The Man

Abrahams slipped his pipe back into his coat pocket. “Everyone wants what’s best for the country. Everyone isn’t always right.” He tried to smile. “Read the fine print, Doug. There’s always fine print.”

“Don’t worry, Nat. Maybe I’m serving T. C., but I can’t rubber-stamp his name. It’s got to be my name affixed to everything. And I always read what I sign.”

“Good enough,” said Abrahams. He saw Dilman stretch and yawn, and he stood up. “First session adjourned, Doug. I’d better get back to poor Sue, and you’d better get what sleep you can.”

“I think that’s best, Nat. I’m bushed. Let me walk you to the elevator.”

Only later, when he was by himself in the elevator, was Nat Abrahams relieved that Sue had not come to di

Douglass Dilman was alone in the dimly lighted intimacy of the Lincoln Bedroom, in his baggy pajamas, slumped in the Victorian velvet-covered chair, downing the last of his sherry and trying to read the completed Minorities Rehabilitation Program Bill.

It was no use. The long day, the di

He heaved himself out of the chair, tightened the cord of his pajama trousers, and peered at the Empire clock. It was after midnight. He turned off the lamp, padded in his flopping slippers to turn off two more, pausing once to examine the handwritten copy of Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address and then giving up because the words ran together and blurred.

Yawning, he shuffled to the giant rosewood bed, sat on it, kicked off his slippers, stuffed his weary, middle-aged body between the white sheets, and reached over to turn off the last global lamp.

In the welcome darkness he fell back against the pillow.

He knew that sleep was coming swiftly, and his tired mind groped for one noble good-night thought, one lofty sentiment, to commemorate this unique historic occasion, a black President ready to slumber his first night in the white man’s White House.

He tried to evoke something of Abe Lincoln’s wisdom, since he rested in Abe Lincoln’s bed. He sought words… noble… lofty… historic… malice toward none… charity for all… firmness in the right… in the right… in the right… in rights, rights, rights.

It had gone, as sleep suffused him, and what remained was an old Negro jingle chanted among the shanties… noble… lofty… historic…

Nigger an’ white man

Playin’ seven-up;

Nigger win de money-

Skeered to pick ’em up.

Sorry… Mistah… Lincoln… ah’s skeered… skeered… skeered.

He turned on his side, curling beneath the thick white blanket, seeking and nearing the warm encompassing safety of night oblivion. There was one moment’s lucidity before sleep drew nothingness over it.

One moment’s thought: How hard this bed is, how hard and big and white, too hard for a soft man, too big for a small man, yet maybe, maybe, not too white for a black man. Maybe.

Douglass Dilman, President of the United States, slept at last.

IV

The stars and Stripes, whipping from the pole above the White House, was no longer at half-mast.

It had given Douglass Dilman a small shock when Crystal, fifteen minutes ago, had delivered this fact to him with his breakfast tray, in the second-floor Yellow Oval Room. She had proudly described the event as an eyewitness: yesterday, coming to work, she had seen the flag hanging limply midway down the pole; today, coming to work, she had seen it billowing in the wind at the very top of the flagstaff. She had reported the change as if it were a momentous event.

Remembering Crystal’s glowing face now, as he gulped down his coffee, Dilman supposed that she was right. The returning of the nation’s ba

A vicious editorial, in one of Zeke Miller’s more Southern newspapers, came to mind: “Citizens, keep your Old Glories at half-mast for the rest of Dilman’s term, not in mourning for T. C., but in mourning for the death of our dignity and stature as a nation.” But now Crystal had told him, in effect, that Miller’s advice had not been followed, that this day the flag once more celebrated at full-mast a living President.

Yes, he thought, today it’s official. They would all be looking at him, and he did not like it. He was not ready for their total scrutiny and judgment.

He drank his coffee in haste, knowing that today would be another busy and trying day, even more trying than the ones that had preceded it. When the telephone at his elbow rang genteelly, as befitted its station in the gracious damask room, and then musically rang again, Dilman was not surprised. Lately Edna Foster had been starting off his mornings with these calls from her office because there were more and more messages awaiting his reluctant arrival, acting like so many powerful magnets trying to draw him into a day that he shrank from attending.

With a sigh he gave the saucer back its cup, and answered the telephone before it could begin its third summons.

The caller was Edna Foster.

After assuring her that she had not disturbed him, not at all, that he was dressed and fed and almost prepared to come downstairs, he listened for the inevitable.

“There are several messages, Mr. President-”

“Yes, Miss Foster.”

“Grover Illingsworth called in a terrible panic-I mean for him.”

Dilman enjoyed good humor for the first time this morning. Visualizing Illingsworth in a panic was as difficult as picturing a waxen Prince Albert in Madame Tussaud’s trying to slap a fly off his nose. Ever since Kwame Amboko, the President of Baraza, had arrived two days ago, the ta

“What is he upset about?” Dilman asked. “Is anything really wrong?”

“Tonight’s State Di