I Am Abraham (43 page)

He was lying on a table with dirt and blood on his red beard; there were bruises under both his eyes. Emile couldn’t even kiss him and wash his beard, as the morgue attendants kept shuffling bodies from place to place and growled at the little girl, who sat alone in a waiting room. Emilie ran out the hospital with her Kate and felt more and more like a vagabond. Suddenly she had a new status—the widow of Brigadier Ben. She wanted to return to her own people in Kentucky, but she couldn’t get there without a transit card through Union lines. A Rebel general in Atlanta wrote to one of my generals—Mary’s name was mentioned—and
Little Sister
, as we called her, was awarded her own private ambulance. She arrived at Fort Monroe with a lot of fanfare. She had lunch with the commandant, but his captains insisted that she swear an oath of allegiance before they let her through. Emilie was petrified. She couldn’t disavow the Rebels right after her husband died. The captains bullied her, said they would keep little Katherine at the fort, and send her to Richmond on a mule. But they should have reckoned with Mary’s half sister. She threw a Kentucky tantrum, and the captains had to retreat. They wired the White House, and I wired back.

Send her to me.

She and Katherine came in the middle of the night, with their sunken cheeks and wiry hair, and we fed them in the kitchen. I was mortified—the little girl’s hands hopped like wounded birds. We couldn’t console mother and daughter. But having Little Sister and Katherine around was an elixir for Mary, who could play mother hen. She wore a black dress, but it was for Little Sister’s sake; she was awful fond of the brigadier and his red beard. And I watched her cry—and laugh. She’d stroke Little Sister’s cheek, stuff her with morsels of pickled shad.

Just two weeks ago, she dropped her serving spoon in the middle of a meal, clutched her forehead, and disappeared into her headquarters, with Elizabeth as her sentinel. Nothing could draw her out—until Little Sister arrived. She went on carriage rides with Emilie. I couldn’t accompany them; I was only a day or so out of quarantine. But Tad had a playmate now. He’d rush up to the roof with Katherine, and they’d stare at the Potomac like accomplished sea captains. They turned the staircase into a toll bridge, demanding tribute from whoever passed their little booth. And that look of famine fled from Katherine’s cheeks. But she got into a ruckus with Tad over politics and the rebellion. Tad kept carrying around a portrait of me.

“Pa’s President, Cousin Kate. He could hang Bobbie Lee if he put his mind to it, or pull Mr. Jeff out of the Rebel White House, and execute him on the spot, without a court-martial.”

Her shoulders whipped like a windup doll, and she tumbled about with disjointed steps, as she stole a glance at me.

“Then your Pa is the Executioner-in-Chief, and Mother and I won’t stay here another minute.”

She packed her own little bag and stood on the south porch, waiting for some phantom carriage to whisk her away from the Mansion. And I had to humble myself in front of that child, or risk losing her whole regard.

“Well, Missy, I might spare Mr. Jeff—and I might not.”

That captured her curiosity; and her eyes softened a bit, though she still pretended not to notice where I was.

“And what would persuade you, Uncle Abraham?”

“The color of the sky,” I said, “the path of the moon—and how nice you are to me.”

She licked her tongue with short, deliberate swipes. “And suppose I wasn’t nice? Would you give me to your generals and have them feed on my carcass?”

“Missy, I’d sign the order myself.”

She giggled, plucked at her little bag, and moved back into the White House.

She was our star boarder, who gobbled her vittles greedily, hiding buns and slivers of cake in her lap, while she fell in love with one of Mary’s prize china inkwells—you couldn’t find another like it in all the land. Then we had a robbery on the second floor, and that inkwell vanished from Mary’s satin box. Mother shrieked at the servants, called them lazy no-accounts, and wanted to fire every one. But before she had the chance to wreck our tranquility, Tad found the inkwell stuffed inside Katherine’s pillowcase. I wasn’t happy about his little treasure hunt. He shouldn’t have gone sneaking into that little girl’s room.

Emilie flew into a rage. She seized Katherine’s skinny arm and shook it like a pump handle. “Ungrateful girl, plundering your relations like a common Yankee thief.”

I worried that she would rip Katherine’s arm right off at the root in that temper of hers. But I couldn’t intervene. Molly had to calm her own sister like a Kentucky mare.

“Oh, Em, I promised Kate that portion of China. It was a pact between her secret angel and mine.”

Little Sister stopped cranking her daughter’s arm. But the little girl, herself a casualty of war, couldn’t even trust her own good fortune.

“Auntie, is that angel of
yourn
a liar or not?”

“Child, angels never lie—not in this house.”

I didn’t want a lot of folks learning we had Mary’s Rebel half sister in the Mansion. But my wife bandied it abroad—to gardeners and tradesmen, and whoever else would listen. In her mind, we managed to
steal
Little Sister from the South. Mary invited a pair of confederates from her old Crimson Room salon—General Dan Sickles and New York Senator Ira Harris—to the White House. She just couldn’t understand how
suicidal
it was, and destructive to her own sister. Harris, who occupied Seward’s old seat in the Senate, had a boy in the Army, risking his life for the Union, and would have been pretty raw about the widow of a Rebel brigadier in the White House. And Sickles had lost a leg at Gettysburg—it was shattered by a cannonball, but he went on fighting in a wheelbarrow until he fainted, and his men carried him from the field. General Dan was Mary’s favorite rascal; he’s the one who’d been declared momentarily insane after murdering his wife’s
admirer
in Lafayette Park. He hopped around on that wooden leg of his, and frequented every bordello in the District; that stump had become a legend at the Ironclad, the Blue Goose, and other high-class houses. Mother relished his tales, but she never bothered to notice his mean, brooding twitch.

Both he and the Senator were bilious at the first sight of Emilie in a black satin robe, mourning her dead brigadier. I was at their little séance in the Crimson Room. But since I hadn’t fully recovered, I could afford to lie down on Mary’s divan with one eye shut. Both of ’em were skilled at attack and counterattack. They pretended I was some silent witness in the salon; neither one would disturb the President’s sleep.

“Mrs. Lincoln,” said the Senator, “my little niece met your Robert on Boston Commons the other day, says he’s in tiptop condition.”

Mary was purring like a pregnant cat. “We’re proud of him,” she said.

I knew the trap was set. But Mary was blind to the whole business.

The Senator barked like a seal and commenced to swoop. “General Dan and I are eager to learn what regiment Robert will join. He should have gone to the front some time ago.”

Mary turned pale; her mouth quivered. She was looking for me to defend Bob, but I wouldn’t enter the fracas with one closed eye. Mother patted her mouth with a silk handkerchief. Perhaps I wanted her own confederates to punish her for the foolishness of bringing them here.

“Robert is making his preparations now to enter the Army,” she said. “He is not a shirker as you seem to imply. If fault there be, it is mine, dear Harris. I have insisted that Bob stay in college a little longer, as I think an educated man can serve his country with more intelligent purpose than an ignoramus.”

Now the Senator turned to Emilie with a masked smile.

“We have whipped the Rebels at Chattanooga,” he said. “And I hear, madam, that the scoundrels ran like scared rabbits.”

Emilie bit right back. “It was the example you set at Manassas, when the Yankees had their Great Skedaddle.”

She ran out the room with Mary right behind. And I was left all alone with the patriarchs. But I shut my mouth while Sickles leaned over the divan and looked at me.

“Sir, you should not have that little Rebel in your house.”

He could have been some winter fly—that’s how I swatted him away, but that didn’t rescue Little Sister. She couldn’t even celebrate Christmas with us. General Dan and his cohorts would have crucified her; they published poisonous letters in all the local papers about Little Sister and her fallen brigadier, Ben Hardin Helm. My own Republican stalwarts tossed mud at the Presidential carriage whenever the two
Traitoresses
rode through town
.
And I could see that frozen look descend upon Mary as her sister was about to depart. She felt forlorn, loved by neither North nor South, and Little Sister had soothed that raw nerve.

They hugged and kissed for half an hour, and then Mary vanished into her room, while I accompanied mother and daughter to their carriage; my wife had packed the coach with candy and dolls for her little niece, who might have to spend her Christmas in a railroad car.

“Brother Abraham,” Emilie whispered in my ear, “it was bitter to see my Ben in that little charnel house—with blood all over his beard. If he had looked in your eyes one last time, he might never have . . .”

I couldn’t bear to see her shiver and cry. “You know, Little Sister, I tried to have Ben stay with the Union. I wanted to make him our paymaster. But he refused.”

“I couldn’t stir him,” she said, daubing her eyes with one of Mary’s silk handkerchiefs. “He saw his star in the South. And it pained Ben, brother killing brother—he was half Yankee himself.”

“And I suppose I’m one quarter Rebel. But you shouldn’t tell that to Senator Harris. . . . It was good to have you and Katherine here. Mary’s nerves have gone to pieces.”

There was a divide of eighteen years between the two sisters. Mary hadn’t watched her grow up. She ran from Lexington while Emilie was a child. But she sort of adopted Little Sister after we got married—and no war in the world could have broken that bond.

“Mary does seem excitable,” Little Sister said. “And once or twice when I came into the room the frightened look in her eyes appalled me—if anything should happen to you or Bob or Tad . . .”

I knew Mother was dancing at some edge, on her velvet slippers. I didn’t want those slippers to crash—and imagine her in the madhouse. She felt the whole country had abandoned her, and all she had was her headquarters in a borrowed house. But she was less of a fugitive with Little Sister around.

“You’ll come again,” I muttered like some hermit in the midst of a hurricane. “Come when you can.”

The blush had gone out of Little Sister in her widow’s bonnet. She seemed frail, distracted—wounded by Mr. Lincoln’s War. She must have blamed me, a little, for her husband’s death. Still, she had a much sweeter temperament than my wife. She’d once been the most seductive creature alive—with a perfect oval face and brilliant eyes. A hundred men had courted her—at least a hundred. She’d ruined the season for a lot of Southern belles, but sadness had warped her mouth, twisted it to one side—must have happened after her Ben died and she had to scrounge for food in Alabam.

I kissed little Katherine and hoisted her up into the carriage with her china inkwell in a satin box. The coachman kept muttering how it wasn’t his fault if he didn’t get to the depot in time. His name was Tim. He was always quarreling with my wife, always driving her to the fashionable shops. He was a great—big—wild sort of feller.

“The cars will leave without us, Mr. Lincoln.”

I’d scribbled Emilie a pass for her voyage to Lexington. I also prepared a Presidential pardon, but I knew she’d never take the oath, not with her husband—Brigadier Ben—still boiling inside her head. But no one would dare stop her in the cars, not with my
seal
in her pocket.

I reached into the carriage and hugged my two Rebels for the last time.

“Missy, you watch over your Mama, hear?”

Little Kate wagged her finger at the Executioner-in-Chief.

“I will, Uncle. And you stop hurting people. And tell Tad that it’s all right to carry your picture around. I forgive him. And don’t forget me, hear?”

The three of us were war-torn stragglers, without a planet of their own. The rebellion had ruined the fabric, unwound the string that tied us all. Little Kate had given me too much credit. I was more like chief plasterer, I suppose, building a whole bunch of wet walls.

“I feel as though I shall never be glad again,” I said, while the coachman nattered at me.

“The cars, the cars, Mr. Lincoln. They’ll leave without us.”

His horses stood in line with their sturdy legs, snorting against the grip of their reins. He administered one lash, and the carriage lurched forward, went through the gate with a horrible, squealing noise, and fell right into the morning fog.

42.

February Fire

I
T
WASN
’
T
MUCH
of a Christmas without Emilie and Miss Kate. We crossed into the New Year like a little band of orphans careening blindly in a broken truck. Mollie had a blue spell most of the time, wishing the war would go away and she could be with Little Sister again. And then, in February of ’64, while dozing in my office I heard the rattle of the fire alarm. I ran downstairs in my slippers. I could sniff the smoke. It wasn’t coming from our rooms or the servants’ quarters. I hopped onto the porch. Acrid smoke was coming from the Presidential stables, which stood behind a hedge near the great granite box of the Treasury Building. But the Treasury was shut at that hour, and the night watchman hadn’t smelt the smoke. It was the second damn fire in two years—some witch of war was against the White House.

I lost one slipper as I ran to the stables—there were six horses trapped inside, including Tad’s spotted pony and the one that had belonged to our Willie. I leapt over the damn ledge and lost my second slipper. That frightened call of the ponies dug like a stick under my heart.