Irving Wallace - The Man

“It means, Wayne, he needs to display some dignity as an individual, to prove he is not simply a parrot. He is a person, a person who happens to be Negro, and he wants at least to read the most important bill presented to Congress in twenty years involving the people of his race. It makes sense. In his shoes, I would do the same.”

“But you think we have him?”

Eaton frowned. “Forgive me, Governor, but I would not put it precisely that way. I’d say that T. C. has him, and he has T. C., and that is good enough for me.”

“Amen,” said Talley. “And I say you deserve the entire credit.”

“Not all,” said Eaton. “Hesper deserves some of it.”

“I still say-you,” said Talley. “You convinced her to be upstairs when he was there, and to speak to him the way she did. Nobody can resist a widow. That would be like pushing Mom out the window or stepping on the flag. You’re a genius, Arthur. I feel now-why, it’s almost like having T. C. back in the President’s office.”

“T. C. is in the President’s office,” said Arthur Eaton. “And we’re going to keep him there.”

Douglass Dilman sat back in the green swivel chair and contemplated his son across the Buchanan desk.

Since his arrival ten minutes ago, the boy had remained in a state of high enthusiasm. He had congratulated his father profusely. He had happily recounted the details of his train trip down from New York, accompanied by the Secret Service man who had shown up at Trafford University six days ago. He had reported proudly that every passenger aboard was absorbed in a newspaper or weekly magazine filled with pictures of President Dilman. He had recounted the excitement of his ride in the White House limousine, of the photographers who had surrounded him outside the West Wing lobby, of his rescue by Tim Flannery.

Momentarily muted by his first visit to the Oval Office, Julian had then wanted to know everything about it. Dilman had quickly led his son on a tour of the room, pointing out the historical curiosities about which he had recently learned. He had shown Julian the Chief Executive’s seal impressed upon the white ceiling, the.51 Spencer carbine first shot by Lincoln now hanging on a wall, the cork floor between the carpet and French doors still pitted from the spikes of Eisenhower’s golf shoes, the faint heel markings on the wood of the Buchanan desk left by Kennedy’s young son when he crawled under it, the mounted leopard head presented by the President of Baraza to T. C., which the First Lady had permitted to remain behind. When they had returned to the bare desk, Julian wondered if his father would be allowed to put his own effects upon it. Dilman had replied, “Of course, when everything’s unpacked. Next time you come you’ll see the Forensic League trophy on the desk, and those framed pictures of your mother and yourself.” Both had been conscious, fleetingly, of the name and picture unmentioned.

Now Dilman observed his son, rather than listened to him, as Julian rattled on. Julian was relating how the events of the past week had thrilled the student body of Trafford University. Studying the boy, Dilman was surprised again that Julian was almost twenty years old. Julian’s dudish attire-narrow-shouldered, tapering suit coat, tight trousers, high-collared, starched white shirt with the Italian-made tie, pointed, glossy English shoes-accentuated his chicken-breasted, slim and slight five feet seven inches. Julian’s short-cropped hair was pomaded, his white-brown eyeballs bulged out of the coal-black face across the center of which his nostrils were distended. His constantly animated hands, scrubbed clean, the fingernails manicured, were almost overdelicate, in contrast to his African visage. One day he would be wizened.

Julian had, Dilman feared, a certain lack of maturity, balance, judgment. Where his sister resembled her mother physically, Julian had inherited some of his mother’s character traits, too quick to become manic and too quick to become depressive, too often reckless and too often venomous. It was these traits that had made Dilman determine that the boy would be safer in a Negro school, among his own, than in a Southern nonsegregated school, which might be a potential ammunition dump.

Considering his son, Dilman wondered if he had acted wisely. Julian had pleaded to enter the famous university in South Carolina which had been desegregated by force-five Negroes had then been attending it, and they did so under guard-arguing that he wanted to get used to the equality he deserved and arguing that he had every right to benefit from the university’s renowned School of Law. Dilman had refused to let his boy enter that explosive institution. At the time he had said, and tried to believe, that he was doing this for Julian’s own good, to shelter him from the hatred, ostracism, and possible physical violence that were bound to result. Often, afterward, following troubled discussions of his decision with Wanda, Dilman had wondered if he had acted less on his son’s behalf than on his own. The entry of a senator’s son into a South Carolina college would have put Dilman into the news, underlining his Negroness and differentness to his constituents, and this would have been a political detriment rather than an asset to him, and harmed the Negro cause in general.

Yet, Dilman could see, enrollment in a once entirely white college might have had a salutary effect upon Julian. Not only would it have answered his youthful demands for equality, but it would have enforced upon him a sense of social and scholastic responsibility, modified his flare-ups of resentment, given him a greater maturity. Certainly, Dilman could see, Trafford University had not served Julian well. If anything, it only served Dilman himself, kept the public surface of his own life smooth. The peace that Dilman had won by placing his son in the isolation and safe shelter of a Negro school had been costly to the boy. Julian’s frustration was fuel for his anger. Segregation among his own-“that crummy academic Harlem,” Julian had once called Trafford-had made him less fit to become a citizen of the country at large. The parentally enforced segregation, with its withdrawal of rights and challenges, had made Julian disinterested in the life around him and in his education.

Continuing to inspect his son, Dilman tried to tell himself that he had performed sensibly, with a consideration of reality that Julian did not possess. As a father, Dilman had been and was still protecting his child. This morning there was none of the usual bitterness, resentment, imbalance of temperament in Julian. He appeared stimulated, even happy. But then, listening more carefully, Dilman could not deceive himself. The boy was not happier with Trafford, but with the fact that overnight he was a President’s son at Trafford. His pleasure was not that he had won more attention and respect from his colored classmates. He had already had an undue amount of that, unearned, as a senator’s offspring. His pleasure was that members of the white faculty, and members of the white press, and white social arbiters in nearby New York towns, had been fawning upon him.

“Geez, Dad, I wish you could have been to that tea in the Law School library yesterday,” Julian was saying. “Except for some of the honor students, I was the only undergrad there. You’d think I was a celebrity or something the way those white professors kept coming around me to ask about you and your law background, and how you did in Commercial Law, and where you practiced, and if you kept up your interest in law after you got into Congress. I tell you, you should have seen. Even the Dean of Admissions kind of tried to get my ear, to find out my plans, and to find out if I had talked to you, and if I was going down to the White House to see you. Imagine, old frostpuss, the Dean himself-”