(1964) The Man (14 page)

“He has to swear in the White House staff—”

“This afternoon.”

“—and fill some sudden vacancies, mostly female secretaries, Southern.”

“I see. Fine, Edna can begin screening applicants.”

Talley went back to his notes. “Tim Flannery says the press reports show considerable concern. The country’s had a bad jolt.” He looked up. “Maybe it would allay everyone’s fear if they could have a look at him, see that he’s harmless. I thought we could prepare a short, rather self-effacing speech for him, and put him on the television networks—”

“No,” said Eaton firmly. “Too soon. His appearance might inflame rather than soothe. Let’s try to keep him out of sight for a while, let the country know that even under Dilman the government has not been disrupted, that business is going on as usual.”

“What about letting him address a Joint Session of Congress? Truman did it after F. D. R.’s death.”

“He did it over his colleagues’ protests. No, Wayne, I don’t like that either. I still say keep him close to his desk for a while, until everyone settles down.”

“Well—”

“Arrange to have him lunch tomorrow with selected leaders of the Senate and House.”

“Excellent,” said Talley, making a note of it. “What about the Cabinet? Shall I summon all hands for a meeting today?”

Eaton shook his head. “Not today. Not tomorrow, either.”

“Won’t it look funny if he doesn’t—”

Eaton licked his lower lip. “I do not want him running a Cabinet meeting until we’ve had a chance to brief him thoroughly. We’ve first got to inform Dilman of T. C.’s desires, wishes, plans. Then he will know how to handle himself.” He sat up straight. “I’ll tell you what to do, Wayne—beginning this afternoon, and during the next few days, have the various Cabinet members drop in on courtesy calls, but make sure none of them discusses business. As to Dilman, for his part he must request each one to remain in office and to serve him as each served T. C.”

“What if he objects or has reservations?”

“He won’t resist, Wayne. He doesn’t know them, and he does need a knowledgeable Cabinet at once. He hasn’t had time to consider anyone else. Oh yes, be sure to remind him that after F. D. R. died, Harry Truman did just this, asked each member of Roosevelt’s Cabinet to stay on. And Lyndon Johnson did the same. Very well, what next?”

“At least a dozen ambassadors have applied this morning for appointments. Ambassador Rudenko wants to discuss resumption of the Roemer Conference—”

“I’ll see him myself.”

“Then the Ambassador from Baraza, Nnamdi Wamba, is most anxious—”

“I’ll have Jed Stover stall him. I’m flying someone over to Baraza tomorrow to sit down with President Amboko. I want to do what T. C. was intending to do—pave the way for a settlement with the Russians by making the Africans ease upon their Communists in return for our ratifying the African Unity Pact. I want to feel Amboko out. When we are ready, we can tell Dilman how to behave with the Barazans.”

“Then the Indian Ambassador and—”

“Limit them to courtesy calls, too. No official business until next week. Is that enough to keep Dilman occupied?”

Talley nodded. “Of course, but there’s—”

The knocking on the door behind them made both of them turn. “Yes?” Talley called out.

The door opened and Edna Foster poked her head into the room. “Secretary Eaton, since it’s personal, I thought, rather than buzz—there’s a call from Miami Beach for you. It’s Mrs. Eaton. Can you take it now?”

Eaton hesitated and then quickly said, “Yes, certainly. Thank you, Miss Foster.”

“Line two, please,” Edna said, and closed the door.

Eaton rose stiffly from the sofa and crossed to the telephone.

“Arthur, if you’d like to be alone—” Talley called after him.

“Stay where you are.”

“Eaton punched a plastic key on the telephone and brought the receiver to his ear. “Kay dear, how are you?”

He listened to her soprano mockery of his greeting. “ ‘Kay dear, how are you?’ Oh, my, somebody should hear you. They’d think you had just come off the tennis court. How do you do it, Arthur? How do you stand calm and collected in a massacre? I thought you’d be in the middle of a wake, at least, beating your breast and loaded to the gills over your poor T. C. Doesn’t anything drive you to drink, Arthur?”

“You may succeed where others have failed, darling.”

Her laughter rattled through the receiver, and then there was a pause, and she came on more soberly. “I heard it when we all drove back to the hotel before midnight. They broke in on the music, every station. Quite an uproar down here in Florida. And this morning, too. The colored waiter wouldn’t even take a tip for breakfast. ‘Got enuff for one day, ma’am,’ he said. And the whites down in the lobby, glowering and complaining and nigger-hating all over the place. It’s enough to scare you. Know anywhere to hide, Arthur? Or don’t you run scared any more?”

“Not any more, Kay.”

“That the best you can do, Arthur? You sound so restrained. Is there someone in the room with you?”

“Yes, there is.”

“Well, that shouldn’t inhibit the Eatons, should it, now? We’re public property, we belong to all ages. Did you know Reb Blaser’s column is syndicated? Indeed it is. I read about us right down here in the sand. I hear the Eatons are heading for the divorce court. Should I believe everything I read?”

“Cut it out, Kay. He was gunning for bigger game in that column.”

“I should think there’s no bigger game than you personally right now, my dear one. What’s the saying—ah—you’re a heartbeat away from the Presidency, I read.”

“I haven’t had time to think about it.”

“Well, I have, Arthur. I have nothing but time these days. I could hardly fall asleep last night speculating about it. I kept thinking how close it had been. What if that Negro—whatever his name is—had been with T. C. and MacPherson in Frankfurt? Why, you’d be the President and I’d be the First Lady. Now, you couldn’t divorce a First Lady, could you? Could you, Arthur? Has it ever been done?”

At last her chiding anger had penetrated his control. “Kay, stop it. I’m busy right now. We can—”

Her voice was suddenly serious. “Arthur, do you want me to come home now? If you need me—”

He thought how much he had needed her how many times in the past, but now he needed only peace of mind. He had a desire to tell her so, but he was aware that Talley was in the room, and he restrained himself. “Finish your vacation, Kay. That would be best for both of us.”

“Drop dead,” she said calmly, and hung up.

He was left with the receiver still uplifted, without the chance to say good-bye, always an embarrassment when others were in the room. He made a lame pretense. “Be well, Kay,” he said into the dead phone, and he returned the receiver to its place.

He observed that Talley was too busily occupied making notes on that crowded single sheet of paper. He was sure that Talley had guessed what had gone on between Kay and himself, and he was even more resentful of Kay for baiting him when she knew he was not alone.

Remaining near the telephone, Eaton inquired, “What about the rest of Dilman’s agenda?”

“Oh,” Talley said, sitting erect, as if he had been deeply absorbed in work and unaware that the telephone call had ended. Quickly he began to announce what was left for Dilman to do. “He’ll have to reply to a ton of foreign dispatches from heads of state. Maybe something short and sweet, to instill confidence in them. Perhaps a longer cable in response to Premier Kasatkin. I think Tim Flannery and the two of us should get to work immediately helping Dilman draft a dignified, somewhat ambiguous statement to the press telling them that he enters the office with a sense of responsibility to T. C. and to the American people who voted T. C. into office, and that the ship of state is still T. C.’s ship, and he is only temporarily at the helm, but will do his best—”

“Good,” said Eaton. “Inform Dilman and Flannery we’ll meet at three today.”

“Next on the schedule—”

The telephone beside Eaton rang out. He picked it up, praying that it was not Kay again. It proved to be Edna Foster from across the hall. She reported that Congressman Zeke Miller and one of his assistants were in the press lobby. Miller had said that it was imperative that he see both Eaton and Talley. He had promised not to take up more than a few minutes.

“What should I say to him?” Edna Foster asked.

“Tell him we’re crowded for time, but—” He weighed the necessity of seeing Congressman Miller, whom he found gauche and distasteful, but then he realized that if he were to act as T. C. acted, he would have to be a politician as well as a diplomat. “Very well, Miss Foster, send him in.”

He moved toward the corridor door.

“Who is it?” Talley inquired.

“Zeke Miller wants to see us for a few minutes. I suppose we have to.”

“Absolutely,” said Talley. “He packs a lot of power, especially right now.”

Eaton opened the door, noticing that the “In Use” sign still hung from its peg, and then, as if on cue, Representative Zeke Miller, thin briefcase tucked under his arm, charged into the Fish Room, shaking hands with Eaton, and with Talley, who had come to his feet. Then Miller introduced the gangling young man with thick spectacles and flabby lips and overloaded brown briefcase, who had followed him inside, as one Casper Wine.

Zeke Miller circled the Fish Room, hot with perspiration, and imperiously ordered his assistant to a chair. “Sit down over there, Casper.” Then he said to Eaton, “Casper Wine is the goldarn smartest young constitutional lawyer on the Hill. Does a lot of homework for those of us on the House Judiciary Committee.”

Miller swung away, yanking a blue handkerchief from his hip pocket. He brought it to his nose, honked into it, and then, balling up the handkerchief, wiped the perspiration from his forehead, face, and neck. Eaton watched Miller’s activity, these nervous gyrations, with growing distaste. On those occasions when he had been thrown together with Miller, he had always left feeling that he would have been more comfortable with a pit viper. For one thing, Eaton found the Southern Congressman’s appearance repulsive. Not that Miller was technically ugly, Eaton conceded, but his aspect was that of the bigot incarnate. Miller was not quite short, was wiry, and was perpetually in motion. There was something meanly threatening about him, like a coiled spring ready to tear loose, explode, and shred anyone within range.

Miller was semibald, with a long, thin, veiny nose, tiny gray eyes, and an almost lipless mouth that continually worked over discolored teeth. His small frame, like his small mind, was tough and supple. His suits were expensive but garish. Neither his father’s textile money nor his inheritance from his mother had given him polish. His years away from the Deep South had modified his Dixie accent which, it was said in the cloakrooms, he turned on at will during electioneering years.

When taking to the hustings down home, traveling the red clay roads and magnolia groves, Zeke Miller reverted to being the complete “Southroner,” and the voice that twanged away like the plucked strings of a banjo on the floor of the House became softer, rounder, as its rich mellifluousness inveighed against the Communist-African conspiracy “to undermine America by reducing us to one mongrelized family, and thereby bringing on the Biblical Armageddon which will wipe our Christian government from the earth.” America’s hope, Miller often said, was in containing the spread of the Black Plague through strict segregation, and ultimately shipping off the carriers and spreaders of destruction to their native Africa. In his infrequent cheerier moments of oratory, Miller was given to attributing his jokes to his father’s decrepit green parrot, or to revising suitable quotations from the Old Testament. He would not forget that his grandpappy, Braxton Z. Miller, had owned slaves, and they had been peaceable and grateful, and “the Nigra’s lot” had been the better for this paternal segregation. “As the Prophets have told us,” Miller often liked to say, “ ‘Thou shalt not plow with an ox and an ass together.’ ”

Now Zeke Miller had finished drying himself, and was folding his handkerchief and returning it to his hip pocket. “I tell you,” he muttered, “those reporters out there sure downright bugged me. Trying to make me out a Bilbo or worse. Anything for a story. They sure can be mighty rough boys.”

“You should know, Zeke,” Talley said cheerfully, “you own half of them.”

“Aw, no, that’s not true, Governor,” Miller said. “The few newspapers my Dad and I control, they don’t amount to a hill of beans.” For the first time Miller became conscious of Eaton’s stare. He half faced Eaton. “I’ve got too many more serious matters on my head than to bother about my newspapers. Just for the record, Mr. Secretary, I had no part in what that goldarn fool, Reb Blaser, put in our papers. It got me sore as could be, and I told Reb off good, and said if he picks on my friends once more with goldarn scandal rumors, I’ll see that he winds up on one of those nigger newspapers. Just so there’s no misunderstanding, Mr. Secretary, I’ve got nothing against you and your lady. I’m for you. I’m for all of T. C.’s team and everyone in our constitutional government. Fact is, I’m closer on your side than I’ve ever been before. No, sir, you’ve got my word, no more subverting rumors.”

“You’re protesting too much, Congressman,” said Eaton, “and it’s not necessary. I take your word it was a mistake. I accept your promise that it won’t happen again. I’ve quite forgotten the whole incident. You’re right, there are more important matters to contend with now.”

Miller’s mouth cracked into a smile, and his nicotine-stained teeth were revealed. “There’s more important things on my mind, too. If you sit down, I’ll be quick, I’ll give you a report on what’s been going on up on the Hill to save this poor country.”

Eaton and Talley eased themselves down on the sofa, but Zeke Miller stayed on his feet, snapping open his briefcase, extracting a wad of clipped papers. “Know what this is?” he asked, holding up the papers while dropping his briefcase. “This is the American people joined and united in one voice of protest against the greatest humiliation and danger of our century—against having an ignorant nig possum politician dirtying the White House and shoving us around.”