The Lincoln Project

by Dan Gutman

  “It might be the president!” said Julia.

  “Quick!” David said. “Hide under the bed!”

  “What, all four of us?” Isabel asked. “There’s no room!”

  “Okay, David and I will get under the bed,” Luke instructed. “You two hide in the closet.”

  “There is no closet!” Isabel whispered frantically.

  At that moment, the door was flung open. A very angry-looking young man entered the room.

  And he was holding a gun.

  CHAPTER 14

  ANOTHER LINCOLN

  NONE OF THE FLASHBACK FOUR HAD EVER HAD A gun pointed at them before. It is a terrifying thing. The group let out a collective gasp and instinctively stepped back in horror.

  “Don’t shoot!” Julia shouted, throwing her hands in the air. “We didn’t do anything!”

  The boy standing before them couldn’t have been more than ten years old. His dark hair was parted neatly on one side, framing a boyish face. He had a smirking smile, which revealed a set of extremely crooked teeth.

  He was wearing a full Union army uniform, complete with a sword attached to his belt. To the Flashback Four, the boy was obviously too young to be a soldier. But then again, they couldn’t be completely sure. Maybe when things got desperate during the Civil War, children were recruited to fight for their country.

  Luke, David, and Isabel followed Julia’s lead and put their hands in the air. The boy pointed his gun at each of them without saying a word.

  “Please put that down,” Isabel said, trying to sound calm. “Let’s talk this over.”

  Still the boy hadn’t spoken, and that made the Flashback Four even more frightened. As the only African American in the group, David was thinking that if any of them was going to get shot, it would probably be him. Luke was thinking that if the kid brought them to the authorities, they might never get back to the twenty-first century. Julia was thinking what her chances of survival would be if she simply made a run for it. Would he really shoot a girl? Isabel was thinking that ever since they arrived in Gettysburg, one thing after another had gone wrong.

  “Let’s just give him what he wants,” Isabel said, without taking her eyes off the boy. “Don’t try to be a hero.”

  “Maybe he doesn’t speak English,” said Julia. “How will we even know what he wants?”

  With those big, fluffy dresses, the girls were in no position to run, fight, or do much of anything to resist. But Luke and David shot a glance at each other, both knowing what the other was thinking—We could take this kid. They were older and bigger than the boy, and they had him outnumbered two to one. Of course, the kid had a gun in his hand. But it was just a little pistol. It probably only had one bullet in it. He wouldn’t be able to shoot all of them.

  “Look!” David barked suddenly, pointing to his left. “Out the window!”

  It was the oldest trick in the book, of course. But then, maybe the book hadn’t been written yet in 1863. That was what David was counting on, anyway.

  Fortunately, the distraction worked. The boy glanced to his left for a moment, and in that moment Luke and David jumped him. Luke kicked the kid’s wrist, causing him to drop the gun. It clattered to the wooden floor.

  “Land sakes! You hurt me!” the boy shouted. “What in tarnation did you do that for? I’m going to tell my papa on you!”

  Luke and David pinned him to the floor and sat on him to make sure he couldn’t get free. He didn’t resist. He looked like he was going to cry.

  Isabel quickly scooped up the gun before the boy could get it again.

  “It’s not real,” she said, examining it. “It’s a toy pistol.”

  Luke and David helped the boy to his feet.

  “You shouldn’t be pointing a gun at people,” scolded Luke. “Even if it’s a toy. Somebody might shoot you.”

  Isabel gave the boy his toy back.

  “I was just havin’ a little fun,” he said, wiping the tears off his face with his sleeve.

  It was hard to understand what he was saying. The boy had a severe speech impediment.

  “Who are you?” Luke asked him. “What’s your name?”

  “Tad,” the boy replied.

  Luke didn’t quite understand.

  “Ted?” he asked.

  “Not Ted. Tad.”

  It was still hard to understand him.

  “Did you say Thad?” Isabel asked.

  “Not Thad. Tad!”

  It was still hard to figure out what the boy was trying to say. He was clearly frustrated over his inability to communicate.

  “I’m Tad! T-A-D, Tad,” he said. “Didn’t you ever hear of me? I’m famous. I’m Tad Lincoln!”

  It took a moment for that information to sink in.

  “You mean, you’re Tad Lincoln as in Lincoln Lincoln?” asked Julia.

  “You’re . . . President Lincoln’s son?” asked David.

  “Yes!” he said, nodding his head and rubbing his arm, which already had a bruise on it. “He is my papa.”

  It was true, reader. Thomas “Tad” Lincoln was the fourth and youngest son of Abraham and Mary Todd Lincoln. It was the president who nicknamed him Tad because he had a large head and a small, squirmy body that reminded him of a tadpole.

  Tad’s speech problems were a result of being born with a cleft palate, which is an opening that develops when the bones of the skull don’t completely join together. Nowadays it can be treated with surgery, but back in the 1860s there wasn’t much that could be done to help people with cleft palates.

  “Sorry we roughed you up there, Tad,” David said, brushing dust off the boy and smiling at him. Now that they knew who the boy was, all four of them were acting overly friendly toward him. That’s all they’d need, to have the president’s son tell his father that they had beaten him up.

  “Your gun looked real at first,” Luke told him.

  “It is real,” Tad replied. “Papa gave it to me for my birthday in July. I turned ten years old.”

  Besides the speech impediment, there seemed to be something definitely different about Tad Lincoln. He didn’t act like an average ten-year-old.

  “Why are you here, Tad?” Isabel asked.

  “Why are you here?” Tad replied. “This is Papa’s room, not yours.”

  The kid had a point. But they weren’t about to tell him that Julia had snuck up to the president’s room specifically to steal the Gettysburg Address.

  “We . . . uh . . . umm,” Julia sputtered.

  “I could have the four of you arrested and thrown in jail, you know,” Tad told them. “That’s what happened to Jack.”

  “Jack? Who’s Jack?” asked David.

  “He is my soldier doll,” Tad replied, the smirky smile returning to his face. “He is a bad boy. One time I caught him sleeping at his post, so I held a court-martial. And another time he was spying for the enemy, so I charged him with treason.”

  “Jack is a . . . doll?” asked Julia.

  “Yes, and a very naughty boy,” Tad said. “I sentenced him to be shot at sunrise. Me and my brother Willie buried him in the rose garden at the White House. But Papa gave him a pardon, so we had to dig him up again. Papa is always pardoning people.”

  Tad seemed to enjoy telling the story, and he clearly liked the attention he was getting. While he was talking about his soldier doll, the Flashback Four shot furtive glances at one another. Tad seemed to have calmed down, but nobody wanted to say anything that might set him off.

  “Do you go to school, Tad?” asked Isabel.

  “Heck no!” the boy replied. “School? Why should I waste time learning how to spell and all that when there are so many fun things to do?”

  “But you must go to school,” Julia told him. “Doesn’t everybody have to go to school?”

  “I have tutors,” Tad replied. “But they don’t last very long. If they try to teach me reading and writing and such, I make Papa get rid of them.”

  “You don’t know how to read or write?” asked
David.

  “Heck no,” Tad said. “Don’t need to. My papa is the president. When he is finished, he says we’ll move back to Illinois and I’ll have people read and write for me.”

  The four glanced at one another again. None of them was about to tell Tad that shortly after his father’s second inauguration, he would be cut down by an assassin’s bullet.

  “Do you want to play with me?” Tad suddenly blurted out. “We could play army out on the battlefield.”

  “That sounds like a lot of fun,” Isabel said diplomatically, “but we have important stuff we need to do.”

  “Like what?” Tad asked.

  “Oh, you wouldn’t believe us if we told you,” David said.

  “Betcha I would.”

  The Flashback Four looked at one another once again. Luke put his arm around Tad’s shoulder.

  “Well, Tad, the truth is that we come from the twenty-first century,” he told the boy. “We traveled through time so we can take a picture of your father tomorrow while he’s making his speech at the cemetery.”

  “I believe you,” Tad said, as if what Luke had told him sounded completely logical.

  Tad noticed Luke’s camera for the first time and asked if he could see it. Luke showed it to him, being careful not to let the boy touch it.

  “I like that toy,” Tad said. “Can I have it?”

  “Oh, no, I’m sorry,” Luke told him. “It’s not a toy. We need this to take the picture. It’s very important.”

  Tad’s face went from glad to sad in an instant. It looked like he was going to start crying again, or possibly throw a fit. He wasn’t used to people telling him he couldn’t have whatever he wanted. You don’t say no to the president’s son.

  “If you don’t give that toy to me,” Tad said, losing control, “I will scream!”

  “I really wish I could, Tad, but—”

  Tad started screaming. Luke quickly clapped a hand over the boy’s mouth. Tad tried to bite it.

  “Tad, listen to me,” Luke told him, putting the boy in a headlock. “I’ll tell you what I’ll do. Tomorrow, after your father’s speech, you meet me right back here and I’ll give you a toy. How does that sound?”

  Luke was totally lying, but it seemed to calm Tad down somewhat. Luke released him from the headlock.

  “Usually when I ask people for toys, they give them to me,” Tad said.

  “Not this time,” Luke told him. “Sorry.”

  “Where is your father right now, Tad?” Isabel asked. She figured that maybe if she changed the subject, Tad would forget about the camera. And that’s exactly what happened.

  “Papa is visiting Mr. Seward,” Tad said.

  “Mr. Seward” was William H. Seward, who served as the governor of New York and was a United States senator before becoming Lincoln’s secretary of state. He had taken the train to Gettysburg with the president and was staying in a hotel nearby.

  “We saw your father’s speech on the table over there,” Julia said. “Is he going to finish writing it tonight?”

  “I dunno,” Tad replied. “He gives lots of speeches. Do you want to meet Papa and ask him yourself?”

  “That would be awesome!” David said, and when Tad looked at him oddly, he amended it to, “That would be great! Can you arrange that?”

  “You have to pay me,” Tad told them.

  “Pay you to meet your father?” Julia asked. “How much?”

  “A nickel.”

  It seemed like a good deal.

  “So if we give you a nickel, you’ll introduce us to your father?” Isabel asked. She was already fishing around in her pocket for change. But the only thing in there was the TTT.

  “I’ll tell you what,” David said. “I’ll give you five dollars.”

  “Five dollars?” Tad said. “I only asked for five pennies.”

  “I don’t have any change,” David said.

  “Okay,” Tad said. “I’ll take your five dollars.”

  “You drive a hard bargain, Tad,” said Luke, laughing.

  “Where did you get five dollars?” Isabel asked as David dug through his pockets.

  “Remember those five-dollar bills Miss Z gave us?” David said. “Well, I brought one of them with me just in case I needed it. Pretty smart, huh?”

  David finally found the bill in his pants pocket and handed it over to Tad. The boy only looked at it for a moment or two before he started shouting.

  “You trying to hornswoggle me? That’s Papa’s face!” he yelled, ripping the fiver into little pieces. “Papa’s not on the five-dollar bill! This is a counterfeit!”

  Tad started screaming again and throwing a fit.

  “Guards! Guards!” he shouted. “Seize them! They are flimflam artists! Enemies of the state! They must be shot at sunrise and buried in the rose garden!”

  “The kid is nuts!” yelled David. “Let’s get outta here!”

  CHAPTER 15

  YOU CAN’T PLEASE EVERYBODY

  “GO! GO! GO!”

  Luke, David, Isabel, and Julia sprinted out of the bedroom and down the stairs of the Wills house as if the place was on fire. The girls were doing their best not to trip over their long dresses. Nobody was bothering to look back to see if Tad Lincoln was chasing them. All they wanted to do was get away from him. Only when they made it out the front door and around the busy corner did the Flashback Four stop to catch their breath.

  “Did we lose him?” Luke asked, turning around and gasping for breath.

  “I think so,” David said, leaning over, his hands on his knees. “He’s not gonna bother us.”

  “I just have to say,” Isabel told them, “you guys were incredible up there! You looked like Batman and Robin.”

  “I can’t believe you attacked Abraham Lincoln’s kid!” Julia said, giggling uncontrollably.

  “I’ve never even been in a fight before,” Luke admitted.

  “You were great,” David told him. “I like the way you kicked that toy out of his hand. Do you do karate? Jujitsu?”

  “No, man,” Luke replied. “I just reacted. Dude, we make a good team.”

  “Hey, I’m sorry about that whole Gettysburg Address thing, you guys,” Julia told the group. “I . . . don’t know what I was thinking.”

  “Everybody makes mistakes,” Isabel said. “Don’t worry about it.”

  The sun was setting, and it was starting to get dark out on the street. The square was still teeming with people, and some of them were holding torches or small gas lamps to light up the night. A military band struck up a marching tune, and it was so loud that it was hard to hear the person standing next to you. The happy drunks on the street were a little more drunk than they had been earlier, and there seemed to be more of them. It was like there was a big block party going on, which made it easy for the kids to blend into the crowd.

  Bzzz. Isabel felt a familiar buzzing in her pocket, and she pulled out the TTT. There was a new text from Miss Z . . .

  WHAT IS HAPPENING?

  Isabel showed it to the others.

  “We better not tell her about our little . . . meeting with Tad Lincoln,” Luke said. “She might freak out.”

  “Thank you!” Julia said.

  “Just tell her nothing exciting is going on and that everything’s fine,” David suggested.

  Isabel tapped out words to that effect on the TTT and waited to see if she would get a reply. It took a few seconds. Bzzz.

  DID YOU FIND A PLACE TO SLEEP? asked Miss Z.

  NOT YET, Isabel typed back, disguising the fact that they hadn’t even started looking for a place to sleep yet.

  Bzzz.

  GET SOMETHING TO EAT AND A GOOD NIGHT’S REST, Miss Z texted. TAKE PHOTO TOMORROW. LET ME KNOW IF ANYTHING UNUSUAL HAPPENS.

  ROGER, Isabel typed back.

  “Who’s Roger?” Julia asked.

  “Roger means yes,” Isabel told her. “It means I understand the message.”

  “Didn’t you ever see any old war movies?” asked Luke.
“Guys in the military say Roger all the time.”

  “Why don’t they just say yes?” asked Julia. “Yes is easier to type than Roger.”

  “Who cares about that?” David said. “I’m beat. We gotta find a place to sleep or I’m gonna fall over.”

  “We’d better look for a hotel,” Julia suggested.

  “Forget about that idea,” David said.

  As you might imagine, reader, finding a hotel was out of the question. Gettysburg was a very small town, with just a few hotels. Every room had long been filled, and many of them were overstuffed with four or more people. Even if the kids had been able to find a hotel room, they had no way to pay for it. Not knowing they would be spending the night, Miss Z didn’t think it was necessary to get them any 1863 money. The only one who’d brought cash was Luke, and Tad Lincoln had just torn up his five-dollar bill. No, they would have to find a place to stay for free.

  “We should get something to eat before we look for someplace to stay,” Isabel suggested.

  “Yeah, I’m starving,” David said. “Too bad there’s no McDonald’s around here.”

  “We might have to kill an animal and eat it,” Luke pointed out. “That’s what they did in the old days before supermarkets.”

  “Gross,” Julia said. “I’m not killing an animal.”

  “Oh, but it’s okay if somebody else kills it for you?” asked Luke.

  “Sure,” Julia replied. “I’m so hungry, I’d eat mutton right now.”

  None of the kids had noticed, but a crowd had started to gather around the corner, right outside the Wills house. People were whispering to one another and pointing up. Julia, Luke, David, and Isabel went over there to see what all the excitement was about.

  “What’s going on?” Isabel asked a gray-haired lady with a bun in her hair.

  “They say Old Abe is inside this house,” the lady said. “Somebody spied him up in that window.”

  Everyone in the crowd was peering up at the window on the second floor.

  “He must have come back to the room right after we left,” David whispered to Luke. “I bet they snuck him in the back door, to avoid the crowd.”

  “Old Abe! Old Abe! Old Abe!”

  People on the street had begun a slow chant, hoping that the president might come out and say a few words. More people joined in the chant, and quickly there were hundreds of voices.