Reclining low in the rear seat of the bulletproof White House limousine, Douglass Dilman felt, this early morning, as he had felt every morning of the past week, like a prisoner being transferred from his home to his cellblock.
Up ahead, through the distortion of the bent windshield, he could make out the motorcycle escort, red lights flashing. On either side of him were more roaring motorcycles. Behind him he could hear the higher pitch of the protective sedan, which contained the remainder of his complement of bodyguards.
Within the luxurious limousine there was little freedom. In the front seat, the driver and the man next to him were Secret Service agents of the White House Detail. In the back, an arm’s length from Dilman, sitting sideways on one jump seat, was agent Beggs. True, none of them had their eyes upon him. The chauffeur’s gaze was directed straight ahead, the other agent in front examined the passing panorama of Sixteenth Street to their right, and Beggs examined the passing pedestrians and buildings to the left.
Douglass Dilman pressed his brown fedora more tightly to his skull as the wind whipped in through the opening of the electric window beside the driver. Wistfully, Dilman took in the landmarks that he had passed so often in the years when he had belonged to himself, and almost no one had cared if he were living or dead. He recognized the Hebrew Academy, the Methodist Church, the blue Woodner Hotel, the all-female Meridian Hill Hotel, the Hotel 2400, the Bulgarian Embassy, the white-pillared, red-brick, bogus English houses with their porches and stoops, which so many affluent Negroes had purchased from whites. In minutes the limousine would take him away from all this, around Lafayette Square, and to Executive Avenue and the south entrance of the stately Executive Mansion.
Dilman had awaited with dread the inevitability of this important day. It was his moving day. And now it was here. T. C.’s widow Hesper, Dilman had been told, had overseen the removal of the late President’s and her own personal effects and furniture from the White House yesterday, just as Governor Talley and Edna Foster had removed T. C.’s personal belongings from the Oval Office of the West Wing three days before.
For long, painful hours last night, Dilman, with the help of his housekeeper Crystal, his Senate secretary, Diane Fuller, Rose Spinger, and two nervous Army enlisted men, had assembled and packed into cartons and crates his pathetically limited and long-used possessions. Dilman had refused to allow anyone from the White House to help him, not Edna Foster, not T. C.’s valet Beecher, and not any of the White House staff that included the housekeeper, the houseboys, the ushers. Although Flannery had talked him into permitting newspapers to publish photographs of his simple living room in the brownstone row house, he did not want any critical outsiders to see or poke through his home. Nor had he permitted the Reverend Spinger or Wanda Gibson to come downstairs to assist him. In his new role, Dilman realized, he could no longer treat Spinger as a friend, only as one who headed America’s foremost Negro pressure organization. As for Wanda, her presence might have made the Secret Service men wonder about her relationship to him, and someone might have divulged it to the press, which in turn might distort it. While he had spoken to her briefly on the telephone every night before going to bed, he had not seen her personally since assuming the Presidency. She had not chided him for his neglect, for that was not her way. But he suspected that she commiserated with him, knowing his weaknesses, which was justifiable on her part.
Through the window he could see that they were turning off Sixteenth Street. Suddenly he was terrified. He tried to define his terror. It was not simply that he was giving up the safe anonymity of the ground floor of his modest two-story brownstone to spend a year and five months of life in the unfamiliar, awesome, museum-like, constantly exposed second story of the White House. That was bad enough, being the intruder-lodger in a mansion supported by a population that had never before permitted him to live among them, as part of them, in their easy streets and developments and tracts. The worst of it was that he was being carried farther and farther away from the only woman on earth whom he loved, and who cared for him. In short minutes he would be entombed in a prison that she could not visit, to which he dared not summon her. He wondered how long she would wait for his release, or if she would wait at all. He might lose her. He would lose her. Then he would be alone, utterly alone, in a hostile world. It was this terrifying possibility that had chilled him.
He brought his eyes from the window to the ominous radiophone beside him, and then to the sour face of the Secret Service agent in the jump seat. Fleetingly he wondered what the agent was so unhappy about. Perhaps, Dilman decided, his expression was really that of anxiety over his responsibility.
The agent’s full name was Otto Beggs, Dilman remembered. He had been on the afternoon shift, on guard outside the Oval Office, throughout the week. This morning he had appeared at daybreak, introducing himself again, saying that he was on a split shift today, four hours now and four hours late in the afternoon. With the three women, Beggs had helped supervise the Army privates who carried the cartons and crates into their huge military truck. There had also been several pieces of Dilman’s furniture, a small bedroom desk and bench, a maroon leather armchair, a tall lamp with a shade that Aldora had painted so long ago, and the Revels chair, that Dilman had permitted to be moved. The Revels chair was the possession of which he was most proud. He had received it as a gift from the state Party organization upon his election to the United States Senate. Although it was a genuine John Henry Belter rosewood chair with an upholstered panel in its scrolled back and with an upholstered felt seat, handmade in New York in 1870s, he had been told its real value lay in the fact that in the 1870s it had belonged to Hiram R. Revels, of Mississippi, who had become the first Negro to sit in the United States Senate.
The rest of the furniture Dilman had left behind, so that Rose Spinger could lease his old quarters for him furnished, to bring a better rental. After the Army truck had wheeled away toward the White House, followed in a Presidential staff car by Crystal and Diane Fuller, who would direct the unpacking, Beggs and the other Secret Service agents had waited to escort Dilman himself.
Still filled with the panic induced by his thoughts of losing Wanda forever, Dilman determined to question Beggs. He must be discreet, he reminded himself. But he must also know what was possible.
“Uh, Mr. Beggs-”
The Secret Service agent turned his head. “Yes, sir-yes, Mr. President?”
“I’d like to ask you a question.”
“Anything, Mr. President. Pardon me if I keep my eyes on the street while I talk. Duty, sir.” He was attentive, but his eyes were pointed to what lay out beyond the limousine window in the gray morning.
“While I haven’t had time to acquaint myself with the functions of the Secret Service, I do gather your Detail is assigned to protect me at all times.”
“Yes, sir, since 1901. Title 18, United States Code, Section 3056, amended and approved by the 82nd and 83rd Congress,” recited Otto Beggs. Then he went on, “ ‘Subject to the discretion of the Treasury, the United States Secret Service, Treasury Department, is authorized to protect the person of the President of the United States and members of his immediate family.’ ”
“I gathered that,” said Dilman dryly. “I haven’t been out of your sight for a second this week, except when I’ve gone to the bathroom or have been asleep. Does it always have to be that way? Isn’ there some time when I can go out alone, privately, to see certain-certain friends?”
Beggs shook his head. “Sorry, Mr. President. How can we protect you if we’re not with you?”
“I can’t believe every President has been followed every minute of his term by agents,” said Dilman.
“It’s true, sir. Mr. Truman tried to get off on walks without us, and General Eisenhower tried to get rid of us to play his golf in peace, and Mr. Kennedy tried to escape for some swims, but they never succeeded one minute, far as I know. Mr. Johnson was more cooperative in some respects, but T. C. once tried to sneak off to a stag party in Foxhall Road at one in the morning. We caught up with him.”
Dilman was thoughtful. “Let us say I kept it perfectly secret, yet insisted I had to see some friends alone?”
“You can see anyone alone, Mr. President, but you can’t travel to them unguarded.”
“What if I ordered it?”
Beggs turned his head, his puffy red face showing astonishment. “You couldn’t, Mr. President-begging your pardon, sir, but it’s the law. Chief Gaynor is empowered by the law to prevent you from any physical movement that he considers dangerous. This is sort of embarrassing, Mr. President, but like I said, it’s the law-sir.”
Dilman surrendered. “Thank you, Mr. Beggs.” The conversation left him more agitated than ever about Wanda and himself. Circumstances had made any future relationship impossible for them. He could not see her again on his terms, which demanded complete privacy. He could visit her only on the Secret Service agents’ terms and, he supposed, her own desired terms-publicly-and this would for the first time make known to one and all their longtime association. He considered the last, and then one more possibility came to his mind, and he thought about it.
“Crowding up a bit,” the chauffeur called out. “Take us another five minutes, Mr. President. Mind if we go on sirens?”
“I’d prefer not,” Dilman said. “There’s no hurry.”
There was no hurry inside him to face what lay ahead. He put the meeting with Wanda out of his mind. He would tackle that dilemma later. He tried to consider his more immediate problems. Edna Foster had telephoned him at breakfast to read him his schedule for today. He would have one hour in the living quarters of the White House, to become further acquainted with the historic rooms that were now his home, and to meet his staff, to brief them on where his furniture and personal effects should be placed. After that, there were his morning engagements: a half-hour meeting with Secretary of State Eaton and Governor Talley; a one-hour full-dress Cabinet meeting, his first, not counting the brief gathering when he had asked the members to stay on; a short meeting with his son, Julian, who was coming down from Trafford to see him; a short meeting with his biographer, Leroy Poole, who had so insistently been telephoning.
Lunch, he remembered, would be with the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who were coming over from the Pentagon. This afternoon would be packed, conferences with the Majority and Minority Leaders of the Senate and House of Representatives, conferences with the Directors of the CIA and the FBI, a conference with Tim Flannery, a conference with the Federal Loan Administrator, a conference with the Ambassador to Russia. Only the hours between five and eight had been left free, so that he might catch up on his official reading. After eight in the evening there would be the best time of the day and the week, a private and informal dinner in the White House, his first as President, with Sue and Nat Abrahams.
Thinking of everything he had to do before dinner made him acknowledge the tension that was overlaid on the weariness and uneasiness that had accumulated in the seven days behind him. It was incredible to him that a week, an entire week, had passed since he had become President of the United States. Even now, in his protective, mechanized capsule that moved toward the White House, he did not feel the way the President should, however it was that a President was supposed to feel. Perhaps, he realized, this was because he had not yet been made answerable to the demands put upon the executive branch. The events of the past week had been out his hands, had rolled in pomp and tragic splendor to their climax, as if motivated by the force of a Supreme Being. He had been an observer. And he had been grateful for this, and for Governor Talley and Secretary Eaton, who had both possessed the kindness and intelligence to speak for him when his voice was supposed to be heard.
Vividly he recalled T. C.’s funeral. His memory turned like an orderly kaleidoscope, yet showing him only hasty, quickly changing fragments of color, almost abstract varicolored impressions of sliding glass. There was the impression, streaked by the rain of the late afternoon, of himself and the Cabinet and the Congressional and military leaders at Dulles International Airport, when the jet known as 809 Air Force One landed after its trip from Frankfurt and disgorged the coffins containing the bodies of T. C. and MacPherson. There was the impression of the morning after, when T. C.’s widow Hesper, back from Arizona, stately and contained in her grief, supported by her awkward, adolescent son and by Secretary Eaton, had met him. They had gone together into the East Room of the White House to find T. C.’s flag-draped bier beneath the dimmed chandeliers, surrounded by the flickering candles and the rigid guard of honor. There was the impression of the following noon, the yellow sun shining down upon the massed thousands who lined Pennsylvania Avenue, as he plodded behind the muffled black-draped drums, behind the horse-drawn caisson with its coffin, behind T. C.’s widow and son and relatives. He walked side by side in step with The Judge and two other ex-Presidents, toward the public Rotunda of the Capitol, where the 21-gun salute rang out and the Marine Band played “Hail to the Chief,” and the brief Episcopalian services were observed. There was the impression of the funeral itself, once more in the noon sun but screened from the general public’s view, with himself and The Judge and other ex-Presidents and T. C.’s Cabinet in the landscaped family burial plot on the grounds behind the family manor near Concord, New Hampshire.
There was the change in the kaleidoscope of his memory from yellow to muted and mixed colors. There was the impression of himself, with Eaton and Talley on either side of him, in the Cabinet Room-he had been unable to bring himself to return to T. C.’s Oval Office-greeting and reassuring the countless heads of nations who had participated in the cortege and attended the burial. He remembered meeting the Prime Minister of Great Britain, the President of France, the Deputy Premier of Russia, the Chancellor of Germany, the King of Belgium, the Premier of Japan, and half a hundred more coming, chatting, going, in those bewildering hours. There was the impression, even less bright, more settling, of himself in the Fish Room the day before yesterday, engaged in the lively but brief discussion with The Judge, so forthright, so encouraging, then the more formal discussions with the other ex-Presidents, the short exchanges with senators and representatives whom he had known, with the Party heads, with the members of T. C.’s advisory team. There was the impression of himself, in Tim Flannery’s press office yesterday behind closed doors, being informed of the ugly riots that had broken out like bursting boils, riots between whites and blacks, unorganized but savage, in Tennessee, in Louisiana, in Texas, in California, in Missouri, in Michigan. And the impression of Tim’s reading aloud the first public opinion poll on President Douglass Dilman-in favor of him: 24%; against him: 61%; undecided: 15%-and the remembrance of his secret dismay at this harsh factual appraisal of him, so at variance with the optimistic guess and hopes of the moderate New York newspaper editorial that had heartened him the week before. And then the impression of Tim, and others, afterward, helping him hastily draft the statement requesting national unity and support, promising adherence to the principles T. C. advocated, reminding Americans that the eyes of the world and of history were upon them.
“Mr. President-”
It was Beggs addressing him, and quickly he collapsed the kaleidoscope of memory and hid it in his mind, and he looked up.
“-here we are at the White House.”
The limousine had, indeed, drawn to a halt before the South Portico. A group of men, three of their number brandishing large cameras, were gathered between the curved driveway and the canopy. Beggs leaned forward to open the rear door, but a uniformed White House policeman had already opened it. Before stepping out, Dilman looked off to his left. The view, that would now belong to him for a year and five months, as it had belonged to Jefferson and Jackson and Lincoln and F. D. R., momentarily lulled his apprehension. There was a sylvan, pastoral quality about the sloping expanse of green lawn, flecked here and there with autumn’s rust, and between President Cleveland’s Japanese maples a circular fountain threw off its steady clean spray. Behind the birch and elm trees in the distance he could make out the high iron fence that enclosed the President’s private park and protected it from the traffic on South Executive Avenue. Beyond the fence he could see the majestic white marble obelisk of the Washington Monument pointed to the cloudy sky. The greatness demanded of the Mansion’s occupant pierced his peaceful mood, and apprehension suffused him again.
Beggs and the policeman were outside the car in attendance. Dilman pushed himself from the deep upholstered seat, ignoring their offered assistance, and stepped out onto the driveway. Only one of the clustered dozen waiting, Tim Flannery, was familiar to him.
Flannery darted forward to grasp his hand. “Welcome home, Mr. President,” he said.
“This isn’t much pleasure to me, Tim,” Dilman said, “considering the circumstances.”
“No,” Flannery agreed. Then he was all business. “Mr. President, I’ve allowed three from the press pool to grab a few pictures of you.” He turned, waving. “Go ahead, boys.”
As the limousine rolled away, leaving Dilman stiffly posed against the backdrop of the south lawn and the Washington Monument, the photographers hustled toward him, crouching, clicking. Dilman nodded, unable to smile, and then he moved toward the canopy. The photographers went crabwise alongside him, shooting more pictures, as the onlookers, White House police, Secret Service agents, gardeners and yardmen parted to give him passage.
He was halfway under the canopy when a medium-sized Negro with tight curly white-cotton hair that matched his white bow tie, with jet-black solemn face that matched his immaculate dark suit, stepped forward.
“Mr. President,” he said, “I am Beecher, the late President’s valet.”
Dilman stopped and extended his hand. Hesitantly the valet shook it.
“I’m glad to see you again, Beecher. I remember you from the Congressional receptions I attended here.” He paused, and then added, “I don’t know what your plans are, but I’d be pleased if you stayed on, that is, if you’d like to work for me.”
For the first time a smile wrinkled the valet’s bland face. “Thank you, Mr. President. I would like nothing better.” He indicated the south entrance. “Many of the White House staff are in the Diplomatic Reception Room, waiting to welcome you. After you’ve met them, I’ll escort you to your apartment on the second floor.”
“Very well,” said Dilman.
The valet leaped ahead to open the door, and Dilman went through it into the Diplomatic Reception Room. Inside the door, he hesitated. At least one hundred persons lined the vast and stately circular room with its eighteenth-century furnishings. There were women in domestic white or blue uniforms, many wearing aprons, and several dressed in crisp daytime secretarial suits or blouses and skirts. There were men in overalls, in fatigues, in dark suits with black ties. They were everywhere, aligned against the ornately framed oils of many First Ladies-he recognized the likenesses of Dolley Madison and Jacqueline Kennedy-and they waited along the cupboards of gold-edged plates, amid the scattering of yellow-upholstered furniture, against the scenic wallpaper depicting Niagara Falls and New York Bay.
“This is part of the White House day staff,” the valet whispered to Dilman.
All eyes were upon Dilman, curious eyes, speculating eyes. Slowly Dilman crossed the oval carpet, until he had progressed to the middle of the Reception Room.
He cleared his throat. “I do not have time to meet you individually right now and shake your hands, but I am touched by this turnout. I would like you to do this for me-I don’t think it will take very long-but I’d like each of you, starting from the door, to raise your hand and give me your name and job title. I would appreciate that.”
He turned to his left, toward those nearest the entrance and before the glassed cupboard, and as each one lifted a hand, some tentatively, some high and assured, each announced his name and position in the White House. While the roll call went around the room, Dilman murmured an acknowledgment of each one’s identity. He was astonished by the diversity of personnel. He had read or heard that there were 132 rooms in this house to be looked after, and that thirty-eight policemen guarded its many passageways, entrances, exits, and that four thousand persons possessed full-time or semipermanent security passes to service the Executive Mansion from within or without.
Yet Dilman had never expected anything as overwhelming as this. The men and women identifying themselves included police, chefs, kitchen help, chambermaids, butlers, carpenters, air-conditioning specialists, launderers, electricians, maintenance engineers, house painters, floor boys, telegraphers. Some were more important than others, Dilman knew, but he gave them no warmer recognition. Among the important ones were the housekeeper, Mrs. Crail, and the members of the Social Bureau from the East Wing, T. C. and Hesper’s social secretary, Miss Laurel, with her twelve assistants that included two secretaries.
It had taken longer than Dilman had anticipated, a full fifteen minutes, and when the last to introduce himself, the wispy chief calligrapher-who wrote all White House invitations, place cards, seating charts by hand-had finished, Dilman cleared his throat a second time.
“Thank you, each of you. It is a pleasure to meet you,” he said. “Some of you, I know, have become indispensable to the operation of this nation’s first house. Some of you have served Presidents as far back as Herbert Hoover and Franklin Roosevelt, and others of you have been here under Mr. Truman, General Eisenhower, Mr. Kennedy, Mr. Lyndon Johnson, and The Judge. But all of you, I know, old and new, have served T. C. and the First Lady efficiently and loyally. Some of you, missing them, having other plans, may wish to leave for different employment. You may do so, of course, and I will understand your motives. Most of you, I hope, I trust, will stay on, knowing your-your loyalty is to a high office and not to any individual. If you will stay on, this is simply to tell you that I want you and depend upon you. I can’t promise life in this house will be as it has been. No one can replace T. C. But the life of the house itself, the routine, the service to those who come here, must remain unchanged.”
He paused, blinking at the cream-colored carpet, and then he said with the faintest smile, “Perhaps, even, your work will be easier now. You see, except for my son, who is away at college, I am alone, quite alone, a widower, and I have few friends and little interest in social affairs except those which are expected of me. Yes, my personal demands may make it easier, but remember that this White House is not only my house but your house, too, and I want you to continue to take pride in it and in your jobs. I hope you will stay. I hope to know each of you better in a short time. Thank you-thank you very much.”
The valet, Beecher, was at Dilman’s side, and from the crowd of personnel, the Chief of the Secret Service, Hugo Gaynor, and T. C.’s military attaché, Brigadier General Robert Faber, swiftly emerged to join him. There was a light spatter of applause as General Faber, Chief Gaynor, and Beecher led him straight ahead, out of the Reception Room, into the wide ground-floor corridor with its seemingly endless ribbon of red carpet.
“Excellent, Mr. President,” the buoyant military attaché was saying. “I’m certain they will be eager to serve you.” He guided Dilman to the left. As they started up the corridor, Chief Gaynor said, “Over there is where you will come in from your office every day. Next to it is the service entrance for employees and tradespeople.” He pointed ahead. “Miss Crail’s office, she’s the housekeeper, a demon, and next to her, Admiral Oates’s office, he’s the White House physician, and across the way the flower shop-they keep the old house decorated-and those doors open to the main kitchen, all electric and stainless steel. It has a dumbwaiter that runs up to a pantry on the first floor, and to your private pantry or kitchenette on the second floor. Ike put the second-floor pantry in-liked late snacks and raiding the refrigerator.” General Faber and Chief Gaynor threw half salutes at a plainclothes agent and a police guard seated at a table in the corridor, as both leaped to their feet and returned the greeting.
“Here we are,” said Chief Gaynor. He swung off the red carpet, passed under an arch into a small vestibule. “Here is your private elevator, Mr. President. Takes you straight up to your second-floor apartment every day.” He pushed the button, and Dilman watched the floor lights on the wall indicator drop from 3 to 2M to 2 to 1M to 1 to G. The valet opened the elevator door and held it.
“Gaynor and I will leave you here,” said General Faber. “I’m sure you’ll want to oversee what’s going on in privacy. If you need anything up there, Beecher and Miss Crail will be at your beck and call.”
“I appreciate your help,” said Dilman.
He ducked into the miniature elevator, as Beecher closed the double doors and pressed the button for the second floor. While the mobile closet climbed upward, Dilman inspected it. The elevator was carpeted in green. There were three mirrors on its three walls, and two mirrors on the double door before him. For the first time since shaving, hours ago, he could see himself. His kinky hair, despite the tonic, was as stiff as ever. His wide dark face was as Negroid as ever. The improbability of it all hit him with fresh impact. He was black and he was here.
He emerged into another small vestibule, almost bumping into an umbrella holder. The valet had gone to the left, and Dilman followed him.
“This is the second-floor West Hall,” said Beecher.
The hall, too long and too wide to be called a corridor-to Dilman it resembled a gallery-appeared to run almost the width of the White House.
“It goes from east to west,” said the valet, “and divides the second-floor apartments. Every important room opens into this hall. Down that way”-he pointed to the east section-“on the other side, the south side that looks down on the back lawn and Washington Monument, are the main rooms-the Executive study, although the Kennedys, Johnsons, and the late President used it for a living room, also. That is where the Truman Balcony is, sir. Next is the Treaty Room, and then the famous Lincoln Bedroom.”
“What’s down at the end there?” Dilman asked.
“The state bedrooms, Mr. President. The Rose Guest Room, the Lincoln Sitting Room, where there’s a fine television set, the Empire Guest Room, that’s the most of it, sir.”
Dilman stood studying the enormous hall. There were bookcases against one wall, and along the opposite wall were grouped a settee and chairs, beneath early American prints of Indians. At the farthest part of the hall stood a desk, and then a Baldwin piano.
Dilman gestured to his right. “What’s over there?”
“A private suite, Mr. President. You can see, it opens into T. C.’s sitting room, and on either side are the bedrooms that were used by the President, First Lady, and their son. Also, the pantry is there. It all looks down on the Rose Garden. I’d be glad to show you around-”
“Not yet, thanks,” said Dilman. “First, I’d like you to show me where my own things are being unpacked.”
“Oh, in the Queen’s Bedroom-the Rose Guest Room, really-way down at the end of the hall. We figured it wouldn’t be in use immediately, and it was the best place to uncrate everything until you ’could sort it out and become acquainted enough to know where you wished your effects to be placed. I’ll take you there, Mr. President.”
They marched briskly to the end of the hall, then through an entry, past a carpeted bathroom, a sitting room where the sofa and chairs were done in blue slipcovers, and into the Rose Guest Room. Dilman stepped aside as two Army privates carried out the last of the empty crates.
In the bedroom, he found Crystal on her knees upon the white tufted rug, stacking his embarrassingly limited collection of law books, history books, encyclopedias, synthetic leather-bound sets of Booker T. Washington’s writings and Dickens’ novels, and all the garishly jacketed mystery stories he enjoyed. Diane Fuller, her back also to him, was sorting out his papers on a table draped in red velvet.
Without disturbing them, he glanced around the room. It probably had been breathtakingly beautiful yesterday, he guessed, but this morning it was a mess. Except for the Revels handmade Belter chair, his cheap pieces of furniture, drab and scuffed, were eye-sores that littered the magnificent room, so gaily decorated in red and white. Heaps of his belongings, from humidors to ashtrays, from photograph albums to laminated plaques, stood like dozens of unattractive molehills. Piled across the canopied bed, across the rose patterned quilting, was a rag mountain of his clothes, on hangers, encased in plastic garment bags.
“It’s not fit for any royal Queen visiting us today,” he muttered.
“We’ll have it orderly in no time,” Beecher said quickly. “You know, many Queens have stayed in this room, one of the last being Queen Elizabeth II of Great Britain. She left behind, as a gift, that mirror over the fireplace. The bed was said to have belonged to Andrew Jackson. The shield-back chair-”
But Dilman was no longer listening. Crystal and Diane Fuller had turned around at the sound of voices, and now, grunting and heaving, Crystal was lifting her rotund bulk upright. “Thanks, Beecher,” Dilman said. “I think I’ll pitch in and help them here. I won’t need you right now.”
The moment that the valet was gone, Dilman went directly to Crystal, taking hold of her thick arm, smiling down into her shining face. “Well, Crystal, how are you managing? It’s a little different from my beat-up five rooms on Van Buren, isn’t it?”
“Mr. President, I’ll sure take them beat-up five rooms any day. This ain’t no livin’ home. This is a museum, sure is. Why, I’d be ’fraid to go to the bathroom here!”
Dilman chuckled. “You’ll get used to it, soon enough.” He was suddenly serious. “That is, if you want to. Crystal, I haven’t had a real chance to speak to you, or I would have asked you before. Will you stay on and help me?”
Her shoulders went up and down, and her fat arms shook. “Doin’ what, Mr. Dilman-Mr. President? I’m willin’, but doin’ what with all that fancy help around?”
“Taking care of me, that’s what you can do, Crystal, as you always have done. Those servants you see are for other people-visitors, dignitaries, guests. I need someone who knows how to make my breakfast, and keep starch out of my collars, and where to put my bedroom slippers. Let’s make believe nothing has changed, Crystal, except our address. We’ll continue on the same basis, only I’ll try to arrange a raise. What do you say?”
“I say yes, and how, bless the Lord!” Crystal exclaimed. “Maybe I’ll wind up writin’ a famous book about you, what the President is really like, and I’ll get rich and famous, too, and-”
Dilman grinned. “I knew I could count on you.”
He became aware of Diane Fuller watching, listening, from the velvet-draped table. He tried not to frown. Oddly enough, while Crystal belonged here, Diane did not. Her scrawny, deferential manner, her lack of poise, her unseemly loud dresses (the one this morning was orange polka dots on yellow), her bowlegs, her stutter and nervous mannerisms, made her less of an asset here than in his Senate office, where he could relegate her to the typewriter and file cabinets. Moreover, he did not want to bring in too many of his own color. That would create unpleasant talk. Still, there was Diane, waiting. Something must be done.
“What about you, Diane?” he asked. “Would you like to stay on?”
She spoke with difficulty. “Of-of course, S-senator. I have-haven’t no place else to go, and besides-”
“Besides what?”
“This is-is-is sure enough real exciting.”
“All right. Now, it won’t be the same as before, I’m sorry to say. I’ve kept on T. C.’s personal secretary, because she’s familiar with the Executive Office routine and can guide me. However, they can always use another secretary in the East Wing downstairs. I’ll tell them I want you hired.”
“I-I’d sure be grateful, S-s-senator.” Then she amended it hastily, “I mean-Mr. President.”
Crystal had approached, taking in the entire room with the arch of her hand. “What do we do with all this stuff?”
“You keep sorting it out so it is neat and so that you know where every item is,” said Dilman. “As soon as I find out which rooms I’ll be living in, we can start moving everything where it belongs. Don’t worry about it.” He consulted his wristwatch. “Matter of fact, I don’t have much time to look around. I’ll see if I can learn which is to be my bedroom.”
He left the Rose Guest Room, lost his way a moment, then escaped the maze of rooms to find Beecher, the valet, patiently tarrying in the hall.
“Sorry to keep you,” Dilman said. “Let’s start with a bedroom for tonight. What do you suggest?”
“Well, there’s these guest bedrooms-”
“No. Too fancy.”
“That leaves two others on this floor that are used,” said the valet. “Way down there at the end is the one most used by other Presidents. It’s huge and has a good cedar closet and bathroom-why, even the bathtub has the Presidential eagle on it. It was T. C.’s bedroom before he-”
“I’m not sure about that, either,” Dilman said. He did not repeat what had passed through his mind: that the electorate might unconsciously resent a minority black politician immediately sleeping in the bed where their popular T. C. had slept for two years and seven months, a Negro enjoying that bed while their choice slept in a coffin in the earth.
“What else is there?” Dilman asked. “You mentioned another-”
“Yes, sir, Mr. President. There’s the Lincoln Bedroom right over there.”
“I thought it was a show piece. Has it ever been used in modern times?”
“Often, Mr. President. Will you have a look?” Beecher started down the hall, with Dilman a half step behind him. Unexpectedly the valet veered to his left, opened a door, and waited for Dilman to go inside.
Dilman almost entered, had meant to go right into the room, but something about it brought him to a stop, made him hang back. For the first time this morning, he had the feeling that he was neither visitor nor intruder. An accident of history had brought him to this place, and suddenly, in this room, he was a part of this place, engaged in its role, a part of its story. For the first time this morning, he felt that he belonged. It was his fancy, he told himself, yet the warmness of being wanted radiated beneath his flesh.
Hushed, he surveyed the Lincoln Bedroom. It was an old-fashioned and simple room, too calming, too reasoning, too good to permit here the invasion of violence and hate and fear. It had once been Lincoln’s Cabinet Room, he knew, and the plaque on the mantelpiece was a reminder that within these plain walls Lincoln had signed the Emancipation Proclamation, prohibiting slavery in the United States and giving four million human beings of Dilman’s race their freedom.
Lincoln’s own bed, massive and grand, dominated the room.
“What’s it made of?” Dilman asked.
The valet came beside him, puzzled. “Pardon, Mr. President?”
“His bed. What’s it made of?”
“Oh. It’s solid rosewood, sir. Look at the beautiful carved headboard. That’s eight feet high above the bed. The bed itself is nine feet long.”
“Not long enough,” said Dilman. “He was taller than that.”
Dilman studied the velvet-covered tables and Victorian lamps on either side of the large bed. He studied the bureau and mirror, and the stained table on which rested one of the five copies of the Gettysburg Address written in the sixteenth President’s own hand. All these pieces had been purchased by Mrs. Lincoln, and everything in the room was probably Lincoln’s own, the painting of Andrew Jackson, the chairs in yellow and green Morris velvet, the desk, the Empire clock, everything. Even the figured rug gave Dilman comfort, a rug so much like the threadbare ones that had covered the floor of the hotel in which his mother had raised him to adulthood. Straight ahead, framed by the windows, was the spire of the Washington Monument once more.
He walked deeper into the room, and on an ashtray lay a white book of matches with the imprint “The President’s House.”
Over his shoulder he said to the valet, “You are certain this is a bedroom that’s been in ordinary use?”
“Positive, Mr. President. Theodore Roosevelt and Calvin Coolidge slept in that bed. Teddy Roosevelt’s children, six of them, often slept in it at once. F. D. R. had Colonel Louis Howe, his aide, sleep in it, and Margaret Truman slept in it, and so did Mamie Eisenhower’s mother, Mrs. Doud. President Kennedy and Mrs. Kennedy used this bedroom while their other one was being painted. Mrs. Jacqueline Kennedy, particularly, loved that bed. She liked to say it looked like ‘a cathedral.’ Later, whenever President Kennedy’s parents, former Ambassador Joseph Kennedy and Mrs. Rose Kennedy, visited, they were put up in this room. Lyndon Johnson’s relatives were here, and T. C.’s son Freddie always slept in the bed when he came here during school holidays.”
“And Lincoln,” said Dilman.
“Yes, Lincoln.”
Dilman stared at the towering rosewood headboard and green-fringed white spread. No one on earth, he told himself, could object to his occupying the Lincoln Bedroom, and least of all Abe Lincoln of Illinois.
“Very well, this is it,” he said curtly, and he went into the hall.
When the valet had caught up with him, Dilman stopped, something on his mind.
“Is there anything else, Mr. President?”
“I was just wondering what room is accessible when I want to work at night.”
“Well, sir, there’s the Lincoln Sitting Room on one side, and the Treaty Room on the other, but one more room beyond that is where T. C. and most of the Presidents have worked and relaxed at night.”
“Which room?”
“It’s been known by several names, including the Yellow Oval Room and the Executive study. May I show it to you?”
Dilman strode in step with the valet across the parquet floor. “Is it a study?” Dilman asked.
“It’s a catchall room, Mr. President. Right up until he left the country, T. C. used it for a living room, library, informal office. Dolley Madison did it up in yellow damask, and-you’ll see-most everything in it, the oval rug, the wallpaper, the covering on the two sofas, and some of the Louis XVI chairs are in bright yellow. T. C. would sit in a green leather padded captain’s chair at the green inlaid desk-behind one of the sofas-while the First Lady sat across from him and read. On balmy nights they’d go out on the Truman Balcony, stretch on the patio furniture, and have iced tea, and just talk and talk. When some head of state was visiting, they would receive him in this room, and then go with him down the grand staircase, across the way, to the White House Entrance Hall, where the Marine Band would play their ruffles and flourishes, and then they’d go on into the first-floor State Dining Room… Here we are, Mr. President. The Yellow Oval Room.”
The white doors were wide-open, and Dilman went into the great golden chamber, slowed by its breadth and brightness, by its richness, impressed by the chandelier with its chains and crystals, the candelabra guarding the central window to the right, the Cézannes on the wall nearby.
Dilman wheeled slowly, to take it all in, when suddenly his neck stiffened and he stepped back with surprise. He and the valet were not alone. There was another in the Yellow Oval Room.
She was bent over the flat table desk behind the nearest sofa, opening and closing drawers, concentrating on her search. When she straightened, and sighed, Dilman could see that she was not as tall as she appeared to be, but held herself so regally that it gave her added stature. She was attired in an unadorned black afternoon dress, and lifted from her face and lying across her coiffured blond-gray hair was a mourning veil. Even as she turned at his movement, Dilman knew who it was he had stumbled upon.
T. C.’s First Lady arranged her mourning ensemble. Her wide-set eyes betrayed nothing except recognition. Her high-cheeked, wellbred, fiftyish face did not change its expression, but retained its cool, phlegmatic sadness.
Dilman felt his Adam’s apple drop and rise. He was too tongue-tied to know how to address her. He had met her fleetingly at T. C.’s annual dinners for the members of the Senate. He had seen her three times during the week of grief and burial. He had never exchanged more than an incoherent phrase with her. He could hardly recall her maiden name, only that her given name was Hesper, the renowned and admired Hesper who had been one of the few First Ladies to bring style and grace to the White House. He could not force himself to address her so quickly by mere proper name, like any ordinary citizen, although he knew that she was no longer First Lady, her title and eminence stolen from her by Fate. Yet, she was what she was, T. C.’s widow.
He turned for the valet, as if for help, but realized that Beecher was retreating, readying to withdraw from the room.
Dilman faced her. “Good morning. I’m sorry to walk in on you this way. I’d been told that you had left-”
“The apology should be mine, not yours, Senator Dilman. I did, indeed, move out yesterday. It was kind of you to be so patient, to give me the entire week. But last night I remembered some of my husband’s personal correspondence I had overlooked.” She touched the table desk behind her. “It was in this desk, the one he always used late at night.”
“I hope you found what you wanted,” said Dilman lamely. “Perhaps you wish to look around some more? I-I have other things I have to-”
She lifted a gloved hand. “No, please, Senator.” She took up the packet of letters, bound by a rubber band. “I have everything now. I know this is your moving day, and I must not be underfoot. But, in a way, I’m pleased this happened, our meeting like this, away from the crowds, the misery.”
“I don’t know if I’ve adequately extended my deep feeling of grief,” said Dilman, “or my condolences. I welcome the chance to repeat both. All of us are less, without T. C.”
She was quietly observing him. “Thank you. You are very generous, Senator Dilman.”
Dilman’s sensitivity had come closer to his skin, and now he was acutely conscious of her manner of addressing him. Despite her good breeding, her infallible manners, she was not addressing him as Mr. President. To her he had been a senator, and he was a senator still, and she would not recognize his accession. Or worse, she regarded him as an inferior, a Negro inferior, unworthy of replacing her husband as Chief Executive.
But then Dilman rejected the motive of intended, or unconscious, insult. She was not demeaning him in any way. He was being ungenerous, overly susceptible to his own conviction of his inferiority, and he was better able to understand this suffering woman. She had come through the long, ambitious political years, with their gains and setbacks, clutching the hand of one mate. She had encouraged him, yearned and aspired with him, shared the ultimate victory with him. Overnight, at the height of reign and glory, his crown had been torn from him, his page in history ripped in half. She could not let herself lose both for him yet. For her, beneath her controlled sorrow, there was a refusal to accept unfair reality. For her, still, there could be only one President, one Mr. President, and that one her dearest, her own one. She would not let him be dethroned, not so soon, perhaps not ever. She would not be unfaithful to his love and their dreams. She would acknowledge no usurper.
Dilman knew what was required of him. He must reassure her. “I do want to add this-this one thing,” he said. “I consider myself a temporary tenant of this house. If it belongs to anyone, it still belongs to your husband and yourself. You earned your residence here. I have not. I am keenly aware of the fact. I want you to continue to feel it is your house. The doors will forever be open to you and your son.”
“Yes,” she said absently. “Thank you again.”
She paced a few steps, nervously, then moved to the yellow sofa nearest the fireplace and sat down, head bowed.
Dilman’s uneasiness increased. He wanted to escape. “I-I think you deserve some privacy. I’ll go.”
Her head came up, and she spoke as if she had not heard him. “You have a son, too, have you not, Senator? I can’t remember.”
“Yes. A twenty-year-old boy at Trafford University. In fact, he’s coming down to see me today.”
“It is wonderful, having a son. My own is at Andover.” Her eyes took in the room. “He so enjoyed coming here. He was so proud and thrilled. Like his father, he has a sense of history.”
Dilman did not know how he could reply or comment. He wanted to move the conversation away from the White House. Because it was difficult speaking to her across the table desk, he walked around it and sat on the corner of the other sofa. “Have you made any plans yet? Will you stay on in Washington?”
She shook her head. “I don’t think so. Of course, Freddie will return to school. I believe I’ll settle in our Phoenix house. There’s so much, so very much, to be done. I want to go through T. C.’s papers. Princeton is preparing a special Presidential Wing to receive them. Then many fine scholars, historians, want to write biographies about my husband. I think they should. I think it’s my duty, difficult as it will be, to cooperate.” She paused. “By the way, Miss Laurel-she’s been our social secretary-Miss Laurel has consented to come along with me, to help handle the thousands of letters that have poured in, to help with the rest. I believe that you’ll have her resignation today. I hope you won’t mind?”
“Not at all,” said Dilman hastily. “She belongs with you.”
She was inspecting him once more. “You’re alone, I’m told. Who will run this place for you?”
“I’m sure it will run itself.”
“No. It needs someone. There is so much that goes on. It needs a woman. Find one-an experienced social secretary, at least.”
“I-I’ll try to find someone,” he said. “I’m fortunate to have Miss Foster.”
“She’ll be helpful, but she is limited. I might add, I’ve requested her to empty my husband’s files, and put them in some kind of order, and send them to me-you know, for the biographers. I promise, she won’t take too much time away from you.”
“Miss Foster and I will do anything to cooperate. I want to do whatever is possible to commemorate T. C.’s achievements and his leadership. No matter what, do not hesitate to call upon me.”
She was staring at him. “There is one thing,” she said slowly, but said no more.
“Please, anything-”
She pulled herself erect. Her manner was more candid now, more firm and forthright. “Perhaps what I am about to say I should not say. Perhaps it is out of line. Do not misunderstand. I am not being presumptuous. I may be moved by private emotion, but I choose to think that what is giving me strength to speak out is my concern for the millions of Americans who voted for my husband, backed him, depended upon him.” She caught her breath, and then rushed on. “Nothing I can do from this day forward, no gathering of his letters and documents, no publication of his speeches and life, can be one-tenth as useful as what you can do, Senator Dilman. You alone can truly perpetuate T. C.’s memory and the ideals for which he gave his life. You, and no other, can serve his voters and the future generations who will be grateful for what he accomplished. You yourself can be his best memorial.”
Her urgency troubled and bewildered Dilman, and the burden she was settling upon him made him wince inwardly. He did not speak, but waited, hoping that he was masking his dismay.
She went on. “You will be sitting in the chair T. C. was to have sat in these next critical seventeen months. You will be holding the pen he was to have held when his proposals and legislations come to your desk. You will be implementing decisions on matters here and abroad, decisions he had already made but had had no opportunity to carry out. You will be surrounded by good and wise men, Governor Talley, Secretary Eaton, Attorney General Kemmler, General Fortney, whom T. C. appointed, counted upon, whose advice he would have continued heeding, but whose words he can hear no longer.”
She paused. “I-I have no right to ask it, Senator Dilman, because now my husband is gone, and I am no longer a President’s wife but a private citizen and a widow. Nevertheless, I will ask it as a private citizen, one of the millions who put him in office to lead us. I will ask that you try-try your best-to-to perform in the next seventeen months as if the Saviour had resurrected T. C. inside your head and your heart.” Suddenly her voice broke, and her composure with it. “Oh, I know you can’t be T. C., but-” Her hand went to her wet eyes, and she murmured, “Oh, forgive me-”
He had come off the sofa, stirred, to embrace this good woman, but then, as he neared her, arm extended, he could see the blackness of his supplicating hand groping past her white face. He froze, then straightened, trying to find the right words to speak.
There was a light knocking on the door behind him. Startled, he spun around.
“Mr. President?” A platinum-haired, smartly dressed young female was speaking to him from the doorway. “I’m Miss Laurel, the White House social secretary. I have a worried call from Edna Foster. She’s trying to locate you. She says you are running behind schedule. Secretary Eaton and Governor Talley are in your office, and then the Cabinet meeting-”
Dilman nodded, distraughtly, then turned back to look down at the former First Lady. She had found her handkerchief and was dabbing at her eyes.
His voice thick, Dilman spoke to her. “You have my promise, ma’am. On any matter that confronts me, from this day on, I will think before I act-I will think of T. C. first. I can never be the man he was, except in one respect. I love my country as much as he did, and I will do everything I can to preserve its security and wellbeing, no matter what lies ahead.”
Quickly he left her, and as he did, he exposed T. C.’s widow, for the first time, to the full view of Miss Laurel, who was still standing at the doorway. Miss Laurel gasped at the sight of the handkerchief and tears, and ran past Dilman, crying out, “Hesper, dear-what is it? What is it? Don’t, my dear-everything will be all right.”
Dilman fled from the room into the hall, but Miss Laurel’s promise to T. C.’ widow, repeated over and over again, followed him to the elevator. Everything will be all right. These moments, if the alchemy were possible, he would have sold his soul to the devil to bring T. C. back. For he knew that he could never be T. C., because he was weak and he was black. Then, he thought, he crazily thought: an original sheet of paper is white, but the carbon is black, and often the carbon, copy, no matter how weak, is almost as useful. He would try. He would try with all his strength.
When he punched the elevator button, he felt better.
Slouched in the wooden antique chair alongside the Buchanan desk in the President’s Oval Office, Arthur Eaton crossed his legs, dropped the memorandum he had prepared for the Cabinet meeting in his lap, and tightened the navy blue knit tie higher between his button-down shirt collar. He brought out his silver holder, twisted a cigarette into it, lit it, puffed contentedly, and watched with amusement Wayne Talley’s impatient dartings about the office.
“Easy, Governor,” Eaton called out. “Save yourself for the Cabinet meeting.”
“If there’s going to be any,” Talley growled. “Why does he have to be late on a day like this? We’ll have only half the time we need to cram him.”
“It won’t require as much time as you think,” said Eaton.
He continued watching Talley, as the stocky aide went to the French doors, peered across the Rose Garden, made some indistinct sound, tramped to the first window overlooking the south lawn, then came around to the almost barren Presidential desk.
Talley’s arm swept across the desk. “Look at it. Everything gone, even the clock, even his pens, and the captain’s chair. Not a damn thing of T. C.’s left-”
“Except us,” said Eaton, with a smile.
“Yeh, sure. If they get that New Succession Bill through, you’re safe. What about me? How do I know who’ll get to him a month from now?”
“Nobody’ll get to him a month from now, Wayne.” Eaton uncrossed his legs, and held the Cabinet memorandum in his free hand. “Look, Wayne, Dilman is President. Learn to live with it. I knew from the start that Zeke Miller’s protest would be thrown out of the Judiciary Committee and it was. After all, when the written law is obscure, you follow the unwritten law, which is historical precedent. The precedent was, nine times, that the next eligible in line becomes President, and no ifs, no maybes, about it, and no special elections either. Dilman was the next eligible, and now he is the Chief, and let us not waste any more energy fretting about it. Let us get on with business.”
Talley had planted himself in front of the Secretary of State. “Okay, business, Arthur. Do you know that the New Succession Bill sponsored by Senator Hankins is being approved by the full committee in the Senate Caucus Room today? Only one change suggested by the Legislative Council. After a President dies, and the next in line is serving as temporary Acting President, the new President and Vice-President are elected by the existing Electoral College for a full four-year term and not merely the unexpired term.”
“Yes, I heard about the change. I didn’t know the hearings were done and the bill was being approved today.”
“The committee isn’t touching a word in the language about you and the rest of T. C.’s Cabinet. It stays right in there. Dilman cannot remove you or any other member of the Cabinet without Senate consent. In fact, the line of succession as it was the day T. C. and MacPherson died stays untouched for the rest of the unexpired term. No new Speaker, no new President pro tempore of the Senate is to be elected to take precedence over you. The chairmanship will be revolving. That’s it, Arthur.”
“I know.”
“As committee chairman, Hankins is bringing the bill to the floor tomorrow or the next day. It’ll pass.”
“Will it?”
“It certainly will. And now, to expedite things, Zeke Miller is introducing a companion bill, same language, in the House. The House Rules Committee won’t stymie it. When it gets to a roll call there, it’ll go through in a flash.”
“Maybe.”
“For sure, Arthur. The question is-will Dilman sign or veto?”
“I haven’t the faintest idea,” said Eaton with annoyance. It irritated him to be dragged into these grimy, tricky, bartering legislative matters.
Eaton allowed Talley to drift out of his vision. He closed his eyes and smoked his cigarette. As much as he had tried not to, he had thought of that damned New Succession Bill, of course. How could he help but think of it? Everyone in T. C.’s inner circle, in the Party, in the press, his own wife, Kay, in fact, had kept reminding him that he was the next in line to the Presidency. Even if he had been able to remain deaf to the talk of the past week, it would have been impossible not to recognize his new position with the arrival of the three Secret Service agents, assigned by law to protect him as the Number Two man in the government.
Now, like it or not, he had Senator Hankins’ New Succession Bill, with language that retroactively froze him into the position of succeeding Dilman as President, no matter whom the House and Senate selected for chairmen, no matter whom Dilman might prefer in his Cabinet. It was an embarrassment in many ways, the kind of act Eaton ordinarily deplored, for it was so nakedly political and unreasonable. If it passed, it told Dilman that the Congress did not trust him as a person (and a Negro), that the Senate was stripping him of his inherent removal powers, that the Senate was taking over as his guardian. Furthermore, no matter how ambiguously written, it told the country to shut one eye to the Constitution, for while the Constitution gave the Senate the right to approve of a Presidential appointment, it did not give that body the right to control a Presidential removal. In short, one paragraph of the language of the act was clouded over by doubtful legality, yet it was skillfully hidden behind the verbiage of an otherwise valid New Succession Bill. The political cynicism and rationalization that wrote the bill, put it in the hopper, had it introduced on the floor, had it powerhoused through the subcommittee, the full committee, and to a roll call, was appalling to Arthur Eaton.
Moreover, Eaton hated himself for being thrown into the Hankins and Miller camp. They were not his kind of people. He despised their talk. Publicly, they were pleading that an unusual situation in government had called for an unusual measure to meet it and to secure the continuity of government. Privately, secretly, these same men were agreeing that even if the doubtful paragraph made the bill unconstitutional, it would take so long a time to reach a test before the Supreme Court, take so long a time to be thrown out, that by then President Dilman would have served his one year and five months under Senate restraint, and what happened after that did not matter. All that mattered was that the nation would have been protected from its own current President.
Eaton wanted no part of those politicians and their bill, and he promised himself that he would stay aloof, as far above and beyond the questionable intrigue as possible. He had one task, and it was enough for one human being-to see that the United States was steered in the direction that his friend T. C. had set for it.
He opened his eyes to find Wayne Talley before him once more.
“Arthur,” Talley said, “Dilman mention anything to you about the Hankins bill?”
“Not to me, no.”
“What if it’s brought up at the Cabinet meeting?”
“I doubt that it will be brought up,” said Eaton. “Since it concerns each of the Cabinet members, protecting them against their President, why should any one of them bring it up? Certainly I would not have the nerve to speak of it myself.”
“What if Dilman himself brings it up?”
Eaton thought about this. “No, he won’t bring it up either,” he said with confidence. “You’ve seen him in action throughout the week. He’s afraid to open his mouth. He listens. He worries. He retreats. He has no strong or definite opinions about anything in government, except that he doesn’t want trouble. I think he wants to remain unobtrusive and accepted. If he can get through T. C.’s term without rocking the boat, I believe he will feel that he has accomplished all he wished to accomplish.”
“Which is?”
“To prove a Negro can be President and leave the nation no worse off.”
Talley did not seem convinced. “I hope so. Let’s see how he reacts to that first television speech we hammered out for him. If he goes for it verbatim, every point we made, promising the country he will serve merely as a caretaker for T. C.’s program, then I think you’re right.”
“When did you give him the draft of the speech?”
“When he was leaving here last night.”
Eaton nodded. “Then we should know today. After all, if he is going on the networks with it tomorrow-late tomorrow afternoon, isn’t it?-he should-”
Eaton left the sentence unfinished, as he cocked his head to listen to the approaching clack of footsteps on the cement walk outside. He came to his feet, and he and Talley stood respectfully attentive as the Secret Service agent near the garden greeted Dilman and the White House policeman opened the screen and turned the latch of the French door.
Dilman was inside the Oval Office, nodding his head. “Mr. Secretary-Governor-”
“Mr. President,” said Arthur Eaton.
“Good morning, Mr. President,” said Wayne Talley.
Dilman remained uncertainly before them, revealing a troubled smile. “I know I’m late. I apologize. I was trying to supervise the moving, and trying to find where everything was, when I ran into the-the First Lady-you know-”
“Oh, Hesper, you mean,” said Eaton. “I thought she’d moved out yesterday.”
“Well, there were a few bits of unfinished business, I guess,” said Dilman. “Anyway, we got to talking-a lovely lady-and that’s why I’m late. Do we still have a little time before the Cabinet meeting?”
“Only fifteen minutes now,” said Talley. “We can cover the ground, if we go right at it.”
“I’m ready,” said Dilman. He started for the desk, and with obvious reluctance sat down behind it in the straight-backed, light green leather swivel chair that had been substituted for T. C.’s widely photographed ebony chair with the electrically controlled lifting and reclining device built into its massive frame.
Eaton settled back into the seat he had been using beside the President’s desk, and Talley pulled up a cane-bottomed chair.
As Talley took the memorandum from the Secretary of State, Dilman held up one hand. “Before you start,” he said, “I-I’ve got to remind you I’ve never attended a real Cabinet meeting, let alone chaired one. I assume our gathering last week was merely a brief prayer get-together. As to a full-dress meeting-” He shrugged helplessly.
Talley glanced at Eaton, and then addressed Dilman. “While there are no set rules as to procedure, Mr. President, there are a few certain practices that are traditional. As you know, you are the presiding officer, and, as you know, the ten Cabinet members are seated in their order of succession. Generally, you meet with the Cabinet twice a week, usually Tuesday and Friday, but that is highly flexible. Truman and Eisenhower believed in these regular Cabinet meetings. Lincoln, Wilson, Kennedy did not, preferring to work out problems in individual conferences with Cabinet members or advisers. Other members of the government that you feel can be helpful can also be invited to attend. F. D. R. usually had Harry Hopkins in the room-”
“I’d expect you to be present, too, Governor Talley,” Dilman said.
“Thank you, Mr. President. Now, the meeting is nothing more than a sort of clearing house-you know, clearing house for ideas, opinions, exchanges of specialized information, and so on. It gives you a chance to get a diversity of advice, reactions to your own notions, and to pick up some expert knowledge. The whole thing is informal, and because no official records of the conversation are kept, it can be pretty freewheeling. Truman had a private secretary take rough notes. Eisenhower appointed a special Secretary of the Cabinet to prepare the agenda and keep minutes of what went on, but that hasn’t been done much since. You are expected to open the meeting by presenting any problems you have on your mind. Or you can simply ask the members, from Secretary Eaton here down to the Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare, what they have to report or discuss.”
Listening, Eaton pushed forward. “Excuse me, Governor… Mr. President, I want to interject one observation I have made while attending so many of T. C.’s Cabinet meetings. Don’t be disappointed if not too much is accomplished. Your Cabinet members are specialists in different fields. T. C. found that the Secretary of the Interior had neither interest in nor knowledge of our problems in-well, say my Department of State. And the Postmaster General is apt to be more concerned about the design of a new stamp issue or political patronage in the Post Office Department than the Attorney General, who is full of facts and figures and concern about Negro voting. I think it was to avoid this bureaucratic self-interest, as much as for any other reason, that President Kennedy chose to depend on small task forces to dig up facts for him, so that he could thrash them out beforehand with a handful of intelligent advisers. Certainly he had no fixed schedule of Cabinet or National Security Council meetings. Neither did T. C. He liked to get his facts from any one of the ten government Departments, from experts among the more than two million civil servants in the executive branch, and then sit down with Governor Talley and myself, maybe one or two others, and debate the specific problem and arrive at a conclusion.” Eaton paused. “I think, Mr. President, you will be able to determine, shortly, if you prefer to lean on the Cabinet as a whole or on advisers you find intelligent and sympathetic.”
Dilman’s fingers twisted the cigar visible in his upper suit-coat pocket. “I don’t imagine I’ll go wrong following T. C.’s procedure. Only-”
Eaton waited, curious to see if Dilman had any unexpected qualification.
“-I keep wondering if the country might not feel easier about me if they knew I was meeting regularly, formally, with T. C.’s Cabinet. They can then see plainly what I am doing. Whereas, well, they might be worried about what I’m up to behind closed doors, you know, with a kitchen Cabinet.”
It was sensible, a fine point, Eaton told himself, yet he could not be sure that Dilman was not offering resistance to their guidance or attempting to assert his individuality.
Eaton decided to proceed cautiously. “You may have something there, Mr. President. I believe you will be able to decide which course to take in a few weeks. Certainly give the regular Cabinet meetings a tryout.”
“Yes,” said Dilman. He swiveled toward Talley. “What are we going to talk about in there today, Governor?”
Reminding the President that they had only seven or eight minutes before the meeting, Talley went rapidly through the problems on the agenda. There was the African Unity Pact. Renewal of the United States as a member nation, pledged to defend the independence of the new African democracies, was being scheduled for consideration in the Senate. T. C. had wanted ratification, had planned to speak out for it and then sign the Pact. This would satisfy Africa. At the same time, T. C. had intended to pressure President Amboko of Baraza into dropping anti-Communist legislation on a local level, and into resuming cultural exchanges with Moscow. This would satisfy Russia. Then, to conclude the peace parley left unfinished in Frankfurt, President Dilman and Premier Kasatkin would have to arrange another international conference. Talley thought it wrong to resume the talks in Frankfurt. The President of France had already offered the hospitality of his country. A site near Paris might be considered.
“As to domestic affairs,” said Talley, “the major effort, the one T. C. gave most of his energy to, is the Minorities Rehabilitation Program. I’m sure you are well acquainted with it, Mr. President.”
“Not as well as I should be at this point,” said Dilman. “Naturally, as a senator, I’ve followed its development. Lots of people have had lots to say to me about it, inside Congress, and on the outside, too. But it’s been in the Legislative Council so long that I’ve been waiting for the final form of the measure.”
“It’s in its final form right now,” said Talley. “It’s in the hopper. It’s being introduced. It’ll go to the Subcommittee of Employment and Manpower. Anyway, as you’ll soon hear, the majority of the Cabinet are involved in support of it. Attorney General Kemmler, Secretary of Interior Ruttenberg, Secretary of Labor Barnes are prepared to go to the Hill to fight for it. T. C. felt that not only would it give our economy a shot in the arm, but it was the only reasonable solution to the-the civil rights issue. We’ve found the majority of responsible white and colored leaders are behind it, Mr. President.”
“Yes, I know,” said Dilman. “I know the Crispus Society, the NAACP, and the Urban League have approved, with reservations.”
Eaton had been not only listening to Talley, but watching the President’s broad, black face. Except for an expression of unceasing anxiety, nothing else, either affirmative or negative, was betrayed. On familiar Caucasian faces, Eaton was always able to detect inner response, a closing, a widening, a dilation, an expansion, a wrinkling of some feature, that was often as eloquent and revealing as words. On this unfamiliar black face Eaton could read no subtle definition of reaction. The blackness hid Dilman’s thoughts as successfully as the darkest moonless night.
Eaton’s instinct, which he and T. C. had regarded as unerring, led him to a quick decision. To continue overwhelming Dilman with a landslide of information would be useless now. He had been made aware of the key issues, the immediate ones, and of how T. C. had felt about each. It was enough for the time. If more indoctrination were required, the Cabinet meeting might supply it.
Eaton straightened, and squinted down at his wristwatch. “I’m afraid we’re expected in the Cabinet Room.”
Talley protested. “There’s still some more to-”
“You’ve briefed the President on the main points, Wayne. That’s enough.” He rose, and smiled at Dilman. “I’m sure you’re ready to say uncle to this stuff, Mr. President. I know that I am.”
Dilman smiled back. “I appreciate your understanding, Mr. Secretary. I feel like a computer that’s been overloaded with data. I’m afraid something might clog or short-circuit.”
Eaton waited for the President to rise and precede him. Then, with Talley, he followed Dilman across the Oval Office, through Edna Foster’s cubicle, and into the cool chamber that was the Cabinet Room.
T. C.’s team was present and seated, and immediately upon Dilman’s entrance they rose to their feet. Dilman took his place in the handsome chair at the center of the twenty-foot mahogany table, the only spot on the table covered by a desk blotter, near which a telephone rested. About the table were ceramic ashtrays, some partially filled, silver carafes of water and trays of glasses, and sheaves of notes and documents belonging to individual members of the Cabinet.
Once the President was seated, and Eaton had taken his chair next to Dilman, the others in the room sat down. Talley found his place at the far end of the tapering table, near the fireplace and the portrait of George Washington above it. Across from Talley sat the only other non-Cabinet member in the room, Ambassador to the United Nations Slater.
Eaton’s gaze swept the table, taking in the attendance: Secretary of the Treasury Moody, Secretary of Defense Steinbrenner, Attorney General Kemmler, Postmaster General Guthrie, Secretary of Interior Ruttenberg, Secretary of Agriculture Allen, Secretary of Commerce Purcell, Secretary of Labor Barnes, Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare Mrs. Cummins. They were each well-known to Eaton. Despite their differences in years, their varied backgrounds-some had been university professors, some businessmen, some career politicians-they had always been a lively and unceremonious clan. But that had been at another time, under the informal leadership of the one who had appointed them, and knew and respected them.
This morning they were different, Eaton could see. They were quiet, almost hushed, inquisitive about their new Chief Executive. They were strangers to him, and he to them. In the afterwave of shock, Dilman had asked them to stay on, to assist him. They had agreed. Now they were confronted by one with whom they had had little previous contact, a man whose mind they did not know, whose desires were a mystery to them, a man separated by a color barrier that made understanding of him almost impossible. It was reflected in their cautious eyes, and probably loomed large in the brains behind those eyes, Eaton guessed. He could be wrong, he told himself. He doubted it.
He wondered why the meeting had not begun, and then he realized that Douglass Dilman had pulled an envelope out of his inner suit-coat pocket and was reviewing some notes penciled on the back of the envelope.
Dilman placed the envelope on the blotter, and scanned the Cabinet personnel surrounding him.
“I’ll call our first meeting to order,” Dilman said. “I know that we met once last week, but I cannot think of it as a conference on government business. Now we must not fall out of step with one another. We must go ahead together. I do not know you. I have inherited you. And you do not know me. You have inherited me. However, we do have one mighty factor in common, and that is our belief in the ideals T. C. represented.”
Dilman reached forward and picked up the envelope upon which he had scribbled.
“Leaving the second floor of the White House for this meeting, I had occasion to run into the late President’s widow. We talked, and coming down in the elevator I jotted a few reminders of our talk. I was moved that, in this period of her deep personal grief, her one concern was that I, as her husband’s successor, continue to uphold his program for the welfare of all the people of the nation. This good woman was thinking not of herself but of others. She hoped I would be the transmitting agency of a solution to her concern over the fate of her husband’s vast and dependent following.”
Dilman laid down the envelope and looked around the table.
“I am here to pledge to you that I shall, to the best of my ability, within my limitations, serve the United States in such a way as to relieve the First Lady’s concern about our program ahead, and in such a way as to assure the millions who voted for and backed T. C. that their support was not given in vain.”
The ringing out of applause was spontaneous, and it surprised Arthur Eaton. He could not remember ever having witnessed such a demonstration during T. C.’s tenure. He cast a glance at the black man to his left, sitting hunched forward, head lowered, one hand folded over the other on the blotter. The blackness still made Dilman impenetrable, but now, for the first time, Eaton wondered if behind the stolid, dull mask there lay astuteness and the intuition needed for winning favor. Now it occurred to Eaton that perhaps Dilman had not been elected to Congress by political accident and shenanigans, but that he had been elected because he was clever enough to judge people and use them. Yet this evaluation of Dilman was so drastically the opposite of Eaton’s judgment of the man the past week that he was not ready to accept it. More likely, Dilman had just scored because of the emotional climate created by T. C.’s death, which had affected not only his listeners but Dilman himself.
Eaton looked down the table at Talley, who winked. Then Eaton understood why Talley had winked, and what had just happened. Dilman had made his pledge. He would not walk outside of T. C.’s shadow.
Dilman was addressing them once more.
“At this first meeting, I have no specific problems or legislation about which to ask your advice. It is too soon. Except for my knowledge of what is going on as a senator, and from briefings by the former President’s advisers, I am not yet fully conversant with what T. C. had to face and what I must now face in his stead. I require all the information I can get, as fast as possible, and I need any suggestions you have to offer. So let me say, for this get-together at least, I would like each of you, specialists in your own fields, to speak of your problems, so I may understand my problems. You do the talking today. I’ll be only too ready to listen. At the next meeting, perhaps, I’ll be able to be more constructive. There are ten of you, and the Ambassador, eleven of you, and if you each take five minutes, I’ll be sufficiently befuddled and informed to feel we’ve got off to a good start, and I’ll still be out of here in time to keep a heavy day of other appointments… Mr. Secretary Eaton, do you wish to start off my education?”
Eaton tried to smile. “Mr. President, you are doing so well that I feel you can educate us. As a matter of fact, there are a number of foreign-policy problems of the most pressing nature to remark upon.”
Eaton found himself vividly reporting to the Cabinet the last conversation with T. C., and T. C.’s desires up to that moment when he had been killed. Carefully, he elaborated upon what Talley had tried to tell Dilman in the Oval Office. Premier Kasatkin and the Russian Presidium were suspicious of United States intervention in emerging Africa.
“The Russians,” said Eaton, “feel that our renewal of membership in the African Unity Pact, promising these African countries economic aid and military support if their independence should be threatened from the outside, is a provocative slap at Moscow. In short, another NATO. However, T. C. said, the Russians would overlook our Pact if we would cease to encourage anti-Communist legislation in Baraza. Almost the last words T. C. spoke were that we must compromise with honor, maintain a moderate course, to insure world peace. While he wanted the Pact ratified, he also wanted to give the Russians their bone-our promise that Baraza would lift its anti-Communist measures. This week, as Secretary of State, I did two things-I brought Ambassador Slater from the United Nations meetings to hold talks with the Barazan Ambassador to this country, and I sent Assistant Secretary for African Affairs Stover to Baraza City to feel out President Amboko. Perhaps Ambassador Slater would like to tell you about his conferences?”
The United Nations Ambassador, a diminutive, onetime history professor celebrated for his eloquence, launched into a detailed account of his talks with Ambassador Wamba of Baraza. The talks had made it clear that while Baraza was fearful of American abandonment by its not joining the African Unity Pact, the little country was equally fearful of giving its minority of Communist-trained natives a free hand. Ambassador Wamba would make no promises. The decision would have to come from President Amboko.
Here Eaton took over again. Stover’s one long conversation with President Amboko had reflected the same fears and indecision.
Eaton turned in his chair to Dilman. “Amboko wants to see you in person, Mr. President, before he makes up his mind. If I may be frank, I think he suspects that because you are an American Negro, while he is an African Negro, you will be more sympathetic toward his views, perhaps let him have his cake and eat it, and promise to defy Russia.” Eaton could see Dilman squirm slightly at his undiluted candor, but he felt that it was time to let Dilman know that there were those abroad who might make use of his color. “Mr. President, no matter what our African friend may have to say to you, our own course has been distinctly charted by T. C. We cannot risk a nuclear war to serve the self-interests of one tiny African country. This can be discussed in detail before Amboko’s arrival. I suppose you will have to receive him.”
“Yes,” said Dilman quietly, “I think I’d like to.”
Now Eaton brought up the resumption of the Roemer Conference, and promised to see Russian Ambassador Rudenko about a mutually satisfactory date and the possibility of holding the conference in or about Paris. Then, feeling that he had dominated the table long enough, Eaton hastily told Dilman that foreign policy had become so complex it overlapped from his Department of State into numerous other Departments, notably those of the Defense and the Treasury.
As if on cue, Secretary of Defense Steinbrenner, a mirthless, ponderous, shrewd aircraft millionaire, made a statement about the country’s current standing in the weapons race, emphasizing the number of stockpiles of nuclear warheads, and the country’s situation as to overseas bases. Except for the recent development of the Demi John guided missile, mainstay of the nation’s highly mobile airborne rocketry force known popularly as the Dragon Flies, Steinbrenner deplored the fact that in readiness for limited warfare the United States was woefully behind the Russians. He wanted greater expenditures devoted to select units like the Dragon Flies. Furthermore, he wanted reorganization of the Pentagon, especially in the areas of enlarging the military manpower draft and in enforcing speed upon government-subsidized contractors’ production schedules.
Immediately Secretary of the Treasury Moody leaped into the fray, protesting the cost of a Pentagon reorganization and opposing part of Eaton’s foreign-aid program. Listening to the contentious banker’s rasping voice, Eaton took out a cigarette and his silver holder, fitted them together, and smoked. He had heard all this before, and he could see that Dilman had heard it, too, in the Senate, and Eaton tried to hide his boredom. As Moody went on about deficit spending, lower interest rates, tax cuts, economy, Eaton shut him out. Then, suddenly, the Secretary of the Treasury mentioned the budget of the proposed Minorities Rehabilitation Program, and immediately there were six voices, one from every part of the table, superimposed upon each other.
Eaton tried to distinguish one voice from another, but it was difficult, and then, he knew, unnecessary, for the voices were saying almost the same thing but in different languages of self-interest. Unanimously they favored the Minorities Rehabilitation Program and they wanted no paring of the budget. Secretary of Labor Barnes was saying that the Program would create jobs and guarantee prosperity. Secretary of Agriculture Allen was saying that farmers were satisfied that the Program would absorb their own surplus foods for use in depressed areas at home and abroad. Secretary of Interior Ruttenberg was saying the Program would help him develop and conserve natural resources, as Ickes had done with the WPA. Secretary of Commerce Purcell was speaking of his public highways, and Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare Mrs. Cummins was speaking of her expanded school-building program, and Postmaster General Guthrie was speaking of the promise of more post office branches and more carriers.
Ideas were flying, and despite the initial unanimity, there were suddenly acrimonious exchanges. Hearing the cross fire, the participation of almost the entire Cabinet, Eaton was pleased. T. C.’s genius, he told himself, had made such intellectual vitality and excitement possible. Here they were not suffocated by the tedious monologues that had often taken place in earlier Cabinets, ones divided by departmentalism. Eaton recollected a conversation, long ago, with a member of one of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Cabinets, about a typical meeting during which Secretary of Labor Frances Perkins had lectured the others on her problems, and Harry Hopkins, James Farley, Cordell Hull had been inattentive, and Robert Jackson and Henry Morgenthau had exchanged jokes about other matters. Only President Roosevelt, the catalyst interested in everything and everyone, listened to Madam Perkins.
Eaton cast a sidelong glance at President Dilman. His black face was as set and unchanged as ever. His hands were immobile, but his cautious eyes moved from speaker to speaker.
Then came the slapping of a palm on the mahogany table, and a voice louder than the rest. Immediately the others fell silent, fully concentrating on Attorney General Clay Kemmler, whose flinty eyes were colder than ever and whose prominent jaw was extended farther than ever.
“Why don’t we stop this economic and prosperity nonsense about the Minorities Rehabilitation Program, and all the sidetracking and disagreements about the money aspects, and speak right out about the only damn thing that is important about that bill?” Kemmler demanded. “We’ve had a Negro problem since Reconstruction days, and it didn’t get attention until the Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson administrations, because the Negroes kept quiet and were poorly organized, and then all hell broke loose. Under T. C., all hell was still breaking loose. His administration had to dig up something fast or be witness to daily massacres of whites and blacks. So he thought of how F. D. R. pulled the WPA out of his hat, to keep the unemployed busy, keep them from open rebellion. Then he thought of the Urban League’s old notion of a domestic Marshall Plan to help Negroes, who have been deprived so long, to bring them up quickly, through increased income and education, to ready them for complete equality. That’s how MRP was born and that’s the sole reason for it.”
Attorney General Kemmler seemed to gulp for breath, and then he whirled toward President Dilman, and leaned against the table, wagging a finger at him.
“Mr. President, there’s no aspect of that bill for you to consider except one-that it’s designed to help your people, and therefore your country.”
Eaton could see that while Dilman’s broad face held to its impassivity, one hand folded over the other more tightly, until the dark knuckles lightened.
“Mr. President,” the Attorney General went on, “I hope you will find time to visit our Department of Justice someday soon, and walk through our Civil Rights Division. Under Kennedy and then Johnson we had a hundred men and women, lawyers, investigators, secretaries, working there. Under T. C. we had two hundred in this Division. In the past week, since you, a Negro, sir, have become President, we have had to bring our personnel up to two hundred and fifty and in a month it should be three hundred and fifty. Why? Because your sudden accession has doubly reminded the average Negro of what he is missing. He is tired of standing in line with his hungry belly, waiting for his citizenship and his book learning. He is tired of the Crispus Society and the NAACP fighting his battles with law books. He wants action. There’s this Turnerite Group, to name only one of a hundred others springing up, all putting on the heat, not merely demanding our action but acting themselves, and threatening all kinds of unnamed horrors. And there’s the Klan, and its offshoots, militantly revived, and doubly revived because they fear your administration may be anti-white and vindictive, and they’re getting ready for every kind of violence. Only one thing can stop the civil warfare that’s right ahead, and that is immediate passage and effective implementation of the Minorities Rehabilitation Program. Maybe it won’t solve everything permanently, but it’ll get this country back to normal right now, and give my Department a fighting chance to handle what is going on. I recommend strongly, because of the race issue and nothing else, that you, like T. C., throw the full weight and prestige of your office behind the bill.”
The Attorney General halted, chest heaving, and Eaton could observe that after this outburst there was little left to discuss. Eaton looked at President Dilman, whose expression still had not changed.
Eaton said, “Mr. President, I think we’ve used up our allotted time. If you are to keep to your appointment schedule-”
Dilman nodded, stuffing the envelope still before him back into his pocket, and then, blinking at Kemmler, and then at the others, he tried to speak. His voice, caught low in his throat, was almost inaudible.
“I will begin a thorough reading of the Minorities Rehabilitation Program Bill tonight,” he said. “Before our next meeting is convened, I may call upon some of you, individually, for more information about it, as well as on Baraza and other matters… Secretary Eaton, I appreciate the speech that you and the others among T. C.’s advisers prepared for my television debut tomorrow. It is excellent, and represents my sentiments entirely. I shall deliver it as written, with but one insignificant modification that I must make. I will not be explicit about the minorities bill in this talk to the nation, until I’ve studied it and understand it better. In all respects, I believe the speech will assure the country that I am not going to give it a-a black government-or a different government-but a government such as it enjoyed under the late President… Thank you, one and all. The meeting stands adjourned.”
He rose, and went hastily across the thick green carpet, and disappeared into Edna Foster’s office.
At once the Cabinet meeting broke up, and few lingered behind to hold postmortems, since each of them had a heavy engagement calendar. Going to the door, most of them expressed satisfaction that Dilman would “toe the mark” and “cause no trouble” and “listen to advice.” Eaton was the last member in the room, and before he could leave, he found Talley holding his elbow, guiding him to the privacy of the nook between the far wall and the farthest French door.
“What do you think, Arthur?” Talley asked
“I thought it went very well,” said Eaton. “He seems prepared to go all the way with us. He’s delivering our speech to the country tomorrow. We can’t expect more.”
Talley had a reservation. “Yeh, but what about that last little thing, about his saying he wants to modify the outright endorsement of the minorities bill we put in his speech, wants to study the bill so he can understand it? What does that mean, Arthur?”
“It means, Wayne, he needs to display some dignity as an individual, to prove he is not simply a parrot. He is a person, a person who happens to be Negro, and he wants at least to read the most important bill presented to Congress in twenty years involving the people of his race. It makes sense. In his shoes, I would do the same.”
“But you think we have him?”
Eaton frowned. “Forgive me, Governor, but I would not put it precisely that way. I’d say that T. C. has him, and he has T. C., and that is good enough for me.”
“Amen,” said Talley. “And I say you deserve the entire credit.”
“Not all,” said Eaton. “Hesper deserves some of it.”
“I still say-you,” said Talley. “You convinced her to be upstairs when he was there, and to speak to him the way she did. Nobody can resist a widow. That would be like pushing Mom out the window or stepping on the flag. You’re a genius, Arthur. I feel now-why, it’s almost like having T. C. back in the President’s office.”
“T. C. is in the President’s office,” said Arthur Eaton. “And we’re going to keep him there.”
Douglass Dilman sat back in the green swivel chair and contemplated his son across the Buchanan desk.
Since his arrival ten minutes ago, the boy had remained in a state of high enthusiasm. He had congratulated his father profusely. He had happily recounted the details of his train trip down from New York, accompanied by the Secret Service man who had shown up at Trafford University six days ago. He had reported proudly that every passenger aboard was absorbed in a newspaper or weekly magazine filled with pictures of President Dilman. He had recounted the excitement of his ride in the White House limousine, of the photographers who had surrounded him outside the West Wing lobby, of his rescue by Tim Flannery.
Momentarily muted by his first visit to the Oval Office, Julian had then wanted to know everything about it. Dilman had quickly led his son on a tour of the room, pointing out the historical curiosities about which he had recently learned. He had shown Julian the Chief Executive’s seal impressed upon the white ceiling, the.51 Spencer carbine first shot by Lincoln now hanging on a wall, the cork floor between the carpet and French doors still pitted from the spikes of Eisenhower’s golf shoes, the faint heel markings on the wood of the Buchanan desk left by Kennedy’s young son when he crawled under it, the mounted leopard head presented by the President of Baraza to T. C., which the First Lady had permitted to remain behind. When they had returned to the bare desk, Julian wondered if his father would be allowed to put his own effects upon it. Dilman had replied, “Of course, when everything’s unpacked. Next time you come you’ll see the Forensic League trophy on the desk, and those framed pictures of your mother and yourself.” Both had been conscious, fleetingly, of the name and picture unmentioned.
Now Dilman observed his son, rather than listened to him, as Julian rattled on. Julian was relating how the events of the past week had thrilled the student body of Trafford University. Studying the boy, Dilman was surprised again that Julian was almost twenty years old. Julian’s dudish attire-narrow-shouldered, tapering suit coat, tight trousers, high-collared, starched white shirt with the Italian-made tie, pointed, glossy English shoes-accentuated his chicken-breasted, slim and slight five feet seven inches. Julian’s short-cropped hair was pomaded, his white-brown eyeballs bulged out of the coal-black face across the center of which his nostrils were distended. His constantly animated hands, scrubbed clean, the fingernails manicured, were almost overdelicate, in contrast to his African visage. One day he would be wizened.
Julian had, Dilman feared, a certain lack of maturity, balance, judgment. Where his sister resembled her mother physically, Julian had inherited some of his mother’s character traits, too quick to become manic and too quick to become depressive, too often reckless and too often venomous. It was these traits that had made Dilman determine that the boy would be safer in a Negro school, among his own, than in a Southern nonsegregated school, which might be a potential ammunition dump.
Considering his son, Dilman wondered if he had acted wisely. Julian had pleaded to enter the famous university in South Carolina which had been desegregated by force-five Negroes had then been attending it, and they did so under guard-arguing that he wanted to get used to the equality he deserved and arguing that he had every right to benefit from the university’s renowned School of Law. Dilman had refused to let his boy enter that explosive institution. At the time he had said, and tried to believe, that he was doing this for Julian’s own good, to shelter him from the hatred, ostracism, and possible physical violence that were bound to result. Often, afterward, following troubled discussions of his decision with Wanda, Dilman had wondered if he had acted less on his son’s behalf than on his own. The entry of a senator’s son into a South Carolina college would have put Dilman into the news, underlining his Negroness and differentness to his constituents, and this would have been a political detriment rather than an asset to him, and harmed the Negro cause in general.
Yet, Dilman could see, enrollment in a once entirely white college might have had a salutary effect upon Julian. Not only would it have answered his youthful demands for equality, but it would have enforced upon him a sense of social and scholastic responsibility, modified his flare-ups of resentment, given him a greater maturity. Certainly, Dilman could see, Trafford University had not served Julian well. If anything, it only served Dilman himself, kept the public surface of his own life smooth. The peace that Dilman had won by placing his son in the isolation and safe shelter of a Negro school had been costly to the boy. Julian’s frustration was fuel for his anger. Segregation among his own-“that crummy academic Harlem,” Julian had once called Trafford-had made him less fit to become a citizen of the country at large. The parentally enforced segregation, with its withdrawal of rights and challenges, had made Julian disinterested in the life around him and in his education.
Continuing to inspect his son, Dilman tried to tell himself that he had performed sensibly, with a consideration of reality that Julian did not possess. As a father, Dilman had been and was still protecting his child. This morning there was none of the usual bitterness, resentment, imbalance of temperament in Julian. He appeared stimulated, even happy. But then, listening more carefully, Dilman could not deceive himself. The boy was not happier with Trafford, but with the fact that overnight he was a President’s son at Trafford. His pleasure was not that he had won more attention and respect from his colored classmates. He had already had an undue amount of that, unearned, as a senator’s offspring. His pleasure was that members of the white faculty, and members of the white press, and white social arbiters in nearby New York towns, had been fawning upon him.
“Geez, Dad, I wish you could have been to that tea in the Law School library yesterday,” Julian was saying. “Except for some of the honor students, I was the only undergrad there. You’d think I was a celebrity or something the way those white professors kept coming around me to ask about you and your law background, and how you did in Commercial Law, and where you practiced, and if you kept up your interest in law after you got into Congress. I tell you, you should have seen. Even the Dean of Admissions kind of tried to get my ear, to find out my plans, and to find out if I had talked to you, and if I was going down to the White House to see you. Imagine, old frostpuss, the Dean himself-”
Dilman knew what was foremost in his mind. It was time to end his son’s false ticker-tape parade. Dilman interrupted. “Julian-”
Julian stopped, saw his father’s face, and waited suspiciously.
“I’m glad you’re so popular,” Dilman went on, “but tell me one thing. Was Chancellor McKaye among those eager to seek you out?”
Julian’s expression showed that he suspected a trap, and his protruding hyperthyroid eyes rolled, as they always did when he was wary. “No,” he said. “Why?”
“Well, he sought me out,” said Dilman. “I had a letter from him the day before our late President’s death.”
Julian attempted an evasive tactic, but it was halfhearted. “You mean about having you come up to the school to speak on Founders’ Day? I heard some talk they were planning to invite you. I hope you-”
“You know that was not the invitation Chancellor McKaye sent me,” said Dilman with annoyance. “It was an invitation, yes, but to discuss what’s happening to you. He informed me you’re heading for an F in at least one course, and you may not maintain a passing grade in two others. If your grade point average goes below a C, he will find it necessary to put you on probation. You know what that means. You not only need to get passing grades, but you need a B average in order to be accepted in law school. I must say, I was surprised, Julian. You were averaging between a B and C. You’ve been complaining that the curriculum was too easy. Now, suddenly, this nose dive. The Chancellor indicated that you are rebellious, inattentive, and more interested in outside activities than in your classes. Before going to him, I wanted to hear you out. We’ve always been honest with one another, Julian. More than ever, this is a time for honesty. What’s happening with you at that school, Julian?”
Julian had been wriggling in the antique chair. Now he was sullen. “Nothing,” he said. “I’ve been busy, that’s all.”
“Busy with what?”
“Well, you know, I’m on the students’ administrative board of Carver Hall, and there’s the Debate Club, and lately they’ve been overloading us with homework.”
“You’ve managed up until now.”
“And then the Crispus Society. Now that I’ve become the campus rep to National Headquarters, and I’m on the Students’ National Advisory Council of Crispus, I have to go into New York more often. Ask your friend Spinger the amount of work that entails. Anyway, don’t worry, I’ll-”
“I am worried, Julian. I’ve not stood in the way of outside activity. As far as I’m concerned, have it, but only if it doesn’t interfere with your real job, and your real job is getting through the university, and later getting a Bachelor of Laws.”
Dilman could see the venom shooting across his son’s face, and Julian’s lips puckering to contain their trembling. “I don’t care what, but I disagree with you,” said Julian, his voice cracking. “My real job isn’t in that intellectual Catfish Row, getting a black sheepskin so’s I can practice on Chicago’s South Side like you did, protecting my people from petty civil suits. My job is protecting my people’s rights under the Constitution, seeing they’re not subjugated. I can do that better devoting more time to the Crispus Society, fighting for my whole people, than by trying to do graduate work in a Negro college, so’s I can become a Negro lawyer to represent Negroes over matters that don’t count. My first duty is to help the country straighten itself out, so that when I get my law degree, I’ll have one as a lawyer, not as a Negro lawyer, and I can live among people, not just Negro people, and can represent clients of every color-that’s my duty and my job. I don’t care what you say to it, Dad, but you went and put me in that school to keep me in my place, to keep me a Negro, like the whites do-”
Dilman had heard much of this before, but never spoken with such indignation. He held his own temper in check, determined to reason with the boy. “I didn’t try to keep you a Negro or anything else, Julian,” he said. “What you are, what you become, is in your own hands. Certainly there are gross inequities being practiced against us, but we’ve made gains and we’ll make more, and one day, under due process of law, this country will be everyone’s country.”
“The payment’s overdue more than a hundred years,” said Julian angrily. “We’re not waiting any more. We’re collecting.”
Dilman stared at his hands on the desk, “We’re being gradually paid up,” he said quietly. “Slavery and bondage are gone. Segregation is going. You’ll have it easier than I had it, and even the way times were, look what a Negro like your father could accomplish in this country. Both whites and blacks put me in Congress-”
“On the white man’s terms,” said Julian. Hastily he added, “I’m not being disrespectful, but I mean-”
“Julian, look where I’m sitting, look around the room you’re in-”
Julian had grasped the desk. “They didn’t mean for you to be here, Dad, they don’t want you here. We want you, but they don’t.” His voice was cracking again. “I haven’t told you everything I’ve been hearing.”
Dilman wanted to end this painful scene with one who was of his own blood, one who would not understand. “I know what’s going on, Julian,” he said. “Nevertheless, I’m here, and that speaks well of our situation in our country. It is proof of what is possible. I’ll do my job here, and all I want of you is that you stop trying to turn over the country with one push and concentrate on learning some reason in school-”
“Dad, I’m going to tell you, I’m going to tell you,” Julian interrupted. “All of us think it’s like a miracle, your being put here. You’ve got the chance of a lifetime to do in a little while what our people, and the ones who died and suffered, all the societies, couldn’t do in a century. You can force the whites-”
“I’m not forcing anybody to do anything.” Dilman’s tone had become harsh. “I’m the President of the United States, not the President of the Negro population, and whatever’s best-”
“I’m still going to tell you-listen, Dad, please listen-you’ve got to know what our people are saying outside-they’re saying if you were the President of the United States, all of it, that would be fine, too, but you’re not-won’t be-you’ll be like the ones before-the President of the whites-”
Dilman’s hands balled hard. “That’s enough from you, Julian, that’s quite enough. You remember who you are and who I am, and that I’m the one who’s still in charge of seeing you think right and behave right-me, not your callow friends.”
Sulkily Julian released his grip on the desk, and pushed back into his chair. “Okay, if-if you don’t want to talk-”
“Don’t bait me. And stop being childish.”
“I’m not baiting you the least bit. I’m only thinking how you always wanted us to be your kind of Negro, and none of us wanted it, not Mom, and not Mindy, and not me either. I always envied Mindy because she was born lucky, and got away, and I was born this way and got stuck. When I wanted to do something about it, become a person like everybody else, like Mindy, you wouldn’t let me, and you still won’t.”
At the first mention of his daughter’s name, Dilman had automatically begun to scan the office, to make certain that every door was closed to hostile ears. He could see that the doors were shut tight.
He brought his gaze back to his son. “I don’t want to discuss Mindy here.”
“And you don’t want to discuss me, either,” said Julian bitterly. “I’d trade places with her tomorrow, if I could.”
“Don’t be so sure of that,” said Dilman. “All Negroes who pass aren’t so happy. The deceit-”
“She’s doing all right,” said Julian.
Dilman looked at his son sharply. “How do you know?” he demanded. “How do you know she’s doing all right?”
Julian’s immediate discomfort was evident. “I-I’m guessing. If she weren’t, wouldn’t you have heard from her, now that you’re President? If she weren’t better off playing white, wouldn’t she come forward to live in the White House?”
“You seem to know a good deal about her,” said Dilman. “You’ve been in touch with her, haven’t you?”
“Suppose I have?”
“I’m surprised, that’s all,” said Dilman, and his heart ached at her rejection of him, and then he was ashamed at the fear that had entered his head. When Mindy had gone across the line separating white from black, she had gone entirely, disappeared from every phase of the old life she had ever known. Only she knew her secret and her identity. Now she was not alone. She had shared her secret. The threat of it oppressed him. “Isn’t she afraid? Why should she take the chance of letting you know-”
“I don’t know who she is or where she is,” said Julian. “One day, a year and a half ago, I had a brief note from her at school, right out of the sky. She needed money desperately, for some emergency. She figured I was on an allowance from you. She asked for a loan to be mailed in cash. She told me to mail it under a different name to General Delivery at the main post office in New York City. I did. After that, I tried to find that name she gave me in the New York directories. There was none like that. Maybe she uses many names. Anyway, I wrote her, using that name, and a couple of months ago she paid me back in cash. There was another note from her. She’s got a better position, whatever it is. She’s going with a great crowd, and she made it clear they were white. Oh, she’s doing fine, she’s doing just great. She’s got equal rights, because she was born color-lucky like the white folks. And all I’m asking is that you let me work harder on the outside for the same acceptance and decency.”
“Mindy’s wrong,” said Dilman. “Deceit is wrong. Julian, you’ll have your acceptance and decency in the open, on your own terms. T. C. was fighting for it, and you tell your friends I will, too.” He suddenly felt tired. “I moved today, I moved into that”-he pointed through the French doors-“plantation house.” He smiled weakly. “That’s our home for the next year or so, Julian. There’ll be a room for you, for weekends and holidays. When are you going back to Trafford?”
“Late this afternoon.”
“Very well. Why don’t you go up there-someone will show you the elevator to the second floor-and have a look around? It’s something to see. Crystal’s there right now. She’ll whip you up some lunch, and after that you get the valet to show you a room for yourself. I’ll catch up with you before you leave.”
Julian rose, softened, chastened by the realization of the White House. “I’m sorry to-to disagree with you, Dad, with all you’ve got on your mind. I’m staying on with my work in the Crispus Society, but I’ll try to do better in school, too. You can write the Chancellor that.”
Relieved, Dilman smiled fully. “Thanks, son. Just open that door, and go around the ell and through the ground-floor door. You won’t get lost.”
The moment that Julian had gone, Dilman consulted the typed card slipped into the silver holder on the desk. The card read: The President’s Engagements. Beneath his son’s name was the name of Leroy Poole.
Dilman picked up the console telephone receiver and pressed the buzzer. Instantly he heard Shelby Lucas, the agreeable, somewhat courtly, prematurely gray engagements secretary, inherited from T. C., reply on the other end. “Yes, Mr. President?”
“How am I running, Mr. Lucas?”
“About-about ten minutes ahead, Mr. President.”
“Is Mr. Poole here?”
“In the Fish Room, sir.”
“Please send him in.”
Putting down the console telephone, Dilman attempted to disengage his thoughts from his son, from the accusations of his son and Mindy, and concentrate on what he must say to Poole. He remembered how impressed Julian had been that an author of Poole’s stature had undertaken to write his father’s biography. From the first, Dilman had been less impressed. He had found Poole repulsive in appearance, deficient in objectivity, and more unreasonable than Julian about equal rights for Negroes. He was a race chauvinist, the Negro counterpart of the Zeke Millers. His perspiring journalistic professionalism seemed barely to perform on a jellied foundation of emotionalism. There was something oily and insincere about him. His questions, well researched, well prepared, often seemed to have no relationship to his own curiosity or interest.
Behind Poole’s deference to his subject, Dilman suspected, lay mockery and contempt. Dilman could not be sure, but his sensitivity always entertained these suspicions when his biographer left the Senate office or the brownstone living room. Time and again Dilman had been tempted to call the project off. He had not wanted a researcher rummaging through the storeroom of his past life. He had not wanted this book written about himself, even though it was to be published by a Negro press, presumably for Negro readers. Dilman had feared that it would be read by white constituents, too, who might decide that he was not representative of them, and next time vote against him. Yet because the Reverend Spinger and other Negro leaders wanted the book as an inspiration for the Negro young, to turn them away from violence, to show them what one of their own had accomplished in a democracy, Dilman had continued cooperating.
Several times since he had been sworn into the Presidency, Dilman had thought fleetingly about the book, wondering if he should permit its publication now that his role had changed. Of course, previous Presidents had made themselves available to biographers during their terms of office. But his own problems were ones that they had not possessed. He had been unable to come to a decision. There had been so many calls from Poole during the week, which he had avoided, that at last he had been embarrassed into taking one. On the telephone, he had been aware at once that Poole’s approach had become even more self-effacing and deferential. Dilman had accepted his biographer’s congratulations and good wishes, and heard out his set speech about the increased importance of the book now that its subject had graduated from senator to President. Without committing himself to the book’s continuance, Dilman had agreed to see Poole as soon as possible, and requested him to work out a date with the engagements secretary. Since then Dilman had been too busy to give Poole or the book another thought, but now this was one more minor matter that he must settle.
The corridor door had swung open, and engagements secretary Lucas was saying to someone not yet visible, “Right in here, Mr. Poole.”
Leroy Poole came through the door like a beach ball. The door closed behind him, and he stopped, dipped his obese face, murmuring, “Mr. President of the United States,” and then he advanced toward the desk, pudgy hand outstretched. “Once more, my sincere best wishes, Mr. President. I think all of us are very lucky we have someone with your experience to carry on.”
Dilman half lifted himself from the swivel chair, and lost his hand inside Poole’s chubby clasp, thinking how much it was like shaking hands with a boxing glove. Dilman waved toward the chair. “Sit down, Leroy.”
Poole eased into the seat, his arms aloft, as if to bring all of the office down into their laps. “The office looks so different from any of the photographs I’ve seen. Somehow you come to expect a throne room, considering that this is the most important office in the world.”
“One of the most important,” Dilman corrected him.
“Yes, I guess the others consider theirs just as important,” said Poole.
“They do, and they’re demanding equal time. I don’t want to be abrupt, Leroy, but I’m afraid they won’t let me be as casual about appointments here as I was in the Senate Office Building. So let’s get right on-”
Dilman paused. The French door behind Poole had opened, and Julian was standing there, worried and harassed, and at his elbow was the Secret Service agent called Sperry.
“I-I’m sorry to break in like this,” Julian was saying, “but I went into the ground floor like you said, and this gentleman grabbed me and asked for my pass, and I had none. I told him who I was, but he frisked me, and then said I couldn’t get upstairs until I was cleared.”
Dilman calmed his son with a gesture. “All right, Julian… Mr. Sperry-”
The Secret Service agent came alongside Julian. “Sorry, Mr. President, I was sure he was your son, but I couldn’t take any chances unless he was identified or I was instructed.”
Dilman nodded. “You were correct. Consider him identified as my son, and ask Chief Gaynor to make out a permanent White House pass.” Dilman realized that Poole was on his feet, studying Julian. Hastily, Dilman performed the introduction. “Julian, meet Leroy Poole, the writer you so much admire.”
Julian’s eyes protruded more noticeably as he eagerly stepped forward to shake Poole’s hand. “Gosh, Mr. Poole, this is an honor-”
“A pleasure for me, too, Mr. Dilman. I’d been looking forward to meeting you at least once before completing your father’s biography.”
“I’ve read every one of your articles,” Julian said. “I even heard you lecture once at our school.”
“Your school? I remember your father telling me. You’re at Trafford. I don’t recall-”
“It was the students’ branch of the Crispus Society.”
“I remember,” said Leroy Poole.
Dilman’s cough interrupted the exchange. “Sorry, Leroy, but I am crowded for time… Mr. Sperry, will you take my son up to the second floor?”
“Thanks, Dad,” said Julian. His eyes lingered admiringly on Poole. “Pleased to meet you, Mr. Poole.”
When the French door closed, Poole resumed his seat. “That’s a mighty fine boy you have, Mr. President. I don’t remember your telling me that he was a member of the Crispus Society.”
“It’s in your notes, I’m sure,” said Dilman. “In fact, he’s now on one of the national committees at their headquarters. Shall we get on with our business?”
“I’m ready, Mr. President. I’ve been giving some thought to the book-”
“So have I, Leroy. I’ve come to a decision. I don’t like the idea of its publication right now, but I want to be fair. You’ve worked hard and long on it. You’re expecting certain income from it. I have no right to deprive you. So-”
“You have no right to deprive the country,” said Poole, fingers wiping his brow. “The book was conceived as an inspirational story for our people. Due to circumstances, to your elevation, Mr. President, I now feel positive it will be inspirational for all people of this country, no matter what their color. It will lead to an understanding of you, better feeling between the races, and it will present the best image of you, the most accurate one, the only firsthand one extant.”
Listening to Poole’s salesmanship, Dilman remembered hearing from Edna Foster what she had heard a few nights ago from her fiancé, George Murdock, that many members of the press corps had been approached by New York publishers to write their reminiscences of T. C., and several had been asked to write hurried biographies of the new President. It occurred to Dilman that not one of the press corps, who might undertake a paste-up story of him, knew him as well as Poole or was in possession of so many actual facts. If biographies were inevitable, it behooved him to encourage one that might be a good one.
“All right, Leroy,” he found himself saying, “you don’t have to sell me on the biography. I agreed to this, and no matter what has happened, I’ll go through with it. I’ll make only one qualification. When I was a senator, it did not seem unreasonable to permit a Negro publisher to bring the book out. Now that I am, by fate, President of the country, I think that would look wrong. I think the book should be published simultaneously by the Negro press you’ve contracted with and by a reputable white publishing house in New York. I must insist upon that.”
“Suits me fine,” said Poole. “In fact, that’s a great idea. I’ll call my literary agent in New York today. Tell him it has to be two publishers or none. That’ll be no problem. The big thing is the ending of the book. I’ve got to change that. Now there’s a new climax and finish, and we’ll have to talk it over, and-”
“Leroy, I don’t have time any more. I wish I could, but-no more interviews.”
Poole looked stricken. “Senator-Mr. President-Good Lord, I can’t write about you and not tell of your becoming the first Negro President.”
“Don’t get upset,” said Dilman. “I’ll tell you what-you conclude the book on the note of my moving into the White House, which I did today. You end the book where I’ve been President for a week.”
“That’ll still require some interviews.”
Dilman hesitated. “I can’t promise you, Leroy. Here’s what I suggest. Draw up one last set of questions and send them to me through Miss Foster. I’ll dictate the answers some night soon when I have a spare hour. You have my word-I’ll do it soon. If there’s anything you’ve missed, you can poke your head in here once or twice in the coming month. That’s the best can promise, Leroy.”
“It’ll have to do,” said Poole unhappily. “Yes, I’ll manage somehow. It’ll be a good book, I guarantee you.”
“I’m sure it will.” Dilman pushed his swivel chair away from the desk. “That’s it, then. Everything’s settled.” He waited for Leroy Poole to rise and leave, but Poole had not moved. Puzzled, Dilman waited.
“Uh, Mr. President,” said Poole, “there is just one other thing, if you can give me another minute or two.”
“Well-” Dilman began doubtfully.
“Only a minute or two,” Poole implored.
As he watched the beads of perspiration on the writer’s brow increase, Dilman felt sorry for him. He relaxed slightly. “Very well, Leroy, what’s on your mind?”
“All the oppressions going on around the country against our people,” said Poole with urgency. “Especially one case I happen to be following. It seems to symbolize the worst of everything. Have you been reading about the trial down in Hattiesburg, Mississippi?”
“You mean those Turnerite boys?” said Dilman. “I’ve seen it in the morning papers this week. I haven’t followed it closely.”
“It’s a shocking matter,” said Poole with growing agitation. “The Turnerites were peacefully picketing a Klansman. They were violently attacked, one blinded, one crippled for life. They were jailed, instead of their white attackers. Now they’re waiting sentence by County Judge Everett Gage, one of the most flagrant segregationists and vicious warthogs in the white racist underground. The trial was a farce, and it seems to me it is the perfect battleground to stop discriminatory practices in those local Southern courtrooms and introduce some vestige of legal democracy. I keep telling myself the Attorney General should intervene-this is one place he should intervene. Has he sent you a full account?”
Dilman’s forehead had contracted, trying to read Poole’s anxiety and interest in one out of more than a hundred similar cases. “No,” said Dilman. “This is not a Federal matter. It is a state matter, a community matter.”
“But our whole judicial system is being made a clowning-”
“Leroy, I don’t understand you. Why this concern over one obscure and isolated trial?” He paused. “Is it because you’re a Turnerite? I never asked you before. Are you?”
“My God, no,” said Poole. “I’m dragging along with the Crispus Society. I’m too sedentary and timid for anything as vigorous as the new Turnerite Group. It is just that I admire them, as every thinking minority should. This is, after so many words, their first public move, and they’re being legally lynched. That’s all there is to my interest, Mr. President. I have deep sympathy for them.”
Although he was inexplicably troubled, Dilman tried to hold a stern expression on his face. “I’m sorry, Leroy, but I have less sympathy for those Turnerites than you have. I don’t like most of that irresponsible and inflammatory talk their leader has been giving out.”
“Jeff Hurley? Why, Senator Dilman-Mr. President-he’s a great man. I-I had occasion to meet him several times, hear him speak. He’s no rabble-rouser or savage red-neck like those white segregationists. He’s intelligent, kindhearted, and he’s only reflecting the mood of-of the Negro population.”
Dilman felt weak, but would not weaken. “Leroy, we’ve gone over this ground indirectly in our interviews for the book. You know my stand. I’m a Negro, I’m conscious of it, I’m proud of it. I’m more aware of my birthright today than ever before. I want justice done for us, as Negroes, the way I want it for every Mexican and Puerto Rican and Jew and Catholic. But, Leroy, this is still a civilized country we have, educated to abide by the laws enacted by the majority. You don’t get what you want by breaking other people’s heads.”
“In war you do. There is war in this country.”
“No, Leroy, as Americans we gave up that kind of solution at Appomattox. We’ve come a long way by using better means. We’ll go farther the same way.”
“But, right now, you can do so much more for us, for justice, now that you are President,” Poole pleaded.
“Leroy, no matter what I feel inside as a Negro man, I can do no more as an American President than T. C. or The Judge or Johnson or Kennedy did before me.”
Poole came forward, his moonface crunched with anguish. “Then I appeal to you not as a President but as a Negro man. There is one personal act you can perform that would help those Turnerite martyrs and bring the issue more strongly before the whole country. I heard there’s a great attorney come here from Chicago, Nathan Abrahams, the kind of man who is conscious of these injustices. He could save the Turnerites, even with the trial over, then by appealing the verdict and sentence. I know you once mentioned him as an old friend of yours. His prestige would-”
Dilman shook his head vigorously. “No, Leroy. I can’t go to Nat Abrahams. He is an old friend, true. He is in the city. We spoke on the phone only two days ago. In fact, he’s coming to dine with me tonight. But I would not dream of influencing his activity. If you want him so badly, why don’t you call him? Or have that man Hurley do so?”
“Hurley tried. I heard that. He was told Abrahams is tied up on other business right now. But if you, as his friend, with your position-”
“Absolutely no,” said Dilman. “If he can’t do it for Hurley, I don’t feel I should put him in the position of having to do it for me.” Then he added, “Especially since, in spite of what the details of that trial in Mississippi may be, I still don’t like how Hurley is going about things. Sorry, Leroy.”
“Well, I’m sorry, too,” said Poole softly. “Forgive me. I think you are making a mistake.”
“I’ve made many mistakes as an individual,” said Dilman. “I hope to make fewer as this country’s Chief Executive. I’m as conscious as you of my color and of injustices to men of my color. Perhaps what’s happened-my being put in this seat, this office-and acting with dignity and responsibility toward all races in the full view of the whole nation and the world-will, could, do more to break down barriers of prejudice than anything else. It is a dream I hold. I don’t want to destroy it by diverting myself to lesser skirmishes or using my influence on friends. Be patient, Leroy. Much will be done.” He paused. “Our conversation, of course, is privileged. I don’t want to see any of it in your book.”
Leroy Poole rose. “Of course not, Mr. President. One thing has nothing to do with the other… Thank you for your time. I’ll write up some questions for you to answer. I hope to see you again soon.”
He had turned to leave, when he seemed to remember something and hurriedly came back to the desk.
“Mr. President, I almost forgot, but I promised someone to mention this to you. There’s a young lady I met, very well known in Washington-very capable, I’m told-who wants to apply for the position of your social secretary. She’s-”
“I was thinking of promoting one of the girls already on the White House staff. I don’t think anyone from outside-”
“She’s Senator Watson’s daughter.”
Dilman could not conceal his surprise. “Senator Watson? Are you sure? He’s the Southern-”
“That’s right. But his daughter, Sally Watson, is different. I don’t know her well, but we’ve talked. She’s absolutely color-blind, progressive, liberal, and knows everyone in the city, naturally. She’s dying to apply for the job, if it’s open.”
“Oh, it’s open.” Dilman tried to think. At least three top secretaries on T. C.’s staff had resigned. Mary Lou Rand, the First Lady’s press secretary, had been one of them. Miss Laurel, the First Lady’s social secretary, had been another. He hated to examine their real motives in quitting. He remembered the advice given him by T. C.’s widow this morning. Hesper had said that he needed a woman in the White House to manage the many executive social functions. The right woman was imperative. Through the morning, Dilman had thought of hiring a clever and personable Negro girl. Then he had rejected the idea. There was no Negro girl among those he knew who had the social background to conduct formal dinners, play hostess to heads of state and Supreme Court justices and congressmen and ambassadors. There was not one he knew, even if he waived experience, who had the education and poise. Moreover, a Negro girl brought into the White House by him on this level would invite more angry speculation from the press that he was peopling the White House with those of his own race.
Yet, he had thought, a white social secretary invited as many difficulties, if different ones. While he expected that, by making inquiries, he could find the right young lady, one who had mingled in the government and Georgetown set, the idea of having a white girl so close to him in the White House was dangerous. That, too, might create suspicion and resentment. Nevertheless, it had to be someone, and if he was to do what Hesper advised, find an efficient person, it would have to be a white girl.
He considered the name of the one whom Poole had suggested. He had a vague recollection of reading about Sally Watson in the Washington Post, the Star, Zeke Miller’s Citizen-American. As a senator’s daughter, she would know everyone, know what was proper and correct. And Poole had said that she was liberal and open-minded, and “dying” for the position. Gradually Dilman warmed to the suggestion. The act of appointing a Southern senator’s socialite daughter to a social job in the White House might be more valuable than harmful, from a public-relations point of view.
Dilman found Leroy Poole still standing before him, Dilman nodded. “Yes, the position is open,” he repeated. “I was just thinking pro and con, but I suppose that is pointless without meeting the young lady and knowing more about her.”
“I think you should at least see her, Mr. President. I think you’ll be impressed.”
“All right, I’ll see her. Can you call her for me?”
“Immediately.”
Dilman’s eyes went to his engagement card and then to his wristwatch. He was still running ahead of schedule. There would be a free span of fifteen minutes or so between his last morning appointment and his luncheon with the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
“All right, Leroy. Tell Miss Watson to be here at twelve-fifteen. Don’t give her any false hopes. Simply say I’ll see her briefly.”
“I’ll take care of it, gladly, Mr. President.” Poole began to turn away, when the view of the South Portico of the White House beyond the Rose Garden arrested him. “My, that’s a beautiful sight out there.” Suddenly he snapped his fingers. “One last thing, Mr. President. Since I’m ending your biography on your moving into the White House, I think it would be the smart thing to have a quick look at what’s going on up there.”
“It’s a mess today-”
“Exactly,” said Poole with heightening enthusiasm. “I want to see the moving in, the unpacking, the various rooms. I’ve never been up there before.”
“The press and public are not usually invited into the President’s private apartment.”
“I wouldn’t repeat the intimate details to a soul. I simply need a general visual picture for the book. That’ll be the tag of the book.”
Dilman shrugged, indifferent, his mind already going to the next names on his engagement card. “Go ahead, Leroy, if you require it. But don’t get in the way and don’t be long. I’ll inform the Secret Service where you’re going.”
He buzzed Edna Foster to alert Secret Service that Mr. Poole could be admitted to the second floor for a short visit. Then he buzzed Mr. Lucas to tell him to pencil in Miss Watson at twelve-fifteen, and to send in the next visitor.
He sat back in his green chair, exhausted by the hammerings of guilt from his son, by the special pleadings of his biographer, and resentful of this jabbing at his repressed consciousness of being a Negro, of being the first colored man in America who could (if he wanted to, they said) lead his people out of servitude to a Promised Land.
Through the French doors he could see the waddling, ridiculous figure of Leroy Poole making his way toward the ground-floor entrance. How could anyone as ineffectual and verbose and foolish-looking as that make him, a man in his position, feel so reproached and uneasy and afraid? Damn the Pooles and the Hurleys, he suddenly thought. They had no larger responsibility and so they could think, say, do anything. They had only a little ax to grind. But he, as President, had inherited a big stick. He must remember, he must never forget, to use it with wisdom, if at all. Unaccountably then, his mind revolved to Wanda Gibson, whom he could not see, and to the solution that had been taking form in his thoughts, and he began to feel more assured about what lay ahead…
After Leroy Poole had embraced Crystal across the expanse created by their equal corpulence, after kidding her gently and dubbing her Mammy Dolley Madison (for he adored her because she exuded the warmth he had enjoyed from his Mom in childhood), he made a mock ferocious charge across the litter in the Rose Guest Room toward Diane Fuller. While the skinny secretary feigned resistance and squealed, Poole pecked at her hollow cheek and pinched her behind.
Then, elaborately, he again extracted his small spiral notebook, and began to scribble notes describing this historic room on Dilman’s unpacking day. Without meeting the eyes of the fink Uncle Tom of a valet, he was conscious of the haughty servant’s disapproval of his uncouth extroversion.
Writing, Leroy Poole thought how much the valet Beecher had in common with Douglass Dilman: Man, you are sure enough a counterfeit white, like Massah, and, man, maybe it gets you along fine today, but it won’t stand you no good on Judgment Day, because you ain’t white, no matter what, and you ain’t black, no matter what, and you won’t rise no higher than purgatory and limbo.
Before coming upon Crystal and Diane in the Rose Guest Room, Poole had been taken on a careful tour of the second floor of the White House by the valet. At another time in his young life, he imagined, the visit might have been memorable. To know that a poor shanty black boy like himself could be led down hallways and up elevators by the President’s bodyguards, could be shown the intimate splendors of the White House by the President’s valet, would have been a high spot of his life. This morning it was next to nothing, and he was as inattentive as if he were going through the modern office building on 44th Street in Manhattan to visit his publisher.
For ten minutes he had been guided in and out of the great hall, in and out of the Yellow Oval Room, the Treaty Room, the Lincoln Bedroom (here he had his only start, seeing that fink Dilman’s clothes piled on the long bed), all the while listening to that Uncle Tom valet’s supercilious history patter. While Poole had made a pretense of taking notes, had indeed taken several, knowing all the while that he could get what he needed from the excellent guidebook the White House Historical Association had published, his entire attention was focused on a confrontation with one person somewhere in one of these stodgy, phony rooms.
Christ, he had thought, what had this junk cost to keep one bum politician in luxury for four years while millions of his people couldn’t buy their way out of the countless filthy, overcrowded, rotting and stinking slums? The hell with all this, the crappy Victorian chairs in the Treaty Room, the crappy crystal chandeliers bought by that nitwit President Grant, the crappy Monroe vases in the Yellow Oval Room, the crappy Greuze painting of Ben Franklin, another white fink-all this cared for by more overpaid people than there were working in the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department or than were publicly able to work for the Turnerite Group.
His lousy meeting with that servile black Judas, Dilman, more yellow on his spine than black, had infuriated him, blinded him to everything but his failure. There were his gutty, beaten brothers handcuffed in that stinkpot town in that Devil’s Island of a state in the deep torture chamber of the South, suffering kangaroo trial before a foul vermin of a county judge. There was his friend Jeff Hurley, and that smart good Dago, Valetti, and the rest of his brother blacks risking their lives in Little Rock or Shreveport, where every segregated hotel was about as safe as the Alamo. And here was he, one of the secret unlisted members they counted upon most, commanded by their leader to convince a fink President to get a maybe fink Jew lawyer to lend a hand to justice. They were on the firing line, waiting on word from him, their hopes and last appeal for decency depending on him, and he had failed. Would Hurley understand how desperately he had tried? Would Hurley believe that he had been unable to turn a black man who was yellow into a black man who would be Negro? Yet three days ago the mails had brought him a hasty letter from Hurley and one last hope. If this hope was fulfilled, they could be optimistic again. If this, too, failed, then hell would break loose, and when Poole remembered the Turnerite plan of last resort, he had shuddered. And so he had tagged after the valet, looking not at the objets d’art which were America’s pride and heritage-not his, for America rejected him-looking not at this alien decadence but for the one animate object he must meet.
Finishing his note-taking in the Rose Guest Room, he once more slipped on his fat-man jester mask of good cheer, teased Crystal and Diane, and bade them good-bye for today.
“Have we seen every room?” he asked the hovering valet.
“Not quite. Please follow me.”
They entered a corridor, then entered the red-and-white Empire Guest Room, then looked into the small bathroom with a carpet-a carpet in the can, Je-sus!-and then moved toward the southeast corner room.
“This is the last one you haven’t seen,” the fink valet was announcing. “It is the Lincoln Sitting Room, adjoining the Bedroom, which you visited. You’ll find the furniture somber, late Empire and Victorian. The side chairs are backed by laminated rosewood, quite unique. The room offers solitude, retreat, and an excellent view of Washington and Georgetown. Perhaps the only modern, discordant note in the Sitting Room is-”
The valet had gone into the Lincoln Sitting Room, and at once halted and drew himself upright.
“Excuse me, sir,” he was saying to someone in the corner. “We won’t disturb you, Mr. Dilman. I was taking one of the President’s guests on a-”
At the mention of the name, Leroy Poole squeezed past the valet into the Sitting Room, where Julian Dilman sat slumped in a red-patterned, upholstered chair drawn up before a going television set.
Poole rotated his palm in greeting. “Hi, Julian,” he said breezily.
Julian leaped to his feet, as filled with consternation and pleasure as if Lincoln himself had come into the room.
“Why, hello, Mr. Poole. It’s sure good to see you again. It was a great honor and pleasure meeting you downstairs. You don’t know what a fan I am of yours. I’d sure like to talk to you sometime about your essays.”
“Why not right now?” said Poole, all affability. He pivoted toward the impassive valet. “Do you mind, Jeeves?”
“Not at all, sir,” said Beecher. “We’ve completed the tour, sir. Ring for me when you are ready to leave.”
The valet backed off to the doorway, then through it, then hastened away.
Poole had followed the retreat of the valet to the door. Now, closing the door, he said to Julian, “That butler-I bet Harriet Beecher Stowe’s writing a book about him this minute.”
Julian clapped his hands, and beamed at being the solitary recipient of a Great Author’s bon mot. Going to the side chair nearest the President’s son, Poole silently exulted that he had found the objet d’art, animate, he had been hunting, and that it would not be difficult at all.
“Sit down, Julian,” Leroy Poole said. “I have only a couple of minutes, but I’d enjoy a little chat.”
Poole settled easily into a chair, while Julian, displaying embarrassment at the unreeling of an old Western motion picture filling the television set screen, said, “I-I was just eating up some time before catching my train back to Trafford. Let me shut it off.”
“You’ll never know how it came out,” Poole said.
“I don’t care,” said Julian. He went awkwardly to the television set and turned it off. Then, shyly, he took a place beside Poole. “My taste is better than that, believe it or not,” he said. “I read a lot, that’s what I do.”
“What sort of thing?” asked Poole.
“Well, the classics, of course,” said Julian nervously.
“I thought you said you read my stuff.”
“I do! That’s the truth, Mr. Poole, that’s what I really read the most now, the protest literature, that’s what I find important.”
Poole dropped his teasing demeanor and nodded solemnly. “Good boy,” he said. “I wish your father felt the same.”
“What do you mean, Mr. Poole?”
“I’ve come to know your father quite well, Julian, so I mean no negating or adverse criticism of his remarkable mind and achievements, but-no, I don’t think it’s fair to discuss this with-”
Julian almost fell from the chair in his eagerness. “Please, please, Mr. Poole, go ahead! I know my father pretty well, and I know his shortcomings as well as his good points.”
“Ummm,” murmured Poole. “Okay, then. It’s just that I don’t think he’s as close to his people, their problems, as he should be. I think he’s been in this antiseptic center of compromise too long, and he’s been separated from the realities of Negro misery and injustice too long.”
“You’re right, absolutely,” Julian said fervently. “He’s always been that way, at least long as I can remember, long as he’s been a politician depending on support from whites. To tell the truth, I was having a fight with him-well, a disagreement, let’s say-about just that before you came in his office.”
Poole wore his mask of innocent wonder. “No kidding?”
“He forced me into a Negro college,” Julian rushed on. “Now he objects because I’m giving so much time to the Crispus Society. I accused him of not facing what he is, what we’re up against, and he gave me a good dressing down.”
“No kidding?” Poole repeated. “Well, we gave him quite a morning, the two of us. You know that trouble down in Mississippi over the Turnerites-?”
“Oh, yes!”
“I begged your father to get the Attorney General into the matter, to straighten out that crooked trial. If he couldn’t do that as President-I know the pressure he is under-I asked him to do Jeff Hurley a personal favor. I asked him to have his friend Nat Abrahams-”
“I know Nat. He’s a great guy.”
“Okay, I asked your father to persuade Nat to step in and appeal the conviction, when it comes. Apparently, Nat’s tied up with something else, but he couldn’t say no to your father, to the President, if he were asked. No soap. Your father wouldn’t ask.”
“He wouldn’t?” said Julian. Then he nodded knowingly. “That’s right, he wouldn’t. Especially now. He has strong feelings against equality by force. I’m like you, like what you write, Mr. Poole. I think that’s the only course there is left for us. Yet nothing can change Dad. He’s wrong, but that’s the way he is.”
“You can change him,” said Leroy Poole. He had timed it. A pause, and then this opener before the real bombshell. He could see the beginning. Julian’s repellent eyes had inflated.
“Me?” Julian grimaced. “You mean you want me to ask him to help them down in Mississippi?”
Leroy Poole allowed his last mask of affability to slip away. His fat face was grim. He was Jeff Hurley’s envoy and final negotiator before the cataclysm.
“Julian, I didn’t come upon you in this room by accident. I pretended to be on a tour. That was crap. I was looking for you. You know why? Because those Turnerites down in Hattiesburg have got to be saved. No Negro can give in to such flagrant injustice and humiliation. I know Hurley has drawn the line in Hattiesburg. If those bastards step over it, there’ll be real trouble-not talk, Julian, but trouble-for your father, for the whole country, for you and me. I’m trying to prevent it being done the hard way. I want to be law-abiding like your father. Okay, either he’s got to intervene, or get someone in the government or in private practice, someone with weight, to throw it around and show those bastards that the Middle Ages are done and over with forever. That’s it, Julian. I just tried. I failed. You’re the last hope. I want you to go in there and convince your father to act.”
Julian pushed a little dry laugh, false and fearful, out of his unsmiling mouth. “Mr. Poole, I-I’d do anything-I’m trying all the time-but this is one thing I can’t do. My father just practically threw me out of his office over a lesser matter. If I even opened my mouth about this, he’d pin my ears back-he’d cut my allowance, make me quit Crispus, God knows what else. We’ve had it out about active protest. No use. I can’t go back to him again.”
Leroy Poole held his breath. This was it, the cold, chilling moment to strike, the clear air and exact time for the bombshell.
“Julian, I’m not asking you to go to your father, I’m ordering you to go-as one member of the Turnerite Group to another.”
He was pleased at the result of the impact. Julian’s eyes almost popped from their sockets, his mouth gaped, his jaw went slack. Some instinct of self-preservation appeared to draw his thin body into itself, as if trying to shrivel itself into invisibility. Julian’s terrified eyes went from Poole to the door and back again.
Julian sought helplessly to articulate some coherent reaction, and then he managed to stutter, “I-I-you shouldn’t-I-Jeff made the blood pledge with my pledge-that it would be secret-no one would know in a million years-it was the condition-to be in the secret corps. This is-this is-”
“There’s no betrayal, if that’s what you’re going to say, Julian,” said Leroy Poole briskly. “We have a small public organization, but the mass of the iceberg hidden below is the most of it and the most effective section. I’m an unlisted, undercover member, and so are you. I wouldn’t have known you belonged, except that Hurley wrote me the information the other day. No one knows, will ever know, except Hurley, Valetti, and now me, and I was okayed because I’m on the Advisory Board. When you and I went in, we vowed to do whatever we were ordered to do. I was ordered to write the pamphlets and propaganda. I did. Then I was ordered to get your father on our side. I followed orders, I tried. You-you were ordered to stay in the Crispus Society, get on their Student Council in New York, and you did, and then you were assigned to get inside information for us, about the trouble spots, the hard and soft spots-”
“I’ve done it, that’s what I been doing, that’s enough,” Julian whispered.
“Not now, Julian,” Poole went on relentlessly. “Now you’ve got more to do, because your situation has changed. Your father is President of this country. You’re his son, and that counts for something. You’re one of us, and we are your brothers, and that counts for more. You go to him-”
“What if I fail like you did? I know I’ll fail, I know. What’ll happen then?”
“We’ll worry about that later. All I want to know is that you don’t chicken out on Hurley and the Group. Will you see him today? Will you speak to him?”
Julian’s voice was a croak. “Yes.”
“Good boy.” Poole placed his hands on his knees and stood up. “What time are you going to be at the Union Station?”
“Five o’clock.”
“I’ll see you there,” said Leroy Poole.
He started for the door, but Julian’s quavering voice caught him before he could touch the knob.
“Mr. Poole-it-it’s supposed to be secret-that’s the whole thing.”
“Julian, what do you take us for? It’s as secret as it ever was, about me, about you. No one’s ratting on either of us. Trust Jeff Hurley. He’s the greatest Negro this country ever gave birth to. He’s our savior, our future. Let’s just do as he says, every one of us, and then maybe soon we’ll all be free, and won’t be scared any more, not scared of anyone, not scared of being secret and being found out. This is it, Julian. You get in there. You make your father’s first real Presidential act a gutsy one, and he’ll go down in history and deserve Lincoln’s bed-and so will you.”
Waiting for the President to finish his telephone call, Sally Watson glanced at her wristwatch. The time was twenty-three minutes after twelve. She had been with the President nearly eight minutes, had done most of the talking, and still was not certain if she had impressed him. There were seven minutes left-ten at the most-to prove that she could be an asset to him in the White House.
She was still breathless with the suddenness of Leroy’s call, the careening drive to Pennsylvania Avenue, the bantering passage through the crowd of newspapermen in the West Wing lobby, the immediate face-to-face interview with the new President.
She tried to review the first half of this important meeting. His blackness had not disconcerted her. Indeed, she had found his heavy features rather exotic and his general aspect not at all unattractive. What had disconcerted her was his remoteness. The few questions he had posed, about her upbringing, education, and previous jobs, had seemed directed not at her but at the blotter on his desk. Her replies, carefully detailed, confident yet reserved, well edited, had seemed to slide off the top of his kinky-haired head. He had hardly met her eyes at all. He had not reacted to anything she had told him. She could not be sure he was even listening. Sally Watson was not used to inattentiveness from men, black or white. Even T. C. used to look at her.
The President was still on the telephone, and she was worried now. Had his inattentiveness been due to a natural reticence, or preoccupation with his busy schedule? Or had he been bored by her? She could not believe that she had bored him. She had been composed and controlled, bright but not silly, and when she had left the house she had never looked better. Perhaps, between the house and here, with all the frightful rush and tension, she had unraveled.
Quickly, quietly, while there was time, Sally Watson brought her expensive lizard purse to her lap, located her enamel-inlaid sterling compact, and snapped it open. Her bouffant blond hair was still set perfectly, not a strand out of place. Her eye shadow and mascara were still fresh and right. Her lips-possibly they were overdone. Furtively, she found a Kleenex, brought it to her mouth, and pressed her lips against it. The compact mirror congratulated her on the improvement. The last touch of Aphrodite was gone. What was left, she prayed, was modest Pudicitia.
She dropped the compact into the purse and sat erect, waiting. President Dilman’s call was proving interminable for her. Every minute that he was so occupied was a minute subtracted from her chances. Could he even imagine how desperately she wanted the position? She would be “inside.” She would be “high up,” in the rarefied power hierarchy. She would be Somebody. Her circle of friends would envy her. Arthur Eaton would respect her infinitely more.
She must win the job. Yet there was not a single indication that President Dilman was seriously considering her for it. Of course, he had sent for her, but maybe that had been to satisfy Leroy Poole or toady to her father. A pin of discouragement perforated her grand hopes. Well, anyway, she told herself, if nothing came of it, well, anyway, she’d been the first of the crowd to see him up close, the strange one, the one on everyone’s lips. She would have a conversation piece and attention grabber for a month. But-oh, dammit-she didn’t want a conversation piece. She wanted a real occupation and identity, to make her eligible for continued living and for Arthur Eaton’s love.
She heard the telephone bang into its cradle, and she started, and then, to her surprise, she found President Dilman appraising her.
“Forgive me for the length of that telephone call, Miss Watson,” he said. “If Alexander Graham Bell had not lived, I guess we’d have anarchy instead of a centralized democratic government today.”
She knew her responding laugh was strained. She said, “It’s kind enough of you to see me at all.”
He had a pencil, and absently drew circles with it on a scratch pad. “Everything you’ve told me up to now, Miss Watson, indicates you possess the right background for this type of work. But I must add, to be perfectly honest, I do have one or two reservations about you.”
She felt stricken, as if sentenced to doom without being told the reason behind it. Desperation made her bolder. “What reservations, Mr. President? Please tell me whatever is on your mind. I feel I’m so perfectly qualified for the position, so right for it, that I can’t imagine-” She threw up her hands helplessly, then remembered the scar and turned her right wrist inward. “I can’t imagine anyone on earth not seeing how useful I could be.”
Dilman made some kind of muttering sound-approving, disapproving of her outburst, she could not judge-and then he said, “Very well, Miss Watson, we don’t have much time, and I must fill this job, and I mustn’t make a mistake. To be specific, my reservations are three. Let me put them before you.”
Sally said, “Yes, please do,” and she held her breath.
“First,” said Dilman, “you’ve skipped around a good deal in your job training and positions-”
“Because I’ve never found what I wanted or what I’m best suited for,” she said quickly. “This is where I belong.”
“Very well. Let us say this is where you belong. The second question is-have you ever served in a position similar to that of White House social secretary?”
“Not exactly, except in my personal life. It’s such a special position, the only one like it in the United States, that I suppose few girls have had experience like that. But I have known most of the White House social secretaries from Miss Laurel back to Miss Tuckerman and Miss Baldridge, and I believe I can bring to the job as much know-how as any of them brought to it, to start with. I can bring you a dossier filled with every kind of endorsement, from Eastern boarding schools to Radcliffe, from Park Avenue editors to the Junior League. I believe I am attractive, well groomed, well dressed, with the best of breeding and manners. I have imagination, taste, adaptability. I know how to handle and direct correspondence, plan and conduct an informal luncheon or a formal dinner, oversee the housekeeper while she manages the help. I’ve done this, Mr. President, I’ve done it for my father, ever since my mother divorced him. My stepmother has never been good at this, and I am, so I’ve done it. You know how long my father has been in the Senate. He is acquainted with everyone and everyone knows him, and we’ve been visited by princes, maharajahs, ambassadors, millionaires, and astronauts, and I’ve entertained for most of them. You are acquainted with my father. Call him and ask him. He’ll verify every word I’ve spoken.”
Dilman smiled. “I don’t believe I need to call your father as a reference, Miss Watson, but perhaps I should call him about something else-that third reservation I hold.”
“What is it?”
“Miss Watson, as a Negro I have never had much in common with my Southern colleagues in the Upper House. The only one I’ve had any liking for is Senator Watson, and I’ve not known him too well, either. He is a decent man, a gentleman, but he is still a product of, a representative of, an area, a people, who regard persons of my color as inferiors. What will your father think of his daughter serving as social secretary to a Negro? Does he even know you are here?”
“He does not know I am here, but if he did know, he would not have stopped me from coming, or even have tried to. He treats me as an individual, and he lets me have my freedom. We disagree about many things. We love each other none the less for it. As to what he would think of my being your social secretary-I don’t think he would like it. But I don’t think he would make his objections known to me or to anyone. He would not interfere. And I know he would understand that my affection for him would always be a thing separate from my loyalty to my employer.”
She paused, seeing how intent Dilman was upon her every word, and then she went on. “Mr. President, my father is not applying for this job. I am. While he is an enlightened Southerner, he still carries ancient prejudices. I do not. Please, Mr. President, in all fairness, do not visit the sins of the parents on their children.”
She sensed that she had convinced Dilman on this point, and his receptive expression confirmed it. “I believe you, Miss Watson,” he said at last. “If there were a First Lady in the White House to help me, I’d feel safe in hiring you on the spot. Being without a First Lady, I must burden the woman I hire with the social duties of two women. If there were only someone in Washington, beside your parent, who could assure me that you were absolutely capable of-”
That instant, it came to her. “I know someone,” she said.
“To recommend you?”
“Yes. Well, I hope he would. I mean Secretary of State Eaton.”
She had thoroughly impressed him, at last. It was evident in his reaction. And she knew why: not because Eaton was second in the government, but because he had Style. No Negro, she thought, would dare turn down an applicant who had the social sanction of the suave Secretary of State.
“Let’s hear what Secretary Eaton has to say about you,” said Dilman. He reached for the white console telephone. “Do you mind going into Miss Foster’s office for a moment? Right there, the door behind you.”
Sally could hear the President speaking on his direct line to the Department of State as she left the Oval Office and went quickly into Miss Foster’s office. She interrupted Miss Foster’s staccato typing to introduce herself and remind Miss Foster that they had met briefly at the White House Congressional Dinner two years before. After that, Sally allowed Miss Foster to resume her work, and she nervously moved around the small room, pretending an interest in the framed photographs on the wall and the reference books on the shelves.
She had done all that could be done, and now her entire future rested on Arthur Eaton’s word. If he said yes, her life would become new and meaningful. If he said so little as maybe, her life would be shattered. She would kill herself, for she would not only have lost the job, but she would know that she had lost Arthur.
Miss Foster’s telephone shook the room, or so it seemed to Sally. Her heart thumped. Miss Foster had hung up and gestured toward the President’s office. “You can go back in, Miss Watson.”
President Dilman was standing before his desk when she entered.
Suddenly his broad face offered her a wide smile, and he extended his hand. “Welcome to the White House, Miss Watson. Secretary Eaton’s praise and enthusiasm for you were so unbounded that for a moment I was almost too timid to think of hiring you. Apparently you are everything I hoped for, a remarkable young lady who’s going to safeguard my social life. Well, I am delighted.”
She clutched his hand in both of hers, squeezing it in her excitement, shutting her eyes and whispering, “Oh, thank you, thank you, you won’t regret it a day.” She wanted to faint, but whether from pride over the prestigious job or from knowledge of Arthur’s reciprocal love, she didn’t know.
She realized that Dilman was guiding her to the corridor exit. She tried to fasten on what he was saying. Something about calling Miss Foster tomorrow. Security papers, payroll papers, résumé blanks, all to be filled out. Something about seeing her office in the East Wing the day after tomorrow. Something about officially starting the job Monday. Thank you, Miss Social Secretary. Thank you, Mr. President.
Dazed, she found herself gliding past the secretarial cubicles outside Flannery’s office, found herself wandering into the press-filled lobby, found Reb Blaser and George Murdock and others watching her. Before they could question her, she left swiftly, half running up the White House driveway, past the guardhouse, and into busy Pennsylvania Avenue.
She walked on air, lofted and propelled by her unrestrained fantasies of bliss, and when she came down to earth she was on Fifteenth Street, in sight of Keith’s RKO Theatre. There was only one thing she wanted to do to fulfill her perfect day. She reached a drugstore, and then a telephone booth inside, and closed herself in a glass cocoon of privacy.
She dialed DU 3-5600.
The Department of State. The seventh floor. The chief receptionist. The Secretary’s secretary. Who? Miss Sally Watson? One moment please, I’ll see if he has gone to lunch.
“Hello, Sally?”
“Arthur, I hope I’m not bothering you in the middle of a conference or-”
“What happened, Sally?”
“Arthur, I got it! I can’t believe it. The President says I start Monday. I can’t believe it. And my thanks to you. I don’t know how to thank you enough.”
“You have the position because you deserve it. I told him honestly that I thought he would find no one your equal in Washington. I told him not to let you go. I told him that had I known you wanted a job, I would have released half my girls to make way for you. I’m delighted, Sally. Congratulations.”
“Arthur, that buildup you gave me. How can I live up to it? You can’t believe-”
“I believe more than that about you, Sally. You know I do.”
“Arthur, I want to do anything I can for you.”
“You do your job.”
“I want to repay you.”
“Mmm-well, my dear, there might be one way, as I suggested the last time we were together. It becomes fairly lonesome at home in the evening, especially at the dinner hour.”
“Invite me, Arthur, go ahead, invite me.”
“You are invited. I’ll get to you tomorrow with the date.”
“You won’t forget, this time?”
“I hadn’t forgotten, Sally. I’ve been busy. I am still busy. Except now that you are a government girl, I can justify it as mixing business with pleasure. I must run, Sally.” He paused. “There is only one thing I want you to do for me. When we meet, I want you to be wearing the white sequined gown. You know, the décolleté one. Good-bye, Sally.”
When she floated out of the booth, she was surer than she had ever been. She would be a First Lady of sorts yet-not Dilman’s, but Arthur Eaton’s.
It was a quarter to seven in the evening. The after-work, going-home traffic had abated. The Presidential limousine sped through the red lights and darkened thoroughfares toward the brownstone row house on Van Buren Street.
This morning, when he left his private residence, the journey had taken twice as long, and Douglass Dilman had not imagined that he would return so soon. All through the busy, depleting, and eventually upsetting day, the conviction had grown upon him that he must return as soon as possible.
Because of his second argument with his son, his appointment schedule had dragged on longer than planned. His last visitor had left him a half hour ago. Then he had requested Edna to inform Nat Abrahams at the Mayflower Hotel that their dinner must be postponed from eight o’clock to eight-thirty. Before she departed for the night, Edna had confirmed the change, adding that Mrs. Abrahams was confined to bed with a cold and that Mr. Abrahams would be coming alone.
After that, Dilman had telephoned Reverend Paul Spinger directly.
“Paul, is Wanda back from work yet?”
“She’s in the kitchen. I can get her for you, Mr. President.”
“No. I’d rather not speak to her on the phone. Simply ask her to stay there. I want to see her alone. Just for a few minutes.”
“I’ll tell her, Mr. President. How was your first day in the White House?”
“I don’t know, really, Paul. I’ve been too busy… Look, Paul, I want my visit kept hush-hush. You understand? It’s not easy to arrange on this end, but I intend to manage it. See you all shortly.”
After notifying engagements secretary Lucas and press secretary Flannery that he was through for the day, and would spend the entire evening in his new dwelling, Dilman had stepped outside. He had come upon the Secret Service agent, Otto Beggs, the one who had accompanied him from the brownstone this morning. Beggs had been waiting beside the colonnade to accompany him again in the short walk to the ground-floor elevator. Dilman had remembered the husky agent was on a split shift, which might explain his disgruntled expression. Dilman also remembered that it was Beggs who had warned him he could travel nowhere alone.
As they strode through the chilled darkness, he had taken his measure of Beggs. It would not be easy, he had told himself, but he was determined to have this one important private visit. When they had entered the ground floor, Beggs had turned left, but Dilman had turned right. Almost comically, Beggs had scrambled back to his side.
Dilman had informed the agent that he wanted to make a short visit to his brownstone residence before dinner. There was a civil rights matter that he had to discuss informally with Reverend Spinger, his upstairs tenant. Dilman had insisted that he did not want the press alerted to this unscheduled meeting. Therefore, he wished minimum security maintained in order to allow his going and coming to be unnoticed. There had been a brief disagreement, nervous on both sides, and, at last, Beggs had consented to reduce their protective escort to three agents in the limousine, and one motorcycle policeman ahead and one behind, without sirens being put into use until they left the immediate White House area.
He had been pleased at how quickly and quietly the limousine had been made to appear, and how swiftly and stealthily their departure had been accomplished.
During the ride to Van Buren Street, he had known that he could not repeat this kind of rendezvous many times. Despite the ease of this slipping away from the President’s House and its prying eyes, there were always too many others, elsewhere, watching and whispering. Sooner or later he would be caught in the act. He could not constantly use Spinger as his camouflage. And, at the same time, he could not risk the possibility that his friendship with Wanda Gibson might be made public. It would be misunderstood and misinterpreted. Being a colored Chief Executive was bad enough. Being a Negro President with a mulatto lady friend was impossible. To survive, he must reinforce his public image as the loner, the bachelor. It would make him less threatening, less publicized, and make the resentful electorate feel more secure. Nevertheless, this one personal meeting with Wanda was imperative. If it developed as he expected that it would, the result would solve everything.
Dilman felt the automobile braking to a halt beneath him, and through the rear window he could make out his beloved Victorian-style residence. The street was empty, except for parked cars and a Negro boy carry a cumbersome filled grocery bag, whistling off key, as he meandered toward his home.
Beggs stooped and got out, and Dilman followed him. He noticed that the two other agents, who had left the front seat, were consulting in undertones. As he started for the entrance, Dilman saw one agent planting himself before the house, and the other hustling up the sidewalk to the rear.
When Dilman reached the front door, he realized that Beggs was a half step behind him.
Dilman opened the door and said, “Mr. Beggs, from here on in, I’d prefer to be alone.”
Stolidly Beggs replied, “Sorry, Mr. President, I’m not allowed to do that.”
“Well, I can’t let you sit in on the meeting. It is private government business.”
“I won’t invade your privacy, Mr. President,” Beggs promised. I simply got to be near where you are. It’s risky enough as it is, sir.”
He would not be dissuaded, Dilman could see, and so, with a shrug, Dilman went inside, followed by Beggs.
They strode down the hallway and mounted the stairs to the upstairs landing. As they arrived, the door opened. Reverend Spinger, his wife behind him, both conscious of the Secret Service Agent, greeted Dilman formally as Mr. President. Dilman introduced Beggs, and then entered the warm, old-fashioned living room. When he turned to address the Spingers, he was surprised and alarmed to find Beggs still behind him and inside the room.
“Mr. Beggs,” said Dilman, “you promised me some privacy.”
Beggs’s ruddy face was helplessly apologetic. “You’re on your own from this point, Mr. President. I’ll just remain standing here inside the door.”
Dilman frowned, and looked at Spinger. “Reverend, is there anywhere I can see you alone for five minutes?”
“We can go to my study in the rear,” said Spinger.
Permitting Spinger to lead him out of the living room, Dilman could hear Rose offering to heat Beggs a pot of coffee, and Beggs accepting with thanks on the condition that he could drink it standing at his post.
Dilman trudged after his friend, until they came to Wanda’s bedroom.
“She’s waiting,” Spinger whispered.
Dilman nodded. “Paul, you’d better not go back. I told him we’re having a conference. Can you keep yourself out of sight for a little while? It won’t be long.”
“I’ll go to our own bedroom.”
Dilman lingered until Spinger had gone, then he started to knock, but suddenly restrained himself. He did not want Wanda to call out. Instead he turned the knob several times, rattling it, and went inside.
She was at the window pulling down a shade, her back to him, when she heard his entrance. She came around slowly, smiling, and Dilman’s heart quickened at the sight of her. Although he had telephoned her every evening from downstairs in the past week, he had not seen her for what seemed an eternity.
He stood motionless on the far side of the tastefully decorated bedroom, enjoying the sight of her. He was positive that no woman on earth at thirty-six was at once so youthful and so serenely mature. Her brunette hair was swept back from her refined cameo face, each diminutive feature crinkled upward in genuine pleasure. Her softly draped chartreuse blouse clung to her small bosom, and her slim, forest-green skirt accented her shapely legs. She appeared taller than her five feet three inches, and she looked definitely mulatto rather than white. Dilman would not allow himself to believe that he was shading her in his mind’s eye to make her duskier, because he wanted her that way, and wanted what he planned to be possible.
Wanda Gibson spoke first. “Doug, I can’t tell you how wonderful it is to-to see you.”
He crossed to her, embracing her more spontaneously and closely than he had in months. He enjoyed her soft hands behind his neck, and he kissed her cheek, and then her lips. “Wanda, I can’t tell you how much-how difficult it has been without you.”
She disengaged herself. “We’re together right now. That’s all that matters.” She took his hand and led him to the love seat before the portable television set. “How were you able to get away, Doug?”
They both sat down, and he said, “I wasn’t able to, but I did. The Secret Service, the advisers, the press, they keep you on a leash like an unruly pet. I sneaked away. I don’t know if I’ll be able to do it twice.”
Her brown eyes had been studying every movement of his face, he knew. “Doug, you’re not sleeping,” she said. “I can tell.”
“I’m not eating, or living, or thinking, either. From early morning till night you’re on a roller coaster, it feels, going, going, and when you try to sleep, you’re still going, like there’s no place to get off. Why did this have to happen to me? I’m the wrong man for it, Wanda. I’m not geared to it. I try not to let anyone know, but I’m scared and confused.”
“Doug, you are as well prepared for the position as any man on earth. We’ve been through all that.”
“In the House, in the Senate, it was different,” he said. “What you did was part of shared responsibility. Your ayes and nays were in chorus, not solo. But as Harry Truman once said of the Presidential desk-the buck stops here. No one to pass it to, Wanda. End of the line. Certainly, I understand what is going on. None of the legislation has any mysteries. It’s the final responsibility that’s getting me down. You turn around, to hand some document to someone else for the final decision, and you know what? There is no one there. Yours is the final decision. That’s what is so damn oppressing.”
“I don’t think that is your worry at all, Doug.”
He was taken aback. “No? What do you think is my worry?”
Wanda bent toward him, took a cigar from his coat pocket, and began to unpeel the cellophane. “Your color,” she said simply. She handed him the cigar. “Here. You need it. Besides, I like the fragrance. It’s more you, and like old times.”
He bit off the cigar end, and she lighted it. He viewed her through the first cloud of smoke. “My color,” he repeated dully.
“That’s always the worry with you,” said Wanda. “If you were white, you might be shocked and a bit overwhelmed by the job, but you’d fall into it, manage it. Now what you’ve always been trying to-oh, not to have it noticed by anyone-hide-has been exposed to every person in the country, in the whole world, and that’s what is scaring you. That’s it, Doug, and don’t deny it. You are afraid you can’t make ordinary mistakes like other ordinary human beings. You are afraid of making Negro mistakes in front of your white peers.”
Her bluntness startled him. He was immediately defensive. “Well, there’s some truth in what you say, but I think you’re exaggerating it, Wanda.”
“I’m understating it, Doug. I know your strengths, and you know them, too, and we don’t have to go into that. You can’t hide your blackness any longer, not by putting your head in the sand, not by losing yourself in the crowd, not by being a yes-man so no one will remember you have a voice. I won’t discuss this part of you in relation to your family, or to me, or to your work in Congress. It’s not the time for that, and I have no right to bring it up when you are so engulfed by other demands. But, Doug, there you are, there you are in the White House, and nothing can change it. The whole wide world knows the color of your skin, and like it or not, they’ve got to accept it, and, more important, so have you. Once you accept that in your mind, you can begin to act as a human being. Then I think you won’t be so troubled.”
Momentarily he was annoyed with her, because she was speaking the truth, and he did not want the truth, least of all from her. “Act like a human being?” he said. “Do you think anyone’ll let me? Don’t you read the papers, any more, or listen to the radio?”
“Doug, I know what’s going on, exactly. Our people are singing Moses, they’ve got Moses, and that’s an unfair pressure for you. And the bitterest whites are hating more than ever, and persecuting us more than ever to get their hate out of their systems, because they can’t get at you. And the in-betweens-I listen, I overhear them-they don’t know what to think. They feel threatened and uneasy because your presence makes them feel like members of a minority for the first time. They don’t believe you’ll rule as a white, like T. C., but as a black man, and they’re worried you’ll make their precious pure-white Christian land into a Dark Continent. They should know how little they have to fear from you.”
Dilman winced at the last. He fought to keep his dignity and manhood in her eyes. “Wanda, believe it or not, I only want to do my job now, do it, get it over with, and go back to where I came from. Yet it seems no one will let me. The Negroes want this and that because I’m Negro. The whites want this and that because I’m not white. T. C.’s gang wants me to be T. C., when I’m not him at all. You want me to be-to be something else. God, even my own son-”
He broke off, lost in misery, and she waited, and then she said, “You saw Julian?”
“He came to the office today. I had to talk to him about his grades and about doing better in school, something more important than ever now. So I had to listen to that Negro-versus-white-school business all over again. I know, Wanda, I know what you’ve said, but there it is, and he has to do well. I told him he was spending too much time with the Crispus Society, and he owed more time to himself and his future. Well, I thought we had it settled, and then suddenly he had to see me again, in the middle of the afternoon, so important it couldn’t wait. So I saw him. You’ve never heard anyone so unreasonable and agitated. Now it wasn’t the Crispus Society he was defending, but those damn Turnerite hoodlums. Sure they got the raw end of the stick down in Mississippi, and there’ll be more of that. But it’s not a Federal matter.”
“What did he want from you?”
“To use my influence to get Nat Abrahams to intervene. Heaven knows, Nat does his share helping us. Now he’s busy with something for himself. His office has already told the Turnerites he is unavailable. I have no right, either as his friend or as the President, to influence him. Julian wouldn’t listen. He was practically frothing.”
Dilman kept working his fist into his palm. “I didn’t know what got into him, and then I finally figured it out before coming here. He must have run into that writer who’s been doing my biography, Leroy Poole, up in the White House. They were both up there at the same time. And Poole-he talks Crispus, but he acts Turnerite. I suspect Hurley is a close friend of his. Poole’s a very eloquent and inciting young man, and to someone like Julian, who is so much younger, and so impressionable, who in fact admires Poole’s writings, that Turnerite talk can be unsettling. I’m sure that’s what was behind Julian’s tirade. Anyway, I had to be very firm with Julian. I told him no and that was that. He didn’t like it. I don’t even know if we’re on speaking terms at this point.”
Wanda’s hand reached out to touch Dilman’s fist. “I’m sorry, Doug.”
Anxiously he asked, “You agree with me on this, don’t you?”
Wanda nodded. “Yes. They’re being mistreated in Hattiesburg, but that’s not unusual, wrong thought it is. I don’t like Hurley’s talk and what he stands for. Neither does Paul Spinger.”
Dilman put another match to his cigar. “Good. You make me feel better already.” He glanced at her, and then he said, “That’s why I need you, Wanda. That’s one of the reasons. You’re the only frank and honest person I can discuss my problems with, personal or otherwise. That’s why I came here to see you right now, hard as it was.”
“Why did you come here, Doug?”
“To ask you a favor.” He waited for her blanket promise, but she was silent. He went on. “Wanda, now that I’m-I’m President, seeing you on the old basis is going to be impossible. You know that.”
“I know that, Doug.”
The trace of sadness in her voice accentuated his growing fear of losing her. He said, “I don’t want to lose you.” He added, “I need you to-to push me forward. Wanda, I figured it out early this afternoon. I was hiring a white Southern girl for my social secretary-”
“Well, that took courage.”
“Senator Watson’s daughter. She’s exactly right for the position. There’ll be some dirty digs, but there would be whatever I did.”
“What about Diane Fuller?”
“I’m getting her another job, secretary in the press section of Miss Watson’s department. But there remain a couple of key openings, secretarial openings, administrative ones, on the White House staff. We’ve had resignations, as you can imagine.”
“Yes.”
“Now there are these openings.” He paused. “Wanda, I want you to accept one of those jobs.”
She did not appear surprised. “That’s thoughtful of you, Doug. Unfortunately, I already have a good job.”
“Vaduz Exporters? Wanda, this is the White House. You’ve told me yourself, a dozen times, you don’t like your boss-who is that director?-Gar, Franz Gar. Well, here’s a chance to leave him. I know you have a well-paying setup at Vaduz, but you told me it is mechanical and dull, and you have no contact with people. It would be different in the White House. The work might not pay as much, but I’d look after that soon enough. It would be fascinating for you. Most important, it would be helpful to me. I could see you every day. We could talk.”
“And no one would know we were friends? How nice,” she said bitterly. “How shrewd of you, Doug. And courageous, too. What if someone found out I was also your girl friend?”
Her caustic challenge disturbed him. “Don’t become angry, Wanda. It would only be temporary, a temporary arrangement, like my own job. Later, we-”
“No, thanks,” she said flatly. “Until now our relationship, platonic as it is, has at least been honest. Even if it means not seeing you, I refuse to change that. I won’t let what there is between us become surreptitious and back-door.”
“Wanda-”
“Absolutely no, Doug. You’re having a rough time, and I hate to make it rougher. But I’m not moving into Harding’s closet. When you have the nerve to see me again, you’ll know where to find me, if it’s here or someplace else. Doug, I-”
The soft knocking on the door stopped her, and brought Dilman to his feet. “Yes?” he called out.
The door opened partially, and Reverend Spinger slipped in, and closed it behind him. He looked from one to the other. “Haven’t you been hearing it?”
“What?” Dilman asked.
“The noise out front-” He started for the covered side window.
Dilman listened. What he had been too engrossed to hear above his conversation with Wanda, he heard now. There came through the walls the rumble of many voices. “What’s going on?” he asked apprehensively.
“I couldn’t get a good look from our room,” said Reverend Spinger. “There seems to be a lot of people gathering in the street. I can get a better peek from here.”
He flattened against the wall, and parted the shade from the window by several inches. At last he let go and shook his head. “Just from what I can see, there must be a couple hundred out there. There’s the press, for sure, ’cause I could see the television trucks, and I’d guess some more Secret Service, and of course, the neighborhood is all spilling out.”
Dilman’s immediate reaction was one of annoyance. “How in the devil did my coming here get out?”
Reverend Spinger scratched his cottony pate. “Doug, you abdicated privacy when you were sworn in to this job. No matter what you attempt, you won’t know privacy again for a year and five months. To restate in another form what Voltaire told us, the public is a heartless monster, and since you can’t do as he suggested-chain the monster or flee from it-you must be on guard against it every minute of every day.”
The clergyman’s words reminded Dilman of his precarious situation. He saw Wanda standing, staring at him, and his annoyance melted into shameful trepidation. He detested himself for his cravenness, and for Wanda’s knowledge of it. Yet he could not be other than what he had always been.
“Wanda, I’ve got to go. Will you-?”
Tactfully Spinger drifted out into the corridor.
Dilman moved closer to her, and at once, by a trick of lightning, or from the anxiety in his mind, her mulatto coloring was again more white than dusky. “You see what it’s like, my dear. There’s only one solution for the present. Please reconsider taking a job in-”
“No, Doug. I’ll wait for you to phone.”
He wanted to beseech her, but she had turned away from him. “All right,” he said at last. “Only, don’t give me up.”
He joined Reverend Spinger in the corridor. As they started for the living room, Spinger said, as if to give support to the fiction, “You were conferring with me.”
Dilman nodded absently. “Yes… encouraging the Crispus Society to cooperate with the government in playing a-a more aggressive role in furthering civil rights by legislation and legal means, and joining us in condemning vigilante action and violence on both sides.”
They emerged into the living room, and Reverend Spinger said, “Yes, that would sum it up, Mr. President.”
Dilman went to the door that Otto Beggs had opened. He halted before his bodyguard. “What’s all the racket downstairs?”
“The press missed you, and I guess found out where you were, Mr. President. The minute they started charging after your scent, Chief Gaynor knew it might attract crowds. So he rushed over quite a few of the White House Detail. I’m sorry, but I had nothing-”
“Forget it,” said Dilman.
Dilman looked around to say good-bye to Rose Spinger, when suddenly Wanda Gibson burst into the living room.
“Doug-!” Then she stopped, teetered in her tracks, and froze, horribly aware that they were not alone with the Spingers, that a stranger was also in the room.
Dilman’s Adam’s apple jumped. He could see Beggs staring at Wanda. Dilman felt an onrush of panic. He tried to keep his voice even. “Is there anything that wasn’t clear, Miss Gibson?”
“N-no, Mr. President,” said Wanda, her voice flat and emotionless.
“I’d like a copy of your shorthand notes,” said Dilman. He waved a good-bye, and then went across the landing and rapidly down the stairs, followed by Beggs.
As he emerged into the night, it was not the impact of the reporters’ shouts and bellows that momentarily unnerved him, but the battery of lights from the television kliegs and the explosion of flashbulbs. Beyond the rim of lights, and cordon of Secret Service agents, he could see hundreds of black neighborhood faces and fluttering hands, and could hear shouts of encouragement.
Fingers gripped his arm, and he was relieved to find that they belonged to Tim Flannery. The press secretary’s mouth was close to his ear. “Mr. President, don’t ever leave me flat-footed again. Somebody in Chief Gaynor’s office leaked it. Don’t let them interview you. Let me go to the microphones and tell them it’s too late tonight to answer questions, but that you’ll make a short statement.”
“Very short, Tim.”
He allowed Flannery to precede him down the stone steps to the three standing microphones. He could hear the shouted questions: “What were you doing here, Mr. President?… Did you see Spinger alone or with other Negro leaders?… What were you talking about?… Was it about the Turnerites, Mr. President?”
Flannery held up his hand, then bent over the microphones. “Gentlemen, no questions. Save them for the press conference. The President will make a brief statement, and that’s it for tonight.”
Flannery stepped aside, and Dilman made his way to the microphones. He felt wooden and insincere. He said, “Friends, because Reverend Spinger, head of the Crispus Society, was confined to his quarters with a cold, I decided to call upon him. Our meeting was partially social, partially devoted to discussion of immediate domestic problems in the civil rights area. We did not touch upon any specific Negro groups besides the Crispus Society and its role in working with the government in the civil rights legislative program.”
“Did you talk about the Minorities Rehabilitation Program?” a reporter yelled.
Dilman looked blankly at the semicircle of men and cameras in front of him. He said into the microphones, “We discussed the MRP Bill, among many other legislative acts. We are in accord in our belief that progress toward equality can be attained only by due process of the law, never through the actions of vigilante groups of any race who would take the law in their own hands.”
There was a spattering of applause, and, from afar, a shrill cat-call and a solitary boo of disapproval.
“Reverend Spinger and I spoke privately about these matters, and informally. In the near future I expect to hold more formal meetings with all national leaders, Negro and white, who are eager to cooperate with the government in maintaining peace, and finding an orderly solution to our mutual problems. That is it for tonight, my friends… No, no questions, or I’ll collapse of starvation.”
With Beggs and a wedge of other agents leading the way, Dilman hastened to the limousine and ducked inside. As he sank into the cushioned back seat, and Beggs squatted on the jump seat, the car began to pull away. Covertly, Dilman lowered his head but lifted his eyes to catch sight of the illuminated upstairs living room windows. He could make out both Spingers in one. The other window frame was empty. For the heartless monster public there was no Wanda Gibson.
Then, sitting back, Dilman caught Beggs looking at him oddly. And then, with a sinking sensation, he knew that you could guard and guard against the monster, and in the end there was no defense. Somehow, someway, there was always one, as Beggs might be one, to let the monster come through. He wondered what Beggs thought. He wondered if the monster would be loosed, and if it might strangle him.
He shut his hot eyes and behind them cursed his foolhardiness-and his cowardice.
At precisely nine o’clock, Nat Abrahams noted, they entered the Family Dining Room on the first floor of the White House.
As a liveried butler opened the door from the Main Corridor, and Dilman went inside, Abrahams thought again what a strange experience this was for both of them. They had eaten together in so many mean and contrasting places, in crowded cafeterias of the Pentagon and officers’ messes of Army bases during the Second World War, in cheap bistros of France and hostile Bierstuben in Germany, in self-service restaurants and automats of Chicago and Detroit. Often, during their reunions in the Midwest, when Abrahams had been the host, he had made numerous preliminary calls to find a decent eatery where his Negro friend would be accepted and in no way embarrassed. Incredibly, and in short years, here they were once more, together, dining in the White House, Dilman’s first dinner in the nation’s first house as President of the United States, and Nat Abrahams his first guest.
Following his host across the floral carpet, Abrahams had an opportunity to examine the Family Dining Room briefly. The walls were yellow, the ceiling white. To the right a gilt convex mirror, with a gold eagle perched upon it, hung over the marble fireplace. To the left stood a Philadelphia breakfront filled with blue-and-gold chinaware. Ahead were two windows looking out toward Pennsylvania Avenue. Abrahams was able to identify two oil paintings: one plainly President John Tyler, resembling somewhat Truman’s first Secretary of State James F. Byrnes; the other, reproduced in the guidebook that Sue had purchased, was of a brigadier general mounted on a black horse, John Hartwell Cocke of Virginia, he thought.
They had reached the mahogany pedestal table, and Abrahams counted eight chairs of richly grained wood set off by white upholstery surrounding the table. The White House maître d’hôtel, a smiling South American in cutaway coat and striped trousers, held the President’s chair for him at the head of the table, and a white-coated colored waiter attended Abrahams’ chair next to the President’s. Dilman sat first, and then Abrahams took his seat.
Abrahams could see that Dilman was ill at ease, brushing nervously at his rumpled business suit, blinking up at the chandelier, at the flower centerpiece, then at the ostentatious table setting, classic tulip-shaped glassware, elegant Limoges plates, sterling knives, forks, and spoons. While the tomato soup was ladled out from a silver-gilt tureen, Dilman glanced sheepishly at Abrahams in the manner of one who wonders which spoon to use first. Abrahams smiled, winked, unfolded his gold-crested napkin and dropped it over his lap. Dilman did the same.
When the soup had been served, and the maître d’hôtel and waiter had backed away, Dilman said, “You’d never guess I told Mrs. Crail-she’s the official housekeeper-I wanted an informal dinner, no fuss, absolutely no fuss. Look at this. Anyway, Nat, I won the battle of the menu. She had in mind-let me think-oh, yes-boiled rolled flounder, roast turkey with something called jelly celestial, scalloped sweet potatoes, and God knows what not. She kept saying that was the kind of small menu T. C. liked for informal dining. But I put my foot down, so I’d get off on the right one. I said, ‘Mr. Abrahams is my oldest friend, and we’re going to eat what we always enjoyed most, the kind of food you can talk over.’ I don’t know how it’ll come out, but I think it’ll be a reasonable facsimile of old times.”
Abrahams had been spooning his soup. “Brisket of beef?” he asked.
Dilman grinned. “Exactly. The beef, and a green salad with oil and vinegar, a noodle-and-ham casserole, hot sliced carrots, and-hold your hat-potato pancakes with apple sauce.”
“Latkes,” said Abrahams, giving them their Jewish name.
“I don’t think they’ll come out quite the way Sue’s mother used to make them. Oh, yes, and I remembered red wine-they have the best years, Bordeaux, the kind that makes me sleepy. Just like those nights sitting in between the zinc bar and pinball machine in that joint off the Champs-Élysées.”
A waiter appeared and poured water, followed by the maître d’hôtel, who placed the wine bottle on a side table. Dilman lapsed into silence, and sipped the tomato soup.
Abrahams enjoyed the thick soup. Except for the constricting black bow tie that Sue had made him wear, as being appropriate for high places, he felt relaxed. When the Lincoln limousine had picked him up at the Mayflower Hotel, and was bringing him to the South Portico of the White House, he had suffered a mild attack of apprehension, wondering if some protocol would be imposed, worrying whether Dilman would be as he always had been. The apprehension had been dispelled at the moment of their impulsive bearish embrace of greeting.
The months that separated them from their last meeting had visibly changed Dilman. Although he appeared more friendly, less withdrawn, than he had as a senator, his eyes were red-flecked, tireder, Abrahams had seen, and there were rigid lines of tension around his mouth. Also, he walked more ploddingly, like an elderly person recovering from major surgery. Yet the week as President had not inwardly transfigured him, had not weighted him with any more reserve or aloofness than he had normally possessed. Abrahams guessed that his friend was too new to the post to comprehend it fully. If anything, he seemed uncertain about his role, as if misplaced in some Dantesque purgatory between the Senate and the White House.
After Abrahams’ congratulations and Dilman’s inquiries about Sue and the children, they had gone from the elevator into the Main Hall of the first floor. There had been an empty stretch of seconds when Dilman did not know where to take Abrahams, or what to do next, but this impasse had been resolved by the dignified Negro valet, Beecher, who had seemed to materialize from nowhere.
“I almost forgot, Nat, but I asked Beecher to take us on a quick tour of the first floor,” Dilman had said. “I could use a refresher myself. Besides, the walk will give us both appetites.”
They had been led to the vast East Room, with its gold drapes and gilt benches and Steinway piano (Beecher: “Each of the three chandeliers weighs 850 pounds and has 50,000 pieces of crystal, and each requires two houseboys a week to clean it”). They had been led to the Green Room, with its Daniel Webster sofa and Martha Washington armchair and James Monroe clock (Beecher: “Please take note of the portrait of President Eisenhower over that door and President Kennedy over this door, and, of course, the portrait of The Judge”). They had been led to the Blue Room, with its velvet upholstery and gold Minerva timepiece and white bust of George Washington (Beecher: “The three windows looking down on the south lawn may be converted into doors by sliding them upward and opening the wall panels beneath”). They had been led into the Red Room, with its cerise silk-covered walls and Jacqueline Kennedy breakfast table and crimson Empire sofa (Beecher: “This portrait of President Wilson was painted in Paris in 1919 by an English artist, but as you can observe, it was left unfinished”).
By the time they were in the immense and drafty State Dining Room, Nat Abrahams had become less attentive. Because Dilman appeared absorbed, as if soaking in and memorizing every fragment of data, Abrahams had not wished to spoil it by reminding his friend that he had been through these rooms not once but on two occasions before. The first time, Abrahams and a dozen other attorneys involved in civil rights causes had been brought to Washington by President Kennedy for a two-day conference, and they had toured the ground and first floors of this mansion. The second time, Abrahams and officers of the American Bar Association, then meeting in Washington, had attended a reception given by President Lyndon Johnson, and again Abrahams had been part of this tour.
During T. C.’s abbreviated term of office, Abrahams had not been invited to the White House. He had supported the minority opposing the Party’s nomination of T. C. and Porter, and even though, once T. C. had been nominated, Abrahams had backed him, he had not been forgiven. Abrahams suspected that it was T. C.’s aide, Governor Talley, notable for a mastodon memory (if little else), that separated the good ones from the bad ones, and who had listed Abrahams as lukewarm. Abrahams had, in fact, cast his ballot for T. C. only as the lesser of two evils, and because T. C. had been committed to the Party platform, which had extended lofty if generalized promises to the restless minorities.
Abruptly, his recollection of the last half hour’s tour was brought to an end by the waiters removing the empty soup bowls.
He looked at Dilman, and he said, “You know, Mr. President-”
Dilman’s scowl was immediate. “Cut it out, Nat. You want me to call you Barrister Abrahams?”
“I was merely testing you,” said Abrahams with a chuckle. “Okay, Doug, it’s an informal dinner.” He felt better, very good, indeed, about his friend, about tonight, and he scratched his hooked nose and jutting jaw, and said, “I was simply going to say how sorry I am that Sue is missing this, not only seeing you as President-she’s so thrilled about that-but being able to eat amid this splendor. She could keep her mother silenced and put the kids to bed with it for months.”
“Well, I want Sue here as soon as possible,” Dilman said. “You said it’s only a mild cold.”
“The hotel physician promises she’ll be up in a day or two.”
“Then I want you both over for a rerun of this meal in a few days.” He took up the glass of Bordeaux and held it toward Abrahams. “To you and your new future, Nat.”
Abrahams toasted him back. “Happy Presidency, Doug. You’ll make out.”
They sipped the wine, and then Dilman said, “I want to see as much of you and Sue as you can spare of yourselves. I’m busy as a beaver all day, and have plenty of homework at night, but I’ll be eating alone a good deal. With Julian up at school, and-well-I don’t have anyone around I can really kick off my shoes with. I need you both, Nat.”
He was about to say something more when the servants came in with heaping platters, and he fell into silence. Abrahams guessed that Dilman would not speak during the evening while any of the White House staff was within earshot. He is wary and defensive, Abrahams thought; he’s afraid of letting anything slip, anything that might be misconstrued, whispered behind the stairs, and create gossip and paragraphs for enemy columnists. Sensible enough, Abrahams thought, and decided to go along with his friend and hold his own tongue until they were alone.
While they were being served their slices of beef, potato pancakes, and more wine was being poured, Dilman spoke only once. He pointed to the vegetables. “Those peas, Nat, savor them, because you’ll be digesting history. Mrs. Crail says they were grown and picked from Teddy Roosevelt’s mint garden.”
After the waiters had retreated, the two of them ate quietly for a full minute. Abrahams, his mouth full, said, “Mmm, the pancakes aren’t bad, Doug. You’re running a fine kosher kitchen.”
“I’m sure that confuses them. That and the fact that I don’t like watermelon.” He spoke the last without bitterness, but with dry humor. He went on, “I meant what I was saying before, Nat. I want you and Sue here as often as you can come. This is the loneliest time I’ve ever faced. It’s bad enough being a widower President, in the White House by accident. But being a colored one, to boot, makes it-”
“Enough of that nonsense,” Abrahams interrupted. “You’re not getting any sympathy from me, unless I get my share. Don’t forget, I’m only a white darky whose grandfather was beaten to death in a Polish progom.” He had spoken lightly, but suddenly he became serious. “Plenty of white Presidents have been unpopular and lonely, Doug. I remember reading a letter in some collection-R. H. Dana wrote it to one or another of the Adamses, wrote it from this town in the 1860s-to the effect that Lincoln-it was about President Lincoln-that ‘he has no admirers, no enthusiastic supporters, none to bet on his head.’ I’m sure for a time Lincoln felt like an outcast locked in this house… but yes, we want to see you whenever you’re free, which I’m sure won’t be as often as you think. And we want to see you not because we’re sorry for you but because we need good companionship, too.”
“How long are you going to be here, Nat?”
“A week or two, maybe even a month. If it works out, I’ll take Sue back, spend a few days straightening out my things at the office, and leave her to pack or sell off the furniture and maybe stay on with the kids until the end of their semester. I’d return here, and she could follow me later.” He paused. “Under the new plan, I’d be living in Washington for three years.”
“That would be great, Nat.” Dilman grinned. “You’ll be living here longer than I will.” He ate slowly, thoughtfully. Then he said, “I think I was a little surprised when you wrote me about Avery Emmich’s offer, and that you were considering it. Didn’t I write you, asking you more about it? Maybe I didn’t. But even what you told me on the phone the other night doesn’t make it-well, entirely clear to me.”
“What do you mean, Doug?”
“You can’t live up on the Hill as long as I have without picking up a good deal of information about big business, big private enterprise. Not many come bigger than Eagles Industries. Nothing wrong with them, or any other corporation, except that Eagles isn’t notorious for being liberal or progressive. And Emmich, I gather, is a sort of throwback to Cornelius Vanderbilt, Astor, Gould. One of the public-be-damned gents, I always thought. Maybe I’m wrong. Anyway, I’ve found it hard to fit you into that framework. The mental pictures I have of you and Eagles don’t harmonize. I know I’m wrong.”
Abrahams put down his fork. “You’re right, Doug. I’ve been through all that, until my conscience collapsed of weariness. Doug, it comes down to this-I’ve looked into Eagles, and if I had found out they were crooks, real crooks, or special bastards, or anything like that, I’d have blown the deal immediately. They’re no better or worse than the rest of American big business. The anatomy is the same, always-hard head, no heart, all hands in a thousand tills, mechanized, automated, conservative, with a single goal-profits. Okay. The democracy we fight to save. Eagles Industries needs me, men like me, with the liberal lapel button. For them, that’s good business, too. And I-I need a fat patron, Doug, because I’m threadbare, and have responsibilities, and can’t get any more life insurance. If the patron is willing to let me get fat, too, without putting me on a leash, it’s a good deal.”
“No more life insurance, you said?”
Abrahams could see the flick of concern in his friend’s dark countenance. He shrugged. “I’m exaggerating, self-dramatizing. It wasn’t a real coronary, only a yellow light that warned me to slow down. I want to slow down before it turns red and stops me dead. Nothing serious, no sword hanging overhead, but I love Sue and I love those kids and I want that farm. So I’m playing it safe. I’m trading three years of doing what doesn’t particularly interest me for a lifetime of living, of puttering around with what does interest me, after those three years. That’s the whole of it, Doug.”
“I agree with your choice,” said Dilman solemnly. “I’d do exactly the same in your place. Have you seen Gorden Oliver yet?”
“Twice, briefly. He came to the hotel. We’re still trying to reach agreement on several of my recent demands.”
“What do you make of him?” Dilman asked.
“Oliver? I don’t know. I must say, he threw me off balance on first meeting. I always fall prey to preconceived notions of what people will be like-I should know better, and I do. Anyway, word association, you say lobbyist and I say rotund, foxy, devious, green-backs, call girls, et cetera. I was surprised to find him rather out-doorsy, literate, direct, a qualified attorney, a family man.”
Dilman had been listening to every word. “Yes, he’s all you found, Nat. He’s also a little, just a little, of what you expected him to be. He’s been in and out of my offices on the Hill, with talk, free information, free tickets and invitations, free services, free jokes, for years. I have no reason not to trust him or like him. He’s been useful to me at times. And registered lobbyists do as much good as harm. But somehow, even though he’s New England-I think he’s from Vermont-I keep remembering he is a company man and his company is headquartered in the South. Anyway, that’s nothing that need bother you, Nat. You are sharper than I am about people. You’ll stay on top of him.”
The waiters had returned, and were busily removing the empty plates and platters, and used silverware. Both men waited for the able to be cleared, and for the ice-cream cake and coffee to be served, so that they had their privacy once more.
Something had entered Abrahams’ mind, and would not go away. While he knew that his friend was sensitive and secretive about his personal relationships, Abrahams was curious and he determined to investigate one area. He had finished the dessert, and he filled his crusted, straight-stemmed pipe and lighted it, he said, as casually as possible, “Doug, I was thinking of what you were saying before about being lonely, and then I couldn’t help thinking of someone you’ve mentioned several times in your letters The lady you once introduced to Sue and me when we had dinner at your place. I mean Miss Gibson, Wanda Gibson.”
Dilman did not raise his head from his coffee. “What made you think of her?”
“As I said, your loneliness. I had a suspicion-Sue did, too, the night we met her-that you were fond of the young lady.”
“I am,” said Dilman.
“You still see her? I didn’t know. You haven’t mentioned her name in-why, I guess in over a year.”
“Aside from you, she’s been the person closest to me. Until now, we’ve kept company all the time. She’s very unusual.”
“Pretty, too,” Abrahams said, “and I thought sound and intelligent.”
“Yes, all that. Now I don’t know what’ll happen to us. This President thing came right down between us like-I was thinking recently-like a steel grill. You know, this is privileged talk, Nat, strictly, like everything else-but I tried to call on her alone tonight, first time since all that happened to me-it was awful-”
In a subdued, almost compulsive spate of recollection, Dilman recounted the details of his effort earlier in the evening to see Wanda alone at the Spingers’. He told of his offer to her of a job in the White House, and of her absolute refusal to accept one.
“That’s what happened,” Dilman concluded, “and here we are, wanting one another, and farther apart than ever before. I wish she weren’t so prideful. I’d give anything to have her in the White House.”
“Anything, Doug?”
Dilman looked up sharply, eyes narrowing. He started to retort, but did not. He waited.
The sensitive area, Abrahams thought. And then he thought, we’re either friends all the way or not at all. “You could have her here in an instant, Doug. It would take only four words: ‘Will you marry me?’ That’s the only anti-loneliness, Doug. Have you asked her?”
“No.”
“Okay, I can’t pry further.”
Dilman said, “It’s all right. If anyone has a right to ask, it’s you, Nat. I know you want to help me. But I can’t go into it. I haven’t gone into it deeply enough with myself. Maybe someday I’ll be able to discuss it with you. All I can say-the only explanation I can make is-well-I can’t see myself with Wanda in a big ceremonial state wedding in the White House. Having one lone colored man in the White House is churning up enough trouble. Maybe it’ll calm down, because they’ll see I’m sort of alone and inoffensive, not threatening to anyone. But a Negro man and his wife in this Southern mansion? That would be too much for them out there to take-too much, and I’m not ready for it. I know it’s a shameful infirmity in me, Nat, but it is an infirmity I can’t overcome, like a limb missing, and one simply can’t will that limb back on. I haven’t the strength of character.” Embarrassed, Dilman fumbled for a cigar. Abrahams watched him, leaned across the table corner to light the cigar, and then sat back.
“Doug,” Abrahams said at last, “how can I lecture the President of the United States? I can’t. But I can lecture one of my oldest and best friends. I’m going to.”
Dilman grunted. “I’ve been lectured at all day, by the boy who’s writing my biography, by my son, by Wanda, by myself. I don’t mind one more, only I’m afraid the ground’s been pretty well covered.”
“I’m sure it has,” said Abrahams. “But since I’m giving up making jury speeches, I’d like to hear the sound of my voice on a similar issue one last time, in valediction.” He knocked his pipe against the heel of his hand, then packed and lighted it once more. “Doug, there’s never been a Negro as high up as you, politically, in our country’s entire history. I know all there is to know about that. Most Negroes are happy about this, but many are scared of your sudden exposure and the subsequent white resentment. You are one of these. The nigger-hating whites are doubly inflamed, that’s for sure. You did worse than marry their sisters, you became the head of their plantations, their Massah, their Colonel. The rest of the whites are-what? Uneasy, edgy-let’s leave it that way. If the country had a say now, you’d be out in the street in ten seconds flat. The country has no say, so it has to sit still for you, until this Presidential term is over. But no matter how much hate there is out there, everyone knows you are here by law, the white man’s law. Nothing can alter the historical fact of your succession. You are rightfully their President, our President.
“Okay, so how are you to behave? Just be yourself? Who in the hell are you, anyway? I’m sure you don’t know. Maybe I don’t know, either, but maybe I have a better idea than you do. You are our President. That’s a fact. You are an American citizen. That’s a fact. You are a Negro American. That’s a fact. Because of the last, the pigmentation of your skin, you are different from any other President in our history. That’s a fact. What does this mean to you? Does it mean you act like a minority party who’s now king of the hill and going to put his heel in everyone else’s face? Does it mean you act like somebody who wandered into the wrong house, and you better beat it quick before you’re arrested? Does it mean you act like you know you don’t belong because you are different, and you back away and hide? Or does it mean you act like a human being who has inherited, through no wish of his own, the toughest job on earth, and you know it, and they out there know it, and you are going to fill that job like any human being fills any job he has to do?”
Dilman stared past Abrahams’ shoulder, twisting his cigar, twisting it until the tobacco leaf flaked. “Thank you, Nat. Very good in a Northern courtroom, where there’s a sanctified air of reason. Not very good here, where I’m servant to a mass of two hundred and thirty million who don’t always observe rules or reason.” His troubled eyes met Abraham’s eyes. “Your premise is not built on solid ground, Nat. You need one more fact, and it’s missing. Out there, even to the best of them, I’m not a human being. That’s it. I’m not a human being.”
“Doug, for God’s sake-”
“Facts, Nat, two lawyers addressing themselves to facts. You don’t want me to be a mean Negro or a servile Negro or a Negro in white face. You want me to be a human being who has a job called President, and to serve the job as a human being. How can I? Who’ll let me? What happens if I slip out of here one day, unrecognized, with Wanda for my wife, with nobody knowing who we are, and travel across the country? What am I then? Human being? I’m a nigger like any other nigger-you can’t tell one from another, you know-in the South and Southwest, and a Negro in the East and North and West. That’s what I am, Nat, when I’m not pretending to be senator or President. I’m a black man, nothing more. None of the government and organization language, like education, employment, equal suffrage, good housing, public accommodations, none of that is out there. It’s a simpler language out there. It says if you stand in line an hour in a market or store, and it’s come to be your turn, and a white man walks in, he gets served first. It says if you’ve got a hunger pang in your belly, and want to park at the first hamburger slop-joint you see, you can’t, because they won’t let you in. It says if your wife’s got to go to the bathroom, and there’s no public rest room she can get into, she’d better have a good bladder. It says if your throat is parched, and you want a Coke, just a lousy Coke, you can’t find a place to buy one, nowhere, no, sir. It says if you’re exhausted and grimy on the road and want to stop overnight, there’s not a hotel or motel with a vacancy when you ask. It says what Roy Wilkins always used to say, that every time you step out of your front door in the morning, until you come home and shut the door in the evening, you run the risk or certainty of all this kind of mistreatment and denial and humiliation. That’s the real language out there, Nat, and it reminds you, in case you ever tend to forget, that you’re not a human being, not here, not now, but a black man, meaning a half man.
“Sure I am President, Nat, but I’m not forgetting, and no one will let me forget, I am a black man, not yet qualified for human being, let alone for President. No matter how I feel, I can only act one way, Nat, only one way, and that’s as if I’m a servant of T. C., keeping the house in order while he’s away… It’s the old story I used to hear a Negro deacon tell when I was a little boy. He told it from the pulpit. ‘Ef yo’ say to de white man, “Ain’t yo’ forget yo’ hat?” he say, “Nigger, go get it!”’ That’s got to be my job, Nat, getting T. C.’s hat.”
Nat Abrahams was too deeply moved, too filled with white man’s guilts, to plead further with Dilman. He knew that he should accept Dilman’s view of reality but try to broaden it, to help him see more clearly his role and future. It was no use now, impossible, after this confessional. For years he and Dilman had openly discussed the Negro problem, and yet he could not recall any other time when he had heard his friend sound so passionately embittered.
“Okay, Doug,” Abrahams said quietly, “you’ll get T. C.’s hat. But there are a few other things you have a right to do, to instigate, to press, on your own. You have a right-”
Dilman held up a tired hand. “Nat, I have no more rights here than I have out there. Maybe fewer here. Someday, it might be different. But this is here and now. Don’t you think I’m aware of what’s going on? Don’t you think I know everything there is to know about the New Succession Bill they’re rushing through? Why all this speed from my colleagues on the Hill? Because they can’t forget I’m Negro and they don’t trust me, don’t want me to put in an Ethiopian Cabinet, with a black Secretary of State who might one day succeed me. And you know what, Nat-I’m not going to veto it. No, sir.”
“You should.”
“No, sir. I’m not going to sign it ‘Approved,’ either, but I’m not going to veto it. I’m going to let it sit on my desk ten days and a Sunday, and let it pass into law without either my approval or disapproval. It’ll get knocked out eventually by the Supreme Court, anyway. But I’ll play their little game, so they feel safer, so they know I’m not peopling the succession line with recruits from the Crispus Society or NAACP. I’m letting them know that I know my place, and I’ll do what I’m supposed to do, like it or not. If I didn’t, Nat, I’d be inviting real trouble for every Negro, let alone for myself, and for the unity of the country at large.”
“Maybe it’s time for that,” said Abrahams.
“It’ll never be time for that until my wife can go into any restroom in the land, and until a Negro can walk through the front door of the White House by popular demand.” He pushed himself away from the table. “It could be worse, Nat. I inherited some pretty good people from T. C. I know Governor Talley isn’t too smart, but he gets things done. Secretary Eaton is crafty and helpful, and a gentleman. As far as I can tell, the Cabinet is a good one. As for the bills pending, the minorities bill, the crisis in Africa, I think I can’t go far wrong listening to T. C.’s advisers. After all, they want what’s best for the country, too.”
Abrahams slipped his pipe back into his coat pocket. “Everyone wants what’s best for the country. Everyone isn’t always right.” He tried to smile. “Read the fine print, Doug. There’s always fine print.”
“Don’t worry, Nat. Maybe I’m serving T. C., but I can’t rubber-stamp his name. It’s got to be my name affixed to everything. And I always read what I sign.”
“Good enough,” said Abrahams. He saw Dilman stretch and yawn, and he stood up. “First session adjourned, Doug. I’d better get back to poor Sue, and you’d better get what sleep you can.”
“I think that’s best, Nat. I’m bushed. Let me walk you to the elevator.”
Only later, when he was by himself in the elevator, was Nat Abrahams relieved that Sue had not come to dinner. He knew that she would have wept.
Douglass Dilman was alone in the dimly lighted intimacy of the Lincoln Bedroom, in his baggy pajamas, slumped in the Victorian velvet-covered chair, downing the last of his sherry and trying to read the completed Minorities Rehabilitation Program Bill.
It was no use. The long day, the dinner, the Bordeaux, the sherry, had made him heavy-lidded and drowsy. He cast the printed bill on the marble-topped table, placed the sherry glass next to it, and tried to think of what Nat Abrahams had said and what he had said. He was too fatigued to recall exactly. His memory slid off to Wanda, to Julian, to Leroy Poole, to Arthur Eaton, to Sally Watson, to Clay Kemmler and the Cabinet, and then slid past them, searching for respite.
He heaved himself out of the chair, tightened the cord of his pajama trousers, and peered at the Empire clock. It was after midnight. He turned off the lamp, padded in his flopping slippers to turn off two more, pausing once to examine the handwritten copy of Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address and then giving up because the words ran together and blurred.
Yawning, he shuffled to the giant rosewood bed, sat on it, kicked off his slippers, stuffed his weary, middle-aged body between the white sheets, and reached over to turn off the last global lamp.
In the welcome darkness he fell back against the pillow.
He knew that sleep was coming swiftly, and his tired mind groped for one noble good-night thought, one lofty sentiment, to commemorate this unique historic occasion, a black President ready to slumber his first night in the white man’s White House.
He tried to evoke something of Abe Lincoln’s wisdom, since he rested in Abe Lincoln’s bed. He sought words… noble… lofty… historic… malice toward none… charity for all… firmness in the right… in the right… in the right… in rights, rights, rights.
It had gone, as sleep suffused him, and what remained was an old Negro jingle chanted among the shanties… noble… lofty… historic…
Nigger an’ white man
Playin’ seven-up;
Nigger win de money-
Skeered to pick ’em up.
Sorry… Mistah… Lincoln… ah’s skeered… skeered… skeered.
He turned on his side, curling beneath the thick white blanket, seeking and nearing the warm encompassing safety of night oblivion. There was one moment’s lucidity before sleep drew nothingness over it.
One moment’s thought: How hard this bed is, how hard and big and white, too hard for a soft man, too big for a small man, yet maybe, maybe, not too white for a black man. Maybe.
Douglass Dilman, President of the United States, slept at last.