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“Slavery and our Civil War were just such a MORAL IMPERATIVE. After the Holocaust we believed, did we not, that no such event could happen again in the family of man. But genocide by the human race to the human race has happened over and over.

“In the beginning of the last century we awakened to the invention of electric light and airplanes and the X ray and the automobile and film. And, also, the machine gun, a weapon that killed twenty thousand men at the Somme River in a single day.

“We kick the door open now and march into this twenty-first century with more promise that the human race can solve the enormous tasks before of feeding and giving a decent life and preserve this planet.

“When the sums are added, the meaning of the past century was a rising of people to liberate themselves from their masters. It was the century of Mandela.

“Yet the seeds of hatred are within us all. Along with unrivaled progress in our way of life, we must face the demand of a MORAL IMPERATIVE with the goal of eradicating racism. Racism from person to person, tribe to tribe, and nation to nation is the greatest blight on the people of this land, of this world.

“No, we can never defeat it entirely. But we must know to recognize it, confront it, and destroy it wherever it surfaces.

“And, in this matter, we have a richness of different communities and our basic decency to say, who better than America can lead the way.”

There was a long, long moment of silence as Quinn stepped away. Then from this side of the Mall and that side and from the stands a single word was chanted and swelled till the old town shook.

“QUINN!” they cried, “QUINN! QUINN! QUINN!”

* * *

Ah, it was a good thing Rita remembered to slip in a couple of pairs of après-ski boots in the presidential limo for the street was slushy. They walked to the White House as hands reached out begging for a touch, crying the chant.

Quinn saw an awed little fellow of about twelve whose clothing told him he was poor. Quinn halted for a moment, took off his new Stetson, and put it on the lad.

A few moments later they took their places in the reviewing stand and up Pennsylvania Avenue came the Marine Corps band. It stopped before Gunner Quinn and, behind the trumpet and drum roll, played “Hail to the Chief.”

And on came America.

Chinese dragon dancers.

And a man on stilts dressed as Uncle Sam.

And floats with coal miners and mules from Virginia and a lobster boat from Maine.

And up the street marched the Mount St. Joseph High School band of Bloemer, New Mexico, who traveled to the capital on money earned picking crops.

And the replica of the Statue of Liberty.

And the United States Army Band.

And prairie schooners.

And a flyover nudging the sound barrier.

And minutemen.

And the fiercest posse in the West.

And the United States Navy Band.

And mountains and plains and rivers and streams and timber and paddlewheel boats and alligators and floats bulging with the bounty of the nation.

The last division of marchers were led by the United States Air Force Band just as the sun began to lose its zest.

* * *

It would be another hour before the some thirty inaugural balls would require their visit. Already the night was punctured by ten thousand fireworks.

Quinn realized he was quite out of the world this moment, but the sight of Rita dressing brought the biggest smile of the day. Better get a move on, he told himself as he patted his pants and jacket pockets before emptying them. He withdrew the note that Rita had written the night before.

For My Beloved

It has come to this

You beside me

This is my unwritten speech to you

Inaugural, a first poem

You found in your pocket

On this night I am my own crowd of supporters,

Which trusts so much the familiar slope of your ear

that listens to you listen,

gives a fair account of what you hear,

surrounds your every cell

as if each were its own true conviction,

and I am not afraid how many other distant from you

may keep you this way.

For they want to know