The Man

“I am!” shouted Senator Hankins above the rising hubbub of excitement. He hobbled forward to the rostrum. “Mr. Chief Justice, I have conferred with the learned Senator Watson, and with the leadership among my honorable colleagues. It appears that all are adamant in their opinions, that no ‘Not Guilty’ votes will be changed during this day, and that continued voting on the remaining three lesser Articles will result in an even larger tally and judgment for acquittal. Therefore, setting aside my personal feelings, and out of respect for the judgment passed, concerned only with preserving what we can of the unity and well-being of our beloved country, I hereby move that the Senate, sitting as a court of impeachment, does now adjourn sine die-that is to say, permanently-permanently. I ask for yeas and nays on this motion.”

The Chief Justice gazed out over the churning Senate floor. “Who says yea?”

“Yea!” The concerted shout was thunderous and unanimous, and it went on and on, “Yea!… Yea!… Yea!”

The Chief Justice roared, “Unanimous! The Senate, sitting as a court of impeachment for the trial of Douglass Dilman, upon Articles of Impeachment presented by the House of Representatives, stands adjourned sine die! The President stands acquitted on all four Articles!”

Hardly anyone except Abrahams heard the Chief Justice, and not even Abrahams distinctly heard the last. For Tuttle, Hart, Priest, were climbing all over him, hugging him, choking him, pummeling him, and senators and press correspondents were all around, wringing his hand.

Beyond the circle of humanity pressing in on Abrahams, there was bedlam. The Senate had become a carnival of whooping, cheering, laughing revelers, whose celebrations drowned out the scattered boos and catcalls. Pandemonium engulfed the galleries and the floor, and spilled into the outer rooms.

Desperately, Abrahams tried to reach Senator Watson, to thank him, but it was impossible. Watson was caught in a crush of reporters and a

Nat Abrahams felt soft arms encircling him, feminine hands touching his neck and cheeks, and there was Sue, aglow and laughing through her tears, pressed to him, kissing him, kissing him again and again.

Then, holding her close, he was leading her past the celebrating crowds toward the exit.

“Come on, Sue, I want to go to the White House and tell him-”

“Oh, darling, he knows, he knows.”

Abrahams smiled. “He knows he was acquitted of four Articles. I want to tell him he was acquitted of five.”

THE snow had begun to fall on New Year’s Eve, and it fell all the night, and now, on this bright, fresh morning of New Year’s Day, the capital city was blanketed in white.

The snow lay like a silvery imperial mantle on the dome of the United States Capitol, clung to the Corinthian marble columns of the United States Supreme Court, covered the flat roof of the Department of Justice. The frosted, pearly flakes sparkled from the cupola of the Jefferson Memorial, the branches of the dogwood trees surrounding the Lincoln Memorial, the five outside walls of the Pentagon Building, the iced surface of the Potomac River, the square mosque of the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, and the Stars and Stripes of the flag at full mast above the President’s House at 1600 Pe

From the broad center window of the Yellow Oval Room, on the residential second floor of the White House, President Douglass Dilman could make out, more clearly than ever before, the white marble shaft of the Washington Monument. It might have been a trick of the dazzling morning, but to Dilman the soaring monument seemed less distant than it had been four months ago, less distant and less intimidating.

The rising pitch of a television a

The handful of friends whom Dilman had informally invited to drop by this morning to enjoy the Pasadena parade, and then the various football Bowl games, filled the sofas and the chairs drawn up before the immense television set that had been placed in front of the marble fireplace.

Affectionately, Dilman observed Julian and Mindy in their activity across the room from the others. His son was holding out the cups into which Beecher was ladling either eggnog or fruit punch from the deep cut-glass vessels on the sideboard. Mindy was busily assisting Crystal in arranging the tiny sandwiches being transferred from a tray to a large serving platter.

It pleased Dilman that his son, less antagonistic toward Trafford University and the world at large recently, was doing better in school, taking more pride in his learning, as if he had decided that education in itself might be the most effective weapon against racial discrimination.

It pleased Dilman, too, to gaze upon his daughter’s delicate profile and lissome gracefulness and follow her fawnlike movements. This late holiday morning, she was gay, but Dilman did not deceive himself about her condition. By now, he knew that she was not always this way, nor would she be so in the future, for Mindy’s moods were mercurial, and she was given quickly to apathy, self-confusion, and melancholia. Still, Dilman had been told that she might be better one day, after she had been worse. The eminent psychoanalyst she had begun to visit two weeks before had promised Dilman this. And lately she seemed to enjoy immensely lending a hand with some of her father’s personal correspondence. But neither her presence here today nor the psychoanalyst’s tempered optimism had fully convinced Dilman. After his consultation with the psychoanalyst, Dilman had wondered-as he wondered this moment-once you’ve been white, how can you ever be black again? Mindy was not his child alone. She was Aldora’s child, too. The psychoanalyst, with all his wisdom and insight, was not black, so he might not ask himself what Dilman asked: How long would it be before Mindy tried to escape once more, escape Aldora’s way or her own?

These considerations were too unsettling for the first day of the New Year, and Dilman turned his thoughts to the others in the Yellow Oval Room. Somehow, he liked to believe they had become a part of his family. There they sat at ease, most of them, in various postures of relaxation. There was Otto Beggs, able to cross his good leg over his bad leg but unable to hide entirely the pain he was enduring, pointing out to his wife and two sons a particularly gaudy floral float moving ponderously across the su