“Nick,” he said, “do you honestly think you can go on doing as you’ve been doing? Absolutely nothing, in other words. Do you really think you can go on taking graft and robbing the county, and doing nothing to earn your money?”

“Why, I don’t see how I can do much else if I want to stay in office,” I said. “I got all kinds of expenses that fellas like you and the county judge and so on ain’t bothered with. Me, I’m out in the open all the time, brushin’ up with hundreds of people whereas you folks only see one once in a while. Anyone that’s put in trouble, why I’m the fella that puts ‘em there; they don’t see you until afterward. Anyone that needs to borry a dollar, they come to me. All the church ladies come to me for donations, and—”

“Nick . . .”

“I throw a big barbecue every night the last month before election. Come one, come all. I got to buy presents when folks has a new baby, and I got to—”

“Nick! Nick, listen to me!” Robert Lee held up his hand. “You don’t have to do all those things. People have no right to expect them of you.”

“Maybe they don’t have a right,” I said. “I’ll go along with that. But what they got a right to expect, and what they do expect ain’t exactly the same thing.”

“Just do your job, Nick. Do it well. Show people that you’re honest and courageous and hard-working, and you won’t have to do anything else.”

I shook my head, and said I couldn’t. “I just plain can’t, Robert Lee, and that’s a fact.”

“No?” He leaned back in his chair. “And just why can’t you, pray tell?”

“For a couple of reasons,” I said. “For one thing, I ‘ain’t’ real brave and hard-workin’ and honest. For another, the voters don’t want me to be.”

“And just how do you figure that?”

“They elected me, didn’t they? They keep electing me.”

“That’s pretty specious thinking,” Robert Lee said. “Perhaps they trusted and liked you. They’ve been giving you every chance to make good. And you’d better do it very quickly, Nick.” He leaned forward and tapped me on the knee. “I’m telling you that as a friend. If you don’t straighten up and do your job, you’ll be out of it come fall.”

“You really think Sam Gaddis is that strong, Robert Lee?”

“He’s that strong, Nick. Every bit that strong. Sam is just about everything you’re not, if you’ll excuse my saying so, and the voters like him. You’d better get busy or he’ll beat the pants off of you.”

“Uh-‘hah!’” I said. “Umm-‘humm!’ Would you mind if I used your phone, Robert Lee?”

He said go ahead and I called Myra. I told her I was going out to Rose Hauck’s place to help her do her chores, so that Tom wouldn’t beat her up when he got home. Myra said that was just fine, her and Rose being such good friends—or so she thought—and she told me to stay as long as I liked.