Savage Conversations
Page 2
Who says Abe is dead?
3. “Minnesota Indian War of 1862,” Lincoln’s Legacy, online exhibit, State Historical Society of North Dakota, accessed May 14, 2018, http://history.nd.gov/lincoln/war2.html.
LONG NIGHT’S MOON
June 1875
Bellevue Place Sanitarium, 333 S. Jefferson Street,
Batavia, Illinois
4:00 a.m. Many candles light her room. The air is hot and stifling.
SAVAGE INDIAN
Shackles Mary Todd Lincoln to the chair for the fifty-seventh time tonight.
Gar Woman. That is your true name. Gar feed at night, Sometimes eat their own eggs.
We were all once fish.
The scent of woman during copulation reminds us.
MARY TODD LINCOLN
Vulgarity at last, just like my Mr. L.
He once asked me, why is a woman like a barrel?
SAVAGE INDIAN
Shrugs.
MARY TODD LINCOLN
Giggles.
You have to raise the hoops before you put the head in.
SAVAGE INDIAN
Breathes deeply through his nose. Snorts the bad air. Leaves her side and walks around her bedroom.
MARY TODD LINCOLN
Fiend, he was my lover, father, and comedian.
SAVAGE INDIAN
Sniffles and pinches her things.
The nit comb on her bureau intrigues him the most.
Fishy in here.
MARY TODD LINCOLN
Smooths the wrinkles of her sour nightdress, the one she’s worn since March 12, 1875.
Ghoul, specter, poltergeist, banshee,
You are the fishy one.
Savage, be gone from my head!
SAVAGE INDIAN
Quiet, someone is coming.
MARY TODD LINCOLN
No doubt the Wandering Jew,
Nightly he steals my pocketbook.4
SAVAGE INDIAN
Woman, be still!
He moves in close, gently caresses her face. Takes the smallest sharp flint from his leather pouch, slits the soft skin above each eyelid, sews it firmly open with a thread of silver filigree, then cuts out her left cheekbone.
MARY TODD LINCOLN
Ecstatic.
Oh! At last I can see the world as it truly is.
4. Mark E. Neely Jr. and R. Gerald McMurtry, The Insanity File: The Case of Mary Todd Lincoln (Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 1986), 7.
THE ROPE SEETHES
NOW I LAY ME DOWN
June 1875
Bellevue Place Sanitarium, 333 S. Jefferson Street,
Batavia, Illinois
4:00 a.m. She sits in a chair in her bedroom. A small candle blooms on the bureau.
MARY TODD LINCOLN
Tattoos adorn his arms and hands.
Like night-blooming cereus, they prick the skin, slash my will.
The savage says nit-picking takes time and patience but can be very
Enjoyable for both parties.
SAVAGE INDIAN
Combs her oily hair.
Immerse any nits or lice in kerosene.
Pull them from the hair; drop in bowl;
Pin the cleaned sections of hair aside,
Scissor-divided segments close to the scalp. Wait.
MARY TODD LINCOLN
These many days after dear Abraham, I have come to this,
Hairless with a deformed cheek,
Those of us with eyes sewn open
Perceive nothing to fear,
Not
Gunpowder, walls afire,
A wild Dakota Indian,
The Presidential Box at Ford’s Theatre,
A hangman’s noose.
SAVAGE INDIAN
Silence, Gar Woman!
Ever so gently he takes two sharp flints from his leather pouch and examines them and chooses the smallest. He approaches her face with determination. They assent to their nightly ritual, the one she craves.
MARY TODD LINCOLN
Picks up the mirror and studies her face.
Her thin upper lip curls into a smile.
I faint from the ecstasy.
THE ROPE SEETHES
THE ROPE
Out of Fort Snelling’s coffin,
I swing like a fool on holiday
Backward, forward, and
Around and around.
Artwork of The Rope found at Fort Snelling
THE ROPE SPEAKS
July 4, 1875
Bellevue Place Sanitarium, 333 S. Jefferson Street,
Batavia, Illinois
The Rope hangs from the ceiling in Mary Todd Lincoln’s sitting room.
THE ROPE
I done it.
Done ’em all.
I come when I’m called
Like a dog,
A horse,
A lover.
This is how I make brothers and sisters.
THE ROPE
Begins to fashion a second noose with his hands.
Start with a piece of string or rope three feet in length.
Bring one end of the loop down parallel to the original rope and fold it into thirds. It should form a wide sideways S. The lead (the left side) should be left longer so that you have some string left at the end for tying to something.
With the bottom of the original C, wrap the end of the rope around the loop several times, from the bottom near your hand, upward.
With the rope that has been wound around the C, poke the end of the rope through the top of the loop left by the S.
Once the loop is fully tightened, the task is complete.
THE ROPE
Laughs. Holds up the noose for inspection.
Hangs it from a rafter in Mary’s bedroom.
A good noose should have one giant loop at one end and a piece of rope at the other end.
Artwork of two hangman’s nooses
THE ROPE SEETHES
THE ROPE
Two down, thirty-six more to go.
Artwork of Mary Todd Lincoln and Savage Indian admiring The Rope’s creations
SAVAGE INDIAN LAMENTS
July 4, 1875
Bellevue Place Sanitarium, 333 S. Jefferson Street,
Batavia, Illinois
Savage Indian walks amid all the clutter in her sitting room. Mary Todd Lincoln paces.
SAVAGE INDIAN
I know isolation.
Silence.
The slow descent downward,
Lost somewhere in midair.
Gar Woman, I have crippling doubts, but
I surrender nothing, not even in death.
He looks at their surroundings.
I no longer have to worry.
That doesn’t mean I am not suspicious of the living.
They enter my dreams uninvited.
In Dakhóta land, they are pulling down the last of our dead,
Bodies of men and women hanged by a rope of lies.
When I was a human being,
I would sing the air thick with Dakhóta songs.
December 26, 1862.
In one hundred and fifty years, the citizens of Mankato
will shiver,
Asking why their ancestors hanged thirty-eight Dakhóta
Indians over a
Handful of hens’ eggs.
When I look at your world, I weep
Because in the end, even your life is a captivity account.
Maybe we are all captives of one sort or the other.
He stops and drinks water from her china teacup.
For the thirty-eight lives abandoned.
In that moment in Mankato, I was misplaced.
Maybe the Nightjars carried my spirit to safety,
Back to the beginning even before Mother Earth existed.
You are probably wondering when. What millennium?
Because in your eyes every hour is measured.
To die alone while dying with thirty-seven others.
This is w
here I tell you about my friend’s dying.
A death song, he sang it, then we sang together.
On the platform in Mankato, we tried to grasp hands, shouting to the winds,
Mni Sóta Maḳoce, land where the waters reflect the skies,
The land where we die.
Words caught in our throats. Choked by a muscular rope.
Savage Indian raises the teacup again to salute The Rope.
Rope, he held fast.
The Rope takes a bow.
Eighteen sixty-two, almost like a birthday.
Tiny needles sew shut the muslin cloth around our faces.
Buried in a mass grave only to be dug up,
Stolen by physicians to be used as medical cadavers,
Later stored in cast-iron pots.
Still,
Our bodies cramped and squirmed in the wind, our spirits scattered.
All of us, Gar Woman, still hang,
And you, dressed in a stinking nightshift,
The one you refuse to remove all these months,
Can never cover the past.
The soldiers are pulling on their boots,
They are not the ones they think they are.
When I am myself as I am tonight, every word is a weapon.
When I am myself as I am tonight, why can’t I forget what happened and
Take you amid the dried-up tingling in my head,
The dried-up prickle between my legs,
The ravaged filaments of desire.
Oh, I lied to settlers, I lied to preachers,
But Gar Woman, you are not who you claim to be,
You bring a child into the world and intensely regret it,
Despite your theatrical tears for pity when another son dies.
You believe you know what must be done with your
Brews and tainted teas.
But I have seen the ghosts of Abraham, Eddie, Willie, even Tad,
Shrink when you enter a room,
Shadows escaping your burning sun.
What happens next, Gar Woman?
You’ve swallowed all but one of your eggs.
Savage Indian grabs Mary Todd Lincoln by her shoulders and pulls her to him.
Because the wind refuses your touch
Because the insects abandoned the ground where you sleep
Because your prayers wilt the prairie grasses
Because at dawn every breath is a trial
Because with your eyes sewn open you still see nothing
Because everything you touch leaves a bruise.
The muskets are being reloaded
The carbines are being reloaded
The large-bore rifles are being reloaded
The Gatling guns are being reloaded
Emancipate me.
Fire!
THE ROPE SEETHES
THE ROPE
And now a bloody red tongue unspools.
Scene 2
A House Divided
SAVAGE INDIAN DREAMS
July 1875
Bellevue Place Sanitarium, 333 S. Jefferson Street,
Batavia, Illinois
9:00 p.m. Savage Indian watches the moonrise from the window-sill of Mary Todd Lincoln’s sitting room.
SAVAGE INDIAN
Yellow buds
Green grass
Wind buds
Prairie grass
She,
Woman Who Strokes My Face,
Her gentle moans
Sweetgrass nights
Water grass
Watching butterflies course
Autumn winds
Wild turnips
Buffalo robe
Home
Wakan Tanka
Wakan Tanka
Wakan Tanka
Wakan Tanka
When will I wake?
SUNDAY LAUNDRY
July 1875
Bellevue Place Sanitarium, 333 S. Jefferson Street,
Batavia, Illinois
Dawn.
MARY TODD LINCOLN
On occasion I still go after your laundry.
Taking them in my arms,
I ravage them one by one,
A stained débardeur, the one you treasured,
An Irish linen handkerchief you carried to that dreadful house,5
The squeaking black shoes, made specially for you, rarely worn,
You claimed they pinched your toes.
No, I did not sell all of your things.
Gracious, the lies they tell about me.
On occasion I walk the landscape of your smells,
Your crop of thick hair and full lips,
The aftertaste you once left in my mouth.
Your lucky nightshirt, the one you wrote in,
And I dared not interrupt you, remember.
Burying my nose in your armpits,
I inhale deeply and grab myself … down there.
Rub to pleasure. Oh … oh.
As always, this must do.
5. She referred to Ford’s Theatre as “that dreadful house.” W. Emerson Reck, A. Lincoln: His Last 24 Hours (Columbia, sc: University of South Carolina Press, 1994), 160.
FIRST CUT
July 1875
Bellevue Place Sanitarium, 333 S. Jefferson Street,
Batavia, Illinois
Mary Todd Lincoln’s bedroom at Bellevue Place.
MARY TODD LINCOLN
Stares into her handheld mirror.
You ask, dear Reverend Ward, why blood drips
From the cuff of my dress sleeve?
A wild savage cut me, sir.
SAVAGE INDIAN
Looks up from reading the newspaper.
Liar.
MARY TODD LINCOLN
Playfully sticks out her tongue at Savage Indian.
I assure you, Reverend Ward, the wild Indian came out of nowhere.
He gave chase across the school ground,
I could feel the beast’s hot breath on my neck.
He felled me.
I wrestled with the demon just as Jacob did at the river Jabbok.6
Savage Indian opens his leather pouch and examines his flints.
MARY TODD LINCOLN
Lays the mirror aside. Paces the room.
First cut.
Shelby Female Academy in Kentucky,
Nine years a second home,
More’s the pity, Reverend Ward shamed me,
Called me precocious.
“You are not Jacob,” he said. “Jacob was Israel renamed
‘He who wrestled with God.’
Do not claim this for yourself.”
She cries.
Oh how I wept for Mother,
Often. Abandoned by Father, a man I barely knew.
When I felt nothing,
I used a kitchen knife.
Pauses.
My house is again broken,
Rotting in a dredge rain.
Savage, give me a sharp blade,
I’ll show you what a knife can do.
Mary Todd Lincoln pushes up her sleeve, exposing old wounds.
Savage Indian moves toward her. A drum pounds as he cuts Mary Todd Lincoln’s eyelids. With careful precision, he takes her scalp, holds it high in the air like a trophy, chanting a warrior’s call. The drumming continues as he dances around the room, completing their nightly assent.
MARY TODD LINCOLN
Crawls quickly on her hands and knees.
Retrieves her hand mirror. Admires her image.
Oh yes, yes, Reverend Ward. The wild Indian scalped me.
Look at me when I am talking to you!
6. Genesis 32:22–32 (New Revised Standard Version).
SAVAGE INDIAN IMAGINES MARY TODD LINCOLN
July 1875
Bellevue Place Sanitarium, 333 S. Jefferson Street,
Batavia, Illinois
All is quiet. Savage Indian sits at Mary Todd Lincoln’s desk, studies her accounts.
SAVAGE INDIAN
Her light, a blus
h of shame.
MARY TODD LINCOLN SINGS A LOVE SONG
August 1875
Bellevue Place Sanitarium, 333 S. Jefferson Street,
Batavia, Illinois
8:00 p.m. Dusk. Twenty-three candles blaze atop the piano, signifying the years she was married to Abraham Lincoln. The air stifles. She plays and sings.
Savage Indian stands next to the piano.
The Rope swings from the rafters in Mary Todd Lincoln’s room.
MARY TODD LINCOLN
“And since you leave me
And thus deceive me
No scene can give me
Relief from pain
My only lover
Has prov’d a rover.
All joy is over.
My tears are vain.”
SAVAGE INDIAN
Another séance, Mary? What news of the Dakhóta?
MARY TODD LINCOLN
Sings.
“Then go forever, dear Abraham,
Yet though we sever
Alas I never
Can wish you ill.”7
She stops playing, dabs her eyes with her handkerchief, and looks up at Savage Indian.
Matilda again, always her.
You didn’t know Mr. Lincoln
Had a love—before me?
She was indeed more beautiful.
Now I alone remember her as he did.
Her mouth of envy,
Perfect teeth flashing like a viper, blinding all reason,
I prayed her light would burn out of plague,
But I won him,
Using my mouth.
I swallowed him!
SAVAGE INDIAN
Shows his surprise.
MARY TODD LINCOLN
What? I couldn’t risk gravidity.
She continues playing.
7. Mrs. Alsop (lyricist) and A. Clifton (arranger), “And Since You Leave Me,” (Baltimore: G. Willig’s Music Store, 1824), accessed May 14, 2018, http://www.pdmusic.org/1800s/24asylm.txt.
Artwork of Mary Todd Lincoln’s hands, up close, making her own noose
THE ROPE SEARCHES FOR HIS LEGACY
August 1875
Bellevue Place Sanitarium, 333 S. Jefferson Street,
Batavia, Illinois
THE ROPE
I know the secret thrill of taut,
Tying up, tying down,
Binding tight,
Strapping hard,
Lashing knot to payload—for kicks,
I am a collar,
A strangler,
I float in the wind like a flag on holidays.
I inspire national pride.
SAVAGE INDIAN, ALL MY RELATIONS