Green Earth

True, Maryland had said. Okay, we’ll give that land to the nation for its capital. But not too much! Just that worst part!

And so here they were. Charlie sat on grass, drowsing. Joe gamboled about him like a bumblebee. The diffuse midday light lay on them like asthma. Big white clouds mushroomed to the west, and the scene turned glossy, bulging with internal light. The ductile world, everything bursting with light. He really had to try to remember to bring his sunglasses on these trips.

To get a good long nap from Joe, he needed to tank him up. Charlie fought his own sleep, got the food bag out of the backpack’s undercarriage, waved it so Joe could see it. Joe trundled over, eyelids at half-mast; no time to lose. He settled into Charlie’s lap and Charlie popped a bottle of Anna’s milk into his mouth just as his head was snapping to the side.

Joe sucked himself unconscious while Charlie slumped over him, chin on chest, comatose. Snuggling an infant in mind-numbing heat, what could be cozier.

Clouds over the White House were billowing up like the spirit of the building’s feisty inhabitant, round, dense, shiny white. In the other direction, over the Supreme Court’s neighborhood, stood a black nine-lobed cloud, dangerously laden with incipient lightning. Yes, the powers of Washington were casting up thermals and forming clouds over themselves, clouds that expressed precisely their spirits. Charlie saw that each cumulobureaucracy transcended the individuals who temporarily performed its functions in the world. These transhuman spirits all had inborn characters and biographies, and abilities and desires and habits all their own; and in the sky over the city they contested their fates. Humans were like cells in their bodies. Probably one’s cells also thought their lives were important and under their control. But the great bodies knew better.

Over the white dome of the Capitol, however, the air shimmered. Congress was a roaring thermal so hot that no cloud could form in it.

He had fallen into a slumber as deep as Joe’s when his phone rang. He answered it before waking.

“Wha.”

“Charlie? Charlie, where are you? We need you down here right now.”

“I’m already down here.”

“Really? That’s great. Charlie?”

“Yes, Roy?”

“Look, Charlie, sorry to bother you, but Phil is out of town and I’ve got to meet with Senator Ellington in twenty minutes, and we just got a call from the White House saying that Dr. Strangelove wants to meet with us to talk about Phil’s climate bill. It sounds like they’re ready to listen, maybe ready to talk too, or even to deal. We need someone to get over there.”

“Now?”

“Now. You’ve got to get over there.”

“I’m already over there, but look, I can’t. I’ve got Joe here with me. Where is Phil again?”

“San Francisco.”

“Wasn’t Wade supposed to get back?”

“No he’s still in Antarctica. Listen Charlie, there’s no one here who can do this but you.”

“What about Andrea?” Andrea Palmer was Phil’s legislative director, the person in charge of all his bills.

“She’s in New York today. Besides you’re the point man on this, it’s your bill more than anyone else’s, you know it inside out.”

“But I’ve got Joe!”

“Maybe you can take Joe along.”

“Yeah right.”

“Hey, why not? Won’t he be taking a nap soon?”

“He is right now.”

Charlie could see the trees backing the White House, there on the other side of the Ellipse. He could walk over there in ten minutes. Theoretically Joe would stay asleep a couple of hours. And certainly they should seize the moment on this, because so far the President and his people had shown no interest whatsoever in dealing.

“Listen,” Roy cajoled, “I’ve had entire lunches with you where Joe is asleep on your back, and believe me, no one can tell the difference. I mean you hold yourself upright like you’ve got the weight of the world on your shoulders, but you did that before you had Joe, so now he just fills up that space and makes you look more normal, I swear to God. You’ve voted with him on your back, you’ve shopped, you’ve showered, you sure as hell can talk to the President’s science advisor. Doctor Strangelove isn’t going to care.”

“He’s a jerk.”

“So? They’re all jerks over there but the President, and he is too, but he’s a nice guy. And he’s the family president, right? He would approve on principle, you can tell Strengloft that. You can say that if the President were there he would love it. He would autograph Joe’s head like a baseball.”

“Yeah right.”

“Charlie, this is your bill!”

“Okay okay okay!” It was true. “I’ll go give it a try.”

So, by the time Charlie got Joe back on his back (the child was twice as heavy when asleep) and walked across the Mall and the Ellipse, Roy had made the calls and they were expecting him at the west entry to the White House. Joe was passed through security with a light-fingered shakedown that was especially squeamish around his diaper. Then they were through, and quickly escorted into a conference room.

The room was empty. Charlie had never been in it before, though he had visited the White House several times. Joe weighed on his shoulders.

Dr. Zacharius Strengloft, the President’s science advisor, entered the room. He and Charlie had sparred by proxy before, Charlie whispering killer questions into Phil’s ear while Strengloft testified before Phil’s committee, but the two of them had never spoken one-on-one. Now they shook hands, Strengloft peering curiously over Charlie’s shoulder. Charlie explained Joe’s presence as briefly as he could, and Strengloft received the explanation with precisely the kind of frosty faux benevolence that Charlie had been expecting. Strengloft in Charlie’s opinion was a pompous ex-academic of the worst kind, hauled out of the depths of a second-rate conservative think tank when the administration’s first science advisor had been sent packing for saying that global warming might be real and not only that, amenable to human mitigation. That went too far for this administration. Their line was that it would be much too expensive to do anything about it, so they were going to punt and let the next generation solve the problem in their own time. In other words, the hell with them. Easier to destroy the world than to change capitalism even one little bit.

All this had become quite blatant since Strengloft’s appointment. He had taken over the candidate lists for all federal science advisory panels, and now candidates were being routinely asked who they had voted for in the last election, and what they thought of stem-cell research, and abortion, and evolution. When Strengloft’s views were publicized and criticized, he had commented, “You need a diversity of opinions to get good advice.” Mentioning his name was enough to make Anna hiss.

Be that as it may, here he was standing before Charlie; he had to be dealt with, and in the flesh he seemed friendly.

They had just gotten through their introductory pleasantries when the President himself entered the room.

Strengloft nodded complacently, as if he were often joined in his crucial work by the happy man.

“Oh, hello, Mr. President,” Charlie said helplessly.

“Hello, Charles,” the President said, and came over and shook his hand.

This was bad. Not unprecedented, or even terribly surprising; the President was known for wandering into meetings apparently by accident but perhaps not. It had become part of his legendarily informal style.

Now he saw Joe sacked out on Charlie’s back, and stepped around Charlie to get a better view. “What’s this, Charles, you got your kid with you?”

“Yes sir, I was called in on short notice when Dr. Strengloft asked for a meeting with Phil and Wade, they’re both out of town.”

The President found this amusing. “Ha! Well, good for you. That’s sweet. Find me a marker pen and I’ll sign his little head.” This was another signature move, so to speak. “Is he a boy or a girl?”

“A boy. Joe Quibler.”

“Well that’s great. Saving the world before bedtime, that’s your story, eh Charles?” He smiled to himself and moved restlessly over to the chair at the window end of the table. One of his people was standing in the door, watching them without expression.

The President’s face was smaller than it appeared on TV, Charlie found. The size of an ordinary human face, no doubt, looking small precisely because of all the TV images. On the other hand it had a tremendous solidity and three-dimensionality to it. It gleamed with reality.

His eyes were slightly close-set, as was often remarked, but apart from that he looked like an aging movie star or catalog model. A successful businessman who had retired to go into public service. His features, as many observers had observed, mixed qualities of several recent presidents into one blandly familiar and reassuring face, with a little dash of piquant antiquity and edgy charm.