All that had gone through his head last night, before he fell asleep as dawn came. Now, fully dressed, ready for breakfast and his daily shift that began in an hour, he stood immobilized in front of his scrapbooks. He opened the uppermost one and turned to page seven. There it was. He reread Murdock’s quote. He had remembered it correctly, word for word.
“Otto!” It was Gertrude screaming at him from the foot of the stairs. “Otto, you want to see your sons before they go to school, or not?”
“Coming!” he shouted back, almost gaily.
He felt good. He could not wait to get to work. The West Wing lobby would be a madhouse today. He would be interviewed about Sonenberg and McCune, who had died last night in Frankfurt with the President. He would think of what he should say, on the way to work. He might be too busy to say anything. He knew that Agajanian or Gaynor would be waiting for him.
He went, light-footed, out of the bedroom and down the stairs, as light and quick as he had been at Oregon and in Korea. Although he now weighed 210 pounds instead of 190, and maybe his face was a bit fleshier and blotched from beering, he was proud that he was still strong and fast and without an inch of flabbiness.
Almost breezily he entered the dining room, where Gertrude, in her usual early morning disarray, was trying to force Ogden, his ten-year-old, and Otis, who was eight, to eat their plates clean. Settling down to spear a waffle, he noticed, as he often had recently, that Gertrude, once pleasantly thin of face and trim of figure, had become sharp around the nose and mouth and baggier beneath the spotted housecoat. He noticed, too, that neither she nor his sons had acknowledged him with so much as a good morning. This time he would permit no disrespect to intrude on his good cheer.
“Well, Gertie, what’s the bad news today?” he said with a grin.
He had almost forgotten how much this greeting, which he had been using lately to anticipate and blunt her shrill attacks, infuriated her.
Her head swung toward him, threatening as a machine gun. What unholy hour did you get to sleep?”
“I don’t know. Two or three.” He buttered his waffles and poured syrup over them. “I couldn’t take my eyes off the television screen. What a night.”
“Apparently you were able to take your eyes off it long enough while my brother was here. I suppose you went to that frightful saloon?”
“Just for cigarettes.” He sliced off a piece of waffle and was pleased to find it limp and cold. “Then I guess I walked around. I as pretty shook up by that Frankfurt thing.”
“I didn’t know what to say to Austin. He only wants to help you. Even if he is my brother, he doesn’t have to.”
“I appreciate it,” Beggs said grimly. He stared at the tops of his sons’ heads. “Ogden-Otis-where’s your manners? I haven’t even heard hello.”
Both their sandy-haired heads went up and down. “Hello, Pop… hello.”
He might have been a stick of wood for all they cared, he thought. Gertrude had done a thorough job of brainwashing them against him. A few years ago they would have been swarming over him, tugging, hugging, pestering him for more stories of derring-do on the Oregon gridiron, on the Korean battlefields, on the perils of his White House job. They had looked up to him, admired him. Only Gertrude’s increased and open daily hectoring had reduced his past heroism and authority to his present symbol of failure.
He determined not to lose them. “Well, boys, it should be quite a day in school today, with a new President, eh?”
Gertrude’s querulous voice drew a discordant curtain between her sons and their father. “You sound like it’s good news. You have a Negro President. You have two sons in a predominantly Negro school. They’re both afraid they’ll be hooted at and kicked around.”
“Why make out that it’s so bad?” Beggs demanded. “Why does everything have to be bad?”
“Because it is, it just is,” “Gertrude said, throwing her crumpled paper napkin on the table. “Do you want some really bad news now? I don’t mind telling you. I just heard it from the milkman. The Schearers are moving out of the neighborhood. They’ve put their house up for sale. They didn’t even have the nerve to tell us. I had to hear it from the milkman.”
Automatically Beggs’s eyebrows had arched with surprise. The Schearers were the last of the old crowd, their old friends in the neighborhood, who had stayed on with them. He and Gertrude saw the Schearers at least twice a week.
Gertrude was going on. “He must’ve gotten that new position he applied for. Well, at least they’ve got some sense. They’ve had enough, even if you haven’t. And I’m thinking of the boys now, especially now, and nothing else.”
“I think of them, too,” he said angrily. He paused, to control himself, and then he said, “There’s going to be a change right here. Didn’t you hear it on television or read it in the papers?”
“What? Read what?”
“Sonenberg and McCune were in the same room with the President in Frankfurt. They were killed, too. That means the Assistant job to Agajanian in the White House is open, and I’m next up. It means a solid raise.”
Gertrude seemed to deflate into weariness. “Oh, that one. I heard that one before. Do you have a contract that says you’ll get it?”
“It’s my turn, Gertie. Chief Gaynor knows I’m next in line. Besides, I was thinking”-he felt shrewd, his old confident self-“the fact that we stayed on in this neighborhood is going to work for me. Look at it any way you want, but the new President is a Negro, and knowing Gaynor’s politicking, he’ll be wanting to play up to President Dilman. Gaynor knows where we live. It shows I have no prejudices-in fact, shows I like the Negro people and get along with them. Gaynor’ll figure my promotion will look good to Dilman.”
“I’m sure Dilman doesn’t know you exist,” said Gertrude, “and I’m not sure Gaynor knows either, considering these past years.” He was furious at her remark, in front of the boys, but before he could reply, she was on her feet, hustling Ogden and Otis to the door, stuffing their arms into their jackets. “Get on your way,” she was saying, “and watch the crossings, and if there’s any trouble you report it to the principal.”
Otis had gone through the door, but the older one, Ogden, hung behind. “Pop, last night Junior Austin said there’s a holiday off when a President dies. I hope so.”
“When I get to the White House, I’ll arrange it,” Beggs said expansively.
“Ha,” Ogden chortled, “that’ll be the day.”
Flushed, Beggs shouted, “If I can get you those damn stamps from the President’s secretary, I can-” It was too late. His older son had gone.
Put down, he waited, as Gertrude came back into the dining room. She tried to push her hair out of her face, and buttoned her housecoat, and then she lifted her head and stared at her husband. The tight, unyielding lines of attack had left her forehead and mouth. When she spoke, her tone was more imploring than accusing.
“Otto, I know what that promotion means to you, and I-I hope you get it, for your sake,” she said. “I know what the Service means to you, and all that business, and the excitements, and the scrapbooks. But there’s more to life, Otto. Even if you got the promotion-”