He stood there staring heavily, uncomprehendingly into her face, then put one hand out to touch her, like a bear touching something with a clumsy exploratory paw, and said, through dry lips, “He’s–he’s going to be all right, Lucy. He’s all right.”
She shook her head. “No,” she said, “he’s not all right.”
“The doctor–” he took a lurching step toward her–”the doctor said–”
“No, he’s not all right,” she repeated. “And won’t be. Unless you make him.”
The blood suddenly flushed heavily into his cheeks. “Now look here, if you mean stopping football–if you–” That was an old story between them.
“Oh, it’s not just football. That’s bad enough, thinking he’s a hero, that there’s nothing else in the world–but it’s everything that goes with it–he’s wild and selfish and idle and–”
“No boy of mine’s going to be a sissy, now. That’s what you want!”
“I would rather see him dead at my feet than what your vanity will make him.”
“Don’t be a fool!”
“You will ruin him.” Her voice was quiet and even.
“Hell, let him be a man. I never had any fun growing up. Let him have some fun! I want him to have some fun. I used to see people having fun and never had any. I want him to–”
“You will ruin him,” she said, with her voice as quiet and even as doom.
“God damn it!–look here–” he began, but by that time I had sneaked out the door and had closed it softly behind me.
But Tom’s accident wasn’t all that happened that winter.
There was Anne Stanton’s project of getting state money for the Children’s Home. She got a good handout, and was pleased as punch with herself. She claimed she was about to get a two-year grant, which was badly needed, she said, and was probably right, for the springs of private charity had nigh dried up about 1929 and weren’t running more than a trickle even seven years or so later.
There were stirrings down in the Fourth District, where MacMurfee still had things by the short ones. His representative got up in Congress in Washington, which was far off but not as far off as the moon, and aired his views about the Boss and made headlines over the country; so the Boss bought himself a big wad of radio time and aired his views of Congressman Petit and treated the nation to a detailed biography, in several installments, of Congressman Petit, who, it developed from the work of the Boss’s research department, had thrown a grenade in a glass house. The Boss didn’t answer anything Petit had said, he simply took care of the sayer. The Boss knew all about the so-called fallacy of the argumentum ad hominem_. “It may be a fallacy,” he said, “but it is shore-God useful. If you use the right kind of argumentum_ you can always scare the hominem_ into a laundry bill he didn’t expect.”
Petit didn’t come off too well, but you had to hand it to MacMurfee, he never quit trying. Tiny Duffy didn’t quit trying, either. He was hell-bent on selling the Boss on the idea of throwing the basic contract for the hospital to Gummy Larson, who was a power in the Fourth District and would no doubt persuade MacMurfee, or, to speak more plainly, would sell him out. The Boss would listen to Tiny about as attentively as you listen to rain on the roof, and say, “Sure, Tiny, sure, we’ll talk about it some time,” or, “God dam it, Tiny, change your record.” Or he may say nothing in reply, but would look at Tiny in a massive, deep-eyed, detached, calculating was, as though he were measuring him for something, and not say a word, till Tiny’s voice would trail off into silence so absolute you could hear both men’s breathing, Tiny’s breath sibilant, quick, and shallow for all his bulk, the Boss’s steady and deep.
The Boss, meanwhile, was making that hospital his chief waking thought. He took trips up East to see all the finest, biggest ones, the Massachusetts General, the Presbyterian in New York, the Philadelphia General, and a lot more. “By God,” he would say, “I don’t care hoe fine they are, mine’s gonna be bigger, and any poor bugger in this state can go there and get the best there is and not cost him a dime.” When he was off on his trips he spent his time with doctors and architects and hospital superintendents, and never a torch singer or bookmaker. And when he was back home, his office was nothing but a pile of blueprints and notebooks full of his scribbling and books on architecture and heating systems and dietetics and hospital management. You would come in, and he would look up at you and begin talking right in the middle of a beat, as though you had been there all the time, “Now, up at the Massachusetts General they’ve got–” It was his baby, all right.
But Tiny wouldn’t give up.
One night I came into the Mansion, saw Sugar-Boy, who was lounging in the high, chastely proportioned hall with a sheet of newspaper across his knee, a dismantled.38 in his hand, and a can of gun oil on the floor, asked him where the Boss was, watched him while his lips tortured themselves to speak and the spit flew, realized from the jerk of his head that the Boss was back in the library, and went on back to knock on the big door. As soon as I opened the door I ran right into the Boss’s eyes like running into the business end of a double-barreled 10-gauge shotgun at three paces, and halted. “Look!” he commanded, heaving his bulk up erect on the big leather couch where he had been propped, “look!”
And he swung the double-barrel round to cover Tiny, who stood at the hearthrug before him and seemed to be melting the tallow down faster than even the log fire on the bricks would have warranted.
“Look,” he said to me, “this bastard tried to trick me, tried to smuggle that Gummy Larson in here to talk to me, gets him all the way up here from Duboisville and thinks I’ll be polite. But the hell I was polite.” He swung to Tiny again. “Was I, was I polite?”
Tiny did not manage to utter a sound.
“Was I, God damn it?” the Boss demanded.
“No,” Tiny said, as from the bottom of a deep well.
“I was not,” the Boss said. “I didn’t get across that doorsill.” He pointed at the closed door beyond me. “I told him if I ever wanted to see him I’d send for him, and to get the hell out. But you–” and he snapped out a forefinger at Tiny–”you–”
“I thought–”
“You thought you’d trick me–trick me into buying him. Well, I’m not buying him. I’m going to bust him. I’ve bought too many sons-of-bitches already. Bust ‘em and they’ll stay busted, but buy ‘em and you can’t tell how long they’ll stay bought. I bought too many already. I made a mistake not busting you. But I figured you’d stay bought. You’re scared not to.”
“Now, Boss,” Tiny said, “now, Boss, that ain’t fair, you know how all us boys feel about you. And all. It ain’t being scared, it’s–”
“You damned well better be scared,” the Boss said, and his voice was suddenly sweet and low. Like a mother whispering to her child in the crib.
But there was new sweat on Tiny.
“Now get out!” the Boss said in a more positive tone.
I looked at the door after it had been closed upon the retreating form, and said, “You certainly do woo your constituency.”
“Christ,” he said, and sank back on the leather of the couch and shoved some of the blueprints aside. He reached up and tried to unbutton his collar, fumbled, got impatient and snapped off the button and jerked the tie loose. He twisted his heavy head a little from side to side, as though the collar had been choking him.
“Christ,” he said, almost pettishly, “can’t he understand I don’t want him messing round with this thing? And he shoved at the blue prints again.
“What do you expect?” I asked. There’s six million dollars involved. Did you ever see the flies stay away from the churn at churning time?”
“He better stay away from this churn.”
“He’s just being logical. Obviously, Larson is ready to sell out MacMurfee. For a contract. He is a competent builder. He–”
He lunged up to a sitting position, stared at me and demanded, “Are you in on this?”
“It is not
hing to me,” I said, and shrugged. “You can build it with your bare hands for all of me. I merely said that, given his premises, Tiny is logical.”
“Can’t you understand?” he demanded, searching my face. “Damn it, can’t you understand either?”
“I understand what I understand.”
“Can’t you understand?” he demanded, and heaved up from the couch, and the instant he was on his feet, from the slight sway of his posture, I knew he had been drinking. He stepped to me and seized my lapel, and shook me a little, fixing his eyes upon my face–now close to him, I could see that they were bloodshot–and saying, “Can’t you understand either? I’m building that place, the best in the country, the best in the world, and a bugger like Tiny is not going to mess with it, and I’m going to call it the Willie Stark Hospital and it will be there a long time after I’m dead and gone and you are dead and gone and all those sons-of-bitches are dead and gone, and nobody, no matter he hasn’t got a dime, can go there–”
“And will vote for you,” I said.
“I’ll be dead,” he said, “and you’ll be dead, and I don’t care whether he votes for me or not, he can go there and–”
“And bless your name,” I said.
“Damn it!” he shook me hard, crumpling my lapel in his big hand, “you stand there grinning like that–get that grin off your face–get it off or I’ll–”
“Listen,” I said, “I’m not any of your scum, and I’m still grinning when I please.”
“Jack–hell, Jack–you know I don’t mean that–it’s just you stand there and grin. Damn it, can’t you understand? Can’t you?” He held the lapel and thrust the big face at me, his eyes gouging into mine, saying, “Can’t you? Can’t you see I’m not going to let those bastars muck with it? The Willie Stark Hospital? Can’t you see? And I’m going to get me the damned best man there is to run it. Yes, sir! The best there is. Yes, sir, up in New York they told me to get him, he was the man. And, Jack, you–”
“Yeah?” I asked.
“You’re going to get him.”
I disengaged myself from the grasp on my lapel, straightened it, and dropped into a chair. “Get who?” I asked.
“Dr, Stanton,” he said “Dr. Adam Stanton.”
I almost bounced right out of the chair. The ash off my cigarette fell down my shirt front. “How long have you been having these symptoms?” I asked. “You been seeing any pink elephants?”
“You get Stanton,” he said.
“You are hearing voices,” I said.
“You get him,” he repeated dourly.
“Boss,” I said, “Adam is an old pal of mine. I know him like a brother. And I know he hates your guts.”
“I’m not asking anybody to love me. Not even you.”
“We all love you,” I mimicked Tiny, “you know how all us boys feel.”
“Get him,” he said.
I stood up, stretched, yawned, moved toward the door. “I am leaving,” I declared. “Tomorrow, when you are in possession of your faculties, I’ll hear what you’ve got to say.”
And I shut the door behind me
Tomorrow, when he was in full possession of his faculties, I heard what he had to say, and it was: “Get Stanton.”
So I went to the shabby little monastic apartment where the grand piano glittered like a sneer in the midst of near-squalor and the books and paper piled on chairs and the old coffee cup with dried dregs inside which the colored girl had forgotten to pick up, and where the friend of my youth received me as though he were not a Success and I were not a Failure (both spelled with capital letters), laid his hand on my shoulder, pronounced my name, looked at me from the ice-water-blue, abstract eyes which were a reproach to all uncertain, twisted, and clouded things and were as unwavering as conscience. But the smile on his face, unsealing almost tentatively the firm suture of the mouth, put a warmth in you, a shy warmth like that you discover with surprise in the winter sunshine in late February. That smile was his apology for being what he was, for looking at you the way he did, for seeing what he saw. It did not so much forgive you, and the world, as ask forgiveness for himself for the crime of looking straight at whatever was before him, which might be you. But he didn’t smile often. He smiled at me not because I was what I was but because I was the Friend of His Youth.
The Friend of Your Youth is the only friend you will ever have, for he does not really see you. He sees in his mind a face which does not exist any more, speaks a name–Spike, Bud, Snip, Red, Rusty, Jack, Dave–which belongs to that now nonexistent face but which by some inane and doddering confusion of the universe is for the moment attached to a not too happily met and boring stranger. But he humors the drooling, doddering confusion of the universe and continues to address politely that dull stranger by the name which properly belongs to the boy face and to the time when the boy voice called thinly across the late afternoon water or murmured by a campfire at night or in the middle of a crowded street said, “Gee, listen to this–’On Wenlock Edge the wood’s in trouble; His forest fleece the Wrekin heaved–’ ” the Friend of Your Youth is your friend because he does not see you any more.
And perhaps he never saw you. What he saw was simply part of the furniture of the wonderful opening world. Friendship was something he suddenly discovered and had to give away as a recognition of and payment for the breathlessly opening world which momently divulged itself like a moonflower. It didn’t matter a damn to whom he gave it, for the fact of giving was what mattered, and if you happened to be handy you were automatically endowed with all the appropriate attributes of a friend and forever after your reality is irrelevant. The Friend of Your Youth is the only friend you will ever have, for he hasn’t the slightest concern with calculating his interest or your virtue. He doesn’t give a damn, for the moment, about Getting Ahead or Needs Must Admiring the Best, the two official criteria in adult friendships, and when the boring stranger appears, he puts out his hand and smiles (not really seeing your face) and speaks your name (which doesn’t really belong to your face), saying, “Well, Jack, damned glad you came, come on in, boy!”
So I sat in one of his broken-down easy chairs, after he had cleared the books out, and drank his whisky, and waited for the moment when I was going to say, “Now, listen here, I’m going to tell you something and don’t you start yelling till I finish.”
He didn’t yell till I had finished. Not that I took long to finish. I said, “Governor Stark wants you to be director of the new hospital and medical center.”
He didn’t, to be precise, yell then. He didn’t make a sound. He looked at me for nearly a minute, with an unsmiling clinical eye as though my symptoms merit special attention; then he slowly shook his head. “Better think it over,” I said, “maybe it’s not as bad as it sounds, there may be some angles–” But I let my voice trail off, watching him shake his head again and smile now with the smile which did not forgive me but humbly asked me to forgive him for not being like me, for not being like everybody else, for not being like the world.
If he had not smiled. If he had smiled but had smiled a confident, to-hell-with-you, satirical smile. Or even a smile forgiving me. If he had not smiled the smile which humbly, but with dignity, begged me to forgive him, then things might have been different. But he smiled that way out of the fullness of whatever it was he had, out of the depth of the idea he lived by–whatever the hell it was or whyever the hell he lived that way–and things were the way they turned out to be. Giving that smile, he was like a man who stops to give a beggar a buck and in opening his wallet lets the beggar catch sight of the big roll. If the beggar hadn’t seen the big roll he would never have followed the man down the street, waiting for the block without the street lamp. Not so much because he wants the roll as because he now cannot endure the man who has it and gave him a buck.
For as he smiled and said, “But I’m not interested in the angles,” I did not feel that shy warmth as of the winter sunshine which I had always felt before when he smiled, but sudd
enly felt something else, which I didn’t have a name for but which was like the winter itself and not the winter sunshine, like the stab of an icicle through the heart. And I thought: All right, you smile like that–you smile like that–_
So, even as the thought vanished–if a thought can ever be said to vanish, for it rises out of you and sinks back into you–so I said, “But you don’t know what the angles are. For instance, the Boss expects you to write your ticket.”
“The Boss,” he repeated, and on the words his upper lip curled more than customary to expose the teeth, and the sibilance seemed exaggerated, “need to expect to buy me. I have–” he looked about the room at the clutter and near-squalor–”everything I want.”
“The Boss isn’t any fool. You don’t think he was trying to buy you?”
“He couldn’t,” he said.
“What do you think he was trying to do?”
“Threaten me. That would be next.”
“No,” I nodded, “no that. He couldn’t scare you.”
“That is what he seems to depend on. The bribe or the threat.”
“Guess again,” I said.
He rose from his chair, took a couple of restless paces across the frayed green carpet, then swung to face me. “He needn’t think he can flatter me,” he said, fiercely.
“Nobody can flatter you,” I said, softly, “nobody in the world. And do you know why?”