anything. It's disgraceful. It starts with the White House…'
Whom was he talking to other than me? My brother was trailing after Mr. Taylor, asking about the mural, and my mother was trying to prevent herself from saying or doing anything, struggling against the very emotions that had overpowered her earlier in the car-and back then without anything like this much justification.
'Read that,' my father said, alluding to the tablet bearing the Gettysburg Address. 'Just read it. 'All men are created equal.''
'Herman,' gasped my mother, 'I can't go on with this.'
We came back out into the daylight and gathered together on the top step. The tall shaft of the Washington Monument was a half mile away, at the other end of the reflecting pool that lay at the base of the terraced approach to the Lincoln Memorial. There were elm trees planted all around. It was the most beautiful panorama I'd ever seen, a patriotic paradise, the American Garden of Eden spread before us, and we stood huddled together there, the family expelled.
'Listen,' my father said, pulling my brother and me close to him, 'I think it's time we all had a nap. It's been a long day for everybody. I say we go back to the hotel and get some rest for an hour or two. What do you say, Mr. Taylor?'
'Up to you, Mr. Roth. After supper I thought the family might enjoy a tour in the car of Washington by night, with the famous monuments all lit up.'
'Now you're talkin',' my father told him. 'Sound good, Bess?' But my mother wasn't so easy to cheer up as Sandy and I. 'Honey,' my father told her, 'we ran into a screwball. Two screwballs. We might have gone up to Canada and run into somebody just as bad. We're not going to let that ruin our trip. Let's have a nice rest, all of us, and Mr. Taylor will wait for us, and we'll go on from there. Look,' he then said, with a sweep of his outstretched arm. 'This is something every American should see. Turn around, boys. Take one last look at Abraham Lincoln.'
We did as he instructed but it was impossible any longer to feel the raptures of patriotism turning me inside out. As we began the long descent down the marble staircase, I heard some kids behind us asking their parents, 'Is that really him? Is he buried there under all that stuff?' My mother was directly beside me on the stairs, trying to act like someone whose panic wasn't running wild within her, and suddenly I felt that it had fallen to me to hold her together, to become all at once a courageous new creature with something of Lincoln himself clinging to him. But all I could do when she offered me a hand was to take it and clutch it like the unripened being I was, a boy whose stamp collection still represented nine-tenths of his knowledge of the world.
In the car, Mr. Taylor plotted the rest of our day. We'd go back to the hotel, nap, and at quarter to six he'd come to pick us up and drive us to dinner. We could return to the cafeteria near Union Station where we'd had our lunch, or he could recommend a couple of other popular-priced restaurants whose quality he could vouch for. And after dinner, he'd take us on the tour of Washington by night.
'Nothing fazes you, does it, Mr. Taylor?' my father said.
He replied only with a noncommittal nod.
'Where you from?' my father asked him.
'Indiana, Mr. Roth.'
'Indiana. Imagine that, boys. And what's your hometown out there?' my father asked him.
'Didn't have one. My father's a mechanic. Fixed farm machinery. Moved all the time.'
'Well,' said my father, for reasons that can't have been clear to Mr. Taylor, 'I take my hat off to you, sir. You should be proud of yourself.'
Again, Mr. Taylor gave only a nod: he was a no-nonsense man in a tight suit and with something decidedly military about his efficiency and his bearing-like a hidden person, except there was nothing to hide, everything impersonal about him being plainly visible. Voluble talking about Washington, D.C., close-mouthed about everything else.
When we got back to the hotel, Mr. Taylor parked the car and accompanied us in as though he were not just our guide but our chaperone, and a good thing it was, because inside the lobby of the small hotel we discovered our four suitcases standing beside the front desk.
The new man at the desk introduced himself as the manager.
When my father asked what our bags were doing downstairs, the manager said, 'Folks, I have to apologize. Had to pack these up for you. Our afternoon clerk made a mistake. The room he gave you was being held for another family. Here's your deposit.' And he handed my father an envelope containing a ten-dollar bill.
'But my wife wrote you people. You wrote us back. We had a reservation months ago. That's why we sent the deposit. Bess, where's the copies of the letters?'
She pointed to the bags.
'Sir,' said the manager, 'the room is occupied and there are no vacancies. We will not charge you for what use you all made of the room today or for the bar of soap that is missing.'
'Missing?' Just the word to send him right off the rails. 'Are you saying we
'No, sir, I am not. Perhaps one of the children took the soap as a souvenir. No harm done. We're not going to haggle about something so small or start looking through their pockets for the soap.'
'What is the meaning of this!' my father demanded to know, and under the manager's nose pounded his fist on the front desk.
'Mr. Roth, if you're going to make a scene here…'
'Yes,' my father said, 'I am going to make a scene till I find out what's up with that room!'
'Well, then,' replied the manager, 'I have no choice but to phone the police.'
Here my mother-who was holding my brother and me around the shoulders, shielding us alongside her and at a safe distance from the desk-called my father's name, trying to prevent him from going further. But it was too late for that. It always had been. Never could he have consented to quietly occupying the place that the manager wished to assign him.
'This is that goddamn Lindbergh!' my father said. 'All you little fascists are in the saddle now!'
'Shall I call the District police, sir, or will you take your bags and your family and leave immediately?'
'Call the police,' my father replied. 'You do that.'
There were now five or six guests aside from us in the lobby. They'd entered while the argument was under way and they were lingering to find out what was going to come of it.
It was then that Mr. Taylor stepped up to my father's side and said, 'Mr. Roth, you are perfectly in the right, but the police are the wrong solution.'
'No, that is the
The manager reached for the phone, and while he dialed, Mr. Taylor went over to our bags, swept up two in either hand, and carried them out of the hotel.
My mother said, 'Herman, it's over. Mr. Taylor took the bags.'
'No, Bess,' he said bitterly. 'I've had enough of their guff. I want to talk to the police.'
Mr. Taylor reentered the lobby on the run and without stopping bore down on the desk, where the manager was completing his call. In a lowered voice, he spoke only to my father. 'There is a nice hotel not very far away. I telephoned them from the booth outside. They have a room for you. It's a nice hotel on a nice street. Let's drive over there and get the family registered.'
'Thank you, Mr. Taylor. But right now we are waiting for the police. I want them to remind this man of the words in the Gettysburg Address that I read carved up there just today.'
The people watching all smiled at one another when my father mentioned the Gettysburg Address.
I whispered to my brother, 'What happened?'
'Anti-Semitism,' he whispered back.
From where we were standing we saw the two policemen when they arrived on their motorcycles. We watched them cut their engines and come into the hotel. One of them stationed himself just inside the door, where he could keep an eye on everybody while the other approached the front desk and beckoned the manager over to where the two of them could speak confidentially.
'Officer-' my father said.
The policeman spun around and said, 'I can attend to only one party to a dispute at a time, sir,' and resumed
