Edge of Eternity (54 page)

George exulted. This was strong stuff—especially the reference to the master race, which called the Nazis to mind. It was the kind of speech he had always wanted the president to make.

“The fires of frustration are burning in every city, north and south, where legal remedies are not at hand,” Kennedy said. “Next week I shall ask the Congress of the United States to act, to make a commitment it has not fully made this century, to the proposition that”—he had gone formal, but now he reverted to plain language—“race has no place in American life or law.”

That was a quote for the newspapers, George thought immediately: race has no place in American life or law. He was excited beyond measure. America was changing, right now, minute by minute, and he was part of that change.

“Those who do nothing are inviting shame as well as violence,” the president said, and George thought he meant it, even though doing nothing had been his policy until a few hours ago.

“I ask the support of all our citizens,” Kennedy finished.

The broadcast ended. Along the corridor, the TV lights were switched off and the crews began to pack their gear. Sorensen congratulated the president.

George was euphoric but exhausted. He went home to his apartment, ate scrambled eggs, and watched the news. As he had hoped, the president's broadcast was the main item. He went to bed and fell asleep.

The phone woke him. It was Verena Marquand. She was weeping and barely coherent. “What happened?” George asked her.

“Medgar,” she said, and then something he could not understand.

“Are you talking about Medgar Evers?” George knew the man, a black activist in Jackson, Mississippi. He was a full-time employee of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the most moderate of the civil rights groups. He had investigated the murder of Emmett Till and organized a boycott of white stores. His work had made him a national figure.

“They shot him,” Verena sobbed. “Right outside his house.”

“Is he dead?”

“Yes. He has three children, George—three! His kids heard the shot and went out and found their father bleeding to death on their driveway.”

“Oh, Christ.”

“What is
wrong
with these white people? Why do they do this to us, George? Why?”

“I don't know, baby,” said George. “I just don't know.”

•   •   •

Once again, Bobby Kennedy sent George to Atlanta with a message for Martin Luther King.

When George called Verena to make the appointment, he said: “I'd love to see your apartment.”

He could not figure Verena out. That night in Birmingham they had made love and survived a racist bomb, and he had felt very close to her. But days had gone by, then weeks, without another opportunity to make
love, and their intimacy had evaporated. Yet, when she had been distraught with the news of the murder of Medgar Evers, she had not phoned Martin Luther King, nor her father, but George. Now he did not know what their relationship was.

“Sure,” she said. “Why not?”

“I'll bring a bottle of vodka.” He had learned that vodka was her favorite booze.

“I share the place with another girl.”

“Shall I bring two bottles?”

She laughed. “Easy, tiger. Laura will be happy to go out for the evening. I've done it often enough for her.”

“Does that mean you'll make dinner?”

“I'm not much of a cook.”

“How about if you fry a couple of steaks and I make a salad?”

“You have sophisticated taste.”

“That's why I like
you.
”

“Smooth talker.”

He flew there the next day. He was hoping to spend the night with her, but he did not want her to feel taken for granted, so he checked into a hotel, then got a taxi to her place.

He had more than seduction on his mind. Last time he had brought a message from Bobby to King, he had felt ambivalent about it. This time Bobby was right and King was wrong, and George was determined to change King's mind. So first he would try to change Verena's.

Atlanta in June was hot, and she greeted him wearing a sleeveless tennis dress that showed her long light-tan arms. Her feet were bare, and that made him wonder whether she had anything on under the dress. She kissed him on the lips, but briefly, so that he was not sure what it meant.

She had a classy modern apartment with contemporary furniture. She could not afford it on the salary Martin Luther King was giving her, George guessed. Percy Marquand's record royalties must have been paying the rent.

He put the vodka down on the kitchen counter and she handed him a bottle of vermouth and a cocktail shaker. Before making the drinks he said: “I want to be sure you understand something. President Kennedy
is in the greatest trouble of his political career. This is much worse than the Bay of Pigs.”

She was shocked, as he had intended. “Tell me why,” she said.

“Because of his civil rights bill. The morning after his television broadcast—the morning after you called to tell me that Medgar had been murdered—the House majority leader telephoned the president. He said it was going to be impossible to pass the farm bill, mass-transit funding, foreign aid, and the space budget. Kennedy's program of legislation has been completely derailed. Just as we feared, those Southern Democrats are taking their revenge. And the president's rating in the opinion polls dropped ten points overnight.”

“It's done him good internationally, though,” she pointed out. “You may just have to tough it out at home.”

“Believe me, we are,” George said. “Lyndon Johnson has come into his own.”

“Johnson? Are you kidding me?”

“No, I'm not.” George was friendly with one of the vice president's aides, Skip Dickerson. “Did you know that the city of Houston shut off dockside electricity to protest the navy's new policy on shore leave integration?”

“Yes, the bastards.”

“Lyndon solved that problem.”

“How?”

“NASA is planning to build a tracking station worth millions of dollars in Houston. Lyndon just threatened to cancel it. The city turned the power back on seconds later. Never underestimate Lyndon Johnson.”

“We could do with more of that attitude in the administration.”

“True.” But the Kennedy brothers were fastidious. They did not want to dirty their hands. They preferred to win the argument by sweet reason. Consequently, they did not make much use of Johnson, in fact they looked down on him for his arm-twisting skills.

George filled the cocktail shaker with ice, then poured in some vodka and shook it up. Verena opened the refrigerator and took out two cocktail glasses. George poured a teaspoonful of vermouth into each frosted glass, swirled it around to coat the sides, then added the cold vodka. Verena dropped an olive into each glass.

George liked the feeling of doing something together. “We make a good team, don't we?” he said.

Verena raised her glass and drank. “You make a good martini,” she said.

George smiled ruefully. He had been hoping for a different answer, one that affirmed their relationship. He sipped and said: “Yeah, I do.”

Verena got out lettuce and tomatoes and two sirloin steaks. George began to wash the lettuce. As he did so he turned the conversation to the real purpose of his visit. “I know that we've talked about this before, but it doesn't help the White House that Dr. King has Communist associates.”

“Who says he does?”

“The FBI.”

Verena snorted contemptuously. “That famously reliable source of information on the civil rights movement. Knock it off, George. You know that J. Edgar Hoover believes that anyone who disagrees with him is a Communist, including Bobby Kennedy. Where's the evidence?”

“Apparently the FBI has evidence.”

“Apparently? So you haven't seen any. Has Bobby?”

George felt embarrassed. “Hoover says the source is sensitive.”

“Hoover has refused to show the evidence to the attorney general? Who does Hoover think he's working for?” She sipped her drink thoughtfully. “Has the
president
seen the evidence?”

George said nothing.

Verena's incredulity mounted. “Hoover can't say no to the president.”

“I believe the president decided not to push the matter to a confrontation.”

“How naïve are you people? George, listen to me.
There is no evidence.
”

George decided to concede the point. “You're probably right. I don't believe that Jack O'Dell and Stanley Levison are Communists, though probably they used to be; but don't you see that the truth doesn't matter? There are grounds for suspicion, and that's enough to discredit the civil rights movement. And, now that the president has proposed a civil rights bill, he gets discredited too.” George wrapped the washed lettuce in a towel and windmilled his arm to dry the leaves. Irritation made
him do it more energetically than necessary. “Jack Kennedy has put his political life on the line for civil rights, and we can't let him be brought down by charges of Communist association.” He tipped the lettuce into a bowl. “Just get rid of those two guys, and solve the problem!”

Verena spoke patiently. “O'Dell is an employee of Martin Luther King's organization, just as I am, but Levison isn't even on the payroll. He's just a friend and adviser to Martin. Do you really want to give J. Edgar Hoover the power to choose Martin's friends?”

“Verena, they're standing in the way of the civil rights bill. Just tell Dr. King to get rid of them—please.”

Verena sighed. “I think he will. It's taking a while for his Christian conscience to get around to the idea of spurning loyal longtime supporters, but in the end he'll do it.”

“Thank the Lord for that.” George's spirits lifted: for once he could go back to Bobby with good news.

Verena salted the steaks and put them in a frying pan. “And now I'll tell you something,” she said. “It won't make any goddamn difference. Hoover will continue to leak stories to the press about how the civil rights movement is a Communist front. He would do it if we were all lifelong Republicans. J. Edgar Hoover is a pathological liar who hates Negroes, and it's a damn shame your boss doesn't have the balls to fire him.”

George wanted to protest but unfortunately the accusation was true. He sliced a tomato into the salad.

Verena said: “Do you like your steak well cooked?”

“Not too much.”

“The French way? So do I.”

George made a couple more drinks and they sat at the small table to eat. George embarked on the second half of his message. “It would help the president if Dr. King would call off this damn Washington sit-in.”

“That isn't going to happen.”

King had called for a “massive, militant, and monumental sit-in demonstration” in Washington, coinciding with nationwide acts of civil disobedience. The Kennedy brothers were appalled. “Consider this,” George said. “In Congress, there are some people who will always vote for civil rights and some who never will. The ones who matter are those who could go either way.”

“Swing voters,” said Verena, using a phrase that had come into vogue.

“Exactly. They know that the bill is morally right but politically unpopular, and they're looking for excuses to vote against it. Your demonstration will give them the chance to say: ‘I'm for civil rights, but not at the point of a gun.' The timing is wrong.”

“As Martin says, the timing is always wrong for white people.”

George grinned. “You're whiter than I am.”

She tossed her head. “And prettier.”

“That's the truth. You're just about the prettiest sight I've ever seen.”

“Thank you. Eat up.”

George picked up his knife and fork. They ate mostly in silence. George complimented Verena on the steaks, and she said he made a good salad, for a man.

When they had finished they carried their drinks into the living room and sat on the couch, and George resumed the argument. “It's different, now, don't you see? The administration is on our side. The president is trying his best to pass the bill we've been demanding for years.”

She shook her head. “If we've learned one thing, it's that change comes faster when we keep up the pressure. Did you know that Negroes are getting served by white waitresses in Birmingham restaurants now?”

“Yes, I did know that. What an incredible turnaround.”

“And it wasn't achieved by waiting patiently. It happened because they threw rocks and started fires.”

“The situation has changed.”

“Martin won't cancel the demonstration.”

“Would he modify it?”

“What do you mean?”

This was George's Plan B. “Could it become a simple law-abiding march, rather than a sit-in? Congressmen might feel less threatened.”

“I don't know. Martin might consider that.”

“Hold it on a Wednesday, to discourage people from staying in the city all weekend, and end it early so that the marchers leave well before nightfall.”

“You're trying to draw the sting.”

“If we must have a demonstration, we should do everything possible to make sure the occasion is nonviolent and makes a good impression, especially on television.”

“In that case, how about stationing portable toilets all along the route? I guess Bobby can get that done, even if he can't fire Hoover.”

“Great idea.”

“And how about rounding up some white supporters? The whole thing will look better on TV if there are white marchers as well as black.”

George considered. “I bet Bobby could get the unions to send contingents.”

“If you can promise both of those things as sweeteners, I think we have a chance of changing Martin's mind.”

George saw that Verena had come around to his point of view and was now discussing how to persuade King. That was half a victory. He said: “And if you can persuade Dr. King to change the sit-in to a march, I think we might get the president to endorse it.” He was sticking his neck out, but it was possible.