Читать книгу The King is Dead - Jim Lewis - Страница 19

Now, Senator Anderson, the Governor has asked me to call you and talk to you about this war memorial. The budget’s tight as can be …

I know it is, said Anderson. But, goddamn, I’ve got over two score dead boys from this district, three or four of them from the most prominent families in the state and all of them good supportive people.—Supportive of the Governor, too. They’ve given up their sons, and they’ve been waiting almost a decade for some sort of official recognition. You, of all people, should understand.

Yes, said Walter. I understand. I honestly do. And you can have the money. You can have it.

This gave the Senator pause. I can have it? he said, a little more quietly.

Sure you can, said Walter. All we have to do is find something else in the budget to take out.

Something else? said the Senator.

Yes. So I’ve been going through it again.

I’ll bet you have, said the Senator. What are you trying to tell me?

Well, here it is. It’s not your district, but Strachey right next door’s got about fifty thousand tied up in this little tree-planting business. He wants to prettify the highway from Crossville to Cookeville. Walter slipped his hand under the waistband of his underwear and gently, thoughtlessly, cupped his scrotum.

… That’s his wife’s project, said Anderson softly. There was an old silence on the line. The Senator had held his office since the days when his district was lit with kerosene, and was reelected at the end of every term on a platform of sentimentality. He had never been much of a statesman, and he was growing tired.

In time Walter spoke. Is that right? he said.

You know damn well it is. You know if you try to kill his wife’s beautification program, he’s going to come after you.

That’s all I could find. We can handle him.

God Almighty, said Anderson. He’s going to come after me, if you tell him why. I need him for the new maternity wing on the hospital. The man thinks, because he was born in his mother’s bed, that’s good enough for everyone.

Anderson was starting to drift. Walter Selby was nodding silently and absently drawing a poplar tree on a sheet of official stationery. That’s all we’ve got, he said. What do you want me to do?

You tell the Governor … Ah.—Anderson sounded close to tears. You tell the Governor I handed him this county on a silver platter.

He knows, said Walter Selby, but I’ll tell him again. The budget was safe now, and he could afford to humor the man. How’s your own wife doing? Still got a thousand recipes for rhubarb?

Yes, said Anderson, but all the life was out of him now. She’s published them in a book.

That’s fine, that’s great. I’ll have to go find a copy, and you give her my best.

I will…. Well, I guess I better go now, said Anderson. He was sixty-eight years old, and his only son had passed the last thirty years drooling his supper down his chin in the Nashville Home for the Mentally Impaired.

Go on. I’ll talk to you tomorrow, said Walter Selby.

There were some reports in a stack on the corner of his desk; he glanced at them and then turned his chair around so he could look out the window. The morning sun was crooking through the branches of the tree outside; overhead, a pair of perfectly formed cloud puffs were gliding across the dark-blue sky. Life was short and singular and the State was on his desk, the day was bright and angled toward the evening, and Nicole was the name of happiness. He nodded softly to himself and then turned back to the day’s work.