The Man Who Cried I Am (41 page)

So he was almost done with it all. Once a month he turned out a piece for the magazine, otherwise he played with his pencils, read, had long lunches and carried the title
Editor
, but he no longer made policy decisions; he didn't even care to. And he had stopped teaching at Columbia. He had one spell of three years without a promising student and he knew then it was time to quit.

He wiped his thick-lensed glasses with a handkerchief and picked up the phone. “Get Max Reddick, will you?” he asked his secretary in the outer office. He had tried to call Max last week, but they'd told him at
Pace
that he was out of the country until this week. That was all right, Zutkin had thought then; the hurry was relative now, after all these years.

“Max, Max, is that you? Well, how are you? Yes, fine. You've become a world traveler. What were you doing in Africa? You don't say?” Zutkin paused to ponder this development; what he had to offer was still better. “I'd like to see you about something, Max. It's very important. As soon as you can. Lunch tomorrow? All right? Algonquin? That's fine, Max, just fine. Yes, wasn't it too bad about Granville? What's that saying? ‘When the wagon comes, every swinging goes'?” Zutkin hung up, smiling.

The next day Zutkin watched Max enter the dining room. There was a very good look about him. The lines in his face had settled; in fact, they were his face now, and the beguilingly soft eyes. What they must have done to the women, Zutkin thought. Max had spotted him and Zutkin waved from his corner. He moved around the tables gracefully. What was he, Zutkin wondered, forty now? Forty-two or forty-three? He moves like a youngster, or someone in love. That lightness came only with youth or love and Max certainly was no youth, not anymore. They shook hands heartily and slapped each other on the back, and Zutkin could tell that something good was happening to Max. What?

“Now tell me this business about Africa? I'm dying to hear it,” Zutkin said, signaling for drinks. An African desk could be mighty attractive. Take a man like Max away, place him in a position to experience an entire new set of stimuli to which he'd have to give new responses, and you've got an exciting challenge. That could be worked out, though, for sure. Zutkin called for the second drinks as Max finished telling him about Lagos. Zutkin heaved himself up and settled down to talk. He grasped Max by the wrist. “What I have to say is important. I'm a little nervous.”

“Man,” Max said with a smile, “what have you got to be nervous about? You're white,” and Max punched him playfully on the arm. Zutkin could not ever recall such levity about the man. It pleased him.

“Max, would you consider working with the President's speech-writers? The chance is yours. You're not a second or third choice. The President wants your help.”

“Who did it?”

“For a starter you can thank Julian Berg. Max,
Max!
What about it?” Zutkin could see that Max was stunned. He ordered the third round of drinks and they selected lunch.

“What do I do about my job?”

“Take a leave. Africa isn't going to vanish.”

“For how long?”

“A few months, at least. It's important that the President get your answer and your talent as soon as possible. Max, what do you say? You know what all this means.”

“What kind of speeches?”

“Civil rights. You know his platform. This way you may be able to nail in solidly what's there and squeeze in some suggestions for others.”

Max nodded, slowly. “Will Dempsey give me the leave, do you think? You know, any President's only guaranteed four years, and I want that desk badly.”

“I have no doubt that he'll give you the leave and keep the desk for you. I don't think you should worry on that score. These things work very smoothly and to everyone's advantage once they've been agreed on.”

“You bastards,” Max said. “You wring a man out. A guy can starve for ten years and then, suddenly, you want to give him everything. What's the matter with you people? Some guys die while they wait, don't you know that, Bernard?”

“I know, I know,” Zutkin said. “I didn't make the rules; I only try to change the bad ones. I'm sure the President wants to do this too. He needs your help. How much time will you need?”

“Three days, and I want to talk to Dempsey myself.”

“I can guarantee the leave and your Africa desk. See Dempsey tomorrow morning by eleven. He'll have a call an hour later. Can you see him at eleven?”

“Yes, but goddamn it, Bernard, I'll still have two days more to think about it. Don't rush me.”

“I'm not rushing. Today's the first day, tomorrow's the second and day after tomorrow's the last day.”

“Also, Bernard, I don't like the way you white folks have started to count these days.”

Zutkin reached across the table in a kind of desperation and grasped Max tighter by the wrist. “Max, maybe now,
now
we can start to change this—” Zutkin groped for a strong enough word. “—mothafucking country for the better. What are you laughing at?”

Max had leaned back in his chair. He roared. People at other tables looked at him. Zutkin stared at him. “Didn't I say it right?”

“Baby, right on the button,” Max said. “Right there, Bernard.” He had never heard Zutkin curse before. “I'll probably do it, Bernard. I probably will.”

“Can I congratulate you now?”

“If I can thank you now.”

“You came to this on your own, Max. I only wish there had been something like it, a long time ago. But then, you weren't ready for it.”

“But I would give everything I have now, Bernard, just to have had a little then. Just
some
thing then.”

“Times change,” Zutkin said.

Zutkin taxied home after lunch, went to his study and called Julian Berg.

“Some tea, Mr. Zutkin?” Lottie the maid asked. She had been with him for twenty years. Almost like man and wife they had been near each other for so long that they knew each other's moods and needs. Over the years Lottie had given him a lot of perspective. You could study all the great social and religious philosophers you wanted to, but you had to watch someone very close to the bottom reach simple, pragmatic conclusions to the problem of life and living.

“No, Lottie, thanks. I'm going to fix myself a drink.”

“How many you had already, Mr. Zutkin? It ain't three yet and you look like you had more than your share.” Zutkin and Max had polished off the lunch with two stingers each.

“Today's a special day, Lottie.”

“Ain't no need to get so special that you wind up in a special place, Mr. Zutkin. Know what I mean?”

“When the wagon comes, Lottie—”

“What on earth do you know about some old wagon coming?”

Zutkin placed a fat, liver-spotted, wrinkled hand on her shoulder.

“You ain't gettin' fresh at this late date, are you, Mr. Zutkin?”

Zutkin laughed into her dark, stern face; he had never met a more moral woman. What a mess this country would
really
be in, he thought, if black Puritans had settled New England instead of white ones. “No, not at this late date. I just wanted to tell you that I know about the wagon and how, when it comes, everybody goes.”

Lottie walked away, her big shoulders evenly squared. “I'll get you some tea. One more drink and the wagon'll be right downstairs waiting for you, and I'm too old to start lookin' for another job.”

Practical, too, Zutkin thought. She was right; she didn't need to start looking for another job. The President had promised to do something about the old people. Zutkin believed he would. You had to do something about capitalism's castoffs. By long and painful osmosis the lesson had been learned after the Civil War. You didn't just turn people out who had contributed to the system for so long without any share in that system. They came back to hurt and haunt you. If every ex-slave
had
been given that mule and forty acres of land, a share of their labor, so to speak, would the country be in such a state today? Would Washington be running around like a chicken without its head complaining about the absent voice of the Negro? Damned fools. But this day history was made: a black man to help the President speak. The liberals would studiously ignore it, believing that this was inevitable; it was what they had fought for. The bigots would close their ears even tighter. But the message would get through. Centuries of agony wrapped up in one phrase, perhaps, but Max's words would at least now have voice. The thought of the lunch brought a smile to Zutkin's face. Max had seemed vastly different from the brooding, bitter man he had known for so many years. It was good that there was a Max Reddick.

Harry would not have been any good for this and if he had and been under consideration, and Zutkin had anything to say about it, he would have vetoed Harry instantly. Zutkin had never forgiven Harry for putting out the rumor that Zutkin “had a card.” Zutkin had never been a Communist. He'd gone to meetings and associated with Communists; then, they were the only people who thought. The people he had known in Europe had been out of step with the crying needs of the world. Lost? They'd been dead. Harry had been young then, and as bitter as a black man with Mississippi dust on his coattails could be. He drank and talked a lot and generally had been unstable. His attitude seemed to have been, If I can't have my share of the world, no one else is going to have a share. The Party had not been enough for him, or put it the other way around: the good white people in the Party were not prepared for the onslaught of Harry Ames. Of course, Harry had changed. His work showed it. World problems he tied to color, and it worked, if you substituted color for class. Aside from personal considerations, Harry had removed himself from the picture in two ways. The first was physical. His grasp of American problems was based still in the 1940's. It was 1960 now. In twenty years problems had changed several times; views had been altered or beaten out of shape into new ones; indignation and anger had come to maturity. Harry had missed all the subtle changes which usually tended to be, in later analysis, the important ones. The second way Harry had removed himself was by marrying a white woman. The country hadn't changed
that
much. The black man who had a white wife was not the person to put words dealing with color into the President's mouth. No, the President and his people ran from interracial marriages—any savvy politician did, publicly. Ran like rabbits. The reaction of the people was a known quantity. The people: that dictatorial majority which believed itself by virtue of its mass base to be infallible. The man who was confident of the people (the
American
people, they said, the politicians) was a fool. You didn't trust the people, you couldn't. For Harry, as much as they'd hurt him, he could still twist Marx out of shape and get people. Not Max. The people, yes, but in the abstract. He has a memory like a Jew, Zutkin thought, approvingly; he remembered the times and the places, the where and when of being wounded, just as Jews remember back to Babylonia and Egypt and beyond, up to the present. You survived if you remembered.

“Your tea, Mr. Zutkin,” Lottie said, carefully placing it on the side of his desk.

“Thanks, Lottie. You're right. This is probably just what I need. Tell me, what do you think of the President?”

“I'd say he's a mighty handsome young man, myself.”

“Thanks again,” Zutkin said. As she left the room he thought, They do it all the time, these women, think with their crotches. Built-in voting machines.

Alone now, walking slowly back to work, away from Zutkin's massive, powerful although insidious optimism, Max's mind grew quickly dark with suspicion. Why me? he thought. Why not Dawes? He knew why not Dawes. Dawes would embarrass everybody with his capes and camp-outs. There was Dallas. And he knew why not Dallas; he had a white wife. Max thought of the twenty-odd other Negroes he knew personally who might have been called for the job, but he also knew why they weren't.

What does Zutkin get out of it? Berg? There's
got
to be something in it for them. What? Here I am sitting on the best gig I ever had in my life and here
they
come with something a man just can't refuse. Playing a little bit of God, pulling strings on the President's mouth—although I hear that bastard likes to edit a lot. Don't blame him. I would, too. But what do they want, Berg and Zutkin and whoever else is in on this?
Nobody does anything for nothing
. They want something you've got. Or it's something you can do for them. Admire them, love them, adore them. It all goes back to the guy who is being generous: he wants to think he's a great guy and you do. If you're getting, you better act like that. No, no, no. They want me to believe this country is going to turn around and reverse itself. But that's what they want me to believe, me, who knows better. A greater America. Now, we can do it. The good guys are in and the bad guys are out. Really? Didn't I just look at a file about a bunch of crackers cutting off a Negro's dick in broad daylight on a Birmingham street
and
throwing turpentine where the cat's dick had been? Don't I see a whole bunch of crap going down right here in precious little old New York every minute of the day? Goddamn them. They honestly do believe I'm a patriot, with my ass aching all the time now. I need to be somebody's damned patriot. The President and two million people like him can't change the way this sonofabitch is going—downhill without brakes. So, what's it going to be, Max, baby, Africa for good, huh? Europe, where they're starting to catch the disease? South America? C'mon off it, man. You don't know nothin' but hocks and beans and sirloin and greens; you don't know nothin' but hard pavement under your feet, traffic noises and the neighbors' hi-fis; you don't know nothin' but Catskill and Adirondack forests and Long Island undergrowth and how red the earth of the South looks; you don't know nothin' but all them black bones and all that black blood beat into the ground and all them niggers twistin' in their graves waitin' for one of themselves to walk into the White House and grab that Number One Mister Charlie by his ear to say,
Baby, we are tired of you cats fucking over us
.