“We?” I said again.
“–want to do something bad–”
“We,” I said, “if we had such a damned fine time why was it you turned me down?”
“That hasn’t anything to do with it. What I mean is–”
“What you mean is that is was fine, beautiful time back then, but I mean that if it was such a God-damned fine, beautiful time, why did it turn into this time which is not so damned fine and beautiful if there wasn’t something in that time which wasn’t fine and beautiful? Answer that one.”
“Hush,” she said, “hush, Jack!”
“Yeah, answer me that one. For you certainly aren’t going to say this time is fine and beautiful. This time came out of that time, and now you’re near thirty-five years old and you creep out here as a special treat to yourself and sit in the middle of a lot of sheet-wrapped, dust-catching furniture in a house with the electricity cut off, and Adam–he’s got a hell of a life, cutting on people all day till he can’s stand up, and him tied up in knots himself inside and–”
“Leave Adam out of it, leave him out–” she said, and thrust her hands, palms out as though to press me off, but I wasn’t in ten feet of her–”he does something anyway–something–”
“–and Irwin down there playing with his toys, and my mother up there with that Theodore, and me–”
“Yes, you,” she said, “you.”
“All right,” I said, “me.”
“Yes, you. With that man.”
“That man, that man,” I mimicked, “that’s what all the people round here call him, what that Patton calls him, all those people who got pushed out of the trough. Well, he does something. He does as much as Adam. More. He’s going to build a medical center will take care of this state. He’s–”
“I know,” she said, wearily, not looking at me now, and sank down on the couch, which was covered by a sheet.
“You know, but you take the same snobbish attitude all the rest take. You’re like the rest.”
“All right,” she said, still not looking at me. “I’m snobbish, I’m so snobbish I had lunch with him last week.”
Well, if grandfather’s clock in the corner hadn’t been stopped already, that would have stopped it. It stopped me. I heard the flame hum on the logs, gnawing in. Then the hum stopped and there wasn’t anything.
Then I said, “For Christ’s sake,” And the absorbent silence sucked up the words like blotting paper.
“All right,” she said, “for Christ’s sake.”
“My, my,” I said, “but the picture of the daughter of Governor Stanton at lunch with Governor Stark would certainly throw the society editor of the Chronicle_ into a tizzy. Your frock, my dear–what frock did you wear? And flowers? Did you drink champagne cocktails? Did–”
“I drank a Coca Cola, and I ate a cheese sandwich. In the cafeteria in the basement of the Capitol.”
“Pardon my curiosity, but–”
“–but you want to know how I got there. I’ll tell you. I went to see Governor Stark about getting state money for the Children’s Home. And I–”
“Does Adam know?” I asked.
“–and I’m going to get it, too. I’m to prepare a detailed report and–”
“Does Adam know?”
“It doesn’t matter whether Adam knows or not–and I’m to take the report back to–”
“I can imagine what Adam would say,” I remarked grimly.
“I guess I can manage my own affairs,” she said with some heat.
“Gee,” I said, and noticed that the blood had mounted a little in her cheeks, “I thought you and Adam were always just like that.” And I held my right hand up with forefinger and the next one side by side.
“We are,” she said, “but I don’t care what–”
“–and you don’t care what he–_” and I jerked a thumb toward the high, unperturbed, marmoreal face which gazed from the massy gold frame in the shadow–”would say about it either, huh?
“Oh, Jack–” and she rose from the couch, almost fretful in her motion, which wasn’t like her–”what makes you talk like that? Can’t you see? I’m just getting the money for the Home. It’s a piece of business. Just business.” She jerked her chin up with a look that was supposed to settle the matter, but succeeded in unsettling me.
“Listen,” I said, and felt myself getting hot under the collar, “business or not, it’s worth your reputation to be caught running round with–”
“Running round, running round!” she exclaimed. “Don’t be a fool. I had lunch with him. On business.”
“Business or not, it’s worth your reputation, and–”
“Reputation,” she said. “I’m old enough to take care of my reputation. You just told me I was nearly senile.”
“I said you were nearly thirty-five,” I said, factually.
“Oh, Jack,” she said, “I am, and I haven’t done anything. I don’t do anything. Not anything worth anything.” She wavered there and with a hint of distraction lifted her hands to touch her hair. “Not anything. I don’t want to play bridge all the time. And what little I do–that Home, the playground thing–”
“There’s always the Junior League,” I said. But she ignored it.
“–that’s not enough. Why didn’t I do something–study something? Be a doctor, a nurse. I could have been Adam’s assistant. I could have studied landscape gardening. I could have–”
“You could make lampshades,” I said.
“I could have done something–something–”
“You could have got married,” I said. “You could have married me.”
“Oh, I don’t mean just getting married, I mean–”
“You don’t know what you mean,” I said.
“Oh, Jack,” she said, and reached out and took my hand and hung on to it, “maybe I don’t. I don’t know what’s wrong with me tonight. When I come out here sometimes–I’m happy when I come, I truly am, but them–”
She didn’t say any more about it. By this time she had sunk her head to my chest, and I had given her a few comforting pats on the shoulder, and she had said in a muffled sort of way that I had to be her friend, and I had said, “Sure,” and had caught some good whiffs of the way her hair smelled. It smelled just the way it always had, a good, clean, well-washed, little-girl-ready-for-a-party smell. But she wasn’t a little girl and this wasn’t a party. It definitely was not a party. With pink ice cream and devil’s-food cake and horns to blow and we all played clap-in and clap-out and the game in which you sang about King William being King James’s son and down on this carpet you must kneel sure as the grass grows in the field and choose the one you love best.
She stood there for a minute or two with her head on my chest, and you could have seen daylight between her and her friend, if there had been any daylight, while her friend gave her the impersonal and therapeutic pats on the shoulder. Then she walked away from him and stood by the hearth, looking down at the fire, which was doing fine now and making the room look what is called real homey.
Then the front door swung open and the wind off the cold sea whipped into the room like a great dog shaking itself and the fire leaped. It was Adam Stanton coming into that homey atmosphere. He had an armful of packages, for he had been down into the Landing to get our provisions.
“Hello,” he said over the packages, and smiled out of that wide, thin, firm mouth which in repose looked like a clean, well-healed surgical wound but which when he smiled–if he smiled–surprised you and made you feel warm.
“Look here,” I said quick, “way back yonder, any time, was Judge Irwin ever broke? Bad broke?”
“Why, no–I don’t know–” he began, his face shading.
Anne swung around to look at him, and then sharply at me. I thought for an instant she was about to say something. But she didn’t.
“Why, yes!” Adam said, standing there, still hugging the parcels. I had speared it up from the deep mud.
“Why, yes,” he rep
eated, with the pleased bright look on his face which people get when they dredge up any lost thing from the past, “yes, let me see–I was just a kid–about 1913 or 1914–I remember father saying something about it to Uncle John or somebody, before he remembered I was in the room–then the Judge was here and he and father–I thought they were having a row, their voices got so high–they were talking about money.”
“Thanks,” I said.
“Welcome,” he said, with a slightly puzzled smile on his face, and moved to the couch to let the parcels cascade to the soft softness.
“Well,” Anne said, looking at me, “you might at least have the grace to tell him why you asked the question.”
“Sure,” I said. And I turned to Adam: “I wanted to find out for Governor Stark.”
“Politics,” he said, and the jaw closed like a trap.
“Yes, politics,” Anne said, smiling a little sourly.
“Well, thank God, I don’t have to mess with ‘em,” Adam said. “Nowadays, anyway.” But he said it almost lightly. Which surprised me. Then added, “What the hell if Stark knows about the Judge being broke. It was more than twenty years ago. And there’s no la against being broke. What the hell.”
“Yeah, what the hell,” Anne said, and looking at me, gave that not unsour smile.
“And what the hell are you doing?” Adam demanded laughing, and grabbed her by the arm and shook her. “Standing there when the grub needs cooking. Get the lead out, Sour-puss, and get going!” He shoved her toward the couch, where the packages were heaped.
She bent to scoop up a lot of packages, and he whacked her across the backsides and said, “Get going!” And laughed. And she laughed, too, with pleasure, and everything was forgotten, for it wasn’t often that Adam opened up and laughed a lot, and then he could be free and gay, and you knew you would have a wonderful time.
We had a wonderful time. While Anne cooked, and I fixed drinks and set the table, Adam snatched the sheet off the piano (they kept the thing in tune out there and it wasn’t a bad one even yet) and beat hell out of it till the house bulged and rocked. He even took three good highballs before dinner instead of one. Then we ate, and he beat on the piano some more, playing stuff like “Roses Are Blooming in Picardy” and “Three O’Clock in the Morning,” while Anne and I danced and cavorted, or he would mush it up and Anne would hum in my ear and we would sway sweet and slow like young poplars in the slightest breeze. Then he jump up from the piano bench and whistling “Beautiful Lady,” snatched her out of my arms and swung her wide in a barrel-house waltz while she leaned back on his arm with her head back and eyes closed for a swoon, and with right arm outstretched, held delicately the hem of her fluttering skirt.
But Adam was a good dancer, even clowning. It was because he was a natural, for he ever got any practice any more. And never had taken his share. Not of anything except work. And he could have had them crawling to him and asking for it. And once in about five years he would break out in a kind of wild, free, exuberant gaiety like a levee break streaming out to snatch the trees and brush up by the roots, and you would be the trees and brush. You and everybody around him. His eyes would gleam wild and he would gesture wide with an excess of energy bursting from deep inside. You would think of a great turbine or dynamo making a million revs a minute and boiling out the power and about to jump loose from its moorings. When he gestured with those strong, long, supple white hands, it was a mixture of Svengali and an atom-busting machine. You expected to see blue sparks. When he got like that they wouldn’t have had the strength to crawl to him and ask for it. They would just be ready to fall back and roll over where they were. Only it didn’t do them any good.
But that didn’t come often. And didn’t last long. The cold would settle down and the lid would go on right quick.
Adam didn’t have the power on that night. He was just ready to smile and laugh and joke and beat the piano and swing his sister in the barrel-house waltz while the fire leaped on the big hearth and the high face gazed down from the massy gold frame and the wind moved in off the sea and in the dark outside clashed the magnolia leaves.
Not that in that room, with the fire crackling and the music, we heard the tiny clashing of the magnolia leaves the wind made. I heard it later, in bed upstairs in the dark, through the open window, the tiny dry clashing of the leaves, and thought, Were we happy tonight because we were happy or because once, a long time back, we had been happy? Was our happiness tonight like the light of the moon, which does not come from the moon, for the moon is cold and has no light of its own, but is reflected light from far away? _I turned that notion around in my head and tried to make a nice tidy little metaphor out of it, but the metaphor wouldn’t work out, for you have to be the cold, dead, wandering moon, and you have to have been the sum, too, way back, and how the hell can you be both the sun and the moon? It was not consistent. It was not tidy. To hell with it_, I though, listening to the leaves.
Then thought, Well, anyway, I know now Irwin was broke_.
I had dug that much up out of the past, and tomorrow I would leave Burden’s Landing and the past, and go back to the present. So I went back to the present.
Which was: Tiny Duffy sitting in a great soft leather chair with his great soft hams flowing over the leather, and his great soft belly flowing over his great soft hams, and a long cigarette holder with a burning cigarette stuck jauntily out from one side of his face (the cigarette holder was a recent innovation, imitated from a gentleman who was the most prominent member of the political party to which Tiny Duffy gave his allegiance) and his great soft face flowing down over his collar, an a diamond ring on his finger, big as a walnut–for all of that was Tiny Duffy, who was not credible but true and who had obviously consulted the cartoons by Harper’s Weekly_ in the files of the ‘nineties to discover exactly what the successful politician should be, do, and wear.
Which was: Tiny Duffy saying, “Jesus, and the Boss gonna put six million bucks in a hospital–six million bucks.” And lying back in the chair, eyes dreamily on the coffered ceiling, head wreathed in the baby-blue smoke from the cigarette, murmuring dreamily, “Six million bucks.”
And Sadie Burke saying, “Yeah, six million bucks, and he ain’t planning for you to get your fingers on a penny of it.”
“I could fix it up for him in the Fourth District. MacMurfee still got it sewed up down there. Him and Gummy Larson. But throw that hospital contract to Gummy and–”
“And Gummy would sell out MacMurfee. Is that it?”
“Well, now–I wouldn’t put it that way. Gummy’d sort of talk reason into MacMurfee, you might say.”
“And would sort of slip you a slice. Is that it, Tiny?”
“I ain’t talking about me. I’m talking about Gummy. He’d handle MacMurfee for the Boss.”
“The Boss don’t need anybody to handle MacMurfee. He’ll handle MacMurfee when the time comes and it will be permanent. For God’s sake, Tiny, you known the Boss as long as you have and you still don’t know him. Don’t you know he’d rather bust a man than buy him? Wouldn’t he, Jack?”
“How do I know?” I said. But I did know.
At least, I knew that the Boss was out to bust a man named Judge Irwin. And I was elected to do the digging.
So I went back to the digging.
But the next day, before I got back at the digging, a call came from Anne Stanton, “Smarty,” she said, smarty, you thought you were so smart!”
I heard he laughing, way off somewhere at the end of the line, but the tingling came over the wire, and I thought of her face laughing.
“Yes, smarty! you found from Adam how Judge Irwin was broke a long time ago, but I’ve found out something too!”
“Yeah?” I said.
“Yeah, smarty! I went to see old Cousin Mathilde, who knows everything about everybody for a hundred years back. I just got to talking about Judge Irwin and she began to talk. You just mention something and it is like putting a nickel in a music box. Yes, Judge Irwin w
as broke, or near it, then, but–and the joke’s on you, Jackie-boy, it’s on you, smarty-boy! And on your Boss!” And there was the laughter again, coming from far away, coming out of the little black tube in my hand.
“Yeah?” I said.
“Then he got married!” she said.
“Who?” I asked.
“Who are we talking about, smarty? Judge Irwin got married.”
“Sure, he was married. Everybody knew he was married, but what the hell has that–”
“He married money. Cousin Mathilde says so, and she knows everything. He was broke but he married money. Now, smarty, put that on your pipe and smoke it!”
“Thanks,” I said. But before it was out of my mouth, I heard a clicking sound and she had hung up.
I lighted a cigarette and leaned back in the swivel chair, and swung my feet up to the desk. Sure, everybody knew, or had known, that Judge Irwin was married. Judge Irwin, in fact, had been married twice. The first woman, the woman he was married to when I was a little boy, had been thrown from a horse and couldn’t do more than lie up in bed and stare at the ceiling or, on her good days, out the window. But she had died when I was just a kid, and I scarcely remembered her. But you almost forgot the other wife, too. She was from far away–I tried to remember how she looked. I had seen her several times, all right. But a kid of fifteen or so doesn’t pay much attention to a grown woman. I called up an image of a dark, thin woman, with big dark eyes, wearing a long white dress and carrying a white parasol. Maybe it wasn’t the right image, at all. Maybe it was somebody else who had been married to Judge Irwin, and had come to Burden’s Landing, and had received all the curious, smiling ladies in Judge Irwin’s long white house, and had been aware of the eyes and the sudden silence for attention and then the new sibilance as she walked down the aisle in St. Matthew’s just before the services began, and had fallen sick and had lived with a Negro nurse in an upstairs room for so long that people forgot about her very existence and were surprised when the funeral came to remind them of the fact that she had existed. But after the funeral there was nothing to remind them, for the body had gone back to whatever place it was she came from, and not even a chiseled name was left in the Irwin plot in St. Matthew’s graveyard, under the oaks and the sad poetic festoons of Spanish moss, which were garlanded on the boughs as though to prepare for the festivities of ghosts.