The Judge said he was very sorry about Mrs. Patton. He said that he was a very stupid old man in his second childhood to be playing with toys, and then sat up very straight in his chair to show what a chest and pair of shoulders he still had. Mrs. Patton ate the rest of the mint ice, punctuating her activity with distrustful glances at the disgraced ballista. Then we all went back into the Judge’s library to wait for the coffee and the brandy bottle.
But I loitered behind in the dinning room for a moment. I have said that the zip hadn’t gone out of the ballista with the passage of the years. But that was a misstatement of fact. It hadn’t had a chance to. I went over to examine the thing, with a motive more sentimental than scientific. But then I notice the twists, which gave its zip. There are two twist of fiber on all those things, ballistas, some types of catapults, scorpions, and wild asses, through each of which the butt of a propelling arm is adjusted to make, as it were, half of the bow of a kind of supercrossbow. We used to cheat by mixing in catgut and fine steel wire with the string of the twists on our models to give more force. Now, as I looked at the thing, I realized that the twists weren’t the old twists which I had put in back in the dear dead days. Not by a damned sight. They were practically new.
And all at once I had the sight of Judge Irwin sitting up nights, back in the library, with catgut and steel wire and strings and pliers and scissors on the desk beside him, and with his high old red-thatched head bent over, the yellow eyes gimleted upon the task. And seeing that picture in my head, I felt sad and embarrassed. I had never felt anything, one way or the other, about the Judge’s making those things in the first place, years back. When I was a kid it seemed natural that anybody in his right mind would want to make them, and read books about them, and make maps and models. And it had kept on seeming all right that the Judge had_ made them. But the picture I now had in my head was different. I felt sad and embarrassed and, somehow, defrauded.
So I joined the guests in the library and left a piece of Jack Burden in the dinning room, with the ballista, for good and all.
They were having coffee. All except the Judge, who was opening up a bottle of brandy. He looked up as I came in, and said, “Been looking at our old peashooter, huh?” He put the slightest emphasis upon our_.
“Yes.” I said.
The yellow eyes bored right into me for a second, and I knew he knew what I’d found out. “I fixed it up,” he said, and laughed the most candid and disarming laugh in the world. “The other day. You know, and old fellow with nothing to do and nobody to talk to. You can’t read law and history and Dickens all the time. Or fish.”
I grinned a grin which I somehow felt I had to grin as a tribute to something, not specified in my mind. But I knew that the grin was about as convincing as cold chicken broth in a boarding house.
Then I went over and sat beside the Dumonde girl, who had been provided for my delight. She was a prettyish, dark girl, well got-up but lacking something, too brittle and vivacious, with a trick of lassoing you with her anxious brown eyes and fluttering eyelids as she cinched the rope and then saying what her mother had told her ten years before to say. “Oh, Mr. Burden, they say you’re in politics, oh, it must be just fascinating!” No doubt, her mother had taught her that. Well, she was pushing thirty and it hadn’t worked yet. But the eyelids were still busy.
“No, I’m not in politics,” I said. “I’ve just got a job.”
“Tell me about you job, Mr. Burden.”
“I’m an office boy,” I said.
“Oh, they say you’re very important, Mr. Burden. They say you’re very influential. Oh, it must be fascinating. To be influential, Mr. Burden!”
“It’s news to me,” I said, and discovered that they were all looking at me as though it had just dawned on them that I was sitting there buck-naked on the couch beside Miss Dumonde, with a demitasse on my knee. It’s the human fate. Every time some dame like Miss Dumonde snags you and you have to start talking the way you have to talk to dames like Miss Dumonde, the whole world starts listening in. I saw the Judge smiling with what I took to be a vengeful relish.
Then he said, “Don’t let him kid you, Miss Dumonde. Jack is very influential.”
“I knew it,” Miss Dumonde said. “It must be fascinating.”
“All right,” I said, “I’m influential. You got any pals in the pen you want me to get a pardon for?” Then I thought: Wonderful manners you got, Jack. You might at least smile if you’ve got to say that_. So I smiled.
“Well, there’s going to be somebody in the pen,” old Mr. Patton said, “before it’s over. What’s going on up there in the city. All these–”
“George,” his wife breathe at him, but it didn’t do any good, for Mr. Patton was a bluff, burly type, with lots of money and a manly candor. He kept right on: “–yes, sir, all these wild goings-on. Why, that fellow is giving this state away. Free this and free that and free other. Every wool-hat jackass thinking the world is free. Who’s going to pay? That’s what I want to know? What does he say to that, Jack?”
“I never asked him,” I said.
“Well, you ask him,” Mr. Patton said. “And ask him, too, how much grabbing there is. All that money flowing, and don’t tell me there’s not a grab. And ask him what he’s going to do when they impeach him? Tell him there’s a constitution in this state, or was before he blew it to hell. Tell him that.”
“I’ll tell him,” I said, and laughed, and then laughed again when I thought how Willie would look if I did tell him.
“George,” the Judge said, “you’re an old fogy. Government is committed these days to give services we never heard of when we were growing up. The world’s changing.”
“It’s changed so much a fellow can step in and grab the whole state. Give him another few years and nothing can blast him out. He’ll have half the state on a pay roll and the other half will be afraid to vote. Strong-arm, blackmail, God knows what.”
“He’s a hard man,” the Judge said. “He’s played it hard and close. But there’s one principle he’s grasped: you don’t make omelettes without breaking eggs. And precedents. He’s broken plenty of eggs and he may make his omelettes. And remember, the Supreme Court has backed him up on every issue raised to date.”
“Yeah, and it’s his_ court. Since he got Armstrong on, and Talbott. And the issues raised. But what about the issues that haven’t been raised? That people have been afraid to raise?
“There’s a great deal of talk,” the Judge said calmly, “but we don’t really know much.”
“I know he’s going to tax this state to death,” Mr. Patton said, and shifted his big arms, and glared. “And drive business out of this state. Raising royalty on the state coal land. On the oil land. On–”
“Yes, George,” the Judge laughed, “and he slammed an income tax on you and me, too.”
“On the oil situation, now,” the Young Executive, for the sacred name of oil had been mentioned, “as I see it, the situation–”
Well, Miss Dumonde had certainly opened the corral gate when she mentioned politics, and it was thunder of hoofs and swirl of dust from then on, and I was sitting on the bare ground in the middle of it. For a while it didn’t occur to me that there was anything peculiar about the scene. Then it did occur to me. After all, I did work for the fellow who had the tail and the cloven hoof and this was, or had started out to be, a social occasion. I suddenly remembered that fact and decided that the developments were peculiar. Then I realized that they weren’t so peculiar, after all. Mr. Patton, and the Young Executive, and Mrs. Patton, for she had begun putting her oar in, and even the Judge, they all assumed that even tough I did work for Willie my heart was with them. I was just picking up a little, or maybe a lot, of change with Willie, but my heart was in Burden’s Landing and they had no secrets from me and they knew they couldn’t hurt my feelings. Maybe they were right. Maybe my heart was in Burden’s Landing. Maybe they couldn’t hurt my feelings. But I just broke in, after an hour of sitting quiet
and drinking in Miss Dumonde’s subtle scent, and said something. I don’t recall what I interrupted, but it all amounted to the same thing anyway. I said, “Doesn’t it all boil down to this? If the government of this state for quite a long time back had been doing anything for the folks in it, would Stark have been able to get out there with his bare hands and bust the boys? And would he be having to make so many short cuts to get something done to make up for the time lost all these years in not getting something done? I’d just like to submit that question for the sake of argument.”
There wasn’t a sound for half a minute. Mr. Patton’s granite visage seemed to lean toward me like a monument about to fall, and the satchel under Mr. Patton’s chin quivered like a tow sack full of kittens, and the sound of the Young Executive’s adenoids was plainly audible, and the Judge just sat, with his yellow eyes working over the crowd, and my mother’s hands turned in her lap. Then she said, “Why, Son. I didn’t know you–you felt that–that way!”
“Why–er–no,” Mr. Patton said, “I didn’t realize you–er–”
“I didn’t say I felt any way,” I said. “I just offered a proposition for the sake of argument.”
“Argument! Argument!” burst out Mr. Patton, himself again. “It doesn’t matter what kind of government this state’s had in the past. They never had this kind. Nobody ever tried to grab te whole damned state. Nobody ever–”
“It’s a very interesting proposition,” the Judge said, and sipped his brandy.
And they were at it again, all except my mother, whose hands kept turning slow in her lap, with the firelight exploding in the big diamond which never came from the Scholarly Attorney. They kept at it until it was time to do.
“Who is that Miss Dumode?” I asked my mother late the next afternoon, sitting in front of the fire.
“Mr. Orton’s sister’s child,” she said, “and she’ll inherit his money.”
“Well,” I said, “somebody ought to wait till she gets the dough and then marry her and drown her in the bathtub.”
“Don’t talk that way,” my mother was saying.
“Don’t worry,” I said. “I’d like to drown her but I don’t want her money. I’m not interested in money. If I wanted to I could reach out any day and knock off ten thousand. Twenty thousand. I–”
“Oh, Son–what Mr. Patton said–those people you’re with–Son, now don’t get mixed up in any graft, now–”
“Graft is what it calls it when the fellows do it who don’t know which fork to use.”
“It’s the same thing, Son–those people–”
“I don’t know what those people, as you call them, do. I’m very careful not to ever know what anybody anywhere does any time.”
“Now, Son, don’t you, please don’t–”
“Don’t what?”
“Don’t get mixed up in–in anything.”
“All I aid was I could_ reach out and knock off ten thousand. And not graft. Information. Information is money. But I told you I’m not interested in money. Not the slightest. Willie isn’t either.”
“Willie?” she asked.
“The Boss. The Boss isn’t interested in money.”
“What’s he interested in, the”
“He’s interested in Willie. Quite simply and directly. And when anybody is interested in himself quite simply and directly the way Willie is interested in Willie you call it genius. It’s only the half-baked people like Mr. Patton who are interested in money. Even the big boys who make a real lot of money aren’t interested in money. Henry Ford isn’t interested in money. He is interested in Henry Ford and therefore he is a genius.”
She reached over and took my hand, and spoke earnestly to me. “Don’t, Son, don’t talk that way,” she said.
“What way?”
“When you talk that way I don’t know what to think. I just don’t know.” And she looked imploringly at me, with the firelight striking across her cheek to make the hollow there hollower and hungrier. She laid her free hand on the hand of mine she held, and when a woman makes that kind of a sandwich out of one of your hands it is always a prelude to something. Which, in this case, was: “Why don’t you, Son–why don’t you–settle down–why don’t you marry some nice girl and–”
“I tried that,” I offered. “And if you tried to rig anything for me which that Dumonde you sure rang the lemons.”
She was looking at me with a growing, searching, discovering look from her too bright eyes, like somebody puzzling something out of distance. Then she said, “Son–Son, you were sort of funny last night–you didn’t enter into things–then the tone you took– “All right,” I said.
“You weren’t like yourself, like you used to be, you–”
“If I’m ever like I used to be I’ll shoot myself,” I said, “and if I embarrassed you before those half-wit Pattons and that half-wit Dumonde, I’m sorry.”
“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’t you, and not being you or anything, you can really lie back and get some rest. It is a vacation from being you. There is only the flow of the motor under your foot spinning that frail thread of sound out of its metal gut like a spider, that filament, that nexus, which isn’t really there, between the you which you have just left in one place and the you which you will be when you get to the other place.
You ought to invite those two you’s the same party, some time. Or you might have a family reunion for all the you’s with barbecue under the trees. It would be amusing to know what they would say to each other.
But meanwhile, there isn’t either one of them, and I am in the car in the rain at night. This is why I am in the car: Thirty-seven years before, about 1896, the stocky, sober, fortyish man, with the steel-rimmed spectacles and the dark suit, who was the Scholarly Attorney, had gone up to a lumber town in south Arkansas to interview witnesses and conduct an investigation for a big timberland litigation. It was not much of a town, I guess. Shacks, a boarding house for the bosses and engineers, a post office, a company commissary–all rising out of the red mud–and around them the stumps stretching off, and off yonder a cow standing among the stumps, and the scream of saws like a violated nerve in the center of your head, and in the air and in your nostrils the damp, sweet-sick smell of sawn timber.