The Evil B.B. Chow & Other Stories (10 page)

O
N
M
ARCH
14, 1865, with the war drawing to a close and the cherry trees budding, Lincoln dispatches Under Secretary Dole to convey a message along to Douglass, inviting him to take tea at the Soldier's Home.

Douglass removes the sheet of foolscap from its dainty envelope. His hair, which in official portraits will take the appearance of a bald eagle perching atop his head, dips toward his brow. “Is this a prank, Dole?”

“No sir. The president requests your company.”

“My company?”

“I should think that apparent.”

Douglass frowns. Nearby, a clock tolls six. He looks about in agitation. “But I have an engagement this evening, a speech.”

“I see.” Dole turns back to his carriage.

“I haven't time to cancel, sir. A hall has been rented; tickets issued.” Rather too ardently, Douglass grasps Dole's sleeve. “Don't you see? I should be most honored to take
tea with our beloved president. It is only this duty which compels me . . .”

Dole glances dubiously at Douglass's hand and nods to his driver.

“Perhaps on another occasion!” Douglass says. He is now half jogging alongside the carriage. “Perhaps—”

“Of course,” murmurs Dole, as his hand draws the curtain shut.

L
INCOLN IS TIRED
of nobility. It has been years since he felt a single breeze of contentment. This he blames on nobility. Rectitude exhausts his every part. Days wash past in a torrent of reports and decisions. He peers at memoranda by lamplight, until the letters dance about like pickaninnies. At night, strange dreams press themselves upon him. Upon waking, he glances around his darkened bedroom and feels dread settling onto his skin like black damp.

I was happy once, he thinks: what on earth has happened?

“S
O THIS IS
the famous Mississippi?”

Lincoln nods, levers the flatboat toward the soft current at the river's center. They have just passed Red Wing.

His companion snorts.

“Yes?”

“I should have thought it wider.”

“Give her a chance, Douglass. Rivers must be given a chance.”

S
ENATOR
P
OMEROY ESCORTS
Douglass to the executive wing. Lincoln is in the antechamber to his office, on hands and knees, rooting among papers scattered on the floor. Pomeroy coughs discreetly. Lincoln rises, his legs seeming to unfold then unfold again, until he towers over Pomeroy, whose face shines like a small pink seashell.

“Mr. President,” Pomeroy says, “may I present—”

“I know who he is, Senator.” A forelock droops over Lincoln's eyes. He quietly bids the others from the room and sets a hand on Douglass's shoulder. “Seward has told me all about you. Sit down. I am glad to see you.”

For the next hour, Douglass conveys the concerns of his race regarding military pay, commendations, the treatment of those captured by Confederates. Lincoln issues a pledge here, a vague promise there. Each man's posture is stiff, cautious.

There is a lengthy silence during which, it seems to Douglass, the entirety of a December dusk fills the jalousie windows behind Lincoln's desk. “I have the sense we have met somewhere before,” Lincoln says. “Somewhere without all of this.” He gestures at the dark wainscoting of his office, the massive leather chairs.

L
INCOLN TAKES HIS
shoes off and cuffs his trousers. His tufted, coppery feet give him the appearance of a forest thing, an ogre. He stares at Douglass. “Take off that ridiculous garb,” he says. “It is hot enough to melt a rail tie.”

Douglass unbuttons his waistcoat, untabs the collar, folds them crisply. He removes his cuff links—a gift from the New England Freedmen Association—and scans the wooden deck, shading his eyes. “Have you no chifforobe?”

D
OUGLASS IN
F
ANEUIL
H
ALL
. He stares at the puff pastry brought to him by Garrison. The cream of the abolitionist movement swirls around him: young men in golden spectacles, women in elaborate hoop dresses. Well-meaning folk agog at his capacity for speech. He pokes at the pastry, his finger sinking in. A great many people seem to want to talk to him at once.

“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.

I
N A
W
EST
W
ING
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.”

L
INCOLN 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.”

D
OUGLASS 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.”

“H
OW 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.”

L
INCOLN
'
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 Bucking-hams of the world know where to find me. Now then,” Lincoln says, “we were discussing scouts. A band of them.”

S
OUTH OF
B
URLINGTON
, 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.”

D
ISREGARDING 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.

L
INCOLN 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.”

A
FTER 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 president, 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.”

“A
ND WHY SUGAR
, L
INCOLN
?”

“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.”

D
OUGLASS FINDS
L
INCOLN
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.”

“D
O 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.”