The Man

As the soft drink had been placed before him, Ruby Thomas had set herself on the stool beside him. She had made him conscious of her presence by pointing at his root beer and telling Simon, “That sho’ looks yum-I’ll have some of the same, but git me a J an’ B on the rocks on the side.” Immediately, two facts had made themselves clear to Otto Beggs: one, that this was the prettiest Negro girl he had ever seen; two, that despite her reserve she must be interested in him, for most of the stools at the bar were unoccupied, and yet she had deliberately and boldly chosen to sit beside him.

At first he had tried to ignore her, for fear that she was a streetwalker. This concern was quickly dispelled by her appearance and ma

Against his will, without being too obvious, he had inspected her several times from head to toe. She sat erectly on the stool, one leg crossed over the other, exposing a knee and shapely calf. She was, his thumping heart told him, breathtaking. Not since he had enjoyed and suffered through a long-distance crush on the singer Lena Horne, way back when he was a sophomore at Oregon State University, had he known a colored girl to attract him so instantly and engage him so totally. This one had tousled gamin hair, silken, brunette, sort of French, and widely spaced, large almond eyes, a short cute nose, and pouting lower lip. He guessed that she was no more than five feet two, and he thought it therefore remarkable how firm and large her breasts were beneath the white uniform, and how broad her thighs were against the tightened skirt. And she was black, although it kept amazing him how her color enhanced rather than detracted from her prettiness.

She had not spoken, and he had not spoken, that first time, until he had emptied his stein and was sorting his change. Suddenly she had turned to him and said, “I’m guessin’ who you are-Lordy, I kin tell-y’all the famous Mr. Beggs, the Secret Service hero.” He had flushed with pleasure and pride, and mumbled that he was no hero at all but that yes, he was Otto Beggs and he was a Secret Service agent. He had wondered how she knew. She had told him that everyone in the neighborhood knew-Lordy, he was the big celebrity in the neighborhood-and that he had been pointed out to her last week. She had been apologetic about intruding upon his privacy-“I knows you must git mighty tired of bein’ a celebrity”-but she wanted to brag to the girls in the office that she had met him. He had asked her name, and she had told him, and had told him where she worked, and he had said that he hoped to see her around, and he had fled (alive and young as that young one) into the brightening street.

That had been the first time, and that had been last week. The second time had been a few days later, again on his way to work, and this time she had been sitting at the bar, and he had summoned up the nerve to sit beside her, making some kind of joke to which she had responded with delightful laughter. They had talked incessantly, for twenty minutes maybe, this second time, until she had to leave to return to her dentist and his drills.

For five successive days after that, he had come into the Walk I

Thus two days ago, he had driven to the Walk I

She had seen an advertisement in Ebony magazine, and enrolled in a mail-order course that would graduate her as a dental assistant. Her diploma, she had learned later, had not been enough to make her a qualified dental assistant, but only a sort of assistant to an assistant, as well as a receptionist, file clerk, telephone operator, and jane-of-all-trades. She had held three such jobs already, including the new one, and she liked working for dentists because they were on their feet so much during the day, they were too tired to chase her at night. She ate lunch in the office, in order to get this daily midafternoon break, which she found picked her up when she most needed it and left her refreshed for the evening. She had located a pleasant, inexpensive double apartment a block from the Walk I

Best of all, she had enjoyed listening to Beggs, enjoyed questioning him and listening to his lengthy answers, her wide almond eyes concentrating on his lips. She was curious about his life, his achievements, his work in the Secret Service. He had been able to talk to her more easily than he had talked to anyone in years. The latter years with Gertrude had dammed up his pride in himself, and now he was able to release what had been too long held back. He had told Ruby of his boyhood, of his athletic triumphs at Oregon State, of his war days in Korea, of his Medal of Honor, of his numerous jobs, of his years in the Secret Service. He had avoided telling her about his family. All he had recounted to Ruby Thomas, every minute detail, every anecdote, even to the contents of his beloved scrapbooks, impressed and awed her. “Dog my cats!” she would exclaim. “You really done that?” Above all, she held his work in high esteem. Where Gertrude considered a Secret Service agent as nothing more than an underpaid game warden, Ruby considered the role of guarding the President an honor next to the Presidency itself.

Only one truth marred their relationship, and it trailed doggedly after him, following their third meeting. She was black.

Otto Beggs had long taken pride in his tolerance. Sure, Negroes were different from white folk, they were lazier, less dependable, trickier, less smart, but hell, they weren’t to blame, because look what they came from; they came from Africa and from plantation slavery. He had not known any Negroes, except Solly, who ran interference for him on the football team in Oregon, and a few others in the Army, and he had liked them well enough. Of course, he didn’t like Prentiss too much, because Prentiss had got the job as assistant to the head of the White House Detail that had rightfully belonged to himself. Still, he could not hold that against Prentiss personally. It was not Prentiss’ doing. If anyone was to blame, it was Chief Gaynor. Beggs couldn’t prove it yet, but he was willing to bet money Gaynor intended to promote as many colored agents as he could, which was natural when you played politics. As to President Dilman, Beggs wasn’t definite about him. He didn’t like him in general, that was for certain. On the other hand, he could not say he disliked him entirely, either. What he did dislike was having to track around on the heels of a Negro. Beggs knew that he was smarter than Dilman, more courageous (as he had once proved), and had more personality, and yet, look what that lumpy politician was paid per a