Vignette: President Pratt Tries to Chill

A President of the United States — at least a good one — didn’t get a lot of leisure time, particularly when the nation was in crisis. Henry Pratt had been working on one thing or another from 8 a.m. to 9 p.m., with only a couple of breaks for meals.

Pratt made the most of the few hours he did have. At 9:45 p.m. he was in bed with an e-reader in his left hand and Claire curled against his right arm. On the nightstand was a wineglass holding the last of a smoky ’94 Oregon Pinot Noir, aged to a deep russet and mellowed to a velvety smoothness, that they’d shared over dinner.

An old Albert King and Stevie Ray Vaughan jam session, likewise mellowed to a velvety smoothness, was playing on his earpiece. (Someone had once told Pratt that the Duke of Wellington had wanted to be a violinist before going into the army and making history. Pratt himself had once dreamed of being a blues guitarist and singer, but he had never been better than mediocre as a player and the same voice that served him so well at public speaking had sucked the life out of every song he’d ever tried to sing. So he’d had to settle for becoming President of the United States.)

Pratt set down the book for a moment, picked up the glass and took another sip. The wine was almost perfectly balanced. Perhaps it was a little on the woody side — not enough to make it unpleasant, but enough to make him glad he and his wife had drunk it today. He tried to detect all the aromas and flavors the wine guide had promised, but, like his fingers and his voice when it came to the blues, his nose and palate could never quite capture all the notes. Not that he would ever stop trying.

The music made him feel sadder than usual. Claire had never been able to bear children, and while they could have raised a dozen without straining their finances, they had both been so busy that it seemed wrong to seek out and adopt children that neither of them would have been able to spare the time and attention for. Listening to an older musician guiding and encouraging a younger one, Pratt felt that he’d missed out on something.

He took the earpiece out and tried concentrating on the book, but even that troubled him now. His wife stirred a little and looked up at him.

“What are you reading?”

“A biography,” he said.

“Something bothering you?”

“You could say that.” He tapped the screen of the e-reader. “This man I’m reading about… he was everything you could ask for in a leader. Successful engineer, successful businessman. His career took him all over the world. A war started and he led a volunteer effort to get Americans out of the war zone. Then he started helping refugees from the war. Then the war ended and he led a relief effort that saved millions of lives. He was in the president’s cabinet when a massive flood hit the U.S., and he did a lot to help people there too.

“At this point, everybody thought… not just that he’d be president someday, but that he’d be a great president. I mean, if you tried to imagine the perfect man to become POTUS at a time of crisis and get the country through it, this would be the man.”

“So who is this guy, and why have I never heard of him?”

“You have, actually. Herbert Clark Hoover.” Pratt set the e-reader down on the nightstand, next to the wineglass and his cell phone.

“It’s not that he did nothing,” he continued. “He did try to deal with the situation. If he’d just done a few things differently — vetoed that stupid tariff, gone off the gold standard when deflation hit, treated the Bonus Army with a little basic human decency…” Claire leaned her head on his shoulder and patted his arm. She could tell he wasn’t really worried about Hoover.

“I can’t fail, Claire,” he said. “I can’t become another failed president. Not now.”

Claire squeezed his arm. “All you can do is… all you can do.”

“I know.” He rested one of his large, wrinkled hands on her small, wrinkled hand. Her glossy white hair was falling onto his chest. Pratt was suddenly acutely aware of how old everything in the room was. The furnishings, the wineglass, the wine, his wife, himself… only his phone, earpiece and e-reader belonged to the twenty-first century, and the earpiece was playing music from the 1980s while the e-reader was showing a book about a man who lived a hundred years ago.

It felt like he was trying to take a break from this year. While he was enjoying the comforts of the White House, right now thirty million Americans were in mobile homes and tents and hastily-built cabins, and most of them were likely to stay there for at least the next six months. From what NWS was telling him, north of the 45the parallel it wouldn’t even be possible to start rebuilding until spring. And even though the emergency housing shelters were supposed to be for refugees from the Northern Monsoon, they were becoming magnets for others — people made homeless by wildfires in the West and South, or people towns in Texas, Oklahoma and New Mexico that were being gradually abandoned because their water supply had dried up… and of course plain old homeless people.

The worst thing about the Monsoon was not knowing when or where it would happen again. If it was going to hit the U.S. every ten years, or five years, or three years, they could at least plan around it, but how many years would it take to get a sense of how likely it was to hit in any given fall? And what were they supposed to do in the meantime?

What was it he’d said about climate change? A healthy economy is the best defense. He still believed it. Unfortunately, the economy had been washed into the Gulf of Mexico. Now people were looking for the second-best defense, and he didn’t have one.

And then there was the Norfolk Plan, which was a proposed solution to an entirely different and much more long-term problem, and which had arrived on the front steps of Congress all wrapped up with a neat little bow and a note on it saying PLEASE SOMEBODY FIND A WAY TO PAY FOR THIS. The U.S. had over twelve thousand miles of coastline. The only way to buy all of it without breaking the budget would be to declare eminent domain and offer bargain-basement compensation. Not only did this go against everything Pratt believed in, but it would ruin every property owner on the coast… which would defeat the entire purpose of the Plan.

Pratt’s thoughts were interrupted when his phone began playing “Isfahan.” The Secretary of Defense was calling. He reluctantly disentangled himself from Claire, got up and sat behind the desk with his head turned away from his wife. He trusted her, but need-to-know meant need-to-know, and there was nothing Swanston was likely to call at this hour to say that she needed to hear.

“Hello?”

“CASSIUS is ready, Mr. President.” (Pratt had never cared much for operational names like “Infinite Justice,” “Enduring Freedom” or “Mighty Hand.” They sounded like something a totalitarian regime with a very crude propaganda arm would come up with. He preferred names that sent the message: this will do something, and if you can’t tell what, neither can the enemy.)

“How long can we keep it at readiness?”

“About three months.”

“Thank you, Simon.”

“I’m having someone place the envelope in the football tonight,” he said. “I hope to God you never need it.”

“So do I.”

“In case you do, remember… the green bird.”

“Say that again?”

“The green bird. That’s the rune. Remember it.”

CASSIUS. The green bird. Pratt shut his eyes and took a few minutes to commit it to memory. CASSIUS. The green bird. CASSIUS. The green bird. CASSIUS. The green bird.