A Shade of Difference

by Allen Drury

  For there was something else about Felix Labaiya that no one suspected, and that was the fierce depth of his love for Panama. There was simply no argument as to what was right or wrong where his country was concerned. He was astute enough, and perceptive enough, to understand that this motivation could apply with just as overwhelming a force to the Americans as well, and indeed to most of the peoples with whom he dealt in the house of nations in Turtle Bay. But in his own case it erased all arguments of fairness, all appeals to reason, all attempts to see the American point of view on this issue that so deeply concerned his country. His deepest, and in a sense his only, love was Panama, and it followed therefrom that nothing could possibly deflect him from the basic purpose that was his. A thousand memories linked him to the Isthmus, its vistas, mountains, seas, islands, plains. Here he had been born, grown up, been influenced by his grandfather and father, matured physically, mentally, politically. This was his land. How could there be justice toward those who controlled its most valuable asset? They could quote statistics at him forever, explain how fairly they were administering it, point out that the Panama Canal Company made no profits, explain that its commerce furnished one-sixth of Panama’s income, place themselves on a high moral plane, and talk about guarding an international trust—and all this mattered no more to him than it did to the most ignorant mestizo in the streets. He held it as a matter of blind faith, as fierce and proud as that of Don Jorge, that the Canal was Panama’s. It was mentally, indeed almost physically, impossible for him to acknowledge any competing argument.

  But it was an age in which to be cautious, if you wished to achieve something more substantial than headlines; a time to plan secretly and long before moving; an era in which the crumbling forms of world society furnished great opportunities to those who held tenaciously to their own private desires and advanced them when the time was ripe. The world was at loose ends. A purposeless illogic afflicted even the most carefully laid plans and projects of those whose writ had once run over many continents and across many seas; an insensate destructiveness crippled the crafty programs of those who sought to supplant them. A weird lassitude lay upon the West, an outwardly vigorous yet essentially nihilistic energy upon the East. Under their shadow those who were small and careful and discreet might sometimes achieve their purposes.

  They might also, when the chance came right, furnish the fulcrum upon which to turn the earth.

  So he had done in The Problem of Gorotoland, raised now by Terence Ajkaje’s visit to a Charleston school into an issue of such import that it might well weaken his life’s adversary in very grave degree in the eyes of many states and peoples around the globe. At first the matter had occurred to him—or, again, possibly, occurred to the Soviet Ambassador; here too his memory was a little hazy as to who had first proposed it when they had discussed it over lunch two weeks ago—simply as a generalized attack upon the West, a matter that would embarrass Britain, possibly bring her into conflict with the United States, strengthen his own standing among the uncommitted nations, make him more of a voice to listen to in the councils of the world. His government had not been averse to this when he explained it to them. Freedom was a great thing to be for, and Panama could not lose by taking an active hand in the fight for it, particularly in Africa. He had been gratified by the overwhelming approval that had come to him both in the United Nations and across the world. Then had come the bonus of the M’Bulu’s dramatic gesture, his devastating appearance before the General Assembly, his stirring call to action that had so excited and inflamed the Afro-Asian states. Now the issue was grave indeed for the great Republic and he, Felix Labaiya, had cut out for him a task more important and more vital than any he had yet undertaken.

  As things stood now, it would take a two-thirds vote by the General Assembly to ratify his resolution and its amendment. He thought with a contemptuous smile of the feeble and futile efforts of the United States to head off his amendment yesterday, the series of crushing votes by which its moves had been defeated. Despite the recovery by the Secretary of State, the sudden sober realization of a challenge breath-taking in its implications which had finally gripped the Assembly and brought about a delay at the last moment, he was not too worried as he approached the door of Conference Room 9.

  Terrible Terry, flanked by the delegates of Ghana and Guinea, was coming toward him with hand outstretched. He was Don Felix grandson of Don Jorge, and a supreme confidence buoyed him up. He was trim, neat, self-contained, and determined in his small, dark person; trim, neat, self-confident, and determined in his shrewd dark mind. His country needed him and he had never failed her yet.

  He stepped forward with his pleasant suggestion of smile and bowed politely as he saw the group of midnight faces looking up to his with an eager and expectant air.

  2

  Now there was another problem to solve, the President thought with an exasperated sigh: it never ended, the tangle of jackstraws that history dumped upon his desk each day for untangling. He was aware of his own responsibility in the turn events had taken, he regretted now the very human impulse that had made him dismiss so lightly Terrible Terry’s request for full-scale red-carpet treatment, but he still could not regret or modify the basic judgment of the M’Bulu that had prompted it. The man whose ennobled visage stared forth from this morning’s editorial cartoon, godlike in aspect and haloed by an aura of light labeled “Freedom,” was still a devious little international adventurer, and the President knew not all the friendly press puffs in the world could change the fact. But, then, this was an age when the fact was not important. The legend was all that mattered.

  This was not the first time, or, he suspected, the last, that certain journals around the country had gone to extraordinary lengths to confer their blessings upon such legends. He thought how nice it would be if someday the truth unvarnished emerged from certain editorial offices, but he had long ago concluded that it was not to be. Diligent and devoted reporters might record the truth as faithfully as competence and integrity enabled them, but inevitably editorial decision shifted the emphasis, shadowed the facts, threw everything subtly but completely out of focus, so that the hasty reader emerged with quite a different impression. And, of course, side by side with bland over inflation of favorites and bland denigration of opponents went high protestations of public morality, well-publicized speeches on freedom of the press, stern trumpetings against governmental censorship. Yet, he supposed, the editors responsible were quite able to convince themselves that they were honorable and consistent men.

  He could not, however, spend too long a time considering this particular aspect of twentieth-century America, for the challenge presented at the United Nations was for the time being more overriding than anything else before him. As he approached his desk each day at 9 a.m., after eating a solitary breakfast of fruit juice, boiled egg, toast, and coffee while he watched television news broadcasts and scanned the six major morning newspapers, he did not always know which of the world’s many constantly bleeding sores would be before him for immediate attention. No such uncertainty existed this day. Every top headline, every telecast, confirmed it. Somebody in London had held a copy of the Daily Mirror up before the cameras. “U.S. BROUGHT TO WORLD BAR,” the headline read. He was vividly and unhappily aware that this was exactly the way it was being regarded over the greater part of the earth’s surface.

  In this difficult situation there were certain things he could do of an immediate nature, and indeed in his statement, apology, and state dinner for Terry he had already done some of them. Now he must turn to the practical aspects of world politics: check with the Development Loan Fund on certain applications from overseas, have Orrin talk to certain Ambassadors about projects they desired under the foreign aid program, hint to others concerning possible military expenditures, apply with polite but unflinching steadiness the diplomatic and financial pressures that lay at the hand of the President of the United States when the chips were down. He did not like to operate that
way, he told himself ruefully, but he was becoming as adept at it as his predecessor had been. It was part of what might be called, ironically, Growing Up in the White House. Always in international politics, as in domestic, there came the moment when you were either going to see it through or run away. If you decided to see it through, which by and large had been the policy of most American Presidents, you accepted the means to achieve the objective. He had always been able to appreciate, as an intellectual exercise, the dedication to the country that dominated the actions and the attitudes of the occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania, but it was like any other great responsibility. Until you had it, you never really knew. Now he did.

  He must get now, he decided, an inside picture of the situation at the UN and he must get it from the one man whom he deemed to be, at the moment, closest to the center of the hubbub and most familiar with all its ramifications. He pressed the buzzer, which announced to the office wing of the White House that he was at his desk. His secretary entered and he asked her to locate LeGage Shelby.

  “If he’s in town, send him right on in when he comes. If he’s in New York, tell him to stand by and we’ll set up a conference call. And get me Secretary Knox for the same time, if you will.”

  LeGage might not know all the answers, but he would know some of them; and there was another reason for talking to him, too.

  There was beginning to take shape in the President’s mind a solution for the problem of LeGage, prompted by the noisy picketings of DEFY in the last couple of days. Again he told himself ruefully, for he was not particularly proud of the fact, that he was becoming as hard-boiled as the best of them. And the best of them, he knew, had sooner or later found themselves forced to be very hard-boiled indeed.

  “Sue-Dan,” her husband said, and realized that his voice was already sounding too exasperated for an argument that had just begun, “I don’t want you to do it.”

  She gave a mocking laugh that brought over the wire from Sixteenth Street to the Hill its full burden of destructive amusement.

  “What’s the matter, Cullee? You think it would upset your pet white folks back in the district if your wife expressed her honest feelings for a change? Think they might vote against you if your wife helped her own people? Somebody in the Hamilton family has to, Cullee. You don’t.”

  “Now, see here—” he began, but his secretary had paused on her way to the door to fiddle with some papers and he spoke sharply to her, instead. “Is there something more?”

  “No, sir,” she said hastily and walked out, wiggling the little brown bottom he had often been conscious of before. The door closed with a defiant thud. Probably they were all listening on the other phones, anyway. It was getting so he couldn’t trust a one of them.

  “I don’t understand you at all,” he began over again, more patiently. “One time you say you want me to be Senator and the next minute you want to do something that would knock it all out. Where did you get this crazy idea, anyway?”

  “I want you to be Senator all right, Cullee,” she said, sincerely enough but unable to resist a dig immediately after. “I’m just holding the colored vote for you while you slide up to the white one, … Terry called me about it.” She gave a wicked little snicker. “He’s a big man, that Terry.”

  “Where is he?” the Congressman demanded harshly. His wife laughed again.

  “Up in New York. Don’t worry, he’s up in New York. Where I’m going to be when I help LeGage open the African Bureau.”

  “African Bureau!” he snorted. “That Mr. LeGage Shelby, he’s getting awfully important. How about World Bureau and be done with it? Anyway, you’re not going.”

  “Oh, yes, I am.”

  “Oh, no, you’re not.”

  “Cullee,” she said, her voice rising, “I say I’m going!”

  “I know what you say,” he told her with a fair show of indifference he did not feel. “Suppose Maudie and I can’t get along without you, is that it? Well, maybe we can, Sue-Dan. Maybe we just can. Try it and see.”

  “Well,” she said uncertainly. There was a pause. “Can’t mess up any beds with old Maudie,” she remarked, and the thought started her chuckling again.

  “Try and be common, Sue-Dan,” he suggested politely. “Maybe you can just make it.”

  “LeGage wants me up there to help him,” she said sullenly. “Terry wants me.”

  “I’ll bet. I’ll bet he does. That’s just why you’re not going.”

  “’Gage says it’s going to be the biggest thing DEFY ever did,” she said stubbornly. “It’s going to help Terry and all the other African states. It’s going to link all us colored peoples together all over the world. ’Gage says maybe it will be the start of something really big for all of us.”

  “Seems to me you and LeGage and Terry been talking all morning. You been on the phone ever since I left? Get a lot of wind out of both those boys, once you turn the valve on. Anyway, they’re just giving you a story. They just want you up there so they can use your name and mine and tie me into it.”

  “Why shouldn’t you be tied into it?” she demanded excitedly. “Ebony and the Defender and the Pittsburgh Courier and everybody else been after you here in the past hour wanting to know why you’re not in it. What am I supposed to tell them?”

  “They’ve been after me here, too. Tell them what I do. Tell them I think I can accomplish more working through the office to which I’ve been elected than I can walking in parades and carrying cards. What good does that do, except make a fuss?”

  “Maybe that’s what the white man needs,” she said somberly. “One big fuss.”

  “Don’t doubt Terry and ’Gage are just the ones to start it, but I think it’s best you stay clear.”

  “They’ve started it already. How can I stay clear? How can any Negro stay clear? It’s the colored man’s dawning, Cullee. Only cowards stay clear.”

  “Oh, sure. That’s me. I see.”

  “All we’ve got to go on is what you do, Cullee,” she said pointedly. “Or not, that is. Afraid fine words don’t mean much any more. The world’s bustin’ up, Cullee. People want to know what you’re doing, not what you’re saying.”

  “It’s right out in public,” he said doggedly. “Everybody can see.”

  “They don’t see. Can’t see anything but poor old Cullee won’t help Terry take a little girl to school in Charleston, won’t help LeGage fight for rights in DEFY, won’t help start the African Bureau—just wants to sit on the Hill and be a white man’s lap dog. Anyway, LeGage says he wants to talk to you serious. He says you’re courting real trouble, Cullee. He says he’s really worried about you.”

  “Yeah, I know. Well, you tell him I’m real worried about him. Where is he, anyway? The White House wants him. Just called a little while back to see if I knew where he was.”

  “He’s at Howard, lecturing on non-violence.”

  “Non-violence!” he said with an exaggerated air. “That’s my boy, sure enough. I suppose the Dean’s office will know where to reach him. I’ll call the White House and tell them.”

  “There you go!” she said, suddenly shrewish. “Call the White House, run their errands, tattle on LeGage, be a nice little nigger and everybody says, That Great Cullee! Well, not me. Not many of your own people, either. You’re going to get in mighty bad with your own folks, Cullee, if you don’t watch out.”

  “Well,” he said sharply, “you’re going to get in twice as bad if you go running after tramps like Terry and LeGage, and that’s for sure. You tell me you’re not going to New York and any African Bureau, Sue-Dan. I want to hear it before I hang up.”

  “What’ll you do if you don’t hear it?” she inquired spitefully. “Can’t rape me over the telephone about it, can you?”

  “Maybe you’ll see when I get home,” he said ominously.

  “Maybe I won’t be here when you get home.” His heart constricted with a painful suddenness, but he replied with a show of boredom that he hoped was convincing. “Stop talking fool
ish, little Sue-Dan. You’ll be wanting to fly off to the moon with the expedition, next.”

  “Might be nice up there. At least there’s Russians there, and they like us.”

  “So they say. So they say. But don’t you forget, they’re white too, if that’s all you think about. They’ll turn on you too, if that’s your worry. You’re not going to New York to any African Bureau, Sue-Dan.”

  “We’ll see,” she said mockingly. “We’ll see. Call the White House, big man, and tattle on LeGage. They’ll love you for that. But don’t be surprised if your own folks don’t like you.”

  “I’ll call LeGage myself,” he said sharply, “if he wants to talk to me so bad. Then we can call the White House.”

  “What’s the matter, Cullee?” she asked wickedly. “You getting a little scared, maybe, finally?”

  “I’ll see you at home,” he promised angrily. A sardonic little laugh came over the wire.

  “Maybe you will. Maybe you won’t.”

  The Secretary of State became aware that his wife was regarding him with an amused smile from across the table.

  “These are the times, obviously, that try men’s souls. Come back from wherever you are, Mr. Secretary, and finish up. You’re late for work already and we can’t let the world run on a minute more without you.”

  “Well,” he said, still frowning, “I’m not so very far away. Charleston—Washington—the UN—Africa—”

  “—China—Europe—Latin America— Quite a distance from the state of Illinois, anyway.”

  “How are things in the state of Illinois? Have you talked to the kids?”

  “Constantly. Crystal is humming with incipient motherhood and Hal is working twice as hard as ever before in his law firm. I think things in the state of Illinois are coming along all right. At least they’re all in one color scheme, anyway.” She chuckled. “I couldn’t resist that.”

  “None of us can resist it. It’s in the times.” He looked with a still-troubled frown at the girl who used to be Elizabeth Henry before she became Beth Knox, and used the nickname he always did in moments of stress. “Hank, how is this sad old world ever going to work its way out of the tangle it’s gotten itself into?”