“I couldn’t get a good look from our room,” said Reverend Spinger. “There seems to be a lot of people gathering in the street. I can get a better peek from here.”
He flattened against the wall, and parted the shade from the window by several inches. At last he let go and shook his head. “Just from what I can see, there must be a couple hundred out there. There’s the press, for sure, ’cause I could see the television trucks, and I’d guess some more Secret Service, and of course, the neighborhood is all spilling out.”
Dilman’s immediate reaction was one of annoyance. “How in the devil did my coming here get out?”
Reverend Spinger scratched his cottony pate. “Doug, you abdicated privacy when you were sworn in to this job. No matter what you attempt, you won’t know privacy again for a year and five months. To restate in another form what Voltaire told us, the public is a heartless monster, and since you can’t do as he suggested-chain the monster or flee from it-you must be on guard against it every minute of every day.”
The clergyman’s words reminded Dilman of his precarious situation. He saw Wanda standing, staring at him, and his annoyance melted into shameful trepidation. He detested himself for his cravenness, and for Wanda’s knowledge of it. Yet he could not be other than what he had always been.
“Wanda, I’ve got to go. Will you-?”
Tactfully Spinger drifted out into the corridor.
Dilman moved closer to her, and at once, by a trick of lightning, or from the anxiety in his mind, her mulatto coloring was again more white than dusky. “You see what it’s like, my dear. There’s only one solution for the present. Please reconsider taking a job in-”
“No, Doug. I’ll wait for you to phone.”
He wanted to beseech her, but she had turned away from him. “All right,” he said at last. “Only, don’t give me up.”
He joined Reverend Spinger in the corridor. As they started for the living room, Spinger said, as if to give support to the fiction, “You were conferring with me.”
Dilman nodded absently. “Yes… encouraging the Crispus Society to cooperate with the government in playing a-a more aggressive role in furthering civil rights by legislation and legal means, and joining us in condemning vigilante action and violence on both sides.”
They emerged into the living room, and Reverend Spinger said, “Yes, that would sum it up, Mr. President.”
Dilman went to the door that Otto Beggs had opened. He halted before his bodyguard. “What’s all the racket downstairs?”
“The press missed you, and I guess found out where you were, Mr. President. The minute they started charging after your scent, Chief Gaynor knew it might attract crowds. So he rushed over quite a few of the White House Detail. I’m sorry, but I had nothing-”
“Forget it,” said Dilman.
Dilman looked around to say good-bye to Rose Spinger, when suddenly Wanda Gibson burst into the living room.
“Doug-!” Then she stopped, teetered in her tracks, and froze, horribly aware that they were not alone with the Spingers, that a stranger was also in the room.
Dilman’s Adam’s apple jumped. He could see Beggs staring at Wanda. Dilman felt an onrush of panic. He tried to keep his voice even. “Is there anything that wasn’t clear, Miss Gibson?”
“N-no, Mr. President,” said Wanda, her voice flat and emotionless.
“I’d like a copy of your shorthand notes,” said Dilman. He waved a good-bye, and then went across the landing and rapidly down the stairs, followed by Beggs.
As he emerged into the night, it was not the impact of the reporters’ shouts and bellows that momentarily unnerved him, but the battery of lights from the television kliegs and the explosion of flashbulbs. Beyond the rim of lights, and cordon of Secret Service agents, he could see hundreds of black neighborhood faces and fluttering hands, and could hear shouts of encouragement.
Fingers gripped his arm, and he was relieved to find that they belonged to Tim Flannery. The press secretary’s mouth was close to his ear. “Mr. President, don’t ever leave me flat-footed again. Somebody in Chief Gaynor’s office leaked it. Don’t let them interview you. Let me go to the microphones and tell them it’s too late tonight to answer questions, but that you’ll make a short statement.”
“Very short, Tim.”
He allowed Flannery to precede him down the stone steps to the three standing microphones. He could hear the shouted questions: “What were you doing here, Mr. President?… Did you see Spinger alone or with other Negro leaders?… What were you talking about?… Was it about the Turnerites, Mr. President?”
Flannery held up his hand, then bent over the microphones. “Gentlemen, no questions. Save them for the press conference. The President will make a brief statement, and that’s it for tonight.”
Flannery stepped aside, and Dilman made his way to the microphones. He felt wooden and insincere. He said, “Friends, because Reverend Spinger, head of the Crispus Society, was confined to his quarters with a cold, I decided to call upon him. Our meeting was partially social, partially devoted to discussion of immediate domestic problems in the civil rights area. We did not touch upon any specific Negro groups besides the Crispus Society and its role in working with the government in the civil rights legislative program.”
“Did you talk about the Minorities Rehabilitation Program?” a reporter yelled.
Dilman looked blankly at the semicircle of men and cameras in front of him. He said into the microphones, “We discussed the MRP Bill, among many other legislative acts. We are in accord in our belief that progress toward equality can be attained only by due process of the law, never through the actions of vigilante groups of any race who would take the law in their own hands.”
There was a spattering of applause, and, from afar, a shrill cat-call and a solitary boo of disapproval.
“Reverend Spinger and I spoke privately about these matters, and informally. In the near future I expect to hold more formal meetings with all national leaders, Negro and white, who are eager to cooperate with the government in maintaining peace, and finding an orderly solution to our mutual problems. That is it for tonight, my friends… No, no questions, or I’ll collapse of starvation.”
With Beggs and a wedge of other agents leading the way, Dilman hastened to the limousine and ducked inside. As he sank into the cushioned back seat, and Beggs squatted on the jump seat, the car began to pull away. Covertly, Dilman lowered his head but lifted his eyes to catch sight of the illuminated upstairs living room windows. He could make out both Spingers in one. The other window frame was empty. For the heartless monster public there was no Wanda Gibson.
Then, sitting back, Dilman caught Beggs looking at him oddly. And then, with a sinking sensation, he knew that you could guard and guard against the monster, and in the end there was no defense. Somehow, someway, there was always one, as Beggs might be one, to let the monster come through. He wondered what Beggs thought. He wondered if the monster would be loosed, and if it might strangle him.
He shut his hot eyes and behind them cursed his foolhardiness-and his cowardice.
At precisely nine o’clock, Nat Abrahams noted, they entered the Family Dining Room on the first floor of the White House.
As a liveried butler opened the door from the Main Corridor, and Dilman went inside, Abrahams thought again what a strange experience this was for both of them. They had eaten together in so many mean and contrasting places, in crowded cafeterias of the Pentagon and officers’ messes of Army bases during the Second World War, in cheap bistros of France and hostile Bierstuben in Germany, in self-service restaurants and automats of Chicago and Detroit. Often, during their reunions in the Midwest, when Abrahams had been the host, he had made numerous preliminary calls to find a decent eatery where his Negro friend would be accepted and in no way embarrassed. Incredibly, and in short years, here they were once more, together, dining in the White House, Dilman’s first dinner in the nation’s first house as President of the United States, and Nat Abrahams his first guest.