A Shade of Difference (39 page)

He could not, however, spend too long a time considering this particular aspect of twentieth-century America, for the challenge presented at the United Nations was for the time being more overriding than anything else before him. As he approached his desk each day at 9 a.m., after eating a solitary breakfast of fruit juice, boiled egg, toast, and coffee while he watched television news broadcasts and scanned the six major morning newspapers, he did not always know which of the world’s many constantly bleeding sores would be before him for immediate attention. No such uncertainty existed this day. Every top headline, every telecast, confirmed it. Somebody in London had held a copy of the
Daily Mirror
up before the cameras. “U.S. BROUGHT TO WORLD BAR,” the headline read. He was vividly and unhappily aware that this was exactly the way it was being regarded over the greater part of the earth’s surface.

In this difficult situation there were certain things he could do of an immediate nature, and indeed in his statement, apology, and state dinner for Terry he had already done some of them. Now he must turn to the practical aspects of world politics: check with the Development Loan Fund on certain applications from overseas, have Orrin talk to certain Ambassadors about projects they desired under the foreign aid program, hint to others concerning possible military expenditures, apply with polite but unflinching steadiness the diplomatic and financial pressures that lay at the hand of the President of the United States when the chips were down. He did not like to operate that way, he told himself ruefully, but he was becoming as adept at it as his predecessor had been. It was part of what might be called, ironically, Growing Up in the White House. Always in international politics, as in domestic, there came the moment when you were either going to see it through or run away. If you decided to see it through, which by and large had been the policy of most American Presidents, you accepted the means to achieve the objective. He had always been able to appreciate, as an intellectual exercise, the dedication to the country that dominated the actions and the attitudes of the occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania, but it was like any other great responsibility. Until you had it, you never really knew. Now he did.

He must get now, he decided, an inside picture of the situation at the UN and he must get it from the one man whom he deemed to be, at the moment, closest to the center of the hubbub and most familiar with all its ramifications. He pressed the buzzer, which announced to the office wing of the White House that he was at his desk. His secretary entered and he asked her to locate LeGage Shelby.

“If he’s in town, send him right on in when he comes. If he’s in New York, tell him to stand by and we’ll set up a conference call. And get me Secretary Knox for the same time, if you will.”

LeGage might not know all the answers, but he would know some of them; and there was another reason for talking to him, too.

There was beginning to take shape in the President’s mind a solution for the problem of LeGage, prompted by the noisy picketings of DEFY in the last couple of days. Again he told himself ruefully, for he was not particularly proud of the fact, that he was becoming as hard-boiled as the best of them. And the best of them, he knew, had sooner or later found themselves forced to be very hard-boiled indeed.

“Sue-Dan,” her husband said, and realized that his voice was already sounding too exasperated for an argument that had just begun, “I don’t want you to do it.”

She gave a mocking laugh that brought over the wire from Sixteenth Street to the Hill its full burden of destructive amusement.

“What’s the matter, Cullee? You think it would upset your pet white folks back in the district if your wife expressed her honest feelings for a change? Think they might vote against you if your wife helped her own people? Somebody in the Hamilton family has to, Cullee.
You
don’t.”

“Now, see here—” he began, but his secretary had paused on her way to the door to fiddle with some papers and he spoke sharply to her, instead. “Is there something more?”

“No, sir,” she said hastily and walked out, wiggling the little brown bottom he had often been conscious of before. The door closed with a defiant thud. Probably they were all listening on the other phones, anyway. It was getting so he couldn’t trust a one of them.

“I don’t understand you at all,” he began over again, more patiently. “One time you say you want me to be Senator and the next minute you want to do something that would knock it all out. Where did you get this crazy idea, anyway?”

“I want you to be Senator all right, Cullee,” she said, sincerely enough but unable to resist a dig immediately after. “I’m just holding the colored vote for you while you slide up to the white one, … Terry called me about it.” She gave a wicked little snicker. “He’s a big man, that Terry.”

“Where is he?” the Congressman demanded harshly. His wife laughed again.

“Up in New York. Don’t worry, he’s up in New York. Where I’m going to be when I help LeGage open the African Bureau.”

“African Bureau!” he snorted. “That Mr. LeGage Shelby, he’s getting awfully important. How about World Bureau and be done with it? Anyway, you’re not going.”

“Oh, yes, I am.”

“Oh, no, you’re not.”

“Cullee,” she said, her voice rising, “
I
say I’m going!”

“I know what you say,” he told her with a fair show of indifference he did not feel. “Suppose Maudie and I can’t get along without you, is that it? Well, maybe we can, Sue-Dan. Maybe we just can. Try it and see.”

“Well,” she said uncertainly. There was a pause. “Can’t mess up any beds with old Maudie,” she remarked, and the thought started her chuckling again.

“Try and be common, Sue-Dan,” he suggested politely. “Maybe you can just make it.”

“LeGage wants me up there to help him,” she said sullenly. “Terry wants me.”

“I’ll bet. I’ll bet he does. That’s just why you’re not going.”

“’Gage says it’s going to be the biggest thing DEFY ever did,” she said stubbornly. “It’s going to help Terry and all the other African states. It’s going to link all us colored peoples together all over the world. ’Gage says maybe it will be the start of something really big for all of us.”

“Seems to me you and LeGage and Terry been talking all morning. You been on the phone ever since I left? Get a lot of wind out of both those boys, once you turn the valve on. Anyway, they’re just giving you a story. They just want you up there so they can use your name and mine and tie me into it.”

“Why shouldn’t you be tied into it?” she demanded excitedly.
“Ebony
and the
Defender
and the
Pittsburgh
Courier
and everybody else been after you here in the past hour wanting to know why you’re not in it. What am I supposed to tell them?”

“They’ve been after me here, too. Tell them what I do. Tell them I think I can accomplish more working through the office to which I’ve been elected than I can walking in parades and carrying cards. What good does that do, except make a fuss?”

“Maybe that’s what the white man needs,” she said somberly. “One big fuss.”

“Don’t doubt Terry and ’Gage are just the ones to start it, but I think it’s best you stay clear.”

“They’ve started it already. How can I stay clear? How can any Negro stay clear? It’s the colored man’s dawning, Cullee. Only cowards stay clear.”

“Oh, sure. That’s me. I see.”

“All we’ve got to go on is what you do, Cullee,” she said pointedly. “Or not, that is. Afraid fine words don’t mean much any more. The world’s bustin’ up, Cullee. People want to know what you’re doing, not what you’re saying.”

“It’s right out in public,” he said doggedly. “Everybody can see.”

“They don’t see. Can’t see anything but poor old Cullee won’t help Terry take a little girl to school in Charleston, won’t help LeGage fight for rights in DEFY, won’t help start the African Bureau—just wants to sit on the Hill and be a white man’s lap dog. Anyway, LeGage says he wants to talk to you serious. He says you’re courting real trouble, Cullee. He says he’s really worried about you.”

“Yeah, I know. Well, you tell him I’m real worried about him. Where is he, anyway? The White House wants him. Just called a little while back to see if I knew where he was.”

“He’s at Howard, lecturing on non-violence.”

“Non-violence!” he said with an exaggerated air. “That’s my boy, sure enough. I suppose the Dean’s office will know where to reach him. I’ll call the White House and tell them.”

“There you go!” she said, suddenly shrewish. “Call the White House, run their errands, tattle on LeGage, be a nice little nigger and everybody says, That Great Cullee! Well, not me. Not many of your own people, either. You’re going to get in mighty bad with your own folks, Cullee, if you don’t watch out.”

“Well,” he said sharply, “you’re going to get in twice as bad if you go running after tramps like Terry and LeGage, and that’s for sure. You tell me you’re not going to New York and any African Bureau, Sue-Dan. I want to hear it before I hang up.”

“What’ll you do if you don’t hear it?” she inquired spitefully. “Can’t rape me over the telephone about it, can you?”

“Maybe you’ll see when I get home,” he said ominously.

“Maybe I won’t be here when you get home.” His heart constricted with a painful suddenness, but he replied with a show of boredom that he hoped was convincing. “Stop talking foolish, little Sue-Dan. You’ll be wanting to fly off to the moon with the expedition, next.”

“Might be nice up there. At least there’s Russians there, and they like us.”

“So they say. So they say. But don’t you forget, they’re white too, if that’s all you think about. They’ll turn on you too, if that’s your worry. You’re not going to New York to any African Bureau, Sue-Dan.”

“We’ll see,” she said mockingly. “We’ll see. Call the White House, big man, and tattle on LeGage. They’ll love you for that. But don’t be surprised if your own folks don’t like you.”

“I’ll call LeGage myself,” he said sharply, “if he wants to talk to me so bad. Then we can call the White House.”

“What’s the matter, Cullee?” she asked wickedly. “You getting a little scared, maybe, finally?”

“I’ll see you at home,” he promised angrily. A sardonic little laugh came over the wire.

“Maybe you will. Maybe you won’t.”

The Secretary of State became aware that his wife was regarding him with an amused smile from across the table.

“These are the times, obviously, that try men’s souls. Come back from wherever you are, Mr. Secretary, and finish up. You’re late for work already and we can’t let the world run on a minute more without you.”

“Well,” he said, still frowning, “I’m not so very far away. Charleston—Washington—the UN—Africa—”

“—China—Europe—Latin America— Quite a distance from the state of Illinois, anyway.”

“How are things in the state of Illinois? Have you talked to the kids?”

“Constantly. Crystal is humming with incipient motherhood and Hal is working twice as hard as ever before in his law firm. I think things in the state of Illinois are coming along all right. At least they’re all in one color scheme, anyway.” She chuckled. “I couldn’t resist that.”

“None of us can resist it. It’s in the times.” He looked with a still-troubled frown at the girl who used to be Elizabeth Henry before she became Beth Knox, and used the nickname he always did in moments of stress. “Hank, how is this sad old world ever going to work its way out of the tangle it’s gotten itself into?”

“How are
we
going to work ourselves out of the tangle
we’ve
gotten into? One tangle at a time, Mr. Secretary. That one’s bad enough.”

He sighed.

“Yes. I managed to delay matters yesterday, but I can’t be up there all the time. I have things to do here. And in another couple of days they resume debate. In the meantime, we’ve got to come up with something satisfactory or face very serious consequences.”

“You don’t really think they’d approve that amendment, do you? I can’t believe they would, when the chips are really down.”

“Why not? They know we aren’t going to withdraw, even if they do pass it. They also know we’re going to go right on financing their operations and giving them the money they ask, in spite of everything.” He made an annoyed sound. “You know the United States. We never get really mad at anybody.”

“The world can thank its lucky stars for that. I wonder if the world knows it.”

“They know it, but it doesn’t prevent them from taking advantage of it all they can. No, this is a very serious matter and there’s no point in minimizing it. Our African and Asian friends love to take a high moral position toward us; it doesn’t matter if their own caste systems and tribal relationships are ten times as ruthless as anything we may do here. They have the bit in their teeth and they’re running with it, right now. There’s nothing they’d like better than to pass a resolution condemning us, and they’re very close to the point of doing it. They don’t quite dare, at this exact moment, but give Felix and the Russians and the rest of them a couple more days of intensive lobbying, and who knows?”

“And we’ve done all we can?”

He shrugged.

“Harley’s apologized. I’ve apologized. Terry’s had his party at the White House. The press has had its Roman holiday. The UN has had its speeches.”

“And the Jasons won’t call off Felix.”

He laughed without much humor.

“I’ll bet anything Ted would like to, right now. This is going a little farther than Ted ever contemplated, I think. But Felix is committed now, you see. He’s gone so far he can’t back down. Nobody can back down. It’s reached the stage where there’s no way out for anybody but straight ahead.”

“Perhaps we could tack with the wind instead of trying to sail straight into it.”

He took a last gulp of coffee and put down the cup with an air that dismissed the idea.

“How?”

She smiled, the little amused twinkle she often got as she contemplated his headlong approach to obstacles and prepared to help him ease his way around them.

“Well,” she said, “you just listen to me, Senator, and I’ll give you my thoughts on the subject …”