In the Florida Everglades at the Rod and Gun Club, time had almost stood still except that in the passage of a century a small town had grown up around it, and it, like people, had gone through phases of dilapidation and restoration so that, similar to the case of a dowager well acquainted with plastic surgery, what had been there to begin with was hard to distinguish from what had been added.
Long ago, it had been so authentic as to have been almost as unbelievable as it was true: white clapboard, ceiling fans, dark furniture, surfeits of both liquor and wicker, fishing rods and hunting rifles carelessly resting here and there, Seminole guides waiting by their boats, fugitives and the famous daintily respectful of one another’s privacy. Though much had changed, some things had remained the same, one of them being that, until the day of Hartsfield’s inauguration, snow had never fallen. But then it did, drifting through the bayonet palms and melting into the black water of the Barron River. Not a lot, but it was enough, one of the old Seminole guides said, “to make everybody shut up.” And a wag wrote on the blackboard announcing the restaurant’s specials: “How hard these days / To fish with rod / And hunt with gun / But if it snows / You’re really done.”
No one had foreseen that a monstrous Arctic vortex would collide with an unusual northward charge of moist air from the Gulf of Mexico. When these crashed together over the Midwest, the storm they formed was much like the Blizzard of 1888, except that now the west wind and the jet stream went at it like a bulldozer, ordering it into a north–south line a thousand miles long and two hundred miles wide furious with snow and moving straight east at twenty-five miles an hour. The snow at the midpoint of the line was so heavy and incessant that in the eight hours during its passage over any location it left four feet of itself or more. Wind gusts up to sixty miles per hour drifted it at times into eight-foot swells.
Washingtonians remembered the derecho, the summer wind and lightning that had swept through on a unified front several hundred miles in length, darkening the sky and tossing up debris like a tornado, so that westward traffic on I-66 came to a stop as garbage bins and screen doors that had been lifted from the western suburbs pelted cars like hail. The Inauguration Storm was a similar shock, but of overwhelming, paralyzing white.
*
It was responsible for the coldest, shortest, least attended inauguration in modern history. Even Hartsfield couldn’t hear his speech because of the wind shrieking past the lectern. Heaters were hidden inside, but so much snow was blown into them that they shorted out. Loudspeakers on the mall were blown off their poles. The West Face of the Capitol and much of Hartsfield’s face itself were coated with snow and ice. It was so bad that in the middle of the inaugural address the outgoing president had leaned toward his successor and, in immense distress and perhaps not really according to historical protocol, said, “Speed it the fuck up, will you!”
And because no one was listening anyway, Hartsfield did speed it up, and was very much amused as he raced through the speech so fast that hostile commentators later said he sounded like Mickey Mouse. The parade up Pennsylvania Avenue was canceled, and the presidential limousine followed a snowplow to the White House, where for the first time Hartsfield sat alone in the Oval Office. A fire blazed as snow and wind banged against the tall windows. He wasn’t at his desk, but in a chair close to the fireplace, which provided warm illumination as he watched the dim, bluish light outside and held a tumbler of scotch in his left hand.
His newly appointed chief of staff knocked and entered. “Mr. President,” he said, for only the second time ever, “I guess an emergency declaration for, my God, everything east of the Rockies, will be your first official act.”
“No,” Hartsfield said, “my second.”
*
Every single admiral on the panel had been trapped like a rabbit, confined by the snow to unprepossessing guest quarters and prevented by the closure of I-95 and the airports from shoring up their prospects in the infancy of the new administration. The base was on emergency power, and that evening they trooped through the snow to the Eisenhower, where the food was better. They would meet the next day to determine Rensselaer’s sentence. In the Eisenhower’s wardroom they ate in silence rather than continue to debate their divisions in sentencing. They couldn’t bring them-selves to talk about it anymore, and knew that, at the last minute, they would have to have the judge guide them through the conflict.
To the south, in the deadly silent brig at Chesapeake, Rensselaer sat on the edge of his bunk, a blanket over his shoulders, summoning the stoicism that a soldier learns upon accepting that the currency of his profession is his life. The worst might come, but it was both his duty and his comfort to face it without even a twitch. How many times had he imagined oncoming death? How many times had he foreseen slow torture and how he would accept it, knowing that at its end he would be either dead or alive, but that he would be released from it one way or another.
Now, in the darkness, with snow blanketing the roof, the exercise yards, and the fields and forests beyond, he steeled himself. But when eventually he slept, he dreamt of Katy, and all this hardness was undone.
*
By the morning of the twenty-second the roads would be plowed and the runways cleared. But it was still the twenty-first, and glorious beyond belief. Half the country was covered in blinding, untouched white. Hardly anyone moved. The sky was so blue and the wind so cold that it was as if the nation had awakened at the South Pole. The press partial to Hartsfield had an almost universal headline along the lines of “Storm Over, A New Beginning.” When the new president saw half a dozen such announcements peeking out from the tops of the folds of the leading papers laid one upon another on a mahogany table in the upstairs living quarters, he turned to his wife. “The more they gush, the harder we’ll get hit later. Compliments are like a stretched cable. They snap back eventually, and can kill.”
He picked up a phone on a side table, pushed a button, and said, “I want to see the Attorney General at ten this morning.”
The answer was a simple, “Yes, sir.”
Hartsfield put down the phone. Almost stunned, he said to Mrs. Hartsfield, “I just ordered the Attorney General of the United States to appear in my office at ten. And he will. I didn’t ask. I ordered.”
“You’re going to have to try never to get used to it,” she told him.
“How am I going to do that?”
“I don’t know. I can’t think of anything more corrupting. Don’t be like those jerks who enjoy it. Check yourself at every instance. When you come out of this, whether in four years or eight, I want you still to be the man I married. The moment I see you enjoying your own power, you’re going to catch hell from me. I mean it.”
“I know you do,” he said. And then: “We can even have sushi for breakfast if we want.”
*
At 0430 on the twenty-second, Rensselaer was awakened. He dressed by the weak light of his desk lamp, and he, two guards and a driver left at 0530. It wasn’t necessary. They got to base an hour early and sat in the car for forty-five minutes with the engine running and the heat on, until, still in the dark, they went into the helicopter hangar and, just as they had done when the findings had been announced, turned on the lamps. Frearson arrived shortly thereafter, ruddy from the cold. Sitting down next to Rensselaer, he said, “We’re going to appeal. Don’t despair.”
Quite calmly, Rensselaer answered, “Correct me if I’m wrong, but was there anything in law or procedure that would favor, or even allow, an appeal?”
Frearson seemed taken aback. “Command influence, for one.”
“You think that would be sufficient?”
“It depends. I’ll go through the record of trial with a microscope. The courts are jealous of their independence and they hate pressure and interference above all. To put it in New York terms, they might want to whack the politicians just to send a message. Of course we’ll appeal.”
Their covers were on chairs next to them, but they were still in their naval great coats. As 0700 approached and the hangar warmed, Frearson said, “We’d better take off our coats. It would be a sign of disrespect to be wearing them during sentencing, especially you, as if you’re just stopping by on your way to lunch.”
They both stood at once and removed their coats, folding them so they could be placed on the chairs. And their covers—with the brims aligned and facing the dais—then rested upon the coats like birds settled on nests. Rensselaer’s dress blues, adorned with a big rectangle of ribbons and the larger devices that spoke to his long and distinguished service, shone in the intense light from above, echoing the colorful flags.
O-seven-hundred arrived, but the admirals did not. Then 0710, 0720, 0730. “What does this mean?” Rensselaer asked Frearson.
Frearson shook his head from side to side, expressing perfectly both that he didn’t know but that he was concerned. He was indeed concerned, because he imagined, though he did not let on, that a dispute had arisen in regard to the severity of punishment, including, at the outside, the death penalty. Just the possibility that at this late point the court was divided caused him to fear harsh punishment. “You can’t tell,” he told Rensselaer. “Maybe they’re distracted by a matter within one of their commands. Maybe someone doesn’t feel well. Who knows?”
But at 0735 they walked in, without their coats, and took their seats. Rensselaer felt waves of anxiety enough to unsettle his gut, alternating with a sense of calm sufficient to lower his blood pressure. But from his appearance, he was undisturbed.
The judge called the court to order, and said, “The president of the court, Admiral Porter, will now pronounce sentence.” He turned to his right to listen to the admiral, the judge’s duties over except eventually to close the proceedings.
As was his wont, Admiral Porter did not immediately begin to speak. He kept his eyes on the table in front of him, and smiled, which made both Frearson and Rensselaer lean forward in their seats.
“In fact, Your Honor, with all due respect,” Porter said, “the president of the court will not pronounce sentence.” Here, once again, he hesitated. The air was still, both inside and out. It seemed that no one breathed but Porter himself, who seemed tickled, a word no one would have thought appropriate to him but which now was exactly right. The judge was shocked, and, along with everyone else, he waited.
Finally Porter continued, with deliberate, almost teasing slowness. “Yesterday afternoon, just after the roads had been plowed, I, as president of the court, received the following documents from the Department of Justice, not to be opened or read until the court convened today. And as you may have observed, when the proceedings were called to order I did open them. I haven’t read them fully, but to know what’s in them you don’t really have to. I shall read the first now.” Here he paused again, deliberately, as if to see how long people would seem not to breathe.
He read. “‘William A. Hartsfield, President of the United States. To all Whom These Presents May Come, Greeting: be it known, that this day, I, William A. Hartsfield, President of the United States, pursuant to my powers under Article Two, Section two, Clause one, of the Constitution, have granted unto Stephen Rensselaer, Captain, United States Navy . . .’”
Here, Admiral Porter looked up, and announced that similar documents were enclosed for each member of Athena’s crew charged, even if their charges had been dismissed. And then, after deliberately allowing everything to hang, momentarily gravityless, in the air, he went on.
“ ‘. . . a full and unconditional pardon.’
“‘For his convictions under Article Ninety-Four, Section one, b., two; and Article One Hundred and Thirty-Four, of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, of which he was convicted on twenty January of this year. And for any and all other offenses during the deployment of the United States Ship Athena, from Little Creek, Virginia, to its return to same. In testimony whereof, I have hereon signed my name and caused the seal of the Department of Justice to be affixed. Done at the City of Washington, this twenty-first day of January. . . .’”
Admiral Porter held it up. “Well, here it is.”
Rensselaer was speechless, paralyzed. But more was to come. Porter went on. “I must say,” he said, “and at risk of violating the customs of the court, that I find this not only extraordinary . . . but pleasing. Captain Rensselaer, you will be more than pleased, because the second document relating to you is a presidential commission. Captain Rensselaer, you have been promoted to rear admiral, upper half.”
This stunned the court and not least Rensselaer himself. Among the Navy’s 350,000 sailors were more than 3,000 captains, but only 60 rear admirals of the upper half. Though presidents can make and have made such promotions, they seldom do.
“Admiral Rensselaer,” Porter continued, “you may be pleased to know that your XO and the commander of your SEAL detachment have also skipped a grade, and have been promoted to captain. The awards and decorations resulting from actions during Athena’s deployment, all of which were put on hold, will follow in due course, and you have been granted six months leave, from this day. Can you assimilate all that?”
“Frankly, sir, no,” Rensselaer answered. “I need some time.”
“Take the time. Meanwhile, I’ll give the proceedings back to His Honor. Your Honor?” Though as surprised as everyone else, the judge preserved his judicial demeanor.
“Captain Rensselaer. . . . ” The clerk of the court cleared his throat. The judge then corrected himself. “Admiral Rensselaer, you are free to go. Guards from the brig, remain to receive the release documents. The proceedings are now closed.” He banged the gavel.
Rensselaer and Frearson walked out into cold sunshine that was not half as shocking to them as what they had just heard, and as they did, with one metallic bang of the heavy electrical panel after another, the spotlights in the helicopter hangar were extinguished bank by bank and forever.