I must have been in the grip of one of those periodic delusions when I re-set my alarm to wake at 0245 this morning.

When it went off my eyes flashed open, realizing what I had done. I fumbled for clothes, and realized I had to shower. I fumbled through the ritual of making the coffee and fell into the shower. While I scraped my beard away I junked the idea of putting on my suit.

It was so painfully early, or late, that it simply didn’t matter.

It was as I pulled on my cargo pants and a knit shirt I realized I had been 53 years old for a couple hours. I poured a travel cup of coffee and grabbed a newsmagazine and headed out the door to pay my respects to President Reagan.

I jumped in the ancient Mercedes and fired it up, alone in Big Pink’s freshly re-paved blacktop. There was no traffic as I swung out onto Route 50 and I kicked on the high-beams and lit up the night.

I don’t know what I was thinking; or, more precisely, I was thinking I still worked on the Hill as I did years ago, and I had credentials and access to the Capitol at all hours of the day, and I would just pull up to a meter and stroll up to the Staff entrance and walk past the catafalque first used to accommodate the casket of President Lincoln.

There is nothing more pathetic than attempting to live a past that is dead as surely as Mr. Reagan.

I had resolved to pay my respects to Mr. Reagan as the images of this body arriving at Andrews AFB began to flash on the television behind the bar at Da Domenico’s out at Tyson’s Corners. We were attempting to complete a business lunch that had lasted nearly three hours and not succeeding.

Things continued to drag on, and wine continued to appear. The lunch was long gone and Dom the genial owner had put out the happy-hour hors d’ourvers. Just after six pm, the hearse carrying the president’s coffin pulled up at the south end of the Ellipse between the White House and the Washington Monument.

As we finally extricated ourselves from the table, I looked up at the television and saw the horse-drawn caisson, accompanied by a riderless horse named Sergeant York.

I know that animal, and visit him sometimes with the other mounts over at the stables at Fort Myer. He looked a little skittish on the television, saber hanging down on the saddle behind Mr. Reagan’s brown riding boots reversed in the stirrups. Normally the boots at these affairs are highly polished military black. But Mr. Reagan was a real rider, and it was a nice touch.

As we left the restaurant and walked out into the melting heat I resolved to stop by and stroke Sgt York’s proud black muzzle when things died down again.

Mrs. Reagan is eighty-two, and she looked translucent, almost as if there was not substance to her at all.

This morning I followed the twin tunnels of my headlights and sailed up the Shirley Highway, over the 14th Street Bridge and into the District on the East-West Freeway. I got off at the exit for the House, the way I used to go when I worked at the Humphrey Building for Secretary Thompson. I thought it would have been convenient to pull into the underground garage there, but my parking pass was gone with that last assignment in the Government.

I turned right on Independence Ave. and drove up the Hill. There were police everywhere. The honors to the former President have been designated a “National Special Security Event, or NSSE in the trade. That meant there were snipers around, and night vision scopes and other people hidden away where they could not be seen. Lights flashed from the roofs of the parked police cars, and knots of people walked down the sidewalks.

Mostly couples, up early as I was, and some men in suits, either very early or very late from work.

I drove up past the entrance to the Member and Guest lot on the south end of the Capitol, briefly wishing there was someone on the Committee to clear me in. But there was no one there at this hour, and things are different these days. There is heavy construction everywhere, and the whole East Front of the building is torn up and two gigantic white cranes stand like storks above it.

I pulled into the curb just beyond the Library of Congress, across the street from the Congressional Research Office.

The Capitol has expanded. Once, you could walk right up to the building. They call the construction a “Visitor’s Center,” but that is not what it is at all. It is an extension of the security perimeter to include all of the old public grounds, and a new underground channel through which to channel the masses that come.

And scan them, and run them through magnetometers and biologic sensors. I suppose the Capitol is still the People’s House, but it is going to be pretty challenging to get to it.

The construction takes up the whole East Front. It is deep, and it looks as though they are hollowing out the rest of Capitol Hill where I used to take the little trains that run underground from the House and Senate offices to the elevators below the legislative chambers. It was pretty neat to know your way underground, and in inclement weather, I could get from the far reaches of the Rayburn Building right under the Capitol Dome and all the way to the Phil Hart Building on the Senate side without ever seeing the sky.
 
But those days are gone, too. I walked along, glancing at my watch. It was nearing four AM as I ducked around a traffic barrier to get to the West Side of the Capitol. I felt the sweat beading on my neck, the humidity hanging  palpable in the air.

Some cops yelled at me, polite, and directed me to The Line, which they said began at 4th Street SW. It boggled the mind. I walked down the hill toward the new Museum of the American Indian. More cops told me to cross the street and I walked in front of the Humphrey Building, getting further and further away from the Capitol. I turned up 3rd Street, since that seemed to be allowed, and saw the long snake of people.

There were thousands of them there to pay their respects. My naïve attempt to avoid the crowd had placed me smack in the middle of an orderly crowd of my fellow citizens.  I turned left and walked outside a snow fence that separated the orderly queue of people from the media trucks and satellite dishes.

I walked another block in the darkness, squinting against the glare of the portable lighting. Just as advertised, there was an entrance and some uniformed Park Rangers from Interior. There was a sign that said to turn off cell phones and no cameras were permitted. A helpful Ranger hoisted up a rope to allow me to scoop underneath. I arrived at the end of the line next to a row of blue portable toilets.

I was behind a group of prosperous citizens in evening wear, and in front of a group of young men from North Carolina who were debating the merits of marriage. I was tempted to give them some unsolicited advise, but thought better of it.

I looked at the crowd, at the cops, the Park Police and the Rangers. There were military in uniform and people sleeping on the lawn. The line moved fitfully, and I looked at the Capitol, looming in the distance.

Someone said it was about a five hour wait, and I looked at my watch and saw that I would walk past the flag-draped casket shortly after nine o’clock, and my car would be ticketed or towed.

I stepped out of the line, and walked parallel to it until I came to the foot of the Hill and looked up. A sea of people where coming down, having passed by the President. Some were weeping. Most looked tired. There was a white tent with dozens of condolence books and dozens of people were writing their messages of hope and thanks.

The quarter moon hung in the sky, east of the shoulder of the great white dome above me.

Then I walked slowly back up the Hill, well outside the new security fences, on the far side of the deep gashes of the new tunnels they are busily excavating. The neighborhoods to the East of the Capitol were silent and lit by streetlights. A young couple approached me, looking for where the Line began. I told them how to find it, and how long to expect to wait when they got there. They thanked me for the information, up early to pay respects and get ahead of things.

They were optimists, like me.

And Mr. Reagan.

Copyright 2004 Vic Socotra