(1964) The Man

by Irving Wallace

  “Why tell me?” said Abrahams.

  “Because he heard you knew the President and—” Then, as if to prevent Abrahams from interrupting him, Oliver went on more urgently, in a rush, “Look, Nat, listen, the boys on the Hill—forget the Southern bloc—the others, they’re not too worried about Douglass Dilman. He’s behaved well. He’s made it clear he’s standing on the Party platform and listening to T. C.’s best minds. Only one curious fact gives them pause. The single major legislation the President has made no private or public commitment on is this minorities bill, the very bill he should be behind hot and heavy. It’s the only pacifier we have to stop the racial unrest in this country. Once it is law, all rioting and demonstrations will cease. No more repetitions of what happened down in Mississippi today. The Negroes will be too occupied and prosperous to complain. We’ll have solidarity.” He considered Abrahams a moment, and then he asked, “Have you read the MRP Bill yet?”

  “No,” Abrahams answered flatly. He felt vaguely irritated again and put upon. He had guessed, at once, what Gorden Oliver was leading up to, and he wanted to make it difficult for him. “No,” he repeated, “I haven’t. Should I?”

  Oliver screwed the top of his brandy cane tightly, and leaned it against the table once more. “Only because it is a vital piece of public works legislation, and a great part of your job for Eagles Industries will be to advise Emmich on any new bills affecting his interests.”

  Abrahams was more determined than ever to be difficult. He forced his eyebrows upward, ingenuously. “Is the minorities bill of that much concern to Emmich?”

  Now it was Oliver who was irritated and trying to control his feelings. “Really, Nat, you must know what passage of this bill can mean to Eagles. There’s a seven-billion-dollar—billion, mind you—Federal pie to be cut up among private industry. Eagles wants its share, and is ready to underbid all competition. And Eagles can do the job. We’re strong in the South, strongest there, where much of the money will be spent. We have the know-how and equipment to build those new vocational trade schools, those highways, those housing tracts, those factories. Sure we’re concerned, damn concerned. Nothing is more important to Emmich right now. I thought you knew that.”

  Abrahams was suddenly impatient with games. “I suppose I did know it. I guess I was leading you on a little, Gorden. I wanted to find out how involved you were in this legislation.”

  “Then you have read the bill?”

  “No, really, I have not. I know what it is about, generally, but I haven’t read it. I didn’t think I was on the payroll yet.”

  “Well, you are, in a way you are.”

  “Then I’ll get a copy.”

  “You won’t have to.” Oliver patted his chest complacently. “I brought a copy for you.”

  “So reading pending legislation is one of my first duties here,” said Abrahams. “Assignment one is the MRP, is that right? Okay. What am I to do after I’ve read it? Tell Emmich I think it’s great? He knows that. Tell him I think it won’t help him very much? He doesn’t want to hear that. Tell him what, Gorden?”

  “You have to tell him nothing,” said Oliver uneasily. “He wants passage of the bill—of course. I think he’d like to know that you want it, too.”

  Abrahams could feel the involuntary tension in the cords of his neck. “What’s the difference whether I want it or not?”

  “Nat, you’re being tough on me.” Oliver was frowning down at the cane. He took it, laid it across his lap, and turned it several times before looking up. “Christ, we’re on the same team. We’re getting money from the same mint. We have our jobs to do.”

  “I only want to know my job, I suppose.”

  Oliver appraised Abrahams with a quick glance. “Harv Wickland, the Majority Leader, feels the Party can push the bill through the House. It’ll be landing on President Dilman’s desk any day. Dilman is the one worrying Emmich, all of us. He’s the only unknown factor.”

  “You heard him say that he wants to read the bill in its final form.”

  “Come now, Nat, there won’t be many late changes. It’s in the open for everyone to read. Dilman has had plenty of time to read it and make up his mind. Really, Emmich is deeply concerned. He feels what Dilman does here is the test of him as the new President.”

  “You mean the test of him in the eyes of Eagles Industries.”

  “Well, whether he is for us or against us.”

  Abrahams found himself appalled at this constricted, selfish vision of a piece of legislation which carried with it so many broader ramifications. “Perhaps Dilman feels there is more at stake than whether this is good or bad for big business.”

  “I don’t know,” Oliver said. Then he added quickly, “Maybe you happen to know. Has President Dilman—after all, everyone is aware you’ve been in the White House with him pretty often—has he ever mentioned how he honestly feels about MRP? That could tell us a good deal. Emmich would be very grateful if he could get some inkling of—”

  “Gorden, I don’t know whether the President is for or against that bill, but even if I knew, even if he had discussed it with me, I wouldn’t tell you about it. I’ve been visiting with him as an old friend, not a lawyer-lobbyist for Eagles Industries.”

  “Touché,” said Oliver, with a twisted smile. “I’m nicked and I deserve it. But I’ve got my job, too, you know.”

  Abrahams crumpled his napkin and threw it on the table. He pushed back his chair. “Gorden, I know what you’ve been trying to get at. The MRP is an Eagles Industries type of bill. You want to be sure that, once it has passed both Houses, the President approves it. You’d like me to go to him right now and find out if he’s intending to sign it. If he does, you’d like to know first, so you’d have the jump on your competitors when it comes to submitting bids. If he’s on the fence or negative, you’d like me to use my influence on your—okay, our—on our behalf. That’s the sum of it, of this lunch, isn’t it?”

  Gorden Oliver almost beamed with relief. But then, aware of Abrahams’ taut face, he converted his smile to an appearance of moderate seriousness. His caution was obvious. “If you think Avery Emmich and I are asking you, as your first job for us, to go in and use your friendship with the President to make Eagles a few millions, you are mistaken. We’re not such fools, and we don’t favor using such tactics. No, that’s not it. All we want you to do is to study the MRP Bill, and then study a little homework we at Eagles have done on the bill, a sort of breakdown on its value to our economy and—and to domestic peace—” He reached inside his suit coat, and drew out one bulky document and one folded memorandum. He handed the bulky document across the table. “There’s the text of the MRP.”

  Abrahams opened it, and read the heading: “Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled—Section 1. This Act may be cited as the ‘Minorities Rehabilitation Program.’ ” He carefully folded it. “Okay,” he said quietly.

  “And this is a concise breakdown and memorandum of the high points of the bill,” said Oliver, handing over the other folded pages. “Anyone who reads this will know in five minutes how this five-year works program will help the Negroes, all minorities, economically, socially, educationally, improve and integrate them, to the best interests of the majority white community as well. It may be brief, but it is thorough, Nat. You’ll see how this bill can be helpful to every one of the fifty states, naming names, facts, figures. It’s irresistible.”

  Accepting this document, too, Abrahams shoved both in his pocket. “I’ll read them. Then what?”

  “If you approve—I think you will, most everyone has, except for a handful of left-wingers and right extremists—I wish you’d tell us so. Then, if it comes up, only if it comes up, you understand, I wish you’d let President Dilman know how you feel. That would be natural. But, Nat, even if you find it awkward, then—well, at least ask him to have a look at our patriotic little breakdown of the facts and figures. He might find it an eye-o
pener, if he needs one. I suspect he’s on our side, anyway. . . . Don’t promise me anything, Nat. I just want to be able to tell Avery Emmich you are studying this, and will do what you believe is right and best for the country.”

  “For the country,” Abrahams murmured, rising quickly. “I’ll be in touch with you, Gorden. Thanks for the feed.”

  Departing from the Caucus Room, Abrahams could see Oliver’s worried face pretending to study the restaurant bill as, out of the corner of one eye, he watched his guest and tried to gauge his feelings.

  Going up the corridor, Nat Abrahams’ feelings were red with anger, not at the idiot lobbyist’s effort to use him to coerce the Chief Executive of the land, who happened to be a friend, but at himself for having allowed himself, for the first time in his entire life, to be put in a position that might compromise his honesty as a responsible human being.

  By the time he had left the Hotel Congressional and crossed over to the corner before the Old House Office Building where Sue was to pick him up, his anger had subsided. The bright cool air was not only refreshing but prickly, stinging to life his numbed sense of reality.

  His abiding human fault, Abrahams had come to realize, was that he constantly clung to the saber of romanticism. This satisfied his ego and conscience, but it had provided him with a poor weapon in a progressive, mechanized age, a weapon shown to be inadequate for the protection of his wife, his children, his weakened heart. He had known from the start of the Eagles negotiations that he could not slay dragons with obsolete sabers and broadswords to rescue his family and save himself. This was a new world out here, and to get by the dragons you did not blindly slash at them—they were too big, too many, and you were too small, too ill-armed—instead, you reasoned with them, you compromised, you gave something so that they would give, too. What was it that wise old Edmund Burke had said? That all government, almost every human benefit and enjoyment, almost every virtue and prudent act, was founded on compromise and barter. As his own grandfather used to say, holding him on one bony knee, his grandfather licking his saliva and croaking, “Boychick, you bend sometimes so maybe you won’t break.” Or, Abrahams now thought, so you won’t break others with you when you fall.

  He searched for his mottled briar pipe, filled it with tobacco from the rubbed pouch, and lit it. He had taken no more than one puff when the rented Ford blocked his vision and Sue was framed in the car window, her left hand hitting the horn.

  He climbed inside, kissed her cheek, and the Ford jolted forward. He asked her what she had been doing and where they were going, and she began to tell him, but he hardly listened. If you must bend, he thought, how far do you bend?

  As the car turned a corner, and he was forced against her, he realized that she had become silent and was trying to study him as she drove.

  “What’s the matter, Nat?” she asked.

  “Matter? What makes you think—?”

  “You haven’t heard a word I’ve said. You’ve been a million miles away.”

  He tried to smile. “Only a few blocks away, in the Hotel Congressional with Gorden Oliver, errand boy between Mephistopheles in Atlanta and Nat Faust right here.”

  “So that’s the way it is,” said Sue. “Tell me. Don’t leave out a thing.”

  She drove, and he talked. He told her what Oliver had wanted, and how he himself had reacted, as much as he could remember of it in a ten-minute monologue. When he was done, he turned his head. Her pretty face, still unlined except at the brow, was pointed straight ahead at the windshield, wifely grave.

  “That’s it, Sue,” he said. “Beneath all the verbiage it comes to this, a command from on high—go in there and influence Doug Dilman, no matter what he believes, to approve the minorities bill. Persuade him, get him to sign it, and you’ve earned your salary from Emmich and big business.”

  “Gorden Oliver didn’t tell you to do that in so many words.”

  “He told me without the words.”

  She continued watching the street before them. “Nat, maybe you’ve got your hackles up for no reason at all. You are simply assuming that whatever is good for Eagles Industries is bad for the country, for Dilman, for yourself, and you are against it. Can’t it be that what they want might also be what everyone else wants and needs?”

  “We-ll—could be.”

  “The odds are Doug Dilman likes most of the bill and will sign it. He hasn’t told you he won’t, has he?”

  “No, he hasn’t.”

  “I read the papers too, and from what I have read, almost the entire press and the political organizations and Congress seem to be behind this legislation.”

  “That doesn’t make it right.”

  Sue glanced at him. “That doesn’t make it wrong either, darling. I think you’re misplacing your hostility. You feel guilty about leaving your practice, abandoning your underdogs, making so much money in a short time. You feel ashamed, and so you’re taking it out on Eagles and Emmich and Oliver and anything they propose. Nat, you’re smarter than that. Study all that stuff in your pocket objectively, like you study a legal brief. Then decide how you feel. If MRP is a sensible compromise program, speak up for it. And there’s nothing wrong in telling Doug you’re for it, whether he’s President or not. He may welcome discussing it with you. If you don’t like it, shut up.”

  She took her right hand from the steering wheel and covered her husband’s hand. “Nat, maybe it is good for the country. Don’t be like some angry kid who has to be against everything his elders are for, to show he’s a man. You are a man, the best and most wonderful one on earth. You are a man who can still serve himself and the public while protecting his own life and his children. Don Quixote wasn’t for real, darling, but you are. No more dragons, either. Freud scared them away. And all that is left are human problems to be solved by human beings like yourself in a mature way. I know you’ll handle this and the next three years that way.”

  Her literary allusion, so exactly and uncannily reflective of his own on the street corner earlier, swept aside the last vestige of his anger. Wives, he thought, wonderful wives who grow your minds as you grow theirs, until you and they are one and the same till death do you part. He was amused by her and loved her, for herself and for the better part of him that she possessed, and he wanted to hug her and hold her close to him and enjoy her.

  Instead, he leaned over and kissed the corner of her mouth. She seemed startled, and wary, and then pleased.

  “Mmm,” she whispered, “nice, even if I did almost hit that truck.” Then she said, “What brought on that affection?”

  He continued to smile at her. She would never know what had moved him. Nor did it matter. He could only say, “Because you make good speeches, and you are sensible, and you think I am a man, and I love you. I’ll always love you.”

  He settled back, at ease at last, lighted his pipe again, and felt strong enough to bend a little, a little, if it would be necessary.

  When Otto Beggs caught sight of the broken, unlighted neon sign jutting out from the Walk Inn a long block away, he automatically slowed down. For the second time in a week he had lied to Gertrude about his hours, to get away from home early, and for the second time in a week he was deliberately timing his arrival at the tavern because he knew that Ruby Thomas would be there, and suddenly he felt furtive and uneasy about what had previously come about so naturally—well, almost.

  Except for those times in Korea, which did not count because he was in the Army and in danger and the tiny, submissive girls were foreigners, and except for four or five times on special assignment trips around the country, which did not count because he had been drinking in his off hours and the women were prostitutes, not women, Otto Beggs had never been unfaithful to his wife. He was prim and correct about living up to the responsibilities of a husband and a father, and about remembering the obligations of his position in the Secret Service, and especially the extra obligations thrust upon him as a Congressional Medal of Honor holder, and he would do nothing to
sully his reputation. He looked down, with an attitude of superiority (and a tinge of envy), upon those of his colleagues who cheated on their wives, proud that there was as little likelihood that a scandal would find its way into his scrap-books as there was that Tom Swift would accept a bribe or that an astronaut would beat his wife.

  Yet what had made Otto Beggs feel furtive this time, for the first time, was not the lie to Gertrude (he had already lied to her two days ago), not the fact that he had told Ruby Thomas he would be there (he had been there with her three times before), but that he had lain awake several hours last night enacting a fantasy relationship with her. Even worse, late this morning, and again after lunch, with Austin’s lousy real estate primers open on the desk, he had been unable to study a line because Ruby had sat on the pages before him, Ruby dressed (which was like any other woman undressed), Ruby naked (which was like any other woman undressed), Ruby naked (which was like no sight on earth, he imagined), Ruby opening her arms to him (which had excited him as much as if he were a schoolboy).

  It was this sudden obsession with her, and the realization that she might not be averse to fulfilling his dreams, that gave today’s meeting a special significance, and gave him pause in his advance toward the Walk Inn, where she waited. For now this was no more, at least to him, a casual meeting between chance acquaintances. It was something strange to him: an assignation. It was the kind of surreptitious activity of which he disapproved as being indecent, almost un-American, and yet it moved him like a force powerful enough to overwhelm his puritan will and fear of danger. Much as his mind resisted it, his body had become a partner to this rendezvous with Ruby. For in a life of disillusionment, where he was being ignored on a job he loved, being degraded into studying for a new and anonymous and sedentary career he detested, being disapproved of by those closest to him, being made less and less a virile male of action, there was one radiant light of hope. Ruby. It was Ruby who admired his looks, his position, his dreams. Ruby, who was young, magnificent, passionate (he was sure). It did not surprise him that he could not resist her. What did astound him was that the one radiant light of hope in his life, in this gray time, should shine from one so black. For Ruby Thomas, twenty-four, was a Negro.