Irving Wallace - The Man

“You heard what I did?” Julian said to his father. Julian nodded toward Flannery. “He told you?”

“Yes,” Dilman said.

“I-I know it’s going to count against you in the-the trial-but I had to do it.”

“Why?” Dilman asked.

“Why?” Julian repeated. “Because when they impeached you, I figured you’d quit, and you didn’t. You set out to fight in the open the ones I tried to fight in secret. And then, from what I heard on the radio today, I knew you meant it-not being scared to punish Hurley because you believed he should be punished, and then-what I figured out from that ‘reliable source’ Pentagon story against you-that you were not afraid of the big-brass Charlies in uniform because you believed our best troops, no matter what color, should go to Africa. It-it just made me sick of my lying, when all I had wanted to do was to fight back in the open like you-so I took the plane here and figured the best way to begin was to stand up and tell the truth.” He paused. “I-I hope you’ll forgive me for what I did in the past, and what I did out there just now.”

Dilman considered his son evenly. “I already knew what you did in the past, Julian. I found out this afternoon,” he said. “As for what you did out there in the press lobby, that’s all right. I guess it had to be done… Now get yourself upstairs and find some nourishment in the pantry. I’ll be up in a little while.”

Quickly, awkwardly, Julian left the room, and when he was gone, Dilman turned slowly back to Abrahams.

Dilman stared thoughtfully at Abrahams for several seconds, and then he said, “Yes, I know, Nat, this can help lose me the Senate trial. Well, I suppose this was a sort of trial, too, in a way-only this was one I couldn’t afford to lose.” He tried to smile, but no smile came, and then he said, “That’s something. At least, it is to me.”

For the first time in the nine days since the impeachment trial in the United States Senate had been under way, the front page headline of the morning edition of the Washington Citizen-American made no direct mention of the legal proceedings against the President.

This early morning, the top and banner headline, bolder and inkier than any that had appeared before, read:

SCANDAL! EXCLUSIVE! DILMAN HAS DAUGHTER PASSING AS WHITE!

The second headline, scarcely smaller, as brazen and black, read:

PRESIDENT’S HIDDEN OFFSPRING ASHAMED OF HER RACE-AND PRESIDENT KNEW IT ALL ALONG!

Slowly, Douglass Dilman folded the newspaper until the headlines were no longer visible, and then he folded it again and dropped it into the wastebasket beside the Buchanan desk.

He slumped in his chair for a moment, feeling old and feeble, sickened to the marrow of his bones, but then he forced himself to lift his bowed head and meet Tim Flannery’s angry look and Nat Abrahams’ worried one.

“Why?” Dilman asked despairingly. “Doesn’t that Zeke Miller have enough without this?”

“No,” said Tim Flannery. “He wants to be sure you’re a dead horse, a real dead horse, before he stops beating you.”

“But can’t he see, it’s not I who am the victim?” Dilman said. “It’s poor Mindy, that poor, poor girl. Why go after her? Why ruin her life? It won’t get him any more Senate votes… Nat, explain it to me-I mean it-this is not only revolting, it’s mad, it’s senseless.”

Nat Abrahams sighed. “I know, Doug.” Restlessly, he came out of his chair, crossed the Oval Office to the French doors, and stared into the bleak gray of the morning. Then he said, “When you’re locked in a death fight with a fanatical enemy, Doug, don’t expect rational motives for his actions. If there’s any rhyme or reason to this-this so-called exposé in the paper-well, trying to fathom a mind like Zeke Miller’s-I suppose the sense of it would be this.” He came around and spoke directly to Dilman. “Miller doesn’t care a hoot about your daughter. She doesn’t exist, as far as he’s concerned. You are the target, and all he cares about is hitting you, high or low, anywhere. He’s prosecuting you before two sets of jurors, so he needs as much heavy buckshot as possible, and if there’s no legitimate buckshot, then nails or anything else will do.”

“What do you mean, Nat, two sets of jurors?”

“Your first jurors, the real ones, are the great outside public, and the members of the Senate are actually only a vulnerable second jury. If Miller can keep the voters antagonized toward you, he knows their feelings will press down on the Senate, and encourage their continuing antagonism. This Reb Blaser story about Mindy passing, for instance. Try to see its value through Miller’s distorted vision. Despite your turning down the Hurley appeal, and his execution the other day, you’ve captured more and more Negro and liberal white sympathy because of your willingness to fight your tormentors. The big television speech on Baraza and our pledged defense, over a week ago, is a good case in point. The majority of the audience didn’t like it, true, because they think you’re fomenting a needless war to help some worthless African blacks. But American Negroes and white liberals liked it, for the wrong reasons, and many moderates and independents liked it, for the right reasons. Miller understood their growing sympathy for you. He doesn’t want those people going over to your side. How to turn them against you once more?

“Well, however he did it, he found out you had another child, a daughter named Mindy, who is ashamed of being a Negro and is passing, and he found out that you knew that she was doing this, yet you had not stopped her. Okay. So today he shouts it to the world-he yells out-hey, American Negroes, lookee here, your Negro President has a daughter who’s ashamed of being the same color as you, and her old man approves. Do you see, Doug? He’s desperately trying to turn the ones who are for you against you, trying to tell your Negro following that you hate their skin and your own, trying to tell everyone-Dilman, he’s ashamed of his skin. Then he’s trying to tell the liberals, and the members of the Senate, Look, look at the kind of man you are judging, a man capable of perfidy and lies, constantly saying he had one child when he had two, hiding a grown daughter, condoning her masquerade. Is this kind of man fit to remain President? He’s not only untrustworthy, he’s positively un-American.

“That’s it, I think, Doug. That’s the level of Miller’s mentality, and the thinking of his fellow managers. They are appealing to the public, trying to get the public so whipped up against you that if the Senate dared to acquit you, there’d be marchers from four directions bearing down on Washington to burn the Capitol. You saw the caliber of witnesses they threw up against you all week long. Experts? Authorities? Judicious men to explain and defend their Articles of Impeachment? Hell, no. Not one. Instead, plain people, just-folks people, brought here for the holiday, swearing to hearsay and depending upon faulty memory to insist you were a drunkard, a lecher, an extremist-anything, as long as it is foul and inciting-and all declaiming your shortcomings in language the public can understand. No, Doug, it is not Mindy, it is you-they’re after you, by means foul or fair. It’s bad luck your girl has been caught in the middle. This news story is lousy. The whole thing is rotten lousy.”

Dilman pushed himself up from the desk and walked heavily toward Abrahams, joining him at the French doors. For a long and silent interval he looked out upon the barren Rose Garden. Then, as if addressing himself rather than Abrahams and Flannery, he said, “I’m so sorry for Mindy, so sorry. She was like her mother. She wanted so badly to be white, and average, and part of life. This thing, I don’t know what this’ll do to her, publishing both her names. I’d give anything to be with her now, just to comfort her and try to talk to her, try to explain and soothe her. But I don’t even know where she is. Edna says the phone number listed under Linda Dawson no longer is connected. It was changed to an unlisted number a couple of weeks ago. Now Mindy has seen the papers, she knows the truth is out, the fact of her being Negro, and now all her white friends know, and her employer knows, and her life-what’ll it be? And I can’t even get to speak to her.”