(1964) The Man (59 page)

He tried to go to the door, but Julian blocked his way. “Dad, you can be President or whatever, but there’s a lot who put more faith in Jeff Hurley’s ideas than yours.”

“I told you I’m not interested.” He went around his son to the door.

“You’d better be, you’d just better be!” his son shouted.

He refused to be baited or engaged further. He had come here to ask his son for a plain answer. He had heard his son’s answer and it was satisfactory. That shone bright as a jewel on a dismal day. He would not allow this tiny gem of happiness to be tarnished so soon.

PRESIDENT DILMAN RETURNED FROM NEW YORK CITY AT
6:30
P.M. HE SPENT A HALF HOUR CONFERRING IN HIS OFFICE WITH ATTORNEY GENERAL KEMMLER AND SECRETARY OF HEALTH, EDUCATION AND WELFARE MRS. CUMMINS.

AT 7:15 P.M. THE PRESIDENT MET WITH THE REVEREND PAUL SPINGER AND DIRECTORS OF THE CRISPUS SOCIETY. FOLLOWING THE MEETING, THE PRESIDENT MADE AN IMPROMPTU STATEMENT TO THE PRESS.

PRESIDENT DILMAN
: The unfortunate incident that took place on the campus of Trafford University this morning, after my announcement of the banning of the Turnerite Group, underlines the necessity . . .

“ ‘—for every American citizen to be alerted to the subversive dangers of extremism, from wherever it originates,’ President Dilman told the White House press corps gathered about him in the West Wing lobby earlier this evening. Showing no ill effects from the egg-throwing episode at Trafford, which is creating controversial headlines abroad, the President went on calmly to tell his listeners that he was taking further steps to align Negro moderates alongside—”

A voice from the far corner of Leroy Poole’s motel room bellowed, “Shut that goddam fink announcer off!”

Immediately Poole got out of his chair and hopped to the transistor radio propped against the bag of fruit, and with a roll of his thumb muted the news report.

Pocketing the tiny radio, Poole wheeled to face the others, who were sitting or lolling about the large motel room he had rented the morning after the night he had put the zinging old filial arrow into that bastard Dilman. Once having revealed to Dilman that the kidnaping had been an official Turnerite action, and having zinged him with the news of Julian’s secret membership, he had begun worrying that Dilman might sic the FBI bloodhounds after him for more information. Losing no time, Poole had borrowed a car and removed himself and his effects from his hotel in the center of Washington to this obscure second-class motel on Canal Road, near Fletcher’s Boat House, three miles from Georgetown.

Since then, Poole had decided that he probably was not being sought for more information after all. Most likely, for fear of compromising his kid Julian, the President had told no one of the call from his biographer. Finally Poole had felt safe enough to let the word of his whereabouts be known to those who mattered. One by one they had converged outside Washington, the last of the Turnerite leaders, to determine what could be done for Hurley and for the survival of their organization.

There were seven of them here—Poole excluded himself—and they had been gathered for at least four hours, drinking beer and eating cheese and ham sandwiches. They had reported, they had debated, they had speculated, taking breaks to listen to the news broadcasts, and the time had come for a settlement.

Frank Valetti, Hurley’s second-in-command, product of a Negro-Italian interracial marriage, who resembled a bronzed Indian brave (and was the most persuasive and sophisticated among them, excepting Leroy Poole himself), had informally presided. He had already burned the membership records and minutes of meetings. He had accounted for the cash on hand and suggested how it be spent. The vote had been seven to one in favor of Valetti’s proposal that the funds be turned over to a white leftist lawyer, a good headline maker in Manhattan, to be used to reinforce Jeff Hurley’s defense. The lone dissenter had been Burleigh Thomas, one of the two men who had assisted Hurley in the kidnaping of Gage, and who had gotten away unrecognized, to be the last arrival at the motel. Burleigh Thomas, a constantly fuming, short-tempered, squat and muscular truck driver with matted hair, a low broad-bridged nose, a cleft chin and an abrasive voice, had wanted most of the remaining Turnerite funds held out to support further underground violence.

“Jeff Hurley’s a stuck pig, scalded, skinned, and ready to be cooked,” Burleigh Thomas had said. “Why throw the dough down the drain? Let those of us who wants to, go on and use it for getting in a few more licks against the whiteboys.”

Valetti had replied reasonably that Dilman’s banning had left them disorganized, in danger, and further activist resistance was pointless at this time. Later, perhaps, but not now. Leroy Poole had added that Jeff Hurley was not dead yet, that there were means to save him, that it was their duty to try, and to make a good propaganda campaign for their ideals along the way. This would take what was left of the money. And so the vote had gone seven to one.

Settlement time had arrived. Disposition of the
corpus sine pectore
.

“Well, gang,” said Valetti, uncrossing his legs and bringing his hands together, “I guess that does it. I think we’re all of a mind to disband. Our head man is gone. Our records are gone. Our funds are disposed of. We’re through—at least for now.”

“What are you going to do, Frank?” Poole asked.

“I’m going abroad for a while.”

“Abroad, listen to him,” Burleigh Thomas mocked. “Abroad, eh? Chickening out, you mean.”

Valetti shook his head gently. “Don’t try to bug me, Burleigh, we’re on the same side. Yup, I’m going abroad, because I don’t want the Federals badgering me or using me against Jeff Hurley. Besides I want to raise some dough for our cause, lots of it, and then come back and reorganize something new.”

“Who’s giving you dough abroad?” Burleigh Thomas snorted. “Who gives a damn about us anywheres else? Them that does, they ain’t got the green stuff, and them that has, they don’t give a damn.”

“Settle down, Burleigh.” Valetti’s lips curled in a knowing smile. “I’ve got my means. I suggest you join up with our old friends in the more respectable societies, and do what you can to rouse them up a bit. Just do your best, and when the climate here is ripe, and I have a nest egg for us, I’ll be back and calling on you, all of you. As for Jeff, I guess we can trust the lawyers to do what can be done, and if they get nowhere, we can depend on Leroy here to try to intervene with the President for clemency.”

“I don’t know if Dilman’ll even see me again,” said Poole.

“You’ve got enough to make him see you again.” Valetti winked. “Maybe one or two of our records weren’t burned.”

Burleigh Thomas was on his feet, hiking up his overalls. “I wouldn’t spit on that goddam yellowbelly Dilman, let alone go asking him any favors. I’d see him for only one thing, to bust his goddam face wide open. He’s the cause of all our trouble, I tell you. I could see it from the day he came in that job, told Jeff Hurley as much from the start, that Dilman would be our worst enemy, bad or worse than some goddam whiteshirt Kleagle. Like I said to Jeff from the beginning, we better be prepared to fight that there white nigger of ours hard as we fight the whiteboy skunks. Well, you guys can see I was right, wasn’t I? Lookit him, lookit Dilman. When you got a Rastus nigger up there, you got someone doing the backward bends, so’s he not even treating us like some stumblebum white politician would, let alone like a nigger should. I tell you, I’d sure enough give my left gut to see T. C. still President, or even that Yankee man, Eaton, because they’d at least remember our voting power, and they wouldn’t be hacking us down with that subversive controls business. But Dilman—” Thomas glared at Poole. “I’d rather let my pal Jeff Hurley die in the chair than ask that yellowbelly nigger Dilman one favor.”

“I don’t have to ask Dilman any favors,” piped up Leroy Poole. “Like Frank says, we’ve got other means to deal with turncoats.”

“You bet we have, but not by asking favors,” Thomas growled. He stared at the others. “Okay, you fraidcat punks, do whatever you want to do. Some of us ain’t giving up so easy, no sir. We’re not letting any crappy control laws put in by that possum slummock make us run for cover.”

“You haven’t got a chance on your own,” said Frank Valetti. He threw his raincoat over his arm and went to the motel door,. “I’m hitting the road. Good luck to each of you. We’ll win what Jeff and all of us are after—one day, someday soon. Good night.”

After Valetti had gone, the others shook hands with Poole and one another and departed, singly and in pairs. Presently the room was empty of all but Burleigh Thomas and Leroy Poole.

Thomas pulled on his heavy sweater as Poole waited. Poole could see that Thomas was deliberately fussing too much with his garment, as if he wanted to speak about something on his mind.

Poole felt uncomfortable. It often amazed him that one organization, with one purpose and goal, could have room for men so dissimilar as Thomas and himself. For Poole, the ones like Thomas were aboriginals, too brutish and demoniac to appreciate the refinements of rebellion and freedom, as did ones like himself. The Thomases were the easiest targets for whites like Zeke Miller and Bruce Hankins and Everett Gage, the late Everett Gage, who did not believe such beings were prepared for civilized equality. When you agreed to set them free, you opened the cage. But what then? Could untrained, barbarous, vindictive primates be let loose to live with skilled, educated, law-abiding higher creatures?

Instantly Poole hated himself for entertaining red-neck thoughts. His mind went to his morning mental exercises, and he knew that Burleigh Thomas was as deserving of freedom, no matter how ill-prepared he was for it, as he himself, and he felt kindlier toward the truck driver.

He found Burleigh Thomas scrutinizing him. Poole suffered a lump of guilt inside. “Well, Burleigh, I wish you—”

“Leroy, what you going to do next?”

Poole was surprised that his primitive companion could have such concerns. “Do next? Why, first off, I’m kind of low on eating money. I guess I’ll knock off my book, the one I’m writing on Dilman, and get what is owed to me. And then I’ll start pounding my typewriter pulpit for real, trying to heat our people up some more. Guess I’m still a poor preacher boy at heart.”

“Naw, I mean about our movement.”

“What’s there to do? I’m keeping an eye on Jeff Hurley’s trial. I already heard from his old lady, Gladys, in Louisville, and his other relatives. They’re depending on me. I don’t think the Feds will give Jeff more than a stiff sentence, manslaughter or some such. They don’t want more trouble. If it goes past that, well, I guess I’ll have to go to Dilman. I can make him see me. And from what I’ve read, he’s got it in his power to save Jeff.” He could see that Thomas was not satisfied, and then he remembered. “Our movement, you asked? Like Frank Valetti said, the Attorney General and Dilman shot us down. I guess I’ll play dead until the shooting stops.”

Burleigh Thomas covered his matted hair with a wool cap. “Not me,” he said. “There are maybe a half dozen of us who ain’t letting those big shots think they won the crap game because they got the loaded bones. Nope. We’re going to keep moving in on them holy Joes, the way Jeff would want.”

“I wish you luck, Burleigh, but the dice are still loaded. Valetti’s a pretty smart guy. Why don’t you do what he suggests—take it easy until—”

“To hell with Valetti. He’s got his Commie friends to go back to. That ain’t got a friggin’ thing to do with us. We got no nothing waiting for us but to keep fighting.” He paused, and considered Poole through slit eyes. “You’re a mighty smart kid, Leroy. I been listening to you. They ain’t housebroke you yet, for sure.”

“Nobody has, and nobody ever will.”

“I don’t think we’re so far apart, except like in education. Knowing Dilman the way you do, I sorta have a hunch you agree with me he’s the worst yellowbelly sonofabitch ever got born black.”

“Basically, I can’t disagree with you,” Poole conceded. “However, his fault isn’t that he’s mean, but that he’s scared—”

“Shivering scared, yup. Old cullud-boy-in-the-cemetery-scared, yup. But to me there’s nothing badder, because that makes him suck around those whiteboys, barking and standing on his hind legs when they give him their finger-snapping. It’s like he’s afraid to recognize us, to prove he don’t know us, so he’s twice as tough against us. I think even that scrotum-face, rumdum Zeke Miller would be better—”

“We-ll, I wouldn’t go that far, Burleigh.”

“You’re going to see I’m right,” insisted Thomas. “Before Dilman’s finished in office, we’ll all be back on the plantations picking cotton. I’m just saying to you, do what you want, but there are some of us not letting him get away with it. What Jeff started, we’re finishing. We’re going to bug that Dilman until he’s gotta tell difference between black from white.” Thomas hesitated. “You sure you don’t want to stay with us?”

Leroy Poole patted his belly. “I’m not built for the muscle part of it, Burleigh. I’m strictly a word man. Words can be fists, too.”

Thomas made two hamlike fists. “Not like these, no words like these. Okay, Leroy, you do your doings your way, I do them mine.” He went to the door, wrenched the knob, but turned back before opening it. “Maybe you’ll have a change of heart. If you do, I’ll be here a few days. If you want to talk, you can always get hold of me through my kid sister. She’s a good kid. Leave a note for her at the Walk Inn—that’s a booze joint on Seventeenth—and say you want me to call. Just leave a note for my sis.”

As he opened the door, Poole called out, “What’s her name, Burleigh?”

“Ruby—same last name like mine—Ruby Thomas. She knows where I am every minute.”

FOLLOWING THE ORDERS OF THE WHITE HOUSE PHYSICIAN, ADMIRAL OATES, THE PRESIDENT IS SPENDING THE DAY ABOARD THE PRESIDENTIAL YACHT “FREDDIE BOY.” THE YACHT DEPARTED FROM THE WASHINGTON NAVY YARD DOCK AT
9
A.M., EDT. EXCEPT FOR CONFERRING WITH SECRETARY OF STATE EATON ON THE FORTHCOMING CONFERENCE WITH PREMIER KASATKIN, AND REVIEWING THE FINAL MINORITIES REHABILITATION PROGRAM BILL DELIVERED TO HIM BY CONGRESS, THE PRESIDENT WILL DEVOTE HIS TIME TO DEEP-SEA FISHING AND RESTING.