Irving Wallace - The Man

“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?”