“Sure I am President, Nat, but I’m not forgetting, and no one will let me forget, I am a black man, not yet qualified for human being, let alone for President. No matter how I feel, I can only act one way, Nat, only one way, and that’s as if I’m a servant of T. C., keeping the house in order while he’s away… It’s the old story I used to hear a Negro deacon tell when I was a little boy. He told it from the pulpit. ‘Ef yo’ say to de white man, “Ain’t yo’ forget yo’ hat?” he say, “Nigger, go get it!”’ That’s got to be my job, Nat, getting T. C.’s hat.”
Nat Abrahams was too deeply moved, too filled with white man’s guilts, to plead further with Dilman. He knew that he should accept Dilman’s view of reality but try to broaden it, to help him see more clearly his role and future. It was no use now, impossible, after this confessional. For years he and Dilman had openly discussed the Negro problem, and yet he could not recall any other time when he had heard his friend sound so passionately embittered.
“Okay, Doug,” Abrahams said quietly, “you’ll get T. C.’s hat. But there are a few other things you have a right to do, to instigate, to press, on your own. You have a right-”
Dilman held up a tired hand. “Nat, I have no more rights here than I have out there. Maybe fewer here. Someday, it might be different. But this is here and now. Don’t you think I’m aware of what’s going on? Don’t you think I know everything there is to know about the New Succession Bill they’re rushing through? Why all this speed from my colleagues on the Hill? Because they can’t forget I’m Negro and they don’t trust me, don’t want me to put in an Ethiopian Cabinet, with a black Secretary of State who might one day succeed me. And you know what, Nat-I’m not going to veto it. No, sir.”
“You should.”
“No, sir. I’m not going to sign it ‘Approved,’ either, but I’m not going to veto it. I’m going to let it sit on my desk ten days and a Sunday, and let it pass into law without either my approval or disapproval. It’ll get knocked out eventually by the Supreme Court, anyway. But I’ll play their little game, so they feel safer, so they know I’m not peopling the succession line with recruits from the Crispus Society or NAACP. I’m letting them know that I know my place, and I’ll do what I’m supposed to do, like it or not. If I didn’t, Nat, I’d be inviting real trouble for every Negro, let alone for myself, and for the unity of the country at large.”
“Maybe it’s time for that,” said Abrahams.
“It’ll never be time for that until my wife can go into any restroom in the land, and until a Negro can walk through the front door of the White House by popular demand.” He pushed himself away from the table. “It could be worse, Nat. I inherited some pretty good people from T. C. I know Governor Talley isn’t too smart, but he gets things done. Secretary Eaton is crafty and helpful, and a gentleman. As far as I can tell, the Cabinet is a good one. As for the bills pending, the minorities bill, the crisis in Africa, I think I can’t go far wrong listening to T. C.’s advisers. After all, they want what’s best for the country, too.”
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 dinner. He knew that she would have wept.
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 dinner, the Bordeaux, the sherry, had made him heavy-lidded and drowsy. He cast the printed bill on the marble-topped table, placed the sherry glass next to it, and tried to think of what Nat Abrahams had said and what he had said. He was too fatigued to recall exactly. His memory slid off to Wanda, to Julian, to Leroy Poole, to Arthur Eaton, to Sally Watson, to Clay Kemmler and the Cabinet, and then slid past them, searching for respite.
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.