Promise of Joy (59 page)

“Consulted another white man!” ’Gage exclaimed. “Of course! Of course! Why didn’t you consult me, you damned coward? Because you knew I’d object, that’s why! And you knew why I would, too! Because one of these days after you’ve accomplished this evil purpose, I’ve no doubt you’re planning to turn on the black people in your own country for some other evil purpose, damned if I know what it is but I’m sure you’ve got one. That’s why you didn’t consult me! Well, I’ve said it and I mean it: we’re leaving. DEFY’s getting out of NAWAC and you and your fat friend here can take what’s left and shove it.”

“Suppose
you
listen to me,” Fred said, becoming suddenly, in one of his lightning changes, perfectly calm, perfectly reasonable, “before you go flying off the handle to do something you’ll regret. Whatever the reason, the United States of America
cannot
let Russia be defeated by China. We’ve got to save her. Our whole civilization depends upon that. Why, hell! You talk about your precious race! What’s going to become of it if the Chinese win? Do you think they’re going to say, ‘Come on, brothers and sisters, we love you now, ’cause black is best?’
Are you kidding?
They’re going to say, ‘Lif dat barge and tote dat bale, brothers and sisters!
Yellow’s
best. Haven’t you heard, soul folk?’ … It’s
your
skin, too, ’Gage, baby, that’s why I didn’t bother to consult you. I knew you’d react this way without stopping to think. I knew you’d listen to some blind stooge of Whitey like Cullee—”

“You leave Cullee out of this!” LeGage cried angrily. “Cullee makes more sense than you ever made in all your twisted, empty life!”

“Oh, so we love Cullee now, do we?” Fred inquired softly. “We love big old black Cullee, now. Well, well, well, well.
And don’t hit me,”
he cried harshly as LeGage started forward, apparently intent upon doing just that, “or you won’t live long, either!”

“What do you mean, live long,
either?”
’Gage shouted. “What are you going to do to Cullee?”

“We’re going to give him and his damned President a lesson!” Fred shouted back, for once genuinely carried out of himself by anger. “We’ve got to do something to jolt that damned fool in the White House into doing what he has to do to save this country and Western civilization!”

“You leave Cullee alone,” ‘Gage cried, old unhappy bitternesses with his life’s friend-enemy forgotten as a conviction of terrible danger to Cullee overwhelmed him, “or I’ll kill you!”

“The plans are all made, boy,” Fred said, suddenly corning out of his schizophrenic high to turn cold and composed again. “All made, and nothing you can do about it. Nothing at all. And if you want to take your damned DEFY out of NAWAC, God-damn you, go ahead. We’ll manage very well without you to save our”—and he spat out the words—
“white
civilization, thank you very much!”

“You—” ’Gage cried in a harsh, wounded voice. “You—”

“Too late,” Fred said blandly, and no one would ever know whether it was fact or just another of his cruel and cruelly enjoyed threats. “Just too late, baby.”

The last thing LeGage heard as he flung himself blindly out the door, knowing he must get to a telephone, go to the Hill, warn Cullee, do
something,
was the mocking laughter of the chairman of NAWAC and Rufus Kleinfert’s heavy voice saying politely, “KEEP iss quite ready for whatever you propose, Fred. Unity iss
very
important if we are to save the civilization of the West.”

For several moments thereafter there was silence in the room while Fred stared down at the hurrying traffic along Constitution Avenue, a strange, twisted, moody half grimace still on his lips; not really amusement, Rufus decided, but something wild, remote, uncaged, uncontrollable beyond the ordinary ken of ordinary people: the impersonal amusement of an animal, perhaps, feral, vicious and on the prowl. Rufus, who was far from being the most sensitive and perceptive of men, found himself shivering.

“That slimy little black son of a bitch,” Fred said finally, his voice very soft, his eyes still riveted on his unsuspecting countrymen below but obviously not seeing them. “That slimy, worthless, no-account nigger!
Nigger, nigger, nigger!
…

“Why, listen!” he said, and he rounded on Rufus Kleinfert with a sudden savage motion of his entire body that made Rufus jump and instinctively half raise a hand to ward him off. “Do you think I’m going to let a stinking black tramp like
that
get in my way, when I’ve got this whole country moving behind me now? When all of America is listening to
me?
To Fred Van
Ackerman?
To the guy old Half-Ass Orrin thought he’d driven out of public life forever and ever, amen? When I’m leading the whole parade? When I’ve put my finger on all those silly stupid sheep down there, and all their silly, stupid, craven, hypocritical fears that they won’t admit to themselves but can’t wait to give in to? When they’re loving me for it?…

“It won’t be long now,” he said, and his voice and thoughts seemed to turn inward to some vision that Rufus Kleinfert knew was far away from him and perhaps from all sane human contact. “It won’t be long. Russia’s falling and we’ve got to save her, and the man who stands in the way is going to be wiped out by the people of this country. They’ll kill him or they’ll impeach him or they’ll do something—anyway, they’ll sweep over him. And when he’s gone, which won’t be very many more days or maybe even hours, now, they’ll turn to the man who’s leading them the way they want to go, the man who understands them and knows how to appeal to what they
really
want, not all this idealistic crap we’ve had to feed them in recent years to get them to follow us. I won’t have to feed them
anything
to get them to follow me, after this—except maybe”—his eyes looked oddly tortured for one seeing a vision apparently so attractive to him—“except maybe a few of the damned niggers and the damned kikes and the damned conservatives, and maybe even”—and for a moment a savage humor touched his face—“maybe even a few of these high and mighty
liberals
whose asses I’ve had to kiss for so long to get where I’m going.…

“And nobody,” he said, his eyes returning at last to Rufus and at last appearing to focus upon him, “but nobody, Rufus, baby, is going to stop me. You stick with me and NAWAC and we’ll go places. Because nobody”—his eyes swung again far away to some inner landscape unknown to reason, and again Rufus shivered—
“nobody
can stop me now.”

But in this, of course, he was mistaken as some demagogues—sometimes—fortunately are: not all, but enough to permit the human race, when its members are very, very lucky, to just scrape by the pitfalls of a destiny that would be perfectly justified.

Even as he finished speaking there was sudden turmoil in the outer office, the scream of a secretary, a door flung open.

On the threshold stood a black man, looking, grotesquely, almost white-faced in his terrible anger.

He held a knife that glistened ferociously in the light.

The chairman of KEEP, and presently the chairman of NAWAC, screamed too.

The chairman of DEFY had come back.

Russian rout continues as Congress enters second day of debate on aid resolution. Both governments flee devastated capitals for secret hideouts. European leaders may make direct appeal to Knox as yellow tide sweeps on. UN relief agency pledges a-cloud aid.

Hamilton gives senate administration case for neutrality but party leaders in both houses confident resolution will pass. Many members favor surgical strike to end the war.

Surgical strike!
the Vice President thought with a weary disgust as the afternoon dragged on and speech after lengthy speech repeated Arly Richardson’s catch phrase. It had been a true inspiration, that slogan, sounding so neat and clean and antiseptic, one of those ideal softening substitutes, beloved of democracies, behind which men could hide in comfort from the harsh realities of what they proposed to do. Surely a
surgical
strike could not be something frightful, dreadful, awful, atomic; a
surgical
strike could only be something nice and quick, free from horror and in some magical way not involved at all with the blood, brains, guts, lives and small, desperate worlds of human beings. He had seen it happen often on the Hill in regard to less cataclysmic matters; not surprising that it should happen with the gravest matter of them all. Even more imperative now, in fact, that men hide themselves from what they contemplated.

On the House side, he knew, the same situation prevailed. Bill Abbott had walked over a while ago to sit and chat with him for a few minutes on the dais, invoking murmurs from floor and galleries and a desperate craning from the press seats above their heads as members of the media tried to guess what they were saying. But they kept their voices low and against the drone of speeches nothing could be heard. It was obvious from their expressions, however, that they were not happy. The headlines were quite accurate: the resolution was on its way to passage, either late tonight or, at the latest, at the special early session already set for 9 a.m. tomorrow.

“I can’t understand it,” he said moodily as he contemplated Hugh B. Root of New Mexico, whistling and roaring in his usual unintelligible fashion but somehow managing to convey with his mushy voice and wildly waving, cellophane-wrapped cigar that he was in favor of the resolution. “I just can’t understand it. The country’s being stampeded—just stampeded. People are
terrified
of atomic war. And yet here they go, wanting to rush into it.”

“Apparently,” Bill Abbott said bleakly, “they’re more terrified of the Chinese. You and I don’t want to believe that, but it seems to be true. They see those ‘hordes,’ you see—the ‘hordes’ are very vivid, now, yellow and savage and menacing and running amuck. And let’s face it, Cullee: the hordes
are
there, there’s no getting away from it. They
are
advancing. They
are
managing to absorb their losses, which must be fantastic, and still move on. To many, many minds they
are
beginning to seem almost superhuman, larger than life, doubly terrifying. They
are
beginning to seem invincible. And the Russians
are
falling back, falling back, falling back. The result has raced with an inevitable progression in the past few hours: the Russians are losing, the Chinese are winning—
people like us
are losing,
foreign people
are winning—
WE
are losing,
THEY
are winning—… Ah,” he broke off with a sad disgust, “it’s a hell of a situation.”

“But it isn’t inevitable,” Cullee protested. “They
aren’t
invincible. They must be close to exhaustion, they can’t keep going much longer—”

“Long enough,” Bill Abbott said sadly. “Long enough.…Anyway,” he said, his tone more comforting, “you’ve done your part very nobly, I think. That was a fine speech.”

“I tried to make it that way,” the Vice President said. “I didn’t know how much good it would do, but the President and I thought it should be said for the record.”

The ex-President grunted.

“If there’s even going to be a record.…” He made a wry, unhappy sound. “One man must be happy, though. Freddy Van Ackerman’s got a new parade to lead now.”

“I wonder how far it will take him?” Cullee mused.

“I’m sure he thinks the White House,” William Abbott said. “And he may be right amid the ruins. This is the kind of time when jackals find their rewards.”

But when, a moment later, one of the page boys rushed up to Cullee’s desk with the bulletin—Shelby stabs Van Ackerman, Kleinfert to death, suicides in Connecticut avenue leap. NAWAC heads die in apparent row over race aspects of pro-war policy—neither the ex-President nor the Vice President could really comprehend for a few minutes the reality of the reward the jackals had finally found.

And when Cullee turned over the chair to Powell Hanson and left a Senate chamber beginning to buzz and whisper and exclaim with the news, he still could not realize it.

It was only some time later, after Sarah had called in tears and after he had sat for a long time alone in his office staring unseeing out the window at the winter-bound city, that it finally began to hit him; and it was only some time after that that he suddenly sobbed aloud, put his head in his hands and cried for LeGage Shelby, ex-roommate and ex-friend, whom once he had liked so much and would have liked to have befriended for life had not ’Gage’s ambitions, jealousies and unconquerable inferiorities where he was concerned, made it impossible.

Rufus Kleinfert had an elderly widowed sister and brother living together in St. Petersburg, Florida, who cried for him. But no one at all, as far as could be discovered, ever cried for that flaming young liberal who had come out of Wyoming on the welcoming wings of the media, so long ago in thought if not in time, Fred Van Ackerman.

That night, shortly after the session ended at 10:21, the headlines heralded the coming day:

Speaker, Majority Leader claim sufficient votes to pass Aid-Russia resolution in both houses. Richardson, Swarthman predict “good chance” for overriding Knox veto as Russians continue to fall back in central plains.

Shattered NAWAC pledges continued fight to save western civilization from yellow hordes as new leaders plan mammoth parade and funeral in Washington for fallen Van Ackerman, Kleinfert. Vast outpouring of support swamps headquarters.

White house silent on intervention gains.

But not for long. Half an hour after the first batch of headlines hit the streets another was added:

President announces he will veto Aid-Russia resolution “in best interests of America and the world.”

Half an hour after that he faced three old friends, as desperately tired and strained as he, who had come to the Oval Office on the direct and frantic orders of their superiors.

“Orrin,” Lord Maudulayne said, and corrected himself hastily, “Mr. President—”

“Please,” he said, “if it makes it easier. I don’t mind.” He assayed a small joke, though none of them really felt like humor. “The Protocol Office will never know.”