The Man Who Cried I Am (43 page)

“And Durrell?” Carrigan asked.

“The middle class,” Max said. “It's vocal and seems to represent everybody, but it doesn't. They're the people who with the breaks would become
upper
middle class, but the masses probably would remain just as they are today.”

Three pots of tea and two packs of cigarettes later and Carrigan said, “Max, you've got to be kidding.”

“Yes, that's pretty grim, what you've served up,” Bonnard added.

“In the words of a sergeant I once had,” Max said, “I shit thee not.”

“Our sources don't paint the picture that dark,” Carrigan said with a sigh.

Max said evenly, “You asked me here—as I understand it—to be a consultant and to help with speeches in this area. I've given you counsel, and will continue to give you counsel. I'd get moving on this thing while it's still relatively calm; once it starts up, it'll have too much momentum to stop without deepening the bitterness that already exists. I mean the President's got to start pushing packages through Congress
now.
” When Max left them, he had the feeling that he'd spent the time talking to walls.

On the day he had his next appointment with the President, Yuri Gagarin, in a five-ton capsule, became the first human being to make a space flight. The White House and the Executive Office Building hummed with the news. The Russians send up a bushel basket and we send up a grapefruit; they send up a man and we put up a chimp. The President must be on the phone right now chewing out those people on the space program. Bonnard, drifting lankly through the halls of the old building stopped by Max's office. “You heard about the Russkies?”

“Yeah,” Max answered. “Civil rights goes out the window this week, huh?”

“Oh, I don't know. You see the President this afternoon, don't you?”

“So far it's still on.”

“Let's go to the press conference. What else've you got to do? We can get a bite after. The walk'll do you good; clear your head.”

They walked briskly over New York Avenue to the State Department Building; once inside they made their way into an empty booth overlooking the auditorium. Max noticed at once that there were no Negro newsmen present. Everyone rose when the President came striding to the platform, followed by the Press Secretary, and took his place behind the podium with the seal of his office on the front. The President made three announcements, then the reporters began firing their questions. Was there the possibility of a Cuban invasion? The President answered with three negative statements and Bonnard nudged Max with his elbow. Max glanced at him, but Bonnard continued to look down into the auditorium. The President either answered or parried the questions. Someone asked about the White House News Photographers Association prohibiting the membership of Negroes. Max turned questioning eyes toward Bonnard; Bonnard nodded.

“But there'll be a lot of colored help on the plantation before the President's through,” he said. At the conclusion of the conference, they cabbed to a restaurant on Connecticut Avenue. Bonnard said, “Max, you'd better not have a drink. The President doesn't mind it, but he doesn't approve of it, if you have an appointment with him.”

“Thanks.”

“Forget it. I'll drink one for you.”

“What about the Centennial?”

“Forget that, too. He knows about it, but he feels this is a minor storm and he's going to ride it out, sails down. Besides, I expect he's going to have his hands full during the next few days.”

“Cuba?”

“Mister,” Bonnard said, with a flash of his hard brown eyes, “you haven't heard me say one word about Cuba.”

The President seemed preoccupied when Max entered his office. The room was bright and quiet, but it felt charged with tension.

“Come on in, Max,” the President said. “What a day. What do you suggest we do to overtake the Russians?”

“Drink more vodka, Mr. President?”

“Maybe we've had too much already,” he snapped. He gestured for Max to sit down, then he began a new conversation. “You know, every hour we have to judge things on their merits, and handle those with the most importance to our people. Some things must be first and others have to follow. We'd like to be able to handle all the important things at once, and handle them well. But we can't. In my judgment, civil rights—at the moment—does not come first. In fact, there is a bill going to Congress next month without my endorsement, because I believe the Executive office has recourse to laws already in existence to alleviate the inequities in our society. That picture could change tomorrow, or tonight. I think you disagree with me, but that's what I want you to do. We don't need any yes-men around here; we haven't asked any to join us. I want you to behave as though civil rights is our most urgent problem. In that light, write what you think about it; I want memos from you every week; I want the closest possible cooperation between you, Jim and Gus. You are me in this instance, with all the checks and balances that are bound to the office of President, with the impetus or drag of public opinion included. See the leaders of the movements; talk to them. I want to know every change in their thinking. If something comes up that's urgent, call Mrs. Agnew and she'll get you back in here so we can talk about it. That's all, Max.”

One week after the President had categorically denied the possibility of an invasion of Cuba in which American armed forces would participate, the Premier of Cuba announced that the rebel forces which had invaded his island with American help had been crushed.

Max retreated to his small office, determined to work until he was needed. The city became like a Hollywood setting. The President was the superstar and everyone shared or added to the rumors about him. They joked about him, but to a man or woman they defended him. If the rumors were true, well, then, they'd rather have a swinging President than a swung one. The senators, representatives, committee chairmen and agency officials were cameo stars in the daily productions; the women who emerged with the approach of dusk from the government buildings, eager for the nights in which they sought husbands, lovers or just plain company, were extras who often stole scenes from the stars.

Washington could have killed any superman, if he had been Negro. As Bonnard had suggested, with each passing week new Negro faces appeared in Washington, and because racial barriers were coming down with a crash, the Negroes were expected to attend functions regularly. Then there were the Negro functions as well, and if you liked white company enough to miss a number of the latter, you were placed in limbo. Max saw many a man crumble before the onslaught of martinis, pussy-by-the-yard and black-tie affairs. Theodore Dallas confessed to Max soon after he
was
moved to the U.S. Mission to the UN, that he could not have pulled another three months in Washington and lived.

Dallas's transfer coincided with the independence bashes in Africa: Nigeria, both Congos, the Cameroon Republic and Togoland. The successive waves of spanking new, young African diplomats coming to Washington, and then moving along up to New York in the grand, prestigious Eastern seaboard tour, made Max achingly aware of the desk awaiting him in Lagos.

But he concentrated on the Negroes he could see surging out the Post Office and Treasury buildings at the end of the day, and he thought of the Negroes who had not been able to move north past Washington. They had forced the white trek to Williamsburg and Middleburg, to Maryland and other places in Virginia. The times past had forced too many bright, well-educated Negroes into the tasks of burning old dollar bills, sorting mail or sweeping floors; bright Negroes who could have produced from among them a cure for cancer, or even Goddard's rocket—a thousand things the human race needed so desperately.

At first Max liked working nights when the White House and lawn were lit and the Avenue almost clear of sight-seers and pickets. Then Durrell discovered him; other leaders discovered him, and his nights were filled with dinners and talk. Max would look at them. They thought he had power, that his word could make the President turn his ear in their direction. They believed what the papers were saying—that it was a time of high drama. Youth and risk had triumphed over old age and dull security; that it was the start of a golden age. Of all the people he saw, Durrell disturbed him most; he had gone hippie, and Max thought that was to let him (Max) know that Durrell now considered him one of his better friends. He could not tell Durrell or the others then that he was not, could not do them any good, because the President's choice of action was clear and decisive; he could not tell them that any more than he could tell the President or Bonnard or Carrigan that he despised Durrell.

“When is the President going to do something, Max?” They all asked him the same question, and Max was torn between his loyalty to them and loyalty to the President.

The question was asked more often and in desperation the next month, when the Freedom Rides South began, five days after the Press Secretary announced that the President had refused to endorse the series of civil rights bills with provisions to speed desegregation and make the Civil Rights Commission a permanent body, because the President did not think it necessary to enact civil rights legislation at the moment. Max sat in his office waiting when the news came that two of the Freedom Riders' buses had been burned near Anniston, Alabama. Six days later, when rioting broke out in Montgomery after the Freedom Riders were attacked again, Federal marshals were sent to restore order. Carrigan summoned Max to his office in the East Wing.

“What's going on, Max?”

“You mean in Alabama?”

“Yes, yes, of course.”

“I suppose it's a reaction to the President's not endorsing the civil rights package that went up.”

“You can't be serious.”

“Why not?”

“But there's already a series of laws providing for interstate travel without restrictions—”

“Obviously,” Max said, “no one's bothered to enforce those laws. I mean, Gus, can't you see what's happening? If the President is relying on laws already on the books, these tactics—and they are tactics—are designed to prove to him that they are no good unless enforced by the Federal Government, or unless new legislation is introduced and passed. That's what's going on.”

“The Governor has asked for more help,” Carrigan said, glumly. “Two hundred more marshals are going in tomorrow. And the President says he wants this settled before he goes to Paris.”

“Am I supposed to tell the leaders this?”

“Max, I wish you wouldn't be quite so—so
truculent
. Where do your loyalties lie, with just Negroes or for the country?”

Max spoke in cold anger: “I have been trying to tell you what's good for the country. What histories do you read, Gus? Tell me about the history of the American armed forces, and I can show you how important Negroes were to those forces; tell me about the history of American economics and I can show you where Negroes made up the bulk of those economies by being poor or left out of them altogether; tell me about the history of religion in America, and I can show you where, as long as there have been Negroes in this hemisphere, religion has been an absolute lie; tell me about the history of American politics, and I can show you where American politics would be vastly different today if Negroes had had a real voice in them. Damn it, Gus, it's
you
who have vested loyalties. If I went out there and told those leaders—and I'm not, because I'm not going to be an errand boy for you or the President—to stop because the President
says
so, forget about Alabama, Georgia, New York—you name it, and forget about it—”

“Calm down, Max,” Carrigan said. “I'm sorry. I shouldn't have put it like that. I shouldn't even have said it.”

“Man,” Max said, “why don't you people use me? All my life I've fought like hell to keep people from using me. I came down here for you to use me, and you won't.”

“Have patience, Max, patience. We know you set aside a lot to come down here. You've got to trust us; the whole machinery has got to move, not just one part of it.”

“Yes,” Max said. He stood. “Gus, I'm sorry. I guess we'll mesh. I want you to give a little and you want me to give a little. But I—and my people—have always been the ones to give. I'm trying to tell you, and I am serious, that they are tired of giving. That's all. Whatever I do here, that's the nut of my counsel.”

Sullen and bewildered, Max sat moodily in his office or in his flat, seeing people when he could no longer avoid them. The summer's humidity crept toward the city and Congress was trying desperately to adjourn to escape it. The President had returned from Europe in a blaze of triumph. But Max sat awaiting the summons that never came. He was not disillusioned so much as convinced that only a racial explosion of unimagined proportion could move to action an Administration which had proclaimed in ringing, iron tones that it was dedicated to the rapid attainment of civil rights. Max knew better now; the Administration, like the ones before it, did not know and could not understand what it was black Americans wanted. Washington's determined look, suggesting an honorable concern, was, at the very least, misleading. Max distrusted the bright, glowing faces around him; the hand, after all, was quicker than the eye. The eye, that intricate conglomeration of nerve and muscle, was invariably drawn to the radiant faces which beamed back so much good will. But what did the hands do, Max wondered. Who watched the hands that were busily engaged in the shell game, watched them closely enough to see what happened to the pea?

In June, the pea turned out to be a young Negro student named William MacKendrick, who had been accepted by the board of trustees at the University of Mississippi for enrollment. No publicity surrounded the event until the governor of the state announced during a press conference that no Negro would enter Ole Miss as long as he was in office. MacKendrick insisted that he was going to enter. Some segments of the press called for intervention by the Administration, saying that now it could begin to live up to its campaign promises. But the President said nothing except that the matter appeared to be local.