All the King's Men - Robert Penn Warren [34]
“There ain’t any situation,” Mr. Pillsbury said.
“Maybe there isn’t any situation,” I said, “but there’s been a right smart racket.”
“Ain’t any situation. Board meets and takes a bid what’s been offered. J. H. Moore’s bid, the fellow’s name.”
“Was that fellow Moore’s bid low?”
“Not egg-zackly.”
“You mean it wasn’t low?”
“Well–” Mr. Pillsbury said, and his face was shadowed by an expression which might have been caused by a gas pain, “well, if’n you want to put it that a-way.”
“All right,” I said, “let’s put it that way.”
“Now look a-here–” and the shadow passed from Mr. Pillsbury’s face and he sat up in his chair as suddenly as though he had been stuck by a pin–“you talk like that, and ain’t nuthen done but legal. Ain’t nobody can tell the Board what bid to take. Anybody can come along and put in a little piss-ant bid, but the Board doan have to take it. Naw-sir-ee. The Board takes somebody kin do the work right.”
“Who was it put the little piss-ant bid in?”
“Name of Jeffers,” Mr. Pillsbury said peevishly, as at an unpleasant recollection.
“Jeffers Construction?” I asked.
“Yeah.”
“What’s wrong with Jeffers Construction?”
“The Board picks the fellow kin do the work right, and it ain’t nobody’s bizness.”
I took out my pencil and a pad of paper, and wrote on it. Then I said to Mr. Pillsbury, “How’s this?” And I began to read to him: “Mr. Dolph Pillsbury, Chairman of the Board of County Commissioners of Mason County, stated that the bid of J. H. Moore for the construction of the Mason County School was accepted, even though it was not the low bid, because the Board wanted somebody ‘who could do the work right.’ The low bid, which was submitted by the Jeffers Construction Company, was rejected, Mr. Pillsbury stated. Mr. Pillsbury started further–”
“Now look a-here–” Mr. Pillsbury was sitting very straight up as though it were not a pin this time but a hot tenpenny and in the brown–“now look a-here, I didn’t state nuthen. You write it down and claim I stated it. Now you look a-here–”
The Sheriff heaved massively in the chair and fixed his gaze upon Mr. Pillsbury. “Dolph,” he said, “tell the bugger to git out of here.”
“I didn’t state nuthen,” Dolph said, “and you git out!”
“Sure,” I said, and put the pad in my pocket, “but maybe you can kindly tell me where Mr. Stark is?”
“I knowed it,” the Sheriff exploded and dropped his feet off the desk with a noise like a brick chimney, and heaved up in the chair and glared apoplectically at me. “That Stark, I knowed it was that Stark!”
“What’s wrong with Stark?” I asked.
“Jesus Gawd!” roared the Sheriff, and his face went purple with congestion of language which couldn’t get out.
“He’s biggety, that’s what he is,” Mr. Dolph Pillsbury offered. “Gits in the courthouse and gits biggety, he–”
“He’s a nigger-lover,” the little old bald, knotty-headed fellow submitted.
“And him, him–” Mr. Pillsbury pointed at me with an air of revelation–“I bet he’s a nigger-lover, comen up here and sahayen round, I bet he–”
“No sale,” I said. “I like mine vanilla. But now you’ve raised the subject, what’s nigger-loving got to do with it?”
“That’s it!” Mr. Pillsbury exclaimed, like the man overboard seizing the plank. “That Jeffers Construction now, they–”
“You, Dolph,” the Sheriff bellowed at him, “why don’t you shut up and tell him to git out!”
“Git out,” Mr. Pillsbury said to me, obediently but without great vigor.
“Sure,” I replied and went out and walked down the hall.
They ain’t real, I thought as I walked down the hall, nary one. But I knew they were. You come into a strange place, into a town like Mason City, and they don’t seem real, but you know they are. You know the went wading in the creek when they were kids, and when they were bigger they used to go out about sunset and lean on the back fence and look across the country at the sky and not know what was happening inside them or whether they were happy or sad, and when they got grown they slept with their wives and tickled their babies to make them laugh and went to work in the morning and didn’t know what they wanted but had their reasons for doing the things they did, and then when they got old they lost their reasons for doing anything and sat on the bench in front of the harness shop and had words for the reasons other people had but had forgotten what the reasons were. And then they will lie in bed some morning just before day and look up at the ceiling they can scarcely see because the lamp is shaded with a pinned-on newspaper and they don