- After Willie's funeral Jack goes to Burden's Landing because he can't take it in the city, and because he wants to see Anne.
- Jack and Anne hang out for some time.
- It's late fall.
- They don't talk at all, but sometimes Jack reads to Anne.
- Somehow, it seems almost like that long ago summer when they were in love.
- Still, a question haunts Jack.
- At first it didn't seem important, but now he can't stop wondering who it was that called Adam that day and told him what he told him.
- He asks Anne and she says she doesn't know.
- The next day Jack leaves Burden's Landing to try to find the answer.
- When he gets back he calls the Capitol and asks for Sadie.
- He learns she's at a place called Millet Sanatorium.
- When he goes out to visit her, he learns she checked herself in to get some "rest."
- He asks her if she knew who called Adam.
- She says it was Tiny Duffy.
- Jack asks her how she knows.
- She's mad at him for making her tell – but she does.
- Apparently she told Tiny to do it.
- Jack accuses her of murder.
- She agrees with him.
- Jack is quiet, and then Sadie says she's glad she was able to get it off her chest.
- But Jack doesn't really see Sadie as the killer. He puts the blame on Tiny, who, as Willie's Lieutenant Governor is now Governor.
- Sadie tells him how happy Duffy was when Adam and Willie were shot.
- Jack decides he wants to make Duffy pay.
- Sadie tells him to go for it.
- As Jack is pondering the best way to go about it, he gets a message that Duffy wants to see him.
- He goes.
- Duffy tries to hire Jack, with a hefty raise.
- Jack is surprised by how sure Duffy is that he'll take the job.
- Instead Jack tells Tiny he would never work for him and that he thinks Tiny is the "stinkingest louse God ever let live."
- Jack tells him he knows how he killed the Boss because he talked to Sadie.
- Tiny says he'll kill Sadie if she tries to mess with him.
- Jack says he won't kill anybody because he's too big of a coward.
- After their meeting Jack feels great.
- Several days later he gets a letter from Sadie.
- In it she gives Jack the address of an aunt, in case he ever needs to reach her.
- She tells him that she's willing to go up against Duffy in whatever way necessary.
- Still, she advises Jack to let it drop.
- With the letter she has sent a signed and witnessed statement implicating Tiny, and herself in the two killings.
- But Jack decides he doesn't want to pursue things any further.
- He realizes that he and Duffy are like twins, eternally joined.
- His condemnation of Duffy would be a condemnation of himself.
- (See "Foil: Jack and Tiny" in our "Character Roles" section for more)
- So Jack bums around town for a while.
- He gets a letter from Anne but doesn't open it.
- One day in February he sees Sugar-Boy in the library.
- They talk and Jack asks Sugar-Boy what he would do if he knew that somebody had put Adam up to killing Willie.
- Sugar-Boy says he would kill that person.
- Jack tells him he'd be hanged for murder.
- But Sugar-Boy says he doesn't care.
- The Boss was everything to him.
- He presses Jack for the name, but Jack says he was just kidding.
- Hurt, Sugar-Boy tells Jack not to play with him that way.
- They talk for a bit longer and then part.
- Jack continues in his fog until May.
- Then he goes out to visit Lucy at her sister's farm.
- She feeds him devil's food cake and iced-tea.
- They are quiet for some time, and then she asks Jack if he knows that Tom died.
- He says he knows.
- Tom had died of pneumonia (just as Adam predicted) in February.
- Tom's death was in the papers, and Jack had read about it.
- But couldn't stomach another funeral, and couldn't think of the right words to put in a letter to Lucy.
- Lucy tells Jack that she didn't think she could live with all the grief, but that God gave her something to make the pain bearable.
- Jack feels uncomfortable and is about to make a getaway but Lucy asks him to follow her.
- She shows him a baby in a crib – "Tom's baby," she says.
- Jack thinks it's a cute, good looking baby boy, and he hold it.
- Lucy says she's going to name it Willie Stark, "because Willie was a great man."
- She says she has to believe it.
- Jack takes off, and he too comes to believe that Willie was great.
- He too has to believe it.
- That summer Jack goes back to Burden's Landing because his mother asks him to see her.
- She tells Jack she's leaving the "Young Executive."
- When Jack expresses surprise, she says she had hoped he would understand that she's doing it because she loved the Judge.
- She breaks down, saying that "everything has always been a mess."
- The next day Jack drives his mother to the train station so she can go to Reno.
- She's letting the Young Executive have the house because he loves it, and because she feels bad for him.
- He didn't do anything to deserve all this pain.
- She says she doesn't have much money left, but enough to be comfortable on, and she isn't worried about Jack, because he has Irwin's house.
- Before she gets on the train she asks Jack if he had anything to do with the Judge's killing himself.
- He says he didn't, claiming that when he last saw the Judge, the Judge expressed worries over his poor health.
- When asked if this is true, Jack swears to God.
- This seems to relieve her.
- Jack feels like he's given his mother this "lie" as a "present."
- He gave his mother the gift of a lie, and she gave him a gift of the truth.
- Now that he knows who his real father is, and now that he knows his mother loved his real father, he isn't ashamed of his past anymore.
- That night he moves in to Judge Irwin's house, his house now.
- Then he goes to visit Anne, who opens the door and lets him in. He tells her about Judge Irwin and his mother, and then goes home.
- Jack tells us that the story of Willie is over now. He also says he's given you, the reader, the Great Twitch.
- He tells us that he and Anne are married now, and that the "Scholarly Attorney" lives with them, but is ill and fading fast.
- He plans to spend time writing a book on Cass Mastern and then to leave Burden's Landing with Anne, perhaps to return later.