A Shade of Difference (92 page)

This process, a steadily growing development within him as he moved on from childhood into adolescence, represented a rare maturity of mind which he did not find expressed in very many of his contemporaries, bound as they were to the mine-scarred green hills of West Virginia. It was not surprising, and it too was probably inevitable, that by the time he was ready to enter college the meager life in which he and his family and friends grew up should have produced a deeply dedicated feeling that he must serve humanity itself, first as he found it here and then, if he were so favored, as he found it over a much wider area. He came to feel that with so much misery in the world, everyone who could help should help. If he had been given equipment a little better than most to bring to the task, then he should use it.

He realized, for he had a saving vein of self-humor and self-appraisal that kept him from taking himself too seriously, that it was very possible to become overly pompous about all this, and he soon learned not to express his feelings about it to anyone save his younger sister, Betty, who was the closest to him of any of his family. She possessed a sense of practical good humor as stable as his own, and when he told her of his dreams from time to time she encouraged him eagerly yet with a saving wit that helped to keep him from flying too far too fast. It was with her that he thrashed out such problems as whether he should become a great people’s advocate, one of the world’s great surgeons, a great journalist molding public opinion, another Gompers or Lewis fighting fiercely for labor, another Franklin Roosevelt gallantly riding the tides of social reform, a great research scientist finding at last the secret of cancer.

These were the games he and Betty played as they grew up in the grimy little town where poverty and disaster never slept, and it was not until their father was lost, just as Hal reached college age, in a mine disaster caused by the company’s imperfect adherence to imperfect safety laws that it all coalesced into one fierce, burning desire to set things right in a sorry world through the channels of public service. The Great Depression had laid its turmoil upon the land, the New Deal was getting under way, “social service” was a phrase heard more and more frequently, and somewhere in the rushing surge of national activity he was sure there would be a place for him to give what he had. He went off to the University of West Virginia with his plan finally firm. He would study history, economics, political science, philosophy; get his degree and a teaching certificate in political science; participate as much as possible in the extracurricular life of the school; and eventually come home to the blackened valleys where disaster walked and give himself to service in whatever form it might open to him.

At the University in those turbulent years as things began to change from grimness to excitement, he soon found a place for himself among his fellows. His personality, already settling into the quietly humorous, quietly likable, steady, and down-to-earth pattern it would have for the rest of his life, attracted friends easily and soon gave him a special and well-established place in the life of the school. Of necessity he had to find work to help support himself, and before long was holding down three jobs, working as a waiter at the fraternity house to which he was pledged at the end of his freshman year, working in the stacks at the University library, working as campus correspondent for the
Charleston
Gazette
and the
Wheeling
News-Register.
In what remained of day and night, he followed the course of study he had set for himself, finding that he did well because his interests were engaged and he was pointing toward the fife he wanted to lead. His grades in his first year were not sensational, for he did not have a sensational mind—his greater talents lay in the region of the heart—but his grades were good, and he was well satisfied with his progress as he assessed it when the year concluded. He had not yet found the time to engage in the extracurricular activities that he would have liked, but he hoped that this phase of his college career might open up in due course.

Toward the end of his sophomore year this began to come about, largely through his activities as campus correspondent, which brought him into contact with all the sources of social and political power on the campus. It was the work area he enjoyed best, and it soon made him a well-known and popular figure on campus. “For someone who doesn’t hold office,” one of his friends remarked, “you’ve got more influence than anybody I know.” “Maybe I should hold office,” Hal said. “Maybe you should,” said his friend, and proceeded to set the wheels in motion.

A month later he was elected secretary of the junior class and a year later president of the senior class; but it was with no idea at all of entering active politics that he returned home upon graduation, got himself a job in the relief administration, and began the somber yet rewarding task of trying to restore some small flame of hope among hills and valleys where hope never burned very brightly at the best of times and had all but flickered out in these.

Thinking now of his college life through the mists of sedative-dulled pain and foreboding that swirled about him as a nurse rustled briskly in, snapped on lights that hurt his eyes, stuck a thermometer in his mouth, chivvied and chattered and thoroughly destroyed all chance of a return to even the most uneasy sleep, he felt that the experience had provided him with some book knowledge but more knowledge of people. It had also given him a wide assortment of friends with whom he had exchanged sympathy and understanding and loyalty and liking. He had not found a wife by the time he left college, though he had come close a couple of times; but he hoped that would come in due course.

Home among the hapless hills he worked for a couple of years, his cheerfully steady personality and stout heart proving exactly right for the task of helping the derelict and reassuring the frightened. So popular and well-liked did he become, in fact, that when he presently discovered some of the fraud and misuse of funds that plagued so many relief efforts in those days, it was almost impossible for his superiors to fire him, as they would have preferred to do rather than have him tell what he knew. Instead it was he, in effect, who fired them, for his former newspaper contacts stood him in good stead: he told his former employers, the stories hit the front pages, a major scandal broke upon his office. Out of it he emerged as apparently the only honest man among the five hurriedly slapped together from former officeholders, party hacks, and other political leftovers to assume the task of running relief in the area. Their concept had been to sprinkle the hills with greenbacks and funnel quite a few of them into their own pockets through an elaborate system of kickbacks. His concept had been to administer relief as honestly as he could without regard to personal advantage or political consideration.

When the scandal was over, he had been promoted to director of relief in his region, his powers greatly expanded, and over the state his name was suddenly well known and he was increasingly hailed as an honest and incorruptible man. Invitations to speak began to come to him; his ideas on things began to appear in the press. At twenty-six he was already on his way to becoming a major citizen of his crippled state, where the most appealing physical beauty was apt to walk side by side with the ugly ravages of industrialization and the grinding poverty of many of its citizens.

There occurred to him, since it seemed to be in so many minds including Betty’s and his own, that this growing fame and popularity might well lead the way to a channel of service far wider and more effective than dispensing relief in the hills of West Virginia. It was an era when the national Administration in Washington inspired the young as it never had before or since. A logic so inevitable that he could hardly have avoided it urged upon him the idea that he should seek public office and use the influence it would bring him to assist in the task of righting the wrongs of an upset society.

At that moment, however, the political situation was such that he did not see open before him any of the state or national offices that he had made up his mind to try for. He also felt, for a large strain of practical common sense went along with his genuine idealism about it, that if he were to aim so high on the first flight out, he must strengthen his contacts with the party organization before venturing further. He decided to bide his time and in the interim turn to the teaching of political science. He found a job at Salem College, was highly popular with his students, accepted frequent invitations to speak around the state, continued to gain political strength for the next six years. Then the Congressman representing his home district died of a heart attack; a special election was scheduled; he announced his candidacy, took leave from his job for a month, conducted an intensive handshaking campaign through all the little hamlets and wide places in the road; won his primary and went on to win the general election without difficulty. At thirty-two he went to the House of Representatives, easygoing and friendly of personality, determined and idealistic of heart.

After a year and a half in office he resigned, as did a number of his colleagues, to go to war. By prior arrangement with the Governor, an elderly former Senator was appointed to hold his seat for him and did so without challenge for three and a half years, during which Hal Fry ranged far across the reaches of the Pacific as an officer in the Navy. His tour of duty was like that of so many others, long stretches of boredom, a few peaks of intense excitement as at Midway, for the most part the drab drudgery of war that men must endure in order that their nations may rise or fall, their villains be defeated, and their heroes come to glory. His nation had not fallen and he had not been a hero; but he had been one of the necessary parts of a necessary business, doing his job as he had in civilian life, with a relaxed and friendly competence that made him indispensable to the destroyer on which he ended the war as executive officer. He left the service with honor and commendation, and returned to resume the career of broader service upon which he had just been well embarked when a squadron of little planes came out of the dawn from Tokyo and rudely informed a naive people that in the world they now lived in, life was real and life was earnest, indeed.

By now, in his mid-thirties, he was beginning to think that possibly he would not find the girl he wished to marry—or, if he found her, be fortunate enough to have her also wish to marry him. He had enjoyed a modest number of casual romances in the war, nothing very deep or very lasting, nothing that he felt he couldn’t live without or that had brought him any shattering revelation of himself or any other. It was the time of life when the thought of permanent bachelorhood loses its horrors and begins to assume its attractions, and he started back to Washington, having been triumphantly reelected to his old seat five months after leaving service, not at all averse to the idea that he might find his dedication to public service strengthened even more by the absence of family distractions. The figure of the bachelor politician married to his job was a common one—Seab Cooley was an example that had always intrigued and amused him—and who could say but what he would be the better public servant for it, if it turned out that way?

Two weeks after entertaining these smug thoughts, of course, he was wondering how he had ever been so stupid as to think he could possibly live without the girl he met on his first night back. Even now, though their bright beginning had gone steadily downward into darkness, he did not think he could have missed the experience of their being together and still consider his life to have been complete.

It had happened, as so many things do at the start of each new year in Washington, at the traditional Congressional Night Party given each January by the Women’s National Press Club on the night of the day that Congress convenes. This particular year it had occurred on January 4, during one of those sudden heavy snowfalls that always surprise, dismay, and discombobulate the District of Columbia and its harried weather forecasters. The prediction had been “a little fog and drizzle but no danger of snow.” As it turned out, while public business ceased, private enterprise closed down, and the citizenry crawled home in skidding, sliding, cursing traffic jams, a total of seven inches fell in the capital and up to nine inches in some places in nearby Maryland and Virginia.

That was not until nearly 3 a.m., however, and in the meantime the Congressional Night Party went forward undaunted at the Statler, its customary gaiety given an extra zing by the excitement of the snow and the enjoyable breakdown of the customary procedures of a mechanized society. Guests came in shaking snow off their coats, slapping their gloves, stamping their feet, cheeks aglow, eyes asparkle, shouting greetings happily as though they had come fifty miles across the ice behind a team of matched bays. Voices rose with a special liveliness and pleasure, drinks were downed at an even faster rate than usual, as all those of politics and press and diplomacy whose business is the business of the United States greeted one another joyously at the start of another Congressional session and the beginning of another new year.

In all this jovial throng, as Hal Fry worked his way slowly through the mob around the bar to ask for bourbon on the rocks, looking solid and dependable and even moderately handsome in his tuxedo, he was conscious of a tall dark girl just ahead of him, staring uncertainly about as though waiting for someone. He could not determine in that moment whether or not she was really beautiful, and having missed the opportunity to see her objectively then, he was never to recapture the chance. By the time he had come alongside, he had only a general but overwhelming impression of something warm and intelligent and desirable, something so appealing that he knew instantly he must have it if he possibly could. Among the minor talents of wartime was the talent one of his fellow officers had referred to as “scouting the terrain,” and a minute of it convinced him that she was single, probably nice, and also, probably, in love. For one complacently resigned to bachelorhood this produced a surprising dismay for a moment. She said, “Can I help you?” in a tone that made him realize that his eyes must be showing an inordinate concern to prompt such a response. He smiled pleasantly and said, “No, thanks, I’m just trying to get a drink. Can I help you?” She too smiled and said, “No, thanks. I’m just trying to find an escort.” “Well, good luck,” he said, and she replied pleasantly. “Good luck to you, too.”