(1964) The Man

by Irving Wallace

  George Murdock withdrew the newspaper and carefully folded it. “I suppose it is Miller—after all, the paper is his plaything—but there are dozens more who are apt to say the same thing.”

  Edna could not control the quaver in her protesting voice. “It’s terrible, terrible, George. I’ve read some bad things—the President insists on seeing everything—but this, his painting the White House black, creating an Uncle Tom’s Cabinet, it’s—it’s scurrilous libel. He ought to sue. George, I wish you wouldn’t buy that newspaper any more.”

  He had taken Edna’s arm, and when the street was free of traffic, he guided her across it and into Lafayette Park. As they passed the Kosciusko statue, he said, “I disapprove of this as much as you do, Edna, you know that. But what the devil, I can’t say as I blame Reb Blaser. He does what he’s told. He’s got a job to do like the rest of us. I will say one thing, he’s a darn good writer.”

  “Then why doesn’t he write for someone decent? I think there is simply no excuse—”

  “Edna, be reasonable,” pleaded George Murdock. “We newspapermen try to be truthful and honest in our own way. Blaser has to give in a little, just the way I do. Do you think I like slanting my stories the way I have to, full of corn-shucked pap, because my employer and audiences are conservative hayseeds? Still, I have to. I’m sure you don’t like working overtime, like tonight. Yet you have to. Do you think Dilman likes reading newspapers like this one any more than I do? No, but he has to and I have to, so we both know what’s going on. The country’s full of many kinds of people, Edna, and we have to live with them.”

  “Well, I don’t want to if I can help it,” Edna said. Her wrath had diminished as they reached the center of the park. George’s objectivity and good sense always calmed her, and Lafayette Park, too, always had the effect of soothing her. Even as she listened to George, she had been peering across the artificially lighted grass toward the tree trunks, looking for the brown squirrels, and sparrows and pigeons, that gave her so much pleasure. They reminded her of the farm in Wisconsin and her childhood when there had been so little conflict and so many rosy dreams. She saw two squirrels at last, one scampering up the rough bark-covered trunk of a tree, the other following, and she felt even better. “The poor President,” she said. “I can see him opening up the paper tomorrow morning or before lunch. I always try to avoid him then. I can’t stand the—the way his face looks—”

  “How does it look?”

  “How does it look? Sort of like the face of one of those Negroes they knock down in the South, after they pull back the dogs and close in around him and start kicking him—I remember the series of pictures of one on the ground being kicked, his first look of automatic shock, sort of, then pain but not letting them see it, then finally a look of resignation, keeping the hurt inside so as not to give them satisfaction. That’s the way the President looks when he reads the papers. He doesn’t show much. But I’d hate to see his X rays.”

  George Murdock scratched one scarred cheek and then the other. “I guess I can only say I hope your boss is tough underneath, Edna. This vilification is just the start. Every President is a target. He asks for the job and he’s got to be prepared—”

  “President Dilman did not ask for the job.”

  “He did when he ran for the Senate, and he did when he accepted the gavel as President pro tempore of the Senate. Dilman is a bigger target than the others, because he’s black on white and can’t be missed. There he is. Everything he does will be judged not only for its wisdom but for what it means coming from a Negro. The facts of life, Edna. Every day is going to be worse for him.”

  Her gaze went to George, and for once she was not calmed by his matter-of-factness. “You think it’ll be worse?”

  “Unquestionably.”

  She resolutely prepared herself to speak what had grown in her mind. “If it is, George, then, well—maybe he can take it, but I can’t. I’m going to quit.”

  He was so startled that he stopped abruptly to study her, to gauge how serious she was. She knew that her upset expression convinced him. He took her arm. “Come here a minute,” he said. He led her to the last bench before Pennsylvania Avenue. After they sat down, he said, “Edna, I thought we settled your quitting that first day, when you took my advice and decided not to resign.”

  “It’s never been completely settled in my mind, George. That first day I made up my mind to stay because you convinced me he needed help and because—you know—I felt so sorry for him. But I’m too close to what’s going on, and I can’t stand it. How can I explain it to you?”

  She clasped her hands and looked down at the pavement. “I’ve had enough of the mental strain, George. The position is hard enough without that. I’ll be honest with you, I really will. I finally figured it out. It’s not that I suffer every day with him, get hurt because he’s hurt, the way I felt with T. C. No. I—I’m as liberal as anybody, but I can’t somehow identify with him in the same way. He’s so different from me. I know this is awful, but it is his color, I guess, his whole background, so different from anything I know. Yet I can understand him. So I’m outside him, but I have to be there. You know what—it is like a bullfight—having to go to a bullfight and watch. He’s the bull, practically helpless, no chance, and the men with the banderillas and the picadors with their lances are sticking him till he bleeds, goading and hurting him, until he’s weaker and weaker, and the matador comes out and finally drives the sword in behind his neck. If I have to be close up, watching, maybe I can’t feel like the bull, I can’t suffer that way, but I can hate what I see of all the torturing before he is finished and dragged away. I can be revolted and sickened by it. Well, George, that’s the way I feel, being in those offices with Dilman. I can’t stand it. I hate having to go in and see him tomorrow.”

  George Murdock squeezed her hand. “Edna, he has only one year and four months left in office. Surely—”

  “How many days is that? Four hundred, four hundred and eighty or more? That’s four hundred and eighty bullfights. No, George. He can find other help now. He’s settled into his office. And me, I can find a better job, without agony, typing for someone who doesn’t have to worry about anything more than sales volume or competitors undercutting him.”

  “You couldn’t stand it after these years. You’d go stir-crazy. You’d wither.”

  Edna Foster shuddered. The word wither made her think of spinsterhood. Maybe this was the time to test him on that, too. “Then I could do something more interesting. I didn’t tell you, but Hesper kind of subtly asked me if I’d like to move to Phoenix and help her and Miss Laurel with T. C.’s papers and documents, and her correspondence. She’s—”

  “Edna, no, I can’t have you leaving me now.”

  She met his eyes, which were genuinely anxious, and she felt a wave of relief. “George, that’s nice of you, but—”

  “I mean it,” he said, almost desperately. “I’ve got no right to ask you to do anything for me. I realize that. But you know, I haven’t been able to—to sort of talk to you more seriously—about the future—because I’ve been trying to get myself set, better established.”

  There could be a moment of truth, she knew, far from any bullfight. “George,” she said firmly, “as far as I’m concerned, you are well enough established. I mean, from my point of view.” She had never been more eloquent about her longings for their future, and she awaited his reply with trepidation.

  He sighed. “Maybe,” he said. “I suppose I always set my sights too high. You know how I feel about you. Nothing is too good for you. Maybe I’ve wanted too much. Tonight, if things were the way they were yesterday, I—I might say more than I have up to now. But tonight I can’t, Edna. I got a one-two punch today, both on the button, and I’m shook up, I’m badly shook up.”

  She turned fully toward him. She had known something was wrong. Why had she not penetrated his moodiness from the outset? “I suspected you were worried,” she said. “Tell me, George. Maybe I can hel
p.”

  “First off, I had a cable from Honolulu this morning. Uncle Victor, the senile bastard, he went and got himself married. Can you beat that? After twenty years a widower? Some island social dame nailed him. And him seventy-nine. I didn’t think the old bastard was that feebleminded. Well, that blew it—good-bye, nephew George. I bet they’re collaborating right now on the new will.”

  “George, my God, you were depending on that pie in the sky? I never gave it a second thought.”

  “Well, I don’t know if I counted on it or not. But somehow it was always there to think about. So that’s out.” He hesitated. “That’s not the important thing, though. Something worse happened in the mail.”

  “What?”

  He ran his fingertips across his pocked cheek. “Edna, I lost three newspapers today. They—they dropped me. Far as I can figure out, I’m not ‘in’ enough. They switched to the big wire services instead of keeping their own correspondent. They figure the big ones, exclusive or not, are closer to the inside.”

  She felt weak, helpless, and faintly guilty because he was not inside. “You still have nine papers.”

  “For the time,” he said, “and for now, less income.”

  “I don’t understand, George. I know you’ll make less, but—”

  George Murdock’s nails dug at the bench between his knees. “The whole tone of Weidner’s letter,” he said. “There’s a point of no return with Tri-State. If I lose another paper, I’m through. They’ll buy some other columnist. In fact, if they can’t sell my column to more outlets, I may be through anyway. I didn’t even have to read between the lines. He wrote, ‘If you don’t pep up that daily column, don’t come up with something hot, in place of those warmed-over handouts, we’ll have to reappraise the whole situation. I can’t understand why you’re not doing better.’ Then he said something dirty.” George Murdock glanced at Edna worriedly. “I don’t know if I should tell you.”

  “Tell me, go ahead, tell me everything.”

  “He wrote, ‘I can’t understand why you’re not doing better. After all, you are going steady with the personal secretary to two Presidents. Who has a better pipeline into the White House, especially today?’ Goddammit. Can you imagine?”

  She felt sick. “Oh, George, how could he!”

  “He did . . . I tell you, I’ve got a good mind to quit. Here you were talking about quitting, when that’s all I have on my mind. The effrontery of the bastard, thinking for one minute I’d risk the respect of the only decent woman I’ve ever known, for personal advancement.”

  She wanted to hug him for his perception and gallantry. What held her back was a heavy anchor of failure, tied to a rope of guilt. “Maybe I have let you down, George—”

  “Stop it, Edna. You’re not involved.”

  “I mean, you’ve always been so wonderful, knowing my responsibilities, what my position entails, never even being curious. So maybe I am a little to blame, George. Maybe I’ve been leaning over backward to your detriment.”

  “Forget it. I don’t want to even discuss it.”

  “You’re so kind, George. There are story leaks, let’s face it. Every day it happens. That Blaser story we were just reading. Kemmler and the President did have a disagreement today about the kidnaping. But it was secret. How did Blaser find out? Someone must have leaked it to him.”

  “You bet your life. Somebody over at Justice. Maybe even Kemmler himself. They want to look good, get on the record. All the big press correspondents have inside contacts whom they use, and who use them.”

  “Except you, because of me!” cried Edna. The resolve came to her, and she gave voice to it “I won’t have you penalized any more, simply because you happen to be seeing me. I’m going to keep my eyes and ears open, and if there is something that—that doesn’t endanger security—that I know someone else will let out before-hand anyway—I’ll tell you first. I promise, George.”

  “I told you—forget it,” he said gruffly. “Tri-State isn’t the only syndicate. I’ll look around. We’ll make it yet.” He stood up. “Come on, we’d better check in.”

  She came to her feet slowly. “George,” she said, “I think I want to keep my seat at the bullfight.”

  “Not for me,” he said. “Don’t do it for me.”

  “For us,” she said. “I want to do it for us.”

  His thin lips curled upward, and he pulled her arm through the crook of his elbow and propelled her toward Pennsylvania Avenue. “That’s different,” he said. “That makes me very happy. We’ll make out somehow, together.”

  They crossed Pennsylvania Avenue in silence, and entered through the open driveway gate leading to the White House, both automatically flashing their passes and greeting the police guards, now doubled in number for this evening’s State Dinner.

  As they walked in step to the West Wing lobby, they heard someone hurrying behind them. Edna glanced over her shoulder and grimaced. Reb Blaser, skipping on stubby legs, was alongside them, a grin on his frog face.

  “Hiya, Edna—Georgie, old boy,” he drawled. “How are the love doves?” He did not wait for an answer, but gestured toward the front entrance of the White House, ablaze with light. “Looks like a big night, eh?”

  “To paint the White House black,” said Edna indignantly.

  “Aw, come now, Edna girl,” Blaser said, still grinning. “I got me a job to do, that’s all. Matter of fact, might be some truth to what I wrote, even though I admit to applying a trifle too much tar and feather. But that’s Zeke for you. Don’t blame you none for being loyal to your employer, though.”

  Before Edna could speak again, George Murdock said hastily, “It was a little too rough, Reb, like you said, but that was quite a thing about Kemmler and Dilman disagreeing. Where’d you get it?”

  One of Blaser’s warted eyelids winked. “Connections, George. Comes of being slavey for a big-time Congressman.” They had reached the door to the West Wing, and all three halted. “Incidentally, George, my Congressman brought up your name to me day before yesterday. Meant to tell you, but been too plumb beat out to remember.”

  “Zeke Miller mentioned me?” asked George Murdock cautiously.

  “Nobody else but you. Seems one of our stringers sent him a clip of the piece you did on Miller’s speech on farm subsidies. He liked it, liked it powerfully. ‘That’s a smart young man, that Murdock,’ he said to me. ‘Sharp nose for news. Let’s keep on eye on him.’ ”

  “That’s nice of Miller,” said George Murdock.

  “Oh, he’s not half as bad as everyone makes him out,” said Reb Blaser. “Hell, he’s a successful business tycoon from the South, and he knows what side his bread is buttered on. Yes, he’s right impressed with you, George.”

  Edna turned her glare from Blaser’s nauseating face to George, and she disliked the way George was swallowing this syrupy flattery whole and enjoying it.

  She said briskly, ignoring Blaser, “Good night, George. Don’t work too hard. See you tomorrow.”

  “Yes—good night, Edna. I’ll call you.”

  She started into the lobby, but at the door, turning sideways to let a correspondent slip past her, she had one more glimpse of George and Reb Blaser. The frog was still croaking, and George was still listening, eager, deferential, pleased. For an instant she wished that George wouldn’t stand there, that he would be more than that, but then she knew that she was being unfair. It had been a bad, bad day for George, and now for her also.

  She would have to do something for him. But what?

  Unhappily, she went inside to resume her seat at the bullfight.

  The one emotion that Douglass Dilman suffered, as he stared at the dessert being placed before him, was deep mortification.

  He had suspected what was happening earlier in the evening, when he and Kwame Amboko had stood against the wall of the East Room, he uncomfortable in his new white tie and long-used unstylish dinner suit, Amboko at ease in his blue-and-white-striped silk peaked hat and matching cape draped o
ver his dress suit, the two of them receiving the splendidly garmented guests. Dilman had suspected something was wrong, because it had gone so quickly. He had meant to draw Sally Watson aside and put it bluntly to her, but she had been busy, her fashionably coiffured blond hair and bare shoulders and shimmering white satin evening gown everywhere, and he had been unable to catch her eye.

  Only when Dilman had arrived in the enormous white-and-gilt State Dining Room, and had taken his place in the gold-covered Queen Anne chair at the head of the immense horseshoe table, with Kwame Amboko to one side of him and Amboko’s older sister at the other side, and the guests had seated themselves at the main table, and at the four smaller tables near the Red Room, had his earlier suspicion been fully confirmed.

  Once the guests had been seated, in the interval before the waiters swarmed through the room from the pantry hidden behind the Chinese screen, Dilman was able to see the truth. Of the 104 invitations sent out, Sally Watson had advised him this morning that ninety-six had been accepted. The seating plan, which Illingsworth had shown him before he had dressed, had provided for fifty-six guests at the three sections of the main horseshoe table, and forty more guests at the four smaller tables. Ninety-six guests in all. And when these were seated, Dilman was reminded—he had almost forgotten in the excitement—that he was not Washington’s social Commander in Chief, but T. C.’s humble orderly.

  Humiliation had filled every pore of his being: naked shame before his honored guest and the latter’s entourage from Africa, before his official family, before the White House waiters. He had been witness to a similar scene twice in his life, as an onlooker, when he had viewed the old motion picture, Stella Dallas, on television, and when he had attended a screening of the silent film, The Gold Rush, with pathetic Charlie Chaplin. Both times he had been moved, for, as a Negro, he had understood. Now he was witness to it a third time, not witness but participant and the solitary object of this shattering ostracism.