Irving Wallace - The Man

“He’s a nasty customer, no question. You’d think he’d know better. But I understand his kind. I’ve been through his state with T. C., and there are loads of Millers down there. When you’ve seen that, you can know how he feels about having Dilman in here.”

“Wayne, you must believe me, I have nothing against Dilman because he is black. I simply have no prejudices about color.”

“Neither have I,” said Talley hastily.

Speaking more to himself than to Talley, Eaton went on. “I could never be on Miller’s side or Hankins’ side or anyone’s for such a reason. In fact, I would feel an obligation to defend President Dilman against such attacks.” He considered what he would say next. “I could find myself resisting Dilman, and being unwillingly thrown in with the Miller crowd, for only two reasons. If Dilman were, indeed, to perform as a Negro President instead of the President of the entire nation, if he were to show favoritism to men of his race to the detriment of the country as a whole, I would have to oppose him. And if he were to fall under the wrong influence, jettison T. C.’s program and T. C.’s team, I would have to fight him.” Then he added, “I do not anticipate either of these problems arising.”

“Well, up on the senior side of the Hill there’s a little more concern, Arthur,” said Talley. “Senator Hankins feels that the only way to preserve T. C.’s program is to preserve his Cabinet. They’ve been trying to figure out a way of curbing Dilman’s power of removal.”

“Yes, I guess I heard something of that last night.”

“They’re worried about Dilman moving in, feeling his oats after a bit, and then firing you and replacing you with a Negro friend or some white liberal who will toady to him. They’re worried this would not only end T. C.’s program but weaken the rightful line of succession.”

Eaton pursed his lips. “I believe that they are building straw men to knock down.”

“They want to play it safe, Arthur. As long as you’re around, they feel there is someone to oversee Dilman, make sure he speaks T. C.’s language and signs bills with T. C.’s pen. Then, too, they’re all feeling a little fatalistic-with good reason-and they want to make sure that if anything happens to Dilman, you’ll be around to succeed him, you and not someone, Negro or white, who does not represent the Party’s platform.”

“Yes, I see,” said Eaton thoughtfully. “Whatever they do, they had better make sure it is within the limitations imposed by the Constitution.”

“I’m curious to know exactly what they’re up to,” Talley said. “We know what Miller and his House boys are doing, but I keep wondering about Senator Hankins. I think I’ll give him a ring.” He started for the telephone, but hesitated when he reached it. “No, I don’t think I want to talk to Hankins. That’ll be Miller all over again.” He snapped his fingers. “I know-” He lifted the receiver and dialed one digit. “Edna? This is Governor Talley. Be a good girl and hook me up with Senator Hoyt Watson. He’s probably still at home… Yes, I’ll wait.”

Across the room Arthur Eaton waited, too. When he heard Talley get his connection and begin to question Senator Watson, he ejected his cigarette butt from the holder and replaced it with a fresh cigarette. It was the first time in a decade, to his surprise, that he had found it necessary to chain-smoke.

CONCENTRATING on the postcard-sized screen of the miniature Swiss television set, which stood on the white Formica breakfast table between them, Sally Watson heard her father say, “One second, Governor Talley, hold it a second.”

She glanced up from her coffee to find her father jabbing a finger at the television set. “Sally,” he called to her over the din, “would you mind lowering it a trifle?”

“Of course not, Dad.” She put down her coffee, reached out and turned down the volume.

“That’s better, baby.” Senator Hoyt Watson’s long Percheron face had gone back to the mouthpiece from which he removed his hand. “Okay, Governor, would you repeat your question?”

As she picked up her coffee cup again, Sally Watson’s attention returned to the television screen. The horrible newsreel film of the Frankfurt catastrophe had ended, and now the network was beginning to project a hastily prepared documentary biography to acquaint its viewers with President Douglass Dilman.

Fascinated, she watched the unreal scene in the Cabinet Room of the White House the night before, as Senator Dilman took the Presidential oath. Although she had seen Dilman a number of times in the corridors of the Old Senate Office Building and at Washington social affairs, she had never really been aware of him as an individual, she realized. In close-up on the television screen, he became a person, a very dark person, to be sure, but a man with neat wavy hair, kind eyes, and a habit of rubbing his upper lip with his lower one. Now the film took viewers back to Dilman’s beginnings. There were scenes of a Mid-western city slum area, where Dilman had been born over fifty years ago, and still photographs of an unattractive infant in absurd lacy dresses, and then dull shots of school buildings, and Sally Watson’s interest began to wane and her head began to throb.

She poured herself a third cup of black coffee, hoping her father would not see this, and she wondered at what point during the gruesome party last night she had switched from vodka to Scotch. She could not remember, except that she had made the change because the vodka had done nothing for her and she had wanted something that would make the evening bearable, especially with all that incessant and tiresome Grim Reaper chatter provoked by T. C.’s death. More and more, she knew, she was mixing her drinks at parties, determined to attain euphoria swiftly, and more and more often the hangovers were persisting late into the next day, when she was forced to rid herself of them with fresh drinks and new pills.

Drinking the third cup of black coffee, she tried to devote herself to the television screen. But now her father was replying to Talley, and since the sound volume on the set was low, it was superseded by her father’s basso, so that his voice and the image on the screen blended and created utter confusion.

Because her father’s voice was more alive than the pictures on the screen, and dominated them, she surrendered viewing for listening. Her father, a large, impressive, authoritative figure, with his trademark shock of white hair and his trademark black string tie in evidence, was drawling into the telephone.

“Certainly I’m not happy about the turn of events, Governor,” he was saying, “and neither will my constituents be happy. I don’t like to have truck with Hankins and Miller and their Ku Klux Klan adherents, but at the same time I must agree with them that the country is today faced with a crisis. I don’t like having a Negro as Chief Executive any more than they do, but I don’t like it for different reasons. I don’t think the country is ready for a colored man as President, and I foresee endless strife. I don’t think Dilman, the little I know of him, is up to the rigors of the office. He is adequately educated, modest, a good Party man, but I don’t think he is cut out of Presidential cloth. He may blunder us into considerable grief, unless we hold a firm rein on him. However, this I can assure you, Governor, and you may repeat my words to the Secretary of State-I cannot in good conscience go along with Miller in attempting legal gymnastics to prevent him from holding an office allowed him by the Constitution. I will not subscribe to that. On the other hand, I believe that what Senator Hankins is proposing to do does make a certain amount of sense-”

He halted to listen to Talley, nodding his head slightly at whatever he was hearing.