Irving Wallace - The Man

Abruptly, Leroy Poole ceased drumming his fingers on the table. Once more he considered the mother of his idol, and was again vaguely disturbed and disappointed. Most often, Poole had observed, and made note of it for some future writing, the mothers of celebrities proved disconcerting. You might consider a novelist or scientist or philosopher or military hero so great, so invincible, so perfect as to believe that he had burst upon this mundane earth full-grown, without the process of human birth and with no previous habitat except Olympus. And then, sometimes, you learned he had a mother, a living rag, bone, and hank of hair, and it amazed you that a womb belonging to one so unattractive, mean, stupid, or merely garrulous and mediocre, could have produced Greatness. Especially was this often true in the case of celebrities renowned for their beauty, actresses or actors-flawless idols, all, until their mothers came out of the closets, shrill and repulsive crones.

From the moment that he had sent for her, to the time he had awaited her arrival, Leroy Poole had expected Gladys Hurley to be such a mother, a parent the complete antithesis of her sublime son. And what confounded Poole the most last night, when he had set eyes upon his idol’s mother for the first time, was that Gladys Hurley appeared to be the Olympian mother incarnate. Nothing about her, neither her appearance nor her manner, had contradicted her son’s heroic proportions.

Secretly, emotionally, Poole had been pleased that Gladys Hurley was worthy of her great son; secretly, intellectually, Poole had been distressed. He had wanted, when he went before President Dilman in these critical moments, someone to supplement himself and his own appeal in the confrontation. The brief that he and the lawyer had prepared, Poole hoped, would provide the argument that would be acceptable to Dilman’s intelligence, what little there was of that. The mother, he had hoped, would be the woeful and pathetic universal mother, perhaps the mother of Dilman’s own childhood, who would shake and soften Dilman and reach his deepest feelings.

For once, in the shrewdness of his preparations, Leroy Poole had prayed for a nauseating pudding of a mother, a weeper, a mammy talker, a servile, menial mother, a shawl and Good Book mother, a breast-beating, psalm-sniffling, kneeling, begging mother capable of making the hardest heart crack. Instead, he had been handicapped by Gladys Hurley, and the final touch to his grand design had been botched.

He inspected her now. She was tall and thin, neat and respectable in her dark Sunday-meeting dress. The gray in her hair had been blue-rinsed. Her square, taut, dignified visage was as impassive and tough as that of a plains squaw. She carried silence like a sword. Except for her lack of formal education, which showed itself during her brief forays into speech, except for her work-roughened hands, except for the stoicism in her bearing, there was nothing that betrayed the oppressed and embittered Negro mother. She was worthy of Jefferson Hurley, yes, but she was wrong, all wrong, for a sentimental yahoo like Dilman.

Nevertheless, between them, they would have to make do, Leroy Poole decided. The cautious confidence he had brought along with Mrs. Hurley to the White House now became surer as he recalled his lengthy petition for executive clemency, his detailed review of the unjust trial and sentence, his documentation of new evidence (the prejudicial remarks to the press by the Federal judge presiding, the refusal of the court to grant immunity to the one surviving Turnerite-since Burleigh Thomas was dead-who had participated in the kidnaping with Hurley but escaped, and had been prepared to vouch for the fact that Judge Gage had threatened Hurley’s life before and after the kidnaping, as well as other new and important facts), and his closing moving plea that the President commute Hurley’s death sentence to life imprisonment.

Leroy Poole wondered how carefully Dilman, with his self-absorption, the distractions occasioned by his impeachment, had studied the appeal. The last time he had spoken to Dilman-it seemed another age by now-he had been threatening, even insulting, to the President. Would the residue of his resentment weight the scales as part of the President’s judgment? Poole feared it might and then he did not. For when he had last been here in Miss Foster’s office, she had come straight from Dilman to inform him that the President had promised he would see that the cumbersome process of appeal for Presidential clemency would be expedited. If Dilman had still borne him a grudge, he would not have made the concession.

Indeed, Poole had definitely received cooperation from the Department of Justice. His appeal of the sentence, in the case of the United States v. Hurley , had been rushed through all five stages. His application had been swiftly processed. His affidavits, in the hands of the appointed pardon attorney and United States Attorney, had been rapidly investigated, considered, acted upon, and the Attorney General’s personal recommendation, along with the original appeal, had moved speedily on to the President. Now the petition for clemency was on the threshold of the fifth and final stage-notification of the President’s decision.

Surely, Poole thought, the Dilman who had read this appeal could no longer be the faint, vacillating, half-ostrich, counterfeit-white Dilman he had known months ago as a senator and as the repugnant subject of his hack biography. Surely, Poole thought, the Dilman who read this appeal had been altered by the events around him, which would explain why Dilman himself was unjustly on trial (yes, even Poole would concede this, because, as Dilman’s smart attorney had said on television today, he was being indicted under an invisible Article of Impeachment directed at his black skin).

Suddenly Poole was distracted by a movement from Gladys Hurley. She had opened her imitation-patent-leather purse and found her compact, and was phlegmatically examining herself in the mirror.

As she returned the compact to the purse, Leroy Poole said, “I was just reviewing the case, Mrs. Hurley. I think we have everything on our side.”

She said, “I hope so, Mr. Poole.”

He said, “Of course, we’ve got to allow for anything to happen. If-if it goes the wrong way-you remember our discussion last night, don’t you? I mean, we’re of one mind about that?”

She said, “Yes, sir, if that’s what’ll save my boy.”

Satisfied, Leroy Poole began to consult his wristwatch for the twentieth time, when the corridor door opened.

A White House policeman said, “The President is back. He’ll see you now. Right this way to Mr. Lucas’ office. He’s the engagements secretary.”

Hastily, Mrs. Hurley and Leroy Poole followed the policeman across the checkered tile of the hallway, until they were shown into a modest antechamber with two brown desks. Shelby Lucas, the bespectacled engagements secretary with the Hapsburg lip and undershot jaw, was standing.

“Mrs. Gladys Hurley? Mr. Poole? Sorry to have delayed you,” he said. “The President had to attend a ceremony, and he’s only now returned. I’m afraid he’s running behind schedule, but you may have ten minutes.”

Poole liked the sound of that ten minutes. Bad tidings took more time. One did not snuff out another’s life without lengthy explanations. Good news needed no hour hand.

Lucas had opened the door beside his broad desk, signaled his visitors, and they obediently followed him through a little corridor. Lucas rapped, opened the next door, and announced to the occupant inside, “Mr. President, Mrs. Gladys Hurley and Mr. Leroy Poole.”

They went inside, and Douglass Dilman, on his feet beside his desk, shook Mrs. Hurley’s hand, murmuring some amenity, and then he took Poole’s fat hand. “Hello, Leroy. It’s been some time. Do sit down over there by the fireplace. It’ll be more comfortable.”