by John Hopkins

I was working in a mailroom when John Hinkley mistook President Reagan for Jodie Foster. The number one pressman stood up and, by dragging his index finger across his throat, motioned the rest of us to turn off our machines. We all gathered around a clock radio and listened to relentless speculation on the president’s fate.

As the news wore on we learned about John Hinkley: How he had been picked up with a case full of guns during one of President Carter’s speeches in Tennessee; about his fascination with Jodie Foster and her performance in Taxi Driver, about his rich family in Colorado. Then, I heard something that surprised me: Al Haig had run up the vice president’s back to announce that he was in charge. It just didn’t seem like the kind of thing Al Haig would do. When the new reports started to repeat themselves we went back to our machines. I cranked up my folder to five thousand folds per hour and started to work on a stack of forty-six thousand invoices. I was perplexed; you think you know someone, but then you find you don’t. As I waited for the pile of folded invoices to be larger than the unfolded one, the traditional mailroom cigarette break, I thought of my time with Haig. I thought of us smoking Winstons and drinking coffee, lighting up the highway between McLean and Dupont Circle.

The pressmen, who were closest to the radio, would yell newsflashes over the wack, wack, wack sound of mailroom machinery. Reagan says all things considered, he’d rather be in Philadelphia. The number one pressman was relishing his role as communications link between us and the outside world.

“What about Haig,” I yelled, careful not to fold my fingers. “Bush is pissed,” the number two pressman said. “You crackers have fixed yourselves now.”

* * *

I came to know Haig in 1977 through a curious mix of alternative education and Washington’s then-new subway system. I was attending a new high school in the Kalorama section of Upper Northwest Washington for kids who didn’t like St. Alban’s. It was pretty much up to the students how they got to school and I was supposed to carpool to Rosslyn with my mother, ride the newly inaugurated red line to Dupont Circle, and jump the Mount Pleasant bus to Kalorama. The worked for a week, but, as was my pattern, I fell in with the wrong crowd, and spent my Metro fare at the Wit’s End. The new itinerary had me standing at the Metro station until my mother’s tail lights disappeared on Wilson Boulevard; then I’d hitchhike across Key Bridge, telling drivers I was going to Dupont Circle and trusting them to get me there.

I knew nothing of Washington’s street plan and on my way home I would stick my thumb out on a road that seemed to head toward my home in Virginia. This worked well and I soon discovered the Wit’s End Bar in Cleveland Park, where I spent my traveling money, as I had discovered that hitchhiking required the proper state of mind. It wasn’t long before I figured out that, in terms of hitchhiking, the Rosslyn Metro was a long way out of my way and that it would be faster to head over Chain Bridge a mile beyond the exit my mother normally turned off of. I thought of telling my mother that I had arranged to meet a friend there, but I realized this would end my Metro/Wit’s End money. Instead, I told her of a little-known bus route that would take me right where I wanted to go.

Because it was the same place at the same time every day, I got regular rides. As a car pulled past me onto the shoulder I would scan the back bumper for stickers with fish or other religious proclamations. When I got to the door I checked the dashboard for glow-in-the-dark crosses and the rearview mirror for crucifixes. Experience had taught me that there was nothing more anticlimactic than searching for historic Jesus in bumper-to-bumper traffic. I would also check the ashtrays to see if they were open and full of butts; I liked to smoke on the way to school. My smoking criteria wasn’t hard and fast, but my bumper sticker rule was.

I particularly enjoyed one regular ride. The driver was an older man, in his early sixties I guessed, with what was left of his grey hair cut into a crew. By about the third ride he told me his name was Al Haig, but that I should just call him Haig. I looked forward to seeing his faded green ‘66 Impala, which was essentially an ashtray on wheels. Haig had spent twenty years developing short cuts to Dupont Circle; he was always fine-tuning his route, but it always featured a kamikaze left off of Canal Road onto Reservoir and a gut-check move across MacArthur Boulevard. We’d always scream and yell as we knifed our way through busy intersections.

“Oh, that was a close one,” he’d say.

“Yeah,” I’d say, enjoying the kick of rat-racing with a senior citizen. Haig had an aversion to traffic lights, as if they were a conspiracy to slow him down, and every ride would feature a new right, a new left, a  new opportunity for him to slap the dashboard and say, “that was a close one.”

I caught rides with Haig about three times a week and it wasn’t long before he asked me where I lived. “Hell, that’s hardly out of my way at all,” and I started to wait for Haig about fifty feet from my front door. He would stop by the 7-11 before he picked me up every morning and he’d bring me a sixteen ounce coffee and a pack of Winstons and we’d head for the circle on a mission of speed.

I never knew what Haig did for a living. Once he dropped me off in Dupont Circle, I wouldn’t see him again until the next morning. There was always a lot of talk about what I should do with my life. Haig was convinced that when all the hippies reached retirement age there was going to be some money to be made and pension law was what I should be thinking about. I always nodded my head in agreement. At the beginning of the school year I learned the first rule of hitchhiking: Be an attentive and agreeable listener. And besides, I was used to this; it seems people who pick up hitchhikers have a natural inclination toward career planning.

On Tuesdays and Thursdays, Haig’s wife rode with us. She was a Friend of the National Zoo and on those days I got door-to-door service, but I wouldn’t save any time because Haig always took it easy on Tuesdays and Thursdays. His wife didn’t think I was cut out to be a lawyer, but that I should consider being a lobbyist for animal rights; she said I had a flair for it. I didn’t think much about pension law or animal rights; the only future I thought about was hitting the Wit’s End Bar that afternoon.

Haig had as much to do with me graduating from high school as anybody. I was inclined towards truancy, but the idea of Haig sitting out there on the road waiting for me with a sixteen-ounce coffee and a pack of Winstons for me was too much. It would destroy me on those days when I was actually sick. I would see Haig out there waiting, exhaust pumping out his car, psyched to show me a new shortcut. I’d go out and tell him I couldn’t make it, and he’d hand the cigarettes and coffee through the window and say, “See you tomorrow, kid.”

As spring came around we talked a lot about college. Haig still wanted me to be a lawyer, so he always played up the history as a good major, except on Tuesdays and Thursdays, when it was clear I was going to study political science. Talking about college always made me wonder how this relationship was going to end. When American University was the only college that accepted me, Haig talked about finding a new route altogether. Maybe he’d start to swing up towards Ward Circle, which went right by A.U. When I told Haig I was hoping to receive a car as a graduation present from my parents he said, “Yeah, a young man needs a car.”

The last time I saw Haig at our designated spot was the Monday after I had graduated. I waited out there with the patent-leather shoes Haig had lent me for my senior prom.

“Remember pension law, kid,” he said as he handed the coffee and cigarettes through the window. And I put the shoes on the seat next to him.

* * *

When I got home that night after the assassination attempt and watched the news, I realized that the person calling himself Al Haig was not the person I’d spent my senior year with. This person might have had the same name, but he didn’t live up to what that name meant to me. If it had been the Al Haig I knew, he would have been behind the scenes, fine-tuning, streamlining, looking for a shortcut through the dilemma; he would have been doing what the Secretary of State should have been doing.

I saw Haig one more time. I was hitchhiking home from my short-lived career at A.U. because I had spent all my gas money at the Wit’s End. I heard Haig’s car before I saw it. The muffler had a serious crack in it. He pulled over.

“Where’s your car, kid?” I lied and told him it was in the shop.

“Yeah, mine’s about cooked, too,” he said, pointing up toward the hood. He was running on five cylinders. “I think I might get a Honda.” We didn’t say much. I told him I hadn’t decided on a major because I didn’t want to tell him I was majoring in Allowance and Guitar. He dropped me off about a half mile from my house.

“I’ll be looking for you, kid.” He looked tired. Maybe it was because I had never seen him at the end of the day. Maybe he was just getting old. I watched Haig drive off as the Carter administration came to a close and I thought this was the final sign of Armageddon. Haig in a Honda.

Now when I have occasion to drive into Upper Northwest Washington, I always take an old Haig route. I sit out on Canal Road and wait for oncoming traffic so I can make a kamikaze left onto Reservoir and, for an instant, I wish I were a lawyer sitting in an office somewhere, wringing my hands. “You say you want a revolution.” Waiting for the hippies to hit the wall so I can cash in.

---

 

John Hopkins graduated from George Mason University’s MFA program in 1991.