The Man Who Cried I Am (44 page)

Whenever Max's phone rang at home or at the office, he anticipated the question from the various leaders: “What is the President going to do, Max?” And Max became weary of saying he didn't know, however, the President was watching developments carefully, coming as they did on the heels of the Freedom Rider disturbances in Alabama. His memos were now being routed through Carrigan's office, then on to the President, but the only response he received for his notes on the MacKendrick affair was a “Thanks. Keep them coming,” from the President.

Suddenly and without explanation, MacKendrick withdrew his application. The press said it was because he feared for his safety, but in the Negro community there were rumors that he had been forced to withdraw by the Administration. Max sent these rumors to Carrigan and when there was no response, he went to his office.

“I don't know how those rumors got started, Max. There's simply nothing to them.”

“I'd better talk to MacKendrick, then,” Max said. “He hasn't said anything directly about it.”

Carrigan nodded. “That's a good idea.”

Max tracked MacKendrick to New York, where he had gone to give a series of lectures under the auspices of the New Pan-African Movement. They arranged to meet at Max's apartment. MacKendrick was a small man, and like so many Negroes, had a mixture of white and Indian blood flowing beneath his heavily bronzed skin. His voice was soft and his accent filled with gentle valleys and hills. There is no accent quite like that of a Mississippi Negro; its cadence is French, its emphasis Spanish, its heritage seventeenth-century English with the unsteady lilt of Irish and Scots thrown in.

“Mr. MacKendrick,” Max said, “I'd like to find out what happened in Mississippi. I noticed tonight at your rally you directly accused the President of interfering with your attempts to get into the University.”

MacKendrick was a bit old for a freshman, about twenty-one. Working and studying to overcome the inadequate teaching in the Negro high school he had gone to, and trying to get together a little cash to hold himself together the first semester. Now that was all shot. The young man was waving aside the drink Max offered him. “Mr. Reddick, they tell me you work for the President. You're one of those big colored gentlemen that don't have anything to worry about.” MacKendrick's smooth face broke into a smile.

“That's right,” Max said. “I work for the President, but what you tell me may determine just how much longer.”

MacKendrick grinned once more. “Whose future are we going to talk about, yours or mine?”

“Both our futures, Mr. MacKendrick.”

“Well, Mr. Reddick, I hate to disillusion you about our head of state, but I was asked by a man from the U.S. Attorney General's office not to enter the University because the Administration was afraid my move did not fit its timetable for attacks against the desegregation holdouts. I was also told that it would be embarrassing for such a conflict to come up so early in the President's time in the White House. This man made me a promise—if I held off until next year, they'd see me into the University, whatever it required. Now, Mr. Reddick, I'm a little man, just an ordinary citizen, and maybe not even that because I'm black. But I spent a lot of time studying after my graduation to be able to enter that University without scholastic difficulty. And I had to earn some money so I wouldn't
look
as poor as I am. But I'm intelligent enough to know that we do have some laws on the books that say I
can
go to any school I wish. I told that man if the Government wasn't ready, I was, and he went away. It's taken me two years to get six names of Ole Miss alumni; that's what the University requires. Oh, I found them, reconstructed, living outside the South. But the Attorney General also found them, with a helluva lot less trouble than I had. They were asked to withdraw their names as references and five agreed. I withdrew because I couldn't get five new names in time for the start of the summer semester.”

“You can prove this, of course?” Max asked. He watched the youth as he opened his attaché case and brought out copies of letters each of the five references had sent him.

“These are copies,” Max said. “Can I have them?”

“They're yours, sir.”

“And now what do you do, Mr. MacKendrick?”

“I'm going to try for the fall semester without the references. I wanted to do it their way, but that didn't work out. Now, I have to do it my way.”

“You'll be in a lot of danger, you know.”

“If you're black, you're always in danger. More danger when you've placed some faith in an Administration that double-crosses you.”

The Golden Age, Max thought later, had not yet arrived. The Administration could easily deny MacKendrick's charges. And a terse denial meant to the careful, clever newsman at the Presidential press conferences that he wasn't supposed to ask questions. If he did, his hand probably would never again be recognized by the President and the nameplate on the back of his chair as good as removed. Max believed that the Administration people did not think themselves ready for the desegregation battle, but
when
, millions of people were going to ask, when would they be ready?

“What did he have to say?” Carrigan asked, when Max returned to Washington.

“His grades, they tell us,” Bonnard put in, “were completely shot.”

“His grades were all right,” Max said. “My information is that the Attorney General did indeed ask his references to withdraw and five of them did.”

Carrigan toyed with a pencil. “Max,” he said, with a sigh, “it's true that we did learn about MacKendrick. His grades, for Mississippi, were all right, but we didn't want to run the risk of a confrontation with the governor and then have the kid flunk out of school—”

“Why is it that no one seems to mind that millions of Negroes are failures because of the way they have to live in our society, and everyone minds that, once a Negro decides to buck the society, he forfeits the right to fail?”

“Because it's more than one person, one Negro. If we are to help the mass, the people we help have got to be, and consistently so, winners.”

Max said, “Then you knew all along. I don't have to let you see the copies of the letters MacKendrick gave me.”

Neither Carrigan nor Bonnard spoke.

The facts spoke for themselves, now. The Administration deliberately and successfully subverted the lawful attempt of a citizen to enroll in an educational institution of his choice. A constitutional violation by the people entrusted to uphold that Constitution.

“Gentlemen, you place me in a most awkward position,” Max said. “You have no confidence in me and I have none in you. You can't imagine how sorry I am.”

“C'mon, Max,” Bonnard said. “We can straighten this all out.”

“Yes, we made a mistake, a real boo,” Carrigan said. “We're bound to make mistakes in this business. Human error.”

“But that was some mistake,” Max said. “MacKendrick plans to enter for the fall semester, anyway, without the references. If people lose playing according to the rules, you've got to expect them to ignore the rules after a while. Do you know what's going to happen to him? He'll go it alone. If they let him in, one of those Mississippi mobs will kill him. On the other hand, maybe as soon as he registers the sheriff will arrest him, throw him in jail or into a crazy house. Could be that they'll hang him and say he committed suicide. You know the stories, or don't you? Black Americans know the stories, all of them.”

Carrigan said, “It's been a bad time: Cuba, the Russians in space, and now this. We've made mistakes; we've underestimated people, but our efforts have been honest and history can't condemn us. I know the President is sincere in wanting to keep his promises to American Negroes. But he's got almost a complete term left and when he makes his move, he wants to lock it up, not lose. You know that sometimes the individual has got to be sacrificed for the group.”

“Look,” Max said. “I've heard these arguments all my life. In fact, I don't think there is a black man in America who hasn't heard them.” He spoke sharply now. “I vote no confidence in this Administration, as of now.”

Carrigan rose. “Wait a minute, Max. You—”

Max said, “I have another month to serve. If you want, I'll serve it; I don't want to embarrass anyone, you'll get enough of that. If not, I can leave today.”

Bonnard said, “You're a rotten sport, mister.”

Max spun on him. “Sport? This is not a game, Jim, or don't you understand that yet?”

Bonnard flung out his hands. “It's all a game, that's what it is.”

Carrigan glared at him.

At the door Max said, “Then you'd better come on over where the big kids are; they play big kids' games, and I don't mean stink-finger.”

Max walked out of the White House through the East Gate and then back around the front, on Pennsylvania Avenue. Once he paused and pressed himself close to the fence with the rest of the sight-seers, and made himself think: The White House. That is where we are getting the best; there's where the Golden Age begins. Where did it go wrong? We are all like blind men feeling different parts of the elephant and taking that part for the whole. No, not we; they. I know that elephant; it's tusks, trunk, ears, legs. Elephants? It's the asses that are in, the donkeys. And I believed. I wanted to believe. I had to believe, and now …? He moved slowly along the fence, head turned to his left, to view the majestic building, then he crossed 17th Street and went to his office.

Two days later he took a late plane from Washington, threw his bags and briefcases in a corner, stripped and piled into bed. It was all over; Washington, the Golden Age, was behind him now, but all the whiskey in the world could not remove the taste of it; the gold had turned very suddenly to brass.

When the phone rang, Max opened his eyes to the false dawn of New York. The low, steady hum of his air-conditioner provided an undercurrent of sound against the insistently ringing telephone. Who could be calling? A woman? He wasn't up to that. Not at the moment. He picked up the phone and said gruffly, “Hello!”

“Hello, Max. What's going on?”

Him. He hadn't got the word, then. “Trying to sleep. What are you up to?”

“Just got in town. In Washington they said you'd come up here for a few days. I'm here trying to get my brothers to give me some money, but I wanted us to get together for a quiet little dinner tonight.”

The Reverend Paul Durrell, still coming out of his raggedy bag, Max thought. He had always tried to keep their conversations on a more formal level. “Paul, I just got in from Washington, and I need some sleep, and I'm going to be tied up for a little while—”

“Max,” Durrell said in a patient voice, “you know you can find the time.”

“I can't do you any good, Paul,” Max said, leaping ahead to the meat of the call. “Not anymore.”

“Brother Max, I'm afraid I don't understand.”

“Paul, for four months you and every other so-called Negro leader have been wanting something from me. But I've quit. I'm not in the White House anymore. I can't help you, and I hope I never have.”

“Brother—”

“Save that brother shit for the others, Paul,” Max said angrily. “Why do you work so hard to get me to
like
you? Why have
I
got to be in your pew? The white boys are in your corner. Baby,
what have you done?
I don't like you; I think you're dangerous. The whole movement is tied to you and it can go right down the drain if … I don't know, man. You behave like a man who might have a lot to sweat about.
I don't like you.
”

“Max, why are you so
bitter
toward me? It wrings my heart to hear these things from you. And why do you keep saying the white press is protecting me? Scurrilous, Max.”

“Then sue me. Brother.” Max hung up.

Durrell never really needed Max. He had grown so in prominence with his marches and demonstrations that he had been given a private line to the President's office. A gesture, and very typical of the Golden Age. Max got up, pulled on a robe and drew bath water. While it was running, he put up coffee. He had two letters from Margrit that he hadn't yet opened, and there were the papers to read in the tub while he relaxed and drew out the vague pain that now seemed always centered around his anus. Nerves again. Washington had done it. But perhaps, later in the day, he would feel up to breaking the news to Zutkin.

Zutkin answered the door instead of Lottie and stood a moment, closely studying Max's face. Max even felt his eyes on his back when he preceded Zutkin into the study.

“You look drawn, Max. The weather. Yes, the weather's been terrible here, too, of course. It seems to get worse every summer. Well, let me get you a drink and you can tell me about the President.”

When Zutkin returned with the drinks, Max said simply, “I've quit, Bernard.”

“Ooo,” Zutkin said. “You'll tell me why, of course?”

“Of course,” Max said with a smile. “You, I'll tell.”

“I've heard nothing about it.”

“Now you'll hear, Bernard, and I'm sure that what you hear from other sources won't be quite like what I'm going to tell you. The MacKendrick boy in Mississippi—”

“Washington was hands off on that, right?”

“Wrong. Hands on, all the way. The Attorney General, with the President's knowledge and consent, forced five out of the six references needed for admittance to withdraw their names.”

“But why?”

“The Administration wasn't ready for a confrontation.”

Zutkin forced a twisted smile. “But you must be kidding. You've got to be.”

“No, Bernard, I've quit. I'm not kidding. Why in the hell would I joke about a thing like that?”