White Man's Problems (21 page)

“That's right.”

“It's also the spot where protesters about UFOs come to give speeches,” said Hansall. He laughed and looked around to the other adults with a smile.

“Let's go in and look at Lincoln's statue,” said Mrs. Coyle.

Hansall's ears burned. The chilly air of polite dislike seemed to be giving way to quiet whispers that maybe something needed to be done with him. Well, they were all too serious, he thought. He didn't care to buy into treating this all like the classroom. The boys were looking for distraction, something to break up the monotony.

He had an idea based on a memory from his high school trip years ago. He steered his foursome to the side of the memorial, where excerpts of Lincoln's two inaugural addresses were written in huge block letters.

“Look up there” he said. “There is a mistake in one of those columns. Which one of you can find it first?”

Hansall gave them hints, directing them to the far left, then to the lower half, and finally, when it did not appear that they were going to get it, he directed them to the place in the sixth sentence of the second paragraph of the first inaugural address where the E in the word
Earth
was actually an F. It took another minute for the boys to see exactly where he was pointing, but eventually they all found the flaw and smiled. Each of them looked at him with brimming satisfaction, excited to have caught the memorial makers in a mistake.

Mrs. Coyle was commandeering the group to the other side of the building. A soft din was over the place, the congealed sound of hundreds of school kids milling, the echoes and guide voices bouncing off the grand stone and slate of the compound.

“Ok,” she said. “I do this with every class I bring here. Look on the wall. We are going to read it out loud together. Parents too. Ok, ready? Everyone scooch in close. Jobie, start us off.”

Jobie gazed up at the letters.

“
Four score…
”

The rest of the kids' voices came in, “
And
seven years ago
…”

Hansall smirked. He looked down to try the boys' eyes, to see if they were buying it. But when Linda shot him one of her sideways looks, like his mother, midprayer at church, and he saw that the boys all had their heads forward, he merged in. “
Now we are engaged in a great Civil War, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure
.”

W
ell, he thought, it
was
a damn good speech. He focused on the sound of the words. The kids' voices made a sort of chamber music. As they mouthed the lines, they closed in tighter: “
As a final resting place for those who gave their lives here so that that nation might live.
”

The words, the curious diction, came back to him. He remembered staying up late one night in his room during high school, reading the speech from his history book and trying to memorize the lines. He had opened and closed the book for hours, repeating the phrases out loud until he had the whole thing. The mnemonic tools he used came back to him: three paragraphs, one sentence in the first paragraph, three sentences in the second. He gave into just reading along with the young voices. “
The world will little note or long remember what we say here, but it will not forget what they did here.
”

What a great line. “
It will not forget what they did here…
” The writing was perfect in every way. He looked at the children's faces. They were in T-shirts and laceless sneakers, the boys with long hair and the girls skinny and tallish. “
It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion…
”

As he said “that from these honored dead,” Hansall felt a hitch in his throat. His eyes began to water. Mrs. Coyle looked at him and seemed to give him an infinitesimal nod. He heard his voice in the voice of the kids. “
That this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
”

***

The next day, their last, a road warrior feeling held the tables where the Webster parents and kids ate their scrambled eggs sleepy-eyed, but now accustomed to it, like soldiers at mess. Their suitcases were ready, their sleeping bags were rolled tight.

As the bus pulled onto the freeway on the road to Mount Vernon, the last stop of the week, Hansall studied Will leaning against the window next to him; he was watching the road.

“Hey, man, how are you doing?” Hansall said.

“Fine.”

“It's been a good trip. Don't you think it's been a good trip? We've had fun, haven't we?”

“Yeah, Dad. Sure.”

The kid never really gave him a chance. He never let down his guard, his loyalty to his mother never left the dynamic. Women weren't above involving the kids—to Hansall, that was one of the biggest jokes going. He kept looking at Will, hoping they could seize in this moment a little connection.

“Dad, why'd you do it?” Will said finally.

“Why did I do what?”

“You know.”

“No, Will, I don't know. Why did I do what? What has your mother told you that I did?”

“Forget it,” Will said and pushed past him and headed for the back of the bus. Hansall stared forward. Mrs. Coyle had put a DVD about the preparations the soldiers go through for the changing of the guard ceremony. It was called
Honor at Arlington
.

***

Mount Vernon, he knew, was a poor second to Monticello, and the bus wasn't far out of DC proper when he realized that the cacophonous mother who claimed at breakfast they were headed to Jefferson's home had been wrong. He wrote it off to exhaustion that he didn't catch the mistake at first blush; of course they wouldn't drive all the way down to Charlottesville, which would have taken hours. Fitting that they would end with Washington, Hansall thought. First in War, Peace, and the Minds of his Countrymen, and the last stop on the way back to California.

Dignified signs announced Mount Vernon's proximity, and a massive parking maze oozing of /files/08/89/03/f088903/public/private cooperative fundraising dumped them into a horseshoe-curved unloading zone. From there they were funneled toward the main house and quickly joined the line on one side of the long circular driveway leading to the old building.

As a schoolteacher in front of them rattled on about Washington's love of trees, Hansall deduced from a sign under the nearby walnut that there was a fifty-five-minute wait from their current spot. They inched up the white pebble pathway, moving just often enough to distinguish what they were doing from standing. Mrs. Coyle sensed she was losing everyone, so she reached into her pocketbook and produced a colonial trivia book collection.

“Which political party did George Washington belong to?”

“Republicans,” said one kid.

“Nope.”

“Democrats,” said another.

“Uh-uh. Republicans and Democrats didn't exist back then.”

With that, the kids were out of ideas. The group inched in the line but kept looking at the teacher.

“Parents?” Mrs. Coyle said..

After a moment, a ginger-haired mother said, “Federalists?” She said it as though she was speaking for the group, like the appointed family leader on
Family Feud
. Her eyes petitioned the other moms for support.

“Nope.”

“Then the Antifederalists?” ginger-mom said, laughing at her own cleverness. The moms grinned and avoided eye contact with Mrs. Coyle.

“No party,” said Hansall, from the side. He said it without thinking, reflexively. “He was above party.”

“That's right,” said Mrs. Coyle. She put her hands on Jobie's shoulders, and pointed him up the path, as they moved with the mass of people another few steps toward the mansion.

Inside, the place seemed to Hansall incredibly small. All the more so when the docent said, “In one calendar year, 1783, after he was back from the war, Washington and Martha had six hundred and forty-two houseguests.”

Hansall said to an eavesdropping old lady in the group behind them, “Jeez, I don't even like it when my sister wants to bring her kids out for spring break.”

Once finished with the inside, the guide concluded the tour on the back porch overlooking a broad lawn with a beautiful view of the Potomac. “No matter where he went—and he went everywhere his country asked, because he never refused a request for service—General Washington always,
always
longed for nothing more than to be back in this spot. Yet he hardly ever was able to get here.”

After the speech the group was free to roam. Hansall watched as Will and Declan and Harry ran down toward the river's edge. He noticed Jobie walking with one of the girls, deep in discussion. It
was
a beautiful view, Hansall noted for himself. The tourists were diffusing over the lawn. He saw Linda taking in the horizon as well. He moved her way.

“Beautiful,” he said. “I feel like I've been here longer than George himself.”

She nodded but didn't laugh. They both kept looking forward.

“I know how he felt,” Hansall said. When Linda looked at him, he continued, “You know...he just wanted to be left alone.”

She took that in with another nod and kept looking at the river. After a moment, she turned and stared at him.

“Really? Really, Doug?” She was suddenly livid. Like she was over something, past it. “You really know how George Washington felt?”

Taken by surprise, he became quiet. “It's a joke,” he said.

She made a scoffing noise. “You're a real piece of shit, you know that?” She was gone by the time he tried to respond.

***

Mrs. Coyle had allotted a mind-bending six hours for the visit to Mount Vernon. She figured they could take the day exploring its grounds, gardens, and underground museum before heading for the plane. The specter had, for Hansall, the punishing feeling of the day at Williamsburg, on a somewhat smaller scale, like a reprise of a boring song in the second act of a bad musical. The Websters ground their way through the servant's quarters, the blacksmith shed, and the scullery. They spent an hour trudging through the private cemetery, culminating with a solemn procession past the minimausoleum containing the great man's cement tomb. Martha's coffin was next to George's, albeit much smaller—Hansall was gobsmacked to learn she was five foot one. He had always thought of her as a broad woman, with childbearing hips and lots of flesh—the only one who held George under her thumb
.

He pondered this as he sat on a bench on the bottom floor of the museum building waiting for the day to end. He was in the Ye Olde Refreshment Center, a hybrid cafeteria and fast-food restaurant. On one side, cashiers with three-cornered hats took the money of guests who ordered burgers and fries from short-order cooks and slid their trays down aluminum counters, past self-serve soda fountains dispensing Styrofoam cupfuls of Pepsi, Sprite, and Mr. Pibb. On the other side of the pavilion, a shopping-mall-styled McDonald's coexisted, a marvel of cooperation, he thought, between local and national food service.

He had long since lost track of the boys, or anyone from the group. To pass the time he ate. Reasoning that locals produced better food, he hit the Mount Vernon side for an order of fried chicken and macaroni and cheese. He washed it down with a thirty-two-ounce Diet Pepsi and a white-chocolate-chip and macadamia nut cookie.

***

When the bus pulled into the unloading zone at Dulles Airport—yet another horseshoe curve—the headlights of the scores of vehicles jockeying for position cut into the night. The driver didn't turn the engines off, and as the kids piled off and were directed to pick up their bags by the chaperones, Hansall had to yell at Miss Barlow to be heard.

“I have to take off,” he said, jerking his thumb over his shoulder. “Will knows. I have a different ticket—had to do it because I came through New York. I will catch up with you guys at the gate.” With that he found Will and gave him a touch on the shoulder and a wave. He mouthed, “I'll get it taken care of, and I will see you guys in a few minutes.”

He breezed up to the check-in counter, used the electronic kiosk, and was off to the Elite Gold Service security gate. As it happened, each of the lines to the nine metal detectors was empty, and he was through in no time. He checked the monitor and found it was 6:48. He had a full half hour to himself before having to get to the gate with the kids for the eight-thirty takeoff.

To his surprise, there was a decent-looking sushi bar on his way to the D terminal. Within ten minutes he had downed a Kirin Light and asked for another. An order of yellowtail sushi and a spicy tuna roll appeared. Men in suits and stylish women spoke in non-airport ways to the bartenders. It was a rare high-end airport spot with well-dressed regulars, business travelers shuttling to New York and Chicago.

He relaxed and shot the breeze with the waitress until seven thirty. He found an ATM and placed money into Jobie's envelope, subtracting a credible amount for meals and the glossy book from Arlington. On the upswing now for sure, he imagined a smooth accounting to Jobie's parents at the pick-up in LA. Buzzed up by the beer and sake, he glided toward the gate at 7:35. But, when he made it to Gate D-9, the group from Santa Monica was nowhere to be found. He double checked the destination listed on the sign. Yes, the flight at Gate D-9 was to LA, and it was on time. He realized that in his reverie of the liberty of the last hour since he left the group he had not checked his phone. He looked down to find three messages from a number he didn't recognize. He punched into his voicemail.