All the King's Men - Robert Penn Warren [77]
“Judge Irwin–” she began.
“Leave him out of it,” I said. “He’s different.”
“Oh, Son,” she exclaimed, “what makes you be that way? You didn’t embarrass me but what makes you that way? It’s those people–what you do–why don’t you settle down–get a decent job–Judge Irwin, Theodore, they could get you a–”
I snatched my hand out of the sandwich she had made, and said, “I don’t want anything in God’s world out of them. Or anybody. And I don’t want to settle down, and I don’t want to get married, and I don’t want any other job, and as for the money–”
“Son–Son–” she said, and turned her hand together on her lap.
“And as for money, I don’t want any more than I’ve got. And besides I don’t have to worry about that. You’ve got enough–” I got up from the couch and lighted a cigarette and flung the match stub into the fire– “enough to leave both Theodore and me pretty well fixed.”
She didn’t move or say anything. She just looked up at me, and I saw that her eyes had tears coming into them, and that she loved me, for I was her son. And that Time didn’t mean anything, but that the lifted face with the bright, too large eyes was an old face. The skin lanked down from the cheek hollows under the bright eyes.
“Not that I want your money,” I said.
She reached out with one hand, in a tentative, humble way, and took my right hand, not by my hand itself but just by the fingers, crumpling then together.
“Son,” she said “you know whatever I’ve got is yours. Don’t you know that?”
I didn’t say anything.
“Don’t you know that?” she said, and swung on to my fingers as though they were the end of a rope somebody had tossed in the water to her.
“All right,” I heard my voice say, and left my fingers twitching to get away, but at the same time I felt my heart suddenly go soft and fluid in my chest like a melting snowball you squash in your hand. “I’m sorry I talked that way,” I said, “but, damn it, why can’t we just stop talking? Why can’t I just come home for a day or two and us not talk, not open our mouths?”
She didn’t answer, but kept on holding my fingers. So I released my fingers, and said, “I’m going up and take a bath before dinner,” and started toward the door. I knew that she didn’t turn her head to watch me go out of the room, but as I crossed the room I felt as though they had forgotten to ring down the curtain at the end of something and a thousand eyes were on my back and the clapping hadn’t started. Maybe the bastards didn’t know it was over. Maybe they didn’t know it was time to clap.
I went upstairs and lay in the bathtub with the hot water up to my ears and knew that it was over. It was over again. I would get in my car, right after dinner, and drive like hell toward town over the new concrete slab between the black, mist streaked fields, and get to town about midnight and go up to my hotel room where nothing was mine and nothing knew my name and nothing had a thing to say to me about anything that had ever happened.
I lay in the tub and heard a car drive up and knew that it was the Young Executive and knew that he would come in the front door and that the woman in the couch would get up and with a quick step and small, squared, gallant shoulders carry the old face to him like a present.
And, by God, he’d better look grateful.
Two hours later I was in my car and Burden’s Landing was behind me, and the bay, and the windshield wipers were making their little busy gasp and click like something inside you which had better not stop. For it was raining again. The drops swung and swayed down out of the dark into my headlights like a bead portiere of bright metal beads which the car kept shouldering through.
There is nothing more alone than being in the car at night in the rain. I was in the car. And I was glad of it. Between one point on the map and another point on the map, there was the being alone in the car in the rain. They say you are not you except in terms of relation to other people. If there weren’t any other people there wouldn’t be any you because what you do, which is what you are, only has meaning in relation to other people. That is a very comforting thought when you are in the car in the rain at night alone, for when you aren