All the king's men

Then, in the midst of the roar, I leaned toward A

I didn't know whether or not A

The he suddenly stretched his arms above his head, the coat sleeves drawn tight to expose the shirt sleeves, the hands spread and clutching. He screamed, "Gimme that meat ax!"

And the crowd roared.

He brought both hand slowly down, for silence.

Then said, "Your will is my strength."

And after a moment of silence said, "Your need is my justice."

Then, "That is all."

He turned and walked slowly back into the tall doorway of the Capitol, into the darkness there, and disappeared. The roar was swelling and heaving in the air now, louder than ever, and I felt it inside of me, too, swelling like blood and victory. I stared into the darkness of the great doorway of the Capitol, where he had gone, while the roar kept on.

A

"Hell," I said, and heard the savage tone in my own voice, "hell, how the hell do I know?"

Adam Stanton's lips curled and he said, "Justice! He used that word."

And suddenly, for the flicker of an instant, I hated Adam Stanton.

I told them I had to go, which was true, and worked my way around through the edge of the crowd, to the police cordon. Then I went around to the back of the Capitol, where I joined the Boss.

Late that night, back at the Mansion, after he had thrown Tiny and his rabble out of the study, I asked him the question. I asked, "Did you mean what you said?"

Propped back on the big leather couch, he stared at me, and demanded, "What?"

"What you said," I replied, "tonight. You said your strength was their will. You said your justice was their need. All of that."

He kept on staring ay me, his eyes bulging, his stare grappling and probing into me.

"You said that," I said.

"God damn it," he exclaimed, violently, still staring at me, "God damn it–" he clenched his right fist and struck himself twice on the chest–"God damn it, there's something inside you–there's something inside–"

He left the words hanging there. He turned his eyes from me and stared moodily into the fire. I didn't press my question Well, that was how it had been when I asked him a question, a long time back. Now I had a new question to ask him: If he believed that you had to make the good out of the bad because there wasn't anything else to make it out of, why did he stir up such a fuss about keeping Tiny's hands off the Willie Stark Hospital?

There was another little question. One I would have to ask A

One thing was a cinch. I hadn't told her.

Perhaps Adam had told her, and then she had gone up there "to talk to him about it." So I went to see Adam, who was furiously deep in work, his usual practice and teaching, and in addition, the work on the hospital plans, who hadn't been able, he said, to touch the piano in almost a month, whose eyes fixed on me glacially out of a face now thin from sleepless ness, and who treated me with a courtesy too chromium-plated to be given to the friend of your youth. It took some doing, on my part, in the face of that courtesy, to get my nerve up to ask him the question. But I finally asked it. I said, "Adam, that first time A

And he said, with a voice like a scalpel, "I don't want to discuss it."

But I had to know. So I said, "Had you told her about the proposition?"

"No," he said, "and I said I didn't want to discuss it."

"O. K.," I heard myself saying, in a flat voice which wasn't quite my own. "O. K."

He looked sharply at me, then rose from his chair and took a step toward me. "I'm sorry," he said, "I'm sorry, Jack. I'm on the edge." He shook his head slightly like a man trying to shake the fog of sleep out. "Not been getting enough shut-eye," he said. He took another step to me–I was leaning against the mantel–and looked into my face again and laid his hand on my arm, saying, "I'm really sorry, Jack–talking that way–but I didn't tell A

"Forget it," I said.

"I'll forget it," he agreed, smiling wintrily, tapping my arm, "if you will."

"Sure," I said, "sure, I'll forget it. Yeah, I'll forget it. It didn't amount to anything anyway. Who told her. I guess I told her myself. It just slipped my mind that–"

"I mean forget about the way I acted," he corrected me, "blowing off the way I did."

"Oh," I said, "oh, that. Sure. I'll forget it."

Then he was peering into my face, with a question darkening his eyes. He didn't say anything for a moment. Then, "What did you want to know for?"

"Nothing," I replied, "nothing. Just idle curiosity. But I recollect now. I told her myself. Yeah, and I guess maybe I shouldn't. I didn't mean to get her into it. Just let it slip. I didn't mean to cause any ruckus. I didn't think–" And all the while that cold, unloving part of the mind–that maiden aunt, that washroom mirror the drunk stares into, that still small voice, that maggot in the cheese of your selfesteem, that commentator on the ether nightmare, that death's head of lipless rationality at your every feast–all that while that part of the mind was saying: _You're making it worse, your lying is just making it worse, can't you shut up, you blabbermouth!__

And Adam, with whitening face, was saying, "There wasn't any ruckus. As you call it."

But I couldn't stop, as when your car come to the glare ice over the brow of the hill and hits it before you can get on the brake, and you feel the beautiful free glide and spin of the skid and almost burst out laughing, it is so fine and free, like boyhood. I was saying, "–not any ruckus exactly–just I'm sorry I sicked her on you–I didn't want to cause any trouble–it was just that–"

"I don't want to discuss it," he said, and the jaw snapped shut, and he swung from me and went to stand on the other side of the room, very stiff and military.

So I took my leave, and the chromium-plated courtesy was so bright and cold that my, "Be seeing you, boy," stuck in y throat, like old corn bread.

But he hadn't told A

But I did find out who had told A

It was a beautiful morning in middle May, and just that morning, at that hour, about nine-thirty, there was still some last touch of spring–by that time you had almost forgotten there had been a spring–a kind of milkiness in the air, and way off yonder, from my window, I could see a little white haze on the river, milky too. The season was like the fine big-breasted daughter of some poor spavined share-cropper, a girl popping her calico but still having a waist, with pink cheeks and bright eyes and just a little perspiration at the edge of her tow hair (which would be platinum blond in some circles), but you see her and know that before long she will be a bag of bone and gristle with a hag face like a rusted brush hook. But she looks enough to scare you now, if you really look at her, and that morning the season still had that look and feel even if you did know that by the end of June everything would be bone and gristle and hag face and a sweat-sticky sheet to wake up on and a taste in your mouth like old brass. But now the leaves on the trees hung down thick and fleshy and had not begun to curl yet. I could look down from my office window on the great bolls and tufts and swollen globes of green which were the trees of the Capitol grounds seen from the height of my window, and think of the deep i