A Shade of Difference

by Allen Drury

  A sleep denied, had he but known it, to the Congressman from California, who lay in his lonely bed in the house off Sixteenth Street and wondered over and over again whether he was not in reality being an utter fool, an idiot, a pawn of politics, the stooge and white man’s nigger that loud voices in both races were so kindly telling him he was. The press had been after him for comment ever since Seab’s speech, and some of them, dissatisfied with his stock answer—“I believe the vote in the House Foreign Affairs Committee speaks for itself. I wouldn’t want to make any comment on any other aspect of the situation at this time”—had made it quite clear what they thought of him for introducing the resolution in the first place. He had remarked to Maudie at dinner, more puzzled, really, than angered, that “sometimes it seems as though nobody wants anything done in this country unless it can be done exactly their way. If you won’t play with them, they won’t give you any credit for anything.”

  It baffled, but it also hurt; and there came a time, after he had heard the skeptical sarcasm in enough reportorial voices and seen and heard enough television and radio commentaries assailing his good faith and denouncing his gullibility, when he had almost begun to believe it.

  “They can ride you pretty hard,” he had conceded glumly just before he went up to bed. “You can almost believe it, if you listen to them long enough.”

  Maudie had told him not to listen and not to worry, but even she seemed a little shaken by it all. Her own earlier skepticism about “Orrin Knox and them” had given way to a fierce loyalty in his support, but even so, he could see the speculation in her eyes in unguarded moments.

  “Don’t you desert me, Maudie,” he had finally said with a rueful laugh. “Don’t know as I could get along at all, if you left me.”

  “I won’t leave you,” she promised, “as long as you’re doing right. As long as you’re doing right, I won’t leave you.”

  But it was clear enough that the qualification was very real in her mind, and that she would be the judge if she felt the time had ever come.

  Now as he lay in his bed and thought of himself and his wife and his friend, of the M’Bulu and Felix and Orrin and the President and everyone else involved in the tragic issue of race in this, its latest twisted turning, he wondered if it would ever make sense and if they would ever come out right on the other side—not just the other side of this immediate tangle, but the other side of the whole business. This was only one little phase of it, one little facet, thrown up into the headlines, transformed into a world scandal by the plans and ambitions of many states and individuals. Yet it went on every minute of every day in a thousand and one variations, from nervous college kids sitting at drugstore lunch counters to scared little children and howling mobs at schools to the cruelest kind of intellectual snubbing at New York cocktail parties where members of his race were invited for the publicity value of their skins, only to be insufferably patronized as human beings once they got there. So many things, so many things, hurtful, unhappy, unjust, unbearable—the miseries of it all, as his mother used to say mournfully on the rare occasions when she let it get through her defenses, the miseries of it all!

  And for him, at this moment, in this time, on this immediate problem, miseries even deeper and more profound. Miseries of an empty bed when you needed your wife and she wasn’t there; miseries of a friend closer than a brother, gone and maybe not to come back; miseries of doing what you thought was right, but who knew, maybe for the wrong reasons, maybe just for ambition when all was said and done; miseries of stepping out front and trying to do a job and being made the target for every snide and sneering two-bit nothing in both races as a result; miseries of wondering whether you could trust a white man, any white man; miseries of wondering whether you had indeed been a sucker and a stooge for one particular white man; miseries of wondering whether he would stand by you or let you down; miseries of wondering whether you might really be selling him your birthright, as some said; miseries of wondering if you might not end up with the contempt of both races for trying to help them both—miseries of being black and in a position where you couldn’t avoid your responsibilities. Miseries of being an American and trying somehow to see your way clear to helping the country you loved solve, with liberty and justice for all, her deepest unhappiness and most rending agony.

  He gave his body a sudden, furious twist across the bed, buried his face in the pillows, smelled Sue-Dan; and of course that did nothing to help; it only made it worse. Where was she in New York, and what was she doing? Probably with her family; he could probably rest easy that she wasn’t with someone else. Or could he? It wouldn’t be LeGage; he trusted LeGage there implicitly, whatever else might go wrong between them; but it could always be the M’Bulu. Terrible Terry would be flying her around town with all his pretty robes flapping, giving her a big old time with all those fancy Africans at the UN, putting on a big show, being the great royal hero who had America on the run.

  Yes, it could be Terry, she would probably like that, she was getting bored with him, he wasn’t a sufficiently vigorous hater of the white man to suit her, maybe she was with Terry right this minute, reaching for him the way she did for—

  “No!” he cried aloud in anguish, whipping upon his back so that he lay full asprawl. “No,” he whimpered more quietly so as not to wake Maudie. “Oh, no.”

  For a long time he lay so, really thinking very little, images blurred and incoherent passing through his mind, jealous, sexual, fearfully painful, consciously masochistic as he removed himself from his memories and placed a triumphantly grinning Terry in them. The time came when this produced a physical reaction, agonizing, excruciating, rending, and easeful, all in one. He remained where he was, breathing heavily, as it passed and left his body limp; and little by little rational thought returned, and he began to think again about the road he had chosen and where it might lead him, and how he might best pass along it with credit to his country, his people, and himself.

  There recurred to him presently his conversation with the Secretary of State, the tone of voice in which Orrin had called him from Spring Valley shortly after midnight and told him what he and the President had been discussing. At first the Secretary’s approach had been cordial but cautious; it was obvious that he was worried that Seab’s speech and all the other attacks upon them both might have shaken Cullee badly. Cullee’s initial hesitation had shown him he was right to be worried. Characteristically Orrin had wasted no time in coming to grips with it.

  “How about it? Are you really worried about what they say? Do you want to back out? You can, you know, if it really bothers you. That would bring criticism too, but we’d help you ride it out.”

  At first, a little overwhelmed by this direct and unadorned approach, he had hesitated.

  “Go ahead and tell me,” Orrin had said. “The only way we can get along together on this is to have all our cards on the table. If you really think you’re being my stooge or I’ve conned you into something, say so. It won’t be true, but if you think so, it might as well be. Do you?”

  “N-o,” he had said at last. “At least—I don’t think so.”

  “I have ambitions too, you know,” the Secretary of State had said bluntly. “Maybe I’m just using you for all you’re worth. Maybe my only motive is to line up the colored vote to help win that nomination. You’d be a powerful asset if I had you on my side. Of course you know that. Better think about it carefully,” he said with an irony entering his tone. “I may be a bad and evil white man, out to use you all I can.”

  The Congressman had gotten a glimmer at that point of why it was that Orrin Knox had gone so far in the public life of the country, for this directness and candor gave him a major psychological advantage even as it placed others at a disadvantage. Cullee couldn’t really say, “Yes, I distrust you,” even if he did, for Orrin had set the question in a psychological framework that would have permitted him to dismiss such an answer with a sardonic comment that would have left him with the advantage s
till.

  If one were in any doubt of him at all, one was naturally disposed by this candor to be less doubtful of him, to trust him more and come further toward his position. So Cullee had responded with something of a matching irony.

  “Maybe I’m out to use you. Maybe I could use your support in my race for Senator just as much as you could use mine for President.”

  “Oh, you are going to run, then,” Orrin said. He added, “I’m very pleased for you,” and sounded it.

  “I’m not sure yet,” Cullee said, already regretting the impulse.

  “Nor am I,” the Secretary responded promptly. “Let’s let the good word stop right here, in both cases. But about this other, now—are you all right? I want you to feel completely satisfied in your own mind. That’s the only way it can possibly work.”

  Cullee hesitated again, so long that he thought Orrin would break in; but for once the Secretary exercised great restraint and said nothing. Finally the Congressman spoke slowly.

  “I—think so. That’s all I can say right now; I—think so. You’ll understand.”

  “Yes,” Orrin Knox said, rather bleakly. “I guess I do. Well, then, assuming we can proceed on that basis, here’s what the President and I think would be the best thing to do—”

  Cullee had listened alertly to their plan of action, suggested a couple of minor modifications, and finally agreed to it.

  “Promise me one thing,” Orrin had said just before saying good night. “If you begin to doubt, later on—if you feel you can’t trust me, or the pressure gets too great for you from your own people or mine—don’t hesitate. I’d rather have you out of it altogether than dragging along reluctantly. Then I couldn’t trust you, and right now I do implicitly.”

  And that, of course, was another effective facet of Orrin, the unqualified conferral of trust, once he had made up his mind about someone.

  “You can trust me,” Cullee had said. “If I decide to let you down, I’ll let you know in plenty of time.”

  “I believe you,” Orrin said. “Good night.”

  “Good night,” he said, feeling absurdly warmed by this, which of course, he told himself dryly a little later, was exactly what Orrin intended him to be.

  5

  “It isn’t as though this were some bloody picnic, after all,” the London Daily Express said sharply. “Why isn’t Knox here? Why does he leave it in the hands of a second-rater like Fry when his country is about to take a licking?”

  “Maybe he doesn’t want to sit here and face it,” the Manchester Guardian suggested. “Too much for the Knox pride, possibly. How about that?” he demanded of the New York Times as they went down the private back press stairs and came out into the Chamber to see before them the garish blue-and-tan amphitheater of the Assembly Hall, its half-moons of shining wooden desks with their cold neon lights beginning to fill with delegates and staff as the hour neared eleven and the time approached to begin final debate on Felix Labaiya’s amendment.

  “I don’t know,” the Times said slowly. “Anyway, I’m not sure I agree with all your assumptions. Fry isn’t a second-rater and Knox isn’t afraid to take what he has to take. It could be, you know, that he isn’t here because he doesn’t think the United States is going to take a licking.”

  “Don’t you?” the London Evening Standard demanded. The Times shrugged.

  “Your count’s as good as mine, pal. What have you found?”

  “Not very bloody much,” the Daily Express confessed. “But everything I have found looks bad for Uncle Sammy.”

  “There isn’t much margin either way, I’d say,” the Chicago Tribune said. “I’d say the breaks are going to us. After all, he needs two-thirds, you know. At the moment, he just ain’t got it.”

  “Hope goeth before a fall, old boy,” the Daily Express remarked. “Look at Tashikov coming in, down there. Does he look like a man who’s about to take a defeat?”

  “Look at Hal Fry coming in down there,” the Chicago Tribune said promptly. “Does he look like a man about to take a defeat?”

  “Why bother to look at either one of them?” the Evening Standard inquired. “Go and search among our darker brethren, if ye would find the truth. I must say K.K. looks happy. Ghana looks happy. Guinea looks happy. All God’s chillun look mighty, mighty happy. I’d say that’s a better indication than the boys on the front line, wouldn’t you?”

  “How’s the gallery today, by the way? Ready to riot?”

  “Doesn’t look it,” the Evening Standard said slowly as they all turned around to stare up intently at the tourist groups with their guides, the housewives from Mamaroneck and Glens Falls, the businessmen from Milwaukee and Phoenix, the earnest dark faces that filled the greater part of the galleries.

  “That raises an interesting point,” the Guardian remarked. “How do you see a thundercloud at night? I mean, supposing they were there, among all those nice serious darkies from the ladies’ sewing circles and the Men’s Study and Poker Leagues? How would you know?”

  “That’s what the guards wonder, I’m sure,” the Express said. “Did you see how carefully they’ve been checking them in? You’d think it was a garden party at the Palace.”

  “Here comes Felix,” the Standard said as they all turned back and resumed their study of the floor. “I see he and Hal are going through the motions. We ought to be getting under way pretty soon.”

  Below them in the long left aisle running down to the distant green marble rostrum, the acting head of the American delegation and the Ambassador of Panama were indeed going through the motions, though it was, in Hal Fry’s case, even more of a burden than it would have been otherwise. He had spent a troubled night, waking suddenly to heavy waves of dizziness and unexplained cramps through his stomach and back, his breath short and his heart palpitating painfully, drifting off again into a blurred, hazy world between sleep and waking that had given him very little rest. Orrin had called at eight with the plan for the day, and that had ruined the only period of really restful sleep he had been able to achieve. He had only picked at breakfast, feeling nauseated and weak, and it had been by another effort of sheer will—God, if the world only knew what a stout character I have! he had told himself wryly—that he had been able to get to U.S. delegation headquarters and go through the motions of getting ready for the debate.

  Lafe had dropped in early, looking fresh as a rose, though the Lord knew where he had unfurled his petals the night before, and had immediately begun to question him on his health. That hadn’t helped much, either.

  “I hear you went back to the doctor,” he said accusingly, and Senator Fry shook his head.

  “I suppose she tells you everything I do,” he said. Lafe smiled.

  “Enough to keep me informed. I hear it’s still nervous tension.”

  “That’s the pet medical fad of the century, yes. There’s a certain type of doctor that would be lost without it.”

  “How is it this morning?”

  “I didn’t have a very good night. Or eat a very good breakfast. But I’m feeling a little better now.”

  “Think you’ll make it for the debate all right?”

  “I’ve got to make it for the debate. Orrin isn’t coming up, so—”

  “How’s that? I thought sure he’d be here, especially since you aren’t feeling so well—”

  “He doesn’t know exactly how I’m feeling,” Hal Fry said firmly. “And I don’t want you to tell him, understand?”

  “I’ll see.”

  “Please now, Lafe. Please.”

  The junior Senator from Iowa stared at him thoughtfully.

  “All right. Up to a point. But you can’t go on very long like this, buddy.”

  “Do I look that bad?”

  “You look pretty good, as a matter of fact. Except your eyes, which don’t look good, to me, anyway. Others might not notice, but I know you so well I can tell.”

  “Lafe,” he said suddenly. “There’s one thing that troubles me”—he gave a wry
half-laugh—“among many other things, but”—he sobered again instantly—“this one most of all.”

  “If I can help,” Lafe said simply, “you know I will.”

  “You know about my son,” Hal said. The Senator from Iowa nodded slowly.

  “You’ve never told me, but Orrin did, once.”

  “If anything should happen to me,” Senator Fry said with a sudden bleakness that wrung his colleague’s heart, “what would happen to him? I’ve left him provided for, of course, but—he needs company.”

  “Does he?” Lafe asked quietly, with a compassion that robbed it of hurt. “Are you sure?”

  “I’ve got to think so,” Hal Fry whispered. “I’ve just got to think so. I have to have—some hope, Lafe, even when they tell me there isn’t any.”

  “Well, in the first place, I don’t believe for one minute that there is any reason at all for you to think you aren’t going to snap out of this, whatever it is. But in the second place, assuming worst came to worst and everything bad happened, you can rest easy about your son. I promise you he’ll have company. I’ll go and see him myself, regularly, as long as I’m in Washington.

  “And when they finally kick me out of the Senate”—he grinned a little—“I probably won’t go home anyway, but if I do, I’ll try to get him moved somewhere where I can see him regularly. How’s that, good enough?”

  I mustn’t cry, Hal Fry told himself desperately, but in spite of himself his eyes filled with tears.

  “You’re—very kind,” he said. Lafe gave a strange smile in which bitterness and irony and protest were mingled.

  “Oh, I have one or two small virtues. Nobody thinks so, but I do.”

  “You—have a great many,” Hal Fry said. He added quickly, for now the physical pain was beginning to return strongly again, complicating and multiplying the emotional, and he did not think he could continue much longer without breaking down altogether and making a real spectacle of himself, “His name’s Jimmy.”