Abrahams opened it, and read the heading: “Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled-Section 1. This Act may be cited as the ‘Minorities Rehabilitation Program.’ ” He carefully folded it. “Okay,” he said quietly.
“And this is a concise breakdown and memorandum of the high points of the bill,” said Oliver, handing over the other folded pages. “Anyone who reads this will know in five minutes how this five-year works program will help the Negroes, all minorities, economically, socially, educationally, improve and integrate them, to the best interests of the majority white community as well. It may be brief, but it is thorough, Nat. You’ll see how this bill can be helpful to every one of the fifty states, naming names, facts, figures. It’s irresistible.”
Accepting this document, too, Abrahams shoved both in his pocket. “I’ll read them. Then what?”
“If you approve-I think you will, most everyone has, except for a handful of left-wingers and right extremists-I wish you’d tell us so. Then, if it comes up, only if it comes up, you understand, I wish you’d let President Dilman know how you feel. That would be natural. But, Nat, even if you find it awkward, then-well, at least ask him to have a look at our patriotic little breakdown of the facts and figures. He might find it an eye-opener, if he needs one. I suspect he’s on our side, anyway… Don’t promise me anything, Nat. I just want to be able to tell Avery Emmich you are studying this, and will do what you believe is right and best for the country.”
“For the country,” Abrahams murmured, rising quickly. “I’ll be in touch with you, Gorden. Thanks for the feed.”
Departing from the Caucus Room, Abrahams could see Oliver’s worried face pretending to study the restaurant bill as, out of the corner of one eye, he watched his guest and tried to gauge his feelings.
Going up the corridor, Nat Abrahams’ feelings were red with anger, not at the idiot lobbyist’s effort to use him to coerce the Chief Executive of the land, who happened to be a friend, but at himself for having allowed himself, for the first time in his entire life, to be put in a position that might compromise his honesty as a responsible human being.
By the time he had left the Hotel Congressional and crossed over to the corner before the Old House Office Building where Sue was to pick him up, his anger had subsided. The bright cool air was not only refreshing but prickly, stinging to life his numbed sense of reality.
His abiding human fault, Abrahams had come to realize, was that he constantly clung to the saber of romanticism. This satisfied his ego and conscience, but it had provided him with a poor weapon in a progressive, mechanized age, a weapon shown to be inadequate for the protection of his wife, his children, his weakened heart. He had known from the start of the Eagles negotiations that he could not slay dragons with obsolete sabers and broadswords to rescue his family and save himself. This was a new world out here, and to get by the dragons you did not blindly slash at them-they were too big, too many, and you were too small, too ill-armed-instead, you reasoned with them, you compromised, you gave something so that they would give, too. What was it that wise old Edmund Burke had said? That all government, almost every human benefit and enjoyment, almost every virtue and prudent act, was founded on compromise and barter. As his own grandfather used to say, holding him on one bony knee, his grandfather licking his saliva and croaking, “Boychick, you bend sometimes so maybe you won’t break.” Or, Abrahams now thought, so you won’t break others with you when you fall.
He searched for his mottled briar pipe, filled it with tobacco from the rubbed pouch, and lit it. He had taken no more than one puff when the rented Ford blocked his vision and Sue was framed in the car window, her left hand hitting the horn.
He climbed inside, kissed her cheek, and the Ford jolted forward. He asked her what she had been doing and where they were going, and she began to tell him, but he hardly listened. If you must bend, he thought, how far do you bend?
As the car turned a corner, and he was forced against her, he realized that she had become silent and was trying to study him as she drove.
“What’s the matter, Nat?” she asked.
“Matter? What makes you think-?”
“You haven’t heard a word I’ve said. You’ve been a million miles away.”
He tried to smile. “Only a few blocks away, in the Hotel Congressional with Gorden Oliver, errand boy between Mephistopheles in Atlanta and Nat Faust right here.”
“So that’s the way it is,” said Sue. “Tell me. Don’t leave out a thing.”
She drove, and he talked. He told her what Oliver had wanted, and how he himself had reacted, as much as he could remember of it in a ten-minute monologue. When he was done, he turned his head. Her pretty face, still unlined except at the brow, was pointed straight ahead at the windshield, wifely grave.
“That’s it, Sue,” he said. “Beneath all the verbiage it comes to this, a command from on high-go in there and influence Doug Dilman, no matter what he believes, to approve the minorities bill. Persuade him, get him to sign it, and you’ve earned your salary from Emmich and big business.”
“Gorden Oliver didn’t tell you to do that in so many words.”
“He told me without the words.”
She continued watching the street before them. “Nat, maybe you’ve got your hackles up for no reason at all. You are simply assuming that whatever is good for Eagles Industries is bad for the country, for Dilman, for yourself, and you are against it. Can’t it be that what they want might also be what everyone else wants and needs?”
“We-ll-could be.”
“The odds are Doug Dilman likes most of the bill and will sign it. He hasn’t told you he won’t, has he?”
“No, he hasn’t.”
“I read the papers too, and from what I have read, almost the entire press and the political organizations and Congress seem to be behind this legislation.”
“That doesn’t make it right.”
Sue glanced at him. “That doesn’t make it wrong either, darling. I think you’re misplacing your hostility. You feel guilty about leaving your practice, abandoning your underdogs, making so much money in a short time. You feel ashamed, and so you’re taking it out on Eagles and Emmich and Oliver and anything they propose. Nat, you’re smarter than that. Study all that stuff in your pocket objectively, like you study a legal brief. Then decide how you feel. If MRP is a sensible compromise program, speak up for it. And there’s nothing wrong in telling Doug you’re for it, whether he’s President or not. He may welcome discussing it with you. If you don’t like it, shut up.”
She took her right hand from the steering wheel and covered her husband’s hand. “Nat, maybe it is good for the country. Don’t be like some angry kid who has to be against everything his elders are for, to show he’s a man. You are a man, the best and most wonderful one on earth. You are a man who can still serve himself and the public while protecting his own life and his children. Don Quixote wasn’t for real, darling, but you are. No more dragons, either. Freud scared them away. And all that is left are human problems to be solved by human beings like yourself in a mature way. I know you’ll handle this and the next three years that way.”
Her literary allusion, so exactly and uncannily reflective of his own on the street corner earlier, swept aside the last vestige of his anger. Wives, he thought, wonderful wives who grow your minds as you grow theirs, until you and they are one and the same till death do you part. He was amused by her and loved her, for herself and for the better part of him that she possessed, and he wanted to hug her and hold her close to him and enjoy her.