The Man

She came through Lafayette Park, bursting out on the sidewalk of Pe

To be seen through the iron grillwork fence, engraving itself in licking flames on the slope of the White House lawn, beyond the fence and before the North Portico, blazing in the night, burned a fiery cross.

There was more than the mammoth red glowing cross on the White House lawn, she could see. There were men around the cross, and in the White House driveway, and men clogging the open gate and straining past the guardhouse entrance. There were whooping young white men, rampaging hoodlums with incandescent torches, fleeing the lawn, then grappling and slugging it out and rolling on the grass and cement when caught by the white and colored White House policemen and Secret Service agents.

The pitched battle between the white marauders and hooligans who had incinerated a section of the lawn, now trying to escape, and the White House police trying to contain and arrest them, centered about the entrance gate. The convulsive sounds of men become animals, the sounds of clubs thudding on bone and flesh, of human wailing and cursing, of shotgun blasts in the sky and shrilling metallic whistles, made Sally recoil.

And suddenly, so suddenly, there was another sound-that of skidding rubber tires, angry brakes-and there was another sight-dozens of cars surging into Pe

More speeding and jolting cars were emptying out their vengeful cargoes of fierce Negroes or bellowing ofays and pinks. At once, the snarling white bullyboys who had branded the President’s House, and those rushing to reinforce them, and the embittered products of the capital’s squalid black slums that ringed the White House, who had had enough, enough, who would protect this one of their own, now as persecuted as they were, locked themselves into brutish pitched battle.

From the dark rim of the park, still standing detached, Sally Watson watched as if in a hypnotic trance.

The fighters milled through the street before her, striking and being struck, hurting and being hurt, vilifying and being vilified. And as she watched the race riot-the knives and scissors rising and falling, the broken bottles jabbing, the chains swinging, the hurled rocks flying, the brawling blacks and whites cursing, sobbing, shrieking with pain, the beaten men with slashed bloodied faces and smashed jaws loosened in their sockets, men whining, whimpering, going down-as she saw all of this demoniac barbarity, Sally slowly began to relate it to herself.

The seething caldron of humanity was not the result of her witchcraft, the product of her madness alone, Sally knew. The causes were wider, deeper, older than the provocation of her own evil. Yet it was, this wildness in the night, more her doing than that of any other person present.

She wanted to tell them this, tell one and all, tell them to stop doing this to one another and to do their cruelty to her.

This must cease.

They must punish her.

Unsteadily, tripping once, twice, she left the sidewalk and made her way into the swirling center of the riot.

Dimly, she was aware of the inflamed, gap-toothed, bleeding Negro faces raging around her. Dimly, she was aware of the howling, spattered-nosed white faces fulminating around her. Dimly, she was aware of policemen in uniforms and soldiers in fatigues, hammering right and left with their billy clubs and rifle butts.

The jagged edges of a bottle ripped through her coat. A rock struck her shoulder and sent her plunging to her knees. A heavy combat boot skidded against her mouth.

She crawled between legs, then staggered upright, begging them to stop, but no one heard, and she was buffeted and slapped, and then she felt the spittle and blood mingling down her face. Then, unaccountably, she begged them not to kill her, not to kill her, until she did what she must do. Pushing, tearing, fighting, beating her fists, she tried to free herself from the rioters.

And then suddenly there was room to run once more.

She looked about, trying to make out what was happening, what was breaching and parting the mob, and then she could see. Police cruisers and army trucks were surrounding the thoroughfare. Lawmen with their pistols and leashed dogs, khaki-clad soldiers with their carbines rattling gunfire overhead, helmeted firemen with their swelling and flooding hoses, swarmed through the battleground, dispersing whites and blacks.

She had wanted to reach the White House sentry box, but she could only reach the iron fence. She gripped the metal pickets to keep from falling, and then her legs gave, and she slid to the pavement.

There was the sound of feet, and then she heard her name and opened her eyes.

She blinked up into the worried features of a mulatto woman, blinked up with no recognition.

“Miss Watson-Sally-are you badly hurt?”

“I du

Then, for Sally, recognition came. She had seen the mulatto face before, yes, every day, newspapers, television, Senate, yes, Wanda Gibson, Wanda Gibson, President’s lady.

“I’d better find you help-” Wanda Gibson was saying.

Sally closed her eyes, listening to the sirens, and then through stinging, puffed lips, she groaned, “No, Wanda-no-just get me home-please, please, take me to my father-you take me-I-I’ve got to tell him something, it’s important-help me-it’s important to both of us.”

It was almost midnight, and they were still there in the Oval Office. From the sofa, Nat Abrahams, smoking his pipe, calmly watched, listened, and marveled anew at Douglass Dilman’s energy.

The President looked up from his desk at Tim Fla

“That release will do fine, Tim,” he said. “I think we have given the facts, and it’s a fair enough statement about the riot so that it will please both sides or neither… There’s been no later news from the city police?”

“No,” said Fla

“Thank the Lord,” said Dilman. “All right, Tim, you can roll out that release, give it to the correspondents, and let them go home. Better get some sleep yourself.”

After Fla

Before the lighting of the fiery cross on the lawn, and the resulting riot, Dilman had been expecting Wanda Gibson to come to a late White House di

Even when no woman’s name was reported on the injury list, Dilman had continued to fret. Then the telephone call had come through. It had been Wanda on the other end, at last, to apologize for not appearing. Something had come up, she had explained, and she was now at Senator Hoyt Watson’s house, and no, there was nothing wrong, she would explain later, but meanwhile, Senator Watson had asked to see the President tonight. “Tonight?” Dilman had protested, and then, as far as Abrahams could guess, Wanda had said that she thought the President should see him, that it was something important, for Dilman had replied, “Very well, Wanda, if you think so. Have him come over.” All of that had transpired a half hour ago.