Running

Dubious McGinty had his satellite dish tuned to C-Span, and he was ready to watch General David Petraeus get questioned by the Senate Armed Services Committee. It was a chilly morning on the drawbridge, but McGinty was feeling hot because he had been having flashbacks of Vietnam all night--triggered when he had heard Senator John McCain say that the United States is "no longer staring into the abyss of defeat" in Iraq. McCain was on this committee, and so were the other Presidential candidates that Perry Winkle had told him about. McGinty had voted in a couple of Presidential elections when he was younger, but he had no memory of them, and Winkle was trying to persuade McGinty to register to vote this year. McGinty found it hard to believe that voting would make any difference. A couple sparrows were hopping around his feet, foraging for sticky bun crumbs, but he had only a vague awareness of their chirping presence, and it would be hours before he opened the door and they saw the sky again. McGinty stared at McCain, trying to picture Condoleeza Rice as his running mate; it gave him chills, and he took a gulp of his Irish coffee.

Several miles away, in Adams Morgan, a teacher was sipping Dunkin Donuts coffee and talking to her class about the Olympic torch relay, and why it was being disrupted by anti-Chinese protesters around the world. Angela de la Paz did not know anything about Tibet, and she was staring out the window at a couple of pink warblers singing for her. She was thinking about the horses that Dr. Raj had taken her and a few other students to see on Sunday. They were retired racehorses, and very beautiful. The students got to feed carrots to the horses and pet them, and one of them had nuzzled Angela like a large dog licking her face. Dr. Raj had explained to them that horses don't like racing--they are literally whipped into a frenzy of fear that propels them as a herd to execute a flight response. Sometimes, horses can't take it anymore and simply refuse to run anymore. The horses' new home was so simple--just an old barn and some grassy fields to graze in--but the horses had looked so content. Dr. Raj had explained to them that there was a federal budget freeze at the National Arboretum, and the Friendship Garden program was probably not going to happen this year, but she would try to find other things for them to do. Dr. Raj had spent $100 for a rented van, and her whole afternoon, to pick up the kids and drive them out to rural Maryland to see this place, but she was really not sure what she could or should do for the rest of the year.

Angela's thoughts turned to the second farm they had seen, where wild horses rescued from armed Nevada ranchers had been brought to roam free--a pinto stallion and his small harem of beautiful mares. The herd galloped around just for the fun of it, until the mustangs spotted some horses brought out for dressage practice at the farm next door. Then the wild horses--who had never been ridden- had lined up at the fence in amazement to watch what the other horses were doing prancing around with people on their backs and things tied around their mouths. Angela didn't know that horses could have such different lives. The girl seated at the desk next to her began to cry, and Angela shifted her focus back to the classroom, where the teacher was saying they had spent enough time talking about Tibet.

Several miles south, Charles Wu was eating baklava at Overtime Cafe, reading newspaper reports about the anti-Tibet protests dogging the Olympic torch relay around the world. He really didn't see how China was any worse than the U.S. had been to the American indigenous, the British had been to the subcontinent's indigenous, the Spanish had been to the Caribbean indigenous, or the French had been to the African indigenous. He didn't like it when China was held to such high standards by people that had such disgusting human rights records of their own. And yet.... He frowned, admitting to himself that most people in China did not even have newspapers or any other source telling them what was going on in Tibet. But Westerners are worse, because they know what their governments are doing but let their governments keep doing it. The waiter brought Wu another Chinese beer and told him that the new karaoke machine would be delivered this weekend. Wu smiled and nodded at the waiter as Han Li came in and sat down across the chess game that Wu was teaching him as they got to know each other better. Li ordered some pizza and began telling Wu some of the strange things he had heard coming from the Heurich Society meeting this week--for instance, how furious they were that Condoleezza Rice was being talked about as a Vice Presidential candidate, and how one of the members had kept shouting, "I told you! I told you! I told you she had her own agenda! We can't trust her anymore!" Li's English had gotten a lot better.

A few miles away, Ardua brooded in the Potomac, frustrated that Bush, Cheney, and Rice were all out of town at the same time. She lashed out at George Washington Hospital, killing a young woman in childbirth and a car accident victim in the emergency room, but it wasn't enough for her.