HE’S WEAK. IT was obvious on his face. This supposed man, this President, was struggling to hold back tears. Didn’t he know that death was part of life? He’d caused death, hadn’t he? Didn’t he know what death was? Was he only learning now? The other faces did know. One could see that. They were somber, because at a funeral it was expected that one had to be somber, but all life came to an end. Ryan ought to know. He’d faced danger–but that was long ago, he reminded himself, and over time men forget such things. Ryan had had ample cause to forget
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life’s vulnerabilities, protected as he’d been as a government official. It amazed the man how much one could learn from a few seconds’ examination of a human face. That made things easier, didn’t it?
SHE WAS FIVE rows back, but was on the aisle, and though the Prime Minister of India could see only the back of President Ryan’s head, she, too, was a student of human behavior. A chief of state couldn’t act like this. A chief of state was, after all, an actor on the world’s most important stage, and you had to learn what to do and how to behave. She’d been going to funerals of various sorts all of her life, because political leaders had associates–not always friends–young and old, and one had to show respect by appearing, even for those one had detested. In the latter case, it could be amusing. In her country the dead were so often burned, and then she could tell herself that, perhaps, the body was still alive as it burned. Her eyebrows flickered up and down in private amusement at the thought. Especially for the ones you detested It was such good practice. To appear saddened. Yes, we had our differences, but he was always someone to be respected, someone you could work with, someone whose ideas were always worth serious attention. With practice over the years, you got good enough that the survivors believed the lies– partly because they wanted to believe. You learned to smile just so, and to show grief just so, and to speak just so. You had to. A political leader could rarely allow true feelings to show. True feelings told others what your weaknesses were, and there were always those to use them against you–and so over the years you hid them more and more, until eventually you had few, if any, true feelings left. And that was good, because politics wasn’t about feelings.
Clearly this Ryan fellow didn’t know that, the Prime Minister of “the world’s largest democracy” told herself. As a result, he was showing what he really was, and worse still, for him, he was doing so in front of a third of the world’s highest political leaders, people who would see and learn and file their thoughts away for future use. Just
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as she was doing. Marvelous, she thought, keeping her face somber and sad in honor of someone she’d thoroughly detested. When the organist began the first hymn, she lifted her book, turned the page to the proper number, and sang along with everyone else.
THE RABBI WENT first. Each clergyman was given ten minutes, and each of them was an expert–more properly, each was a genuine scholar in addition to his calling as a man of God. Rabbi Benjamin Fleischman spoke from the Talmud and the Torah. He spoke of duty and honor and faith, of a merciful God. Next came the Reverend Frederick Ralston, the Senate Chaplain–he’d been out of town that night, and so spared of a more restrained participation in the events of the day. A Southern Baptist and distinguished authority on the New Testament, Ralston spoke of Christ’s Passion in the garden, of his friend Senator Richard Eastman of Oregon, who lay in the sacristy, universally respected as an honorable member of the Congress, segueing then into praise of the fallen President, a devoted family man, as all knew. . ..
There was no “right” way to handle such things, Ryan thought. Maybe it would be easier if the minister/ priest/rabbi had time to sit with the grieving, but that hadn’t happened in this case, and he wondered–
No, this isn’t right! Jack told himself. This was theater. It wasn’t supposed to be that. There were kids sitting a few feet across the aisle to his left, and for them this wasn’t theater at all. This was a lot simpler for them. It was Mom and Dad, ripped out of their lives by a senseless act, denying them the future that life was supposed to guarantee them, love and guidance, a chance to grow in a normal way into normal people. Mark and Amy were the important ones here, but the lessons of this service, which were supposed to help them, were instead aimed at others. This whole event was a political exercise, something to reassure the country, renew people’s faith in God and the world and their country, and maybe the people out there behind the twenty-three cameras in the church needed that, but there were people in greater need, the children of Roger
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and Anne Durling, the grown sons of Dick Eastman, the widow of David Kohn of Rhode Island, and the surviving family of Marissa Henrik of Texas. Those were real people, and their personal grief was being subordinated to the needs of the country. Well, the country be damned! Jack thought, suddenly angry at what was happening, and at himself for not grasping it early enough to change things around. The country had needs, but those needs could not be so great as to overshadow the horror fate had inflicted on kids. Who spoke for them? Who spoke to them? Worst of all for Ryan, a Catholic, Michael Cardinal O’Leary, Archbishop of Washington, was no better. “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called …” For Mark and Amy, Jack’s mind raged, their father wasn’t a peacemaker. He was Dad, and Dad was gone, and that wasn’t an abstraction. Three distinguished, learned, and very decent members of the clergy were preaching to a nation, but right before them were children who got a few kind words of lip service, and that was all. Somebody had to speak to them, for them, about their parents. Somebody had to try to make things better. It wasn’t possible, but someone had to try, damn it! Maybe he was President of the United States. Maybe he had a duty to the millions behind the cameras, but Jack remembered the time his wife and daughter had been in Baltimore’s Shock-Trauma Center, hovering between life and death, and that hadn’t been a damned abstraction, either. That was the problem. That was why his family had been attacked. That was why all these people had died–because some misguided fanatic had seen them all as abstractions instead of human beings with lives and hopes and dreams–and kids. It was Jack’s job to protect a nation. He’d sworn to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States, and he would do that to the best of his ability. But the purpose of the Constitution was pretty simple–to secure the blessings of liberty for people, and that included kids. The country he served and the government he was trying to lead were nothing more or less than a mechanism to protect individual people. That duty was not an abstraction. The reality of that duty sat ten feet to his left, holding back tears as best they could, and probably failing, because
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there was no feeling lonelier than what those kids were suffering right now, while Mike O’Leary spoke to a country instead of a family. The theater had lasted long enough. There came another hymn, and then it was Ryan’s turn to rise and walk to the pulpit.
Secret Service agents turned around, again sweeping the nave, because now SWORDSMAN was an ideal target. Getting to the lectern, he saw that Cardinal O’Leary had done as instructed and set the presidential binder on the wooden top. No, Jack decided. No. His hands grasped the sides of the lectern to steady himself. His eyes swept briefly across the assembly, and then looked down on the children of Roger and Anne Durling. The pain in their eyes broke his heart. They’d borne all the burdens placed on them by duties never theirs to carry. They’d been told by some unnamed “friends” to be braver than would have been asked of any Marine at such a time, probably because, “Mom and Dad would want you to.” But bearing pain in quiet dignity was not the business of children. That was what adults were supposed to do, as best they could. Enough, Jack told himself, my duty starts here. The first duty of the strong was ever to protect the weak. His hands squeezed on the polished oak, and the self-inflicted pain helped compose his thoughts.