The Man

by Irving Wallace

  Settlement time had arrived. Disposition of the corpus sine pectore.

  “Well, gang,” said Valetti, uncrossing his legs and bringing his hands together, “I guess that does it. I think we’re all of a mind to disband. Our head man is gone. Our records are gone. Our funds are disposed of. We’re through-at least for now.”

  “What are you going to do, Frank?” Poole asked.

  “I’m going abroad for a while.”

  “Abroad, listen to him,” Burleigh Thomas mocked. “Abroad, eh? Chickening out, you mean.”

  Valetti shook his head gently. “Don’t try to bug me, Burleigh, we’re on the same side. Yup, I’m going abroad, because I don’t want the Federals badgering me or using me against Jeff Hurley. Besides I want to raise some dough for our cause, lots of it, and then come back and reorganize something new.”

  “Who’s giving you dough abroad?” Burleigh Thomas snorted. “Who gives a damn about us anywheres else? Them that does, they ain’t got the green stuff, and them that has, they don’t give a damn.”

  “Settle down, Burleigh.” Valetti’s lips curled in a knowing smile. “I’ve got my means. I suggest you join up with our old friends in the more respectable societies, and do what you can to rouse them up a bit. Just do your best, and when the climate here is ripe, and I have a nest egg for us, I’ll be back and calling on you, all of you. As for Jeff, I guess we can trust the lawyers to do what can be done, and if they get nowhere, we can depend on Leroy here to try to intervene with the President for clemency.”

  “I don’t know if Dilman’ll even see me again,” said Poole.

  “You’ve got enough to make him see you again.” Valetti winked. “Maybe one or two of our records weren’t burned.”

  Burleigh Thomas was on his feet, hiking up his overalls. “I wouldn’t spit on that goddam yellowbelly Dilman, let alone go asking him any favors. I’d see him for only one thing, to bust his goddam face wide open. He’s the cause of all our trouble, I tell you. I could see it from the day he came in that job, told Jeff Hurley as much from the start, that Dilman would be our worst enemy, bad or worse than some goddam whiteshirt Kleagle. Like I said to Jeff from the beginning, we better be prepared to fight that there white nigger of ours hard as we fight the whiteboy skunks. Well, you guys can see I was right, wasn’t I? Lookit him, lookit Dilman. When you got a Rastus nigger up there, you got someone doing the backward bends, so’s he not even treating us like some stumblebum white politician would, let alone like a nigger should. I tell you, I’d sure enough give my left gut to see T. C. still President, or even that Yankee man, Eaton, because they’d at least remember our voting power, and they wouldn’t be hacking us down with that subversive controls business. But Dilman-” Thomas glared at Poole. “I’d rather let my pal Jeff Hurley die in the chair than ask that yellowbelly nigger Dilman one favor.”

  “I don’t have to ask Dilman any favors,” piped up Leroy Poole. “Like Frank says, we’ve got other means to deal with turncoats.”

  “You bet we have, but not by asking favors,” Thomas growled. He stared at the others. “Okay, you fraidcat punks, do whatever you want to do. Some of us ain’t giving up so easy, no sir. We’re not letting any crappy control laws put in by that possum slummock make us run for cover.”

  “You haven’t got a chance on your own,” said Frank Valetti. He threw his raincoat over his arm and went to the motel door,. “I’m hitting the road. Good luck to each of you. We’ll win what Jeff and all of us are after-one day, someday soon. Good night.”

  After Valetti had gone, the others shook hands with Poole and one another and departed, singly and in pairs. Presently the room was empty of all but Burleigh Thomas and Leroy Poole.

  Thomas pulled on his heavy sweater as Poole waited. Poole could see that Thomas was deliberately fussing too much with his garment, as if he wanted to speak about something on his mind.

  Poole felt uncomfortable. It often amazed him that one organization, with one purpose and goal, could have room for men so dissimilar as Thomas and himself. For Poole, the ones like Thomas were aboriginals, too brutish and demoniac to appreciate the refinements of rebellion and freedom, as did ones like himself. The Thomases were the easiest targets for whites like Zeke Miller and Bruce Hankins and Everett Gage, the late Everett Gage, who did not believe such beings were prepared for civilized equality. When you agreed to set them free, you opened the cage. But what then? Could untrained, barbarous, vindictive primates be let loose to live with skilled, educated, law-abiding higher creatures?

  Instantly Poole hated himself for entertaining red-neck thoughts. His mind went to his morning mental exercises, and he knew that Burleigh Thomas was as deserving of freedom, no matter how ill-prepared he was for it, as he himself, and he felt kindlier toward the truck driver.

  He found Burleigh Thomas scrutinizing him. Poole suffered a lump of guilt inside. “Well, Burleigh, I wish you-”

  “Leroy, what you going to do next?”

  Poole was surprised that his primitive companion could have such concerns. “Do next? Why, first off, I’m kind of low on eating money. I guess I’ll knock off my book, the one I’m writing on Dilman, and get what is owed to me. And then I’ll start pounding my typewriter pulpit for real, trying to heat our people up some more. Guess I’m still a poor preacher boy at heart.”

  “Naw, I mean about our movement.”

  “What’s there to do? I’m keeping an eye on Jeff Hurley’s trial. I already heard from his old lady, Gladys, in Louisville, and his other relatives. They’re depending on me. I don’t think the Feds will give Jeff more than a stiff sentence, manslaughter or some such. They don’t want more trouble. If it goes past that, well, I guess I’ll have to go to Dilman. I can make him see me. And from what I’ve read, he’s got it in his power to save Jeff.” He could see that Thomas was not satisfied, and then he remembered. “Our movement, you asked? Like Frank Valetti said, the Attorney General and Dilman shot us down. I guess I’ll play dead until the shooting stops.”

  Burleigh Thomas covered his matted hair with a wool cap. “Not me,” he said. “There are maybe a half dozen of us who ain’t letting those big shots think they won the crap game because they got the loaded bones. Nope. We’re going to keep moving in on them holy Joes, the way Jeff would want.”

  “I wish you luck, Burleigh, but the dice are still loaded. Valetti’s a pretty smart guy. Why don’t you do what he suggests-take it easy until-”

  “To hell with Valetti. He’s got his Commie friends to go back to. That ain’t got a friggin’ thing to do with us. We got no nothing waiting for us but to keep fighting.” He paused, and considered Poole through slit eyes. “You’re a mighty smart kid, Leroy. I been listening to you. They ain’t housebroke you yet, for sure.”

  “Nobody has, and nobody ever will.”

  “I don’t think we’re so far apart, except like in education. Knowing Dilman the way you do, I sorta have a hunch you agree with me he’s the worst yellowbelly sonofabitch ever got born black.”

  “Basically, I can’t disagree with you,” Poole conceded. “However, his fault isn’t that he’s mean, but that he’s scared-”

  “Shivering scared, yup. Old cullud-boy-in-the-cemetery-scared, yup. But to me there’s nothing badder, because that makes him suck around those whiteboys, barking and standing on his hind legs when they give him their finger-snapping. It’s like he’s afraid to recognize us, to prove he don’t know us, so he’s twice as tough against us. I think even that scrotum-face, rumdum Zeke Miller would be better-”

  “We-ll, I wouldn’t go that far, Burleigh.”

  “You’re going to see I’m right,” insisted Thomas. “Before Dilman’s finished in office, we’ll all be back on the plantations picking cotton. I’m just saying to you, do what you want, but there are some of us not letting him get away with it. What Jeff started, we’re finishing. We’re going to bug that Dilman until he’s gotta tell difference between black from white.” Thomas hesitated. “You sure you don’t
want to stay with us?”

  Leroy Poole patted his belly. “I’m not built for the muscle part of it, Burleigh. I’m strictly a word man. Words can be fists, too.”

  Thomas made two hamlike fists. “Not like these, no words like these. Okay, Leroy, you do your doings your way, I do them mine.” He went to the door, wrenched the knob, but turned back before opening it. “Maybe you’ll have a change of heart. If you do, I’ll be here a few days. If you want to talk, you can always get hold of me through my kid sister. She’s a good kid. Leave a note for her at the Walk Inn-that’s a booze joint on Seventeenth-and say you want me to call. Just leave a note for my sis.”

  As he opened the door, Poole called out, “What’s her name, Burleigh?”

  “Ruby-same last name like mine-Ruby Thomas. She knows where I am every minute.”

  FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

  Office of the White House Press Secretary

  THE WHITE HOUSE

  FOLLOWING THE ORDERS OF THE WHITE HOUSE PHYSICIAN, ADMIRAL OATES, THE PRESIDENT IS SPENDING THE DAY ABOARD THE PRESIDENTIAL YACHT “FREDDIE BOY.” THE YACHT DEPARTED FROM THE WASHINGTON NAVY YARD DOCK AT 9 A.M., EDT. EXCEPT FOR CONFERRING WITH SECRETARY OF STATE EATON ON THE FORTHCOMING CONFERENCE WITH PREMIER KASATKIN, AND REVIEWING THE FINAL MINORITIES REHABILITATION PROGRAM BILL DELIVERED TO HIM BY CONGRESS, THE PRESIDENT WILL DEVOTE HIS TIME TO DEEP-SEA FISHING AND RESTING.

  BY ONE o’clock in the afternoon, Douglass Dilman knew that the cruise was a mistake, and that he was in for another fiasco.

  When Admiral Oates had suggested the brief nautical outing, his need for a relaxed day away from his office, especially because of the agitation induced by the Trafford University incident and the slight flare-up of his blood pressure, Dilman had not been able to reject the idea. Somehow, he had felt, it would make him lose face in front of Governor Talley, Secretary Eaton, and several other advisers in his office at the time. With feigned enthusiasm, he had agreed to the cruise. He had not told any one of them that except for one trip on a Great Lakes steamer and several ferryboat crossings to Staten Island, he had never been on a boat, and he had never in his life been on one that went out to sea.

  His apprehension had been somewhat alleviated in the early morning, after he had been piped aboard and been made welcome by Commander Chappell, and been saluted by the six enlisted men on deck. As the ninety-two-foot yacht-once christened Eisenhower’s Barbara Ann and Kennedy’s Honey Fitz, and last and still T. C.’s Freddie Boy (so lettered in bright gold on the stern)-proceeded down the Anacostia River, and into Chesapeake Bay, Dilman had been taken on a tour of the vessel by Admiral Rivard, the veteran Navy Chief of Staff.

  Hardly conscious of the rocking of the yacht, the steady creaking of the timbers, Dilman had admired the white, mahogany-trimmed ship from stem to stern, from port to starboard-or was it starboard? Wasn’t it aft? Or fore? Or bow? He had been as baffled by the Admiral’s language as he would have been by Latin or Hebrew, in fact, more so. Nodding constantly, to display his pleasure and comprehension, Dilman had covered not only every inch of the deck, but the Commander’s cabin where the helm could be seen, and then he had gone down the companionway-or was it hatch?-no, companionway, absolutely-between the nauseating, freshly painted walls to the cabins below. He had visited the dining room, which seated forty, and the large Presidential stateroom or bedroom with its two bunks, and the attractive lounge with its green carpet, chairs, television set, radiotelephone, and Currier and Ives nautical prints.

  On the afterdeck-he was sure Admiral Rivard had called it the afterdeck-Dilman had gratefully settled into a bamboo chair on the hemp rug. He had tried to be attentive to Secretary Eaton, as the Secretary reported on his recent conversation with Soviet Ambassador Rudenko. Dilman had assimilated the gist of it-three-day summit conference to be held at the château in Chantilly, twenty-six miles north of Paris, with the final meeting capped by the French President’s farewell banquet, to be held in Versailles Palace-and all the while he had been hypnotized by the yacht’s rising and falling rail over Eaton’s shoulder. Dilman had measured, secretly, the distance the rail heaved above the horizon line and dipped beneath it. The upward motion had taken in two inches of perfectly blue and cloudless sky. The downward motion had taken in three inches of pea-green, sea-green water. The more his stomach gurgled, the more his gorge heaved toward his throat, the more attentive he had tried to be to Eaton’s voice.

  He had not known how long his Secretary of State intended to go on, but he had been thankful when Edna Foster interrupted him with a shore-to-ship message. After that, Commander Chappell announced cheerfully that they were in the Atlantic, in the open sea, and the fishing tackle was ready for him on the port side. To Dilman, the obstacle of locating the port side (without daring to ask) through this floating maze, and the sickening knowledge that they were bouncing about in the middle of the ocean had given him the courage to state that he was not prepared to fish yet.

  “I’ve got too much work,” he had said.

  The Commander had persisted. “Mr. President, you ought to take advantage of a warm windless day like this. Not many this time of the year, I’ll tell you. But look there, the sun, not a breeze, sea smooth as glass, and some channel bass and marlin waiting to be caught.”

  “Thank you, Commander, soon as I can.”

  He slunk off, making a pretense of finding Miss Foster, but when he reached the companionway, Sally Watson had intercepted him. The sea change had made her more exuberant and prettier than ever. Her blond hair, swept back, was partially covered by the hood of her brightly striped Italian sweater. Her slim hips, as she walked, moved provocatively under her snug white raw-silk slacks.

  “Magnificent, isn’t it?” she had asked joyously, lifting her sunglasses.

  “Fine, fine,” he had said.

  “I’m utterly famished. The salt air really gives one an appetite. But we’re not allowed to eat lunch, Mr. President, until you lead the way. The steward is all set.”

  “Lunch already?” he had said, and inside, his stomach again climbed toward his gullet. “Too early for me. You tell the steward I’ll eat later. Go right ahead, and let everyone know they can get started.”

  While the others went below to be served by the white-jacketed messboys, Dilman had remained on the deck alone. For a while he had sat in a deck chair, warm in his gray wool suit coat and constricting starched collar, shutting his eyes to the slight roll of the yacht, trying not to think of the work that awaited him in the lounge, wondering if Nat Abrahams had received his message last night and would be able to come out and visit him.

  Too quickly an hour had passed, for he could hear the chatter of the diners as they came out on the deck, and he had pushed himself to his feet. He had not wanted to be found slumped in a deck chair, wilted and ailing. It would have been embarrassing and un-Presidential. The least that he could do, he had decided, was to assume some casual, more presentable pose. He had walked unsteadily to the bow section of the ship, and propped himself with elbows upon the rail, striking an attitude of deep meditation.

  And he was at one o’clock, suffocated with nausea, increasingly dizzy and bleary, and sorry for himself.

  From the corner of his eye he could see Arthur Eaton, so natty in his white yachting cap, foulard, brass-buttoned Navy coat and immaculate white trousers, joining Sally Watson at the prow, joking, laughing, enjoying this perfect day on the water. For the first time, the very first time, Dilman envied Arthur Eaton, not because Eaton was white and he was black, but because Eaton had had the advantage of being raised to this kind of life, being a natural part of it, belonging to it. Eaton was to the Presidential yacht born. Himself, he was strictly a ferry commuter, a Chicago elevated or New York subway type.

  Bitterly he turned away from that pair and looked out to the hostile sea again. How he envied his predecessors, those natural outdoor maritime Presidents like Franklin Roosevelt and John Kennedy and T. C., gifted with sea legs, their class and breeding inborn-but all b
orn, all with the advantages from their day one. Weakly, elbows stiffening on the rising and falling rail, he indulged his self-pity. This goddam yacht was only a symbol of the whole impossible thing. It was rotten to grow up and live one’s entire life as an outcast, a fringe man, and that went not only for Negroes but for many whites, too, whites without background and money and training. It was rotten to live and die dampened by inferiority and awkwardness, never really knowing which fork, which spoon, never knowing etiquette, or the games of leisure, surfing and polo, and that latest South American dance, never knowing sumptuous family gatherings at Thanksgiving or Christmas (with Mother, the matriarch, not Ma, with knobby washboard hands), never knowing foundations and charities and old school ties and stock portfolios and-and assurance, confidence, acceptance-never knowing yachts.

  This was not just himself, a usurper here, a crasher, a servant made up like his master; this was most people everywhere, crippled for leisure by the exhausting striving to make good, make ends meet, make it until coronary time. That was Nat, too, in a way; Nat, like himself, knowing there was better while you pressed your nose to the pane, and knowing you had not the price of admission. There were greater inequities in life than this, but this was one that stayed with you forever. Like your skin, if it was black. His throat was filled with his gut, and he wanted to vomit it all overboard, but he fought it down, clenched his teeth and fought it, so as not to be what he was in front of Eaton and the Admiral and the women, and the Zeke Millers of the earth.

  “Mr. President-”

  He turned from the rail to find his physician, Admiral Oates, contemplating him.

  “Are you all right?” the physician inquired.

  “Why, yes, of course.” His Adam’s apple hardly had room to deny it.

  “I’ve had an eye on you. Mmm. You seem a trifle distressed.”

  “I’m tired. It’s hard to get off the treadmill. I’m tired.”