All the King's Men - Robert Penn Warren [4]
“He’s a good boy,” Old Leather-Face allowed. “Hit wuz a fahr fight, but he had a leetle bad luck.”
“Huh?”
“Hit wuz fahr and squahr, but he had a leetle bad luck. he stobbed the feller and he died.”
“Tough tiddy,” the Boss said. Then: “Tried yet?”
“Not yit.”
“Tough tiddy,” the Boss said.
“I ain’t complainen,” Old Leather-Face said. “Hit wuz fit fahr and squahr.”
“Glad to seen you,” the Boss said. “Tell your boy to keep his tail over the dashboard.”
“He ain’t complainen,” Old Leather-Face said.
The Boss started to turn away to the rest of us who after a hundred miles in the dazzle were looking at that soda fountain as though it were a mirage, but Old Leather-Face said, “Willie.”
“Huh?” the Boss answered.
“Yore pitcher,” Old Leather-Face allowed, and jerked his head creakily toward the six-times-life-size photograph over the soda fountain.. “Yore pitcher,” he said, “hit don’t do you no credit, Willie.”
“Hell, no,” the Boss said, studying the picture, cocking his head to one side and squinting at it, “but I was porely when they took it. It was like I’d had the cholera morbus. Get in there busting some sense into that Legislature, and it leaves a man worse’n the summer complaint.”
“Git in thar and bust ’em, Willie!” somebody yelled from back in the crowd, which was thickening out now, for folks were trying to get in from the street
“I’ll bust ’em,” Willie said, and turned around to the little man with the white coat. “Give us some cokes, Doc,” he said, “for God’s sake.”
It looked as if Doc would have heart failure getting around to the other side of the sofa fountain. The tail of that white coat was flat on the air behind him when he switched the corner and started clawing past the couple of girls in the lettuce-green smocks so he could do the drawing. He got the first one set up, and passed it to the Boss, who handed it to his wife. The he started drawing the next one, and kept on saying, “It’s on the house, Willie, it’s on the house.” The Boss took that one himself, and Doc kept on drawing them and saying, “It’s on the house, Willie it’s on the house.” He kept on drawing them till he got about five too many.
By that time folks were packed outside the door solid to the middle of the street. Faces were pressed up against the screen door, the way you do when you try to see through a screen into a dim room. Outside, they kept yelling, “Speech, Willie, Speech!”
“My God,” the Boss said, in the direction of Doc, who was hanging on to one of the nickel-plated spouts of the fountain and watching every drop of the coke go down the Boss’s gullet. “My God,” the Boss said, “I didn’t come here to make a speech. I came here to go out and see my pappy.”
“Speech, Willie, speech!” they were yelling out there.
The Boss set his little glass on the marble.
“It’s on the house,” Doc uttered croakingly with what strength was left in him after the rapture.
“Thanks, Doc,” the Boss said. He turned away to head toward the door, then looked back. “You better get back in here and sell a lot of aspirin, Doc,” he said, “to make up for the charity.”
Then he plowed out the door, and the crowd fell back, and we tailed after him.
Mr. Duffy stepped up beside the Boss and asked him was he going to make a speech, but the Boss didn’t even look at him. He kept walking slow and steady right on across the street into the crowd, as though the crowd hadn’t been there. The red, long faces with the eyes in them watching like something wary and wild and watchful in a thicket fell back, and there wasn’t a sound. The crowd creamed back from his passage, and we followed in his wake, all of us who had been in the Cadillac, and the others who had been in the second car. The crowd closed behind.
The Boss kept walking straight ahead, his head bowed a little, the way a man bows his head when he is out walking by himself and has something on his mind. His hair fell down over his forehead, for he was carrying his hat in his hand. I knew his hair was down over his forehead, for I saw him give his head a quick jerk once or twice, the way he always did when he was walking alone and it fell down toward his eyes, the kind of motion a horse gives just after the bit is in and he