(1964) The Man (60 page)

B
Y ONE
o’clock in the afternoon, Douglass Dilman knew that the cruise was a mistake, and that he was in for another fiasco.

When Admiral Oates had suggested the brief nautical outing, his need for a relaxed day away from his office, especially because of the agitation induced by the Trafford University incident and the slight flare-up of his blood pressure, Dilman had not been able to reject the idea. Somehow, he had felt, it would make him lose face in front of Governor Talley, Secretary Eaton, and several other advisers in his office at the time. With feigned enthusiasm, he had agreed to the cruise. He had not told any one of them that except for one trip on a Great Lakes steamer and several ferryboat crossings to Staten Island, he had never been on a boat, and he had never in his life been on one that went out to sea.

His apprehension had been somewhat alleviated in the early morning, after he had been piped aboard and been made welcome by Commander Chappell, and been saluted by the six enlisted men on deck. As the ninety-two-foot yacht—once christened Eisenhower’s
Barbara Ann
and Kennedy’s
Honey Fitz
, and last and still T. C.’s
Freddie Boy
(so lettered in bright gold on the stern)—proceeded down the Anacostia River, and into Chesapeake Bay, Dilman had been taken on a tour of the vessel by Admiral Rivard, the veteran Navy Chief of Staff.

Hardly conscious of the rocking of the yacht, the steady creaking of the timbers, Dilman had admired the white, mahogany-trimmed ship from stem to stern, from port to starboard—or was it starboard? Wasn’t it aft? Or fore? Or bow? He had been as baffled by the Admiral’s language as he would have been by Latin or Hebrew, in fact, more so. Nodding constantly, to display his pleasure and comprehension, Dilman had covered not only every inch of the deck, but the Commander’s cabin where the helm could be seen, and then he had gone down the companionway—or was it hatch?—no, companionway, absolutely—between the nauseating, freshly painted walls to the cabins below. He had visited the dining room, which seated forty, and the large Presidential stateroom or bedroom with its two bunks, and the attractive lounge with its green carpet, chairs, television set, radiotelephone, and Currier and Ives nautical prints.

On the afterdeck—he was sure Admiral Rivard had called it the afterdeck—Dilman had gratefully settled into a bamboo chair on the hemp rug. He had tried to be attentive to Secretary Eaton, as the Secretary reported on his recent conversation with Soviet Ambassador Rudenko. Dilman had assimilated the gist of it—three-day summit conference to be held at the château in Chantilly, twenty-six miles north of Paris, with the final meeting capped by the French President’s farewell banquet, to be held in Versailles Palace—and all the while he had been hypnotized by the yacht’s rising and falling rail over Eaton’s shoulder. Dilman had measured, secretly, the distance the rail heaved above the horizon line and dipped beneath it. The upward motion had taken in two inches of perfectly blue and cloudless sky. The downward motion had taken in three inches of pea-green, sea-green water. The more his stomach gurgled, the more his gorge heaved toward his throat, the more attentive he had tried to be to Eaton’s voice.

He had not known how long his Secretary of State intended to go on, but he had been thankful when Edna Foster interrupted him with a shore-to-ship message. After that, Commander Chappell announced cheerfully that they were in the Atlantic, in the open sea, and the fishing tackle was ready for him on the port side. To Dilman, the obstacle of locating the port side (without daring to ask) through this floating maze, and the sickening knowledge that they were bouncing about in the middle of the ocean had given him the courage to state that he was not prepared to fish yet.

“I’ve got too much work,” he had said.

The Commander had persisted. “Mr. President, you ought to take advantage of a warm windless day like this. Not many this time of the year, I’ll tell you. But look there, the sun, not a breeze, sea smooth as glass, and some channel bass and marlin waiting to be caught.”

“Thank you, Commander, soon as I can.”

He slunk off, making a pretense of finding Miss Foster, but when he reached the companionway, Sally Watson had intercepted him. The sea change had made her more exuberant and prettier than ever. Her blond hair, swept back, was partially covered by the hood of her brightly striped Italian sweater. Her slim hips, as she walked, moved provocatively under her snug white raw-silk slacks.

“Magnificent, isn’t it?” she had asked joyously, lifting her sunglasses.

“Fine, fine,” he had said.

“I’m utterly famished. The salt air really gives one an appetite. But we’re not allowed to eat lunch, Mr. President, until you lead the way. The steward is all set.”

“Lunch already?” he had said, and inside, his stomach again climbed toward his gullet. “Too early for me. You tell the steward I’ll eat later. Go right ahead, and let everyone know they can get started.”

While the others went below to be served by the white-jacketed messboys, Dilman had remained on the deck alone. For a while he had sat in a deck chair, warm in his gray wool suit coat and constricting starched collar, shutting his eyes to the slight roll of the yacht, trying not to think of the work that awaited him in the lounge, wondering if Nat Abrahams had received his message last night and would be able to come out and visit him.

Too quickly an hour had passed, for he could hear the chatter of the diners as they came out on the deck, and he had pushed himself to his feet. He had not wanted to be found slumped in a deck chair, wilted and ailing. It would have been embarrassing and un-Presidential. The least that he could do, he had decided, was to assume some casual, more presentable pose. He had walked unsteadily to the bow section of the ship, and propped himself with elbows upon the rail, striking an attitude of deep meditation.

And he was at one o’clock, suffocated with nausea, increasingly dizzy and bleary, and sorry for himself.

From the corner of his eye he could see Arthur Eaton, so natty in his white yachting cap, foulard, brass-buttoned Navy coat and immaculate white trousers, joining Sally Watson at the prow, joking, laughing, enjoying this perfect day on the water. For the first time, the very first time, Dilman envied Arthur Eaton, not because Eaton was white and he was black, but because Eaton had had the advantage of being raised to this kind of life, being a natural part of it, belonging to it. Eaton was to the Presidential yacht born. Himself, he was strictly a ferry commuter, a Chicago elevated or New York subway type.

Bitterly he turned away from that pair and looked out to the hostile sea again. How he envied his predecessors, those natural outdoor maritime Presidents like Franklin Roosevelt and John Kennedy and T. C., gifted with sea legs, their class and breeding inborn—but all
born
, all with the advantages from their day one. Weakly, elbows stiffening on the rising and falling rail, he indulged his self-pity. This goddam yacht was only a symbol of the whole impossible thing. It was rotten to grow up and live one’s entire life as an outcast, a fringe man, and that went not only for Negroes but for many whites, too, whites without background and money and training. It was rotten to live and die dampened by inferiority and awkwardness, never really knowing which fork, which spoon, never knowing etiquette, or the games of leisure, surfing and polo, and that latest South American dance, never knowing sumptuous family gatherings at Thanksgiving or Christmas (with Mother, the matriarch, not Ma, with knobby washboard hands), never knowing foundations and charities and old school ties and stock portfolios and—and assurance, confidence, acceptance—never knowing yachts.

This was not just himself, a usurper here, a crasher, a servant made up like his master; this was most people everywhere, crippled for leisure by the exhausting striving to make good, make ends meet, make it until coronary time. That was Nat, too, in a way; Nat, like himself, knowing there was better while you pressed your nose to the pane, and knowing you had not the price of admission. There were greater inequities in life than this, but this was one that stayed with you forever. Like your skin, if it was black. His throat was filled with his gut, and he wanted to vomit it all overboard, but he fought it down, clenched his teeth and fought it, so as not to be what he was in front of Eaton and the Admiral and the women, and the Zeke Millers of the earth.

“Mr. President—”

He turned from the rail to find his physician, Admiral Oates, contemplating him.

“Are you all right?” the physician inquired.

“Why, yes, of course.” His Adam’s apple hardly had room to deny it.

“I’ve had an eye on you. Mmm. You seem a trifle distressed.”

“I’m tired. It’s hard to get off the treadmill. I’m tired.”

“Why don’t you go down into the bedroom and grab forty winks? Let me catch some fish for you.”

He wanted to buss the doctor for the face-saving order. “That’s a good idea. Maybe I will try to nap.”

He had started for the companionway when Oates caught his hand. He felt the physician press something hard and square into his palm. He looked at Oates questioningly.

“You wear this with your lifebelt,” said Admiral Oates, and he left.

Not until Dilman had reached the bottom of the stairs did he open his palm to see what Oates had given him. It was a tiny pillbox. He turned it over. On the label was printed “For motion sickness, 1 every 4 hours.” Ill as he was, he felt comforted, not only for the physician’s understanding but for his discretion.

Entering the bedroom cabin, Dilman yanked a silver pitcher out of its holder beside the lower bunk, filled a thick-rimmed glass with water, then swallowed a Dramamine pill and water. Squeamishly, he held on to the upper bunk and waited for the result of the silent civil war inside his throat. Either the pill would make it through the enemy line and save him, or the enemy would throw up the pill and overwhelm him. It took twenty minutes to a half hour for a pill to dissolve and work, he had read in some digest magazine, and he waited, hot with anguish, moist with perspiration. He wanted to lie down on the bunk and die. The defeat would be too enormous, and he resisted bowing to it.

After fifteen minutes, hearing a roar outside, he staggered to the porthole to see what was happening. What he saw was the PT boat
Guardian
, filled with Beggs and several other armed Secret Service men, slicing through the water thirty yards away. Far off there was the speck of what appeared to be a cabin cruiser, growing gradually larger. He left the porthole, once more tempted by the bunk, and then, blindly determined to survive, he walked out of the bedroom.

Within a minute, he was inside the yacht’s Presidential lounge, where the pitch and roll of the vessel were less apparent. He surveyed the off-white walls of the lounge, the green-and-white curtains with their nautical pattern, the soft aquamarine-colored chairs, the painting of the
Independence
hung over the television set. The lounge was as gracious as any room in the White House, and he knew that he was best off here, because he would not dare to be ill in a room like this.

Observing his locked briefcase propped against a deep chair, he made his way to it, sat down heavily, and devoted himself to the combination that sprung open his lock. There was only one thick sheaf of printed sheets, fastened into a manila binder, inside the briefcase. This was the Minorities Rehabilitation Bill that the Senate and House had passed, and that was now in his hands awaiting his signature. He had read it thoroughly last night, made some notes and put question marks in the margins about certain provisions, and now he must reread the seven-billion-dollar bill once more and do what needed to be done, what the majority of his staff, of Congress, of white America and black America were apparently waiting for him to do.

He opened the manila binder to examine the bill a final time, but his vision was double, and his stomach heaved higher and higher toward his throat. He dropped the folder on the end table and gagged, clutching the arms of his chair, willing for himself the sea legs and stomach and mind and inner ears of F. D. R. or Kennedy or T. C. And then his convulsions stopped, and he lay back limp, arms flopped on his thighs, legs outstretched, a minor skirmish won, praying for the Dramamine to put down the enemy and save the beleaguered battlements of well-being and dignity.

Half reclining in this state of stupor, Dilman tried to remove his mind from water to land. His memory sought out Wanda, Julian, Mindy, Aldora . . . piteous Aldora of their long ago . . . it had gone wrong the second-to-last day of the last week of their honeymoon, driving home through Joplin, Missouri . . . going into that nice-looking bar for a late afternoon drink, because Aldora from the start had always liked a late afternoon drink, and when inside having their cocktail, those two drunken young business fellows had come up, hey-buddying him, hey-buddy-what-you-doin-with-one-of-our-white-girls, hey-buddy? . . . and knowing they were loaded to the gills, trying to explain, not fight, explain that Aldora was colored like himself and his bride . . . and trying to leave until they grabbed him and held him, saying hey-buddy, you-not-leavin, no, not leavin with any white girl . . . and him trying to pull free, until they wrestled him down and pummeled him bloody and Aldora began screaming . . . and the men going at last, hooting and whooping . . . and he and Aldora . . . the real beginning of the trouble had been then, but not the real beginning, for it had begun when she was born more white than black, fair skin, unfair heart . . . displacing her bitterness at fate, life, for making her
almost
white but not enough, displacing it by resenting her lot with him, his dark skin . . . and his striving to show her he was no poor black trash, but more a man, worthy of her, big lawyer, big politician . . . but no good, because there was Mindy,
almost
white like herself, so white she also had the prospects Aldora had abandoned too early, and Aldora’s growing contempt for him and her hoarding and segregating of Mindy, as if he would contaminate his daughter . . . and then Aldora wanting another Mindy, to prove something, maybe flee from him, but again no good . . . worse . . . getting Julian, black as coal, reminder that her husband was black and she was black and Mindy was black too . . . and his own trying to lift them up in politics, lift them high as white men, to make up for being Aldora’s black albatross, and Mindy’s, too . . . but too late to lift them up with him, because they had escaped, both escaped . . . Mindy, with Aldora’s conspiratorial help, into a white private school in Colorado, the name of which he’d never known, and then into the East, the white white East . . . and Aldora escaping too, into a bottle, a bottle a day, as insulated by glass as a model ship in a great big bottle . . . and his trying everything to reach her and help her escape, even trying to crawl into the bottle with her, no good . . . even taking a room in the sanitarium with her, no good . . . until she’d escaped at last, in a coffin, in the ground, where no one is
almost
white, where all are equal, still and equal, possessed of one mind, dead, one flesh, dead, one face, dead, white-wanting, free-wanting Aldora, in the subterranean planet of nothingness where there were no demons of
almost
.