His limbs felt weak, so weak, and his heart thudded inside its chest cavity. There were a million white men who were right for the job. There were a thousand black men who would have bravely and defiantly welcomed the Godsent opportunity, and called it God-sent. Yet something, something, had gone wrong Up There. The Lord had poked His heavenly finger at the wrong name, and now it was too late. He wanted to rebuke the Maker for His blunder, and then, strangely-out of respect to the memory of his mother and father and aunts in the Midwest earth, out of fear of the hellfire that had been sounded in that old Michigan church in the room behind the broken-down social club, when he was in knee pants-he was humble before that God and the Son of God; and his bitterness and fear, really it was deep-down cringing fear, turned to shame. This was no place for kneeling, but when there was the time and the place, he would beg forgiveness and beg for help.
Yet, Jesus, Jesus, why did it have to be himself, Douglass Dilman, who was not white and who was afraid of being black, and who was without armor or grace?
Then as the shower’s liquid needles, warmer now, hit his chest, and the foam ran down his stomach and thighs, and as he absently rubbed himself with the soapy cloth and allowed the stream of water to dissolve the soap, he thought that his position, despite his secret inadequacy, was not entirely bad. His mind went backward to last night, or the early hours of the morning, when the White House limousine had taken him home. What had happened then was, in retrospect, heartening.
When he had become a member of the House of Representatives, he had leased the upstairs front apartment of a red brick, two-story apartment building between Georgia Avenue and Sixteenth Street. The three rooms and kitchenette, modest and clean, had been sufficent to serve his widower existence. The location had been comfortably in the midst of a onetime white neighborhood, now occupied by upper-class Negroes. But the apartment had soon become too small for him. Senator Espinosa, who had grown senile and disabled, had resigned two-thirds of the way through his term. The Governor of Dilman’s state, to strengthen his position with his vast Negro voting population-which had trebled with the influx of colored families from the South-and with the liberal union leaders, had appointed Dilman to Espinosa’s vacant office for the two years remaining. Dilman as Senator had found himself, briefly, a rara avis. Having left Washington, D.C., to campaign in a preponderantly Negro district for his fifth House term, he had returned to Washington as a Senatorial appointee. One of the few Negroes to achieve so high a seat in government, he had been the subject of lead articles in such magazines as Life, Look, Time, and Newsweek, and he had made the covers of Ebony and Sepia. He had vaguely felt a freak and been discomfited, but, encouraged by the Party bosses, he had cooperated with one and all.
It had been during this transitional period, when he had been the object of so much attention, when his mail had swelled, when he had received callers (mostly political, mostly pressure), that he had decided that his rented apartment could no longer serve him. He had found that the parlor and kitchenette were too cramped, and there was need of a study and library at home. He had begun to search for a larger apartment, but the rents demanded had appalled him. Gradually he had concluded that it might be wisest to buy a house. Washington was, after all, his adopted city, and would likely remain his home for years to come. While he was a senator from his state by appointment, and only for a short period, and while he had no idea if he would be a senator again, he was confident that he could regain his old House seat. And even if that were not possible, he could go into private law practice in the capital city where, with a population 55 per cent Negro, a highly reputed Negro attorney would have enough clients to keep him occupied and secure.
Guided by real estate brokers, he had visited three brownstones in his neighborhood, and in each instance had felt that the house was overpriced and too expensive for his meager savings. The fourth brownstone had come to his attention by chance. Seated one morning behind his desk in the Old Senate Office Building, he had learned that the Reverend Paul Spinger was in his reception room, eager to see him. A visit paid by Spinger was not in itself unusual. Spinger, as director of the largest Negro organization in America, the Crispus Society, had often come to Dilman to discuss civil rights legislation. That morning, as far as Dilman could recall, there had been no immediate business to discuss. He had invited Reverend Spinger in, and the elderly but energetic clergyman-lobbyist had said that the word was around that Dilman wanted to buy a house. If true, he happened to know of a house not yet on the market, whose owner had to sell in a hurry, and which might be bought at a reasonable price, in view of its value as an investment. It was a ten-room, two-story brownstone off Sixteenth Street, on Van Buren N.W., and it was a bargain at $45,000. It was, Spinger had said, a solid, aged abode, that one day could stand remodeling, but was comfortable enough and well located on the fringe of the wealthier Negro section, near Walter Reed General Hospital. Spinger knew about the house in advance, he had said, because he and his wife Rose and a boarder had rented the upstairs for several years. The landlord had lived downstairs. Half jokingly, Spinger hoped that Senator Dilman would consider it. If someone else bought the house, they might require all ten rooms and evict the Spingers. The Senator, Spinger had reasoned, was a widower, with his son in boarding school, and would have no need for more than the downstairs rooms.
Senator Dilman had gone with the clergyman to visit the brownstone, and he had been enchanted by the quiet residential street with its maple trees, the small green front lawn, the walk up to the entry hall, the generous, comfortable rooms and nineteenth-century fixtures. Immediately he had bargained for it and closed the deal. That had been five years ago, more than five years ago, and not one day had Dilman regretted the financial encumbrance. For to this brownstone off Sixteenth Street Dilman owed not only his first real pleasure in having a place where he belonged, but also his enduring relationship with Wanda Gibson, and, because of last night, he owed to this house his first feeling of acceptance as the new and accidental Chief Executive of the United States.
Last night, he thought. And then his memory held on last night.
The feeling of acceptance had come at some time after one o’clock in the morning. As his chauffeured limousine turned into Van Buren Street, Dilman, sandwiched between the Secret Service agents, had become aware of a phenomenon. This was a well-off Negro neighborhood, but a hard-working one, and its inhabitants went to sleep early. The thoroughfare was always blanketed in darkness well before midnight. But last night, after midnight, the street was lighted with illumination from every house, and alive as a Mardi Gras. And then, as they had neared his brownstone, Dilman realized that Van Buren Street was thickly lined on both sides with people, neighbors and others of the capital city, who had come to be the first to set eyes upon America’s new President.
When the limousine had drawn up before his front lawn, and he had emerged, the size of the crowd in attendance had overwhelmed him, almost one thousand persons, he had guessed. The faces, many recognizable, had been mostly black, but there were whites here and there, although Dilman had been unable to discern if they were reporters, Secret Service agents, or simply sensation seekers of the kind who rushed to accidents. As he had walked between the agents to his front door, the applause had begun, then swelled, and there had been cheers. Dilman had paused, deeply moved, and had exhaustedly waved and waved, and then gone inside his house.