(1964) The Man (58 page)

Petrified, eyes wide, mouth agape, Douglass Dilman saw the air suddenly filled with flying, churning objects. Dozens of eggs exploded on the platform around him, against the front of the rostrum, and then followed the rotten apples, gnawed chicken bones, chunks of red watermelon and green rinds.

The single chant, hoarse and hating, began to fragment into a hundred shouts of individual protest, shrieks dinning against his ears: “Beat it, you bastard!. . . You’re puttin’ us back in slavery!. . . Doughface, doughface!. . . Give Simon Legree the white man’s degree!. . . Sellout!. . . Down, down, down, with the Jim Crow President!”

Instinctively he recoiled at the fury of protest, lifting his arm to shield his face. He could hear police whistles, see the swaying comber of officers in blue, clubs out, bowling over the photographers, as they formed a chained line to protect him from his people. The wood platform on which he wavered now rocked with footsteps, the Chancellor, regents, deans, and Secret Service agents crowding about him to save him.

Someone was tugging at his shoulder, wrenching at it, and he gave way a little to stop the hurt, twisting his head, and he saw it was the Secret Service agent Otto Beggs. As he tried to speak, he was struck sharply on the jaw. His free hand went to his jaw and came away with a handful of gooey, dripping white and yellow egg and pieces of shell. There had been no physical pain in being struck, only psychic pain, followed by shock and fear.

“Come on, come on, outa here, Mr. President, outa here. Got to get you to where it’s safe!” Beggs was shouting.

They had surrounded him entirely now, his white Praetorians, almost lifting him from his feet as they hustled him across the platform, down the rear steps, and through the heavy lines of gathering police officers and faculty members, into the Main Administration Building behind.

Once, breathless, before being shoved inside, he had turned, wanting to call out something to the misled multitude, to explain why he had announced what he had announced, to explain that it would save them in the end. But it was no use. While the raised platform hid the eye center of the vortex, he could make out the rest of the wild mob on either side, the black students swinging their homemade signs and banners and yelling their foul epithets, and the police, reinforced by state troopers, retaliating with their clubs and curses and whistles.

Presently—he would never know how he had arrived there—he found himself on the tan leather couch in Chancellor McKaye’s high-ceilinged, oak-paneled office. The swift transition from the animal bedlam of the disorder outside to the hushed quiet of the soundproofed office left him limp and dizzy. Familiar persons came and went: Beggs wiping the egg from Dilman’s chin, Chancellor McKaye with his endless apologies, and Admiral Oates with his stethoscope and tranquilizers. After the dour White House physician had barred all visitors but those who were absolutely necessary and then himself had left, Dilman had received Tim Flannery.

“I’m sorry, I’m damn sorry, Mr. President,” the press secretary said, scratching his head through his rumpled red hair. “That was unexpected. Even the reporters were thrown.”

“What are they saying?” Dilman wanted to know.

“Most of them think it was planned by the Turnerites themselves,” said Flannery.

Dilman thought about this. “No, I don’t think so,” he said at last. “I don’t think one organization would be big enough. I think—I believe all of us misjudged Negro sentiment here and around the country. I can see it now, after the fact. Because the Crispus Society, the NAACP, the Urban League were still for going slowly, for the minorities bill, outspoken against the activist outfits like the Turnerites, we thought that was the heavy majority of Negro opinion. We’re wrong, Tim. I think those young Negro boys have had it. They may not be Turnerites, but they’re sympathetic, they want action. Gradualism is out. They’re rebelling against their fathers, who accommodated themselves to the segregation system. The young are disenchanted by the recent past. Their fathers failed. Hurley and his leaders represented a new look in paternal authority. And now, without thinking it out, they expected the first Negro in the Presidency to see things their way. And I refused. I went along with their fathers and the white men who fenced them in. I used a legal instrument to cut off their momentum and make their goal harder to reach. They weren’t positive I’d do it, but they suspected I would, and they came here prepared for it, with their signs and slogans, waiting. That’s the sum of it, I’d guess, the gospel truth.”

“Do you want to say anything like that to the press?” Flannery asked. “They’re clamoring for a statement.”

“Now? Lord, no. Now’s no time for reason and psychological explanations. Let this break up, and die down. Maybe we can issue something later.”

“Well, I’ll keep the correspondents away from you,” Flannery said. “I’ll tell them you’re safe and sound, and will have some statement to make tomorrow or the day after. They’ll be busy enough trying to interview some of the student demonstrators, find out what drove them to this.”

“Good luck to Reb Blaser,” Dilman said with a grimace.

Flannery stood up. “Mr. President, I’m still not so sure that demonstration was representative of all Negro feeling. I think you’ll see most of them are behind you when the minorities bill becomes operative.”

“I think you’ll find you’re wrong,” said Dilman. “They’ll look on the minorities bill as a white man’s bill. They’ll look on that as a forgiveness bribe, after today’s announcement, curtailing their right to direct action.”

“Maybe,” said Flannery.

“I hope maybe, Tim,” said Dilman. “When are we supposed to leave here?”

“After the Chancellor’s luncheon and—”

“Cancel it,” said Dilman. “McKaye’ll understand.”

“Done,” said Flannery. “Then you wanted a brief meeting with your son.”

“Yes. Is he safe? Will you find out about him? Give me a little while alone here to get my bearings, and then send him along.”

“Okay.”

“Tim, I could stand a drink, nothing too potent. Maybe a small brandy or some wine—”

Dilman had been alone ten minutes when Beggs opened the door to admit his press secretary once more. Flannery came in with a well-filled crystal decanter and a wine glass. He set both on the coffee table.

“The Dean of the Law School provided this,” he said. “Sherry. Will that do?”

“It’ll do fine.”

“The mob is gradually dispersing,” Flannery said.

“Any serious injuries?”

“A few bloody noses, one fractured wrist, that’s all. By the way, someone located Julian. He’s in his dorm room with his friends. He’s shaken up a bit, naturally, but he’s okay.”

“I’ll be ready for him in—in fifteen minutes.”

Alone once more, Dilman unwrapped a cigar, readied it, but was too distracted to light it. He put it down in the tray, reached for the decanter with his trembling hand, then realized that Flannery had already poured his drink. He took up the sherry in his right hand, steadying it with his left, and sipped it.

He reconsidered what he had done today. He had urged his people, already so grievously hurt, to uphold white men’s laws. He had alienated his Negro support. But conversely, had he gained white support, restored the majority of the people’s confidence in him? He was doubtful of this. The white electorate probably felt that he was carrying out, with reluctance, what T. C.’s advisers insisted he carry out. He had lost much, won little.

Yet these mathematics were not what concerned and bothered him. If he had felt positively in the right, nothing on earth would have disturbed him. What bothered him, as it had from the beginning, was that the Turnerites had qualified for condemnation only if they were Communist-financed. Yet he was still uncertain of the truth of this accusation. He had bought Attorney General Kemmler’s flimsy case after that bad telephone exchange with that damn Leroy Poole, after learning from Poole that the Mississippi abduction had been inspired by Turnerite policy, which frightened him, and after hearing the lie that his own son was a part of this terror, which had emphasized for him how far the members of that gang would go in maligning the innocent to gain their ends. But the reasonable part of his brain doubted that the Turnerites were literally subversive, dedicated to overthrowing the government. His black skin knew what all of Kemmler’s Justice Department attorneys would never understand, and what that rioting throng that had stopped his speech did understand, that the Turnerites were out to overthrow inequality, not government but inequality. Now it was too late for these second thoughts. If injustice this was, he must find other means to correct it.

He had finished his sherry, and then realized with a start that not fifteen minutes but twice that time had gone by. He jumped up, went to the door, and opened it. Beggs, who was planted outside, quickly turned.

“Has my son—?” Then he saw Julian, miserably huddled in a chair of the reception room. “Oh, hello, Julian. Come on in.” As Julian brushed past him with only a muttered greeting, Dilman asked Beggs, “How is it going?”

“We got it under control. Only a few handfuls of them hanging around.”

“Good. Tell Tim Flannery to have the car here in fifteen minutes. He can notify the helicopter crew.”

He closed the door carefully, to make certain it was fastened securely, and then he turned to his son. Julian was standing beside the coffee table, patting his checkered sport coat against his dark-gray slacks. His short hair was plastered down and glossy as ever, and his thyroid eyes were fixed on the sherry decanter.

Dilman indicated the decanter. “Want some?”

“No.”

“All right, sit down. We don’t have much time. Let’s talk.”

Defiantly, Julian remained on his feet, but once Dilman had settled on the couch, the boy yanked a chair nearer the coffee table and lowered himself into it.

“I don’t know what we’re supposed to talk about,” Julian said sullenly.

“We’ll see. . . . Were you out there in that mob?”

“For a while. When the guys with the signs started infiltrating in, I decided to get out. I went with two of my friends back to my room.”

“Did you know this was going to happen?”

“If you did what they hoped you wouldn’t, yes, I knew it would happen. Everyone’s been steamed up since Hurley was arrested.”

“Have the other students been giving you a rough time?”

Julian examined his polished nails. “Not especially. I told them I didn’t know what you’d do. I told them if you did the banning, I was against it, and on their side.”

“I see.”

“I don’t have to listen to white men,” Julian said angrily. “I make my own decisions.”

Dilman picked up his unsmoked cigar. “Maybe I’m not listening to white men or colored men either. Maybe, in my position, I have a higher responsibility. Maybe I’m listening to the Constitution.”

“Oh, sure.”

Dilman knew that he could not continue to be high-minded and pretentious. He was dealing with his son, who was once more disillusioned with him and, in effect, disowning their relationship. “You know my feelings about the law, Julian. Possibly it would help if you’d transmit them to your friends.”

“Help who?” said Julian. “I’ll be lucky if I can find anybody to speak to me.”

Dilman’s heart ached. He put the cigar down again. “Do you want to transfer out of here, Julian?”

“A month ago, yes. Now, no. Not now. I’ll show them I belong to me.”

Dilman sighed audibly. The time had come. It was the wrong time, but then, perhaps, there would never be a right time to speak what was foremost in his mind. “Are you sure you belong only to yourself, Julian? Are you sure of that?”

Julian’s bulging eyes left the examination of his fingernails. He glanced suspiciously at his father. “What does that mean?”

“Do you have any allegiance elsewhere? I know you’re an officer in the student end of the Crispus Society—”

“That crud. Are you serious? I joined them before I grew up.”

“And after you grew up, Julian, what else did you join?”

Julian’s brow wrinkled, once more wary, and his pointed English shoe dug at the carpet. “What else did I join? I don’t get you, Dad.”

Dilman edged forward toward his son, until his knee hit the coffee table. “All right, cards on the table, Julian. I forget how many days ago—the night after the FBI caught Hurley—I received a call from the young man you so much admire—from Leroy Poole—pleading Jefferson Hurley’s case for self-defense and begging me not to ban the Turnerites. I said I’d have to ban them. Do you know what he said?” He watched his suspicious son carefully now. “He said to me, ‘You indict the Turnerites for criminal subversion, and you indict your own son.’ He said ‘Julian is one of us, stealing information from the Crispus people, getting statistics about persecutions in places like Hattiesburg.’ To that effect. That’s what he said.”

Julian’s face was filled with wrath. “Leroy Poole?
He
said that to you?”

“That and more. Yes, Julian. And I told him he was a rotten liar. He said, ‘Okay, ask Julian.’ ” He paused. “I’m here, Julian. I am asking you.”

“Asking me what? You mean you even listened one minute to that sonofabitchin’ smelly satchel-mouth? Him? He said all that?”

Dilman had never heard his son use such language before. Yet he was relieved by the boy’s indignation. “I’m quoting him almost exactly. I told you I did not believe him. I came here to make sure.”

Julian was on his feet, agitatedly wringing his hands. “That bastard, that dirty troublemaker.”

“Julian, I wouldn’t press this further, but obviously there’s a lot at stake for both of us. Were you ever, even for a day, for a minute, a secret member of that Turnerite Group? Just give me a simple yes or no, and that’s it.”

“No, I never was. I swear to it. Now are you happy?”

Dilman stood up. “I’m not happy. But I feel better. I’m glad you had the good sense for which I always gave you credit.”

“I never belonged,” said Julian shrilly, “but that doesn’t mean I don’t think they’re righter than you are.”

“I’m not interested, Julian. Thanks. Be well. I’ll see you soon in Washington.”