(1964) The Man (87 page)

“Yes, Judge, I’m about ready.”

Dilman had been too impatient for a hike when it had begun, and had gone along only out of courtesy to his aged host. Now he was grateful for the tonic of the walk, and his respect for the ex-President’s instinctive folk wisdom was reinforced.

Upon his arrival at Fairview Farm, ten miles outside Sioux City, Dilman had been abashed by The Judge’s unceremonious welcome as they shook hands on the wooden porch.

The Judge had snorted, expectorated, and rasped out, “So, they crucified you up on the Hill yesterday, eh, my friend? Hell and tarnations, I’ve known them for muddleheads and blockheads half my life, and firsthand, but I sure didn’t expect them to take leave of their senses, insulting our office of President, making our Party into a white demagogue’s party, slapping the Negro vote in the face. Couldn’t have done better if they wore white hoods when they indicted you, the blasted fools.”

“I’m glad we’re of one mind,” Dilman had said, his hand still gripped in The Judge’s hand, as they remained in sight of Flannery, the Secret Service agents, the state police.

The Judge had let go of the handshake. “Young man, I hold a strictly zoological view of our legislative branch. Taken as a whole, Congress reminds me of nothing more than a dinosaur—the Stegosaurus, to be specific—a giant body with a peewee head and a collective brain the size of a walnut. Taken individually, the members are either dodoes or dingoes—understand?—the dodo bird pretending to be a bird, yet unable to fly, and heading for extinction because of self-importance, pretension, unadaptability—the dingo dog of Australia, half domestic pet, faithful and serving, other half wild beast, roving in packs and killing sheep. Congress!” He had glared off. “Who in the hell is invading our serenity?”

Three sedans, crammed to overflowing, had come bumping up the rutted main road into Fairview Farm.

“The press,” Dilman had said.

“Let them stew,” The Judge had growled. He had considered Dilman, eyes narrowing. “Young man, you’re not fit to enjoy our food, not yet. Come on, let’s you and me take a brisk half hour’s hike over the farm—show you how the middle of America lives—you’ll find it good for your juices—cleanse out all the spite from your gut before breakfast.”

They had fled from the press into the inner hall and parlor, and emerged through the back door, and gone on their hike. The Judge, entwining a knitted scarf around shoulders and neck, taking up his walking stick, had led Dilman to the towering silo, where green corn and feed were already stored and ripening for the winter, and past the windmill, and through the sheds where the gleaming four-row cultivators, plows, harvesters were parked. They had paused at the hogpen, where the pigs lined the troughs, jostling, squealing, eating their swill.

They had gone inside the vast red barn to watch the milking machines attached to the udders of cows, and to observe the buckets of milk being taken to cream separators. The Judge had pointed out the haymow on the upper floor of the barn, proudly announcing that he labored up there three times a week, pitching hay down to the mangers.

They had rested briefly before a second farmhouse, smaller and newer than The Judge’s own, where his niece and her young son and daughter lived. “Kids are in school now, or I’d show the tykes off to you,” The Judge had said with pleasure. “Smartest ones you ever seen. Good having them all here with me, makes me young again, but too bad it had to be. She was married to my younger brother’s boy, and he got himself sniped at and killed some years ago in Vietnam. So I took them in. She does my typing, letter answering, editing of my books for her board and keep.” Then he growled, “ ’Course, if she knew the truth, I’d pay her just to have those young ones around.”

After that, they had cut across a soft field, freshly plowed and planted with winter wheat, and then entered a wooded area, stopping only when they had arrived at the gurgling, swift-running creek. “Better than the Potomac,” The Judge had said. “I spend every hour of the summer I can spare just lazing on the bank over there, fishing with live bait, chewing my cud, and catching stray memories. I don’t know a better way of living. Too bad it’s going out of our giddyup life.” He had dug his stick into the soil in several places near the creek. “Sometimes you can kick up an old Indian arrowhead. Can you imagine that? Let’s head back to the chow line before the Missus has my scalp for starving a guest.”

As they returned to the main house, The Judge spoke several times, in his nasal fashion, of his book reading. He had pride, like most largely self-educated persons, in his thorough knowledge of several subjects. His collection of volumes on American history, one of the most extensive private collections in the nation, now reposed in the Presidential Library that bore his name. He could quote at length from almost any book in that library. He had read deeply, if not selectively, in the works of philosophers, and he would remember an anecdote about Diogenes as readily as a passage from Thoreau. Once, encompassing all of his feudal domain with a swing of his stick, he said, “I love this because it inspires meditation. ‘Life is a ticklish business. I have resolved to spend it in reflecting upon it.’ Know who said that? Dutchman named Arthur Schopenhauer. Don’t subscribe to some of his ideas, but like that one. Trouble with a job like the Presidency is it’s a job where you should do more thinking than anyone in the world, and yet you have less time to think than a shoe clerk.”

Twice, approaching the large farm house, Dilman had opportunities to inspect carefully his famous, cantankerous host. The Judge was short, overweight, certainly eighty years old, but he was confident in his opinion, lean-minded, jaunty. His chapped globe-face with its pimple triangle of a nose resembled, except for the myopic eyes, nothing so much as a squashed pumpkin left outdoors long after Halloween. Above all, he was earthy, common, colorful, and knew it, and promoted the image. In their walk, he had characterized Representative Zeke Miller as “a kind of adolescent who likes to step on flowers,” and he had dusted off Senator Bruce Hankins as “ineffectual because rigor mortis set in on him two decades ago.” As to Arthur Eaton, he had hooted at the name, remarking that “he wants to be President more than any man in this country, yet he thinks it’s bad table manners to admit it, but take my word, you could fit all his supporters in a telephone booth.” Best of all, The Judge had said wryly, he preferred to discuss more dependable and trustworthy animals, such as the livestock on his farm.

When they entered the homey parlor, Dilman realized to what extent the hike and the fresh air had fatigued him. And for the first time there was the hollow need for food in his belly. He was about to flop into the widest armchair when the Missus came in, scolding her husband for his tardiness and warmly taking Dilman’s hand.

Seeing her this way, in her inexpensive cotton print house-dress and white apron, Dilman was reminded of how impossible it was to believe that she had once been the First Lady of the land and the hostess in the State Dining Room. Her thinning blue-gray hair was set neatly above a smooth, plump face, broken only by the bifocal spectacles perched low on the bridge of her potato nose. She was dumpy and grandmotherly, like senior models shown in advertisements for pancake mixes or hot cereals, and although she would brook no nonsense from The Judge, she was adoring of him, and sweet and concerned about everyone else in the world.

She had been, early in the century, a county librarian, Dilman remembered, and her choice of language was less erratic and more refined than that of her husband.

“Right now I want to apologize for The Judge’s behavior,” she said to Dilman, “treating you like some delegate from the 4-H clubs rather than President. He and his farm! And walking you nearly to death. Why did I have to marry the world’s number-one pedestrian? Now, you come right in and eat, Mr. President. You look famished. And as for you, Judge, take off that abominable scarf, and wash your hands, and don’t keep us waiting.”

After they had gone into the dining room and settled themselves around the circular colonial table, The Judge tucked the corner of his napkin into his shirt, bowed his head, muttered grace, then smacked his lips and poked his spoon into the steaming porridge. As Dilman finished his own porridge, and consumed the rest of the generous breakfast—the waffles, the browned ham and scrambled eggs, the oven-hot biscuits, the still-warm, creamy glass of milk—his mood perversely altered from mindless well-being to vague depression.

He had made this visit outside Sioux City to seek advice—or confirmation—of a political and personal decision that had possessed all his thoughts from the second that he had learned of his impeachment. For more than a half hour he had been diverted from unhappy reality by the outdoor interlude with the ex-President. Briefly his healthy exhaustion and hunger had distracted his mind. But now, with breakfast almost ended, with his stomach filled and his calves strong, he was no longer diverted. The truth of his painful situation permeated his thinking. No rural sight-seeing, no return to nature, no amount of fresh air or delicious food, could anesthetize him longer.

He was about to speak what was uppermost in his mind when the Missus rose from the table. “I’ll leave the dishes and let you gentlemen talk,” she said. “I can’t stand having those poor men and women out front starving, while we stuff ourselves in here. I’m going to see they at least get coffee and biscuits in the shed. . . . As for you, Judge, don’t go smelling up this room and getting soot on my curtains with that foul corncob.”

The Judge, who was already lighting his brown-yellow corncob pipe, grunted, “You go attend your chickens, Missus.” As Dilman peeled the wrapper from his cigar, The Judge said, “Now we can talk peaceably.” He puffed with contentment. “I know you got lots on your mind, Douglass, or you wouldn’t be out in this godforsaken place. I wasn’t unconscious of your problems when I ran you ragged out there and peppered you with all my fool talk about harvesting and horses. I did it on purpose, to try to settle you down.”

“I appreciate that,” said Dilman. “Matter of fact, while we were walking, I kept envying you—not only you but a friend of mine, Nathan Abrahams, the lawyer—”

“The Chicago fellow? Good man, good man. Followed his handling of tough civil rights cases for years.”

“I envied you both because, when your work was done, you had someplace to go. You did your service, Judge, and then you came back to the farm. Nat Abrahams has served in his way, and when he’s earned a few more dollars, he, too, has a farm outside Wheaton waiting for him. It must be gratifying to know you’ve undertaken the tasks on this earth you were born for, have finished them as best you could, and now deserve and can enjoy a reward beyond that of a career alone.”

“No reason you can’t do the same one day.”

“Not a chance,” said Dilman, “not any more. I haven’t earned my peace. Not that it will be my fault, but that’s the way it is working out. I’ve been impeached—that’s an awful thing—the second President ever to be impeached for crimes, existent or nonexistent. Already I’m burdened by a half disgrace. Now I’ve got to go on trial, like the worst kind of felon, in the biggest, most public courtroom in the world, and hear lies told about my supposed immorality and incompetence and lawbreaking, see these lies become a permanent part of my record and biography, and of American history. They’ll convict me, Judge, no matter what their lack of evidence or my rebuttal, because they have one piece of criminal evidence against me I can’t refute—and that’s that I’m black. I’ll be thrown out, the first President in history, and my half disgrace will become full disgrace. My work will be undone. I’ll spend the rest of my life, I suppose, like some persecuted fanatic, buttonholing people to convince them I was innocent, to justify my few months in office. I can’t seek a farm, a reward, a pension, for a job well done, because I will have been fired. That is why I feel such despair, and why I so much envy you and my friend Nat.”

“Sounds to me, young man, like you’re beginning the self-pity and buttonholing a mite prematurely,” said The Judge owlishly. He sniffed at the bowl of his corncob. “You’re impeached. You’re not tried yet. You had your years as an attorney. Did you ever give up a client before he went into court?”

“Maybe I practically did, once or twice, when my client was black and his jury was white, and outside the courtroom the papers and the public clamored against him.”

The Judge sat straight. “Hell and tarnations, fellow, then you were dead wrong. This is still these United States of America, and not just white America, and you’re still innocent until proved guilty. Do you think you’re guilty of any one of those loaded Articles of Impeachment they’re sending over to the Senate?”

“I’m not guilty of a single one, not even the fourth one, because I contend I had the executive right to remove a Cabinet member, since there’s Presidential precedence, and the kangaroo law restraining me was vindictive, prejudicial, and unconstitutional.”

“Then you’re innocent. Go in there and show them.”

“Show whom?” said Dilman bitterly. “Those House advocates—managers—who prosecute me? The full Senate that sits as a jury on me? They’re not experienced and uncommitted magistrates. They’re elected representatives of the people, mostly voted in for their popularity rather than for having common sense, and so they’re the mass public’s alter ego. They hear the voice of the people, and they echo that voice. If they don’t, they’re out on their behinds come next election. I tell you, it boils down to the emotional, unthinking public in the final analysis. Remember, I’ve been out on the hustings, tramping through the grass roots, these last four days—five days, counting this morning when my hotel in Sioux City was picketed for giving shelter to a Communist traitor—”

The Judge gave a nasal trumpet of disgust and waved his hand in dismissal. “Forget those provincial farmers. Any stranger who comes around these parts, who’s been to Paris twice and Moscow once, he’s an international scoundrel and Soviet spy. I know my Middle Western brethren. Except for some of our fringe progressive movements, these boneheads are traditional, conservative, close-minded, all hoarding, saving, clinging to one-hoss-shay ideas in their silo heads. But they’re not all bad either, only slow. Give them time, a warm stove to sit around, a chance to reason in a language they understand, and they come around, they come around. A section of the country that nurtured Battling Bob La Follette, John Peter Altgeld, Eugene Debs, even produced nuts like Ignatius Donnelly, can’t be written off. There’s hope for it, and hope for you.”