O'hara's Choice - Leon Uris [50]
“What price this confession, Father?”
“There is no one else I can speak to of these things but you. I thought surely, Matthew was a total anomaly, like a counting mule. Then I watched Willow grow up alongside you. It eroded my last defense of slavery. I have come to realize that there might be as many smart black people out there as smart white people. I see a fearsome price to be paid. Yet I still harbor bigotry.”
“That must be difficult for you to say.”
“You are a great heiress, Amanda.”
Horace Kerr would always try to craft a bargain. Amanda felt a truce was in place, but one not built on bedrock. The difference of their “reasons” was going to come back time and again. Would he ever truly let her exist beyond Inverness?
After Chesapeake Park—1891—on Butcher’s Hill Road to Inverness
Chesapeake Park and the splendors of the day seemed a long way off.
Amanda was drained from telling the story of the Fancys. Zach seemed stunned, personally affected, as if he had been hit by something. He got down from the carriage and steadied the dandy horse for the trot up the hill. As he relit the lamps, Amanda saw that her Marine was sorely shaken.
Did he really understand about Willow? She believed he did. The loving side of him was what made her swirl.
Certainly no other boy had ever understood. They were all so damned condescending. Only now and again in her circle of artists and writers was there some sort of compassion.
“What’s disturbing you, Zach?”
“It’s nothing.”
“It is something.”
He shook his head.
“Is it Willow?”
“No, I think your friendship with her is beautiful.”
Her kerchief wiped his brow.
“Zach.”
“I have a problem with heights. It struck me strangely, tonight.”
“Did you ever have a black friend?”
“Maybe . . .”
He released the brakes and gave the reins a tug and hung on to his haunting secret.
“Will I see you in two weeks?” she asked.
“Yes,” he said.
It was a bittersweet end to the glories of the day. They knew they each had a penchant, for better or for worse, for looking into the other’s dark corners.
• 16 •
NOW HEAR THIS
1891—a Month Later—USMC Barracks—Washington
When the grid for Washington had been laid out in 1800, President Thomas Jefferson and Marine commandant Major Nicholas took a horseback ride together for the purpose of selecting an area to house the Marines.
A lot was chosen, bounded by Eighth and Ninth and by G and I streets in the southeast part of the grid. The barracks and commandant’s house became the oldest building in continuous use in the capital.
Newly remodeled enlisted quarters of 1891 held fifteen-man squad rooms with iron bed frames, hair mattresses, white sheets, blue service blankets, and well-filled pillows. Linen was laundered at government expense.
The Advanced Military Program moved deep into its second year.
Major Ben Boone and navy captain Richard X. Maple were old friends who had served on the command staff during the Civil War. Both were posted to the Naval War College in Newport when it commenced in 1884.
By 1888, Captain X, as he was known, was promoted to second in command of the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, largely in charge of curriculum.
While so many of his military peers found the Marine Corps superfluous in times of peace, Maple had always leaned toward keeping it. As the first AMP class was moving to completion, Major Boone had a middle-of-the-night brainstorm. Winning the support of Captain X in this crucial period could mean the difference between the end of the program—and thus the Marines—or a future for his beloved Corps.
Ben came down from Newport regularly to lecture at Annapolis and chewed on Maple’s ear until he prevailed on him to bring a group of midshipmen to the Washington barracks for a seminar on the Marines. Maple agreed, reluctantly, to see what AMP had wrought.
Captain Tobias Storm came up with the next unlikely idea. Storm could compare this first