Then, because you wanted to lie down in the late afternoon on a strange bed in a shadowy room and watch the smoke drift up and not think about anything, what you've been or what you're going to be,, and because the feet, the beast, the plungers, the half-wit won't stop, you jerk yourself up and sit on the edge of the bed and feel like swearing. But you don't. For you are wondering, with the beginnings of pain and insufficiency, what it is inside that won't let the feet stop. Maybe he is a half-wit, maybe he won't be Governor, maybe nobody will listen to his speeches but Lucy, but the feet won't stop.
Nobody would listen to the speeches, including me. They were awful. They were full of facts and figures he had dug up about running the state. He would say, "Now, friends, if you bear patiently with me for a few minutes, I will give you the figures," and he would clear his throat and fumble with a sheet of paper and backbones would sag lower in the seats and folks would start cleaning their fingernails with their pocket knifes. If Willie had ever thought of talking to folks up on the platform just the way he could talk to you face when he got heated about something, leaning at you as if he meant every damned word he said and his eyes bugging out and shining, he might have swayed the constituency. But no, he was trying to live up to his notion of a high destiny.
It didn't matter so much as long as Willie was playing the local circuit. The carry-over of the schoolhouse episode was still strong enough to mean something. He was the fellow on the Lord's side and the Lord had given a sign. The Lord had knocked over the fire escape just to prove a point. But when Willie got down in the middle of the state he began to run into trouble. And when he hit a town of any size he found out that the folks didn't care much which side of a question was the Lord's side.
Willie knew what was happening, but he didn't know why. His face got a little thinner, and the thin skin seemed to draw back tighter over the flesh, but he didn't look worried. That was the funny part. If ever a man had a right to look worried, it was Willie. But he didn't. He just looked like a man in a kind of walking dream, and when he walked out on the platform before he began talking his face looked purified and lifted up and serene like the face of a man who has just pulled out of a hard sickness.
But he hadn't pulled out of the sickness he had. He had galloping political anemia.
He couldn't figure out what was wrong. He was like a man with a chill who simply reckons that the climate is changing all of a sudden, and wonders why everybody else isn't shivering too. Perhaps it was a desire for just a little human warmth that got him in the habit of dropping into my room late at night, after the speaking and the handshaking were over. He would sit for a spell, while I drank off my nightcap, and not talk much, but one time, at Morristown, where the occasion had sure-God been a black frost, he did, after sitting quiet, suddenly say, "How you think it's going, Jack?"
It was one of those embarrassing questions like "Do you think my wife is virtuous?" or "Did you know I am a Jew?" which are embarrassing, not because of anything you might say for an answer, the truth or a lie, but because the fellow asked the question at all. But I said to him, "Fine, I reckon it's going fine."
"You think so, for a fact?" he asked.
"Sure," I said.
He chewed that for about a minute and then swallowed it. Then he said, "They didn't seem to be paying attention much tonight. Not while I was trying to explain about my tax program."
"Maybe you try to tell 'em too much. It breaks down their brain cells."
"Looks like they'd want to hear about taxes, though," he said "You tell 'em too much. Just tell 'em you're gonna soak the fat boys, and forget the rest of the tax stuff."
"What we need is a balanced tax program. Right now the ratio between income tax and total income for the state gives an index that–"
"Yeah," I said, "I heard the speech. But they don't give a damn about that. Hell, make 'em cry, or make 'em laugh, make 'em think you're their weak and erring pal, or make 'em think you're God-Almighty. Or make 'em mad. Even mad at you. Just stir 'em up, it doesn't matter how or why, and they'll love you and come back for more. Pinch 'em in the soft place. They aren't alive, most of 'em, and haven't been alive in twenty years. Hell, their wives have lost their teeth and their shape, and likker won't set on their stomachs, and they don't believe in God, so it's up to you to give 'em something to stir 'em up and make 'em feel alive again. Just for half an hour. That's what they come for. Tell 'em anything. But for Sweet Jesus' sake don't try to improve their minds."
I fell back exhausted, and Willie pondered that for a while. He just sat there, not moving and with his face quiet and pure, but you had the feeling that you listened close enough you would hear the feet tramping inside his head, that something was locked up in there and going back and forth. Then he said, soberly, "Yeah, I know that's what some folks say."
"You weren't born yesterday," I said, and was suddenly angry with him. "You weren't deaf and dumb all the time you had the job in the courthouse in Mason City. Even if you did get in because Pillsbury put you there."
He nodded. "Yeah," he said, "I heard that kind of talk."
"It gets around," I said. "It's not any secret."
Then he demanded, "Do you think it's true?"
"True?" I echoed, and almost asked myself the question before I said, "Hell, I don't know. But there's sure a lot of evidence."
He sat there one minute longer, then got up and said good night and went to his room. It wasn't long before I heard the pacing start. I got undressed and lay down. But the pacing kept on. Old Master Mind lay there and listened to the pacing in the next room and said, "The bastard is trying to think up a joke he can tell 'em at Skidmore tomorrow night and make 'em laugh."
Old Master Mind was right. The candidate did tell a joke at Skidmore. But it didn't make them laugh.
But it was at Skidmore that I was sitting in a booth in a Greek café after the speaking, having a cup of coffee to steady my nerves and hiding out from people and the cackle of voices and the smell of bodies and the way eyes look at you in a crowd, when in came Sadie Burke and gave the joint the once-over and caught sight of me and came back and sat down across from me in the booth.
Sadie was one of Willie's new friends, but I had known her from way back. She was an even better friend, rumor had it, of a certain Sen-Sen Puckett, who chew Sen-Sen to keep his breath sweet and was a fat boy, both physically and politically speaking, and had been (and probably still was) a friend of Joe Harrison. Sen-Sen, according to some guesses, was the fellow who originally had had the bright idea of using Willie as the dummy. Sadie was a lot too good for Sen-Sen, who wasn't, however, a bad looking fellow. Sadie herself wouldn't have been called good looking, certainly not by the juries who pick out girls to be Miss Oregon and Miss New Jersey. She was built very satisfactorily but you tended to forget that, because of the awful clothes she wore and the awkward, violent, snatching gestures she made. She had absolutely black hair, which she cut off at a crazy length and which went out in all directions in a wild, electric way. Her features were good, if you noticed them, which you were inclined not to do, because her face was pocked. But she did have wonderful eyes, deep-set and inky-velvety-black.
Sadie wasn't, however, too good for Sen-Sen because of her looks. She was too good for him because he was a heel. She had probably taken him up because he was good looking and then, again according to rumor, she had put him into political pay dirt. For Sadie was a very smart cooky. She had been around and she had learned a lot the very hard way.
She was in Skidmore with the Stark party that time because she was attached to the Stark headquarters troop (probably as a kind of spy for Sen-Sen) in some such ambiguous role as secretary. As a matter of fact, she was around a lot, and made a good many of the arrangements and tipped off Willie about local celebrities.