A Shade of Difference (77 page)

“Go to hell,” she whispered viciously. “Just go to hell.”

He made a happy sound.

“I’m going to the UN. Ta, ta.”

Far beyond the Mall, across the Lincoln Memorial and the Washington Monument and all the marbled buildings of the capital, the Majority Leader could see the hills of Virginia lying ablaze with autumn in the hazy sun. Soon now the weather would change; soon now, he thought with an ominous foreboding similar to the President’s, all our weather may change and the final winter of the race come rushing on.

Often and often before he had experienced this feeling at times of crisis—the Congo, Berlin, Laos, Viet Nam, the convenient death of Dag Hammarskjold, the first Soviet moon shot, the conference last spring in Geneva, the endless parade of unnecessary evils forced upon the world by the indefatigable plotters of Moscow. Many a time he had looked out upon the beautiful city where confused and uncertain men of goodwill struggled to thwart the never-resting schemers who gambled daily with the life of humanity, and wondered how long a time was left in which to see the vista. Next year—next week—tomorrow—this afternoon—ten minutes from now—
now?
Sooner or later, he suspected, the Now would be here; the whole world’s Now, when all the organized, efficient evil and all the struggling, uncertain good, and all the hopes and all the plans and all the craftiness and all the idealism and all the strange, unhappy mixture of bright dream and dark reality that went into human living would suddenly find their answer at last in two or three days and nights of great unearthly sound and illumination, of blast and heat and the crash of infinite thunders … and then silence, and no more. No more Washington, no more Moscow, no more Soviet Union, no more United States, no more functioning society anywhere, one vast ruin beyond the mind’s ability to grasp, a gray and smoking graveyard adrift forever in the soundless caverns of the uncaring universe.

He shivered and told himself that this apocalyptic vision, which was the constant quiet companion of so many millions, must yet, somehow, be fended off by their combined common sense and abilities, their combined protests, their one great
NO!
to thwart and defeat the
NOW!
But in all honesty he could not tell himself that the chances for this were good. Surely, everyone said, no sane man would—but the decision did not rest with sane men.

In all this, everywhere was a battlefield, everything a battle. It did not matter, really, whether it came by clash of conventional arms in some jungle, in a propaganda lie spread around the globe, in a nuclear test, in a deliberately forced crisis in some entrapped city, in a showdown in the United Nations. Anywhere anyone was unhappy, anywhere anyone wanted to cry lie and distort the truth, the United States was on the defensive, and the truth, if it caught up at all, caught up too slowly to stop the steady corrosion of national reputation and international goodwill. Thus it all became important, in a situation in which the implacable intent was always to distort and always to tear down.

There could be, he had long ago decided, no dealing with such minds except on the flimsiest and most temporary of bases; and therefore there rested upon his own land the need to remain true to her principles, to walk honorably and do justice in the sight of the world. He had long felt a sad impatience with the flaccid cringing before some mysterious and undelimitable entity called “world opinion.” He had always felt that the reason to do right was not because some illiterate savage in the swamps might think badly of you if you didn’t, but simply because you owed it to yourself and your concept of yourself as a nation to do right. If you so acted, then goodwill and good reputation would follow.

Except, of course, that it did not, in this world torn apart by the ravenous ambitions of Communist imperialism and the headlong desire for independence of peoples who had the right to it, without the education or talent to make it work. Of the rights and wrongs of the latter he was aware, and on the whole he sympathized; but it was the former that posed the greater problem for his country. The only power history had ever known that was dedicated exclusively to increasing every tension, inflaming every difference, promoting every antagonism, destroying every chance for peace, did not need truth to further its campaigns. It needed only the prejudice, and the unhappiness, of others.

Thus it did not matter that British rioted against their Negro immigrants, that French preached
liberté
and practiced
inégalité,
that in India the Pious the most vicious forms of racial discrimination were practiced, or that in Africa itself black murdered black. These peoples did not wish to look in their own mirrors, and so they were only too willing to ease their consciences by following eagerly when the Soviet Union pointed the finger at the United States.

It was much nicer to forget all about what you were doing to the colored races yourselves and run happily off to thumb your nose at America. America was fair game. And America, he could not deny, at times deserved it.

The rights and wrongs of the present situation, whatever they may have been at any given moment in the past few days, were therefore utterly immaterial to the issue now. In a political sense they had gone down the drain the moment Terry took the little girl to school. All that mattered was that the United States, in the eyes of millions too impatient to be bothered with the facts and too ignorant to understand them if they could be bothered, had done something bad. There were the most real and imperative reasons for seeking to redress the balance.

Politically this was so, and in the deeper sense that he preferred to think of as his country’s truest honor, it was also so. His native Michigan had its problems, Detroit was no shining example of harmony between the races, but this only served to emphasize the moral imperatives he considered binding upon him and upon the country. It was simply
not right
that the Negroes should be treated as they were in far too many places in America; and while the position of many of them had improved fantastically in recent decades, and while the whole emphasis of government had been upon improving their welfare even further, too much still remained to be done for either the country or the government to rest.

So he could not rest now, charged as he was with responsibility for getting the Administration’s legislative program through the Senate. The slow and difficult processes of democracy, compounded of the disparate actions of individual men blending ultimately into some final, peaceably reached consensus, were in major degree his personal charge, at least insofar as the Senate was concerned. The margin in the House had been barely enough to pass Cullee’s resolution, far from enough to justify any claim that the United States was wildly enthusiastic either about apologizing to the M’Bulu, who didn’t deserve it, or increasing the tempo of help for her own colored citizens, who did. Could the Senate do any better?

He sighed, and immediately there came into his mind two people, one his wife, who was increasingly anxious that he bring the session to an end and get away for a greatly needed rest, and the other the senior Senator from South Carolina, once again the principal obstacle in the path of his legislative plans. He thought with a warm affection of Dolly, who now that she had him lawfully wedded and bedded at “Vagaries” hovered over him like a mother hen with one chick. It had been a long time since he had been surrounded by such solicitous and unceasing love, and he felt very grateful to her for it. There was imposed upon him, in return, the obligation to fall willingly into her plans, to agree to her constantly expressed desire and worry that he get away for a genuine rest, that he do something he had never had any particular urge to do, and join her in traveling abroad when the session was over.

When the session was over: that was the problem. He did not think at this moment that it would be more than another day or two, but Seab could always lead the South into filibuster. Except that he had the sense that Seab might just possibly not have the heart for it this time, that things had finally changed once and for all, that their old friend was aging rapidly and might at last be no longer able to summon his old vigor and valor. Furthermore, he did not think Seab had the votes. Many of their colleagues were skeptical of the resolution; few were under any illusions as to the worth of Terrible Terry or the ultimate intentions of the cabal that had flocked about him in this peculiar episode. Nonetheless, a majority, he was quite sure, were as convinced as he that the Congress must pass the resolution—some for practical reasons of world politics, some for reasons of idealism concerning America’s national purposes, most for that combination of idealism and practicality that most honest men are willing to admit governs all their actions. It might not be large, but he was quite sure it would be a majority.

There remained only the problem of what to do about Seab, and here Senator Munson found himself in agreement with his two former colleagues at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and the State Department that some means must be found to let him down as gently as possible. It was not so easy to just say, to hell with old Seab Cooley; kick him in the teeth. He deserved better than that of his country and his colleagues, and the Senate, which could at times be a most surprisingly gentle and sentimental institution, would not, Bob Munson knew, either desire or tolerate too harsh a crushing of South Carolina’s most famous son.

Nonetheless, the Hamilton Resolution had to go through, and it had to go through in a form strong enough so that it meant something. Any compromise with Seab could only be
pro forma,
the most modest of changes in language; and whether he would accept them or continue to oppose them remained an open question that was not so important as Seab might think.

Seab was going to lose because the times were against him and he had to lose. If worst came to worst, he, Bob Munson, would rally his support without compunction and vote the old man down.

But this harsh thought, prompted as it was by session-end tiredness and tension, was succeeded a moment later by another impulse, more tolerant and more kindly. He wondered, and all the possibilities of it suddenly brought a smile to his face, how Dolly would feel about it if he were to invite Seab to accompany them on the proposed trip to Italy she was talking about. It could be done without too much difficulty, separate staterooms, separate hotel rooms, but someone for the old man to travel with and someone for them to look after. Seab in the Forum was a thought that increased the smile considerably. Cicero would have trembled and Cato met his match if Seabritus Beus Cooleus had been around then.

The whole thing was a nice idea that pleased him, and he decided to talk to Dolly about it when he got home. His eyes still held the warm expression the thought imparted to them when Mary buzzed and told him over the intercom that Senator Cooley had arrived for lunch.

It was in no such tender mood that the senior Senator from South Carolina had left his own office in the Old Senate Office Building ten minutes before and begun to plod down the long marbled corridors toward the elevators, the subway, and the Majority Leader’s hideaway in the inner recesses of the Capitol beyond. It had been scarcely half an hour since he had received one more of those increasingly numerous calls from South Carolina that were beginning to be a steady feature of his days.

The caller had been one of his oldest friends in Oconee County, and his message had been that he and some of the boys had been “doin’ a little tawkin’ about next year, you unastan, Sen’tuh, jes a little tawkin’,” and the result of this tawkin’ had been the conviction that well, now, it did look as though possibly it might be mighty tight for the Sen’tuh in the primaries next spring. The young Governor, he had
such
a good record, defyin’ the Supreme Coht and the Fedril marshals and all, that it did look as though he was mighty poplar round ’bout. There seemed to be real serious tawk about maybe Seab, he might ought to think about retirin’. Not, his old friend in Oconee had added hastily, that any of his
real
friends thought he should; but then, you know, Sen’tuh, some yoh friends gettin’ a wee bit old now, and it’s this young crop makin’ all the trouble. He jes wanted to pass this on, his old friend said, for whatever Seab wanted to do about it. Hissef, he concluded mournfully, he jes didn’t know
what
he’d do in Seab’s shoes.

This unsettling communication, which had recently been duplicated many times in calls and letters from all over the state, had deepened the melancholy that was threatening to become his constant companion. He knew very well what the situation was concerning the bright young Governor: he was attractive, intelligent, a powerful orator, and he was beginning to draw on sources of political and financial support that had heretofore been reserved to Senator Cooley alone. Furthermore, the new money in the state was backing him, and this included, for all their pious talk about the rights of man, the Jason family, whose interests and agents were many. In due course, not openly but in all the sectors where it counted, the word of this would be allowed to leak out. The young Governor might well be the one to put Ted Jason in nomination for President next year, and the hope would be that his support would bring with it many areas of the South restlessly doubtful about the Governor’s position on the question of race.

“You all needn’t worry what he
says
about it for the papers,” the talk would go. “Jes’ remember what he
did
for our boy in South Carolina.” Thus Ted would be a liberal in the North, a conservative in the South, a brother to the Negro and a friend to the white, and all would be well on that particular front.

Well, Seab thought with a fighting humor, let him try it. First he had to beat Seab Cooley and then he had to beat Orrin Knox, and Orrin wasn’t asleep at the switch either. Although he had exaggerated it for the press and had been delighted when they leaped to pick it up, Seab had not been kidding when he charged that Orrin’s hand in Cullee’s resolution had been inspired by his own political ambitions. He was only surprised that Cullee was letting him do it, and about his only satisfaction in the past twelve hours had been the way in which press, radio, and television had interwoven in their comments the recurring thought that the resolution was not basically a genuine expression of belief on Cullee’s part but just a political tote bag for the ambitions of the Secretary of State.