“I would like to go to the kitchens and service areas please. Can that be arranged?” The woman smiled and nodded, her mane of dense black hair shifting in a wave.
“If you would come with me Mister President”. She lead him through the serving doors at the rear of the hall, into the food preparation area. The staff there looked at their visitor and every motion in the room froze as they realized the President was with them. LBJ picked out the head chef and addressed him.
“Chef, I wanted to thank you and all your staff here for the efforts you’ve made on our behalf tonight. I know you all have families to go to and you have already worked longer and harder than we had any right to expect but I would like to thank you all in person. Chef, could you introduce me to your staff please?”
The Chef lead LBJ around the kitchen staff, introducing each one in turn. LBJ gave each one a quick handshake and a small White House medallion from a box carried by one of the Secret Service Agents. Less than ten minutes later, he was out and walking back down the service corridor.
“Won’t you also have a family to go to.... Lillian isn’t it?”
“Lillith, Mister President. No, I don’t have a family as such. The Business is my family now.”
“No husband or boyfriend Lillith?”
“No Mister President.” Lillith looked at LBJ strangely. The man had a reputation for being course-mouthed and boorish but there had been no sign of that tonight. He’d been polite and gentlemanly then and was being so now.
“I was married once but it didn’t work out.” She paused for a second, somehow, for some reason she couldn’t define, she wanted to confide in the President. “My husband was a control freak, everything had to be done exactly how he wanted it just so. Exactly this exactly that. Every little thing, he wanted to rule every aspect of my life. When I got pregnant I realized I couldn’t bring children up in that sort of environment so I ran away.”
LBJ looked at her and got hit by a feeling of ancient sorrow so deep that it seemed to have physical force. “He sent three of his thug friends after me. To bring me back. To ‘persuade’ me to return to him. Their means of ’persuasion’ was hurting me.” Then the feeling of sorrow was briefly, just for a split second, replaced by rage and for that brief LBJ got weird sensation that her eyes had turned red. It was just imagination of course, and a trick of light reflection from the red emergency exit signs. Before it could register properly, it was gone and her voice went back to normal. “When hurting me didn’t work and I still refused to go back, they killed my children.”
LBJ’s mind reeled under the simple statement. What sort of man could punish his wife by killing their children? In fact, he had an uneasy feeling he may have heard the story somewhere. Perhaps in an old newspaper.
“Lillith, it sounds hopelessly inadequate to say this but I am dreadfully sorry. As an American I am appalled such things could happen in my country, and as a Texan I want to lynch the people responsible. As President, I can do something about this. I will instruct Director Hoover to give this matter his personal attention so that those who did this to you can be punished.”
Lillith smiled. “Mister President that was a long time ago and very far from here. Far from America. But I am very grateful for your concern. Thank you Mister President.”
Presidential Limousine, Du Pont Circle, Washington DC.
Sitting in the back of his limousine as it swept through the night on the way back to the White House, Lyndon Baine’s Johnson was a profoundly troubled man. What had started as a minor engagement intended to spare his administration a relatively trivial embarrassment had ended up by worrying him deeply. Two woman had managed it, that black airwoman and Lillith. They’d opened his eyes to something of which he hadn’t been unaware, but also had never realized the full implications and meaning of before.
It was just plain flat out wrong that a skilled and intelligent woman who’d beaten out everybody else in her class should have to worry about the color of her skin. To almost apologize for it when making an acceptance speech for an honor she’d won fair and square. It shouldn’t happen, not in America, this was the country where people were supposed to be judged on what they achieved not who their families were or the position some ancestor had held.
On top of that, the horror story Lillith had told him still filled him with rage. He didn’t believe, not for one moment, that her ex-husband was outside America. If he had been, he would have been under a mushroom cloud by now. LBJ was sure about it. The words “they killed my children” still echoed in his mind and made rage boil up inside him again. Anyway, he was sure he had read that story somewhere. It disgusted him to think that a husband in America could even think of doing such a thing. In the rational part of his mind, he knew it wasn’t unique or even unusual. In fact, he had a terrible suspicion that if he asked for statistics on such events, he would find more than he cared to know about. That didn’t change the situation though. In a great society like America, such things shouldn’t happen.
A Great Society. Now there was a name to play with. Other people should have their eyes opened, just as his had been opened. It was impossible to legislate how people thought, but one could use the law to set examples and provide guidelines. To make people think twice about casual prejudice or accepting obscene brutality. One couldn’t do that of course without changing some of the environment people lived in as well. That’s what was needed, an effort to build a great society, to build a place where the meaning of man’s life matched the marvels of man’s labor.
That would have to be the basis of a new program for Congress, to create a society where people could be free to develop their talents as far as they could go. A program to give aid to education so that people could compete on equal terms, to attack disease and the decaying heart of the big cities as part of an effort to prevent of crime and delinquency. One that would beautify the countryside, and conserve the monuments from the past. Most of all, to develop the depressed regions of the country as part of a wide-scale fight against poverty. Damn it, there were millions of elderly people who couldn’t get needed medical attention, that would have to be corrected through an amendment to the Social Security Act.
It was a lot of legislation to be pushed through. Somebody would have to see it through, to watch over its progress and ease it through the inevitable dogfights. Ramsey Chalk, thought the President, that would be an ideal solution. It’s the sort of thing that the pretentious charlatan would relish. And, pushing through a legislative program that big would take up all of his time. He wouldn’t have the energy left to interfere with international politics. That would be a very good thing.
Chalk’s forays onto the international scene were a constant embarrassment and were getting worse by the week. This insane idea he’d had for the United Nations had just been the start, his latest fad was for an international criminal court where war crimes could be tried. Ramsey being Ramsey of course, the first people in the dock would be Americans. But, it wouldn’t happen. LBJ was firmly determined on that. If he gave Ramsey the job of shepherding The Great Society through, then that would keep his mind off such stupidities.
Unfortunately, Ramsey would try and do the job all too well. He’d spend the entire country’s GNP and then some. And still want more. So he’d have to have a check and a balance. LB.I nodded to himself. The Targeteers. They’d be given a study contract to validate and cost out Ramsey Chalk’s proposals and produce a working plan to execute them within a strict budget limit. LBJ had no illusions about welfare plans, left to their own devices, they grew like a cancer. So there would have to be boundaries and limits firmly established.