by Leon Uris
“Then why am I so overjoyed? Thornton snarled.
“That personality drove you to earning twenty-five billion dollars, the American presidency, and for a fleeting moment you nearly gained control of all the king’s horses and all the king’s men.”
“I had it right here,” he said, showing his fist. Darnell turned his eyes away. “Didn’t I?”
“The people didn’t think so, Thornton. Greed is endemic but when the time came to have the Lincoln Memorial sponsored by Nathan’s hot dogs, they shamed.”
Thornton tried to understand.
“We name our children after our father and mother, or an aunt or a hero. We bury our dead in green lawns and bring fresh flowers to keep their sainted memory. We weep on bad days of remembrance of our family. We toil for them. We are tender to our aged. And we fight them tooth and nail.”
“And .. . ?”
*
“I haven’t cried for a dead computer,” Darnell said. “Men like us, who were there at the beginning, should taught have computers their proper place, before they gained control over the morals of half the human race.”
“Hasn’t that always been the game?” Thornton asked. “The irresistible personality in man driving us to wars. So, what do we do, Darnell?”
“We may think we’re hot stuff now, but we’ve a lot of catching up to become as great as we have been in our past. Fortunately, there is a lot to draw on.”
Thornton Tomtree paled. “And Quinn O’Connell personifies our past greatness .. . and .. . the way to the future. That son of a bitch. You said I had no control over the drive of my personality.”
“That’s right, Thornton.”
Pucky entered. “The O’Connells are arriving. We should meet them at the front door.”
“This tea is a pretty shitty tradition, if you ask me,” Thornton said, creaking out of his seat. “What the hell do we talk about?”
“Oh, the Denver Broncos,” Darnell said, “O’Connell is a Bronco junky.”
“I, Quinn Patrick O’Connell do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will, to the best of my ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States.”
In all the heavens we know of and all the heavens we know nothing of, can there be a more almighty event to befall a single, lone person?
The thousands arrayed before him in chilled air did not budge.
“I have come to you for about a year to listen to your aspirations and
to present you with my vision of the future. You have told me,
resoundingly, that now is time for America to travel the high road. The high road requires of every citizen to lend their energy to one gigantic swell for progress and decency.. ..”
Quinn reviewed the things he wanted to bring to America, always with
reference to the most generous and decent people in the world.
And, in a few moments, because it was very cold, he concluded on his lofty theme, knowing he will be fought all the way, but daring those who would turn him back or those whose robber hearts who would take the planet down.
“The human race,” Quinn said, “has functioned from its first day on the proposition that some people are superior to others and thus empowered to rule and exploit those people of lesser stuff. Humanity is often mistaken as civility. Humans have always been somewhat less than human. Well then, how do we score this game? Every so often a MORAL IMPERATIVE demands that we must alter our sense of humanity or fade into the stardust of the universe.
“Slavery and our Civil War was just such a MORAL IMPERATIVE. After the Holocaust we believed, did we not, that no such event could happen again in the family of man. But genocide by the human race to the human race has happened over and over.
“In the beginning of the last century we awakened to the invention of electric light and airplanes and the X ray and the automobile and film. And, also, the machine gun, a weapon that killed twenty thousand men at the Somme River in a single day.
“We kick the door open now and march into this twenty first century with more promise that the human race can solve the enormous tasks before of feeding and giving a decent life and preserve this planet.
“When the sums are added, the meaning of the past century was a rising of people to liberate themselves from their masters. It was the century ‘
“Yet the seeds of hatred are within us all. Along with unrivaled
progress in our way of life, we must face the demand of a MORAL IMPERATIVE with the goal of eradicating racism. Racism from person to person, tribe to tribe, and nation to nation is the greatest blight on the people of this land, of this world.
“No, we can never defeat it entirely. But we must know to recognize it, confront it, and destroy it wherever it surfaces.
“And, in this matter, we have a richness of different communities and our basic decency to say, who better than America can lead the way.”
There was a long, long moment of silence as Quinn stepped away. Then from this side of the Mall and that side and from the stands a single word was chanted and swelled till the old town shook.
“QUINN!” they cried, “QUINN! QUINN! QUINN!”
Ah, it was a good thing Rita remembered to slip in a couple of pairs of apres-ski boots in the president al limo for the street was slushy. They walked to the White House as hands reached out begging for a touch, crying the chant.
Quinn saw an awed little fellow of about twelve whose clothing told him he was poor. Quinn halted for a moment, took off his new Stetson, and put it on the lad.
A few moments later they took their places in the reviewing stand and up Pennsylvania Avenue came the Marine Corps band. It stopped before Gunner Quinn and, behind the trumpet and drum roll, played “Hail to the Chief.”
And on came America.
Chinese dragon dancers.
And a man on stilts dressed as Uncle Sam.
And floats with coal miners and mules from Virginia and a lobster boat from main.
And up the street marched the Mount St. Joseph High School band of Bloemer, New Mexico, who traveled to the capital on money earned picking crops.
And the replica of the Statue of Liberty.
And the United States Army Band.
And prairie schoolers.
And a fly over nudging the sound barrier.
And minutemen.
And the fiercest posse in the West.
And the United States Navy Band.
And mountains and plains and rivers and streams and timber and paddlewheel boats and alligators and floats bulging with the bounty of the nation.
The last division of marchers were led by the United States Air Force Band just as the sun began to lose its zest.
It would be another hour before the some thirty inaugural balls would require their visit. Already the night was punctured by ten thousand fireworks.
Quinn realized he was quite out of the world this moment, but the sight of Rita dressing brought the biggest smile of the day. Better get a move on, he told himself as he patted his pants and jacket pockets before emptying them. He withdrew the note that Rita had written the night before.
For My Beloved
It has come to this
You beside me
This is my unwritten speech to you
Inaugural, a first poem
You found in your pocket
On this night I am my own crowd of supporters,
“Which trusts so much the familiar slope of your ear that listens to
you listen,
gives a fair account of what you hear,
surrounds your every cell as if each were its own true conviction,
and I am not afraid how many other distant from you may keep you this way.
For the want to know you as I know you,
just as after seeing a painting of a radiant faraway land.
You arrive there and find it unchanged.
>
Leon Uris, A God in Ruins
(Series: # )