All The King's Men: Chapter 5 Summary & Analysis

Burden returns the narrative to what now appears its central event: the nighttime conversation with Irwin, in Burden’s Landing, in 1936. That night, Burden and Willie drove back to Mason City in the black Cadillac, and before falling asleep in the wee hours of that morning, Willie told Jack he was raising Jack’s salary in order to give Jack extra incentive to find dirt on Irwin. Jack repeated to Willie his assertion that, if any dirt existed on Irwin, it would be very, very difficult to find.

Jack leaves Mason City the next day and heads to a bar in Baton Rouge, where he drinks and asks himself why the Judge might do something illegal at any point in his life. Jack answers his own question: out of ambition, fear, love, or money. Jack slowly ticks off the possibilities—the Judge was always confident in his ambitions, he was afraid of no one, and had no documented affairs. Thus Burden decides to focus on the issue of money, and to see if Irwin had ever done anything untoward in order to acquire his wealth.

Burden decides to go to his father, the Scholarly Attorney, in Baton Rouge in order to determine if his father can give him any information about Irwin’s former financial dealings. Burden knows that, owing to his father’s condition, it might be difficult to get any amount of true information out of the man. Burden goes to a bodega in a Latino neighborhood in Baton Rouge and waits for his father to enter—he sees his father after an hour or so has passed, and though his father does not initially recognize him, Burden convinces his father to take him (Burden) back to his father’s apartment, to talk.

On the walk up to the squalid apartment where his father lives, Burden hears his father reference a man named George—Burden asks who George is, and his father announces that George is an “unfortunate,” a man his father has taken in. Burden’s father takes bread to George for George’s art projects, which involves George chewing the bread and plastering it onto a sculpture of an angel—Burden’s father finds these sculptures to be deeply religious and artistically captivating, although Burden believes both men are truly insane.

Burden’s father says that George was once a trapeze artist whose wife died during their act, and that now George is mute, and he makes his religious art as a form of penance for his wife’s untimely demise. Burden does not wish to stay too long, nor to talk about George, and so asks his father whether Irwin was ever broke in his younger life. His father seems taken aback by the gruffness of this question, and launches into a religious tirade about the “filth” and “foulness” of human desires. Burden recognizes that he has only upset his father, and so, after attempting to calm him, leaves without gaining any actualy information about Irwin.

But on his way down the stairs, Burden realizes that his father became upset because he does, in all likelihood, know some piece of information about Irwin’s past—and thus Jack believes that, if he keeps on digging, he will find dirt on the Judge. Jack then shifts the narration to a football game he is watching with the Boss—a game presumably at Louisiana State University, where the Boss’s son Tom is a star quarterback.

Tom does extremely well in the game, and the Boss comes up to him, afterward, to congratulate him. The Boss is angry that Lucy still wishes to keep Tom from playing football, believing it is too dangerous, and Jack, though he is caught up in the excitement of the game, realizes he must drive to Burden’s Landing that weekend to talk to Anne and Adam about Irwin’s past—the three have decided to meet up and spend time together back in the Stanton’s old home. Jack also reveals at this juncture that Adam and Anne’s father used to be Governor of the state, long ago—thus the Stantons, like the Burdens and Irwins, represent the old political hierarchy of the state, par excellence.

Before Adam is set to arrive at the Stanton home, Burden is there with Anne, and though they horse around and build a fire, before long Jack loses patience and asks Anne, flat-out, if Irwin was ever broke as a young man. Anne senses that Jack is asking this question for Willie’s sake, and reiterates her position that Willie is a bad man, a politician who will stop at nothing to get what he wants—other people’s reputations be damned. Anne also tells Jack that she has met with Willie to discuss plans for Willie to give Anne some funds for a children’s home in Baton Rouge—a charitable project to which Anne has devoted a great deal of her time.

Adam then tramps in, bringing his characteristic good cheer, and he doesn’t seem to sense that Anne and Jack have just had an argument. After welcoming Adam back to Burden’s Landing, Jack asks his friend whether he recalls Irwin ever needing money as a young man—this, over Anne’s objections. Adam answers that, as a matter of fact, he does remember his father, the Governor, having a conversation with Irwin, a fight even, about money a long time ago, in the nineteen-teens.

Adam asks Jack why Jack wants to know this about Irwin, and Jack replies, again over Anne’s objection, that Willie wants to know. Adam seems also not to like Willie, thinking him to be an unscrupulous leader in the way Anne does, but Adam believes that it’s not against the law to be broke, and does not see the further political implications of Irwin’s long-ago financial past. The three spend the evening together, dancing, singing, and trying to have fun, although Anne seems residually mad at Jack—and the next day, Jack drives back to Baton Rouge.

At the capitol, Jack overhears a conversation between Duffy and Sadie, in which Duffy claims that the Boss wants to put six million dollars of taxpayer money into the new free hospital he has proposed building. Duffy tells Sadie that he has a friend, Gummy Larson, who can fix this up for the Governor—but Sadie knows that Gummy would include a kickback for Duffy, and that Duffy wants as much of that six million as he can get his hands on. While overhearing this conversation, Jack gets a phone call from Anne, who tells him that she knows how Irwin got his money—he married a wealthy woman. Anne implies that Irwin did not have to do anything illegal to get this money, and that Jack will not be able to tarnish Irwin’s reputation for Willie’s political gain. Anne hangs up the phone.

Jack sets about investigating to see if Anne’s claims are true. He goes to La Salle County, where a big part of the Irwin landholdings are located, to see how Irwin financed the purchase of his property. It seems that the property went into foreclosure in 1914, and that Irwin had married Mabel Carruthers, his second wife, in 1913—but this to Jack proves nothing, since Irwin might have waited to ask his second wife for money to pay off his debts. Jack keeps digging.

After Jack keeps digging for a while, however, he realizes that, although Mabel came from family money, she also spent a great deal of that family money before marrying Irwin—in fact, after meeting with an old family friend of Mabel’s, Jack realizes that Mabel had married Irwin thinking Irwin had money—and thus Irwin could not have paid off his 1914 foreclosure with Mabel’s money. Jack begins to realize that Irwin must have done something else to pay off that debt.

Irwin, who was the state’s attorney general in 1914, was given a job by the American Electric Power Company in 1915—a job that paid a great deal of money. Jack, upon further digging, realized that Irwin had also been given a certain amount of American Electric stock in 1914—and Jack set about finding out what Irwin had done to American Electric, in his capacity as attorney general, to cause the company to become so kindly disposed toward him.

But at this point, Jack reaches a dead end. He can’t find a link between American Electric and Irwin—not, that is, until one day, when he is walking along, a name from his weeks and weeks of research and digging comes back to him—the name Mortimer Littlepaugh, the chief counsel for American Electric. Jack does some digging and realizes that Littlepaugh died in 1914 of accidental causes, apparently falling off a high railing of a hotel in which he was staying. Jack decides to visit with his sister, still alive, Lily Littlepaugh, to find out more about Mortimer’s life.

Jack eventually finds Lily in a very small apartment in Memphis, TN, where she lives in squalor and seems to be some kind of card-reader or clairvoyant. Jack humors her and, in a clairvoyant session, tries to get Lily to talk about Mortimer, begging her to admit that Mortimer’s death was not an accident, but that, instead, Mortimer had flung himself off the balcony of the hotel (if it had been an accident, Lily could not have received his life insurance policy from the insurance company).

Jack tells Lily there is nothing to worry about now—the insurance company will never know—and he pays her three hundred dollars for any information about Mortimer. This seems to jog Lily’s memory, and she admits that Mortimer went to Governor Stanton about the “coal affair”—a sweetheart deal that Irwin had arranged between a coal company and the American Electric company, which Mortimer believed to be illegal, but which Irwin wanted to happen in order to ingratiate himself with American Electric and to make enough money to pay off his personal debts. Lily admits, also, that she has a suicide note written by Mortimer—she goes into a back room in her small apartment and finds it for Jack.

Mortimer, in the letter, repeats exactly what Lily claims—that Irwin allowed the sweetheart deal between the Southern Belle coal company and American Electric to go through, to American Electric’s business advantage, as a quid-pro-quo that would give Irwin a job at American Electric and a bonus in stock compensation. Mortimer, who knew about this graft, attempted to go to Governor Stanton, but Stanton covered it up and denied any wrongdoing. Mortimer admits in the letter to killing himself and pretending it is an accident so that his sister may at least have some money on which to live.

Burden says that he will take the letter, quickly, to have it “photostatted” (copied), so that he can use it for his advantage. Burden asks that Lily make a statement on the record, in front of a notary, and at a later date, verifying everything she has told Burden, and promises her more money if she does so. Burden then tells the reader that, as a historical researcher, he loves the truth, and he believes he has found a new piece of the truth regarding Irwin, who for so long has pretended to be a thoroughly upright citizen.