(1964) The Man

by Irving Wallace

  Abrahams sat up, tried to shut the smooth, glib, whispering voice from his hearing. It had begun to irritate him. Out on the floor before them, not only a human being’s future hung precariously in the balance, but the continuance of the checks and balances of America’s system of government as well as the integrity of the American public who prattled about equality and freedom. Yet an announcer, epitome of the best and worst, now the worst, in the brassy, competitive, public-relations American culture, was trying to report this critical historic event in the same manner he might a game, a sport, a horse race.

  As if his mind refused to accept and suffer, hope living, hope dying, each excruciating vote being announced, Abrahams’ thoughts dwelt on the end result of what was occurring before his very eyes.

  What would happen to this country if Douglass Dilman were convicted and ousted in these next minutes? What would be on the national conscience as the great country stirred awake tomorrow morning, sated by its Roman holiday, but knowing it had crucified a President not because he was an incompetent leader—the Dilman triumph in Baraza would be known to all by then—but because he was black and they were white? How would neighbor look upon neighbor, and how would they live as one people in their shame? And Doug, what would happen to Doug? Where would he go? What would he do? How could he live? Yet, on the other hand, if he were acquitted in the minutes to come, what would be the state of the Union then? And Doug’s future?

  He heard the senators’ voices replying to the Chief Justice . . . “Guilty” . . . “Guilty”. . . . “Not guilty.” He heard the watch on his vest chain ticking, ticking, ticking. He sought it, peered down at its hands. Twenty-three minutes had passed since the roll call began. Then he felt fingers tugging at his sleeve.

  He glanced up. It was Tuttle, and Tuttle was sliding a slip of notepaper in front of him. It was a scrawled message from Hart:

  “They have 60, we have 26—14 votes left. They need 7, we need 8. I’m dying. What do you think, Nat?”

  He took up a pencil and wrote across the note, “I think I’m dying, too, but we’re not dead. Stop using your fingers for writing and keep them crossed!”

  He sent the note back down the table, turned in his chair, and now gave his full attention to the final fourteen voters. But to his surprise, in the time it had taken for Hart to write the note, pass it on, for him to read it, and reply, ten more votes had been announced, and the eleventh was just being announced, and this he knew because he could hear the damnable announcer whispering into the microphone behind him.

  “—Stonehill just voted not guilty, as expected,” the tightening voice behind him announced to the nation. “It now stands ninety-seven senators out of one hundred have cast their votes. The tabulation shows sixty-five guilty, and thirty-two not guilty. The prosecution requires two of the remaining three votes to impeach and convict the President of high crimes. The defense requires two of the remaining three votes to acquit and save the President of the United States . . . There seems to be a lull . . . The Chief Justice is checking with the Clerk to see what is left to be done . . . We can tell him what is left. Three votes to be announced, and the impeachers need two, and it looks like they may get them. Only Senators Thomas, Van Horn, and Watson remain on the roll uncounted. Thomas, from a border state, has been outspoken in his criticism of the President. Van Horn was a supporter of President Dilman’s intervention in Baraza from the outset, and with the flash of our victory there, it is unlikely he will do anything but continue to support the President. The third and last voter, the redoubtable Senator Hoyt Watson, whose own daughter was involved in the charges against Dilman, is a Southerner—a progressive Southerner, but a dyed-in-the-wool Southerner nevertheless—and so it appears that two of the three remaining votes will be guilty, giving the enemies of the President their sixty-seven required votes, their two-thirds, and unfolding before our eyes one of the most memorable occasions in history, the driving from office of the highest public official—”

  The Chief Justice’s gavel fell.

  Nat Abrahams shut his ears to the announcer, gritted his teeth, clenched his fists, and stared straight ahead. He knew that perspiration had gathered on his forehead and down his back. He knew his worn, worried heart was faltering again. He waited.

  “Mr. Thomas.”

  “Mr. Senator Thomas, how say you? Is the respondent, Douglass Dilman, President of the United States, guilty or not guilty of a high misdemeanor, as charged in this Article?”

  “Guilty!”

  “Mr. Van Horn, how say you? Is the respondent, Douglass Dilman, President of the United States, guilty or not guilty of—”

  “Not guilty.”

  Abrahams’ mind tabulated the count now: sixty-six guilty, thirty-three not guilty. One vote would convict Dilman; one vote would acquit Dilman. And there was but one vote and one voter left.

  The one-hundredth Senate member in the room sat erect behind his mahogany desk, arms folded across the desk.

  “Mr. Watson,” the Chief Clerk called out.

  Abrahams watched him, throat and lungs near bursting, eyes strained wide, watched the old gentleman unfold from his seat, grip his birch cane, watched his white thatched head, wrinkled phlegmatic face, rise with his aged body.

  Chief Justice Johnstone hesitated, perhaps himself slowed by the weight his question would place on the senior senator’s bent shoulders.

  “Mr. Senator Watson, how say you? Is the respondent, Douglass Dilman, President of the United States, guilty or not guilty of a high misdemeanor, as charged in this Article?”

  Senator Hoyt Watson did not reply. It seemed an eternity as he stood there, cane in his knobby hand, gazing up silently at the bench.

  Watson’s somber voice last night, in the privacy of the Oval Office, his words to Dilman last night, rang in Abrahams’ ears: “I cannot judge in your favor now, simply in knowing my daughter perjured herself and the House was misled . . . I must judge you tomorrow on your merits . . . if you acted as an American President or as a Negro President.” All of this Abrahams heard now. Then, he wondered, what did Senator Watson hear now? Did he hear the thousands jamming the streets of Baraza and every democratic city of Africa, cheering the American flag? Did he hear the ancient cacklings of beloved ancestors, good colonels with good slaves, and did he hear the chant of the million in his state, who had carried him on their cheers into the Senate for twenty-four years, made him the bright white shield of their purity and safety against the ignorant niggers trying to threaten their accommodations, education, prosperity?

  What did Senator Hoyt Watson hear these fleeting, suspenseful seconds while the Senate, the House, the White House, the South, the United States, the wide world waited?

  The Chief Justice, standing before his carved chair on high, bent forward, and as if to shake another old man from his reverie and have today’s history written and done with, he spoke.

  “Mr. Senator Watson, how say you?” he repeated. “Is the President guilty or not guilty as charged in this Article?”

  “Mr. Chief Justice, I vote the President not guilty of any high crimes or misdemeanors!”

  Nat Abrahams fell back in his chair, limp with disbelief.

  The galleries, the occupants of the floor, sat dumb, as if stunned into muteness by the fall of one giant mallet on their collective skulls.

  A half dozen, then a dozen senators, foremost among them Hankins, were leaving their desks, surrounding Hoyt Watson, their irate heads bobbing, their angry arms waving, as Watson stood stonily in their midst, clutching his cane and listening.

  From above, almost indistinctly now, Nat Abrahams could hear the Chief Justice intoning, “Upon this fourth Article, sixty-six senators vote ‘Guilty’ and thirty-four senators vote ‘Not Guilty.’ Two-thirds not having pronounced guilty, the President is, therefore, acquitted upon this Article! . . . Silence! Silence! . . . Mr. Senator Bruce Hankins, are you requesting the floor?”

  “I am!” shouted Senator Hankins above the rising hubbub o
f excitement. He hobbled forward to the rostrum. “Mr. Chief Justice, I have conferred with the learned Senator Watson, and with the leadership among my honorable colleagues. It appears that all are adamant in their opinions, that no ‘Not Guilty’ votes will be changed during this day, and that continued voting on the remaining three lesser Articles will result in an even larger tally and judgment for acquittal. Therefore, setting aside my personal feelings, and out of respect for the judgment passed, concerned only with preserving what we can of the unity and well-being of our beloved country, I hereby move that the Senate, sitting as a court of impeachment, does now adjourn sine die—that is to say, permanently—permanently. I ask for yeas and nays on this motion.”

  The Chief Justice gazed out over the churning Senate floor. “Who says yea?”

  “Yea!” The concerted shout was thunderous and unanimous, and it went on and on, “Yea! . . . Yea! . . . Yea!”

  The Chief Justice roared, “Unanimous! The Senate, sitting as a court of impeachment for the trial of Douglass Dilman, upon Articles of Impeachment presented by the House of Representatives, stands adjourned sine die! The President stands acquitted on all four Articles!”

  Hardly anyone except Abrahams heard the Chief Justice, and not even Abrahams distinctly heard the last. For Tuttle, Hart, Priest, were climbing all over him, hugging him, choking him, pummeling him, and senators and press correspondents were all around, wringing his hand.

  Beyond the circle of humanity pressing in on Abrahams, there was bedlam. The Senate had become a carnival of whooping, cheering, laughing revelers, whose celebrations drowned out the scattered boos and catcalls. Pandemonium engulfed the galleries and the floor, and spilled into the outer rooms.

  Desperately, Abrahams tried to reach Senator Watson, to thank him, but it was impossible. Watson was caught in a crush of reporters and announcers. Abrahams heard someone yell, “Senator Watson, how could you repudiate your lifetime record to support Dilman? Why did you decide to vote not guilty?” And Watson, bewildered by the attention, replied firmly “Two reasons—two. First, like Edmund Ross who cast the decisive vote for Andy Johnson, I decided that the executive branch of the government was on trial, and if its occupant were drummed out in disgrace on such flimsy political evidence, our nation would no longer be a democracy but what Ross called ‘a partisan Congressional autocracy.’ And second, I decided even before President Dilman had proved his patriotism and intelligence by saving Baraza and Africa for us, that if I could cease judging him as a Negro person and judge him solely as a fellow human being, I could then judge his true merits as a President. I judged Douglass Dilman as a man, and found him worthy of the Presidency. Coming here, rising to announce my vote, I fully realized that he was guilty of nothing except the accident of his colored skin. So I voted not guilty, and I am proud to have done that, and I hope and pray each and every one of you is proud of yourself today. For President Dilman has shown us he is a man—and now, perhaps, the nation has shown him and the entire world that it, too, has reached maturity at last.”

  Nat Abrahams felt soft arms encircling him, feminine hands touching his neck and cheeks, and there was Sue, aglow and laughing through her tears, pressed to him, kissing him, kissing him again and again.

  Then, holding her close, he was leading her past the celebrating crowds toward the exit.

  “Come on, Sue, I want to go to the White House and tell him—”

  “Oh, darling, he knows, he knows.”

  Abrahams smiled. “He knows he was acquitted of four Articles. I want to tell him he was acquitted of five.”

  THE snow had begun to fall on New Year’s Eve, and it fell all the night, and now, on this bright, fresh morning of New Year’s Day, the capital city was blanketed in white.

  The snow lay like a silvery imperial mantle on the dome of the United States Capitol, clung to the Corinthian marble columns of the United States Supreme Court, covered the flat roof of the Department of Justice. The frosted, pearly flakes sparkled from the cupola of the Jefferson Memorial, the branches of the dogwood trees surrounding the Lincoln Memorial, the five outside walls of the Pentagon Building, the iced surface of the Potomac River, the square mosque of the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, and the Stars and Stripes of the flag at full mast above the President’s House at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

  From the broad center window of the Yellow Oval Room, on the residential second floor of the White House, President Douglass Dilman could make out, more clearly than ever before, the white marble shaft of the Washington Monument. It might have been a trick of the dazzling morning, but to Dilman the soaring monument seemed less distant than it had been four months ago, less distant and less intimidating.

  The rising pitch of a television announcer’s voice, his exclamations and superlatives of appreciation as he described the colorful floats and elaborately dressed equestrian groups in the Tournament of Roses parade from distant Pasadena, California, this voice, mingled with the remarks and comments of the guests watching the spectacle on the television screen, brought Dilman’s attention away from the monument, from the snowy south lawn and frosted Truman Balcony, and concentrated it once more on the activity in the festive room.

  The handful of friends whom Dilman had informally invited to drop by this morning to enjoy the Pasadena parade, and then the various football Bowl games, filled the sofas and the chairs drawn up before the immense television set that had been placed in front of the marble fireplace.

  Affectionately, Dilman observed Julian and Mindy in their activity across the room from the others. His son was holding out the cups into which Beecher was ladling either eggnog or fruit punch from the deep cut-glass vessels on the sideboard. Mindy was busily assisting Crystal in arranging the tiny sandwiches being transferred from a tray to a large serving platter.

  It pleased Dilman that his son, less antagonistic toward Trafford University and the world at large recently, was doing better in school, taking more pride in his learning, as if he had decided that education in itself might be the most effective weapon against racial discrimination.

  It pleased Dilman, too, to gaze upon his daughter’s delicate profile and lissome gracefulness and follow her fawnlike movements. This late holiday morning, she was gay, but Dilman did not deceive himself about her condition. By now, he knew that she was not always this way, nor would she be so in the future, for Mindy’s moods were mercurial, and she was given quickly to apathy, self-confusion, and melancholia. Still, Dilman had been told that she might be better one day, after she had been worse. The eminent psychoanalyst she had begun to visit two weeks before had promised Dilman this. And lately she seemed to enjoy immensely lending a hand with some of her father’s personal correspondence. But neither her presence here today nor the psychoanalyst’s tempered optimism had fully convinced Dilman. After his consultation with the psychoanalyst, Dilman had wondered—as he wondered this moment—once you’ve been white, how can you ever be black again? Mindy was not his child alone. She was Aldora’s child, too. The psychoanalyst, with all his wisdom and insight, was not black, so he might not ask himself what Dilman asked: How long would it be before Mindy tried to escape once more, escape Aldora’s way or her own?

  These considerations were too unsettling for the first day of the New Year, and Dilman turned his thoughts to the others in the Yellow Oval Room. Somehow, he liked to believe they had become a part of his family. There they sat at ease, most of them, in various postures of relaxation. There was Otto Beggs, able to cross his good leg over his bad leg but unable to hide entirely the pain he was enduring, pointing out to his wife and two sons a particularly gaudy floral float moving ponderously across the sunny screen. Beggs would begin his executive duties, as special agent in charge of the White House Secret Service Detail, the first of next week when the holidays were officially over. Near him there was Jed Stover, with his wife and grown daughter, his mind obviously on matters far removed from the Pasadena parade. Ten days earlier, the Senate had reluctantly approved Stover�
��s appointment as Secretary of State, and since then three new international crises had sprung up. Then, seated comfortably in a side chair, there was General Leo Jaskawich, sworn in as the President’s special assistant to replace Talley, puffing his cheroot and amusing himself by blowing smoke rings. Finally, there was Wanda, so delightful in repose, so intent on the screen as she absently drank her fruit punch.

  Dilman had not had Wanda’s present ready for her at Christmas, and so he had given her a card, shaped and printed as a rain check, and on it he had written apologetically that her gift would be arriving any day now. It had been delivered yesterday, but he had not given it to her yet. He was saving it for the intimate holiday dinner tonight. She would not be surprised, he guessed. Although Sue Abrahams—who had helped him make the final selection, and had suggested the modifications—had insisted upon disguising the engagement ring by wrapping it in a gigantic box, Wanda would not be surprised. But she would be pleased, he hoped, as pleased about it (and about what it meant to them in more ways than one) as he was himself.