A Shade of Difference (44 page)

How many times, the Majority Leader wondered with an ironic inward sigh, had he faced that pugnacious, tousled old physiognomy across the desk, and how many times had he tried with all the desperate craft of a hard-pressed imagination to think of the right arguments with which to bring its owner around to what he desired? How many times had he succeeded, how many failed? He could no longer remember, the process had occurred so often during their long years of service together in the Senate. But one thing was certain: It was one of the things that had always made life interesting.

“Yes, sir,” he said aloud, “it has that.”

“What has what, Bob?” Senator Cooley inquired. “What are you talking to yourself about, Bob? Me?”

Senator Munson smiled.

“I was telling myself that trying to figure how to outfox you was one of the things that had always made life interesting for me here. Then I’d told myself, Yes, sir, it has that, and that’s when you began eavesdropping.”

“You always do it, Bob,” the senior Senator from South Carolina assured him. “You—always—do it! I try to hold firm to my principles, but you talk me around every time.”

“Unn-hunh,” the Majority Leader said. “Well. This time I’m not so sure about that, Seab. This time I’m plumb scared.”

“What do you have in mind, Bob?” Seab Cooley asked with growing interest, and the Majority Leader, because this time he had in mind something that would provoke his old friend as he knew few things could, continued to play it for chuckles.

“Oh, I thought you might like to be named Ambassador to Liberia. I thought maybe I could arrange it with the President, if you did.”

“Way things are going over there in that continent right now, best not send anybody but a black man any place there, Bob. Nobody but a black man can even get ashore, Bob, more’s the pity.”

“It would be an interesting experiment, though; you have to admit that. Especially,” he said, deciding to take the plunge, “since we need all the help we can get with that particular problem right now.” The reaction was exactly as he expected.

“Not from me,” Senator Cooley said firmly. “No, sir, Bob, not from me.”

“Yes,” the Majority Leader said. “I was afraid that might be your position, Seab. Nonetheless, I doubt if even the most optimistic observer would say everything was going right for us at the moment. You know the situation up there in the UN. Combined with the way the Russians are beating the propaganda drums about it, it’s not a pretty spot to be in. Something drastic may be required, it seems to me.”

“Somebody’s put you up to something, Bob,” Senator Cooley said. “Who is it, Bob, Orrin? And what does he want us to do, Bob, pay that little kinkajou twenty million dollars in sob-money? Is that it, Bob?”

The Majority Leader, confronted with the instinctive ability to guess close to the mark that comes to many an experienced veteran of politics, decided to play it straight.

“Yes, it’s Orrin. And you’re somewhere in his vicinity, though you’re overstating it a bit. He thinks it might be well for us to make some more formal amends than we’ve made so far. The form remains to be worked out. He wanted me to sound you out about it.”

“Do you agree with him, Bob? You don’t, do you, Bob? I can always tell when you don’t agree with what you find yourself asked to do. Why don’t those folks downtown ever leave you alone, Bob? Seems to me you’ve earned the right to be left alone, for a while.”

Senator Munson smiled, a trifle bleakly, but his tone was comfortable enough.

“Now, don’t try to pry me loose from my obligations, Seab. You know why I do these things. It’s habit—it’s custom—it’s duty—it’s my word. Nine times out of ten, it is also my honest conviction. Adding it all up, I really don’t have too much choice.”

“Except on the tenth time, Bob,” Seab Cooley said softly. “And this is a tenth time. You know it is, Bob. We’ve humbled ourselves enough, in this instance. We have to have some national pride, Bob, no matter what.”

“I agree with all you say, but Orrin makes a reasonably convincing case even so. You know Orrin’s pride for this country, Seab, and if he can see it this way, possibly there’s something in it.”

“Orrin’s a puzzle to me right now,” Senator Cooley confessed. “I can’t quite understand Orrin, at this moment. He’s not the Orrin we knew in the Senate. He’s weaker, it seems to me.”

“Well, I don’t know,” Senator Munson said thoughtfully. “He’s got a lot of new responsibilities now, and they change a man. I think he’s trying to do the best job he can as Secretary of State, and sometimes you can’t be as forceful as you’d like to be in that office. You have to pick your way more cautiously because the whole world depends on it, sometimes. It makes a man more hesitant, I’m afraid.”

“Just so a man doesn’t lose sight of what’s really best for the country, Bob. That’s what worries me about that office. I’ve seen them come and go, Bob, and you have too, and you know what can happen there, sometimes. A man can get to balancing so many things against so many other things that sometimes all he does is balance. He never does really move America forward; he’s too busy balancing, worrying about what this country’s going to say or that country’s going to think. Sometimes you have to go straight ahead and say damn them all, Bob. You know that.”

“I
don’t really think there’s much danger that Orrin Knox won’t go straight ahead and say damn them all if he really feels it necessary, Seab. He hasn’t changed that much.”

“Then why doesn’t he say it now, Bob? We’ve done enough. Is he playing for the colored vote, Bob? That’s what I want to know. Maybe it’s as simple as that.”

“Yes, I’ve no doubt that will be the first thing some of our good friends of television, press, and radio will say if the background of it comes out, Seab. Orrin will be doing exactly what they want him to do, but that won’t stop anybody from impugning his motives … I’m not going to deny Orrin is a politician sometimes—not as good as you, of course, Seab, but no slouch—but I think in this instance it’s a little too pat to say that’s the chief motivation. I think he really believes the situation in the world is delicate enough to warrant what he has in mind.”

“It isn’t that delicate in terms of real power,” Senator Cooley remarked. “It’s only that delicate in terms of what people think.”

“And unfortunately,” Bob Munson said, “that’s the foundation the world seems to rest upon at the moment. That’s what makes the conduct of foreign policy such a slippery, uncertain, frustrating, infuriating thing. Do one little thing that somebody somewhere—anybody, anywhere—doesn’t like, and half the nations on the globe start cackling like a flock of silly geese. That’s
their
foreign policy: don’t do anything constructive yourself, just cackle at somebody else. That’ll bring you headlines and television coverage and a big, dynamic international image. It’s a heady thing for all these peoples that came late to the world’s attention.”

“Then why should we do it Bob?” Senator Cooley asked softly. “Seems kind of silly to oblige them, doesn’t it? Why don’t we just forget whatever it is Orrin wants, Bob, and go on about our business?”

“Because I said I’d give Orrin a fair chance. I didn’t promise I’d go along with him; in fact, I said I might not. But I said he’d have a fair chance with his idea. I want you to help me give him that chance, Seab.”

“I
didn’t make him any promises,” Senator Cooley said gently. “Now, you know I didn’t, Bob. And of course you know the reality of it for me, Bob: I could no more be a party to humbling the United States to a colored man than I could commit murder, Bob. My people in South Carolina would never forgive me. Furthermore, there’s something else about it, too. You’ve lived here on the edge of the South long enough, you’ve known enough Southerners to know, Bob. It isn’t a matter of politics, with me. I
really believe
they aren’t competent and capable, Bob. I
really believe
the only way is to treat them decently but keep them in their place. I’ve never knowingly hurt a colored man in my life, Bob, and I never will. But look at Africa, if I have to have justification. It’s a tribal chaos pretending to be a civilization, Bob; dress it up all you like and say it isn’t so, but it still is so …” He stared out the Majority Leader’s window, down across the Mall to the Washington Monument and the rolling hills of Virginia lying russet and hazy in the autumn sun. “No, Bob,” he said softly, “it isn’t as though I have a choice. Each of us has to do as he believes. I’ve believed what I believe for seventy-six years, Bob. I can’t change now.”

“I know that, Seab,” the Majority Leader said in a tired tone, unhappy and saddened for all the peoples of earth who appear always to have no choice but to meet head-on upon the battlefields of their lifelong beliefs, “and I respect it. But the times are against you, the world has changed. You’ll only hurt yourself, and you won’t win. I think I can promise you that. You won’t win because you’re wrong. Not just politically wrong, in the context of our times, but fundamentally, morally wrong. Give it up, Seab. Make your formal protest, but don’t make a real fight of it. You’ll only get terribly hurt, and you can’t win.”

“Bob,” the senior Senator from South Carolina said gently, “I don’t make formal protests. When I fight, I fight. There’s honor in that, too, Bob, you know. That’s my kind of honor. Grant me that, at least, Bob.”

“I do, Seab,” Senator Munson said sadly. “I do, but I wish—”

“I’m not a wisher, Bob,” Senator Cooley said, getting slowly out of his chair and preparing to go. “That’s the trouble with the world right now—too much wishing. I fight, Bob. I don’t trim. You can tell Orrin.”

“Yes,” the Majority Leader said bleakly. “I’ll tell Orrin.”

In the luxurious penthouse atop the State Department Annex the Secretary awaited his three o’clock guest with some trepidation, uncertain exactly what tack to take to secure Cullee’s agreement for the project he had in mind, aware of many of the delicate considerations that surrounded it, wondering whether Cullee would be able to see and seize the opportunity offered him to serve his country in time of need. Orders had been left that he be shown up to the privacy of the penthouse, away from the formal offices downstairs, out of the often stultifying atmosphere of the Department itself, which Orrin found oppressive and tried to avoid as much as possible in his conduct of affairs. But atmosphere, of whatever kind, could only do so much. The rest depended upon men. He wondered what would come of their discussion now.

His eyes traveled across the white blocks of government buildings, the Potomac, Virginia, the lovely tree-filled city, and came at last to the Capitol sitting far and dominant upon the Hill. He was not quite used to this perspective yet. He had looked down from there upon the city for so long, and now he must look up to it, instead. There was not only an obvious symbolism here, there was also a tactical problem. His ties to the Congress were so strong that they were an instinctive, implicit part of his being; yet here he was in a position where he must deal with it, not as one of its most powerful and commanding insiders, but as an emissary from the Executive Branch, forced to rely upon argument and persuasion to secure the support he once could secure just by being Orrin Knox, with all that meant in power, influence, and personal authority. Now he was an office, not a man: the Secretary of State. It separated him from the sources of his power, put up a barrier, silken but distinct, between his colleagues and himself, forced him to rely upon subtler persuasions and gentler arguments. He studied the distant building on the Hill with an expression of naked longing on his face so pronounced that some of it still lingered when the private elevator arrived with a gentle thud, the door opened, and his visitor stepped out.

“I still miss it,” Orrin said frankly, gesturing toward it with a nod as he came forward to shake hands. He noted at once that Cullee looked upset about something but responded with a fair facsimile of a smile in spite of it.

“It misses you.”

“Please sit down. I have in mind that you and I should turn the old dome on its top together.”

At this the Congressman looked genuinely amused for a moment, and the Secretary was gratified to note that his face relaxed into slightly less rigid lines as a result of it.

“That might be fun. I haven’t really done that, yet.”

“This may be the time,” the Secretary said with a smile. He wondered if his visitor’s trouble was personal and decided to find out. “How have things been going with you since we talked the other night?”

He knew he was right, for an unhappy expression came into Cullee’s eyes for a moment. But he managed to speak in a noncommittal tone.

“All right. And you?” He smiled a little and settled back cautiously into the chair on whose edge he had been resting. “Not so well, I guess.”

The Secretary gave a ruefully humorous grin and shook his head.

“The problems do not decrease, in this job. They add six and multiply by ten, every hour on the hour. Terry and Felix have really posed us quite a little conundrum, between the two of them.”

Cullee started to smile, but whatever was bothering him came to the surface before he finished and turned it into an unhappy frown.

“For me, too,” he said in a low voice. He looked up with a startling expression of naked agony in his eyes and, moved by some impulse the Secretary did not understand but felt deeply flattered to arouse, apparently decided to confide in him completely. “They’re going to cost me my wife before they’re through.”

Orrin Knox felt a start of surprise, but suppressed it.

“I am so sorry,” he said carefully. “How can they do that?”

The Congressman looked at him steadily for a long moment, the pain still deep in his eyes. When he spoke it was with candor that overwhelmed the Secretary.

“I wish I could tell you,” he whispered, “what it means to be black.”

And what do you say to that, Orrin Knox asked himself crazily: I am so sorry?

“Perhaps,” he said, still with great care, “I can’t understand. But I shall try, if you want to tell me about it.”

“It traps me,” Cullee Hamilton said, staring out the window with eyes that obviously did not see the beautiful city or the beautiful day. “It catches me where I can’t break out. I’m—what I am, and I’m not ashamed of it, either. God knows I’m not.
You
don’t think,” he asked with an almost pathetic wistfulness, “that I’m ashamed of it, do you?”