The afternoon before election Matthew and Bunny sat in the latter's
hotel suite sipping cocktails, smoking and awaiting the inevitable.
They had been waiting ever since the day before. Matthew, tall and
tense; Bunny, rotund and apprehensive, trying ever so often to cheer
up his chief with poor attempts at jocosity. Every time they heard
a bell ring both jumped for the telephone, thinking it might be an
announcement from Helen's bedside that an heir, and a dark one, had
been born. When they could no longer stay around the office, they had
come down to the hotel. In just a few moments they were planning to go
back to the office again.
The hard campaign and the worry over the outcome of Helen's confinement
had left traces on Matthew's face. The satanic lines were accentuated,
the eyes seemed sunken farther back in the head, his well-manicured
hand trembled a little as he reached for his glass again and again.
He wondered how it would all come out. He hated to leave. He had
had such a good time since he'd been white: plenty of money, almost
unlimited power, a beautiful wife, good liquor and the pick of damsels
within reach. Must he leave all that? Must he cut and run just at the
time when he was about to score his greatest victory? Just think: from
an underpaid insurance agent to a millionaire commanding millions of
people--and then oblivion. He shuddered slightly and reached again for
his glass.
"I got everything fixed," Bunny remarked, shifting around in the
overstuffed chair. "The plane's all ready with tanks full and I've got
Ruggles right there in the hangar. The money's in that little steel
box: all in thousand dollar bills."
"You're going with me, aren't you, Bunny?" asked Matthew in almost
pleading tones.
"I'm not stayin' here!" his secretary replied.
"Gee, Bunny, you're a brick!" said Matthew leaning over and placing his
hand on his plump little friend's knee. "You sure have been a good pal."
"Aw, cut th' comedy," exclaimed Bunny, reddening and turning his head
swiftly away.
Suddenly the telephone rang, loud, clear, staccato. Both men sprang for
it, eagerly, open-eyed, apprehensive. Matthew was first.
"Hello!" he shouted. "What's that! Yes, I'll be right up."
"Well, it's happened," he announced resignedly, hanging up the
receiver. And then, brightening a bit, he boasted, "It's a boy!"
In the midst of her pain Helen was jubilant. What a present to give her
Matthew on the eve of his greatest triumph! How good the Lord was to
her; to doubly bless her in this way. The nurse wiped the tears of joy
away from the young mother's eyes.
"You must stay quiet, Ma'am," she warned.
Outside in the hall, squirming uneasily on the window seat, was
Matthew, his fists clenched, his teeth biting into his thin lower lip.
At another window stood Bunny looking vacantly out into the street,
feeling useless and out of place in such a situation, and yet convinced
that it was his duty to stay here by his best friend during this great
crisis.
Matthew felt like a young soldier about to leave his trench to face a
baptism of machine gun fire or a gambler risking his last dollar on a
roll of the dice. It seemed to him that he would go mad if something
didn't happen quickly. He rose and paced the hall, hands in pockets,
his tall shadow following him on the opposite wall. Why didn't the
doctor come out and tell him something? What was the cause of the
delay? What would Helen say? What would the baby look like? Maybe it
might be miraculously light! Stranger things had happened in this
world. But no, nothing like that could happen. Well, he'd had his lucky
break; now the vacation was over.
A nurse, immaculate in white uniform, came out of Helen's bedroom,
passed them hurriedly, smiling, and entered the bathroom. She returned
with a basin of warm water in her hands, smiled again reassuringly
and reëntered the natal chamber. Bunny and Matthew, in unison, sighed
heavily.
"Boy!" exclaimed Bunny, wiping the perspiration from his brow. "If
somethin' don't happen pretty soon, here, I'm gonna do a Brodie out o'
that window."
"The both of us," said Matthew. "I never knew it took these doctors so
damn long to get through."
Helen's door opened and the physician came out looking quite grave and
concerned. Matthew pounced upon him. The man held his finger to his
lips and motioned to the room across the hall. Matthew entered.
"Well," said Matthew, guiltily, "what's the news?"
"I'm very sorry to have to tell you, Mr. Fisher, that something
terrible has happened. Your son is very, very dark. Either you or Mrs.
Fisher must possess some Negro blood. It might be called reversion to
type if any such thing had ever been proved. Now I want to know what
you want done. If you say so I can get rid of this child and it will
save everybody concerned a lot of trouble and disgrace. Nobody except
the nurse knows anything about this and she'll keep her mouth shut for
a consideration. Of course, it's all in the day's work for me, you
know. I've had plenty of cases like this in Atlanta, even before the
disappearance of the Negroes. Come now, what shall I do?" he wailed.
"Yes," thought Matthew to himself, "what should he do?" The doctor
had suggested an excellent way out of the dilemma. They could just
say that the child had died. But what of the future? Must he go on
forever in this way? Helen was young and fecund. Surely one couldn't
go on murdering one's children, especially when one loved and wanted
children. Wouldn't it be better to settle the matter once and for all?
Or should he let the doctor murder the boy and then hope for a better
situation the next time? An angel of frankness beckoned him to be done
with this life of pretense; to take his wife and son and flee far away
from everything, but a devil of ambition whispered seductively about
wealth, power and prestige.
In almost as many seconds the pageant of the past three years passed in
review on the screen of his tortured memory: the New Year's Eve at the
Honky Tonk Club, the first glimpse of the marvelously beautiful Helen,
the ordeal of getting white, the first, sweet days of freedom from the
petty insults and cheap discriminations to which as a black man he had
always been subjected, then the search for Helen around Atlanta, the
organization of the Knights of Nordica, the stream of successes, the
coming of Bunny, the campaign planned and executed by him: and now, the
end. Must it be the end?
"Well?" came the insistent voice of the physician.
Matthew opened his mouth to reply when the butler burst into the room
waving a newspaper.
"Excuse me, sir," he blurted, excitedly, "but Mister Brown said to
bring this right to you."
The lurid headlines seemed to leap from the paper and strike Matthew
between the eyes:
DEMOCRATIC LEADERS PROVED OF
NEGRO DESCENT
Givens, Snobbcraft, Buggerie, Kretin and Others
of Negro Ancestry, According to Old
Records Unearthed by Them.
Matthew and the physician, standing side by side, read the long account
in awed silence. Bunny entered the door.
"Can I speak to you a minute, Matt?" he asked casually. Almost
reluctant to move, Matthew followed him into the hall.
"Keep your shirt on, Big Boy," Bunny advised, almost jovially. "They
ain't got nothin' on you yet. That changing your name threw them off.
You're not even mentioned."
Matthew braced up, threw back his shoulders and drew a long, deep
breath. It seemed as if a mountain had been taken off his shoulders.
He actually grinned as his confidence returned. He reached for Bunny's
hand and they shook, silently jubilant.
"Well, doctor," said Matthew, arching his left eyebrow in his familiar
Mephistophelian manner, "it sort of looks as if there is something to
that reversion to type business. I used to think it was all boloney
myself. Well, it's as I always say: you never can tell."
"Yes, it seems as if this is a very authentic case," agreed the
physician, glancing sharply at the bland and blond countenance of
Matthew. "Well, what now?"
"I'll have to see Givens," said Matthew as they turned to leave the
room.
"Here he comes now," Bunny announced.
Sure enough, the little gray-faced, bald-headed man, came leaping up
the stairs like a goat, his face haggard, his eyes bulging in mingled
rage and terror, his necktie askew. He was waving a newspaper in his
hand and opened his mouth without speaking as he shot past them and
dashed into Helen's room. The old fellow was evidently out of his head.
They followed him into the room in time to see him with his face buried
in the covers of Helen's bed and she, horrified, glancing at the
six-inch-tall headline. Matthew rushed to her side as she slumped back
on the pillow in a dead faint. The physician and nurse dashed to revive
her. The old man on his knees sobbed hoarsely. Mrs. Givens looking
fifteen years older appeared in the doorway. Bunny glanced at Matthew
who slightly lowered his left eyelid and with difficulty suppressed a
smile.
"We've got to get out o' this!" shouted the Imperial Grand Wizard.
"We've got to get out o' this. Oh, it's terrible.... I never knew it
myself, for sure.... Oh, Matthew, get us out of this, I tell you. They
almost mobbed me at the office.... Came in just as I went out the back
way.... Almost ten thousand of them.... We can't lose a minute. Quick,
I tell you! They'll murder us all."
"I'll look out for everything," Matthew soothed condescendingly. "I'll
stick by you." Then turning swiftly to his partner he commanded, "Bunny
order both cars out at once. We'll beat it for the airport.... Doctor
Brocker, will you go with us to look out for Helen and the baby? We've
got to get out right now. I'll pay you your price."
"Sure I'll go, Mr. Fisher," said the physician, quietly. "I wouldn't
leave Mrs. Fisher now."
The nurse had succeeded in bringing Helen to consciousness. She was
weeping bitterly, denouncing fate and her father. With that logicality
that frequently causes people to accept as truth circumstantial
evidence that is not necessarily conclusive, she was assuming that
the suspiciously brown color of her new-born son was due to some
hidden Negro drop of blood in her veins. She looked up at her husband
beseechingly.
"Oh, Matthew, darling," she cried, her long red-gold hair framing
her face, "I'm so sorry about all this. If I'd only known, I'd never
have let you in for it. I would have spared you this disgrace and
humiliation. Oh, Matthew, Honey, please forgive me. I love you, my
husband. Please don't leave me, please don't leave me!" She reached out
and grasped the tail of his coat as if he were going to leave that very
minute.
"Now, now, little girl," said Matthew soothingly, touched by her words,
"You haven't disgraced me; you've honored me by presenting me with a
beautiful son."
He looked down worshipfully at the chubby, ball of brownness in the
nurse's arms.
"You needn't worry about me, Helen. I'll stick by you as long as you'll
have me and without you life wouldn't be worth a dime. You're not
responsible for the color of our baby, my dear. I'm the guilty one."
Dr. Brocker smiled knowingly, Givens rose up indignantly, Bunny opened
his mouth in surprise, Mrs. Givens folded her arms and her mouth
changed to a slit and the nurse said "Oh!"
"You?" cried Helen in astonishment.
"Yes, me," Matthew repeated, a great load lifting from his soul. Then
for a few minutes he poured out his secret to the astonished little
audience.
Helen felt a wave of relief go over her. There was no feeling of
revulsion at the thought that her husband was a Negro. There once
would have been but that was seemingly centuries ago when she had been
unaware of her remoter Negro ancestry. She felt proud of her Matthew.
She loved him more than ever. They had money and a beautiful, brown
baby. What more did they need? To hell with the world! To hell with
society! Compared to what she possessed, thought Helen, all talk
of race and color was damned foolishness. She would probably have
been surprised to learn that countless Americans at that moment were
thinking the same thing.
"Well," said Bunny, grinning, "it sure is good to be able to admit that
you're a jigwalk once more."
"Yes, Bunny," said old man Givens, "I guess we're all niggers now."
"Negroes, Mr. Givens, Negroes," corrected Dr. Brocker, entering
the room. "I'm in the same boat with the rest of you, only my dark
ancestors are not so far back. I sure hope the Republicans win."
"Don't worry, Doc," said Bunny. "They'll win all right. And how! Gee
whiz! I bet Sherlock Holmes, Nick Carter and all the Pinkertons
couldn't find old Senator Kretin and Arthur Snobbcraft now."
"Come on," shouted the apprehensive Givens, "let's get out o' here
before that mob comes."
"Whut mob, Daddy?" asked Mrs. Givens.
"You'll find out damn quick if you don't shake it up," replied her
husband.
* * * * *
Through the crisp, autumn night air sped Fisher's big tri-motored
plane, headed southwest to the safety of Mexico. Reclining in a large,
comfortable deck chair was Helen Fisher, calm and at peace with the
world. In a hammock near her was her little brown son, Matthew, Junior.
Beside her, holding her hand, was Matthew. Up front near the pilot,
Bunny and Givens were playing Conquian. Behind them sat the nurse and
Dr. Brocker, silently gazing out of the window at the twinkling lights
of the Gulf Coast. Old lady Givens snored in the rear of the ship.
"Damn!" muttered Givens, as Bunny threw down his last spread and won
the third consecutive game. "I sure wish I'd had time to grab some
jack before we pulled out o' Atlanta. Ain't got but five dollars and
fifty-three cents to my name."
"Don't worry about that, Old Timer," Bunny laughed. "I don't think we
left over a thousand bucks in the treasury. See that steel box over
there? Well, that ain't got nothin' in it but bucks and more bucks.
Not a bill smaller than a grand."
"Well, I'm a son-of-a-gun," blurted the Imperial Grand Wizard. "That
boy thinks o' everything."
But Givens was greatly depressed, much more so than the others. He had
really believed all that he had preached about white supremacy, race
purity and the menace of the alien, the Catholic, the Modernist and the
Jew. He had always been sincere in his prejudices.
When they arrived at the Valbuena Air Field outside Mexico City, a
messenger brought Bunny a telegram.
"You better thank your stars you got away from there, Matt," he
grinned, handing his friend the telegram. "See what my gal says?"
Matthew glanced over the message and handed it to Givens without
comment. It read:
_Hope you arrive safely Senator Kretin lynched in Union Station
Stop Snobbcraft and Buggerie reported in flight Stop Goosie and
Gump almost unanimously reëlected Stop Government has declared
martial law until disturbances stop Stop When can I come?_