White Man's Problems (20 page)

Hansall pulled off his own sweatshirt.

“No. Here, take that off and put this on.”

Jobie was startled and removed his wet coat. As he took Hansall's sweatshirt, the little boy broke into a wide grin. “This is going to be really big on me,” he said. Eventually his bangs poked through the neck and he smiled at Hansall. The sweatshirt was like a gigantic caftan. Hansall helped Jobie push up the sleeves and tucked the back into his jeans as best he could. Jobie looked down at the letters printed across the chest. He looked up at Hansall again. “Brown,” he said.

Hansall was not sure what Jobie meant. “Yeah? That's where I went to college. It's called Brown.”

“The color brown?”

“Yeah.”

Jobie cocked his head in confusion.

“Well, no. It's named after some guy named Brown.”

Jobie nodded as though he were a magistrate, or a policeman, or a teacher who had just been presented with a reasonable idea. “Brown,” he repeated. Then he ran to catch up with the other boys.

Will drifted next to Hansall a few minutes later, as they passed the picket-fence white headstones, and they walked without speaking. He looked at the boy's straight hair. Will's skin was pale, a bit washed out, especially considering he was a Californian. Hansall wondered, as he often did, what his son's true feelings were toward him. He concluded that it was disappointed love.

Hansall thought of how this contrasted with his own feelings about his parents. He went to memories of his mother rather than his father, probably because she was gone now. Even as a very young boy, he looked forward to being with her. He carried with him images of riding in the Pontiac, the two of them, singing songs on the way to the supermarket. He couldn't wait to get home from school to see her, to hear what she planned to do for the rest of the day. When asked in later life for his earliest memory, he always had the same reply: a Saturday morning play class—a prehistoric Mommy and Me—in which a long, thin foam mat was placed in the middle of the tile floor in the Methodist Church basement, and he and the other kids would practice tumblesaults. He could still see and feel the burnt-red foam, the topside covered with a shiny skin, the bottom spongy and more prone to erosion, little silver-dollar-sized divots probably bitten out by toddlers. He remembered tasting that foam. He remembered his mother's wide-open arms as she motioned for him to tuck his head down and roll toward her.

“Dad,” Will said, pointing at a tombstone near the path, “why does that one have just numbers?”

Two rows in, a marble slab did not have a name and life and death details. It read, “11342345.”

“It must be a temporary,” said Hansall. “Like a placeholder until they get the rest of the info on the soldier.” The other boys stopped and looked at it, too.

“No,” said Linda, who walked by as they slowed. “That's a serial number. That's what they do when they can't identify the remains.”

The long walk uphill ended a few minutes later at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. At a whispered command from Mrs. Coyle, they hurried to catch the Changing of the Guard. Right on the hour, the children stretched on their tiptoes to see the clicking and clacking soldiers march back and forth along the marble, until the retiring sentry was replaced by the new man, who took his place in the guard box, face chiseled into a glare. As Hansall took in the new marine's final position, sideways, he wondered if the guards were really guarding anything.

The group made their way from the monument.

“So no one knows who he is?” said Will.

“Nope,” Hansall said.

“Not even his family?” said Declan.

“Not even the army people?” said Harry.

“Someone must have known when they buried him,” said Will.

“They told them to forget,” said Jobie. “They told anybody that knew about him to forget him. His mother, his brother, sister.”

“That's crazy,” said Harry.

“War is hell,” said Jobie with a shrug.

***

When they reached the Visitor's Center on their way to the bus, the kids swarmed into yet another gift shop. Hansall marveled at the consistency of the color scheme. It, too, was beige, with new carpet and brown shelves. The workers again wore vague uniforms, and the kids scattered among the souvenirs. He stood at the entranceway, near the checkout counter, near but not talking to a cluster of teachers and moms.

Jobie approached him. “Can I have my money?”

“What is it this time?”

He held up a glossy coffee-table book. “I need fifty-five.” Hansall noticed Mrs. Coyle heading over, and, figuring he had backup, looked sternly at the kid.

“C'mon, Jobie,” he said, loud enough for the teacher to hear. “Not again. You can't spend that kind of money.”

“What's he saying?” Mrs. Coyle said.

“We're at it again,” Hansall explained, rolling his eyes. “He wants fifty-five bucks to buy a book.”

Jobie held up the book.
The Illustrated History of the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier
. He glared at Hansall, then turned to Mrs. Coyle. “It's my money.”

Hansall took the book out of his hand. “Jobie, we said n—”

“Well,” Mrs. Coyle interrupted. “I don't think that's so bad. Is this what you really want?”

Jobie nodded. She looked at Hansall and turned her palms and said, “Let him get it. It's a nice book.”

Jobie snatched the book back from Hansall and got in the checkout line. Hansall shuffled to the line and stood without speaking to Jobie, watching the checkers slide items into the clear plastic gift bags. Hansall thought,
This is a cemetery, for crissakes.

Then a bolt of panic hit him as reached in his pocket. He didn't have Jobie's money. Hansall knew he could not pull out a credit card, because the kid would freak out if he didn't see the money come from his envelope. Hansall scoured the inside of the shop for an ATM but couldn't find a machine. The checker said, “Next.”

“Hi,” Hansall said in his nicest voice. The checker was yet another retiree, a rail-thin man with a gray beard. “Hey, can I give you a check?”

The man shook his head. “No checks.” Hansall glanced down and saw Jobie leaning in. Hansall snuck a look at what money he had left in his pants pocket. Sixteen dollars. Behind him, the line of tourists waiting to throw down for Arlington National Cemetery swag was backing up. The old man behind the register stared at him. Then he shifted his gaze to Hansall's right.

Linda was at his side. “How much is it?” she said. She ignored Hansall and handed the checker three twenties. She retrieved her change and the book, now encased in a large clear gift bag, and handed it to Jobie. She put her hand on the small of the boy's back and guided him out of the store.

They shuttled their way through the rest of the day. A blindingly fast trip to the Air and Space Museum at the Smithsonian left the boys unsatisfied, and Hansall toyed with the idea of inciting a gender fight on behalf of his guys. Where they wanted to linger with astronaut uniforms and retrorockets, the women running the show hurried them back onto the bus. But the group dynamic reclaimed even Hansall when they passed the Washington Monument, and by now the kids did not have to wait for Mrs. Coyle to start the chant. Jobie, in fact, seemed on perpetual lookout, and he jumped up and shouted, “Standing at five hundred fifty-five feet and three-quarter inches…”

The rest of the bus joined in, “The world's largest freestanding masonry structure…” Hansall found himself catching on to the cadence, chiming in with the others, swept up by the natural force of ringing in on something. He looked down at Will, who was beaming as he gave full-throated voice with the other kids, proud as they were of accomplishment in memorizing the words, in memorializing the Memorial. He smiled at his dad.

“…The Washington Monument.”

***

Hansall's brief bubble of belonging was burst at the National Archive, where the Websters stood in line outside of the building for forty-five minutes. As they waited, the women seemed to enclose around Linda. Rather than hanging back and bridging the gender gap as she had been doing throughout the trip, a shuttle diplomat of sorts, determined to keep the peace and find common ground with Hansall, she was returning to her female nation-state. The mothers and teachers surrounded her, their arms touched her, they practically hugged her. Their private laughter rang at him, a stuck-out tongue.

The boys were ensconced in a ridiculous conversation about bonus patches for Grand Theft Auto, so, as they moved into the somber old building, Hansall felt, once again, alone. The big news at the National Archive was not even national. The Magna Carta was on temporary loan from wherever it was housed, or, more accurately, wherever it was that housed the earliest copies of the Magna Carta, of which there were apparently only five, that being the number of Magna Cartas that were needed to proclaim the new normal across England in 1215. It was unclear to Hansall which Magna Carta was in front of them now, but it was plain that any one of the early copies was so special that it warranted first-stop special-guest-star status on the United States National Archive tour of Freedom's Greatest Hits. Hansall wondered if it shouldn't read “3/5” at the lower right-hand corner, like a very limited and very valuable Warhol lithograph.

The light around the glass-encased parchment made clear viewing impossible. He had a recollection of a World War II novel in which a bunch of German soldiers went through an elaborate plan to kill Winston Churchill, only to find out that the man they ultimately took out was not Winston Churchill but an impostor used by the British to fake everyone out. Instincts ignited, Hansall found it suspect that the English would let the U.S. have
any
of the real Magna Cartas. The kids peered in at the grand old document, their faces hopeful but vacant. They hadn't yet covered the Magna Carta in social studies, Ms. Barlow explained. Hansall wondered what the hell the children could possibly be grasping from this. What was a kid growing up three thousand miles away going to get out of fifteen seconds in front of this abstract reduction? All anyone ever understood about the Magna Carta was that it was the granddaddy of them all, like the Rose Bowl.

Onward through the Archive they zoomed, taking in the Declaration of Independence, The Constitution, and The Emancipation Proclamation, collectively, in less time than they spent waiting to use the urinals at lunchtime on the scalding day in Williamsburg. Hansall brought Will back for a second look at the Bill of Rights, dutifully trying to attach significance to the one thing on this journey he wanted his son to understand.

“All of our freedom—everything—comes from this paragraph, if you ask me,” he said, pointing to the First Amendment. To their credit, the boys, including Jobie, went to their tiptoes.

Will pointed to a place lower on the piece of parchment. “Dad, what is the Seventh Amendment?”

Hansall felt the wave of panic he always felt when he should know something but did not. He was a fake. He had faked everything—high school, college, law school. He knew there were objective measures such as diplomas and the bar exam, but felt nonetheless that if he were the real deal, he would remember the Seventh Amendment.

“It's complicated,” he said, in an authoritative voice. “It has to do with states' rights…the rights of the states.”

“Really?” said Declan.

“Of course,” said Jobie. “Mr. Hansall is a lawyer. That's what lawyers study, the Constitution and the amendments.”

***

Hansall's hangover did not improve during the long, hot day, and by the time they finished a hectic dinner in Chinatown, he was exhausted. Next the group took on the Korean Memorial, with its statues of soldiers moving through rice paddies. The GIs had green pit helmets, with the netting and packs of cigarettes fastened in the band. The memorial was made up of a wall of superimposed images, snapshots of young men at war, portraits taken by Polaroid during down times. Mrs. Coyle told the kids to look closely for a dog, and at the end of the wall collage, one of the girls jumped and squealed and pointed to a German shepherd in the arms of two infantrymen.

Will and Hansall stared at the picture. Hansall noticed the boy was upset.

“It makes me think of Rusty,” Will said.

Hansall and Johanna had purchased Rusty as a puppy in happier times, and he had become Will's dog. Rusty had to be put down several months earlier, on New Year's Eve. Hansall had not come to the house for the vet's visit, at the conclusion of which it was decided Rusty had suffered long enough. Johanna told Hansall the next day, while he was watching the Rose Bowl.

“Well, buddy, Rusty is in a better place now.” Seeing that didn't work very well, Hansall nodded to the picture. “Just like that guy. He's long gone by now, too.”

Will rushed ahead to find Declan. Per Mrs. Coyle's instruction, the children held hands as they moved through the mass of spring breakers splaying out over the conjunction of memorials surrounding the mall and made their way to the steps of the Lincoln. Swept up in goal gradient and overtired, they ran up the white granite stairs, and Hansall struggled to keep up. When he arrived at the top, the group had turned and was looking out. It was just becoming dark, and the Washington Monument stood at the end of the reflecting pool, with the Capitol Building on the horizon.

“You all remember Martin Luther King, whom we talked about,” said Ms. Coyle. “Well, you are standing right where he stood when he gave the speech. Who can remember what the speech was called?”

Hands shot up and several of the kids strained to get her attention. “Let's see how much the parents know,” she said. “Who can answer? Linda?”

“It was the
I Have a Dream
speech.”