I took in the fact that I was intruding.
"Excuse me," I said, and started to back out of the door.
"Shut the door and sit down," the Boss said, and his voice moved right on without any punctuation to something it had been saying before my entrance, and the forefinger snapped, "–and you can just damned well remember you aren't supposed to get rich. A fellow like you, fifty years old and gut-shot and teeth gone and never had a dime, if God-Almighty had never intended you to be rich he'd done it long back. Look at yourself, damn it! You to figure you're supposed to be rich, it is plain blasphemy. Look at yourself. Ain't it a fact?" And the forefinger leveled at Mr. Byram B. White.
But Mr. White didn't answer. He just stood there in his unhappiness and looked at the finger.
"God damn it, has the cat got your tongue?" the Boss demanded. "Can't you answer a civil question?"
"Yes," Mr. White managed with gray lips that scarcely moved.
"Speak up, don't mumble, say, 'It's a fact, it's blasphemous fact,' " the Boss insisted, still pointing the finger.
Mr. White's lips went grayer, and the voice was less than loud and clear, but he said it. Every word.
"All right, that's better," the Boss said. "Now you know what you're supposed to do. You're supposed to stay pore and take orders. I don't care about your chastity, which from the looks of you you don't have any trouble keeping plenty of, but I mean it's poverty and obedience and don't you forget it. Especially the last. There'll be a little something coming to you now and then in the way of sweetening, but Duffy'll tend to that. Don't you go setting up on your own any more. There just aren't going to be any one-man bonanzas. You got that? Speak up!"
"Yes," Mr. White said.
"Louder" And say, 'I got that.' "
He said it. Louder.
"All right," the Boss said, "I'm going to stop this impeachment business for you. But don't go and get the notion it's because I love you. It's just because those fellows can't get the idea they can just up and knock off somebody. Are my motives clear?"
"Yes," Mr. White said.
"All right, then sit down over there at the desk." And the Boss pointed at the little desk with the pen tray and telephone. "Get a sheet of plain paper out of the drawer and take your pen in hand." He waited until Mr. White had glided spectrally across the room and settled himself at the desk, making himself remarkably small, like the genie getting ready to go back into the bottle, drawing himself into hunch as though he wanted to assume the prenatal position and be little and warm and safe in the dark. But the Boss was saying, "Now write what I say." Then he began to dictate: "Dear Governor Stark,–because of ill health–which renders it difficult for me to attend consciously–" The Boss interrupted himself, saying, "Be sure you put that _consciously__ in now, you wouldn't want to leave that out," and then continued in the business voice–"to the duties of my position as Auditor–I wish to offer my resignation–to take effect as soon after the above date–as you can relieve me." He eyed the hunched figure, and added, "Respectfully yours."
There was a silence, and the pen scratched across the paper, then stopped. But Mr. White's tall, bald, narrow head remained bent over close to the paper, as though he were nearsighted, or praying, or had lost whatever it is in the back of a neck that keeps a head up straight.
The Boss studied the back of the bent head. Then he demanded, "Did you sign it?"
"No," the voice said.
"Well, God damn it, sign!" The when the pen had again stopped scratching across the paper, "Don't put any date on it. I can fill that in when I want."
Mr. White's head did not lift. From where I sat I could see that his hand still held the pen staff, the point still touching the paper at the end of the last letter of his name.
"Bring it here," the Boss said.
Mr. White rose and turned, and I looked at his still bent-over face to see what I could see. His eyes didn't have any appeal in them now as he swung them past me. They didn't have anything in them. They were as numb and expressionless as a brace of gray oysters on the half shell.
He held out the sheet to the Boss, who read it, folded it, tossed it over to the foot of the bed near which he sat. "Yeah," he said, "I'll fill in the date when I need to. If I need to. It all depends on you. But you know, Byram–why I didn't get one of those undated resignations from you from the start I don't know. I got a stack of 'em. But I just misjudged you. I just took one look at you, and said, 'Shucks, there ain't any harm in the old bugger.' I figured you were so beat down you'd know the good Lord never meant for you to be rich. I figured you never would try to pull any shines. Shucks, I figured you didn't have any more initiative than a wet washrag dropped on the bathroom floor in a rooming house for old maids. I was wrong, Byram, I am free to confess. Fifty years old and all that time just waiting your one big chance. Waiting for your ship to come in. Saving up one little twitch and try like a one-nut for his wedding night. Waiting for the big chance, and that was it, and everything was going to be different. But–" and he whipped the forefinger at Mr. White again–"you were wrong, Byram. This was not your chance. And there never will be one. Not for the likes of you. Now get out!"
Mr. White got out. One second he was there, and the next second he wasn't there, and there had been scarcely a sound for his passing. There was just the empty space which had been occupied by the empty space which went by the name of Mr. Byram B. White.
"Well," I said to the Boss, "you gave yourself a good time."
"Damn it," he said, "it's just something in their eyes makes you do it. This fellow now, he'd lick spit, and you can see that, and it makes you do it."
"Yeah, I said, "it looks like he's a long worm with no turning, all right."
"I gave him every chance," the Boss said glumly. "Every chance. He didn't have to say what I told him to say. He didn't have to listen to me. He could have just walked out of the door and kept on walking. He could have put a date on that resignation and handed it to me. He could have done a dozen of things. But did he? Hell, no. Not Byram, and he just stands there and his eyes blink right quick like a dog's do when he leans up against your leg before you hit him, and, by God, you have the feeling if you don't do it you won't be doing God's will. You do it because you are helping Byram fulfill his nature.
"Not that it's any of my business," I said, "but what's all the shouting about?"
"Didn't you read the paper?"
"No, I was on vacation."
"And Sadie didn't tell you?"
"Just got here," I said.
"Well, Byram rigged him up a nice little scheme to get rich. Got himself a tie-in with a realty outfit and fixed things up with Hamill in the Tax Lands Bureau. Pretty, only they wanted it all to themselves and somebody got sore at not being cut in, and squawked to the MacMurfee boys in the Legislature. And if I get my hands on who it was–"
"Was what?"
"Squawked to the MacMurfee outfit. Ought to taken it up with Duffy. Everybody knows he's supposed to handle complaints. And now we got this impeachment business."
"Of who?"
"Byram."
"What's happened to Hamill?"
"He's moved to Cuba. You know, better climate. And, from reports, he moved fast. Duffy went around this morning, and Hamill caught a train. But we got to handle this impeachment."
"I don't think they could put it through."
"They ain't even going to try. You let a thing like that get started and no telling what'll happen. The time to stomp 'em is now. I've got boys out picking up soreheads and wobblies and getting 'em to town. Sadie's been on the phone all day taking the news. Some of the birds are hiding out, for the word must have got round by this time, but the boys are running 'em down. Brought in three this afternoon, and we gave 'em what it took. But we had something ready on them all. You ought to've seen Jeff Hopkins's face when he found out I knew about his pappy selling likker out of that little one-horse drugstore he's got over in Talmadge and then forging prescriptions for the record. Or Martten's when he found out I knew how the bank over in Okaloosa holds a mortgage on his place falling due in about five weeks. Well–" and he wriggled his toes comfortably inside of the socks–"I quieted their nerves. It's the old tonic, but still soothes."