Good Manners

I was too young to know him. I came to him later, in clips: a whisper in a room of children, a shoe he ducks, a sentence he cannot get to the end of. He looks almost harmless struggling with the words. I laugh. Elsewhere in the record, his orders are being carried out. There are people who will never find him funny. I have to remember the shoe belonged to someone who wanted it to hit him. Still, I watch his face as the man whispers in his ear. I find some comfort in how badly he seems to want the news to be something else. Then our current president, stumbling through another sentence. Somewhere in it, a woman becomes something he is allowed to take. He seems pleased with himself. And I miss the older performance, the effort of appearing decent, of having to explain yourself. I had imagined a country large enough to put a limit on the man who led it. Bush ducks again. He straightens, almost smiling. Across the room, the man who threw the shoe is being held down.