The Lincoln Project

by Dan Gutman

  “Old Abe! Old Abe!”

  Suddenly, the white lace curtain was drawn back and a face appeared in the window.

  “Look! It’s him!” somebody shouted.

  It was the unmistakable face of Abraham Lincoln, the face that the Flashback Four had seen on TV, in photos, on classroom walls, five-dollar bills, and pennies. He looked very much the same. It was a kindly face with a somewhat dark complexion. Isabel got goose pimples when she saw him.

  “I can’t believe I’m seeing him in person,” Isabel whispered. “Look at him!”

  “Hurrah for Old Abe!” a man shouted, and he let out a whoop as he took the hat off his head and threw it in the air.

  People were cheering, whistling, and pointing. Some had tears of joy in their eyes, or simply gaped at the president, open-mouthed. He waved to the crowd and smiled as he bowed his head slightly to acknowledge their attention.

  It was hard for Luke and his friends to appreciate what seeing Lincoln in person meant to the people surrounding them on all sides. There was no CNN, or round-the-clock news in those days. No TV, radio, or internet. Most people would never get the chance to see a president—or any famous person—in the flesh. This was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

  “He’s more handsome than he looks in the pictures,” said one lady in the crowd.

  “God bless our president!” several people shouted.

  “God bless America!”

  Lincoln continued waving to the crowd below him on the street. As he did, Luke’s attention was distracted by the man standing beside him. He had his hands in his pockets and a sneer on his face. The guy looked familiar somehow, but Luke couldn’t remember where he might have seen him before.

  “Scum of the earth,” the man muttered under his breath disgustedly. “Look at that buffoon, soaking in his adulation.”

  The man had a slight southern accent. Luke turned to get a better look at him. He was a handsome man, with brown, piercing eyes and dark, curly hair that piled mostly on top of his head. Neatly trimmed mustache. He was wearing a fine wool suit and a thick tie. Very well put together. Clearly, he wasn’t just some crazy person out ranting on the street. Luke knew he’d seen the man’s face before—or perhaps a photo of him—but he couldn’t recall where. He elbowed David in the side.

  “Ever seen that guy?” he whispered.

  “Nope,” David replied.

  The man continued muttering, while staring daggers at Lincoln.

  “Tyrant,” he said. “That uppity, no-’count, mealy-mouthed blowhard.”

  Then he spat on the ground as the president continued waving to the crowd.

  “Can’t please everybody, I guess,” Luke whispered.

  The lace curtain fell back in the window, and as quickly as he had appeared, the president was gone. End of show. The crowd let out a groan. They had only witnessed a brief glimpse of Abraham Lincoln. For some people, that would be enough. They would be able to tell their grandchildren that they had seen the president of the United States with their own eyes.

  The crowd was beginning to disperse when the front door of the Wills house suddenly opened, and none other than Lincoln himself came out on the steps. He had put on his familiar stovepipe hat, and it made him look even taller than his usual six feet four inches.

  A tremendous cheer went up, and the crowd surged forward. After two miserable years of battles and bloodshed with no end in sight, the people looked to their president for assurance that the nation would survive. He was their father figure.

  A hastily assembled group of musicians struck up a ragged version of “Hail to the Chief.” Lincoln waved some more and bowed to the crowd before him.

  He was dressed simply, with a white shirt, black bow tie, and a plain black overcoat with three buttons on each side. His beard was neatly trimmed. He had no mustache.

  The man next to Luke kept muttering angry things about the president. He appeared to be seething with hatred. To the rest of the crowd, Lincoln was a rock star. Men had hoisted their small children up on their shoulders so they could see the great Abraham Lincoln.

  “God save our president!” somebody shouted.

  Luke couldn’t stop glancing over at the man next to him.

  “Dude, I know I’ve seen that guy before,” he whispered to David. “He’s giving me the creeps.”

  “He probably just looks like somebody else,” David replied.

  The people on the street were happy to get a wave from the president, but they wanted more.

  “Speech! Speech!” a few began to chant.

  Lincoln held up his hands. Little by little, the crowd began to settle down. The band stopped playing. A hush fell over the square.

  “I appear before you, fellow citizens, merely to thank you for this compliment,” the president said. His voice took everyone by surprise. They had expected it to be deep and somber, but it was unexpectedly high-pitched.

  “Thank you for nothing,” muttered the man next to Luke.

  “The inference is a very fair one that you would hear me for a little while, at least, were I to commence to make a speech,” said President Lincoln. “I do not appear before you for the purpose of doing so, and for several substantial reasons. The most substantial of these is that I have no speech to make.”

  The crowd laughed good-naturedly.

  “It is somewhat important in my position that one should not say any foolish things if he can help it,” he continued.

  “If you can help it!” somebody shouted from the crowd, causing more laughter.

  “It very often happens that the only way to help it is to say nothing at all,” said the president, which brought on more laughter.

  The man next to Luke had closed his eyes, as if he was saying a silent prayer.

  “Believing that is my present condition this evening,” Lincoln continued, “I must beg of you to excuse me from addressing you further.”

  Lincoln bowed again and waved to the crowd some more. His little speech was over. The crowd burst into applause and celebration.

  The man next to Luke was fiddling with something in his right pocket. That’s when Luke figured out why his face seemed so familiar.

  “It’s John Wilkes Booth!” Luke said suddenly.

  Luke was absolutely right. The angry man next to him was John Wilkes Booth, the well-known Shakespearean stage actor who would go on to assassinate President Lincoln two years later. Luke had seen a picture of him in his social studies textbook at school.

  As Lincoln was turning to go back inside the Wills house, Booth pulled his right hand out of his pocket. There was a gun in it, and this one was real.

  “That’s enough,” Booth muttered. “Now, by God, I’ll put him through. This is the last speech he’ll ever make.”

  I know what you’re thinking, reader. You or I or any normal person under these circumstances would back away and separate ourselves from the dangerous situation. But sometimes, instinct takes over and the mind moves in the other direction.

  “Get him, David!” Luke shouted, chopping down on Booth’s arm to knock the gun loose. As he was doing that, David had come at Booth from the opposite side and punched him in the jaw. The two of them tried to wrestle Booth to the ground, but he was slippery and broke free from their grasp.

  “Stop him!” David shouted.

  But it was too late. Booth had escaped and was on the run, sneaking away around the corner, down an alley, and into the night.

  CHAPTER 16

  A BETTER IDEA

  WITH ALL THE NOISE AND EXCITEMENT IN THE square, nobody else noticed there had been an attempt on the president’s life. Everything happened so fast.

  After finishing his short speech, President Lincoln waved to the crowd once more and ducked back inside the Wills house. The people roared with approval, then slowly began to disperse.

  David and Luke continued to stand there, stunned.

  “That’s the second person we beat up today,” David marveled, still staring at the front step
s where Lincoln had been standing moments earlier.

  “I can’t believe we just saved the president’s life,” Luke replied. “We’re heroes, dude. Unsung heroes. Nobody will know what we just did.”

  “You guys were awesome,” Isabel told them.

  “Don’t be so impressed with yourselves,” Julia told them. “Booth would have missed anyway.”

  “How do you know?” David asked.

  “Because if he had killed the president, every history book would say he assassinated Lincoln at Gettysburg in 1863. But we all know it happened at Ford’s Theatre in Washington in 1865.”

  “She’s right,” Luke admitted. “It didn’t matter what we did to him. He would have missed.”

  “He’s going to try it again in two years,” David said. “And he’s going to succeed. Nothing we can do about that.”

  “Maybe we can have Miss Z send us back in two years and stop the real assassination,” Isabel suggested.

  “I’m not sure I want to go through this again,” Luke said. “I thought we were just going to come to Gettysburg, take the picture, and go home. I wasn’t expecting all this fighting and stuff.”

  “Or . . .” David whispered, looking around, “. . . we could find Booth and kill him now. Then he won’t have the chance to do anything in two years.”

  “Are you crazy?” Luke asked. “I’m not gonna kill anybody, not even John Wilkes Booth. Besides, we’re under strict orders not to do anything that could change history, remember?”

  The Flashback Four headed off down Baltimore Street looking for food and lodging for the night. They hadn’t gone more than a few steps when Julia spotted a couple of boys walking toward them—the same boys they had encountered earlier. This time they were carrying some packages. Julia elbowed Isabel, and the two of them started to giggle. Luke groaned.

  “So we meet again, ladies!” the taller of the boys said cheerfully as he removed his hat and bowed deeply. He acted as though Luke and David weren’t there.

  “Well, howdy to you,” Julia replied with a curtsy. “What brings you nice fellas out on this lovely evenin’?”

  “We’re delivering a heap of bread to the Gettysburg Hotel,” the shorter one said. “Would you ladies like to accompany us?”

  “Oh, ah don’t know,” Isabel said, blushing. “We’re not supposed to cavort with strangers.”

  “We have other plans,” Luke told the boys curtly. “But we would sure like some bread.”

  The bread smelled so good. It smelled like it had just come out of the oven, because it had just come out of the oven. It had been a long time since any of the Flashback Four had smelled freshly baked anything. They were used to getting baked goods from the supermarket—wrapped, sealed in plastic, and shot full of preservatives.

  “Oh, gee, we don’t have any money,” Isabel said, taking a deep sniff of the bread.

  “I reckon we could spare one loaf for the pretty ladies,” the taller boy said. “Just don’t tell anybody, okay?”

  “Our lips are sealed,” Julia replied, giggling.

  “Huh?” the two boys said, puzzled.

  Julia had no idea that the expression “our lips are sealed” would not be coined for nearly fifty years.

  “We’ll keep it to ourselves,” Isabel told them. “We are much obliged for your generosity.”

  The boys handed over a loaf of bread, and Isabel accepted it gratefully.

  “Maybe we’ll see you ladies at the parade tomorrow?” the shorter boy asked.

  “Well, I reckon that maybe you will!” Julia said, giggling some more as she batted her eyelashes.

  As soon as the boys were gone, Isabel broke the loaf into four pieces and passed them around. The Flashback Four wolfed them down as if they had never tasted bread before. That would satisfy their hunger, at least for a while.

  The next order of business was to find a place to stay for the night. Coincidentally, the TTT buzzed in Isabel’s pocket. She showed the others the message from Miss Z.

  FIND A PLACE TO SLEEP?

  “Tell her we’re staying at the Hilton,” David suggested.

  NOT YET, Isabel typed.

  Bzzz. A few seconds later, the reply came back—TRY A CHURCH.

  It was actually a good idea. During the Battle of Gettysburg, most of the churches in town had been converted into hospitals to handle all the wounded soldiers. It would make sense for the churches to be used now to house out-of-town visitors.

  The Flashback Four continued walking down Baltimore Street. In four blocks, at the corner of High Street, they came to Gettysburg Presbyterian Church. It had originally been built as a log cabin back in 1740, three miles away. The congregation moved in 1842. It’s still at the corner of Baltimore and High Streets today.

  The kids climbed the steps. Luke was elected to do the talking. When he pulled open the front door, a minister blocked his entrance.

  “Excuse me, we’re mighty tuckered out and we’re looking for a place to—”

  “I’m terribly sorry,” the minister told Luke. “We have over a hundred people sleeping here already. We don’t have room for anyone else.”

  “Just four more?” asked Isabel. “We’ll sleep on the pews if we have to.”

  “That’s where everyone else is sleeping,” the priest told her. “I’m sorry, Miss. You’ll have to mosey along.”

  Discouraged, the group retreated back down the steps. There were other people wandering around, clearly looking for somewhere to spend the night.

  “I bet every church in town is filled,” Julia said.

  “Let’s get off the main drag,” Isabel suggested. “Everybody’s looking for a place to stay here.”

  They turned the corner on High Street. Soon the storefronts and official buildings were replaced by houses and fields. The gas lamps were replaced by moonlight. The night was warm and clear.

  “These people need to invent the lightbulb, quick,” David said. “I can’t see anything out here.”

  “I’m afraid I’m gonna step in more horse poop,” said Julia.

  They walked past a few houses, but nobody had the courage to knock on a door and ask a total stranger if they could sleep there.

  “Look,” Isabel suddenly said as they approached a large building. “A barn!”

  “I’m not sleeping in a barn!” Julia complained.

  “Why not?” David asked.

  “Animals sleep in barns,” Julia said.

  “Well if it’s good enough for animals, it’s good enough for me,” Luke said. “I’m tired.”

  “No you’re not,” David told him. “You’re tuckered out.”

  Julia stood on the dirt road as the others went to pull open the heavy barn door.

  “You can find someplace else to sleep,” Luke told her. “But we’re staying here.”

  Julia ran to catch up.

  It was almost pitch-dark inside the barn, but Isabel was able to find an empty horse stall with hay on the floor that would provide some small degree of comfort.

  “It smells in here,” Julia complained. “I bet there are rats, too.”

  “I don’t care,” Luke said, rolling his jacket up to make a little pillow for himself. “I’m snug as a bug in a rug.”

  David picked another corner of the stall and lay down there. That left Julia and Isabel standing awkwardly, with one problem in common—it was impossible to lie down in those gigantic dresses.

  “We won’t look,” David assured them. “Can’t see anything anyway.”

  “There’s nothing to look at,” Isabel said as she peeled off the dress. “I have like ten layers of clothes on underneath this thing.”

  Julia unhooked her dress too, and as she did something fell out of it and bonked David on the head.

  “Oww!” he shouted. “What was that?”

  “Oops,” Julia said.

  It only took David a few seconds to figure out what had fallen out of Julia’s dress. It was a gun. In fact, it was John Wilkes Booth’s gun.

  �
�What are you doing with this?” David demanded, sitting up and rubbing the side of his face.

  “I didn’t steal it!” Julia explained. “It was just lying on the ground. So I picked it up. Finders keepers.”

  “It was lying on the ground because we knocked it out of Booth’s hand!” Luke yelled.

  “Are you crazy?” Isabel shouted at Julia. “That thing is loaded. You could have killed David!”

  “But look, you guys,” Julia said. “Think about it. This gun belonged to John Wilkes Booth. The real John Wilkes Booth! Do you have any idea how much it might be worth? We could sell it on eBay and make thousands. Maybe more. I’ll split the money with you.”

  “No!” David said, putting the gun in his corner of the stall. “Miss Z told us no souvenirs. This thing is dangerous. What if it had gone off when it hit me?”

  “Okay, okay, I’m sorry!” Julia said, in a way that told the others that she wasn’t really sorry at all.

  “What is wrong with you?” Isabel asked, as she curled up on the floor. “Is money that important?”

  “Sometimes I can’t control myself,” Julia admitted.

  “Let’s talk about it tomorrow,” Isabel said. “I’m going to sleep.”

  “G’night, you guys,” muttered David.

  Each member of the Flashback Four settled into a corner of the stall. They were exhausted and the barn was perfectly quiet. But it was hard to sleep because it had been such an exciting day. There was a lot to think about.

  “Hey, Luke,” Julia whispered after five minutes of tossing and turning.

  “What?”

  “Remember when I was trying to steal the Gettysburg Address and take it home to make money?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You said you had a better idea.”

  “Yeah, I did.”

  “What was it?”

  “Yeah, what was that better idea?” David asked.

  Luke sat up.

  “I’ve been thinking about it a lot,” he said, lowering his voice to a whisper. “Do any of you guys know when Thomas Edison invented the phonograph?”