Sam Dent arrived, and I asked him what was up, but he gave me a vague answer: “If I knew, I’d certainly tell you; but nobody does, actually. They think they do, but they can’t be sure.”
The Garretts arrived and Hortense gave me a quick briefing: “You’ll stand with us, receive the guests first, and present them. Sam will present them to you and you will present them to us. For heaven’s sake, listen for names and get them straight. Repeat them clearly to us.” She took her place with Mr. Garrett, at the upper end of the room near the door of my office, and I took mine with them; she was standing next to me, with Mr. Garrett on her right. The orchestra came in and began to tune up. The bass player took his fiddle out of the case.
The guests began to arrive and were met by Sam who herded them to the front of the room toward the windows. If was barely five o’clock, yet dozens of people were there, some looking out at the street as though expecting something. Everyone seemed to know what was coming off except me, and I began to feel queer. The orchestra struck up with “Ma, He’s Making Eyes at Me.”
The phone rang, the one for incoming calls, which the girl had refused to let me use. She answered it and then signaled to Mr. Garrett who was there in three strides. He answered, nodded, and handed the receiver back to the girl. Then he nodded to Hortense and they went out in the hall and from there to the sidewalk. Finally I knew what it was: the call was from the White House to say that the President’s car had just left. That’s what all the excitement was about.
By now everyone was at the windows, watching, and I watched, too, from the doorway. A car pulled up and six men got out, like in a gangster movie, four of them staying outside, two-and-two, to block the sidewalk, and the other two coming inside to stand around gimlet-eyed, studying the crowd. Then another car pulled up, a limousine with the blue-and-white Presidential seal on the door. Then the President was getting out and holding his hand for the First Lady. Then they were coming in with Mr. Garrett and Hortense. The orchestra leader, who by now was standing beside me, made a sign and the orchestra broke off what they had been playing and rolled into “Hail to the Chief.” The President waved to them and took his place with the Garretts where they had been before, up near the door of my office, the First Lady beside the President and the Garretts beside her. Hortense beckoned to me and I went over. When I was presented, the President said: “Dr. Palmer, it’s a pleasure I’ve looked forward to. I’ve seen you play often.”
“He’s a fan of yours, Dr. Palmer,” the First Lady said.
From there on in, it went smoothly. Sam formed the guests into line and brought them to me, and I latched onto the names, which wasn’t hard, since they were all prominent people — senators, cabinet officers, congressmen, judges, writers, scholars, librarians, and so on. It was quite a distinguished gathering. Senator Hood was there with Mrs. Hood, but they seemed somewhat subdued.
The orchestra resumed its lively tunes, and when everyone had been received, the President stood around, chatting affably. I made a point of not staring. Then I felt a hand on my arm, and when I turned, he was standing beside me.
“Dr. Palmer, I saw you do something once that baffled me, and I’ve promised myself that if I ever met you, I would remind you of it and ask you to clear it up.”
“Sir, if I can, I’ll be glad to.”
“It was in a game with Virginia. In the last quarter, one of Virginia’s players scooped up a Maryland fumble and headed for a touchdown, with you in hot pursuit. Now, I had noticed your clean tackling — you left your feet, hit them clean, and brought them down hard. But when you closed in on this man, you didn’t tackle him the way you usually did. You went up his back, threw an arm around his neck, and wrestled him to the ground with about as much style as a fireman throwing a mattress out the window. I knew there had to be a reason... So what was it? Do you remember the play?”
“I remember it — the game, the play, the tackle. It was cold that day. There were snow flurries, and our hands were so numb that we couldn’t handle the ball. Both teams kept fumbling, and passing was out of the question. To tackle a man from behind, you had to grab what you could and hold on — pants, padding — anything. You couldn’t knock a man down by impact; there wouldn’t be any. He would be running the same way you were and just about as fast. But what could I do that day? My hands were so cold I couldn’t hold on, so I had to clip him and take the penalty or else go up his back. I hated it; it’s such a crummy way to play. But I did it. I brought him down, and we won the game. Does that clear it up?”
The President nodded, apparently in admiration. Then he smiled.
“It never occurred to me,” he said, “what the reason was, but I knew there had to be one. I always admire someone who does what has to be done — when, as Grover Cleveland put it, he ‘faces a condition, not a theory.’ ”
He turned to someone else then, and my other arm was caught, this time by Hortense.
“I heard it,” she whispered. “Aren’t you proud?”
“I guess so, but why couldn’t you have told me who was going to be here?”
“Oh, I couldn’t! We weren’t sure he would be. Even after he accepted, something could have come up. He would have been represented, of course, but that would have been awful — to let it out that he was going to be here and then have him not come. And, the Secret Service asks you not to make an announcement. If it’s not known, the danger is that much less.”
“Everyone knew but me, apparently.”
That night she paraded naked in front of the full-length mirror, asking me: “Lloyd, does it show on me? I am five months gone, as you said, and tonight that Judy Hood looked at me rather peculiarly. She had a certain look in her eye.”
“Turn around. Slowly.”
She turned, and I said: “Nothing so far.”
“It won’t be long now, and I still haven’t heard from that Finn.”
“Not to hurry you—”
“I know, I know, I know.”
20
That day marked the zenith of Lloyd Palmer’s star as director of the Hortense Garrett Institute. After that, it began to fall — or, I could even say, plunge. That same week we took on more writers, more biographers, with study rooms, recorders, secretaries assigned to transcribe, and all the rest — including a man I won’t name. He was from Georgia and was doing a book on Longstreet, who was briefly Lee’s second in command. That doesn’t sound like anything trouble could grow out of, but what that biography did to me shouldn’t happen to any American citizen who pays taxes and obeys the law. This writer was well known. He was the author of a fine book on Francis Marion, the Swamp Fox of Revolutionary fame, as well as many historical articles in important publications. In other words, he seemed worthy in every way of the grant-in-aid we gave him, in addition to office accommodations.
The first indication that there might be something odd about him was when Davis dropped by my office and suggested that “you leave him to me,” a hint I disregarded because I was beginning to distrust all hints from Davis. So when this man came in, I asked him to lunch. I took him to Harvey’s and listened while he talked — or at least, half-listened, for he began to bore me early on. I dislike people with grievances. His was against Douglas Southall Freeman, the biographer of Lee and Washington — and, it seemed, of Longstreet as well. That, this man could not forgive Freeman for.
“So, okay,” he growled, “we know about Gettysburg, how Longstreet wanted to shift his corps to the right and hit the Union rear and cut them off from their road, and perhaps, with luck, roll them up for a surrender. And we know that Lee said no and insisted on Pickett’s charge, one of the worst decisions yet made on a battlefield. So, okay, that was it; that was how Freeman had to tell it so long as the subject was Lee. But couldn’t he leave it at that? Did he have to write Longstreet up year after year for every newspaper, quarterly, and publisher who wanted a piece on the subject? Couldn’t he have disqualified himself? Because he must have known, Dr. Palmer, that to make a star out of Lee, he had to make a bum out of Longstreet! But Longstreet was right that day at Gettysburg! He was not a bum! And I say Dr. Freeman was wrong to keep on defaming him! He shouldn’t have! He did not have the right! Why did he have to be Longstreet’s biographer, too?”