by Steve Almond
“Douglass! Where is Douglass?”
“The proclamation’s been issued!”
“Find Douglass!”
“Here he is. Speak Douglass! Speak!”
I am kept, Douglass thinks. As kept as china in an antique cabinet.
IN A WEST WING ceremony, Secretary of the Treasury Chase presents Lincoln with a newly minted twenty-dol-lar bill. The president holds the note up to the light. “What a signature Mr. Spinner has,” he says. “But it must take him hours to sign every bill. Tell me, how does he manage it?”
Chase lets out a laugh.
“What is funny, Chase?”
“Surely you realize, Mr. President.”
“Realize what?”
“Spinner’s signature, sir; it is engraved on the plate.”
“Engraved?”
“Yes.”
“What, then, is to keep a thief from stealing these plates? Or one of your staff from printing extras?”
Chase stares at him, unsure what to say. “But there are safeguards,” he stammers.
Lincoln shakes his head. “This thing frightens me,” he murmurs. “Not even our names are kept authentic any longer.”
LINCOLN RESTS HIS weight on the long pole, lets the boat drift. His eyes settle on Douglass. They are the color of bog peat. “Tell me about slavery.”
“What is there to tell?” Douglass says impatiently. He is seated at his desk, endeavoring to compose his memoirs.
“What did you eat?”
“Cornbread. Salt pork. Whatsoever they gave us.”
“When you say ‘they’?”
Douglass continues scribbling. His plume bobs like a cock’s wattle.
“And this talk of corporeal punishment, privations?”
Douglass offers no response.
Lincoln gazes out at the river, at the silvered eddies, and chuckles in a manner he hopes will provoke Douglass’s interest. “I am reminded here of the one-legged Paducah planter. It seems he seeded his main acres with orchard rye, hoping to corner the market, leaving only a small patch for cotton. That season an early frost came, and our poor Paducah Joe was left without recourse—”
“Lincoln.” Douglass holds his pen aloft. “If you might.”
Lincoln gives his long pole a sullen yank.
“I rather like corn bread.”
DOUGLASS RETURNS TO the White House. Lincoln has aged a decade. His cheeks look like butcher paper, torn just beneath the eyes. “I have some concerns about the course of the conflict. Your people are not coming to us in the numbers I had hoped, Douglass.” His tone is that of a peevish schoolmaster.
“They are trapped, Mr. President. Surely you can see.”
“I want you to devise some way to bring them into our lines. Would you do that for me, Douglass? A band of scouts, perhaps?”
“I am hardly the man—”
“We will give you guns, Douglass. And rations and some pay.”
“I very much doubt—”
“And morphine, Douglass. Morphine for the injured.”
“HOW IS IT that you navigate this vessel?” Douglass says.
Lincoln has angled his body against the long pole. With his face upturned, his eyes closed, and the sun beating down, he looks, from this certain angle, like a large, sleepy turtle. “Navigate?” he says.
“Yes. Is there some rudder device, some means of control?”
Lincoln laughs. “The river is like history,” he says. “And the flatboat is like a man’s life. He can move about in the current, work the pole toward certain intended effects. But he is taken, finally, where the river wishes to take him.”
“And where is that, Mr. President?”
“To the sea, Douglass, the deep and final sea.”
LINCOLN’S SECRETARY POKES his head in the doorway. “Governor Buckingham of Connecticut,” he says.
“Tell Governor Buckingham to wait,” Lincoln snaps. “I want to have a long talk with my friend Frederick Douglass.”
Douglass blushes. “Really, Mr. President. I am certain the governor—”
“Hush, Douglass. I have no end of Buckinghams. That is why they keep me in this grand house. So the Buckinghams of the world know where to find me. Now then,” Lincoln says, “we were discussing scouts. A band of them.”
SOUTH OF BURLINGTON, Lincoln purchases a flask of whiskey from a passing gambling barge. Douglass, embarrassed, tries to hide beneath his desk.
“Say, is that Frederick Douglass?”
“No sir.” Lincoln moves to shield his companion from view.
“Back away, you oaf. Let me see. But what other man could appear so god-awful? Look at his nose! Like a wedge of moldy cheese. Say there, Frederick!” Others now start to crowd the rail.
“I must ask you gentlemen to cease—”
“Is this your house nigger, Douglass?”
Lincoln steers away from the barge, but a cross flow drags them back.
“And where is Mrs. Douglass?”
“Come dance a waltz, Douglass.”
“With your goon here. We’ve never before seen two niggers dance a waltz.”
DISREGARDING THE ADVICE of his advisors, Lincoln invites a group of rail workers to the White House to celebrate the completion of a line to the Oregon territory. The men move about in rented waistcoats, a sea of nervous mustaches. Lincoln presses the men for accounts of the West. He is fascinated by buffalo, the talk of mountains and endless ridgelines. Long after the men have been marched off, Lincoln can be seen in the West Garden, his arms extended from his body, holding twelve-pound axes in either fist. He looks terribly sad planted there, like a scarecrow trembling in the wind.
LINCOLN DROPS A cube of sugar in the flask and holds it out to Douglass.
“Thank you, no.”
“Intemperance does you no favor, friend.”
“Still.”
“As you wish.” Lincoln swallows. “Tell me again about the good widow Glenwood, Douglass. Ah, now there was a woman who knew not to hide from virtue. And its tender erosions. Do not look upon me with such reproach, Douglass. It is not I who rhapsodizes my dreams. Also, I have found some sketches among your papers. I did not know you worked on the easel, Douglass.”
“I do not.”
Lincoln snorts with glee. “Good man! Have a nip!”
Douglass’s cheeks redden. “Perhaps just a taste.”
Lincoln stands and appears to wobble a bit. He snatches up his stovepipe, turns it onto his head. Sheaves of paper, stashed there with a pair of white kid gloves, flutter about. “What is all this rubbish?”
“You should keep your affairs at the desk,” Douglass frets.
“How very important I am!” Lincoln cries, hopping about. “Coded dispatches from the front! Commendation order for one Corporal Bryce Riley! A speech in longhand!”
Douglass picks up the sheet at his feet. “What is this then?”
“How does it go?”
Douglass sniffs the flask and winces another swallow down. He clears his throat and reads: “‘It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God’s assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men’s faces.’”
Lincoln shrugs. “Just a notion I’ve been playing with.”
“Not bad, Lincoln. A bit tentative, perhaps.”
Lincoln watches the wind hurl his papers, some landing on the rippled current. Others dance high in the golden noon, as if to drunkenly alight, before tangling in the bank’s undergrowth. The merriment drains off Lincoln in dark sheets; his brow collapses. He stoops to collect the floating documents, a motion somber with the weight of undesire.
Douglass, suddenly feeling the effects of drink, improvises an awkward jig. “Cheer up, Lincoln! You are yet the president of these United States!”
Lincoln sucks in his cheeks. “So I am given to understand.”
AFTER HE TROUNCES McClellan in the election of 1864, rumors begin to circulate around the capital of a plot to depose Lincoln and appoint a dictator. The pre
sident, suffering an intense bout of melancholia, refuses to see members of his cabinet.
“If anyone can do better than me, let him try his hand,” he writes, in a note to congressional leaders. “You boys at the other end of the avenue seem to feel my job is sorely desired. Listen: I am but one man in this ruinous union, which has become nothing but a white elephant, impossible to steer or manage.”
“AND WHY SUGAR, LINCOLN?”
“The effects of the elixir reach the brain faster.”
“It is not just a matter of taste?”
“Certainly not.”
“Have you no cause to savor your drink?”
“Of cause I have no end, Douglass. Time—that is the matter.”
“Grant makes time.”
“He is a soldier. That is his brand.”
“And us?”
“We are lovers, Douglass.”
DOUGLASS FINDS LINCOLN in his study. The lines along his mouth are sunk deep as runnels. “The speech didn’t scour. It was a flat failure. The people are disappointed.”
“I thought it a fine speech.”
“Everett, Seward, and Lamon all thought it bad. I have blundered, Douglass, and made an enemy of brevity.”
“It was succinct.”
“No, no, Douglass. You are too kind to me. It was a failure. A perfect failure.”
“DO YOU, IN those moments alone, look into the eyes of your wife?”
“That much depends, Lincoln, on whether I am in a position to do so.”
Lincoln offers a throaty laugh. His long earlobes, mossed with fine hairs, jiggle. “I see.” He plucks at Douglass’s silk cravat. “And from whom does this finery derive?”
Douglass displays a band of teeth, fingers the cloth. “This? Hmmmm. Let me see.” He tips the flask. “The good widow Winchester, I believe.”
“Yes?”
“If memory serves.”
“You have had the good fortune of good widows.”
“Indeed.”
“You have provided them a great comfort, I suppose.”
“So I am given to understand.”
“I HAVE JUST had the oddest dream,” Lincoln says. “Do you remember the flatboat, Mary? Did you know me then? I was there, on the river. The air was like jelly, thick and full of fruit. And do you know what was with me? You will never guess.”
Mary does not answer. She is occupied at the task of scratching flowers off the bedside wallpaper with a butter knife.
“I WAS MADE happiest, by jing, at my election as captain of the volunteers in the Blackhawk War.”
“You look something like an Indian,” Douglass says. “Your cheeks appear chopped at.” They are past the Mason-Dixon, floating from St. Louis into Trapville.
“And then my days rail-splitting.” Lincoln sips at the flask, wipes his mouth with his wrist, and shambles to his feet. With great ceremony, he spits into one palm, then the other, lifts an invisible hammer over his head, and brings it down onto an equally invisible spike. His height is accentuated by a certain unconsummated grace. “I worked with a fellow named Cooper. His arms were like bolts of pig iron. He celebrated every tie with a song. ‘The Sword of Bunker Hill.’ ‘The Lament of the Irish Immigrant.’ Do you know that one, Douglass?”
“No.”
Lincoln, still hammering, begins to sing in a reedy baritone:
I’m very lonely now, Mary
For the poor make few new friends
“Will you join me, Douglass?”
“Not just yet, Mr. President.”
“We laid track from New Salem to Bedford. In the evenings, Ann would rub my shoulders.”
“Ann?”
“With liniment.”
“Ann whom?”
Lincoln has sweat through his undershirt. His face is lit with a sudden exhaustion. “Perhaps that is what I meant to remember,” he says softly. Lincoln gazes at Douglass for a long while. “They shall set us against one another, friend, we men of honest labor, with our women between us. You do understand that, don’t you?”
LINCOLN’S FIRST VISION occurs in 1860, following his election as president. He is reclining in his chambers at the Springfield courthouse, facing a looking glass. In this glass he sees two faces at once, both his own. The first is full of a healthful glow. The second reveals a ghostly paleness. He repeats this experiment no fewer than six times. On each occasion, the illusion reappears.
THE FLASK IS DONE at dusk. Both men have stripped down to skivvies. “Honest Abe,” Douglass says.
“I cannot tell a lie.”
Douglass smiles. “Have you ever kept a pet, Honest Abe?”
“As a lad, I trained a jackrabbit to eat from my hand.”
“I should have thought a jackass.” Douglass strides to the edge of the flatboat and spits. “Sometimes I dream I am kept as a pet. With many merry widows to feed me carrots and meat and bits of books. My cage is made of woven flax and goldenrod.”
“That calls to mind a story, Douglass, of the merchant with a half-wit son. It seems the boy required a sip of molasses before he would to bed each night.”
“How has this anything to do with a cage?”
Lincoln frowns. “Yes. I see.” Quite independently, the pair dissolve into giggles. “Oh my,” Lincoln says.
“Yes?”
“I must relieve myself.”
Douglass issues a clarion blare through his fingers: “The business of the presidential bladder must be attended to,” he announces. “Please clear a path for the presidential indiscretion.”
Lincoln lurches toward the edge of the flatboat. He appears, at best, a man stapled together. “The bank,” he says, pawing the air.
“So then, must we by needs speak of the presidential bowels?”
“Stop it now, Douglass. Push on toward the bank.”
“Yassah!”
The vessel comes to settle in a stand of reeds. Lincoln tumbles into the water and lets out a whoop. He dogpaddles to the shore, his coarse hair washed off his forehead. Douglass notes the odd shape of his skull, as if someone had pinched him about the jaws and sent the remaining bone ballooning up. He has a small man’s face, the eyes of an obedient dog. Lincoln straggles to his feet, britches clinging pinkly to his bottom.
“I am a teapot, Douglass,” he hollers. “Here is my spout.”
DOUGLASS FINDS LINCOLN alone, reclining on a settee in the West Wing. His eyes are shut, and the puffed flesh beneath them is the color of cherrywood. Douglass retreats to the doorway.
“Don’t run off, Douglass,” Lincoln says, though his eyes remain shut. “I was just now thinking of you.”
“Were you?”
“Indeed. I dreamt us together. You were very brave, Douglass. You tried to save me.” Lincoln touches his beard. “Did you know, friend, that I suffer from a kinship with the shades?”
Douglass grins. “Do you?”
“For years, I have known I shall suffer a violent end.”
“That is nonsense, sir. You are surely protected.”
“I am afraid not, Douglass. That is only a belief to ease the moment. God alone can disarm the cloud of its lightning. Do you agree, Douglass?”
Douglass tries to speak, but his throat constricts, as if clenched by a fist.
Lincoln doesn’t seem to notice. “For a man to travel to Africa and rob her of her children—that is worse than murder by my hand. Soon, I believe, the people of the South shall be touched by the better angels of our nature. Consider Goethe: ‘Nature cannot but do right eternally.’ Are we men not a part of nature?”
“Yes,” Douglass says. “On earth and in heaven.”
Lincoln opens his eyes and Douglass notes how red they are, like portals of blood. “I am afraid with all my troubles, I shall never get to the place you speak of, friend.”
Douglass is halfway returned to New Bedford before he realizes the source of his disquietude: Lincoln seems to have derived a strange succor from his rumination, as if grief were his only dependable ally.
&
nbsp; WHAT SORT OF affiliation is this, Douglass wonders, that seeks to undo a natural repulsion? I do not understand Lincoln, nor he me. We are like two polite giants sharing the same bed and pretending not to mind. Perhaps we are friends because we must not be enemies.
Douglass peers through the telescope he has mounted on a small rise behind the White House. Lincoln is at the window behind his desk, gazing out from the dimmed room. His lips are moving, almost imperceptibly. He looks as if he has been there for years.
“I AM PUBLIC property now,” Lincoln tells his marshals. “Open the curtains at once.” They are returning to the capital from Antietam by carriage. “I shall not cower in this absurd darkness at the very moment when my behavior should exhibit the utmost dignity and composure.”
“Mr. President—”
“Who should want to harm me? This is nonsense.”
“But sir—”
“And what if I should die?” he mutters. “Would any of you be so much worse off?”
The marshals part the curtains. Lincoln stares into the night, his beaked profile cast in bronze by the carriage lantern. For the rest of the trip, as the corpses and shanties tumble past, his marshals puzzle over this odd vehemence; whether it is simple pride, willed naïveté, or a variety of reckless self-determination.
LINCOLN AND DOUGLASS lie together, beneath the stars. Without the gas lamps of Washington and New Bedford, the night sky appears far closer.
“Am I so ugly?” Lincoln says.
“I’m afraid so.”
“Ape-like? That is what they say, is it not?”
“Only some of them.”
“And the others?”
“‘Rawboned,’” Douglass says ruefully. “Sometimes ‘goonish.’”
“Would you believe that I dreamed to be a stage actor when I was a lad?”
“Or that I dreamed to be a free man?”
“Please,” Lincoln murmurs. “Some restraint, Douglass.”
“COME AWAY FROM there,” Mary says. “What are you looking at? What is it you see in that infernal mirror?”
