The President

by Parker Hudson

  The luncheon over, the family moved to the West Wing, where the adults had coffee in the Oval Office and the youngest children played outside on the lawn. Exactly at 2:30 Hugh heard the familiar beat of what he knew would be three Sea Knight helicopters, painted green, descending on the South Lawn.

  When the family members arrived at the White House earlier that day they had given their luggage to a member of the staff. Now they were to be ferried by helicopters to Camp David for the weekend. The customary three helicopters, deployed as a group to confuse anyone trying to do harm to the president, would be more than adequate to transport even their large family. Only the president’s parents had elected to be driven to the Maryland hilltop retreat.

  Once the helicopters had landed and disengaged their rotors, the family assembled in the sunshine for a group picture on the South Lawn steps. Then with waves and smiles toward the small army of reporters and photographers who covered the president’s every step, the Harrison family moved toward the waiting helicopters. Within five minutes the rotors were again engaged, and the three craft took off one at a time for the low-level, exhilarating ride to Camp David. For Hugh a ride in a helicopter was nothing new, but even he enjoyed the view of Washington and the Maryland countryside. And for the other family guests it was a thrilling kickoff to what they hoped would be an exceptional weekend together.

  Thirty minutes later Leslie Sloane was devouring a pita pocket sandwich at the U.S. Network’s Washington bureau when the telephone on her desk rang. She removed the large earring from her right ear and answered.

  “Hi, Leslie. It’s Ryan. How are you?”

  “I’m fine, Ryan. Sorry, you caught me with my mouth full of a very late lunch after covering the president’s getaway to Camp David.”

  “That’s actually why I’m calling. Is there a story there? Is he really just going off with his family for Easter Weekend, or is something else going on we don’t know about?”

  “I don’t think so, Ryan. I know Chris Wright pretty well now, and he swears it’s just what it appears. I even asked Bob Horan which staff members are going, and he said no one, not even Jerry Richardson. Bob said the president basically gave everyone the weekend off and told them to go home, that he was going to spend some time with his family. There’s a rumor that his wife put her foot down and even made him leave all his files here. Other than the military aide who carries the codes, the communications personnel, and the Marines who guard Camp David, and his family, of course, I think he really is alone.”

  “Well,” Ryan pressed, “is that a story? I mean, is he tired? Does he already need to recharge his batteries? Is the job getting to him?”

  “Hey, let’s give him some slack.” She took a sip of her soft drink, then continued. “He’s the best chance we’ve got to make a real difference in this country. Remember what happened last time when we lambasted the president after only a few months? We made him a lame duck for almost four years. Let’s not shoot ourselves in the collective foot again and kill one of our own before he even gets started. I assure you I’m on top of this, and let’s just play it like it is: a restful weekend with his family, showing them what it’s like to be the first family.”

  “Okay. But don’t be blinded and miss a story when it’s right in front of you.”

  “Ryan,” Leslie said, her tone conveying her irritation, “how long have I been at this? If anything, I’m becoming more of an insider. These people are really beginning to open up to me. Just this morning Patricia Barton-North’s domestic policy advisor gave me some unreported examples of how some new equal-but-separate arrangements are working at colleges and public schools, and she asked me to help with a story on them. I’ll pass them to Julia Porter there in New York. If she does the story, the VP will owe us one.”

  “Sounds good. I know you’re doing a great job. I’m sorry if I came on too strong.”

  “Apology accepted,” Leslie responded.

  “Listen, when are you coming up to the Big Apple?”

  Leslie smiled. The gossip columns had speculated for months that she and Ryan Denning were an item, but so far there was no truth to it, other than that they worked closely together, and they were both recently divorced. His had been messy, involving two teenage children. She, at thirty-five, had no children, given her clear commitment to a career. Too bad we work for the same network, she thought for the hundredth time. Daddy always said not to mix work and romance.

  But to Ryan she answered, “Next Friday, I think. Don’t we have that planning conference?”

  “Yeah, we do. How about if you and I have dinner on Friday?”

  She paused for a moment. “Sure, Ryan. That sounds great. Have a good weekend.”

  The presidential helicopters were spaciously outfitted. William and Carrie sat facing each other in aisle seats, giving the window view to Mary and Graham. As they flew across the countryside William was drawn back, as usually happened when he was with Mary, to thoughts of growing up, and particularly to that Sunday in their high school days thirty-five years before.

  William Harrison came of age in the early sixties, when the intoxicating idea first convinced Americans that they themselves, and particularly their government, could solve virtually any problem with enough thought and enough of the nation’s plentiful resources.

  The Missile Race, the Space Race, the War on Poverty, the Peace Corps, the Bomb, the Civil Rights Movement, the Pill, the Great Society, Vista, Head Start: these and other endeavors all proclaimed to William’s generation, particularly as citizens of the world’s most powerful nation, that their future, whether for success or for failure, was totally in their own hands. William Harrison, then a young teenager, believed.

  It was easy to believe. Almost everyone did. Especially in William’s family. His father, Tom, was an engineer with a company that had secured one of the first communications contracts from NASA, as the nation’s concern about Sputnik turned into a race to place a man on the moon. His father’s education had been interrupted by World War II, and when he had returned from the Pacific and graduated from North Carolina State University he had stayed in Raleigh and taken a job with an electronics firm.

  If William inherited an ability to think through and then solve problems from his father, he inherited from his mother an activist value system that encouraged him to find problems to solve. A graduate of Duke University in the heady days during World War II, Elizabeth Harrison imbued her family with an intellectual curiosity and a willingness to challenge the status quo, which she had learned in her early “firebrand” days at lectures and rallies for socialism and justice, both at Duke and at neighboring Chapel Hill.

  Although she had never worked outside the home, William’s mother was always challenging their local politicians and writing letters, believing that opportunities were available every day to make the world a better, more just, more rational place.

  Their family had belonged to a large, mainline church in the northwest suburb of Raleigh. Architecturally beautiful with its classic red brick facade and bells that were famous in the community, the church was a gathering place for those who wanted to attend church in a manner that reflected their intelligence and their position in the community. These were definitely not “holy rollers.” The members of St. Stephen’s Church represented the New South, and they appreciated that their worship service reflected the same inclusive, liberal concerns that characterized the other aspects of their lives. Above all, they were comfortable with their pastor, with his calls for action on the many social ills of the day and with his lack of demands for anything to do with their spiritual lives, a concept most of them would have found to be old-fashioned and beneath them, anyway.

  In William’s sophomore year their popular pastor was called to a larger congregation, leaving the members to search for a new minister. They had gone about that task in a characteristically organized way and had narrowed the candidates to three by that spring. Each of these men had been asked to preside over the worship serv
ice and to preach on two consecutive Sundays. It was on the second Sunday for Rev. Gene Wilson, the youngest of the three candidates, that the remarkable event occurred.

  After his first week some said the search committee had invited Rev. Wilson only as a contrast to the two older, more traditional men. For in his first of two sermons Rev. Wilson had talked almost exclusively about spiritual matters, including the state of their souls and their prospects for spending eternity with God in heaven, not even mentioning a single one of the many social problems that needed their members’ attention. He did criticize the Supreme Court’s decision to bar prayer in public schools, but no one cared much for that issue. And few of the members of St. Stephen’s had ever questioned their own fitness for heaven. After all, they attended church regularly and did good things, didn’t they?

  His mind snapped back to the present when Mary turned from the window and noticed him deep in thought. He smiled and said in a low voice, “I was just thinking again about your Rev. Wilson.”

  She leaned a little closer, and her surprise was obvious. “What made you think of that?”

  “Oh, I often think about all of us growing up. Different things. And about that day, strange as it may seem.”

  “I didn’t know you remembered it.”

  “Of course I do. Particularly how Mom and Dad didn’t want to go to church that morning, after Rev. Wilson’s sermon the week before. I thought we were going to skip it.”

  “Yes, I remember them debating about it. Thank goodness habit won out,” Mary added.

  Both of them reflected silently on what had happened that morning. They had dutifully dressed for church, including the usual search for young Hugh’s shoes, then deposited Rebecca and Hugh in Sunday school. After a special class for the high school students, Mary and William joined their parents in the main sanctuary during the offertory, in time for the sermon.

  Young Rev. Wilson—he was only in his early thirties—began by acknowledging the “constructive criticism” that several of the church members had expressed to him during the week after his first sermon, but he looked down from the pulpit with a mixture of compassion and concern and told them that he nevertheless had a responsibility to convey what he felt God had called him to preach, whether or not he would be chosen to be their pastor, and he would therefore submit to God’s will.

  To the sound of much rustling in the pews and some coughing, Rev. Wilson described to the members of St. Stephen’s how the power of God had changed his life, how Jesus described salvation as a conscious act of being born again through belief in him, and how both salvation and God’s power, in the being of the Holy Spirit, were available to each one of them that day, if they believed in and confessed Jesus as Lord.

  William, seated between his mother and sister in the polished wooden pew, noticed that his mother’s back stiffened on several occasions during the sermon and that his parents exchanged glances more than once. But he also noticed that Mary seemed to be listening intently and hanging onto every word. The one time he actually looked at her, there was an expression of concentration and of what could only be described as joy on her face. William, focusing as best he could at fifteen, was mostly curious.

  Rev. Wilson had built a logical and impassioned case, quoting scripture throughout, that the most important choice any of them could make was not which cause to support, but whether they would submit to God and let him run their lives. The rest could follow, but that day they needed to choose whom they would serve: man or God. And then he did something no preacher had ever done at St. Stephen’s: he asked all those who wanted to confess their sins and to inherit eternity that day by accepting Jesus as the Lord of their lives to come forward so that they could pray together.

  The event William would always remember was that his sister Mary immediately stood up, the first in the congregation, and moved toward the aisle, trying to pass in front of him and his parents. And he would also always remember the look of shock, disbelief, and embarrassment on his mother’s face, as Mary waited to pass and the two women’s eyes met. His parents finally made room, and Mary walked forward, joined in the front of the church by about fifteen other members.

  The young minister, smiling warmly, walked down from the pulpit and prayed with and for the members who had come forward. As William listened to his sister and the others confess their sins and ask Jesus to take over their lives, the hair on the back of his neck stood up, and he felt a distinct chill, almost as if an invisible wind had blown through the crowded, warm church. And when Mary turned around to walk back to her seat, William saw that she had been crying. Yet the joy he had noticed earlier now seemed to radiate from her. When she sat down next to him again, she quietly asked him for his handkerchief.

  Brought back to the present, he again leaned over and asked, “Did you know how angry Mom and Dad were with you that day?”

  “Oh, yes.” Mary nodded her head at the window, then turned to face him. “I think I really embarrassed them. Mom said I must have been crazy to get caught up in such a blatantly emotional appeal, ‘as if we were at a tent revival, for heaven’s sake!’ she said.”

  “I didn’t know.”

  “Yes, she was pretty hard on me. But unlike what she thought, it was just so simple for me. I felt God’s real presence in my life for the first time those two Sundays, and I decided then and there that I wanted to accept his offer of salvation. I felt a new power in my life after that.”

  “I’ve never understood why that event had such an impression on me,” William said, “especially since I didn’t really share it with you, but only watched. I guess it was just a stage in my life—or maybe the fact that you so spontaneously did something that Mom and Dad didn’t like.” He grinned. “But you sure got good at expressing your faith!”

  “Well, thanks, little brother. You know I still enjoy doing so—in fact, it’s about the most important thing any of us can do.”

  Raising his hand, he said, “I know, I know. And remember, I’ve heard it plenty of times. I don’t need another lecture. I just wanted you to know that even at my old age I can still remember some of the special times in our family.”

  “Okay, no lecture. But I make no promises for Camp David, once I find out what those advisors of yours have been filling your mind with.”

  William laughed. “Truce. We can lecture each other hourly, and Mom will be there to fill in if we miss anything. But for now, don’t miss this wonderful view.”

  CAMP DAVID, MARYLAND—Camp David, with its rustic, wooded charm, dated back to the Roosevelt Administration, when it was originally carved out of Catoctin Mountain in the Maryland countryside. Called Shangri-La by Franklin Roosevelt and renamed by President Eisenhower for his grandson, Camp David had undergone minor transformations by each succeeding president. But the basic layout of small cabins spaced around Laurel Lodge, the “main house” for the compound, had remained unchanged. The only exception was the home used by the president himself, Aspen Lodge, which had been enlarged several years before and contained an office with modern communications equipment. Circling the entire perimeter was a tall, electronically monitored fence. The whole facility was guarded by a detachment of Marines.

  When the helicopters landed, William Harrison realized he was out of the presidential fishbowl for the first time since taking office. He actually smiled and thought of a remark Carrie had made: The world and its problems would probably still be there on Tuesday. He helped his wife and daughter down the stairs of their helicopter and pointed Robert and Sasha toward the superintendent, who was waiting with members of the staff by the landing site. He met all of the president’s family and gave them their cabin assignments.

  As Carrie Harrison had promised her husband, the weekend was purposely unstructured, with the exception of one event a day. There would be an ongoing round-robin tennis tournament with trophies to be awarded at lunch on Monday. There was an intergenerational softball game scheduled for Saturday afternoon between, roughly defined, the Public
Sector and the Private Sector, the teams selected by household employment. And there was an Easter morning service planned for the chapel, followed by an Easter egg hunt for the children. Since William and Carrie did not regularly attend church, the first lady had asked Mary if she knew someone in the Washington area who would be appropriate to officiate. “Not too wild, now,” Carrie had warned good-naturedly but quite seriously. Mary had assured her that she knew a pastor in Baltimore who would be appropriate, and the arrangements had been made.

  Other than those events, the weekend was to be free, allowing plenty of time for rest, conversations, walks, and playing with children.

  Rebecca’s daughter Courtney, at twenty-four the second oldest of the “children” after Mary and Graham’s first son Jonathan, pulled her cousin Robert aside as they walked from the landing site toward Laurel Lodge. “Your Russian friend, Sasha, is kind of cute. Does he play tennis?”

  Robert smiled. “He’s Ukrainian, not Russian, and, yes, he’s pretty good.”

  “How about if we warm up for the tournament together? I’ll ask Katherine or Sarah to join us. In about thirty minutes?”

  “Sure. Sounds good. If they both want to play, ask Tim, too, and we’ll all play around,” Robert suggested, and moved off to find Sasha.

  Rebecca was wearing a long-sleeved, flower-printed dress and a large straw hat. She and Bruce were holding hands, taking their time walking toward their cabin, enjoying the sunshine together now that the strong breeze of the morning was dying down.

  Katherine and Sarah, the only two cousins who were almost exactly the same age, had always been close. They had grown up in Raleigh together, though they had attended different high schools and Katherine had lived most recently in the governor’s mansion. “I can’t wait to get into some jeans!” Katherine exclaimed, as they walked together up the gentle slope toward the main house nestled in the trees. “And I think we can walk almost anywhere around this place without being followed! Please, Sarah, tell me what’s going on in the real world. Is it still there?” she asked, her bubbly personality returning now that she was out of her “prison” and together again with her favorite cousin.