Read Online A Shade of Difference by Allen Drury - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Allen Drury
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its high cheekbones, classic brow, and full lips, an expression of trouble, both innocent and obvious, passes briefly. Ray Smith, approaching him unnoticed from the left, does poke him with a friendly fist and asks, “What’s the matter, Cullee? Somebody walking over your grave?” The Congressman shakes his head and looks down at the shorter Senator with a quickly concealing smile.
“I’m worried about water. Are we going to help those folks in the San Fernando Valley? Looks to me like we’ve got to if we’re to be elected next year.” Ray Smith grins back and says with a playfulness just a trifle too exaggerated, “Elected to what, Cullee?” And abruptly the Congressman realizes that Ray Smith and his wife agree. He’s actually afraid of me, he thinks, and it is impossible to deny a thrill of ego at that. He thinks maybe I could beat him, if I wanted to; or at any rate, he isn’t sure he could beat me. And he asks himself again, as he has on many more occasions than he has ever let on to Sue-Dan: why not? Why shouldn’t I? California’s different; they’re more progressive out there. Somebody has to break the ice, and why shouldn’t I? Out there, maybe a man could.
Thus his thoughts again parallel Seab Cooley’s, and now almost identically. There is the same commingling of passionate belief, personal ambition, and practical politics; the only added ingredient being that Cullee, a much younger man reared in a much different age, is able to stand back for a second and think to himself with an ironic and troubled amazement how fantastic this America is, which lets one man seek office on one basis in one state and another man seek office on almost the diametrically opposite basis in another state. How broad this umbrella, which covers so many children, he thinks; and underneath the joshing, uncomfortable conversation he is attempting to carry on with Senator Smith a deeper melancholy comes as he adds to himself: and will they ever rest together in harmony and peace, or will they always betray the ultimate reality of brotherhood and love that is the great final promise of the American dream?
But now, he chides himself, you’re talking like an editorial writer, and the whole thing is a lot more basic than that. The whole thing at the moment, in fact, is as basic as Sue-Dan Hamilton and what she thinks when she goes to bed with Cullee Hamilton; because while this still happens very often it is beginning to become obvious to one participant, at least, that the other doesn’t think too much of it. Certainly not as much as she used to in the first wild months of a union that seemed at the time so inevitable it couldn’t be stopped. Now he is beginning to find it possible to think that under certain conditions it could be stopped; and the thought terrifies him, for what would life be like without little old Sue-Dan? But even here a basic, ironic honesty still intrudes. You’d get along, boy, his mind tells him; you’d get along. But his body adds instantly, it wouldn’t be the same. Oh, no, indeedy. It wouldn’t be the same.
At once there leaps into his mind—by now Ray Smith is really quite worried that the Congressman does intend to run against him, because he seems so absent-minded and unresponsive to all of Ray’s sallies and there surely can be only one explanation for that: Cullee’s so busy thinking how to beat him that he isn’t able to concentrate on small talk—a picture of hot, dusty Molobangwe, capital of Gorotoland, lying in the blazing sun of distant Africa. He recalls the mud-and-wattle huts, the cattle and chickens in the streets, the guttural, rapid, curiously clicking sound of Terrible Terry’s native tongue, and in the rambling, ramshackle European structure, left over from an early ill-fated Christian mission, which now serves as the royal palace, a peculiar conversation with his elusive and half-naked host. The talk appeared to center around politics and the M’Bulu’s impatient
“I’m worried about water. Are we going to help those folks in the San Fernando Valley? Looks to me like we’ve got to if we’re to be elected next year.” Ray Smith grins back and says with a playfulness just a trifle too exaggerated, “Elected to what, Cullee?” And abruptly the Congressman realizes that Ray Smith and his wife agree. He’s actually afraid of me, he thinks, and it is impossible to deny a thrill of ego at that. He thinks maybe I could beat him, if I wanted to; or at any rate, he isn’t sure he could beat me. And he asks himself again, as he has on many more occasions than he has ever let on to Sue-Dan: why not? Why shouldn’t I? California’s different; they’re more progressive out there. Somebody has to break the ice, and why shouldn’t I? Out there, maybe a man could.
Thus his thoughts again parallel Seab Cooley’s, and now almost identically. There is the same commingling of passionate belief, personal ambition, and practical politics; the only added ingredient being that Cullee, a much younger man reared in a much different age, is able to stand back for a second and think to himself with an ironic and troubled amazement how fantastic this America is, which lets one man seek office on one basis in one state and another man seek office on almost the diametrically opposite basis in another state. How broad this umbrella, which covers so many children, he thinks; and underneath the joshing, uncomfortable conversation he is attempting to carry on with Senator Smith a deeper melancholy comes as he adds to himself: and will they ever rest together in harmony and peace, or will they always betray the ultimate reality of brotherhood and love that is the great final promise of the American dream?
But now, he chides himself, you’re talking like an editorial writer, and the whole thing is a lot more basic than that. The whole thing at the moment, in fact, is as basic as Sue-Dan Hamilton and what she thinks when she goes to bed with Cullee Hamilton; because while this still happens very often it is beginning to become obvious to one participant, at least, that the other doesn’t think too much of it. Certainly not as much as she used to in the first wild months of a union that seemed at the time so inevitable it couldn’t be stopped. Now he is beginning to find it possible to think that under certain conditions it could be stopped; and the thought terrifies him, for what would life be like without little old Sue-Dan? But even here a basic, ironic honesty still intrudes. You’d get along, boy, his mind tells him; you’d get along. But his body adds instantly, it wouldn’t be the same. Oh, no, indeedy. It wouldn’t be the same.
At once there leaps into his mind—by now Ray Smith is really quite worried that the Congressman does intend to run against him, because he seems so absent-minded and unresponsive to all of Ray’s sallies and there surely can be only one explanation for that: Cullee’s so busy thinking how to beat him that he isn’t able to concentrate on small talk—a picture of hot, dusty Molobangwe, capital of Gorotoland, lying in the blazing sun of distant Africa. He recalls the mud-and-wattle huts, the cattle and chickens in the streets, the guttural, rapid, curiously clicking sound of Terrible Terry’s native tongue, and in the rambling, ramshackle European structure, left over from an early ill-fated Christian mission, which now serves as the royal palace, a peculiar conversation with his elusive and half-naked host. The talk appeared to center around politics and the M’Bulu’s impatient
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