I was of a mind to go out there and punch Chuck Roche in the nose.
After she heard Roche’s rant, Ms. Sabel pushed off Stefan’s shoulder and stormed for the exit. Her battered body didn’t let her get three steps. I shoved my shoulder under hers while Emily grabbed her other elbow. We steadied her.
“You’re not thinking about challenging him?” Emily asked with a quaking voice.
“Damn straight.”
“That’s just what he wants.” Emily nearly shouted. “To provoke you, prove you don’t care about Alan Sabel. He’ll call you everything if you open the front door.”
Mercury slapped my face. You’re gonna do this, bro. You go out there, open your mouth—I’ll put words in it.
I said, Where the hell have you been?
Mercury said, Carrying you, homie. Now shut up and get out there.
Are you going to make me say something stupid about the Capitoline—
Mercury gripped my shoulder hard. I ain’t doing shit for you. I’m doing this for Pia-Ceasar-Sabel. I’m the god of eloquence. Have some faith for once and do what I tell you.
OK, OK, I said. I’ll do it.
“What? Not you,” Emily sneered. “We need someone with public speaking—”
“Jacob does it.” Ms. Sabel’s stern voice didn’t leave room for discussion. “Bianca introduces him.”
She turned to me. “It’s not about me. Popov hijacked our democracy. You have to do this for Dad and the USA.”
She turned around, sat down between Stefan and the Major, and didn’t look up.
In short order, I was following Bianca and Emily through the main house. Our indignant march pounded the marble floors.
We passed Sylvia in the foyer. She looked confused and out of place, embarrassed to be attending a funeral for a man she’d never spoken to. I’d been preoccupied, which left her to fend for herself. The press photographed everyone on the grounds at Sabel Gardens with telephoto lenses and drones overhead. And President-Elect Roche wasn’t the only one saying bad things about us. Sylvia couldn’t have come at a worse time. Our love affair had been grounded by life. She gave me a weak smile and a thumbs-up.
Outside, we headed for the gates. Reporters were packing up. Bianca ran ahead to the lectern when she saw someone reaching to pull a mic off it.
“A minute please,” she said. “Sabel Security Agent Jacob Stearne was an Army Ranger who earned lots of medals in service to this country. We owe him the courtesy of listening for a few minutes.”
She stepped back and looked at me.
No part of me wanted to move. I was rooted to the spot like an oak. I felt the eyes of a hundred reporters and the lenses of a hundred cameras turn to me. What the hell was I doing? Shooting people, no problem. Public speaking? No way. And this was not just public speaking. This was speaking to the entire nation about … what?
Mercury smacked my shoulder. Move it, soldier. Don’t stand there like an idiot. I told you I got this. Now get up there and open your mouth.
I said, Tell me I’m not going to be speaking in tongues.
You’re no coward. You’re not afraid to speak in tongues or anything else I have in store for you. Think, dude, think. You’ve stood in the line of fire for these jackasses. No need to give a damn about them. Give a damn about Pia-Caesar-Sabel. You’re going to set this straight. Right here. Right now.
Emily took a knee in the front row, her phone live-streaming. Bianca motioned expectantly for me to step forward.
I took the first step, then the second. Next thing I knew, I was tapping the microphones for some bizarre reason. I tossed my hands up, palms out to show I was unarmed. Force of habit. Hostile parleys in uncertain territories were common during my deployments. I opened my mouth.
“Friends, uh.” My brain froze. I rocked back and forth. “Americans. World citizens. I’m just a soldier. Most of my adult life was spent ducking bullets and bombs in Iraq and Afghanistan. I never learned the finer points of speeching.” I swallowed hard. “I mean, speech making. Oration. Whatever y’wanna call it.”
Mercury punched me in the gut. Speak from here. Make it bold.
“I learned how to look a man in the eye—” my voice turned thunderous, “—and decide—the instant before pulling the trigger—whether he’s friend or foe. Whether he was a man or coward, hero or terrorist. I don’t know much about Chuck Roche. I never looked him in the eye. I never saw him in uniform. I don’t know if he’s even been on a battlefield. Some people voted for him, so I guess someone thought well of him.”
I scratched my head and tried to think. “When a man dies, everyone remembers his sins. Richard Nixon was a crook, not the man who opened China. Today, Roche told you Alan Sabel was an egomaniac. If that’s true, he paid the ultimate price for his hubris. I’ll leave that for the Almighty to judge.”
I took a deep breath and took a second to look at the camera lenses. They were big glass things, not like handheld cameras or phones. And there were a lot of them. I felt my gaze boring into them, through them, trying to see the people on the other side.
“I came out here to tell you about my boss, my friend, Alan Sabel.” I paused and caught an encouraging smile from Emily. “He was good to me. He was good to everyone he met. He was good to this community. His philanthropy reached every corner of this region—and he didn’t do it for glory. He did it because he cared. Is that treason? To feed the poor? To shelter the homeless? To comfort the afflicted? I should be so treasonous.
“Alan Sabel used to be our hero. He was an American success story. A grad student who adopted an orphaned girl and built an empire. Everyone looked up to him.” I paused again. I felt something welling up in my chest. A thickness in my nose and throat. “He was more than a success story to me. He was someone who gave a damn.”
It caught up with me. I felt tears welling in my eyelids. No way would I let them see me cry. I turned away for a second. Bianca held a tissue out at a discreet level. I shook it off, took a deep breath, and turned back.
“Alan Sabel was a young man who witnessed his neighbors’ murders and did not stand by. He did what no one else did. On the spot, he took responsibility for a child. Who among us has that kind of courage? We know the obligations, the sacrifices, the challenges—that’s why foster care is full of discarded children. That didn’t stop Alan Sabel. He stepped up and gave his home, his future, his life to a little girl.
“Compare his act to the elite who emotionally abandon their own flesh and blood after a divorce. Or those rich people who never bother to have children because they haven’t the time. I’m sure the President-Elect has his reasons for his family situation. But who is he to judge a man like Alan Sabel?
“The real issue here isn’t what Alan Sabel did. The real issue is: what would any responsible parent do? What would your father do if you were in trouble? What would you do for your son? Your daughter?”
I looked each reporter in the eye, one more time.
“What was Alan Sabel’s crime? Was he any less a man than any politician? No. He was much more. What crime did he commit? What Roche said today was nothing but an aporia. When Alan Sabel’s daughter was in danger, did he wait for the legal system to wend its way through a lengthy process? When a Russian general sent him this picture, did he wait for the State Department to file a complaint?”
Holding Alan Sabel’s phone over my head for everyone to see, I wondered where the hell I’d found it. I glanced up at it. To my shock, the picture of Ms. Sabel, the one I know for a fact that I’d deleted, was in full view. Reporters squinted to see it and instantly recognized what it was. They began shouting for me to send them copies. I tossed the phone to Emily.
“Or did Alan Sabel do what any father would do—move heaven and earth to save his child? The very child he plucked from drowning in the river of obscurity? Would you do any less for your child? Is it treason to pull your daughter from death’s door?”
I took a deep breath.
“For Alan Sabel, there was no border strong enough to hold him back. He saw no USA. He saw no Russia. No sovereign nation to be recognized—because certainly, no government is evil enough to shelter the criminals who attempted to murder his daughter. If there had been time, he knew Russia would’ve welcomed him; even helped him save her. But there was no time. He knew that Pia Sabel, this country’s Olympic heroine, was in mortal danger and that he could—and therefore should—save her.”
That one silenced them for a second.
“He was no rogue mercenary.” I gave them my soldier stare and lowered my voice an octave and roared. “In my experience, heroism isn’t something self-proclaimed, it’s self-evident. I was there. I saw Alan Sabel in action. I served by his side. I looked him in the eye, and I saw it in his soul: Alan Sabel was an American hero.”
I paused once again. When I spoke again, my voice was softer, quieter. “Sorry, I’m just a soldier. When I joined the Army, I swore to protect truth, justice, and the American way. And I’ve come close to giving my life for that oath many times. You know what I say to any civilian who dares to call Alan Sabel a traitor? Rot in hell, coward.”
I turned on my heel and walked away to the cacophony of reporters barking questions. Bianca trotted alongside me.
Emily stayed behind to divvy up the photo of Ms. Sabel. Giving them that picture was a terrible idea. I don’t know what I was thinking. Ms. Sabel would fire me for that one. The last thing a woman would want is having photos of her beaten body shared all over the internet.
“Do you know what aporia means?” Bianca asked as we paced across the driveway.
“What? Sure. It means … um … something. Why?”
“You used it back there.”
“Oh.” I kept up my stride. “Did I say it wrong?”
“No. It’s just. That speech. It didn’t sound like you. It sounded … more eloquent than I expected.”
“Sorry.”
“That’s not what I meant. I—” She decided to quit while she was ahead. “You did great. Better than anything I could’ve thought up.”
“Thanks.”
Mercury strode alongside me. He didn’t look at me. He didn’t beg for props.