All the King's Men - Robert Penn Warren [94]
“I imagine Lucy could take it,” I said.
“Lucy–” he said, and looked sort of surprised, as though I had introduced a new topic in the conversation. Then I recollected that Lucy’s name hadn’t been mentioned. Sure, he had been talking about Lucy Stark, he knew that and I knew that. But as soon as the name Lucy was mentioned, to take the place of that she, somehow it was different. It was as though she had walked into the room, and looked at us.
“Lucy–” he repeated. Then, “All right–Lucy. She could take it. Lucy could sleep on the bare ground, and eat red beans, but it wouldn’t change the world a damned bit. But can Lucy understand that? No, Lucy cannot.” He was, apparently, , taking a relish in using the name now, in saying Lucy instead of She, as though he proved something about something, or about her, or about himself, by saying it, by being able to say it. “Lucy,” he was saying, “she could sleep on the bare ground. And that’s exactly what she’s going to raise Tom to do, too, if she has her way. She’d have him so the six-year kids will be plugging him with nigger-shooters, and then no bothering to run. He’s a good stout boy–plays a good game of football, bet he makes the team when he gets to college–but she’s going to ruin him. Make him a sissy. Looks like I say a word to the boy and you can just see her face freeze. I called up here tonight to get Tom to come down and see the crowd. Was going to send Sugar-Boy to get him because I wasn’t going to have time to get home. But would she let him go? No, sir. Said he had to stay home and study. Study,” he said. Then, “Didn’t want him down there, that was it. Me and the crowd.”
“Take it easy,” I said. “That’s the way all women treat their kids. Besides, you got to be a big-shot by hitting your books.”
“He’s smart, smart enough without being a sissy,” he said. “He makes good grades in school, and, by God, he better. Sure, I want him to study. And he better, but what I don’t get is–”
There was a racket out in the hall, voice, then a knock at the door.
“See who it is,” the Boss said.
I opened the door and in stormed the familiar faces, somewhat flushed, Tiny Duffy’s in the lead. They ringed round the Boss and wheezed and shoved and chortled. “We fixed ’em!–We damned well fixed ’em!–You’re telling it, we stopped that clock!–It’ll be a long time till next time!” While the Boss lay back on the cushions at his thirty-degree angle, with his feet propped on the leather, and his eyes flickering around from face to face, under the half-lowered lids, you got the notion he was spying through a peephole. He hadn’t said a word.
“Champagne,” one of the boys was saying, “real champagne! A case and it is honest-to-God stuff. French, from France. Out in the kitchen, and Sambo is icing up. Boss, it’s a celebration!”
The Boss didn’t say anything.
“Celebrate, it’s a celebration, ain’t you gonna celebrate, Boss?”
“Duffy,” the Boss said, not loud, “if you aren’t too drunk you can see I don’t want this assing around here. Take your rabble over to the other side of the house and stay out from under foot.” Then in the silence of his pause his eyes flickered over the faces again, to come back to Duffy. To whom he said, “You think you grasp the idea?”
Tiny Duffy did grasp the idea. But the others grasped it, too, and I thought that I detected a slight competition among the brothers of the lodge to be among the first out.
The Boss regarded the fine paneling of the closed door for a couple of minutes. Then he said, “You know what Lincoln said?”
“What,” I asked.
“He said a house divided against itself cannot stand. Well, he was wrong.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah,” the Boss said, “for this government is sure half slave and half son-of-a-bitch, and it is standing.”
“Which is which?” I asked.
“Slaves down at the Legislature, and the sons-of-bitches up here,” he said. And added, “Only sometimes they overlap.”
But Lucy Stark did not leave the Boss after the settlement of the impeachment trouble. Not even after the next election, when the Boss came in for a second term in 1934. (A Governor can succeed himself in our state, and the Boss succeeded himself with a vengeance. There never had been a vote like it.) I suppose Tom was the reason she hung on. When she did leave him, there wasn