supercilious and self-centered, too knowing and opinionated about everything and everyone in Washington and on the earth. He had repeated several choice anecdotes ridiculing MacPherson, who everyone had thought was the new Chief Executive.
Sally remembered that Poole had read aloud several passages from his second novel (still in the works, stream-of-consciousness), bitter narrative sections that made no sense and gave no fun when you were half drunk. After the applause he had explained the novel, and for a while his idea had held Sally’s attention. It was hard to recall it clearly the morning after, but there was something about the near future in the United States, something about a sudden outbreak of bubonic plague in the heavily Negro-populated county of a state similar to South Carolina or Louisiana (where some counties are 80 per cent Negro), but where the minority whites keep control because of their ties to the outside world. Overnight, to prevent the raging epidemic from spreading, this county is quarantined from the rest of the state and nation. No one can enter or leave. After a few months this isolated county has a population 90 per cent black, and 10 per cent white, and must live this way for several years.
“There it is, see?” Leroy Poole had squeaked, waving the manuscript in his pudgy fist. “Shoe on the other foot, see? Now we are the Ins and they are the Outs. How come? ’Cause gradual-like, the Negroes begin dominating the voting, buying and spending, law enforcement, the works. And pretty soon Negroes are running government, schools, business. And the poor whites left, the minority, what happens to them? Well, now, don’t you know? Negroes hire white women for their maids and white gents for their handymen. Now the whites go to the back of the bus, to the segregated lousy puking little white schools, and the Negroes got the run of the county. What do you say, friends, how’s that for an acidy parable?” She could recollect little more of it, or perhaps Leroy Poole had refused to tell any more. She had thought it rather novel and cruel, and wondered if he would finish it, and if he did, how it would be received.
Now, dressing, she realized that, by coincidence, Leroy Poole’s way-out fantasy of last night had-well, a small portion of it had-become a reality with Douglass Dilman’s accession to the Presidency. Her mind, remembering Dilman, remembered last night when she had found herself on a torn sofa beside Leroy Poole, listening to him discuss Dilman.
It all came back to her, the connection, Poole and Dilman, not what Poole had been saying. A Negro publisher had given Poole a sizable advance against royalties to write a biography of Senator Douglass Dilman, since Dilman was one of the highest-ranking Negroes in government. Poole had not been enthusiastic, for some reason, but had needed the cash to finish his novel, and had undertaken the chore. He had come to Washington weeks ago, received Dilman’s cooperation, and had been practically living with the Senator, gathering information on the Senator’s background and political career and ideas, and had already begun writing the made-to-order book. She recalled a thread of Poole’s conversation, to someone, to Harriet or herself. “I’ve gotten to know Senator Dilman better than he knows himself, I’ve been that close-but don’t hold it against me, sister!” He had screamed with laughter, a disconcerting high-pitched laughter, and after that she had left Poole for the bottle of Scotch.
Suddenly the creative process began to work inside Sally. She could almost feel it working, and she ceased buttoning her blouse to let it happen. Poole had said that Dilman was a widower, with a son, no one else. That was last night when Dilman was a senator. This morning he was the President of the United States, still a widower, with a son, and no one else. Who would run his life for him, the social part, the feminine part? A new President always made new appointments, hired new personnel. Whom would Dilman hire for his First Lady, his social secretary, his party giver? He might hold over some of T. C.’s staff, and the First Lady’s staff, but there would still be openings that would have to be filled, and there would certainly be resignations. Sally’s mind went to at least a half-dozen of her Southern girl friends who would not, or whose husbands or families would not let them, work under a Negro, President or no.
That was it, that was surely it, Sally exulted to herself. There would be an opening in the White House for a white girl of high social breeding and with a political background, to assist the new President, a girl who had many Negro friends and so could, in a natural way, give the President guidance in the world of white socialites about him. There would be an opening which she could fill, and in filling it give aid to that wonderful, kindly-looking Negro who had become Chief Executive, and in aiding him, gaining his dependence upon her, she could represent Arthur Eaton inside the White House. She could become Arthur’s helpmate on the highest level.
Only one piece of the puzzle was missing, and once that was in place the picture was there, made sense, and her future was assured. The missing piece was the image of the go-between who could get her offer of service to the new President himself. And she had that, too. Last night, last night, Leroy Poole, living with Dilman, writing about Dilman, last night a senator’s biographer, this morning a President’s historian.
Her mind fitted the last piece into the puzzle, and the picture that she saw and embraced was that of herself and Arthur, captioned by the lettering of her imagination: Secretary of State Arthur Eaton and Mrs. Sally Watson Eaton.
She ran to the cream-colored French telephone beside her bed, and then, as her hand clutched it, she tried desperately to remember the hotel where Leroy Poole was staying. Not the Shoreham, not the Mayflower, not the Hilton or Willard, no. What would that poor, struggling, fat little Negro writer be doing in one of those expensive big places? She eliminated the big hotels. She tried to think. It was some cheap hovel, ridiculously named, in the heart of town. She had heard it mentioned several times last night. It was on-yes, on F Street-heavens, but where-heavens-yes! That was it-Paradise-the Paradise Hotel on F Street.
She picked up the telephone and dialed for information…
The instant after the alarm clock went off, Leroy Poole opened his eyes, reached out and shut off the bell, flung aside his blanket, then settled back on the pillow and, lying perfectly still, began his daily morning exercise.
For five minutes, he performed this Spartan drill, a system of valuable and mystic calisthenics of his own invention, one known only to himself. As he engaged in it, he knew that his daily ritual would have astounded an outsider, especially a white outsider. Where most men did vigorous bends, push-ups, sit-ups to strengthen their muscles, to give tone to their physiques, Leroy Poole practiced an exercise consisting solely of remaining immobile on his bed, first contemplating his gross body, then conjuring up his gross past.
Once, wondering if this physical inactivity could be rightly regarded as exercise at all, Leroy Poole had looked up the word in Webster’s Dictionary.
Leroy Poole’s morning exercise followed an unvarying routine. After awakening, and removing his blanket, he set his eyes on the mound of flesh before him, gazing at the flabby chest and jelly protrusion of stomach encased in capacious cotton pajamas. Sometimes he studied his hands, the fatness of the sausage fingers. He was not concerned with this obesity of the flesh, the distorted plasticity of it, for he had been told that it was the result of glands, not gluttony. Instead he was concerned that the outer softness so unfairly contradicted the inner hardness, making it more difficult for others, and himself as well, to take his aggressive word sermons and crusading pen seriously.
Since no physical exertion could reduce his body to the same hardness as that of his mind and heart, Leroy Poole compensated for this by toiling daily to invigorate and fortify what lay invisible beneath his skull and skin. Like Richard Wright, a boyhood idol, Leroy Poole had learned long ago that “there existed men against whom I was powerless, men who could violate my life at will,” and that their savage and unjust superiority must be combated, even unto death. He had to toughen his will against white men’s bribes: no money, no comfort, no intellectual rationalizing, no compromise promises of future Green Pastures, no white token acceptance and approval could be permitted to negate the searing helplessness and humiliation that he and his family had suffered, were suffering, or allowed to modify and weaken the determination in his mind and heart. These were the muscles-the inner muscles of righteous hate-that Leroy Poole sought to energize and sustain every morning. The exercise performed was a simple one: he remembered his past, and was strong again.
It was not always easy. It had not been easy this morning. Last night’s party had left him weakened, and a residue of this weakness remained. It had not been the drinks. He did not drink. His abstinence he owed less to the hellfire Baptist upbringing of his childhood than to the fact that drinks made black men as foolish as white men, but
