Lincoln's Assassin

by J F Pennington

  Hand was still grinning as we stepped out of the coach, and I was still confused. He waited until our companions—another cousin, bound for California with his grown son—occupied with our brief luggage, would not hear our dialogue, to reveal his plan. Then did I recount what he had told me.

  “Let me understand, after the war Corbett returned to his milliner’s trade, and even obtained a post as a Methodist lay preacher, but soon went onto the lecture circuit, milking his part in my ‘death’ to its fullest.”

  Hand nodded.

  “He then removed to Kansas, trying his hand at farming and continuing to deliver an occasional address to whatever congregation might listen. Thereafter he received a mysterious appointment as doorkeeper to the Kansas State Legislature and even more mysteriously broke into the chambers one day screaming ‘Glory to God’ with his pistols blazing!

  “Miraculously,” I returned Hand’s constant smile for effect only, “no one is hurt. But Corbett is incarcerated in the Topeka asylum for the insane and remains there for more than a year, after which time he makes a daring escape and, as far as the authorities are concerned, has disappeared. And now he is here.”

  “Z’at is rh’ight.”

  “I will not ask how you discovered he came to be here, and can be so sure it is indeed him. I trust you have some undeniable proof. But how did you think to trace him to the Kansas frontier in the first place?”

  “Does h’eet not make sense?”

  “How so?”

  “Oh! my frh’iend, must h’I explain h’everhyz’ing?”

  But he did not.

  ***

  It is difficult for me to detail the entire life of this man whom I never knew, yet of whom I feel so much—what? Not kinship. Not amity. Certainly not amity. Yet perhaps some peculiar familiarity. How can one not feel some sort of familiarity to one’s own assassin? Then let me do my best to tell you what little I knew of him from the occasional journal and odd report of a mutual—mutual what?

  Thomas P. Corbett was born in London, England, of simple stock in 1832 and moved to Boston, Massachusetts, about the same time John Brown was making headlines and I was myself first playing in a scene of a different, if more honestly dramatic sort. There, after losing his young wife to childbirth, Corbett became involved with a church of Methodist Episcopalians. This particular congregation was fundamental revivalist. Such were the times.

  Corbett’s revelation in that city caused him to adopt the name Boston as his own, and thenceforth would answer to no other—any sooner than Boucicault might have answered to any name other than Dionysius. Corbett was of “small stature, slight form, mild countenance and quiet deportment,” or so said the New York Times the day after my “death.”

  In the spring of 1858, Corbett found himself engaged in a bar-room debate over morality and the will of God. This was not the result of having had too much to drink. He had for some time forgone such earthly pleasures and entered the saloon for the express purpose of confronting its less reverent patrons. So outspoken was he in his opinions and condemnatory of those about him that trouble, it is said, could be seen mounting in the bay. Corbett, first scorned and ridiculed only, was invited to leave the establishment, which by his own oaths he doomed to brimstone and perdition. Still, he continued on his path of self-righteousness. Some men know not their limits, nor those of their god.

  Several of his opponents, sincerely assailed by continued and relentless insult, finally felt the strains of vengeance tugging at their sleeves. While two of them arose from their seats and prepared to battle the short but capable Corbett, a third approached from behind, breaking his mug upon the bantam’s skull.

  When Corbett awoke he found himself only beginning to receive the revenge of his accursed opponents. In a small chamber above the inn’s tap room Corbett came to his senses, finding himself lashed to a bed, completely stripped of his clothes and with two gaily painted and highly expert prostitutes teasing and probing his now-protesting body. The roars of approval from onlookers and his obvious arousal indicated that, though senseless, he had not been altogether reluctant. The unconscious spirit was as weak as the flesh.

  Corbett fought the continued advances of his perfumed assailants, but modesty and chastity were completely sacrificed before he was released from his bonds and left alone in a low-wailing misery.

  Not thirty minutes later, and without another sound heard from the upper room, Corbett descended the stairs with a look of grim resolution in his eyes and a bloodied knife in his left hand. The entire saloon began jeering and whistling until, on an instant, they all fell quite silent. Corbett held something in his right hand that he proffered palm up to them as a tribute to their cruelty. His pants were all stained in their middle and deep blood oozed from between his curled fingers. One of the whores fainted sick at the sight.

  “Oh dear God,” the barkeep might have whispered. “He’s castrated himself!”

  ***

  “You’re a friend of his?” she winked habitually and cocked her head.

  “He gave me your name.”

  She sipped a drink the color of whisky and stuffed the bills I handed her into the black lace ruffles of her low-necked dress. Its yellow taffeta rustled encouragingly.

  “You’re lying,” she said with another wink. “He doesn’t know my name, and I don’t know his.” Then, half-relenting, “Although he might’ve learned it from another.” A semi-colon pause. “Not a very good friend, I hope,” she winked yet again.

  “We still keep secrets from another,” I replied, hinting at an unknown meaning.

  “I hope you are better at keeping things than he,” she said with a strange, seductive smile—secretive and somehow hopeful but sullenly resigned, in the manner of all saloon girls. “Yes. I suppose he is a customer. But a very different kind of customer.”

  She leaned to me in a whisper and I could smell the spiritless odor of sugar from her glass and on her breath.

  “He pays me to let him watch. Just me, by myself. Oh! one time he asked me to let him watch another. From the closet. Begged me to allow it. I said no,” she sat upright with self-satisfaction. “Then he offered me such a handy sum that, well—I told him if he so much as breathed, I would have whatever was left of him to have.” She paused, sipped at her glass with years of practice that even made her seem to wince, and checked the room. “He has no genitals. None!” she began to roar raspily, then brought her voice back down. “He has the barrel, but no powder, not a single bullet. Not even grapeshot!”

  She sipped again and handed her glass over the bar to be refilled. The keep reached under the ledge to oblige when her fingers ran to cover the glass. She looked at him and shook her head slightly, then held the glass straight out. He grabbed the bottle of brandy behind him and filled the glass to its very rim without hesitation, so she had to go to it.

  “Dismembered hisself,” she continued with mixed shock and perverse pleasure as she sat back down. “I suppose it takes a real man to remove his own manhood. But we’ll never know for sure—no!”

  That was what she said and I knew there were two things Corbett had abundantly: courage and conviction, if not discretion.

  She sniggered softly, the perfect rows of front teeth yielding to the silver-traced truth of those behind. For all her powdered saloon features still, there was something attractive about her. She squeezed her breasts together with her arms as she pressed against my side.

  “You, on the other hand,” she cooed, “seem more than equipped. What do you say?”

  She arched one stenciled eyebrow toward the second floor landing.

  “Who was that man? The one my friend paid to see?”

  She smiled, then shrugged with those same years of resignation and resolve.

  “I should have known. I will not—good day,” she said, rising, a single tip of her head emptying her glass.

  “I only wish to know his name,” I said as harmlessly as I could manage.

  “I should not have told you at
all. It was just a story. You have no proof.”

  I offered her another wad of folded bills.

  “Will this pay for the story’s ending?”

  She took the money quickly, pleased at its minting, and snapped, “He no longer comes here. I never knew his name either. Your friend seemed to know him, however. He seemed to know him well. Now go.”

  Strophe

  What part of me did you kill that night? Or should I ask what part of me did you leave alive? What is there left of me? This is not a life I lead. This is but the shadow of some former self I knew. Some half-surviving shape or shade, left to wander unfamiliar roads and unmanageable situations. Less capable than that already beaten form that had sought sanctuary from the truth in the hope of some proposed falsehood.

  All for which I had dreamed was an extended moment of luxuriance in your mother’s arms, those eyes and that heart that once held me close and dear. For half an instant it had seemed enough to close my eyes and breathe one final breath. And I would trade this moment’s promise of a longer life for the security of any of those uncertain others. As I lived them, so they were. Unmistakable, unforgivable. Now I should simply let them pass.

  ***

  We found Corbett there. As conspicuous as I tell you he is, or was, or should be, or must have been, I never would have known him. Not until I heard someone call him, this man who killed me, by his new name, the one Hand had confided to me. Another thing he seemed to have learned so easily. And if I had doubts I had fewer still when I remarked his strangely crippled gait and the pallid wonderment of his upturned gaze.

  “Thatcher!” came the shout again. “Tom Thatcher! Give a hand, the legislature’s almost in.”

  What is there so unmistakable in a man that can be recognized with a glance, though he should change his look and his name, his humor, his wealth or poverty, his self-worth? More than the eyes, could it be his very soul? That part of his spirit that must inform his corporeal strength, and in Corbett’s instance dictate its ruthless passions that his body would never again deign to utter its own?

  From the moment I saw him limp across the avenue I knew not only that all those wild stories were true, but also that there might yet be truth to one still untold, by me only imagined. For why else should our paths have crossed so neatly? Providence was finally moving her hand in my behalf, if this time I would only listen to her and not another’s voice.

  He had all the attributes of a zealot. The glazed hollow glare, infected voice and affected vernacular that peeled like a sermon for the Society of Friends, or commended itself to address a camp meeting. To compound these, he wore his hair past his shoulders because it was so the manner of the Christ.

  What had made Corbett mad? Who can say? I can only guess. What could I know of such things? They touch me only somewhat—and, after all, what does it matter? Surely he is. Whatever madness led to his emasculating revelation was heightened tenfold therein. Perhaps, it can be said, he makes even Wilkes seem mild and moderate-minded.

  Corbett was not merely mad. He was a fool, but exactly whose fool, I was not yet sure.

  Antistrophe

  The sins I have committed—unlike some young boy’s methodical execution of neighborhood cats—I will not dare to guess if they have been against God or man or nature. They have given me power. Out of darkness is born light. Out of much darkness there can be, but little light—but it is light. And out of more light, when the power of that light is raised and occupied, compassion.

  If I fasted for the entire month I spent at the monastery it was still two weeks less than a holy man. A man must confront all his demons if he is to achieve clarity, and in thirty days I confronted only myself. Still, this was a positive confrontation; that when next met, those demons, those sons of darkness would be wholly battled. Then, as now, my heart ripped and tore for Ella and our children more than any. Less for myself than I should have ever thought.

  ***

  I could not have scripted a more effective drama. Nor could Mr. Taylor a more engaging comedy, I am sure.

  “Booth isn’t dead.”

  He looked at me deadpan, brushed past and continued walking, his companion too neither acknowledging my claim nor my presence.

  I ran to confront him again.

  “Booth lives,” I repeated.

  He stared numbly as he loosed a plug of chewing tobacco into the roadway.

  “Then, brother, you have no claim to what is mine. At any rate, $1,653.84 is not a sum worthy of further quartering and distribution. Perhaps you might seek out Mr. Conger or Lieutenant Doherty. They at least have an amount capable of division.”

  He spat again.

  “He is not dead.”

  “So you would retrieve my money entirely? Well, it is spent. I have nothing. Nothing! Or, if this is another of those wild rumors, let me ease your mind. He is dead. I shot him. He is dead and he is gone. He was only a man.”

  “The man lives, and he may be looking for you.”

  He stopped now. This had taken him by surprise.

  “Why?”

  “Perhaps he thinks you know something,” I intrigued.

  “I only know my duty,” he spoke quickly and defensively, his wad transferred from one cheek to the next. “I was hired to do a job, and I did it.”

  “To kill him.”

  “Yes—to kill him.” He stopped chewing. “Who are you?”

  “I believe that is what he would like to know.”

  “Who are you?”

  “Just a friend.”

  “Not mine, brother.”

  “I am hoping I might be.”

  “I have no friends. Nor need of one. This world is not long as it is.”

  “If you would speak to me—”

  “Speak to you?” marvelled the man with the kind of wild ferocity I had known in my father’s madness. “I should sooner spit!”

  He did so yet again, though less at me than, distractedly, dribbling on himself.

  “Why? What would you have of me, my life?”

  Here he hocked what was left of his tobacco and railed into a single howl—the purest lunacy imaginable—from his aspirate throat and widely gapped teeth.

  “Don’t you know why I was picked to be your executioner, Mr. Booth?” he addressed me by name without hesitation, suddenly affecting a mock reverence for one so gladly dead. “There can be no temptation held to me, neither good nor evil, that could persuade me to perform what I will not. There am I surely unlike your understanding, who have inherited the unfortunate custom of assuming a posture for the promise of a portion of the house receipts.”

  He turned about with a slight hobble, continued across the avenue and into the State House, leaving me to wonder and wait. When finally at half-past-eight Corbett exited with his companion, he did not see me, and I imagined he might have thought the entire incident some twisted vision of penitence. From the shadows I followed the two of them at a distance. Tarrying before the doorway of the saloon, his eyes had not fought to avoid a lingering at every darkened passage, before they entered a meeting hall at the other end of the street.

  ***

  "I, grand cyclops of the den, with the aid and assistance of my two night hawks, under the laws and statutes of the Order, and with due regard for the imperial wizard and his genii, his most grand dragon and attendant hydra, the dominion’s grand titan and his furies, and with direct consent of the provincial grand giant and his four goblins, do hereby convene this body of ghouls for the purposes of sacred initiation.

  “Bring the candidate forward.”

  A shuffling of feet, the sound of chains and armor.

  “Do you believe in the supremacy of your race and the inalienable right of self-preservation of the people against the exercise of arbitrary and unlicensed power?”

  “I do.”

  “Will you devote your intelligence, energy and influence to the furtherance and propagation of the principles of our Order?”

  “I will.”

  �
��Will you, under all circumstances, defend and protect persons of the white race in their lives, rights and property against all encroachments or invasions from any inferior race, and especially the African?”

  “Yes.”

  “Are you willing to take an oath forever to cherish these grand principles and to unite yourself with others who, like you, believing in their truth, have firmly bound themselves to stand by and defend them against all?”

  “I am.”

  “So swear.”

  He was handed a bible and began.

  “I do solemnly swear, in the presence of these witnesses, never to reveal, without authority, the existence of this Order, its objects, its acts and signs of recognition. Never to reveal or publish, in any manner whatsoever, what I shall see or hear in this council. Never to divulge the names of the members of the Order or their acts done in connection therewith. I swear to maintain and defend the social and political superiority of the white race on this continent, always and in all places to observe a marked distinction between the white and African races, to vote for none but white men for any office of honor, profit, or trust. To devote my intelligence, energy, and influence to instill these principles in the minds and hearts of others. And to protect and defend persons of the white race in their lives, rights, and property against the encroachments and aggressions of an inferior race.

  “I swear, moreover, to unite myself in heart, soul and body with those who compose this Order. To aid, protect and defend them in all places. To obey the orders of those who, by our statutes, will have the right of giving those orders. To respond at the peril of my life to a call, sign or cry coming from a fellow member whose rights are violated. And to do everything in my power to assist him through life. And to the faithful performance of this oath, I pledge my life and sacred honor.”