(1964) The Man (7 page)

She heard Talley’s strained voice. “I somehow believed that almost every President who didn’t finish his term was assassinated, but it says here that not more than four were shot down.”

“Lincoln, Garfield, McKinley and Kennedy,” said Flannery, fingers pressing his forehead. “Harrison and Harding died, in part, of pneumonia. Taylor’s death was caused by cholera morbus. F. D. R. suffered a cerebral hemorrhage. Incredible, but poor T. C. was the only one ever to be snuffed out by an accident.” He shrugged. “I suppose it had to happen to someone sometime.” Then he added wretchedly, “Only why did it have to be T. C.?”

Edna had been watching Tim Flannery as he spoke, and there was a sweetness about him, behind his whole façade of forced factuality, that she liked very much. He was a tall Irishman, with unruly rust-colored hair, and a small reddish mustache, and a wide, ingenuous florid face, now puffy and blotched by sorrow. He looked as tweedy as his suits, with their suede elbow patches, and he had been a Midwest newspaperman who had written several highly respected history books on the side. It said much for him that most of the cynical White House press corps, and her own George among them, liked Tim Flannery.

“Chrisamighty, but I’m sure not in the mood for this,” Governor Talley was saying. His one crossed eye contemplated the ceiling and then reluctantly came down to the papers in his hands. “Well, guess somebody’s got to do it. Might as well get it over with. . . . Let me see, Tim, says here that Speaker Earl MacPherson will fill one year and five months of T. C.’s unexpired term. Is that correct?”

“Give or take a few days, yes,” said Flannery, almost inaudibly. He seemed to make an effort to pull himself together. “All the past Vice-Presidents who succeeded Presidents had over three years of unexpired terms to fill, except Fillmore, who served two years and eight months of Taylor’s term, and Coolidge, who picked up one year and seven months of Harding’s unexpired term, and Lyndon Johnson, who served one year and three months of Kennedy’s unexpired term. MacPherson will have a long enough way to go in the—in the Presidency.”

“Yes, he will,” said Talley with gravity. He touched the papers in his hand. “You say here this is the first time in our history we have ever lost both men elected to serve us for four years.”

“Never happened before,” said Tim Flannery. “But as Clinton Rossiter wrote in
The American Presidency
, ‘This is no guarantee for the future.’ How right he was.” Flannery pointed to the sheaf of papers. “Did you notice that other quotation from Rossiter?”

“Which one?”

Flannery had bent forward and pointed to a paragraph on the top page. “Right there.” He read it aloud. “ ‘If we are only poorly prepared for a double vacancy, we are not prepared at all for a multiple vacancy; and it is this kind of vacancy, so I am told by colleagues who deal in the laws of probability, that we are most likely to be faced with during the next hundred years and beyond.’ ”

Talley frowned. “I’m not interested in that. I’m interested in the facts, Tim, nothing else. We’re faced with a double vacancy, not a multiple one. Let’s check the Presidential Succession Act of 1947, just get it straight, before we dictate the release to Edna.” He had begun turning the pages, and at last he found it. “Here it is. Okay, clear and simple. If the Presidency and Vice-Presidency are vacant, ‘the Speaker of the House of Representatives shall, upon his resignation as Speaker and as Representative in Congress, act as President.’ ” His gaze moved down the page. “Yes, clear enough—President, Vice-President, Speaker of the House—and after that the order of succession is President pro tempore of the Senate, Secretary of State, Secretary of the Treasury, Secretary of Defense, Attorney General, and so forth through the Cabinet.” He raised his head. “Any Speaker even come half this close to the Presidency before?”

“Not while Speaker, no,” said Tim Flannery. “One former Speaker, Polk, was later elected President. But none ever—”

“Okay, there’s always got to be a first time,” said Talley. He handed the papers back to the press secretary. “So it’s the Speaker of the House—grumpy old Earl MacPherson himself—who’d have believed it possible? Okay, that’s the law, and no matter how we feel, we might as well start dictating some kind of press announcement.”

Flannery snapped his fingers. “I forgot to get a capsule of MacPherson’s background. Some of that should be in, too.”

“Definitely,” said Talley.

Flannery twisted in his chair toward Edna. “Can you be a good girl and fetch Representative Harvey Wickland in here? He can give us what we need for now on MacPherson.”

Edna came out of her swivel chair, hastened to the door leading to the President’s Oval Office, opened it, and then halted, surprised. Everyone in the crowded room was on his feet, all converging upon Arthur Eaton, who stood in the center of the room, in the middle of the eagle of the United States seal woven into the thick green Presidential rug.

Edna turned to Flannery and Talley. “Something’s happening!” she exclaimed. “Everyone’s gathering around Secretary Eaton.”

Immediately, Talley and Flannery jumped to their feet, pushing past her into the room toward Eaton. Reluctantly Edna followed them to the center of the Oval Office.

Eaton, his voice dry and low, was speaking aloud. “I have just been called outside to take a telephone call from Frankfurt. I have terrible news to report to all of you, terrible news, and it grieves me. Speaker of the House Earl MacPherson died in surgery, on the table, under the knife, ten minutes ago. This has been confirmed. Now the Speaker is also dead.”

A great gasp swelled through the room, and off somewhere there was someone hysterically sobbing, and after that there was a sickening silence.

Edna heard Tim Flannery, beside her, whisper, almost to himself, “Multiple vacancy.”

The first to be heard speaking aloud was Governor Wayne Talley. “I don’t believe it.”

The second to be heard aloud was Arthur Eaton. “It is true.”

Then it was that General Pitt Fortney called out, “Who in the hell is T. C.’s successor?”

Arthur Eaton held up his head. “According to the Presidential Succession Act of 1947, the next in line is the President pro tempore of the United States Senate.”

For strange and suspenseful seconds, the Secretary of State’s pronouncement hung in the air, and those who heard it were immobilized, allowing it to sink into their minds, as the curved walls with their niches and shelves of dead mementos seemed to close in on them.

“The President pro tempore of the Senate,” the Attorney General intoned, as someone might intone Amen.

And then at once, all at once, collectively, each in the room seemed to realize who this was, who their next President of the United States was, and all at once all of them, collectively, turned their gaze upon the one man who stood somewhat apart from them, near the Buchanan desk.

Everyone, it seemed, was staring at Senator Douglass Dilman. And for Edna it was frightening to see that in each person’s eyes, without exception, there was registered a look of horror.

Within thirty minutes the group, grown larger from the arrival of other members of the government, had assembled in the Cabinet Room. They stood now in a semicircle, with an opening in the center for two still photographers and two television cameramen representing the press pool, clustered around the long, dark mahogany table.

Once, while waiting, Eaton had asked Douglass Dilman if he had any close relatives or friends in the city whom he might wish to have witness the ceremony. He had replied, in an undertone, “No, sir, no one.”

Once, minutes ago, Eaton had beckoned to Edna and Tim Flannery and demanded a Bible. There was much scurrying about, but no copy of the Bible was to be found, until Edna remembered the one in the lower drawer of her desk. She had gone to get it, and found the cheap, battered Bible, a Gideon Bible she had borrowed from a hotel room in Memphis once, on a trip with T. C., and had forgotten to return, and which she now retained for reference purposes. Guiltily, she had brought in the Gideon Bible and given it to Eaton.

She found herself still standing next to Eaton, who leaned against the high-backed leather chair bearing the tiny brass nameplate “Secretary of State.”

She heard Eaton inquire of Senator Dilman, “Do you wish this open on any particular passage?”

She heard Dilman reply, “Psalms 127:1.” Slowly, Eaton leafed through the book, and then he said, “Is this it? ‘Except the Lord build the house, they labour in vain that build it: except the Lord keep the city, the watchman waketh but in vain.’ ” He glanced inquiringly at Dilman, and Dilman swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing, and said, “Yes, sir, that is it.”

It was during this moment that Noah F. Johnstone, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, came through the corridor door and across the room, gravely nodding at the familiar faces turned toward him. Even without his robes, Edna thought, even in his bow tie and dark suit, the Chief Justice appeared impressive. He was a giant of a man, with a slight stoop and an uneven gait. His sunken face, wrinkled and wise, betrayed no emotion.

He came around the Cabinet table into the glare of klieg lights, nodding to Talley, and then to Dilman and Eaton, and he took his position beside T. C.’s old chair. “Are we ready?” he inquired of no one in particular, and then he accepted the open Gideon Bible from Eaton, squinted down at it, and said to Dilman, “Take the Holy Book in your left hand and raise your right hand. I will recite the oath of office as it is written in Article II, Section 1, of the Constitution of the United States. When I have finished, please repeat the oath.”

He proffered the Bible to Dilman, who accepted it and held it with difficulty in his left hand, and raised his trembling right hand. Chief Justice Johnstone lifted his own right hand, and measuring each word, he rendered the oath of office.

When he was done, he waited.

After a painful interlude, Douglass Dilman’s thick lips moved, and the words that he repeated came out low and slurred.

“I, Douglass Dilman, do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will, to the best of my ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States.”

He halted, and looked around the room, bewildered, as if seeking a friend in a company of strangers. The harsh kliegs, blended with the light of the overhead neon grill, made the witnesses to the historic tableau seem ghostly. He had lowered his right hand, and suddenly Chief Justice Johnstone reached out and grasped Dilman’s right hand in his own and shook it.

“Mr. President,” the Chief Justice was saying, “we deeply mourn the passing of our beloved past President, but the continuity of our government, the welfare of our country, must stand above any one individual in these perilous times. Our hearts go out to you for your double burden—and may the Lord in Heaven bless you and watch over you as the new Chief Executive of this nation—and—as the first Negro to become President of the United States.”

I
t was the muffled sound of argument that awakened him.

There was a thin line of ache behind his forehead as he listened, sorting and separating the muffled sound into two sounds, the first shrill and feminine, cross and indignant, the second low and male, calm and placating.

His head was deep in the fat pillow, so deep that when he turned, he could not see the time. The pillow had been handmade by Aldora, almost double-sized and stuffed with gray goose down, and presented to him on their first anniversary, so long ago, when their marriage still had hope.

The cross fire of altercation beyond his bedroom wall, increasingly abrasive, continued louder. He lifted himself ever so slightly on his forearm and was able to make out the time on the electric clock humming upon the end table beside the bed. It was eight fifty-two, and although the room was darkened by the drawn shades, he knew that it was morning.

He realized that he had meant to be awakened earlier, had meant to set the alarm, but had forgotten to do so before falling asleep. The shutoff lever on his telephone had banished all calls, and in his utter exhaustion he had slumbered on and on. It was shameful, he thought behind the headache, and, as always, to do anything shameful alarmed him. Other men could afford mistakes, small and large, but he could afford none, not the smallest one. Several times, during his residence in Washington, he had awakened with the remnant of the same dream, that he had been treading water in an enormous aquarium, and that all its sides were painted with blue eyes staring at him. The shimmering fragment of dream had always left him uneasy.

But now, the private hook of humor that he possessed but had not dared to reveal to anyone but Wanda and his closest friends extricated him from the fish bowl, and he was free to admit to himself that he had performed his first act as the President of the United States. He had overslept.

Suddenly the enormity of what had happened last night, and of what he was, oppressed him with its unreality and automatically forced him to retreat into the cup of the down pillow.

He had, he remembered, been told by someone last night that, after formally resigning from the Senate, he had become the President of the United States at ten thirty-seven in the evening. He had not been returned to his brownstone row house until after one o’clock in the morning. It was almost impossible to recollect what had taken place in the time between. He had signed something, yes, his first official signing; he had affixed his name to the proclamation that poor Speaker MacPherson was supposed to have signed, the same statement that had been hastily prepared for the Speaker and was to have been flown to Frankfurt. This proclamation was the official announcement of T. C.’s funeral and the period of national mourning.

He had listened to Secretary of State Arthur Eaton and Governor Wayne Talley expound on the critical Roemer Conference, and he had not absorbed a word of it. He had sat with them, smoking cigars until his eyes smarted and his throat felt blistered, and he had sat with the sympathetic press secretary, yes, Tim Flannery, the redhead, preparing the carefully worded release to all the news media. Then others had swum about them, senators and representatives whom he had known during work hours for years, and T. C.’s Cabinet members, whom he had hardly known at all, and they had spoken of approaches and strategies and public relations and the Party, and he had been grateful that they had addressed Eaton and Talley and Flannery and not himself.