(1964) The Man (33 page)

Momentarily muted by his first visit to the Oval Office, Julian had then wanted to know everything about it. Dilman had quickly led his son on a tour of the room, pointing out the historical curiosities about which he had recently learned. He had shown Julian the Chief Executive’s seal impressed upon the white ceiling, the .51 Spencer carbine first shot by Lincoln now hanging on a wall, the cork floor between the carpet and French doors still pitted from the spikes of Eisenhower’s golf shoes, the faint heel markings on the wood of the Buchanan desk left by Kennedy’s young son when he crawled under it, the mounted leopard head presented by the President of Baraza to T. C., which the First Lady had permitted to remain behind. When they had returned to the bare desk, Julian wondered if his father would be allowed to put his own effects upon it. Dilman had replied, “Of course, when everything’s unpacked. Next time you come you’ll see the Forensic League trophy on the desk, and those framed pictures of your mother and yourself.” Both had been conscious, fleetingly, of the name and picture unmentioned.

Now Dilman observed his son, rather than listened to him, as Julian rattled on. Julian was relating how the events of the past week had thrilled the student body of Trafford University. Studying the boy, Dilman was surprised again that Julian was almost twenty years old. Julian’s dudish attire—narrow-shouldered, tapering suit coat, tight trousers, high-collared, starched white shirt with the Italian-made tie, pointed, glossy English shoes—accentuated his chicken-breasted, slim and slight five feet seven inches. Julian’s short-cropped hair was pomaded, his white-brown eyeballs bulged out of the coal-black face across the center of which his nostrils were distended. His constantly animated hands, scrubbed clean, the fingernails manicured, were almost overdelicate, in contrast to his African visage. One day he would be wizened.

Julian had, Dilman feared, a certain lack of maturity, balance, judgment. Where his sister resembled her mother physically, Julian had inherited some of his mother’s character traits, too quick to become manic and too quick to become depressive, too often reckless and too often venomous. It was these traits that had made Dilman determine that the boy would be safer in a Negro school, among his own, than in a Southern nonsegregated school, which might be a potential ammunition dump.

Considering his son, Dilman wondered if he had acted wisely. Julian had pleaded to enter the famous university in South Carolina which had been desegregated by force—five Negroes had then been attending it, and they did so under guard—arguing that he wanted to get used to the equality he deserved and arguing that he had every right to benefit from the university’s renowned School of Law. Dilman had refused to let his boy enter that explosive institution. At the time he had said, and tried to believe, that he was doing this for Julian’s own good, to shelter him from the hatred, ostracism, and possible physical violence that were bound to result. Often, afterward, following troubled discussions of his decision with Wanda, Dilman had wondered if he had acted less on his son’s behalf than on his own. The entry of a senator’s son into a South Carolina college would have put Dilman into the news, underlining his Negroness and differentness to his constituents, and this would have been a political detriment rather than an asset to him, and harmed the Negro cause in general.

Yet, Dilman could see, enrollment in a once entirely white college might have had a salutary effect upon Julian. Not only would it have answered his youthful demands for equality, but it would have enforced upon him a sense of social and scholastic responsibility, modified his flare-ups of resentment, given him a greater maturity. Certainly, Dilman could see, Trafford University had not served Julian well. If anything, it only served Dilman himself, kept the public surface of his own life smooth. The peace that Dilman had won by placing his son in the isolation and safe shelter of a Negro school had been costly to the boy. Julian’s frustration was fuel for his anger. Segregation among his own—“that crummy academic Harlem,” Julian had once called Trafford—had made him less fit to become a citizen of the country at large. The parentally enforced segregation, with its withdrawal of rights and challenges, had made Julian disinterested in the life around him and in his education.

Continuing to inspect his son, Dilman tried to tell himself that he had performed sensibly, with a consideration of reality that Julian did not possess. As a father, Dilman had been and was still protecting his child. This morning there was none of the usual bitterness, resentment, imbalance of temperament in Julian. He appeared stimulated, even happy. But then, listening more carefully, Dilman could not deceive himself. The boy was not happier with Trafford, but with the fact that overnight he was a President’s son at Trafford. His pleasure was not that he had won more attention and respect from his colored classmates. He had already had an undue amount of that, unearned, as a senator’s offspring. His pleasure was that members of the white faculty, and members of the white press, and white social arbiters in nearby New York towns, had been fawning upon him.

“Geez, Dad, I wish you could have been to that tea in the Law School library yesterday,” Julian was saying. “Except for some of the honor students, I was the only undergrad there. You’d think I was a celebrity or something the way those white professors kept coming around me to ask about you and your law background, and how you did in Commercial Law, and where you practiced, and if you kept up your interest in law after you got into Congress. I tell you, you should have seen. Even the Dean of Admissions kind of tried to get my ear, to find out my plans, and to find out if I had talked to you, and if I was going down to the White House to see you. Imagine, old frostpuss, the Dean himself—”

Dilman knew what was foremost in his mind. It was time to end his son’s false ticker-tape parade. Dilman interrupted. “Julian—”

Julian stopped, saw his father’s face, and waited suspiciously.

“I’m glad you’re so popular,” Dilman went on, “but tell me one thing. Was Chancellor McKaye among those eager to seek you out?”

Julian’s expression showed that he suspected a trap, and his protruding hyperthyroid eyes rolled, as they always did when he was wary. “No,” he said. “Why?”

“Well, he sought me out,” said Dilman. “I had a letter from him the day before our late President’s death.”

Julian attempted an evasive tactic, but it was halfhearted. “You mean about having you come up to the school to speak on Founders’ Day? I heard some talk they were planning to invite you. I hope you—”

“You know that was not the invitation Chancellor McKaye sent me,” said Dilman with annoyance. “It was an invitation, yes, but to discuss what’s happening to you. He informed me you’re heading for an F in at least one course, and you may not maintain a passing grade in two others. If your grade point average goes below a C, he will find it necessary to put you on probation. You know what that means. You not only need to get passing grades, but you need a B average in order to be accepted in law school. I must say, I was surprised, Julian. You were averaging between a B and C. You’ve been complaining that the curriculum was too easy. Now, suddenly, this nose dive. The Chancellor indicated that you are rebellious, inattentive, and more interested in outside activities than in your classes. Before going to him, I wanted to hear you out. We’ve always been honest with one another, Julian. More than ever, this is a time for honesty. What’s happening with you at that school, Julian?”

Julian had been wriggling in the antique chair. Now he was sullen. “Nothing,” he said. “I’ve been busy, that’s all.”

“Busy with what?”

“Well, you know, I’m on the students’ administrative board of Carver Hall, and there’s the Debate Club, and lately they’ve been overloading us with homework.”

“You’ve managed up until now.”

“And then the Crispus Society. Now that I’ve become the campus rep to National Headquarters, and I’m on the Students’ National Advisory Council of Crispus, I have to go into New York more often. Ask your friend Spinger the amount of work that entails. Anyway, don’t worry, I’ll—”

“I am worried, Julian. I’ve not stood in the way of outside activity. As far as I’m concerned, have it, but only if it doesn’t interfere with your real job, and your real job is getting through the university, and later getting a Bachelor of Laws.”

Dilman could see the venom shooting across his son’s face, and Julian’s lips puckering to contain their trembling. “I don’t care what, but I disagree with you,” said Julian, his voice cracking. “My real job isn’t in that intellectual Catfish Row, getting a black sheepskin so’s I can practice on Chicago’s South Side like you did, protecting my people from petty civil suits. My job is protecting my people’s rights under the Constitution, seeing they’re not subjugated. I can do that better devoting more time to the Crispus Society, fighting for my whole people, than by trying to do graduate work in a Negro college, so’s I can become a Negro lawyer to represent Negroes over matters that don’t count. My first duty is to help the country straighten itself out, so that when I get my law degree, I’ll have one as a lawyer, not as a Negro lawyer, and I can live among people, not just Negro people, and can represent clients of every color—that’s my duty and my job. I don’t care what you say to it, Dad, but you went and put me in that school to keep me in my place, to keep me a Negro, like the whites do—”

Dilman had heard much of this before, but never spoken with such indignation. He held his own temper in check, determined to reason with the boy. “I didn’t try to keep you a Negro or anything else, Julian,” he said. “What you are, what you become, is in your own hands. Certainly there are gross inequities being practiced against us, but we’ve made gains and we’ll make more, and one day, under due process of law, this country will be everyone’s country.”

“The payment’s overdue more than a hundred years,” said Julian angrily. “We’re not waiting any more. We’re collecting.”

Dilman stared at his hands on the desk, “We’re being gradually paid up,” he said quietly. “Slavery and bondage are gone. Segregation is going. You’ll have it easier than I had it, and even the way times were, look what a Negro like your father could accomplish in this country. Both whites and blacks put me in Congress—”

“On the white man’s terms,” said Julian. Hastily he added, “I’m not being disrespectful, but I mean—”

“Julian, look where I’m sitting, look around the room you’re in—”

Julian had grasped the desk. “They didn’t mean for you to be here, Dad, they don’t want you here. We want you, but they don’t.” His voice was cracking again. “I haven’t told you everything I’ve been hearing.”

Dilman wanted to end this painful scene with one who was of his own blood, one who would not understand. “I know what’s going on, Julian,” he said. “Nevertheless, I’m here, and that speaks well of our situation in our country. It is proof of what is possible. I’ll do my job here, and all I want of you is that you stop trying to turn over the country with one push and concentrate on learning some reason in school—”

“Dad, I’m going to tell you, I’m going to tell you,” Julian interrupted. “All of us think it’s like a miracle, your being put here. You’ve got the chance of a lifetime to do in a little while what our people, and the ones who died and suffered, all the societies, couldn’t do in a century. You can force the whites—”

“I’m not forcing anybody to do anything.” Dilman’s tone had become harsh. “I’m the President of the United States, not the President of the Negro population, and whatever’s best—”

“I’m still going to tell you—listen, Dad, please listen—you’ve got to know what our people are saying outside—they’re saying if you were the President of the United States, all of it, that would be fine, too, but you’re not—won’t be—you’ll be like the ones before—the President of the whites—”

Dilman’s hands balled hard. “That’s enough from you, Julian, that’s quite enough. You remember who you are and who I am, and that I’m the one who’s still in charge of seeing you think right and behave right—me, not your callow friends.”

Sulkily Julian released his grip on the desk, and pushed back into his chair. “Okay, if—if you don’t want to talk—”

“Don’t bait me. And stop being childish.”

“I’m not baiting you the least bit. I’m only thinking how you always wanted us to be your kind of Negro, and none of us wanted it, not Mom, and not Mindy, and not me either. I always envied Mindy because she was born lucky, and got away, and I was born this way and got stuck. When I wanted to do something about it, become a person like everybody else, like Mindy, you wouldn’t let me, and you still won’t.”

At the first mention of his daughter’s name, Dilman had automatically begun to scan the office, to make certain that every door was closed to hostile ears. He could see that the doors were shut tight.

He brought his gaze back to his son. “I don’t want to discuss Mindy here.”

“And you don’t want to discuss me, either,” said Julian bitterly. “I’d trade places with her tomorrow, if I could.”

“Don’t be so sure of that,” said Dilman. “All Negroes who pass aren’t so happy. The deceit—”

“She’s doing all right,” said Julian.

Dilman looked at his son sharply. “How do you know?” he demanded. “How do you know she’s doing all right?”

Julian’s immediate discomfort was evident. “I—I’m guessing. If she weren’t, wouldn’t you have heard from her, now that you’re President? If she weren’t better off playing white, wouldn’t she come forward to live in the White House?”

“You seem to know a good deal about her,” said Dilman. “You’ve been in touch with her, haven’t you?”

“Suppose I have?”

“I’m surprised, that’s all,” said Dilman, and his heart ached at her rejection of him, and then he was ashamed at the fear that had entered his head. When Mindy had gone across the line separating white from black, she had gone entirely, disappeared from every phase of the old life she had ever known. Only she knew her secret and her identity. Now she was not alone. She had shared her secret. The threat of it oppressed him. “Isn’t she afraid? Why should she take the chance of letting you know—”