Leadville: 300 Days Away

by Kara Skye Smith

  "It's shaping up to be a hay ride of a week, guys," says the agent with the radio headset to his ear. "Be on your toes," he tells them.

  Mac nods.

  He looks back out the window, a hazy sky and a setting sun, he acknowledges, "They'll probably start the 'talks' tomorrow."

  Monday, beginning of the near daily scheduled 'talks' between President Nixon and the Prime Minister Zhou, Mac stands at the back of the room with a microphone in his ear, and dark glasses that cover his eyes and avert his secret glances from the public eye, glances that he uses to constantly surveil the doors and the ‘stage’ where the leaders of two countries sit and talk in what appears to be casual conversation. Mac watches photographers, checks passes, continually checks signals of the 'other guys' and stays on his toes with the information of the whereabouts of other CIA officials, Secret Service Agents for the duration of the 'talks'. On Monday, Mac listens through conversation about National Security, Taiwan, Japan, South Asia and the Soviet Union.

  On Tuesday, Mac watches the doors and 'stage', consistently glances around the room for anything, anyone out of place. He checks passes and remains alert of signals from other agents all during discussion of the India-Pakistan issue. He hears President Nixon mention the Vietnam war and the U.S.’s military presence in Asia, almost wishing that the President wouldn’t have mentioned the military debacle quite so early in the talk today. Mac listens intently for the mention of Tibet. Nothing.

  “Tomorrow,” he thinks and responds to the signal another secret service agent has sent him, grabbing - just in time - a news correspondent near an exit door and asking to see his pass.

  On Wednesday, the topic is Taiwan. The U.S. ally during the Cold War is discussed at length while Mac listens to President Nixon discourage Taiwanese independence, suggesting that a move toward alignment with Japan would be a bad idea.

  “Saving the best for last,” Mac thinks to himself fully aware of the pertinence of the Dalai Lama’s exile and the Tibetan Buddist’s request to return ‘home’.

  Thursday. Morning begins with a swift but enjoyable trip to the Great Wall. Mac marvels at is majestic qualities and the ability of Mrs. Nixon to climb 'all those steps'. Kissinger, it is noticed, has elected to stay home. Mac and the other 'agents' have a few laughs, on the way home, about the President's 'right hand' admittedly faking a stomach ache so that he wouldn't have to go along on the strenuous excursion. Thursday’s talks between the two leaders begin with a ‘joke’ about Kissinger writing a book of poetry, and end with both Nixon and Kissinger’s expression of concern that without a U.S. security provision in Asia, Japan might decide to move toward developing nuclear weapons independent of the Chinese or the Soviet Union. Mac does not lose hope that the week’s end will hold a thorough discussion and ‘vote’ toward returning the Tibetans to their homeland, peaceably.

  On Friday, when even the Portugese and their colonial policy are discussed, Mac starts to wonder if he’d been ‘out’ or in the bathroom when Tibet was mentioned. Mac goes over in his mind, quickly, how many times he’d been out of the room. He does not quite understand how the President could just 'not mention' Tibet. Mac does not understand this slight - and Mac is a very smart man. There is really not a lot, that Mac does not understand. Sure, his tendency toward 'caring' has occasionally seen him a downfall or two, but ‘missing the point’ is rarely Mac’s problem, if ever.

  Mac attends the banquet, that night, as requested, enjoying the duck dinner and ‘overseeing’ private photo sessions.

  He listens to the President make a toast in which he quotes Chairman Mao, whom he had managed to see that day on a 'secret' and hushed assembly, “Seize the day, seize the hour!” he says.

  The President mentions, during his toast, the two countries’ differences by saying, “you can’t build a bridge covering 16,000 miles over 22 years in just one week.” Mac hears this and thinks maybe the President has just referred to Tibet. With that, Mac is offered a glimmer of hope toward resolution of what he tries not to, but really does care about, a victorious ending of the ST Circus mission. Mac thinks back. The Chinese invasion of Tibet, having started in 1950, could be what the President had just mentioned, that would make 22 years; but, Mac is not quite sure whether Tibet is what the President refers to. Prime Minister Zhou, during his toast agrees with President Nixon and reiterates.

  “A very good point," he says, "that you can’t build a bridge over 16,000 miles over 22 years in one week.”

  And Mac nearly mumbles to himself, “Just get to the point!” Mac rethinks the miles part of the saying and wonders if, in fact, the two are talking of the McMahon line, the disputed border between Tibet and India.

  Nevertheless, Mac is hopeful for the next day’s talks that a Tibetan resolution can be reached, or at least the subject broached, and wishes that his old friend, Antoine, were here to help decipher the niceties and innuendo. 'Getting to the point', as he would say; Antoine was always very good at that. Mac is suddenly asked to return to the photo room. Mrs. Nixon would like her picture taken with the wife of the Prime Minister.

  Saturday, a strange occurrence unfolds during sight seeing at the Ming Tombs. A slight, or something much talked about, occurs. The pesky arrival of that unshaven camera guy, again, and his perky little camera spokesperson. A group of girls, dressed in the traditional Chinese clothing of their age (a group of children) are sent to meander the Ming Tomb area while the President and his wife arrive for their 'visit'.

  "Seems not too out of place," is Mac's opinion, but for some reason the camera guy just can't let it go. A slip, a faux pas, and the mention of a 'cover up'. During the talks with the Prime Minster, later that day, he apologizes for the contrived arrival of the girls to 'prettify', he calls it, their visit to the monument. Prime Minster Zhou admits that the press had made the accusation that the presence of the children untruthfully conveyed the image, a false facade, of the tombs, or something like that is what the American press had said; and, the Prime Minister apologizes. President Nixon accepts the apology and warns Prime Minister Zhou of the dangers that the American press can, and does, arouse. Tainting Sino-American relations is not in either of these countries' best interest; and, he tells the Prime Minister that the U.S. press is better left appeased. The apology works unfailingly.

  The conversation most of that day, whether spurred by the press 'leak' or not, is rather unremarkable; nothing much out of the ordinary is said at all. Mac, while listening, gets the urge to scratch his head. He does not scratch his head, though, as his every move and ‘signal’ goes toward protecting the room, the room full of great leaders that he stands in. So, Mac does not scratch his head, but he’d like to.

  In fact, Mac would like to cock his head to one side, give his head a good scratch, and even put out the palms of his hands and ask, "What the hell are you doing here? Haven't you forgotten something? Didn't you, not long ago, drop arms into Tibet - down to those guys that you asked me and the 10th Mountain Division of ST Circus to train? Train to fight, remember? Didn't you 'okay' supply drops to 'keep us going', long enough to fight... the Chinese? It's called The Resistance, remember?"

  The Resistance of Chinese invasion, he wants to pantomime, just in case the President 'forgot'.

  "O, I suppose that is so ten years ago," he thinks, "but that's been ten years without freedom to the 'guys' in Tibet!" Maybe, Mac decides, the President thinks it's all over with. Mac suddenly wants to walk to the front and whisper in the President's ear, "It isn't over yet. Didn't your precious right hand, over there, tell you, it isn't over yet? The Dalai Lama would like to go home now." But, Mac just stares at the front of the room. He really wants to scratch his head, right now.

  He really wants to ask the American leader, who is holding out his teacup at this moment, "Just what the hell are you doing here?"

  Mac swallows down his own saliva that wells up enough that he could spit it and reminds himself to calm down.

  "Remember not to care
," Mac repeats several times, like a mantra, not out loud, but to himself. Once he is calm, his head itch gone and his palms not sweating, Mac's thoughts wander toward retirement.

  "How do you retire from caring about the lives of the men you've trained," Mac wonders and then he hears himself think of what Antoine would say, "You just do."

  Sunday, there is a party with tuxes and evening gowns - and it isn't worth the price of 'waiting' for a car.

  On Monday there is a discussion of ‘what wasn’t discussed’ that ends with the mutual agreement that discussions over India, Japan and the Soviet Union will not be ‘mentioned’ to any one ‘outside the small circle’ within the room. 'The small circle' who have witnessed the Nixon-Zhou talks are priviledged with the information and must be briefed not to 'tell' any one, outside of this room, especially press people. The notes of the talks will be deemed 'classified'. Nixon ‘vows’ that he would never ‘embarass’ Zhou in front of his own government like that - 'like that' meaning by divulging the fact that India, Japan and the Soviet Union were actually discussed. Jamaica is talked about, no breach there; and Kissinger makes several bad jokes about a recent vacation, and how he’ll never visit that particular island again.

  Just as the news correspondent had opened the historic event of the meeting of these two Cold War nations announcing the start of the extensive two week talks, she just as perkily closes the U.S.’s coverage of the event as if not a step has been missed. Just like her head - not a hair out of place - the viewer of her newscast is led to believe that not a rival is left undiscouraged and not a detail is left undone, opening relations between the U.S. and China ... or, something like that. But, for Mac, and Tenzing, the Dalai Lama, Danthra and the Resistance fighters along the mountain passes of Mustang, who on this very day, and for the last ten years, hold American guns in their hands, it is as if the two rivals of this resistance had sipped ice teas, poolside, and talked about their wives. Nothing. Not a mention. Not a word.

  "Was this the same country who had invaded Tibet talking with the same country that had trained Tibetan men to fight against the invasion?" The question is laid out there.

  "Apparently so," Tenzing says on Mac's first and last visit of his life to Darjeeling, sitting next to Matseidha at the wooden table near the dumpling stand. “You are telling me this about the great country that flew me to the other side of the world and taught me to shoot 'big guns'?” Mac shakes his head and lowers it, looking at the leftover ‘beer’ from Losar that sits before him.

  “You wouldn’t know it, either” he tells Tenzing. “At least, you and I wouldn’t. To everybody else in the room, and apparently the rest of the world... it sounded great!” Mac fakes enthusiasm in a joking sense, as he has found himself doing lately. It used to be that this same enthusiasm came straight from the heart for Mac, and only from the heart, never fake. There just wasn’t any other way with Mac, until now, of late, when sarcasm and cynicism had set in. Discouraged and alone, off-duty after his secret service work assignment - only seven agents on the plane back to the U.S. with the President - Mac shows Tenzing his itinerary, and talks about the places he plans to travel on his ‘way home’.

  Mac does not mention his wife, just now, like usual. He ignores the fact that his wife counts the days until his return, on trips like these; and he wonders, for the first time, what it's like to spin a prayer wheel. Mac decides to 'head off' toward Katmandu, he tells Tenzing, and see if he can get clearance into Lhasa, the forbidden city. There is no talk of Danthra. Tenzing doesn't mention him, now that he is gone; and Mac has forgotten that the two were brothers.

  Tenzing, with discouragement or sadness to his voice after all the jolly merriment of seeing Mac, turns to Matseidha, a weak moment, without hope, "Imagine hearing this information that Mac tells us," he says to Matseidha in the dialect from Amdo, "from where my brother was standing that day. Maybe now you grasp the importance of his sacrifice. This is why I want the sword," he says to her, after being informed by Mac about the made-up minds of the Americans to shun their loyal helpers in the fight against communist invasion, by now embracing the very communists the American's themselves had once determined 'bad'.

  "Shaking hands with China, not a mention of Tibet - today I fear," he tells his wife, "that you and me and all Tibetans might never go back home."

  Stephanie, on her couch in Leadville, watches President Nixon, on television, at the banquet with the Chinese Prime Minister.

  “Look he’s gonna eat all that with chopsticks. You ever eat with chop sticks?” James sits down on the arm of the couch while Stephanie matches up her daughter’s socks.

  “Thanks to the satellite, more people watched Nixon’s speech from China than any President’s speech ever in history - all over the world,” he says.

  “Well! What do you know,” she pats James' leg, “smart kid!" she tells him. "And look at him, he can’t eat with those things! O, somebody outta get him a fork. The world is watching you,” she says to Nixon on the television, “not being able to eat with those things.”

  “Mom,” James lets fly out of his mouth, “I want go live with Mary Beth, in California. For a while!” he says, jumping off the couch's arm both hands up, pressing the air, as if fanning the flames of her temper.

  “You can sit down,” she says, “I’m not gonna bite ‘ya. I'm not gonna howl or yell, this time. Probably cause you're expecting me to. Actually, darlin', you know, I thought I’d hear this from you, someday. I just didn’t think it’d be so soon. Seventeen, I thought. For some reason I just always thought Mary Beth would wander back in here sometime during your seventeenth year. I’d pictured it at your seventeenth birthday, actually.” Stephanie whaps a pair of girl’s socks against the stacks of them that lay across her thighs and sighs a weary, tearful sounding sigh.

  “You gotta go so damned far away, though?” she asks. "Nothing wrong with Leadville. Mary Beth don't fit in, but there ain't nothing wrong with you staying here with her, in Leadville. Why do you have to go so damned far away?"

  “That’s just where she lives now, Mom” he says and shrugs. “She says I’d like it, a lot. I think I would too. And, well, mom, I’ve never seen the ocean, you know that? Mary Beth tells me that you haven't either. She says that's just a shame.”

  “Mm. She live near the ocean?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “O sure. Have you seen any pictures?”

  “Mom!”

  “She’s coming for ya today, isn’t she?”

  He nods his head.

  “She never gives but a blink of notice. Legally, until you’re fifteen-”

  “She said you’d say that.”

  “Ugh! Don’t tell me Mary Beth is predicting my words, now, please don’t. O just go, before I say no. Before I yell at you and send you to your room for the next two years just for asking and upsetting me today," she points to the TV.

  He lets out a happy yell and runs behind the couch. He slides toward his room on his sock covered feet across polished oak floors.

  "Today!" Stephanie says, "when the U.S. President is over there in China eating at a banquet. You know he's the first president we have to ever go to China, don't ya? You do not want to upset me today. This is a day of hope, James. I suppose I’m gonna hear it from you, soon as you're fifteen, any way."

  She yells down the hall, "And don’t take anything I didn’t give ya for Christmas! If you go to that Disneyland, you send me something back for your sister! You hear me?!” She yells toward his room, yelling over the television that starts to play the music of The Walter Cronkite show. “I wonder what he’s doing over there in China, besides eating, that is.”

  “Mom,” James says, coming back out to the front with a suitcase in his hands, “I learned in school you’re supposed to say the People’s Republic of China, or just People’s Republic, for short.”

  “You did, huh? Well, it was China before you were born,” she says.

  “Don’t sound so old fashio
ned.”

  “O hush,” she says, her voice grows quiet as she watches him unzip the suitcase.

  “What have you got there? You packing up already?”

  He nods his head, “Uh-huh. Startin’ to.”

  “O, come here,” she whines and opens out her arms, “I just want you to know, whatever she tells you, that it wasn’t my fault.” She gives him a big hug. She pushes his hair away from his eyes and looks into them. “She will say it, too. I did what I could cause I love ‘ya. I didn’t want to ruin your life. I didn’t ‘steal you away’ or nothin’. It’s just, I cared. And I cared for you... I intend to keep on caring for you. But, I’m gonna let you go, seeing you to together-" she pauses and does not finish the sentence. "Go and visit her - see what she's like. Go and then come back, you understand?”

  “You know,” he tells her, “I try not to get involved. I like having both of you, now that I ‘know’ both of you, in my life. I don’t want to be in the middle of a fight,” he smiles, “so I don’t listen to either one of you. That's how I do it. Didn’t you know that?”

  Stephanie laughs, “I should have. You are a man child after all. Not sure what man’s ever listened to me, my whole life. But you will do as I say,” she tells him. “Go get that big suitcase, out of my closet,” she says. “You can have that one. This thing’s too small.” She hugs him again. “Go on,” she says.