The Sky Beneath My Feet

Chapter 12


The Reflecting Ditch





At the back of the bus, on a row all to myself, I study Mother Zacchaeus’s lapel pin and contemplate rejection. First Rick rejected me—because abandonment is a form of rejection, and moving yourself into the backyard shed clearly qualifies as abandonment. Then the eccentric nun (eccentric is putting it mildly) rejected me—because slapping someone in the face and accusing her of kidnapping is also a rather obvious form of rejection. Eli was next. After our little talk, he shut down around me, restricting himself to monosyllables. When I tried to put a stop to his afternoon bike rides, he simply ignored me. The silent treatment qualifies as rejection, doesn’t it?

At least I still had Jed. But now he’s rejected me too, though in the gentlest of ways. After begging me to accept Marlene’s invitation to accompany the Rent-a-Mob to the demonstration in D.C., coaxing me against my better judgment to remain open to new experiences, to go boldly where no man has gone before and so on, the moment we boarded Chas Worthing’s chartered bus, Jed detached himself from his mother and sat on the row just behind Marlene, never taking his eyes off her from the time we left Towson until we hit the gridlock around the Capitol Beltway.

“You’re all alone back here,” Chas says.

He plops down across the aisle from me.

“I’m fine.”

“Everyone’s glad you decided to come.”

“Yes, I know.”

They had all lined up first thing and let me know. Some apologies seemed genuine—Barber, for example, when he wasn’t twizzling his mustache, appeared quite pleased to see me—and others, like Vernon, the gray-haired doctor, got through the procedure with a minimum of awkwardness. Even a few people who hadn’t been at Chas’s house that Sunday afternoon trooped over to say hello to me, as if they’d been instructed in advance to be especially welcoming. I imagine what I experienced was similar to what a newcomer at The Community has to endure when the professional greeters descend en masse to make sure they feel welcome.

“It won’t be much longer,” he says, glancing at the traffic through the window. “Since this is your first time, I’m looking forward to hearing what you think about it.”

“For one thing, I think it’s pretty extravagant, renting a bus like this to take thirty-odd people on an hour-long trip.”

“It’s the only way to make sure we get there in one piece. The MARC train gets you there, but half the group doesn’t show up on time at the station and a few wander off once you’re in Washington. This way, they know we’re not leaving without them and they stick around for the ride back. Besides, I get a pretty good rate on the bus.”

“If you say so.”

“I like your son, by the way. Jed. He looks nothing like his brother, though, does he? I don’t think there’s much danger of him wandering off, as long as Marlene’s around.”

“They used to know each other,” I say. “In the church youth group.”

“So I heard. I never would have pegged her for a churchgoing type.”

“You might be surprised at the kind of people who go to church, Chas.”

“And you might be surprised at the people who go to a demo.”

“I am surprised. I guess I’m one of them.”

“I guess you are,” he says, smiling broadly.

Once the bus reaches D.C. proper, Chas goes to the front and acts as tour guide, pointing out significant buildings and monuments to the left, then the right. I notice that Jed is no longer sitting on the row behind Marlene. Somewhere along the way, he moved forward to sit with her. Her neck cranes back and forth, following Chas’s commentary, while Jed steals glances at her.

He’s eighteen years old, a high school senior, and yet I can count on one hand the number of dates he’s gone on—not the number of girls he’s dated, mind you, but the actual number of outings. Most of these have been organized school functions. If it hadn’t been for my coaching, he probably would have skipped out on those. More often than not, I’ve had to suggest names to him, girls he might like to invite to the Christian school prom substitute or the Spring Banquet.

He doesn’t seem to need my prompting now. If you’d asked me before, I never would have imagined him being this confident around a girl, especially one who’s in college. Tongue-tied and awkward, that’s what I would have expected. That’s what he was when he suddenly found Marlene standing in our kitchen. Not anymore.

And instead of feeling happy for him, I feel rejected. How do you explain that?

The bus disgorges us near the Washington Monument. As the Rent-a-Mob files out, pausing at the storage lockers in the flank of the bus to be issued painted signs, I am already overwhelmed by the throng of people all around. I’m accustomed to tourists packing the capitol sights, but the Square has become a staging area for chanting, shouting protestors. While the morning sun feels nice on my skin, the noise is deafening. I wish I could get back on the bus.

But there’s no turning back.

“It’s impossible, isn’t it?”

I turn to find Dr. Vernon at my elbow, wincing at the noise. His sign is tucked under his armpit furtively, as if he might ditch it once Chas looks away.

“I should have brought my earplugs,” I say.

“A lot of sound and fury, signifying jack squat. That’s what I hate about these things. Oh, perfect, they brought the drums.”

As he speaks, a group of tattooed young gypsies sashays around the bus, slapping a frenzied beat on their little Djembe drums. They leave a strong odor of marijuana in the air behind them, but even this gives Vernon no pleasure. I find myself warming to him all of a sudden.

“I try to tell Chas this isn’t what it’s all about. This doesn’t change anything.” He shakes his head. “But for him, this is what it’s about.”

As Chas leads us into the fray, I stick with Vernon near the back of the pack. The Square is packed shoulder-to-shoulder around the perimeter, but once we’re farther in, there are pockets of open ground. The Washington Monument looms needle-like overhead.

“Everybody stick together!” Chas shouts, holding his sign aloft as a beacon.

Vernon keeps up a running commentary. “I mean, in 2004, absolutely. In 2006, all right. But now, this hardly makes sense anymore. It’s like marching against slavery in 1870. It’s over, whether people realize it yet or not. The damage is done.”

“Let me ask you something, though. Why did you come?”

“Good question.” He looks down at his marching feet. “It was a Saturday and I had nothing better to do. Plus, somebody has to be here to inject a voice of reason.”

“Someone has to protest the protestors,” I say.

“Exactly. I’m the gadfly, I suppose.”

I nod, wondering how many of the others see themselves the same way. It’s human nature, wanting to be the outlier. Drop me in the middle of the Bodice Ripper book club, and I want to be a lefty liberal. Drop me in among the war protestors, and I want to wave a flag.

Somebody’s beat me to it, though. Once we’ve circled to the other side of the Monument, we pass a young man sitting alone in a wheelchair, strumming Lee Greenwood on his guitar, singing, “At least I know I’m free.” He wears tan camouflage fatigues, with his empty pant legs folded underneath him.

“That’s gonna end badly,” Vernon says.

“What do you mean?”

“If he’s not careful, he’ll get himself roughed up.”

“At a peace demonstration?” I ask, incredulous. “He looked like a veteran.”

Vernon narrows his eyes at me, as if to say, You’ve got a lot to learn about the world.

Maybe so. But the mounted policemen worry me much more than the drum circles or the middle-aged militants. Even though the demonstrators try to give the horses a wide berth, the riders push in closer, hiding their gaze behind mirrored sunglasses.

It takes forever to work our way around the World War II memorial, and once we do, I lose my bearings entirely. In every direction, I’m confronted by a wall of backs, too close for me to see over them. I stick close to Vernon, afraid of being lost. He puts a hand on my shoulder. “You go ahead where I can see you.”

Through the chinks between the people in front of me, I glimpse light ahead. Soon I hear Chas rallying the troops. Bunching forward, I find myself pressed against Barber and Jed.

“Wow,” Jed is saying. “It’s not what I thought it would be.”

“What’s not?” I ask, sliding between them.

And then I see it. We have emerged at the near end of the Reflecting Pool, opposite the colossal temple where Abraham Lincoln sits enthroned. Only the long rectangular pool doesn’t reflect anything—no blue sky, no fluffy clouds, no wind rippling the surface. It’s been drained. All that’s left is a huge brown gash in the earth, a never-ending mud pit transected by a grid of wooden stakes. And without the water, there goes the illusion of depth. The pool turns out to be as shallow as a half-dug grave.

“The Reflecting Pool looks more like a Reflecting Ditch,” Barber says.

Coming up behind me, Vernon chuckles. “Is that a metaphor or what?”





There are speakers (oh, goody!) lined up on a distant stage, their voices echoing and incomprehensible. They’re all mad as hell, judging from the high-pitched shrill of their voices, and they’re not going to take it anymore. Apart from the cluster of die-hards swarming the platform, the swirling sea of demonstrators seems indifferent. Despite the anger coming through the public address system, the atmosphere on the ground is celebratory. A surprising number of people have turned out with folding chairs, blankets, even coolers. There are cameras everywhere too: video cams, phones, SLRs with telephoto lenses. I can’t turn around without ending up in somebody’s frame.

Chas leads us toward an open patch of ground near the perimeter, seizing a park bench to use as a base of operation. Marlene enlists Jed to help pass around packed lunches. We sit cross-legged on the brown grass, having a picnic amid the chaos. Once the food is distributed, Barber huddles with Jed and Marlene, the three of them settling just to my right.

“This is Mob 1.0,” Barber is saying, “totally old school. This kind of thing will be happening less and less. You can’t get this many people to rally around anything unless you keep the principle so vague that it’s practically meaningless.”

Marlene nods. “This might look like a lot of people, but it’s not. A few years ago there would have been twice this many.”

As I chew, I glance around at the crowd, happy there aren’t twice as many of them. The sun, which burned hotly an hour ago, hides itself behind the gathering gray clouds. Looks like rain.

“I wouldn’t have come myself,” Barber says, “except Chas insisted. I’m much more into the flash mob scene these days. You know about that?”

“Like on YouTube?” Jed asks. “People showing up at the train station out of nowhere and singing a song?”

“And even that’s gone a little stale for my taste. The thing is, we’re a niche culture. Does anyone really want to identify with a cause that millions of other people support too?”

“Like peace?” I ask.

“Exactly. Generic peace can’t even hold my attention. You have to drill down, right? What exactly are you against? All war in general? That’s pretty broad. You can get a lot of bodies behind that, but it’s not really unity. Narrow it down to, say, child soldiers. Less people turn up, but there’s more passion. Narrow it down again to these particular child soldiers in this particular African civil war, and nobody knows what you’re talking about—except the ones who do, and with them, you’re like this.” He twines his middle finger around his index finger. “Simpatico, right?”

“What does a flash mob have to do with child soldiers?” Jed asks.

“That’s just an example. Like I said, even that scene’s a little dated.”

Marlene touches Jed’s arm lightly. “The point is, the way to speak to the universal is through the particular. The broad message might appear to speak to everyone, but really it speaks to no one deeply. When you focus on the particular, even though it seems counterintuitive, by communicating just one thing to just one person, you say everything to everyone.”

“Cool,” Jed says.

I exchange a look with Vernon, who’s sitting on my right. He smiles but makes no comment.

“Have you ever participated in a flash mob?” I ask him.

“Me?” He rolls his eyes. “I try to steer clear of anything that qualifies as a ‘scene.’ But like he said, Chas thought this was important, so here we are.”

“You’re like a family,” I say. “Or a church.”

“But with a lot less drama than either one.”

“I don’t know, Doc. Looking around, I wouldn’t say that at all.”

Much to my surprise, I am starting to enjoy myself. The clouds overhead, a cool breeze, the grass between my fingers, it’s pretty much idyllic. After lunch, with the speakers still droning, we trek toward the Lincoln Memorial. As we reach the top of the steps, a fat raindrop bursts on the back of my hand. Then I feel them on my legs, see them popping on the marble at my feet. Just in time, we pass through the fluted columns and into the shaded temple, Honest Abe glowering down at us.

“The Great Emancipator,” Vernon says.

“That’s right,” Chas replies in his tour guide voice. “But do you know what those tied bundles of sticks are in his armrests? Right there under his hands? Those are called fasces, the old Roman symbol for power—”

“Which is where we get the word Fascism,” Barber says. “And it’s no surprise, considering he suspended habeas corpus and assumed Guantanamo-like powers—”

“But,” Chas says, cutting him off, “there’s a significant difference here. Traditionally, the fasces would have an axe in the middle, but there’s no axe here. Why not? Anybody?”

“If there was an axe,” Jed says, “it might cut his hand.”

“Good guess, but no. In the ancient world, when you entered Rome, you had to take the axe out of the fasces, in deference to the people. Symbolizing how the citizens trumped the state. Even then, they understood that true power derives from a mandate from the people.”

He goes on in this vein for some time.

I find myself wandering into one of the side chambers of the temple, where Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address is inscribed in stone. The letters themselves, deeply incised, have an aesthetic power. My eyes settle on one line: Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other. Things have only gotten worse since then. From two niches (to use Barber’s word), North and South, we’ve splintered into hundreds of thousands, a nation of tribes connected not by kinship or even creed. We’re merely tethered together by the Internet, by our brand loyalties and shared consumer obsessions.

“What’s wrong, Mom? You’re not digging the history lesson?”

I give Jed a smile, surprised to find him alone. “Where’s Marlene? I thought you two were suddenly inseparable.”

A bashful shrug.

The rain has picked up, hammering the steps outside, making the vast cavern of marble seem almost cozy by comparison.

“It’s really coming down out there, isn’t it?”

He nods.

“So, you seem to be having a good time.”

“I’m glad we came,” he says. “It’s really opened my eyes.”

“Oh really?”

“I should be more involved in the world, don’t you think? Marlene says there are a lot of meetings, a lot of things like this, just on a smaller scale.”

“I bet there are. And the two of you would be getting . . . involved together?”

“You don’t like her, do you?”

“Of course I do.”

“You think she’s weird.”

“No, I don’t. I’ll admit, the hair is a little bit outside my comfort zone. All the metal . . . But, hey, we’re pretty weird in this family, right? We’re in no position to judge. The question is, what do you think about her?”

“Mom,” he says, “I like her.”

“That’s what I thought. She’s a little older, you know. I’m not sure how many college girls are into dating high school boys.”

He frowns at the word dating, like it’s a foreign, old-fashioned concept. Channeling Barber, I half expect him to tell me that dating’s gone a little stale for his taste. But my son isn’t jaded, just the opposite. He is flushed with the uncertainties of first love.

“Do you think she likes me, though?” he asks.

I start to say something humorous, then stop. He’s asking in earnest. My late bloomer is finally taking an interest in girls.

“What do you think?”

“I don’t know. That’s why I’m asking.”

“Well,” I say, “my advice is to take it slow and see what happens. You don’t want to come on too strong. Just be yourself and let her get to know you.”

He nods, taking this in. I can see the wheels turning in his head.

“Don’t overthink it,” I say.

Another nod, even graver than the first. He is definitely going to overthink it. No question about that. Oh well, I’ve done my best, such as it is. I was never very good at dispensing romantic advice. Until now, I haven’t been called on much in that area.

“There you are,” Marlene says, joining us near the wall. She pauses to take in the gist of the inscription, then smiles at us both. “The rain’s not letting up. Chas thinks we ought to head back to the bus and call it a day.”

Beside me, Jed looks crestfallen.

“So we’ll be getting back to Baltimore early,” I say. “You haven’t made any plans, have you, Marlene?”

She shakes her head. “No, not really.”

I give my son a suggestive look, then wander back through the columns to find the rest of the group. At the last moment, I see the light switch on in his head.

“It will be pretty early, won’t it?” he says. “Maybe we should . . . ?”

He leaves the question hanging and I’m too far off to hear her reply.





The rain prompts a general exodus. As we descend the stairs, the masses have already thinned considerably, leaving bald patches on the ground. The speakers have stopped their rants and the bottom of the Reflecting Pool collects little puddles of standing water here and there.

“If this keeps up,” I say, “it might fill with water again.”

My drowned-rat hairdo keeps dripping down the sides of my neck. I keep peeling my damp shirt away from my skin, but there’s really no point. We catch up to the last ranks of the nearest crowd, which brings us to a halt. The ground feels squishy underfoot.

Beside me, Vernon peels off his windbreaker and drapes it over my shoulders. I try to protest, but he pays no attention. Once again, he’s wearing a cannabis T-shirt underneath, which makes me a little heartsick for Eli.

“Watch out for the horses!” somebody calls.

The mounted cops are weaving around the edge of the crowd, standing in their stirrups to see farther up ahead.

“What’s happening over there?” Vernon asks, craning his neck.

“Do you see anything?”

“Some kind of commotion.”

The problem is, the rain and mud make people ornery and combative. They want to be left alone. They don’t want anybody crowding them. Thousands of people all leaving the Mall at the same time is bound to create some bottlenecks, and with the added pressure of the police . . .

Jed and Marlene draw closer to me.

“Something’s not right,” she says.

Instead of heading back the way we came, straight down the Mall, we drift leftward past a kidney-shaped pond until we’re running parallel with the traffic on Constitution Avenue. The tree canopy offers some protection from the rain. Over the sound of the cars passing, the occasional blowing of a horn, I hear raised voices, then a loud wail.

I would stop in my tracks, but there are people behind us now. The mass moves forward under its own strength. I couldn’t break away if I tried.

“This is getting scary,” I say.

“There’s a fight!”

I strain on tiptoes to see what Jed is talking about. No luck.

I can hear it, though: more shouting, some screams, horses’ hooves.

Then, without warning, we are suddenly in the middle of it all. People are running in every direction, pushing others out of the way. A couple of horseback cops are trying to ride into a packed, writhing scrum.

It’s not what I imagined, not the riot police breaking up the mob. Instead, the mob is fighting among itself. As I watch, a lanky kid with a black bandana wrenches a peace sign from an old man’s grasp, dragging the man to the ground. More black bandanas surge through the crowd. Someone is blowing an ear-piercing whistle.

Everyone is running now. I see Vernon off to the side, fending off a bandana-wearing man with his sign. Jed takes my arm and hustles me around them. We stop suddenly as a horse gallops in front of us. Then Marlene takes my hand, pulling me forward, and Jed is ahead of her, using his height advantage to find a safe path through the fight.

“They must be anarchists!” Marlene yells.

I don’t respond. I’m breathing too hard to talk. I can’t remember the last time I ran for my life. Oh, wait, I never have. Until now.

A squat woman in a floppy hat barrels into me, trying to make her own escape. I lose my grip on Marlene’s hand and go wheeling sideways. I glimpse another mounted cop—maybe the same one who nearly trampled me a moment ago—dragging a bandana-wearing man by the shirt collar, using the momentum of the horse to literally lift the man into the air. Chas and Barber appear behind the horse, holding Vernon between them. A stream of blood pours from just above his eyebrow.

“Come on,” Marlene says, seizing my wrist.

The fight is behind us now, but we keep moving. Jed leads the way, crossing Constitution when there’s a gap in the traffic, putting distance between us and the Mall. I motion for Chas to follow us. He waves me forward and mouths words I can’t make out.

We finally stop for breath outside a pristine marble building that looks like a miniature White House with the front of the Lincoln Memorial slapped on front. This turns out to be the Daughters of the American Revolution Museum. I plop down on the steps, wheezing like a three-pack-a-day smoker. Jed doubles back to help carry Vernon.

“Can you believe that?” Vernon says. The marijuana leaf on his shirt is now speckled with blood. Between the Mall and here, he’s managed to tie his wound with one of the black bandanas, which he managed to liberate during his struggle.

“It’s terrible,” I say.

“Terrible, yes. But exhilarating. Did you see me thrashing that kid?”

“You were amazing,” Chas says, helping ease Vernon onto the steps. “He didn’t know what hit him. And you got yourself a souvenir too.”

“I feel alive,” Vernon says.

Above him, Jed laughs. He, too, feels alive. His eyes are shining from the adventure. Marlene regards him with a dazed expression, and he doesn’t even notice.

“Beth, nothing like that has ever happened at one of these things before. I don’t want you to get the wrong idea.”

“Don’t worry about me. What about the others?”

Chas glances down the street toward the tree line. “They all know where to find the bus. I guess we’d better start making our way over there.”

The six of us, now a band of survivors, wander northward in search of a cutover, finally turning on E Street for an unexpected glimpse of the White House across the south lawn. We pause at the gates and smile like tourists. Jed takes out his phone and makes me snap a picture of him and Marlene with the White House in the background. The farther we get from the fight, the more Vernon seems to want to relive it. He makes Barber and Chas both recount his exploits as they’d witnessed them, then explains everything to me in heroic detail. A kid in a black bandana tried to grab his sign, so he walloped him upside the head. When the kid ducked under and tackled Vernon to the ground, the doctor reached out and grabbed a handful of nose, twisting as hard as he could. The kid yelped and scrambled to his feet, disappearing into the fray, leaving Vernon in possession of his bandana.

“I didn’t even feel this,” he says, pointing to the cut on his forehead.

We’re the last ones to reach the bus. Barber pauses on the steps. “A fight broke out at the peace rally. Sounds like the setup for a joke.”

Chas waves him inside, then funnels the rest of us through. As Jed and Marlene ascend, I notice her hand clasping his. I’m the last one to get on apart from Chas.

“Well,” he says “are you glad you came? Would you do it again?”

“Would I do it again? Probably not. Am I glad I came? It’s been quite an experience, so yes, I suppose I am.”

As I walk down the aisle toward the back, Marlene rests her head on Jed’s shoulder. All the anxiety he expressed in the Lincoln Memorial seems to have vanished. He smiles up at me, confident. I give his shoulder a squeeze. Not every surprise your children throw at you is a disappointment.

You have surprised me, Jed, but so far, I like what I see.