by Allen Drury
But how slow down? In sixty-two years he has never really slowed down, and the insistent imperatives of his personal drive have taken him first to the House for four terms, then back home to the governorship of his native California, and then to the greatest office in the gift of his country. He has never slowed down; it is not his nature. Always there has been the steady drive, the voracious ambition, the ruthless achievement of goals which have left behind them a trail of thwarted opponents and blasted careers. And also, the party orators declare and he himself is certain, a trail of high achievements and sound contributions to his country and her place in the world.
“Our grrrrreatttt President!” his party colleagues always cry; and appraising himself with the scarifying candor which only those who have sat in 1600 Pennsylvania can appreciate, he is satisfied that it is not all partisan exaggeration. In many ways he has not been a bad President, and in some he has been an outstanding one. At least, he reflects grimly, he has understood that he was chosen to provide leadership, and provide leadership he has. From the day he set foot under the portico after coming down the wildly cheering Avenue from his inauguration at the Capitol there has never been any doubt who was boss; and for this, he knows, much can be forgiven and much can be overlooked. There are stresses in America which demand of a leader that he lead; and he who refuses to lead, he knows, betrays them and himself in a way so fundamental as to make himself a thing of pity in the history books. He himself will never be that; he will go down, in the neat little game of Categories that historians play, as one of the “strong Presidents”; quite possibly, also, as one of the great ones. It has been, in some ways, at a fearful price; but it is one he made up his mind to pay when he first began to perceive the possibility that he might someday achieve the office, and he has few regrets now.
But the doctor says slow down; and there is no slowing down. Far too often in recent weeks his heart has begun to beat too fast, there has been a sudden all-gone feeling for a split, terrifying moment, a sensation of going away that has caught him in Cabinet meetings, on public platforms, quite frequently right here in the historic bed in the middle of the night. Fortunately it is here that the most obvious and lengthy attacks have come. More and more often he has come awake gasping for air, has had to turn himself very carefully upon his back or his right side and begin the slow, delicate, deliberate process of breathing very slowly and carefully, trying not to panic, trying not to let it get out of hand, until he has managed to restore the normal rhythm of his heartbeat; and increasingly, he has noted, the rhythm has not seemed to return to quite what it was before. Inevitably, he supposes, the moment will come, a day from now, a month, a year, when this will occur full scale in public; and then, even if he recovers from it, men will know in truth that the hurrying gossip of the town is correct and a dying man sits in the White House.
This he is grimly determined to prevent if he can. He does not mind the thought of dying in office, for there is no surer guarantee of martyred greatness in the history books than to die at just the right moment when people will remember the good deeds and forget the bad ones and somebody else can clean up the mess you may have left behind; so in that sense he rather welcomes the idea of a dramatic demise with his hand on the helm, a great man sacrificing his life in the cause of peace, a gallant soldier giving his all for his country, a fearless, peerless leader taken from us at the very height of his—And so forth and so forth and so forth. But he cannot contemplate without a shiver the possibility of being partially paralyzed, of lingering on too long while the government deteriorates and the country drifts and the enemy, ever vigilant, takes advantage of the national preoccupation to press forward wherever he can.
So it is that he has given some real thought to his condition in recent weeks; so it is that far more often than anyone outside suspects he is in bed and asleep by nine, that he takes two-hour naps in the afternoon and carefully husbands his energies for the great occasions on which he must appear in public and for the major legislation he must read and study. More and more he finds himself doing business on the telephone, requesting, suggesting, advising, cajoling, recommending, threatening, as he often must. Now the personal conference at the White House is becoming increasingly rare; and the press conference, for one excuse and another, always logical, always rational, always carefully calculated for reasonableness and acceptability, is more and more often put off so that the press is beginning to become accustomed to gaps of two weeks, three weeks, even four, between them. His entire thought now is to conserve himself for the major things and let the minor go by the board; for even though he would not mind dying in office and rather expects he will, there is one other reason why he wishes to remain alive: he has little respect for, and he is damned if he wants to turn the country over to, the well-meaning, goodhearted but unfortunately rather blundering, inept, and unimaginative man who occupies the office of Vice President.
Contemplating Harley Hudson in the White House, in fact, is one of those things that makes him extra determined to stay alive. He would be much more at ease about it all if things had gone differently at the convention seven years ago and his principal opponent then had been willing to take second place. But of course Orrin Knox never would, it was out of the question from the first, and even though he had requested his lieutenants to make some tentative soundings in the frantic turmoil of Chicago, nothing at all had come of it. He feels a great respect for Orrin, even though he knows the Senator despises him; and he wishes now in this lonesome hour as he looks out across the silent trees and lawns that things had worked out differently, that events had moved to bring Orrin into office as his running mate, so that together they could have worked for the country instead of being eternally at cross-purposes as they are now.
Thinking of their constant frictions over the years, he knows with a grim certainty that they will seem as nothing compared with the situation that has arisen as a result of Brigham Anderson’s death. One thing he is quite aware of is the high regard held for the young Senator among his elders, and in particular he knows of the close family relationship between the Knoxes and the Andersons. Having studied Orrin very attentively, as a man will study the one who has been for many years his principal opponent in party affairs, he knows how fond the link has become, and he knows Orrin will fight him now with merciless intensity that will ask, and give, no quarter. And for the first time in many a day there comes into his mind the dismaying possibility that he may be beaten, and not only that he may be beaten but that all the shabby double-dealing behind Brigham Anderson’s death may be displayed to the public which, after its first shock at the revelations concerning the Senator’s private life, is quite likely then to turn with a bitter contempt upon the men who used it to kill him. There are many times, he knows, when politics violates fair play and decency, and as long as the public does not know it, little detriment results. But let it once break through the surface and an innate fairness in the country reasserts itself, and never after that do the people involved have quite the same stature that they had before. And since stature is very important to him, both presently and in the history books, it is not a prospect he regards lightly.
Nor, though he thinks party loyalty and their many years of working together will be sufficient to stand the strain, is he at all sure what the Majority Leader will do. He too was very fond of Brigham Anderson, and it was only by exerting the full strength of his personality and his office that he had been able to force him to play his part in weaving the web of circumstance that had entrapped his young friend. Again, he wishes bitterly now that he had not; but the event is over, there is nothing to do but try to pick up the pieces and recoup as best one can. If Bob draws away, the cause of Robert A. Leffingwell will be in jeopardy indeed, for then there will have to be a falling back upon such second-line defenses as Tom August and Powell Hanson and possibly George Hines and even Fred Van Ackerman; and without the Majority Leader it will not be the same. He does not think Senator Munson will oppose him o
penly, even though he too must be lying awake—in fact, he suspects, a good many men all over town must be wakeful this night, thinking of Brigham Anderson and searching their hearts for answers to things to which there may be no answers—but that the Majority Leader might abandon all attempts to help is a prospect he must consider. There will have to be a phone call in the morning, a sounding out to discover where he stands and what he will do, an appeal to all those ties of old friendship, mutual advantage, and the party which will convince him that he should continue to work actively for the nomination. He sighs, for he is very tired and he knows that before this is over he will be much tireder still; and he wonders whether a system already strained so near its limits can come through it as well as he would wish, or whether his martyrdom is going to come rather sooner than he had expected.
It is to Orrin that he keeps returning, however, for it is Orrin who holds the key. He wonders whether Orrin is thinking of him, and he is sure he must be. If hatred were a palpable thing he is quite sure he would feel it thudding against the walls of the historic old house right now, rising against his window ledge, threatening at any moment to flood into the room and swallow him up. But somewhere, if Orrin is the key, there must be a key to Orrin; and he sets himself now to considering practically what it can be, knowing that it does not lie in the methods used upon Brigham Anderson, for even if there were cause—which he long ago satisfied himself there is not, in any way—those methods have been destroyed by their own terror and cannot be used again upon anyone in the present controversy. He feels there must be some way to appeal to the senior Senator from Illinois, and much as he knows Orrin is despising him at this very moment, he would not be the powerful man he is, President of the United States and worthy to be, if he did not begin the slow, patient, stubborn process of trying to reason out for himself what it is.
If the President’s astute mind could project itself but a little further in this tragic hour it would be ironically amused to know that in his own grief-filled house in Spring Valley the senior Senator from Illinois has anticipated him and is promising himself with a quiet implacability that no appeal of any land from the man he dislikes so utterly will move him one iota. A long-standing contempt, the withering contempt of the honest for the dishonest, has always clouded his vision in that quarter; it has been replaced now by a hatred so deep and so cold that it lies upon his heart like a stone. Behind his brusque exterior there lives an emotional personality unsuspected by all but a few, and all of its force is concentrated now upon the objective of defeating Robert A. Leffingwell and making of the President’s remaining months in office a frustrated hell as unpleasant as it can possibly be. He has rarely wished another man dead in his life, but right now, as violently as he once wished Hitler dead or Stalin dead or Khrushchev dead, he thinks he wishes the President dead. He believes now that nothing can sway him to change in this; and he is telling himself that not all the wiles of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue will be sufficient this time to divert from the head of its occupant a justice he has often invited but almost always managed to escape.
This mood, which he is deliberately implanting in his being so deeply that he believes it can never be dislodged, is understandable enough, given the tragic events of the night and their profound impact upon him. Somewhere around six he had had a sudden hunch, inexplicable, elusive, but insistent, that it was important that he get in touch with Brig; there was no way to explain it, it had just come to him, and for some reason equally inexplicable he had put his call through to the Senator’s office instead of his home. It was obvious at once that something was wrong, someone took up the phone but did not answer, there were shouts and movements in the background—he thought he heard someone cry. “Hold the light over there so I can get a shot of his head!”—and for several moments he simply waited on the line until someone spoke. “This is Senator Knox,” he said, “is Senator Anderson there?” “Just a minute, Senator,” the voice said in a startled way, and he heard it call to someone, “Senator! Senator! This is Senator Knox.” And then a voice he could hardly recognize came on the wire and said, sounding so old and so tired, “This is Seab, Orrin. We have lost our young friend, Orrin. He has shot himself.” “But he didn’t have to do that,” he said foolishly, and Seab, seeming to understand the way a man could say something as stupid as that at a time like that, only said, “I think you had better come home right away, Orrin. We all need you here.” “Yes, Seab,” he managed to say. “Call Beth and tell her I’m on my way.” And in a daze he had asked his administrative assistant, who was traveling with him, to cancel his three remaining speeches of the day, the local party people had rushed him to the nearest airport, and he had caught the next plane and come straight to Washington.
On the plane he had tried not to think about it too much, but it was of course impossible to shut out. Around and around and around his mind went, and over and over and over the same hopeless ground. The whys were never resolved, the futile protests went unanswered and only became more insistent. So too did his personal grief. At first he was in such a state of shock that he was unable to grasp it in terms of tragedy or even of human reality; but suddenly after about an hour it began to hit him very hard. He felt as though he might be about to cry, so he turned and stared earnestly out the window and pretended to be looking intently at the gradually dimming land below while his eyes filled with tears and the appalling finality of it struck him squarely with all its force. He remained so for quite some time until finally he put on a pair of dark glasses and leaned back, pretending to be asleep. He would allow himself an hour to cry, he thought grimly, because there would be no time to cry later. He had people to see and things to do, and he would do his mourning for Brig right now so that he could approach them unhampered by emotion and unclouded by a bitterness that could only interfere with efficiency.
At National Airport in Washington, still wearing his dark glasses but by now beginning to feel an iron inner calm, he found that the Post had put out an extra, filled with headlines, pictures, and political speculation. The photographers had done their jobs well, as befitted their experience and ability, which was great, and the taste and consideration of their editors, which was virtually non-existent. There was a picture of Mabel in tear-stained horror, a shot of Pidge looking sleepy, frightened, and totally lost. The cameras had been right there, stuck in their faces in keeping with human decency and the tragedy in which they were involved.
Most of the time Orrin found himself passably tolerant of this sort of thing, which was always excused on the ground that it was giving the public what it wanted to see at breakfast; but this time it only served to goad him even further into a harsh, black anger. It did not lighten his mood at all to be photographed himself as he stood studying the papers near the plane and to have some eager young television reporter ask brightly, “Senator Cooley says you are now the leader of the anti-Leffingwell forces, Senator, and he expects the nomination will now be defeated. Do you expect the nomination will now be defeated?”
The fellow was not one of the Capitol regulars, from whom Orrin might have taken such a question at such a time, and he had given him a look so full of distaste and disgust that the man involuntarily stepped back a pace.
“The nomination,” he had replied with a tenuous self-control, “will be defeated.”
“You think it will be defeated, Senator,” the fellow had repeated automatically, as though he couldn’t quite believe Orrin would want to be that positive.
“I said it will be defeated,” he had said angrily. “It will be defeated. How many more times do I have to say it for you?”
“Thank you, Senator,” the man had said hurriedly, and he had gotten quickly out of the way as Orrin brushed him aside and strode forward angrily into the terminal to get his luggage and catch a cab for home.
There he had found that the emotional storms of the evening were not yet over, for the Andersons of course were there, as were Hal and Crystal and Stanley Danta, and there had been an unha
ppy couple of hours getting everybody quieted down and off to bed. Pidge mercifully fell to sleep early, her mother went to bed in Beth’s room about ten after breaking them all up by remarking wistfully, “I never really knew him, and now I never will,” and after a time there remained only the immediate family to settle down and then he himself could get some rest. First, however, there had to be some fast planning for Hal and Crystal, who at first were determined to postpone the wedding on Wednesday afternoon, until their-fathers talked them out of it. Brig, it was explained, wouldn’t have wanted that at all, and while it was agreed that they should cancel most of the guest list and restrict it to just a few close friends, there was no reason to put it off altogether. Dolly was called and consulted; said she was canceling the reception but thought they should go ahead with the rest of it as Orrin and Stanley suggested; after a while Hal and Crystal agreed reluctantly and went off, much troubled, to bed, Hal to his room and Crystal back to the Westchester, where she said she would make some coffee and sit up for her father. A call came from Brig’s brother in Salt Lake City that he would be flying in in the morning, and Stanley volunteered to meet him and assist during the day Monday with the many details of liquidating the remnants of a life. It was decided that a memorial service would be held at National Cathedral at 2 p.m. Tuesday, with burial in Salt Lake on Wednesday. The Senate would devote itself to eulogies tomorrow, and because of the services on Tuesday and the fact that a recess for the wedding on Wednesday had been promised long ago, there was now no possibility of a vote on the nomination until Thursday. Orrin told Stanley bluntly that he was out to beat it and would use every means at his command; Senator Danta looked grave and unhappy and finally said he thought possibly he would go along with this. Shortly after he left the house Seab called to say he had already contacted fifteen of their colleagues, including Sam Eastwood of Colorado, Stuart Schoenfeldt of Pennsylvania, Ray Smith and Vic Ennis of California, Roy Mulholland of Michigan, and Powell Hanson. Of them all, he reported, only Powell Hanson and Victor Ennis had refused to abandon their commitments to vote for the nominee. Of the rest, ten were now opposed and three were leaning their way. Seab said he would go on telephoning until about 2 a.m. and then start in again at six-thirty in the morning. Senator Knox thanked him with satisfaction and suggested several others he might work on. Senator Cooley promised grimly to do his best. There was no word from the Majority Leader, and Orrin made no move to call him. He imagined Bob was having a rough time and he was damned glad of it. He will get to him tomorrow, he thinks now, and he will see then what remains of an old friendship and a close alliance in the face of these somber events. He does not know exactly what part Bob played in the tragedy of their young friend, but instinct tells him it was not helpful to Brig when the chips were down. If it was something really bad, he tells himself grimly, he may never forgive him.
