The Lincoln Letter

by William Martin

  “Well, son, the president’s off inspectin’ the forts across the river. Won’t be back till noon. If you have dispatches, leave them with me.”

  At noon, Halsey would be escorting a young woman to the Smithsonian. He was not about to miss that. So he considered surrendering the diary to McManus. But he had decided that he would put the president’s private thoughts into the president’s hands and nowhere else. So, with the diary still in his breast pocket, he turned and headed down the other side of the carriage drive.

  He was halfway to Pennsylvania Avenue when he heard his name.

  “Halsey! Halsey, old boy! Halsey Hutchinson!” A slender man in his late thirties was hurrying down the walk. He wore a checkered suit, polished brown boots, and a fresh-trimmed Vandyke: John Charles Robey, distant cousin.

  Halsey wished that he had kept walking.

  “I heard that you’d been wounded, Halz.”

  “You heard right.” Halsey let his voice croak a bit more than usual.

  “But you’re looking excellent. And still aiding in the war effort, I see.”

  Halsey started walking again. “And what is it that you’re up to?”

  “I’m aiding the war effort, too.”

  “I’ll bet you are.”

  “Once more into the breach, dear friends.” Halsey’s cousin was fond of quoting Shakespeare in a big honking voice and bad British accent.

  The family called him John Charles, to distinguish him from Plain John, another cousin. Plain John owned a newspaper in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, and was a radical Abolitionist, the sort who believed that Lincoln was a malingerer on the question of race. The family believed that John Charles was a malingerer in general, a fast-talking buck-passer whose presence in the patronage line meant that he saw an opportunity for himself, not for the nation.

  At least he was no Abolitionist. Those people gave Halsey an itch.

  “I’ve been trying for a week, Halz, but I haven’t gotten beyond the first landing. And if what I just heard is true—that the president won’t be back till noon—I’m for a leisurely breakfast. Care to join me?”

  “Not particularly.”

  “I’ll buy. In exchange, you can offer me a few pointers for when I meet the Original Ape.”

  “Original Ape?”

  “Why, Lincoln, of course. That’s what the papers are calling him, even in the North.”

  “Calling him that won’t get you very far in the patronage line.” Halsey picked up his pace. “As my father says, he’s the only president we’ve got, so we should speak well of him.”

  “Your father’s a wise man. But I’ve heard that Lincoln spends a lot of time in the telegraph office. So my favorite cousin must get to speak to him, as well as of him.”

  “I speak only when spoken to,” answered Halsey.

  “When you speak, could you just mention your cousin and his fine shoe factory in Brockton, Massachusetts?”

  “Why?”

  “Because there are shoe factories all across the goddamn Union, Halz, all vying for government contracts.”

  They reached Pennsylvania Avenue.

  The trees in Lafayette Park were leafing out. Carriages and horses were clattering by. And somewhere in the distance, drums were thrumming. But in Washington, drums were always thrumming. They set up a constant cadence that echoed off the buildings around the park and bounced back to create a counterpoint, so that everyone on the street seemed to be moving to one beat or the other.

  Halsey turned east and went with the cadence.

  John Charles followed on the counterpoint. “This war is the chance of a lifetime, Halz.”

  “Tell that to the boys in the lime pits around Shiloh.”

  “Shiloh? Oh, yes. Terrible thing, that. But … but you know what I mean.”

  “Not really.”

  “Well, you must hear things.”

  “Things?”

  “Conversation. Talk. The president and the secretary, putting their heads together over some telegram or better yet, some requisition for shoes. That sort of thing.”

  If you only knew, thought Halsey.

  “Or maybe you just hear the president thinking out loud.”

  If you only knew, thought Halsey again.

  “And if you were to tell such as myself what you hear, I might be able to use it to the advantage of the family.”

  Halsey had to laugh. “You mean to the advantage of yourself, don’t you?”

  “You know me too well, gentle cuz.”

  As they passed the State Department, two Negroes approached. The taller one was carrying a shovel. The fatter one had a mule harness over his shoulder. They both looked at Halsey and tipped their hats.

  Halsey passed them every morning and always tipped his bowler in return.

  His cousin watched and said in amazement, “Halsey, they’re niggers.”

  “A man tips his hat, you tip yours. It’s a sign of respect, no matter his color.”

  John Charles glanced over his shoulder. “Now you’ve done it. They’ve stopped. They’re watching. Show them respect, the next thing you know, they’re following you through the street, looking to cadge coppers or beg some menial job.”

  Halsey looked back and sure enough, the Negroes had turned. His eyes met theirs, then they went on their way.

  John Charles said, “The great thing about this city, gentle cuz, is that the niggers are expected to tip their hats and make way on the street. It wouldn’t be a bad lesson to teach them in Boston, either.”

  “I’m no Abolitionist,” answered Halsey. “It’s just good manners to tip your hat.”

  “And good sense not to. Those damnable Abolitionists want to turn this into a war to free the nigger. But the nigger isn’t the issue. It’s saving the Union that matters, saving our businesses.”

  Halsey had had enough of this.

  At the corner of Fifteenth, he stopped. “I am very tired just now, so I don’t care about saving the negroes or the Union or you. And I don’t want breakfast. I’m going home to sleep. If you follow me or use my name in the presence of Mr. Lincoln, I will shoot you, gentle cuz.” And to make the point, he flipped open his jacket.

  John Charles looked at the pistol. Then he looked at his cousin. Then he took out a calling card and pressed it into his cousin’s hand. “You can find me in the lobby of the Willard Hotel every afternoon at four o’clock, along with every other man-on-the-make in Washington. Between eight and midnight I’m at Squeaker McDillon’s on Twelfth.”

  “McDillon’s? The gambling hell?”

  “I prefer to call it a faro parlor.”

  “At least you’re not dallying with whores.”

  “In this city, gentle cuz, we’re all dallying with whores, except some of them wear suits instead of dresses. So”—now he tipped his hat—“excuse me while I dabble.”

  * * *

  Halsey watched John Charles go north; then he went south to the place where Pennsylvania Avenue left the Executive Branch and resumed its diagonal run toward Capitol Hill. And as the panoply opened before him, his thought was always the same: If this was the grandest thoroughfare in Washington, it did not bode well for the republic.

  Its width befit a street of high ambition in the capital of an ambitious nation. And it was lined with trees and buildings. And it was angled so as to draw the eye toward that fine distant prospect—the hill atop which sat the national legislature.

  But width merely afforded more room for mud to spurt up through cracked cobblestones, for pigs and fowl to run wild, for wagons and omnibuses to break down. It also separated the respectable activities of the north side—hotels, theaters, businesses—from the area called Murder Bay, a triangle of land formed by Pennsylvania on the north, the canal on the south, and Fifteenth Street on the west, and into which were crammed enough saloons, dance halls, gambling hells, and whorehouses to satisfy every corps in the Army of the Potomac, should they all go on leave at once. And the best that could be said of the trees was that when
they leafed out, they performed the aesthetic miracle of blocking most of the ramshackle buildings from view.

  As for the pillared Capitol, it appeared as if someone had stuck a giant eggbeater in its roof to mix up whatever was inside. Construction of a dome had begun in 1859, but the war had stopped it. Now the crane holding up the cast-iron ribs resembled the beater handle, and the ribs looked like the paddles. But the work had resumed. The president had insisted. He said that finishing the dome would symbolize the continuity of the nation.

  In a city of bleak reality, thought Halsey, hopeful symbols had their place.

  He took to the north side of the Avenue. It was the “good” side, which meant it would be safer for a man carrying a valuable diary, and it boasted a fine brick sidewalk.

  But the peddlers were already crowding it. An organ grinder was playing and his little monkey was dancing. A tonic salesman was hanging a sign on his stand—DR. PHILBERT’S HEALTH JUICE. PERTECTS FROM KOLERA, TYPHOID, AND POXES OF ANY KIND. And the candy vendors and soap sellers were jockeying for the best spots near the entrance to the Willard Hotel, which wrapped around the corner of Fourteenth Street.

  Halsey often stopped for breakfast at Willard’s buffet and stuffed himself with bacon, poached eggs, and tureens of duck-liver pâté. But not this morning. The importance of what he carried, the responsibility he had impulsively taken onto himself, had also taken his appetite. So he kept on.

  And he kept a quick pace, because as the morning crowd grew, the chances of meeting pickpockets grew as well. He held his jacket tight and watched for the reach-and-runners who worked boldly, or the excuse-me-sirs, who operated in tandem, one bumping and apologizing while the other picked, or the lightfoots who came up quietly behind and were gone in an instant.

  Around Ninth Street, the crowd thickened with cross traffic and wagons and people laden down by sacks of sundries. The Center Market, a great shed sheltering scores of smaller sheds and stalls, dominated the south side of the Avenue and covered the whole triangular block down to the canal. It was noisy, raucous, and smelly, but the true stink of the city rose from that canal, which ran up from the East Branch of the Potomac, skirted the base of Capitol Hill, then turned to form the northern boundary of the dust pit called, on more optimistic maps, the Mall. The canal had been dug to improve river trade. But once railroad cars replaced canal boats, it became no more than a trench for sewage, garbage, and a few feet of slow-flowing water.

  Halsey went with his head on a swivel … left, right, center, and back.

  He passed Brady’s National Photographic Portrait Studio and Art Gallery. He went by Hannassey’s Undertaking. Against the doorjamb stood a white pine coffin. Above it a sign: THE DEARLY DEPARTED RENDERED LIFELIKE AFTER DEATH. SHIPMENT ARRANGED TO ALL UNION STATES. STEP INTO OUR BOX AND TEST ITS STURDINESS.

  By then, the diary felt like a lead weight in his pocket. He wished that he had left it on Eckert’s desk. But he could not go back now. Besides, he was almost home.

  For him, as for the other military men who worked in the War Department, home was the National Hotel, at the corner of Sixth. It was one of the finest buildings on the Avenue, red brick, five stories, a shade-giving portico above the sidewalk, and the most modern of conveniences, a telegraph office at the street corner.

  Halsey gave another look behind, then crossed Sixth.

  And the Negro bootblack named Noah Bone called to him: “Mornin’, Mr. Lieutenant Hutchi’son, sir. Glorious mornin’, ain’t it?”

  “Morning, Noah.” Halsey hurried by the twin shoeshine chairs.

  “Shine, sir?” said Noah.

  “Not today.” Halsey barely glanced at the Negro, who was somewhere in his forties, with a bald head and a shoeshine-stained apron.

  “I think you need a shine, sir. I think you really need a shine.”

  That made Halsey stop.

  Noah winked. “I even give it to you for free, sir.”

  Halsey sensed that something was up, so he climbed into a chair and put his feet on the braces.

  Noah took a brush and knocked the mud from around the soles of Halsey’s boots. “I just thought you might want to know, they’s two men lookin’ for you.”

  “Men?”

  “Yes, sir.” Noah kept brushing. “One of ’em follow you down the Avenue.”

  Halsey glanced back along the sidewalk, expecting to see John Charles.

  “Don’t bother lookin’.” Noah kept brushing. “He step in a storefront when you look back, just ’fore you cross Sixth.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Well, this here’s my place in the world, sir. I make sure I know what all’s happenin’ ’round me. I keep my eyes peeled and my ear to the ground. And I know the feller followin’ you. He’s one of the watchers.”

  “Watchers?”

  “They go about watchin’ for deserters and Secesh spies and such.”

  “I think you mean detectives. What’s he look like?”

  “Like someone drop him in a manure pile and he come up all brown. All brown all over, ’cept for his itty-bitty white face.”

  So, thought Halsey, McNealy had decided to tail him.

  “Thank you, Noah.”

  “You treat me good, sir, I treat you good.” Noah put down the brush. “Now—”

  “You said there were two men?”

  “Oh, you like the other gent. He’s famous.” Noah spread polish on Halsey’s boots. “Yes, sir, when Mr. De-tective see you talkin’ to this gent, he think better of you.”

  “When will he see that?”

  Without raising his head, Noah said, “In about five second. ’Cause the other gent jess steppin’ out the hotel telegraph office.”

  Halsey recognized the young man coming along the sidewalk. He was slender, well tailored, handsome. He perched his hat just so, at an angle that was not too jaunty, not too dull. His mustache curled symmetrically around the corners of his mouth. And he sauntered toward them with the kind of athletic grace that could not be taught but could certainly be refined.

  “Mornin’, Mr. Booth, sir,” said Noah Bone.

  John Wilkes Booth stopped, looked down at the Negro crouched before the white man’s boots, and said, “Mornin’, boy.”

  Noah stood up. “This here’s the gent I was tellin’ you ’bout, sir. This here’s Lieutenant Hutchi’son of Boston, Massachusetts.”

  Booth reached over Noah and offered Halsey his hand. “I asked the boy here if any of my neighbors in the hotel hailed from Boston. He mentioned yourself, sir.”

  Noah went back to work with a pair of polishing brushes.

  Booth said, “I promised him a nice gratuity, should a Boston man direct me to places where young ladies of good character might be found in his city.”

  “Mr. Booth goin’ to Boston to play in a show,” said Noah.

  Booth said, “Next month, I’ll be appearing as Romeo at the Boston Museum.”

  “There’s a performance I’d like to see,” said Halsey. “I admired you in Richard the Third.”

  That seemed to please Booth, who climbed up and settled into the vacant shining chair.

  Had anyone else done it, Halsey might have pulled the pistol right then to protect the diary. But here sat theatrical royalty. Halsey was so honored that he forgot his other worries, at least for the moment.

  Booth said, “I’ll be assaying Richard the Third in Boston as well.”

  Halsey had played a few amateur theatricals in college, so a line from Richard the Third came quickly to his mind: “Now is the winter of our discontent made glorious summer by this son of—”

  Booth raised a finger. “Do not say ‘son of Kentucky,’ sir, or I shall be forced to look elsewhere for my Boston acquaintances.”

  “Kentucky?” asked Halsey, momentarily confused.

  “This nation lies in perpetual winter,” said Booth, “until the next election removes Kentucky from the seat of power.”

  Now Halsey understood. Lincoln was a son of Kentucky, and as his
campaign song went, “the hero of Hoosierdom, too, the pride of those suckers so lucky…” For some reason, people from Illinois were called “suckers.”

  Booth leaned closer. “I would not speak so frankly, but the boy here—”

  Halsey noticed Noah shift his eyes upward, though his hands kept working.

  “—the boy here tells me that your family is in textiles.”

  “They are.”

  “Then I might infer that your family business relies on a supply of cheap cotton?”

  “You might.”

  “And therefore I might infer that you are not Abolitionist?”

  “I’m not,” said Halsey, and he noticed Noah’s eyes shift again.

  “Well, then—” Booth stood, pulled out his card, and handed it to Halsey. “—I would be most appreciative of a letter of introduction from you, sir. I shall repay your kindness with the dress circle upon request.”

  Halsey read: JOHN WILKES BOOTH, NATIONAL HOTEL, WASHINGTON.

  “I’m in room two twenty-eight when I’m not traveling the highways and byways, bringing the wonders of the Bard to the masses. I look forward to further conversation, sir, before I leave.” And with a half bow, Booth excused himself.

  Noah put the two polish brushes into the box under the seat and pulled out the buffing rag. “Mr. Booth, he don’t like Abolitionists much.”

  “Sounds as if he doesn’t like the president much, either,” said Halsey.

  “Well, sir”—Noah started his rag pop-plopping on Halsey’s boot—“I shine any man’s shoes who pay my price, Abolitionist, Union Democrat, or outright Secesh.”

  “A wise philosophy,” answered Halsey.

  “So—” Noah stopped shining a moment. “—spit, sir?”

  “Spit?”

  “Ain’t no Abolitionist care if a colored man spit-shine his shoes, and no Secesh want to go around with colored spit on his boot. You say you ain’t Abolitionist, and I know you ain’t Secesh. Do Union Democrats from Boston mind a little spit shine?”

  Halsey said, “I want your best work.”

  So Noah gave a neat spit to each of Halsey’s boots and applied the last buff.

  Halsey gave him a whole Yankee dollar as a tip.