A Shade of Difference (55 page)

There was involved here what seemed to him, as he had said to Orrin on their ride back to the Sheraton-Park after he had dined at the Knoxes’, a fundamental issue involving the stature and prestige of the United States. There was involved, further, a fundamental and most vital issue as to whether the world was to conduct itself with a reasonable orderliness or fly completely off axis, as it always seemed to be on the verge of doing in this hodgepodge, helter-skelter century. If every little black man who cared to raise a holler could grab the attention of the nations and make great states bow and scrape before them, where was it all to end? Certainly not in any conclusion that he as a white man, or even as a self-respecting citizen of what he liked to think was still a self-respecting nation, could contemplate with casual calm.

He had said something of this in the chamber yesterday. He intended to say much more before the debate was over. He was quite sure he would have powerful and active support. Despite Harley’s dramatic doings at Geneva, with all their still-proliferating consequences, the general trend in the world, so far as the United States was concerned, was down. The country had never really stopped sliding since the end of the Second World War, in spite of an occasional dramatic event that seemed to be staying the tide, and not all the impulsive pyrotechnics of Truman, the placid drifting of Eisenhower, the sometimes erratic empirics of Kennedy and Harley’s predecessor, or the stubborn courage of Harley himself, had seemed to reverse the trend. The country was approaching a time, Seab firmly believed, indeed had long been in it, when taking a stand was really becoming the most important thing in the world for America and her allies to do: a stand, no matter what, as long as it
was
a stand.

The senior Senator from South Carolina, who like the great majority of the earth’s peoples sensed things almost more with his viscera than with his brains, was firmly of the opinion that what was giving the Communists the globe was not any such “historical imperative” as the Communists liked to prate about. What was giving them the globe was in major part a lack of guts on the part of the free world. The cowardice of the West was the Communists’ secret weapon, not any fancy talk about history: such was the opinion of Senator Cooley and, he suspected, the opinion of all those silent millions around the world who understood, directly and simply and without endless agonized rationalization, that the race goes to the swift and the battle to the strong, that nothing succeeds like success, and that to the victors belong the spoils.

For him, conditioned as he was by his background and his upbringing, and aware as he was that the issue about to come before the Congress was involved basically with the issue of color, this was as good a place for the country to take a stand as any; and he was grimly prepared to do his best to persuade it to. He had told Bob yesterday that it was ridiculous to prolong the session of Congress over such a matter, but Bob repeated that he had promised Orrin and suspected the Speaker had, too, and so they would have to see it through.

So be it, then; they would have to see it through. He, Seabright B. Cooley, would see it through. He walked scowling through the Senate Library on the gallery floor without a word to anyone, startling the clerks and page boys who watched him pass; made his way through the labyrinthine corridors and gangways behind the Library to his private office; and opened the door and went in, closing it securely behind him.

Then he dialed a number on the Capitol code and leaned back in his chair, staring far down the Mall to the Washington Monument and the Lincoln Memorial as he said with a drowsy amicability about as innocent as a rattlesnake on the coil, “Jawbone? Is that you, Jawbone? This is Seab, over here. How’s things going with that nice colored boy’s resolution?”

He could not, had he known it, have chosen a worse moment to call the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, for that nice colored boy was even now sitting across the desk from Representative J. B. (“Jawbone”) Swarthman of South Carolina with an expression polite but firm on his face and along his jaw a line that indicated a mood averse to nonsense. J. B. Swarthman was not a man to be intimidated by niggers, as he had just told himself scarcely a minute ago, but he had always liked Cullee, he was indeed a nice colored boy, he was—well, to use the phrase certain white men used when they felt they had to excuse themselves for making exceptions, Cullee was different.

This did not make things easy for Jawbone as he lifted the receiver and heard the voice of his senior Senator, the man who had sponsored his career many years ago and to whom he owed most of his political preferment and advancement. It was with a nervousness that Seab could clearly sense that he cried out, “Hey, there, Senator, how you be over there?”

“I said how are you over there,” Seab Cooley reminded him gently. “Leave me out of it for a minute, now. What’s the matter, you not alone?”

“Why, sure, I’m alone, Senator,” Jawbone lied magnificently, giving Cullee a broad wink and smile that produced from him a baffled expression. “What can I do for you, sir?”

“You sure you’re alone, now, Jawbone,” Senator Cooley said softly. “You sure, now.”

“Why—why, sure thing, Senator!” the chairman of Foreign Affairs cried heartily. “You know I am, now!”

“I don’t know any such of a thing,” Seab Cooley said quickly. “In fact, I suspect he’s sitting right there with you at this very minute. Is he now? Is he now, Jawbone? Tell me that, now!”

“Now, Senator,” Representative Swarthman said, an injured tone coming into his voice, “you know I wouldn’t lie to you! Now, I wouldn’t lie to you, hear?”

“I’m sure of that,” Senator Cooley said comfortably. “That’s why you’re going to tell me yes, he is there. Isn’t that right, Jawbone?”

“Well,” the chairman of Foreign Affairs said, crumpling suddenly but retaining his injured dignity, “maybe he is and maybe he isn’t. Anyway, I’m not going to tell him what you say, am I?”

“I want you to,” Senator Cooley said. “I want you to tell him I said you aren’t going to pass that resolution through your committee. That’s right, now, isn’t it?”

“Senator,” Representative Swarthman said in unhappy protest, aware that his colleague from California was stirring uneasily in his chair, “I can’t tell him that, Senator. Not yet, anyway.”

“It’s true, isn’t it?” Seab Cooley demanded sharply. “You not telling me it isn’t true now, are you, Jawbone? The man who dandled you on his knee when you weren’t any bigger than a tadpole? The man who helped you run for Congress ’way back there when you weren’t more than a boy in knee breeches, hardly; the man who’s helped you through thick and thin for forty years? Now, you’re not telling Seab Cooley you’re going to pass that resolution through your committee, are you? What are our folks in South Carolina going to say about that, Jawbone?” He paused and a thoughtful menace came clearly into his voice. “What am I going to say about that, when one who has been like a son to me turns upon his father?”

“Oh, now, Senator,” Representative Swarthman said in anguish. “Now, Senator, you hadn’t ought to talk to me like that, Senator. I’ll do my best for you, you know that; I always do, don’t I? Well, then!”

“If what he wants is for you to kill my resolution in committee,” Cullee said suddenly from across the desk, “I don’t think you can do it. I really don’t think you can.”

“No, now,” Jawbone said hurriedly, “it isn’t that at all, now.”

“What did he say?” Senator Cooley demanded. “Is he putting up a fight, Jawbone? Tell him right out, now. Take your hand off that mouthpiece and tell him right out so I can hear. Do it, now!”

“Senator,” Congressman Swarthman said, beginning to sweat profusely. “Don’t be hard on me, Senator. It isn’t easy over here. I think we can work it out—”

“Not with my assistance,” Congressman Hamilton said flatly. “Tell him he can’t bluff you. Tell him you haven’t got the votes. It’s the truth, isn’t it?”

“I don’t know whether it is or not,” Jawbone objected hastily. “I’ve got to check around—”

“He’s telling you, you don’t have the votes, now, isn’t he?” Seab Cooley demanded. “Don’t you listen to him, Jawbone. Tell him right out that you aren’t going to do it. You hear me? Tell him right out!”

“Senator,” Representative Swarthman said lamely, “please let me work it out, Senator. It isn’t so easy.”

“You can’t work it out,” Cullee said coldly. “It’s going through.”

“You get rid of him,” Senator Cooley directed, “and then you call me back when you can talk, Jawbone.”

“Well—” the chairman of Foreign Affairs said doubtfully.

“I’m counting on you, Jawbone,” Senator Cooley said ominously. “You know I’m counting on you, now. You understand that, don’t you, Jawbone?”

“Yes, sir, I understand that,” Representative Swarthman said limply.

“And you can work it out right for me?”

“Well, perhaps— I’ll have to call you back, Senator.”

“I’m counting on you, hear? I’d be most fearfully disappointed if I found I couldn’t count on you, Jawbone.”

“Yes, sir,” Representative Swarthman said feebly, replacing the receiver as though it had bitten him, which in effect it had. “Yes, sir. Whew!” He pulled a wildly decorated bandanna handkerchief out of his pocket and wiped his forehead with it as he turned to Cullee with an attempt at a placating smile. “He’s a great one to tell you what to do, is the old Senator.”

“I think the committee should meet this afternoon and send the resolution to the floor so we can work on it tomorrow or Monday,” Cullee Hamilton said. “The whole world’s watching, and I think we ought to move fast.”

“Well, now,” Jawbone said with a nervous smile. “That would be moving
pretty
fast, wouldn’t it? I mean, you understand basically I’m sympathetic—or anyway,” he corrected himself hastily, “I see why you feel you have to do it, Cullee, but you know how things go around here. That would be setting some kind of speed record; you know that, don’t you?”

‘It’s time the United States set a few speed records on this,” Congressman Hamilton said bluntly. “Everybody else is.”

“Well, I just don’t know whether we can round up the committee for this afternoon. That’s all.”

“We can get a quorum if we try. I’ll help the staff call the other members, if you like.”

“Oh, no,” Jawbone said hastily. “Oh, no, now. I’ll have the girls do it. Don’t you bother your head about it. I don’t want you to do that.”

“And we’ll meet this afternoon, then. Two o’clock, would that be a good time?”

“I don’t rightly know, now!” Jawbone protested. “Don’t rush me, Cullee. I—why, I expect I’d have to see the Speaker before I could call a committee meeting that sudden.”

“Good idea,” Cullee said, getting up promptly. “I think I’ll go see him myself.”

“Oh,
no,
now,” Representative Swarthman cried desperately. “Now, don’t you go bothering the Speaker, there! We’ll work it out, Cullee. We’ll work it out, that’s for sure!”

“I’m sure we will,” Congressman Hamilton said politely, “but, just for the hell of it, I think I’ll see him anyway.”

Why was it, the chairman of Foreign Affairs Committee demanded of himself as the door closed firmly behind his visitor and his final protest died on his lips, that things like this always happened to him? Why was it that he always seemed to be getting himself caught in the middle between the strong personalities that dominated the Capitol? Now Seab was on the rampage, and Cullee was equally determined, and the Speaker would come into it, and pretty soon the reporters would get hold of it, and oh,
God.
He groaned aloud as he sat at his desk nervously picking his fingers and waiting for the next blow from an unfair fate.

It wasn’t that he didn’t do his best to be a good Congressman; he did take the Foreign Affairs chairmanship seriously and do his best even though he had originally wanted the Agriculture Committee chairmanship and it had only been political chance and seniority that had put him in charge of Foreign Affairs. Sometimes it baffled him completely, but he tried to do his best, even though he could never escape that silly nickname the press had conferred upon him long ago, for all that he had brazened it out by adopting it for his own and using it on all his literature and stationery. “Jawbone,” indeed! What could anybody expect, with a silly fool tag like that? It was bound to affect a man forever, particularly here on the Hill where the derisive chuckle always lay just below the surface of the buddy-buddy laugh.

“Jawbone!” Well, he wasn’t sorry he had made that speech criticizing Franklin Roosevelt back there in 1938, even if some wag in the Press Gallery had seen fit to remark that F.D.R., having been attacked with everything else, was now being belabored by the jawbone of an ass. The comment had spread like lightning through the Capitol—Seab had even called from the Senate side an hour later and joshed him about it—and by next day the wire-service reporters were beginning to refer to him in their dispatches as “Rep. J. B. (‘Jawbone’) Swarthman.” The nickname at first had been deleted by their editors downtown, but after a week or so it was agreed by informal consensus that it should be left in, and before long he was “Jawbone” to everybody. Good old Jawbone, hearty and easygoing, who had jawboned his way into a seemingly endless series of re-elections to the House, aided every step of the way by the paternal interest of the senior Senator from South Carolina, who had always said he had one member of the state’s House delegation that he could really depend upon. Not that Seab’s support of Jawbone’s re-election had been necessary at any time in the past decade, but the old man still thought it was. Seab still thought he could call up the chairman of Foreign Affairs—a position of some power and dignity, by God, after all—and talk to him as though he were still a fledgling Congressman hardly dry behind the ears. Well, he couldn’t any more, Representative Swarthman told himself indignantly. Seab was slipping and he knew it, and now he was just casting about desperately for an issue and thought he could cash in all his I.O.U.’s at once to get Jawbone to help him out.

Jawbone wasn’t so sure about that, though; he wasn’t at all sure about it, this time. No more than Seab could he afford to be caught off base by his people on the racial question, but leastways he had a little flexibility to move around in. Like Seab, he had supported a lot of progressive and liberal things, T.V.A., R.E.A., the school lunch program, the foreign aid program, the aid-to-education program, and so on. He wasn’t any stick-in-the-mud, and his people knew it and understood it and re-elected him for it, as long as he didn’t get too cozy with the northerners on the matter of civil rights and mixing of the races. And he wasn’t under any illusions about the way the issue affected the standing of the United States in the eyes of the world, either; he had been to too many international gatherings and talked to too many foreign diplomats during his time on the committee, and particularly during his chairmanship, to have any doubts about that. It was a hell of a problem for the country, and he as chairman of Foreign Affairs was right on the front line of it—caught in the middle again, he told himself with a sigh, between what he realized in his mind were the needs of his country and knew in his being were the instinctive and adamantine beliefs of his constituency.