Irving Wallace - The Man

The words rang in his ears, in duet with the train’s whistle. Well, if he was nothing else, he was obedient. Here he was, on the Capitol Limited, little more than one hour from Washington’s Union Station.

He left the lavatory and groped his way into the compartment bedroom, where only the tiny bed light over his upper berth and the slit of morning beneath the green shade provided visibility. He took down his vest, and then his suit coat, and pulled them on. Fixing the silver watch chain, he squinted to make out the time. Yes, one hour and five minutes more to Washington.

He bent to see if Sue was awake. Her back was to him. Her small, fragile face was buried in the pillow, and her short bob was a tangle. He listened to her inhale and exhale, and loved her now as he had for every moment of their eighteen years. She was so sound asleep, so far from turmoil, and he regretted having kept her awake last night with the news that he had heard in Akron.

He touched her bare shoulder. “Sue, darling-”

Her shoulder lifted, fell, and her head, eyes still shut, came around. “Mmm?”

“Time to wake up. We’re almost there.”

“Thanks.”

“Are you awake, Sue?”

“I’m fine.”

“You’ve got an hour to dress. If you make it fast, you can join me for breakfast. The diner’s two cars back. I’ll be there.”

“Okay.”

He straightened, flexed his shoulder muscles, picked up his attachè case, and went to the door.

“Nat-”

He halted, returned, to find her on an elbow, eyes wide-open, staring up at him.

“Nat, is it true, what you told me last night-or was I dreaming?”

“You weren’t dreaming, dear.”

“No,” she said slowly. “I was afraid of that. Poor Doug in the White House. I don’t mean just that he’s colored. It’s that he’s so-so sensitive and-and withdrawn. Nat, they’ll crucify him.”

Abrahams frowned. “He’s tougher than a lot of people think, and smarter, too.” He paused. “Maybe it’s the best thing that could have happened-I mean, to the country.”

“Do you really believe that?”

“Honey,” he said evasively, “I never know absolutely what I believe until I’ve had breakfast and a pipeful. You ask me then. Now, hurry up. I’ll see you in the diner.”

Once he was alone in the train corridor, wending his way between the compartments and windows, he tried to understand what he did believe. Stopping before the last window, he placed a palm against the glass pane, briefly conscious of the blur of green trees flashing past him, but soon inattentive to the scenery. His mind had gone back to the scene he had witnessed at the depot, during the time of their departure yesterday.

When he and Sue had boarded the Capitol Limited in Chicago ten minutes before it left at three-forty yesterday afternoon, they had already known of the President’s sudden death in Frankfurt. All through the depot, and outside the train, and in the train itself, Abrahams had seen in the expressions of passengers and porters the same evidences of disbelief and anguish that he had observed that other terrible time when President John F. Kennedy’s life had been extinguished by an assassin’s bullet in Dallas.

Pushing himself away from the window, Abrahams tried to sort out the different qualities of grief. He felt sure that the public had reacted to T. C.’s death in Frankfurt in very much the same fashion that they had reacted to President Kennedy’s death in Dallas, which was considerably different from public reaction to Franklin D. Roosevelt’s death in Warm Springs. T. C. had been almost as youthful as Kennedy, and as vigorous. Most people had regarded T. C. more as an older brother than as a father, because he had been their Chief Executive less than three years and they had not become totally dependent upon him. His sudden death had shaken them badly-that was evident everywhere yesterday-but what seemed to shake them more was the realization that invincible youth and strength, carrying hope and ambition, shielded by the indestructibility of success and power, could be brought down and stamped out so swiftly and easily. Thus, Abrahams guessed, public lamentation had taken on the form of disbelief. When Roosevelt died-and this, too, Abrahams remembered very well-the President had been an intimate part of people’s lives and experiences for so many years that the loss had been not only the loss of the ever present head of the family, but each man’s loss of a great segment of his personal life.

After their train left Chicago, Nat and Sue Abrahams had talked over the tragedy and its meaning at length, and pored over the latest newspapers, and then he had devoted himself to his work. While Abrahams had voted for T. C., supported him, he had felt no passionate involvement with him, and so he suffered no feeling of passionate loss. He had thought, as he worked over his notes for the Washington meeting with Gorden Oliver, Emmich’s lobbyist there, that MacPherson might do the job as well as T. C. had done. There would be no national trauma.

The rest of the short afternoon on the train had been lost to working, napping, reading, and desultory chatter about the children, the new position that was in the offing, the utopia that was possible after that. They had gone to the lounge for martinis, and then eaten too much dinner. Abrahams had seen Sue back to their compartment, where the berths were already made. She had told him that she was tired, and would read some more, and go to sleep early.

With his attaché case he had returned to the lounge car to study the proposals from Emmich’s attorneys, to mark modifications and changes after them. He had hardly been aware that they were in Akron, and that it was eleven-fifteen and they were running a little late. But then, casually peering through the window, he had noticed, with growing curiosity, a large gathering of the train’s porters and conductors, and lips moving excitedly and considerable gesticulating from everyone.

Minutes later, as the Capitol Limited had begun to move again, the wizened Negro bartender had hurried into the lounge with the news. MacPherson had also died in Frankfurt. Senator Douglass Dilman, a colored man, had just been sworn in as President of the United States.

Doug Dilman.

It had taken Nat Abrahams a long time to calm the chaotic emotions he had felt about his old friend and his friend’s incredible promotion. At midnight Abrahams had gone back to his compartment. In the darkness Sue’s sleepy voice welcomed him and said good night. He had sat down on the edge of her berth, and told her what he had heard. She had snapped on the blue night light above her head, and he could see that she was upset and trembling. He had given her a sleeping pill, and then they had discussed it, until her voice had thickened and fallen silent, and she had drifted off to sleep again. Later he had stretched in his upper berth, but he had not slept. He had been awake, his mind a turmoil, for at least an hour after they left Pittsburgh.

And here it was early morning, and here he was drawing closer and closer to the nation’s capital, a city so jolted overnight, so changed, by the rise to highest office of the only colored man he had ever known well and one who had been his friend since their first meeting during the Second World War. Only the previous week Abrahams had had a letter from Dilman, who was overjoyed that Abrahams was coming to Washington. Dilman insisted that they must see one another as often as possible during Abrahams’ visit. Dilman had even set a date for their dinner of reunion. Abrahams speculated as to whether that engagement still existed and, if it did, what his friend would be like.

Sighing, Nat Abrahams drove further speculation from his mind and walked quickly, opening heavy resisting doors, into the lounge car, and then continued into the immaculate dining car. Except for a sprinkling of white passengers, absorbed in the Pittsburgh newspapers, the dining car appeared to be the scene of a Pullman porters’ convention. At least a half dozen of them, joined by the Negro waiters, were congregated at the far end, engaged in deep conversation.