A Shade of Difference

by Allen Drury

  The girl smiled.

  “He is not well himself, I think. Inside, not well. He is quite mixed up about many things. It might be better if he worked somewhere else, in some other profession.”

  “This is a young lady with definite opinions,” Lafe said with a smile, “as you can tell.”

  “So I see. The two of you are going back to Indonesia when you complete your training, is that it?”

  The boy nodded.

  “We consider it a small, but perhaps worthwhile, contribution to our country. Doctors and nurses are needed so badly there.”

  “Will you have your own hospital eventually?” Hal asked in an interested tone, then abruptly reached out for a chair. At once the girl was at his side, holding his arm and helping him to sit down.

  “We should like to,” she said, returning to sit again, gravely, on the sofa. “It is a dream we have.”

  “I suspect you have a way of making your dreams come true,” he said, managing a smile.

  “Yes,” Lafe said with humorous agreement. A little silence fell and finally Hal Fry broke it, as he realized he must.

  “Now suppose you tell me what you know. I haven’t been left all alone with you in this great big hospital just by chance. What is it?”

  Across the face of the Senator from Iowa—When had he first seen that boyish visage, grinning at him across the Senate floor on its first day there? A long, long time ago, in some other world where things were right side up and one’s body made sense—there passed a troubled frown. The young couple, Hal noted, were sitting very still. A terrible terror gripped his heart.

  “What is it?” he demanded. “What is it?”

  “Pretty much everything has been eliminated,” Lafe said carefully, “except one thing that the blood count indicates, and for that they want to give you one further test to be sure. It involves an exploratory operation, probably tomorrow morning.”

  “Exploratory?” Senator Fry said, and the word seemed to hang like some ominous shadow above their heads.

  “In a sense, yes,” the girl said, “though not in the way you perhaps think. It does not involve a massive incision of the body.”

  “Only the sternum,” the boy said. He gestured to it with a lean brown hand. “The breastbone. They test the marrow in it.”

  “What’s that for?” Hal Fry said. A look of compassion that terrified him even more came into the eyes of the junior Senator from Iowa.

  “My dear friend,” Lafe said. “It is for leukemia.”

  And now, the Secretary of State told himself, he must embark upon one of the most difficult conversations of his life, and from it emerge, hopefully, with victory for Cullee and solace for Seab, a forward step for the United States domestically and a sign of good faith to the watching world. Quite a little assignment for a diplomat, as the President had remarked. He wondered if he could bring it off. Probably not, if his host’s initial expression was any indication. The Congressman looked unhappy and hostile and curiously remote, as though he were simultaneously suffering from something and had lost interest in it.

  “Cullee,” Orrin Knox said, holding out his hand, “your office told me you were at home, so I took the liberty of coming here. I hope you don’t mind.”

  “No,” the Congressman said with an air of tired disinterest. “I don’t mind.”

  “Good,” the Secretary said, deliberately taking the chair he had noticed before to be his host’s. Cullee gave no sign, but dropped dispirited on the sofa and put his hands behind his head with a tired, unhappy sigh.

  “Are you all right?” Orrin asked. Cullee gave a small, unresponsive smile.

  “I guess so,” he said, adding without insolence, “Are you?”

  “As well as can be expected, I guess. The world being what it is.”

  “Yes,” the Congressman said slowly. “Well”—and there was a spark of humor returning—“are you and I improving it?”

  “Trying,” Orrin Knox said. “Trying. Now we’ve got to get your resolution through the Senate and we’ll have done all we can at this end of the line.”

  “Isn’t it going through?” Cullee asked with a stirring of surprise. “I thought it was.”

  “I’m sure of it,” Orrin said. The Congressman, he realized, was suddenly out of whatever doldrums he had been in and watchfully alert.

  “You don’t sound sure,” he said sharply. “What’s gone wrong?”

  “I am sure. Nothing’s gone wrong. We have the votes.”

  “Well, then—” The Congressman paused. “Maybe you’d better tell me what it is,” he said with an ominous quietness.

  The Secretary studied him for a moment, obviously debating what tack to take. Then he took a deep breath and what seemed a reasonable gamble and told the truth.

  “Nothing really fundamental. I just don’t want us to kill Seab Cooley while we’re at it, that’s all.”

  “How will it kill Seab Cooley?” Cullee asked scornfully. “That sounds too dramatic for me to swallow, Senator.”

  “It does sound dramatic, doesn’t it? It could happen, though, if the resolution is so strong he feels he has to filibuster.”

  “Am I supposed to be concerned about that? Am I supposed to be concerned about an old man who has always supported the oppression of my people? Let him think about that while he’s dying from a filibuster, if he wants to!”

  “He’s only done what his upbringing and training have taught him to do,” Orrin said quietly, but his host only looked angrier and more excited.

  “So have I! So have I! Now I’m supposed to go easy on that old man? You want me to go easy on the South, Senator? Don’t make me laugh!”

  “Laughing isn’t what anybody is doing, at the moment,” Orrin Knox said gravely. “We’re trying to work this out—I’m trying to work it out—with victory for you and still not too much pain for him. That’s all.”

  “No, you’re not,” Cullee Hamilton said bitterly. “You’re trying to do exactly what ’Gage and Terry and all the rest have been warning me about. You’re just using Seab Cooley as an excuse. You’re afraid the resolution will offend too many people in the South, and that will hurt your chances for the nomination, and that’s why you want me to water it down. That’s what they told me and I said it wasn’t so. I said I believed in Orrin Knox. My God! What a laugh!”

  For a second all the Secretary’s old angry impatience flared up within him, and it was all he could do to hold back some sharp and savagely stinging retort; but Orrin, as his colleagues had noted, was growing up, and so he managed, though not without an intense struggle, to suppress it. He looked at the Congressman with a calm and unflinching appraisal that made him drop his eyes and stare angrily at the floor. This accomplished, the Secretary spoke in a calm voice.

  “If that were the best you could really think of me, then it would probably be wisest that I leave right now. I can’t really believe, however, that your view of me is that shallow, however emotional you may be about it at the moment. There are reasons, my friend, for not driving too hard against a man who has been United States Senator for fifty years and served his country well in many battles on many fronts. You know them as well as I do. You wouldn’t do it to the Speaker. No more would I want you to do it to Seab Cooley. Furthermore,” and a certain tartness came back into his voice, “who said I wanted to water down your damned resolution? I haven’t mentioned anything about it.”

  “You don’t have to,” the Congressman said in a quieter but still hostile tone. “I can see you coming. Anyway,” he added with a sudden renewal of anger, “why play word games about it? What could I possibly change to please Seab Cooley that wouldn’t destroy the whole meaning of it? He wouldn’t be satisfied with anything less, and you know it. So what are we talking about?”

  “We’re talking about doing honor,” Orrin Knox said, still with an edge in his voice, “—and I am going on the belief that you value the word—to a servant of this Republic who, whatever his faults in one area, has done well by
his country in many others. That’s what we’re talking about. Are you with me?”

  “I swear I don’t see why I should be.”

  There was another angry silence, during which the Congressman in his turn stared at his guest. The Secretary’s eyes did not drop, and presently Cullee spoke in a voice that yielded very little.

  “I swear I don’t see why I should be. He’s done enough dishonor to my people so I don’t see why I should honor him.” A sudden bleak expression came into his eyes. “It’s just like ’Gage said. He said I couldn’t trust you.”

  “You know LeGage a thousand times better than I do,” Orrin said, “but I don’t think his views on me or any other white man are very conducive to a better understanding between the races. Now, do you, really?”

  “At least he knows where he stands,” Cullee Hamilton said bitterly. “That’s more than I do, right this minute.”

  “No honest man knows where he stands exactly. Only approximately, and with a prayer to the Lord to forgive his errors, if he’s wise. But that doesn’t mean you can’t see some things reasonably clearly, and one of them is that this eternal self-defeating suspicion of each other’s motives isn’t going to get any of us anywhere. Or does that sound like nonsense to you, too?”

  “No,” the Congressman said slowly, “it doesn’t sound like nonsense.” His face set into a stubborn scowl. “But I’m not about to soften things down for Seab Cooley. Let him filibuster and be damned, as far as I’m concerned. He doesn’t deserve any better from any Negro.”

  “Look: You don’t even know yet what could be done. Why don’t we just consider it for a minute as a couple of legislative technicians and see how it sounds? Here”—and he pulled a copy of H. J. Res. 23 out of his pocket and tossed it on the coffee table between them—“the only thing that might need to be changed is the last paragraph. We can let the rest of it stand, if it makes Terry happy.”

  “But not all of it, if it makes me happy? Why don’t you leave me alone, Senator? It says it the way I want to say it.” An ominous glint came again into his eyes. “You don’t want me to chuck the whole thing, do you?”

  “No, sir, I do not. The language now reads, ‘It is also the sense of the Congress that the United States should move with even greater speed to improve the lot of its Negro citizens. The Congress pledges its full assistance in securing such greater speed.’ … How about ‘should give serious consideration to moving with greater speed,’ and so forth. Would that be agreeable to you?”

  The Congressman shook his head, the stubborn, embittered expression still in his eyes.

  “Even if it were, which it isn’t, it wouldn’t be to Seab Cooley.”

  “Bob Munson and I have just had lunch with Seab Cooley, and there is some reason to believe it might be.”

  “Then that’s even more reason why I can’t accept it, so that answers that.”

  “It doesn’t answer anything,” Orrin Knox said sharply. “Nothing. All he asks is a slight modification and the chance to make a speech against it, and then he’ll have made his record and can get out of the way.”

  “And be re-elected in South Carolina and go on helping to suppress my people. No, thank you. And it isn’t any ‘slight modification,’ as you very well know. ‘Should move with even greater speed’ is a long way from ‘should give greater consideration to moving,’ Senator. What do you take me for, a fool?”

  “No, I don’t take you for a fool!” the Secretary said angrily. “I take you for a man who has a reasonable kindness in his heart and might have the guts to show it, if he weren’t too afraid of his own shadow. The President and I stand behind this, you know. We’ll move, whatever the language says; you can be sure of that.”

  Cullee Hamilton shook his head.

  “Not just my shadow, Senator,” he said softly. “Lots of shadows, all black … I couldn’t do it and feel right inside. God, you know that!” he said in an agonized voice. “How can you ask me to?”

  “I don’t know,” the Secretary said, folding the resolution and putting it back in his pocket. “I don’t know. Sentiment, I guess. Loyalty to an old friend. A foolish belief that things are best accomplished in this mixed-up land of ours when they are accomplished with the broadest general agreement and the least individual hurt. Some feeling that you might be able to understand, apparently mistaken. Some conception of a Cullee Hamilton who perhaps doesn’t exist. Evidently,” he said, and he got to his feet quickly, “I was wrong on all counts. Sorry to have bothered you. I guess all I did was send you back to the waiting arms of LeGage Shelby, right?”

  “No,” the Congressman said, “not quite that.… Wait a minute.” He gave a small, tired smile. “Maybe you’ve talked me around again.”

  “I don’t want to do that,” Orrin said, and then added with a sudden, engaging candor, “Of course I do, but not unless you can really see it.”

  “I might accept ‘give serious and affirmative consideration to moving with greater speed,’ and so on. But he’ll have to come and ask me for it himself.”

  “Oh, well, then it’s pointless. He never will.”

  “He must.”

  “He won’t.”

  The Congressman shrugged and turned half-away.

  “Very well. Then there won’t be any changes—and if any are tried from the floor, I’ll scream so loud they’ll hear me around the world—and he can filibuster until he drops, as far as I’m concerned.”

  “You drive a hard bargain.”

  “It’s the education we get. Will he come?”

  “I’ll call Bob, and we’ll see what we can do. But I can’t make any promises.”

  “Nor I.”

  But after the Secretary had left, quickly as an experienced politician does when he thinks he has an agreement, the momentary satisfaction Cullee had gained from this outwardly adamantine position faded rapidly.

  There returned almost immediately his dismayed suspicions of Orrin Knox, the possibility that he might well be just a too-compliant pawn in the larger game of the Secretary’s Presidential ambitions. The more he thought about it, the more his anger and dismay increased. Of course, the only, possible position was the one he himself had followed right along. True enough, it would be easy to accept a modification in the Senate with the bland comment that, “I see no danger to my resolution; the modification is designed to accomplish the fundamental purpose; it is acceptable to me.” But no one in the Congress would be under any illusions about the change in language, nor would the subtle and legalistic minds that hovered around the racial issue both domestically and in the United Nations. They would say Cullee Hamilton had sold out, and for what? Not even for his own political advantage, which some of them might be able to understand and forgive, but for the political advantage of Orrin Knox, which they could not understand and would not forgive.

  But—on the other hand. There was the Secretary’s desire, and the Congressman felt it to be quite genuine, to give Senator Cooley a face-saving way out, to protect an old friend and not let him be hurt too badly in reaching his accommodation with the inevitable. Cullee could see this. He didn’t want to be mean to the old Senator just to be mean. He did, as Orrin had said, have “a reasonable kindness in his heart” and no desire to be harsh unless he had to.

  Very well, then. Let the old man come to him, as he had suggested, and he would see. He might be able to give an inch if that would help Seab walk his rough last mile; and anyway, from what he heard, things were shaping up against Seab’s re-election so strongly that a paper triumph on this small feature of the Hamilton Resolution wouldn’t make much difference anyway. Perhaps he could afford to be generous, after all. Perhaps, as Maudie said, he should stop all this worrying and come back to the good opinion of the man in the minor. On that basis, maybe he too could be gentle with Seab, as long as it didn’t interfere with his basic purpose. Maybe he could.

  It was therefore in a calmer and more reasonable mood that he heard the phone ring half an hour later and picked it up t
o be advised by an obviously surprised Orrin Knox that if he cared to drop in at Bob Munson’s office around 5 p.m., a profitable discussion might be held. It would mean that not only Seab, but he, too, would have to come part way, but certainly no farther than he himself had suggested, and would that really be too much to ask? He was momentarily soured again and suspicious, but after a second agreed that yes, he would be there.

  “After all,” he said with just enough emphasis to make the point to the Secretary, “I have nothing to lose.”

  Orrin agreed, and the date was set.

  Set for the senior Senator from South Carolina, too, and it was with a sense of growing triumph that he walked once more along the corridors of the Old Senate Office Building, once more rode the subway to the Senate side of the Capitol, once more trudged along with his rolling, barreling gait to the hideaway of the Majority Leader. He had made it quite clear at lunch that he might be willing to accept a compromise on the Hamilton Resolution, but only if that nice colored boy came to him; and now, apparently, he had. Bob Munson’s call had been a little hazy on details, and at first Seab had objected stuffily that he didn’t see why his own office wasn’t a good enough place for the Congressman to come and have a talk; but then the Majority Leader had said something, rather vaguely, about “pride and personal touchiness—you know,” and Senator Cooley had said yes, he knew. He had finally agreed, reluctantly but knowing he had the whip hand now and could afford to be generous, to meet Cullee on neutral ground, in Bob’s office.

  “After all, Bob,” he had said with a happy feeling of triumph, “I have nothing to lose. You know that, Bob.”

  And Bob, a little hesitantly, had agreed, and the date was set.

  So here he was, once more in command of a situation that had looked, for a little while, as though it might be difficult and perhaps disastrous. There had been moments in the past few days when he had actually wondered whether he could swing things his way once again, or whether the Cooley influence and the Cooley magic had finally failed. His own quick tally of known Senate opponents, probables and possibles, had convinced him that the outcome was entirely up in the air; but evidently there were things he didn’t know about. Evidently Bob and Orrin and their young friend from California had found that the opposition was too strong for them, should the resolution be left as it stood. Evidently he was in better shape than he knew.