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11 A Protege'S Allegations F OR THREE STATES the landscape has been unchanged. There have been pine forests, rolling hills, red dirt, car dealerships owned by guys with first names like Bubba. Billboards have car' ried messages with conservative fervor ("In case of nuclear attack, the ban on school prayer will be lifted" or "A Lawman, Plain and Simple, Joe Price for Sheriff'). This is the Old South, comfortable, slow,paced, poor. And then Atlanta's brash skyline appears in the distance, like some apparition from another world. Atlanta reminds me of Seattle and I feel a twinge of homesick, ness as its skyscrapers fill the windshield. Both cities are the same size and share the same preeminence in their region. They are the magnet cities of the Southeast and the Northwest, these opposite comers of the country, both the big success, cities trying to sell themselves as "world class." So newcomers flood into Atlanta and Seattle, people searching for new starts in the next great place, their arrival transforming the city they had sought, with more traffic, higher prices, suburbs stretching far into the countryside, and some' thing inevitably lost. I hurry through Atlanta, late for my appointment. I cruise past where I am supposed to tum, then have to backtrack until I find a once,posh residential neighborhood now invaded by corporate com' plexes of mirrored glass. I head up the steep driveway, past the stately old oaks, to the sprawling brick house where reside the aging retired general and his wife. Their black maid shows me into the television room at the back of the house where they sit. I bend down 120 A PROTEGI~'S ALLEGAnONS 121 to shake the frail hand of Maj. Gen. Joseph Harper, do the same with his wife, Maria, then take a seat and pull out my questions, although I already sense that they will be of no use. They had been such good friends with my grandfather, the Harpers had told me over the phone. They had been house guests in each other's homes, exchanged calls and letters, including one I had discovered in EI Paso, a 1955 letter from my grandfather who had written Harper: "Your visit to our home was a refreshing delight to the entire family. Among all our national VIPs, you have the most highly developed talent for behaving like a normal human being. This is the quality in you which makes your many friends cherish you so warmly." Now, General Harper, is repaying the favor, saying, "I considered Sam Marshall one of my best friends; he was just the finest guy. I admire him tremendously. I never heard any criticism of him." My attempts to probe beyond platitudes prove fruitless. I hear a few war stories and much detail about the Harper's serious health problems. For the first time, I am face-to-face with what I had always feared this trip might become-encounters with elderly people trying to dredge up recollections of Sam Marshall from failing memories. But the Harpers, both eighty-eight, are cheery hosts and animated talkers who seem excited by this visit of their old friend's grandson. So I play the listener for an hour, and offer thanks when General Harper spends many minutes scrawling an inscription in the history of the regiment he commanded in World War II, a glider Infantry regiment of the fabled lOlst Airborne Division. The book is called Sky Riders, and it contains many photographs of then-Colonel Harper and his men during some of the war's most brutal fighting, including a heroic defense in the line during the Battle of Bastogne. I look at the pictures of the colonel, later the commandant of the Infantry School at Fort Benning, and I see a man with ramrod posture, a serious face behind wire-rimmed spectacles , the stature that sometimes comes with command, this officer destined to win the Silver Star. And I try to square those images with the frail figure across the room, a man now confined to a lounge chair powered by electricity. I feel sadness. I feel sympathy. I feel totally inadequate, witness to a soldier fighting his final battle. I make one other stop in Atlanta, something I would not miss, 122 RECONCIUATlON ROAD the chance to pay my respects at the grave of the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. As I make my way from the car, I reflect on the great distance I have...

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