Flight to Canada (3 page)

“Uncle Robin, I’m glad to hear you say that. Why, I don’t know what I’d do without you. I can always count on you not to reveal our little secret. Traveling around the South for me, carrying messages down to the house slaves, polishing my boots and drawing my bath water. All of these luxuries. Robin, you make a man feel like … well, like a God.”

“Thank you, Massa Swille. I return the compliment. It’s such a honor to serve such a mellifluous, stunning and elegant man as yourself, Massa Swille; indeed an honor. Why … why, you could be President if you wanted to.”

“I toyed with the idea, Robin. But my brothers made me think of the Family. It would be a disgrace to the Swilles if I ever stooped so low as to offer myself to this nation. I’m afraid, Robin, that that office is fit only for rapscallions, mobocrats, buckrahs, coonskinners and second-story men. Before Granddad died, they elected that Irishman Andrew Jackson, a cut-up and a barroom brawler, to office—why, I remained in exile during his entire term. Refused even to speak the language, spoke French for those years. It was only after Dad died that I returned to manage this land.”

“You’re a very busy man, Mr. Swille. The presidency would only be a waste of time for you.”

There’s a knock on the door. Mammy Barracuda enters. “Arthur,” then, noticing Uncle Robin, “Oh, I mean Massa Swille.”

“Yes, Barracuda?”

Barracuda has a silk scarf tied about her head. A black velvet dress. She wears a diamond crucifix on her bosom. It’s so heavy she walks with a stoop. Once she went into the fields and the sun reflected on her cross so, two slaves were blinded.

“It’s your wife, Ms. Swille, sir. She say she tired of being a second-class citizen and she say she don’t want to feed herself no mo. She say it’s anti-suffragette. She say she shouldn’t have to exert herself to feed herself and she say she wont to be fed extravenous, I mean, fed intravenous, somethin. Grumph. When she do get out of bed, we have to rock her in the rocking chair. We have to wash her feet and then empty her spoils. The room ain’t been aired out in months. She say she boycott somethin. Humph!”

“If it isn’t one thing, it’s another. You mean she won’t eat at all?”

“She told me to mail this letter. I thought I’d show it to you. See what you thought about it before I mailed it.”

“Very thoughtful of you, Barracuda.”

He takes the letter, opens it.

“What you lookin at?”

“I was just admiring your new apron, Mammy Barracuda, that’s all,” Uncle Robin says.

“Better be. Humph. Grumph.”

“Destroy this letter, Barracuda. A one-year subscription to that
National Era
which carried the work by that fanatical Beecher woman.”

“I will burn it first chance I get, Massa Swille. What about him?”

“I trust Robin second only to you, Barracuda. Lying curled up fetuslike in your lap is worth a hundred shrinks on Park Avenue.”

“Humph. Whew. Wheeew,” utters Barracuda, of whom it once was rumored “she stared a man to death,” as she goes out.

“Wonderful old soul, Mammy Barracuda.”

“You can second that twice for me, Massa Swille.”

“What’s that, Robin?”

“That part about her being a wonderful old soul. You can second that twice for me.”

T
HERE’S A KNOCK AT THE
door. It’s Moe, the white house slave—Mingy Moe, as the mammies in the kitchen call him. He looks like an albino: tiny pink pupils, white Afro.

“Sorry to disturb you, Master Swille, but Abe Lincoln, the President of the so-called Union, is outside in the parlor waiting to see you. He’s fiddling around and telling corny jokes, shucking the shud and husking the hud. I told him that you were scheduled to helicopter up to Richmond to shake your butt at the Magnolia Baths tonight, but he persists. Says, ‘The very survival of the Union is at stake.’ ”

“Hand me my jacket, Uncle Robin,” Swille says as he stands in the middle of the room.

“Which one do you wont, suh—the one with the spangly fritters formal one or the silvery-squilly festooned street jacket?”

“Give me the spangly one,” Turning to Moe, Swille says, “Now, Moe, you tell this Lincoln gentleman that he won’t be able to stay long. Before I fly up to Richmond, I have to check on my investments all over the world.”

“Yessir, Mr. Swille.”

Momentarily, Lincoln, Gary Cooper-awkward, fidgeting with his stovepipe hat, humble-looking, imperfect—a wart here and there—craw and skuttlecoat, shawl, enters the room. “Mr. Swille, it’s a pleasure,” he says, extending his hand to Swille, who sits behind a desk rumored to have been owned by Napoleon III. “I’m a small-time lawyer and now I find myself in the room of the mighty, why—”

“Cut the yokel-dokel, Lincoln, I don’t have all day. What’s on your mind?” Swille rejects Lincoln’s hand, at which Lincoln stares, hurt.

“Yokel-dokel? Why, I don’t get you, Mr. Swille.”

“Oh, you know—log-cabin origin. That’s old and played out. Why don’t you get some new speech writers? Anyway, you’re the last man I expected to see down here. Aren’t you supposed to be involved in some kind of war? Virginia’s off limits to your side, isn’t it? Aren’t you frightened, man?”

“No, Mr. Swille. We’re not frightened because we have a true cause. We have a great, a noble cause. Truth is on our side, marching to the clarion call. We are in the cause of the people. It is a people’s cause. This is a great, noble and people period in the history of our great Republic. We call our war the Civil War, but some of the fellows think we ought to call it the War Between the States. You own fifty million dollars’ worth of art, Mr. Swille. What do you think we ought to call it?”

“I don’t feel like naming it, Lanky—and cut the poppycock.”

“Lincoln, sir.”

“Oh yes, Lincoln. Well, look, Lincoln, I don’t want that war to come up here because, to tell you the truth, I’m not the least bit interested in that war. I hate contemporary politics and probably will always be a Tory. Bring back King George. Why would a multinational like myself become involved in these queer crises? Why, just last week I took a trip abroad and was appallingly and disturbingly upset and monumentally offended by the way the Emperor of France was scoffing at this … this nation, as you call it. They were snickering about your general unkempt, hirsute and bungling appearance—bumping into things and carrying on. And your speeches. What kind of gibberish are they? Where were you educated, in the rutabaga patch? Why don’t you put a little pizazz in your act, Lanky? Like Davis … Now that Davis is as nit as a spit with his satin-embroidered dressing case, his gold tweezers and Rogers
&
Sons strap. He’s just bananas about Wagner and can converse in German, French and even that bloody Mexican patois. Kindly toward the ‘weak’ races, as he referred to them in that superb speech he made before the Senate criticizing Secretary of State Seward and other celebrities for financing that, that … maniac, John Brown. And when he brought in that savage, Black Hawk, on the steamboat
Winnebago,
he treated the primitive overlord with the respect due an ethnic celebrity. You can imagine the Americans taunting this heathen all decked out in white deerskins. Davis’ slaves are the only ones I know of who take mineral baths, and when hooped skirts became popular he gave some to the slave women, and when this made it awkward for them to move through the rows of cotton, he widened the rows.”

“That’s quite impressive, Mr. Swille. I have a worthy adversary.”

Swille, smirking and squinting, flicks the ashes from a cigar given him by the King of Belgium. “An intellectual. What an intellectual. Loggerhead turtles? Oysters? Hogarth? Optics? Anything you want to know, Davis’s got the answer. And his beautiful wife. More brilliant than most men. As aristocratic as Eugénie, wife of my good friend Imperial Majesty Napoleon Bonaparte III. I was having dinner with her just a few weeks ago. You know, she’s the daughter of the Count of Montijo and the Duke of Peneranda. Men who like nothing but the best. I call her Gennie, since we move in the same circles. Why, I’m thinking about refurbishing the Morocco Club in New York—just no place for the royal ones to go any more. We were eating, and she turned to me and asked why Du Chaillur searched for the primitive missing link in Africa when one had shambled into the Capitol from the jungles of the Midwest.”

Lincoln looks puzzled. “I don’t get it, Mr. Swille.”

“She was talking about you, silly. They’re calling you the Illinois Ape. Eugénie’s a brilliant conversationalist. But Varina Davis has it over her. Those glittering supper parties at the Montgomery White House—and did you see the carriage she bought Jeff? Imported it from New Orleans. Yes indeed, from New Orleans. Almost as good as mine. Upholstered in watered blue silk. Can’t you see those two representing the … the Imperial Empire of the Confederate States of Europe in London? They might even make him a knight—Sir Jefferson Davis. I can see it all now. And then upon their return, a ticker-tape parade down Broadway, with clerks leaning out of office windows shouting, Long Live Jeff. Long Live Varina. Long Live Jeff. Long Live Varina. The Duke and Duchess of Alabama. What a man. What a man. A prince. One of my friends recently visited this six-plus-foot tall specimen and said he just felt like stripping and permitting this eagle-eyed, blade-nosed, creamy Adonis to abuse him and … [pant, pant] humiliate him.”

“Come again, Mr. Swille?”

“Oh, Abe, you’re so green. Green as jade in a cocaine vision.”

“Mr. Swille, mind if we change the subject?”

“We have a delightful life down here, Abe. A land as Tennyson says ‘In which it all seemed always afternoon. All round the coast the languid air did swoon. Here are cool mosses deep, and thro the stream the long-leaved flowers weep, and from the craggy ledge the poppy hang in sleep.’ Ah. Ah. ‘And sweet it is to dream of Fatherland. Of child, and wife and slave. Delight our souls with talk of Knightly deeds. Walking about the gardens and the halls.’ And, Abe, a man like you can have a soft easy hustle down here. You could be walking around and wallowing in these balmy gardens and these halls. The good life. Breakfast in a dress coat. Exotic footbaths. Massages three times a day. And what we call down here a ‘siesta.’ Niggers fanning you. A fresh bouquet of flowers and a potent julep delivered to your room. Roses. Red roses. Yellow roses. White roses. We can bring back the ‘days that were.’ Just fancy yourself the Earl of Lincoln, or Count Abe. Or Marquis Lincoln. Marquis Lincoln of Springfield. You could have this life, Lincoln.” He goes to the window and draws back the curtains. There is a view of the hills of Virginia. “It’s all bare now, Lincoln. But we will build that city. From here to as far as the eye can see will be great castles with spires and turrets. We can build one for you, Lincoln. Sir Lincoln.”

“I’m afraid I wouldn’t like it down here, Mr. Swille. I’m just a mudfish. I don’t yen for no fancy flies.”

“Think about it, Lincoln. You can take an hour and a half putting on your clothes down here. Why … why … I’m thinking about taking up Meditative Transcendentalism. I’ve sent to India for a Swami. You know, you may not be so lucky in the next election year. If it hadn’t been for those Hoosiers and Suckers and other rags and patches who packed the Wigwam, you’d be back in your law office in Springfield. Their conduct was disgraceful. Why, I had to tell the networks not to carry it. They hollered you the nomination. Steam whistles. Hotel gongs. Comanches! Liquor flowing like Babylon. Not even top-shelf, but Whiskey Skin, Jersey Lightning and Brandy Smash.”

“The boys were just cuttin up, Mr. Swille, just jerking the goose bone.”

“And then bribing the delegates with Hoboken cigars and passes to quiz shows. Washington, Jefferson and Monroe must be howling in their chains. And that lunatic wife of yours. Must she dress like that? She looks like a Houston and Bowery streetwalker who eats hero sandwiches and chews bubble gum. Why does she wear that brunette bouffant and those silver high-heel boots? She looks like a laundromat attendant. Old frowzy dough-faced thing. Queens accent. Ever think about taking her to the Spa? And why does she send those midnight telegrams to the
Herald Tribune
after drinking God knows what? And there’s another thing I’ve been meaning to ask you, Mr. Lincoln.”

“What is that, Mr. Swille?”

“Do you think it appropriate for the President of the United States to tell such lewd jokes to the boys in the telegraph room? The one about the cow and the farmer. The traveling salesmen and the milkmaid. The whole scabrous repertoire.”

“How did you know that, Mr. Swille?”

“Never you mind. And you think it’s befitting your exalted office to go about mouthing the sayings of that hunchback Aesop? No wonder the Confederate cartoonists are beginning to depict you as a nigger. They’re calling you a Black Republican down here, and I’ve heard some weird talk from the planters. Some strange ugly talk. I want you to read that book they’re all reading down here. Uncle Robin! Give Lanky that book they’re all reading down here.”

Robin goes to the shelf. “
Idylls of the King,
Mr. Swille?”

“Yes, that’s the one.”

Robin removes the book from the shelf and gives it to Lincoln.

“This book tells you about aristocratic rule, Lincoln. How to deal with inferiors. How to handle the help. How the chief of the tribes is supposed to carry himself. You’re not the steadiest man for the job; you’d better come on and get this Camelot if you know what’s good for you. You, too, can have a wife who is jaundiced and prematurely buried. Skin and bones. Got her down to seventy-five pounds. She’s a good sufferer but not as good as Vivian, she …” Swille gazes toward the oil portrait of his sister.

“What … Anything wrong?” Lincoln says, beginning to rise from his chair.

Robin starts toward Swille.

“No, nothing. Where was I, Robin?”

“You were telling Mr. Lincoln about Camelot, sir.”

“Look, Lincoln, if you don’t want to be a duke, it’s up to you. I need a man like you up in my Canadian mills. You can be a big man up there. We treat the Canadians like coons. I know you used to chop wood. You can be a powerful man up there. A powerful man. Why, you can be Abe of the Yukon. Why don’t you resign and call it quits, Lincoln? You won’t have to sneak into the Capitol disguised any more. What ya say, pal?”