All the King's Men - Robert Penn Warren [45]
Sadie wasn’t, however, too good for Sen-Sen because of her looks. She was too good for him because he was a heel. She had probably taken him up because he was good looking and then, again according to rumor, she had put him into political pay dirt. For Sadie was a very smart cooky. She had been around and she had learned a lot the very hard way.
She was in Skidmore with the Stark party that time because she was attached to the Stark headquarters troop (probably as a kind of spy for Sen-Sen) in some such ambiguous role as secretary. As a matter of fact, she was around a lot, and made a good many of the arrangements and tipped off Willie about local celebrities.
Well, now she came up to my booth in the Greek restaurant with that violent stride which was characteristic of her, and looked down at me, and demanded, “Can I sit with you?”
She sat down before I could reply.
“Or anything else,” I replied gallantly, “stand, sit, or lie.”
She inspected me critically out of her inky-velvety-black, deep-set eyes, which glittered in the marred face, and shook her head. “No thanks,” she said, “I like mine with vitamins.”
“You mean you don’t think I’m handsome?” I demanded.
“I don’t care about anybody being handsome,” she said, “but I never did go for anybody that reminded me of a box of spilled spaghetti. All elbows and dry rattle.”
“All right,” I said. “I withdraw my proposal. With dignity. But tell me something, now that you mention vitamins. You figure your candidate Willie has any vitamins? For the constituency?”
“Oh, God,” she whispered, and rolled her eyes to heaven.
“All right,” I said. “When are you going to tell the boys back home it’s no go?”
“What do you mean, no go? They’re planning on a big barbecue and rally at Upton. Duffy told me so.”
“Sadie,” I said, “you know damned well they’d have to barbecue the great wooly mastodon and use ten-dollar bills instead of lettuce on the buns. Why don’t you tell the big boys it’s no go?”
“What put that in your head?”
“Listen, Sadie,” I said, “we’ve been pals for a long time and you needn’t lie to uncle. I don’t put everything I know in the papers, but I know that Willie isn’t in this race because you admire his oratory.”
“Ain’t it awful?” she demanded.
“I know it’s a frame-up,” I said. “Everybody knows but Willie.”
“All right,” she admitted.
“When are you going to tell the boys back home it’s no go, that they are wasting dough? That Willie couldn’t steal a vote from Abe Lincoln in the Cradle of the Confederacy?”
“I ought to done it long ago,” she said.
“When are you going to?” I asked.
“Listen,” she said, “I told them before this thing ever started it was no go. But they wouldn’t listen to Sadie. Those fat-heads–” and she suddenly spewed out a mouthful of cigarette smoke over the rounded, too red, suddenly outcurling and gleaming underlip.
“Why don’t you tell them it’s no go and get the poor bastard out of his agony?”
“Let them spend their God-damned money,” she said fretfully, twitching her head as though to get the cigarette smoke out of her eyes. “I wish they were spending a lot more, the fat-heads. I wish the poor bastard had had enough sense to make them grease him good to take the beating he’s in for. Now all he’ll get will be the ride. Might as well let him have that. Ignorance is bliss.”
The waitress brought a cup of coffee, which Sadie must have ordered when she came in before she spotted me. She took a drag of the coffee, and then a deep drag of the cigarette.
“You know,” she said, jabbing out the butt savagely in the cup and looking at it and not at me, “you know, even if somebody told him. Even if he found out he was a sucker, I believe he might keep right on.”
“Yeah,” I said, “making those speeches.”
“God,” she said, “aren’t they awful?”
“Yeah.”
“The sap,” she said.
We walked back to the hotel, and I didn’t see Sadie again, except once or twice to say howdy-do to, until Upton. Thinks hadn’t improved any before Upton. I went back to town and left the candidate to his own devices for a week or so in between, but I heard the news. Then I got the train over to Upton the day before the barbecue.