by Allen Drury
“Bob,” he whispered, and he felt as though the fearsome effort of that one word would bring his death surely, on top of what he was feeling inside, “Bob—” And he held out a hand blindly toward the Majority Leader, who took it and, rising at once to his feet, assisted him to sit down, tremblingly and shakily and so abruptly that it looked like a collapse. In the Press Gallery several reporters rushed out to dart downstairs to be near the floor if he should have to be carried out, and everywhere across the chamber there came a release of talk and comment that Victor Ennis in the Chair finally had to silence with a heavy gavel.
“Mr. President,” Bob Munson said in a voice touched with emotion, “the Senate has witnessed a gallant performance by a great public servant. Many of us do not agree with his position in this matter, but I think all who are generous of spirit, tolerant of mind, and loving of heart can accord him the honor and respect which are due him for all his many great years of service to our country. Mr. President, I move that the Senate now approve H. J. Res. 23, offered in the House by the distinguished Congressman from California. I request the Yeas and Nays.”
“Evidently a sufficient number,” Victor Ennis said, and it could be seen from the galleries that in one last gesture, the senior Senator from South Carolina raised his right hand a couple of inches before letting it fall back limply in his lap. It could also be seen that the Majority Leader waved commandingly to the junior Senator from Iowa, who got up and hurried to his desk; but the obvious intent of this was thwarted as the Senator from South Carolina shook his head ever so slightly and rejected the offer to help him off the floor. Lafe sat down uneasily in a seat nearby as the roll call began in the once more silent room, watching the President Pro Tempore with a concerned and compassionate stare.
“On this vote,” Senator Ennis announced twenty minutes later, after there had come another dramatic pause when the Clerk reached Senator Cooley’s name and a just barely audible “No” had been whispered, “the Yeas are 53, the Nays are 47, and House Joint Resolution 23 is approved.”
In the ensuing half hour, while the last-minute articles were put in the Record, the last-minute speeches made, the business of the Senate concluded for another year, the President Pro Tempore sat silent and unmoving beside the Majority Leader. From the galleries his face looked gray and fallen-in upon itself, his body huddled and slack and curiously crumpled and small. Only once did he make a gesture, and that was to raise one hand with a painful slowness to his forehead, press for a moment, and then bring it down again; its violently agitated trembling was clearly visible to everyone. At one point the Majority Leader leaned over and asked with a deep concern, “Are you all right, Seab? Do you want to stay?” Very slowly the President Pro Tempore turned his head, and for a second a last gleam of irony touched his eyes. “I haven’t missed an adjournment yet, Bob,” he whispered with a painful slowness. “Don’t … intend … to … miss … this one.” The Majority Leader smiled hopefully, as though this comment presaged a quick recovery, but immediately the gleam had faded, the expression of recognition had disappeared, Senator Cooley had turned back to continue what was apparently going on inside himself, a terrible battle to remain where he was and not be taken from the floor in collapse. Lafe and several others who had gathered in seats nearby in case they were needed kept a watchful eye; but despite his obvious awful tiredness no one, even now, dared insist that Seabright B. Cooley leave the floor.
Above in the galleries the M’Bulu gathered himself gracefully together and, with a last faintly scornful look at the Senators below, departed the chamber. Beth Knox and Dolly Munson made their farewells to Patsy Labaiya and came downstairs to await their husbands in the Senators’ Reception Room. Patsy, with a defiant little air, waved farewell to Ray Smith of California and went downstairs to find her chauffeur and be driven off through autumn-dark, still-sleeping Washington, silent and deserted in the cold little wind that was beginning to rise ahead of the dawn. On the floor, Fred Van Ackerman, smugly pleased, gave one last contemptuous glance at his beaten opponent where he sat sunken and unresponsive, closed his book with an audibly satisfied snap, and left the floor. The Secretary of State, after asking the Majority Leader to tell Seab that he, Orrin, would come to see him later in the day, went out to find Beth and take her home. The Congressman from California, recipient of many congratulatory handshakes from Senators who had voted for his resolution, tried to accept them with a reasonable show of gratitude, though he did not really know, at that exact moment, how he felt about it. Certainly not gleeful, certainly not vindictive, and certainly not triumphant; just a sort of gray, flat, curiously uninvolved feeling—if anything, melancholy, uneasy, and sad. He had won, but he understood that, for him, many things were not yet over. Also, as soon as the vote was announced and he knew he had won, there had come a sharp recurrence of his earlier alarm. He would have called Maudie again, if it weren’t so late. Perhaps the sound of her voice would give him anchor somewhere in the sea of inchoate reactions in which he seemed to be adrift. Perhaps it might. He didn’t know.
But even as he had the thought he was informed that he would have the chance to find out. A page came quickly to his side from the Majority cloakroom.
“Sir,” the boy said, “some lady who says she’s your maid is on the phone. She wants you right away. She sounds real worried.”
“Yes,” Cullee said, hurrying forward even as his heart began to pound with a fearful constriction, “I’ll be right there.”
Shortly before 5 a.m., the Majority Leader, in accordance with tradition, announced to the Senate that he and the Minority Leader had transmitted to the President the information that the Senate had completed its business and had asked him if he had any further communications to make to it before it adjourned.
“The President said he had no further communications to make to the Senate at this time,” Bob Munson said, “and, in accordance with the resolution of adjournment passed at 5:45 p.m. yesterday, I now move that the Senate stand adjourned sine die.”
“Without objection,” said Victor Ennis, “it is so ordered,” and the long session that had seen the nomination of Robert A. Leffingwell, the death of Brigham Anderson, the Russian and American expeditions to the moon, the conference in Geneva, the visit of the M’Bulu, the Hamilton Resolution, and Seab Cooley’s filibuster passed into history.
In the milling flurry of farewell handshakes, cordial wishes for good vacations, invitations to drop-in-if-you’re-in-the-state, promises to see one another, and so on, that always turn the chamber into a noisy confusion after the last gavel falls, Bob Munson nodded to Lafe Smith, who came quickly to his side.
“Help me with this,” the Majority Leader murmured, and together they turned to the President Pro Tempore, now a little more lively, a little more responsive, as many of his colleagues stopped by to shake his hand and congratulate him on a gallant fight.
“Seab,” Senator Munson said, “Lafe and I want to see you home. May we?”
There was no answer for several seconds, and then Senator Cooley leaned forward, put both hands on his desk, and started to raise himself to his feet. Instinctively they started to help him, then as instinctively held back, as above in the Press Gallery the few remaining reporters paused to watch closely. But he fooled them all, he told himself inside his weary mind, he fooled them all and stood before them again, upright and on his feet and able, if slowly and cautiously, to move again.
“No, thank you, Bob,” he whispered as they hovered close. “No, thank you, friend Lafe. I’ll be all right … I’d … best … make it … my own way.” A faint smile crossed his face. “That’s … the only … way … I know.”
“But,” Lafe protested. “It won’t be any bother, Seab, really. Let me get us a cab and I’ll run you out to the hotel.”
“I think … I’d like to take … a little walk … before I go home … thank you,” Senator Cooley whispered. “I think fresh air … may be … what I need most … right now.”
“
Seab—” the Majority Leader said gravely, but the President Pro Tempore gave a little dismissing shake of his head.
“I’ll manage, Bob. Don’t … worry about … me.… A little … fresh … air … and I’ll be fine.… If you could have … one of the boys … bring my coat from … the cloakroom—”
“I’ll get it,” Lafe said, and quickly did so as the galleries emptied and the floor thinned out, so that only a little handful of departing Senators and page boys remained to watch.
“Thank you,” Senator Cooley whispered as Lafe helped him put it on. “Possibly you can help me … to the lavatory … if you will.” Again a tiny show of humor crossed his ravaged face. “Wouldn’t want to act … like a baby … right here on the floor … Bob … Wouldn’t want … to … do … that.”
“Sure thing,” Lafe said, “and then we’re going to see you home.”
But after they had accompanied him as he walked with an awkward slowness but a still indomitable independence off the floor to the Senators’ private toilet and there completed his painful but desperately necessary business, he still refused their offers. And finally, with a great reluctance, but unable to sway him and not quite daring to insist even in the face of his obvious absolute exhaustion, they bade him a deeply troubled good night at the entrance to the great terrace that runs around the West Front of the Capitol and looks down upon the town.
“Think … I’ll … just … walk along here and then … down the Hill,” he told them, still in the agonizing whisper. “I’ll … feel more like … sleeping, after a little … fresh air.”
And so the last they saw of him that night was his once powerful old figure, shrunken and worn, looking piteous and small in the folds of his heavy overcoat, starting out in the face of the wind, now quite cold and sharp as it whipped up from Virginia and the Potomac and the reaches of the storied streets below, to take his little walk before sleeping.
Silent and deserted still lay the boulevards of the sleeping capital as the Congressman from California sped home. Autumn’s long-lingering night had not yet begun to fade, the east was still in darkness, in all the long run from the Hill to Sixteenth Street he saw only two taxicabs and a couple of early milk trucks. The City of Perfect Intentions and Imperfect Men would not begin to come fully awake for another hour or two. At the moment he had it virtually to himself, little Cullee Hamilton from Lena, S.C., as he drove home as fast as he dared, wondering fearfully in the wake of Maudie’s frantic call what he would find this time at the end of his long, dark street.
There had been in her voice a genuine terror that had instantly called up its counterpart in him. She had been awakened by a noise downstairs, as though someone were furtively trying to pry a window; she had managed, with great courage, to get up and sneak down; had seen a figure, or possibly several, she was not sure in the darkness, outside the French doors in the dining room; and had screamed “Git!” with all the frantic vigor in her terrified voice. Then, trembling with fear, she had turned and fled back to the upstairs phone and called him, not knowing whether the intruders had obeyed her command. “Watch yourself,” she had begged him when he cried out that he was coming home at once. “Watch yourself, hear!” He had grabbed his coat, flung himself down the stairs, raced back to the House garage to get his car, and gunned out and away so fast he had almost knocked down the guard who held the door open for him.
Now he was within three blocks of home, and it was only now, so instantaneous and automatic had been his reaction, and so violent and conflicting the many emotions of the evening which had left him, too, almost bereft of coherent and constructive thought, that it occurred to him that he should have had her call the police or have called them himself. But she had been too frightened to think of it, he had been too concerned with getting home to her immediately, and the chance had been lost. As he started to turn off into his side street a patrol car came swiftly down Sixteenth, and passed, so fast he hardly realized it was there until it shot by. Then he waved frantically and blew his horn with a long, steady, imperious blast. In his rearview mirror he could see the car slow, far down the empty street, and begin to hesitate. He completed his turn and came to the driveway, not knowing whether the police had understood his message or not, but knowing he could not wait to find out, for they might not have and he knew that the menace that awaited him itself would not wait.
There were no lights on in the house when he drove into the garage, and he wondered with a wild impatient anger why not. Instantly the explanation came to mind, and he grabbed a flashlight from the glove compartment and started out around the house. The fuse box stood open against the wall, its wires cut, the telephone wires, apparently an afterthought that had fortunately not come before Maudie’s call, dangling useless, too. A chill went up his back and with a sudden instinctive caution he snapped off the flashlight and ran, as silently as he could, a distance of some twenty feet along the hedge; stopped, yanked a brick out of the edging of the front garden, and tossed it across the yard, where it made a satisfyingly noisy crash in the rhododendrons; and then began stealthily to double back toward the house, moving with great care and the delicacy of footing he had learned in track.
From the house there came no sound, and he could only hope that Maudie was all right, probably hidden away under blankets and a mattress in the back closet. That was what he had told her to do, and some instinct told him that she had and that she was all right. But that was not sufficient to satisfy him now, nor was it enough to make him pause and await either the police or the dawn, whichever might come first. Along with his excitement another element was beginning to enter: He was beginning to get angry, with a fierce, blind anger that would not let him use the caution that another part of his mind told him he should. He was too mad: mad at LeGage, mad at Sue-Dan, mad at the world. An angry fury gripped him, a savage determination and desire to get whoever was running LeGage’s errands, for he had no doubt that this was the aftermath of his ex-roommate’s promise of violence. First he would get them, and then he would get LeGage; and only then, in some later, more peaceful world of sanity restored and calm returned, would he think of anything else.
Thus it was that after a moment, although he tried to move with silence and stealth, he found himself proceeding with more and more fury and less and less concealment. And thus it was, as he rounded the back corner of the house and moved forward like some restless panther to explore the cavern of darkness surrounding the tool shed, that he found himself suddenly jumped from behind, a flying tackle trapping his ankles and causing him to fall face forward, his arms pinned by desperate hands, four or five bodies flung down upon his as it thrashed with a violent desperation beneath their combined grunting, gasping weight.
In less than a minute of fiercely silent struggle he found himself trapped and held immobile despite the twistings of his powerful body; and then began the kicks, the blows, the terrible savage pains through his chest, his stomach, his testicles, his face, his arms and legs, his head, his whole convulsive frame. After five minutes, its thrashing began to lessen, and presently it subsided and gave no more response to the kicks and jabs of those who now did with him what they would. The last thing he heard as he sank into unconsciousness was the questioning note of a siren, a high welcoming scream from Maudie somewhere in the front of the house, the crashing, hurried departure of his tormentors; and then his mind mercifully abandoned the world and for some long time, down his long, dark street, he knew no more.
So the wind blew cold off Washington as the senior Senator from South Carolina moved slowly, ever so slowly, along the exposed stone terrace to the front of the Capitol toward the great descending flight of steps to the lower reaches of the Hill; and cold blew the wind of the world, though he knew it not. For him, the world did not seem cold at this particular moment, nor did it seem harsh and unforgiving, nor did it seem, indeed, at all like the world in which he had been living when he began his filibuster.
Curiously, as he started to negotiate the steps, tee
tering for a second and almost losing his balance on the first but then gripping the handrail and easing himself carefully down, one by one with a painful caution, the world seemed warm and shining and full of hope and promise, as it had when he first came to this city, so many, many years ago. He was exhausted to the point where he had passed beyond exhaustion, and at that moment he did not know for sure where he was or where he was going. In his own mind he was once again the idealistic young Congressman from Barnwell, living in a plain little room on S Street that he rented for $10 a week; and if he was going anywhere—and his mind, filled with vague scraps of thought and idle dreams, all muffled and confused and covered over with tiredness, was not sure—it was back to that little room. He realized vaguely that it was late, some big matter had concerned the Congress tonight, and he must get home to sleep before tomorrow’s session. If his mind had any goal at all, that was it, as he inched slowly, ever so slowly, down the steps.
Back to the room on S Street, and next week, or in another ten days or so, when the session ended, back home to Barnwell and “Roselands” and Amy and Cornelia and the Colonel, and all the other familiar, friendly faces that were waiting for him there. There was a great future ahead for young Seab Cooley, and everybody knew it. They talked about it along Main Street and discussed it in the stores, and in many a stately home among the moss-hung oaks people knew with a calm satisfaction that they had done the right thing when they elected him to Congress. The years were bright and hopeful ahead, great things were moving in the world, the War to End Wars was coming to its victorious conclusion, and serene and untroubled the future lay ahead of mankind, awaiting only young and skillful hands to tap its bounties and give them to the great, beloved land.