had a chance to see one, rushing around the country today. Mind if I take a look?”
“Not in the slightest,