I Am Abraham (51 page)

I knew she was crafting something in her skull. She wanted to make amends, have a dinner for my generals
without
their wives. Mary was clear on that particular subject. And her dinner would be aboard the
River Queen
, where she could be the hostess, since this tub was a portion of the President’s House—while we were on the premises.

I had to lend a little of myself, or keep her locked up in the lower saloon . . .

She didn’t have Mrs. Keckly to groom her, but she had some of Keckly’s wiles—she wore a white lace gown with garlands in her hair. I couldn’t recognize my own wife. All the vacant looks were suddenly gone, that sense of exile at City Point. Her old luxuriance had come back, the plump arms and shoulders, the jiggle of her breasts under the gown. And then, with one delicate touch, she put on a black veil below the garlands.

“Mary, it’s not a funeral. It’s a dinner party. Why a black veil?”

“To fight mosquitoes,” she said.

There was no epidemic of mosquitoes in March, but I wouldn’t argue with my wife. Grant arrived with General Ord and some of his young captains, including Bob. No one dared mention the veil. She flirted with the generals in her own childlike fashion, lit their cigars.

Her voice wasn’t shrill. We all chomped on our salads. She didn’t meddle in military affairs. But she told Grant that my little stay at City Point did wonders for my dark complexion. And Ulysses was under the spell of Mother’s soft lilt. He shut his eyes and sat there with his fingers crossed, like a soldier sleeping in his saddle.

“Well, Madame President, once we chase the Rebels down into hell, you can have the manor house.”

“Gracious,” Mary said, with girlish charm, her bosoms
breathing
under that buttress of lace and silk, while every captain watched. “We wouldn’t dream of disowning you. Where would you stay?”

“In my cabin, ma’am. I’m quite content.”

She giggled, but I heard a note of hysteria, as if her
music
now had a ragged edge, and her little plan of seduction had gone awry. Did she want to bewitch Ulysses and all the young captains—including Bob—like some Salome of the Seven Veils? And it seemed as if her signals were stuck somewhere between her rôle of enchantress and Lady President, and she was lost in her own bewildered world, where generals and captains and Presidents were all replaceable figures in a frozen field—except for Bob. She watched him with one blazing eye in the midst of her performance and scowled at the cook, who was also our butler on board the
River Queen
. She picked up Grant’s fork, squinted at it, and said, “Josiah, that fork is filthy. Would you want General Grant to die of some gastric disorder? Then you must wash and
re
wash every fork on the table.”

“Damn if I won’t eat with my hands,” one of the captains muttered under his breath.

But Mary had too much ammunition under her veil. She sidled down next to Grant, with the perfume of her bosoms right under his beard, stroked his hand and said, “I am piqued by one of your generals, sir.”

Grant was still jovial; her perfume might have intoxicated him a little, but he couldn’t comprehend the
waft
of her ferocious will.

“And why is that, Madame President?”

She continued to stroke his hand, even while she stung him between the eyes. “You must remove General Ord
immediately
. He has harmed my husband beyond repair, sent his little wife to distract and confound the President with her wiles. He’s unfit for service, and so is Mrs. General Ord. She’s a hussy—and a witch. She has her own horse in a diabolical trance.”

My fault. I should have run into the privy rather than ride with Mrs. General Ord.

“Mary,” I said, but she was already beyond my reach.

General Ord stood up in a bewildered rage; he stroked his silver mustache out of nervousness, I imagine. He bowed to Mary, saluted Grant, and begged his permission to leave, while Mary snorted under her veil.

“Coward, what would you do if I were not Mr. Lincoln’s wife?”

He was Grant’s most trusted general. Ord hadn’t busted up Atlanta, like Wild Bill, but he’d been wounded twice in the heel, and commanded his own corps during the current siege.

“Madame,” Ord said, bowing again. “I am not in the habit of insulting ladies.”

Ord was beside himself. But Mary continued to goad him.

“Tell me—tell me what you would do.”

“I would find a way to end your silliness—without insulting Mr. Lincoln or Mr. Grant.”

He looked like a ghost in that silver mustache of his. And he rushed out the saloon in several short strides. I’d never seen Grant so shaken. His ash gray eyes seemed to disappear inside his skull. Mother’s tirade had jolted Grant out of his own private shell and filled him with confusion and some kind of fatigue. How could he have known that living with Mary was like a constant barrage of fire?

“Mr. President, my men are tired. We will have to conclude this meal.”

“But it is forbidden,” Mary said. “You cannot interrupt a dinner on the
River Queen
without the President’s approval—even if
you
are General Grant.”

“Mother,” I said, in a voice that was near a whisper. “He has my approval.”

“But he does not have mine,” Mary said. “He’s your best battler, well, let him battle with me.”

Now Robert stood up. The most junior of junior officers had to protect Ulysses Grant.

“
Mother
, shut—your—mouth, or I will drag you to the river and drown you, help me God.”

Mary hadn’t expected her own boy to bark at her like that. The veil fell off and floated onto the table. She wasn’t much of a menace without that veil. Her cheeks were bloated. Her eyes had the vacant stare of a sleepwalker. She seemed helpless—alone—on the
River Queen
. Bob took her in his arms, petted her hair, like he’d pet his own Puss, and accompanied her out the saloon, as if she were some wayward little sister of his who had lost all sense. They had their own language of little caresses and secret looks . . .

We fell into total silence, Ulysses Grant and I. This was one scrape he wouldn’t have to describe in a despatch. He left with his young captains, except for Bob. I sat there, mesmerized by that black butterfly, the silken veil. The mind played its own muscular tricks.

Bob returned to the saloon. I saw both our fatigued faces in the mirror. He was his mother’s child—had her aristocratic mien and a soft, sullen glow around the eyes.

“Father, she’s asleep, and she’ll stay like that—in her own trance. There’s nothing you can do when she’s that way. I witnessed the fights she had with the butcher, haggling over pennies. She always won. I watched her donnybrooks with the Irish maids, saw it all when I was a little boy. There was that
itch
just under the surface, that need for a reckoning. She made war on Billy Herndon and your other allies. And if you had been around more often, she would have declared war on you.”

“But I never . . .”

“You were on the circuit, Father, somewhere with your saddlebags . . . when she wakes up, she won’t remember much. She’ll write the most charming letter in the world to General Ord. She’ll have flowers sent from the White House to Mrs. Mary and Mrs. Julia. And the rancor will build up again. She’ll seethe at some new offense. And she’ll blame it on her
monthlies
, or blame it on you, that you slighted her in front of the general, or that you wasted a lot of time kissing Mrs. Julia’s hand. But you must promise me one thing.”

I felt enfeebled in front of my own boy, as if I could juggle battlegrounds in my head, but couldn’t cure the wildness in my own wife.

“Son, I’ll do what I can.”

And Bob’s dark eyes grew infinitely sad. “It’s not about Mother. You must rescue me. I cannot go on as my general’s pet, bundled up in captivity, away from the war. I will not stay here and liaison with Senators’ wives. I will not dance with local debutantes while our siege guns travel closer to the enemy’s line. I will pick my own bride, without Mother or Mrs. Grant—I want to go with my general to the front. I insist.”

“And have your mother go completely mad? She’ll ride with you in the same troop train, and I’ll have to join you both on one of Grant’s war horses.”

Oh, I could whistle with my boy about rebellion—I was in my stride. Mary wasn’t the culprit in this piece. My own fears had periled me. I could risk
other
sons, could see their ragged remains on the battlefield, but didn’t want Bob’s bones to arrive in a metal box. All my proclamations were like bugle calls on a narrow hill—full of thunder and tin. And Bob was sick of my White House reveilles.

“Father, should I play Hotspur, and have you be my Hal? Or whack you with a wooden sword—”

I was astonished when Bob shoved me with the flat of his hand. He was just as astonished by his own fury. His shoulders shivered as I toppled over and landed on my rump, in the upper saloon. I shouldn’t have gone
overboard
with one simple shove. I was a head taller than Bob.

“Father,” he said, standing there forlorn, in all the finery of his polished buckles and straps. “It was unforgivable. I . . .”

I scrambled to my feet and couldn’t bear to watch him crumple up, as if he wanted to leave the country and vanish from my sight. I took him in my arms, but his body stiffened against my touch, and I had to let go.

“Son, I needed that spill—it kind of cleared my head.”

I scribbled a note to General Grant. Bob folded it into his pocket, pecked me on the forehead, and raced the hell out of there—like a disheartened boy who’d gotten a little bit of enchantment back. I didn’t wander into the stateroom, fearful I might wake Mary from her own charmed sleep; I sat there with her silk veil in my hand, soft as night, and worrying that I’d never see an end to this war, that Grant would falter somehow, that the Rebels would remain in Richmond through time and eternity, and that Bob wouldn’t survive the next onslaught, that he would lie down in an unrecorded grave, and no one would ever find him again.

50.

The Lone Rider

I
’
D
SEEN
B
OB
go off on the battle train, in the very car with Grant, our own prince of darkness in a rumpled coat. This wasn’t like McClellan’s forays, with his lackeys looking at him in awe, while he preened himself. Grant had no ornaments. His eyes were already screwed inward, into some landscape where no one else could follow, not my Bob nor the President of the United States. Then I heard that thump, thump of hooves and a neighing as furious as the Rebel yell. Cincinnati was beside his general, his flanks glistening, as the train lurched with a groan. And I went back down the hill to the
River Queen
and had to deal with my wife.

It was all a ruse—to stop the chatter, I suppose, like a feint of war, to mask her epic battles with
two
generals and their wives. She did not want to be remembered as Mr. Lincoln’s mad lady. So I acquiesced to her little scheme. She would pretend to be my sergeant, my sentinel. I watched her eyes flutter as she memorized her lines, like an actress on a riverboat. “I’ll say, Mr. Lincoln had a dream when downriver at City Point . . . that the White House was in ruin. Sent me up the river to see.”

She was diminished, shrunken, when I accompanied her to the wharf. Bob wasn’t there to say goodbye, so half the drama was gone. She couldn’t make her grand exit without Bob, couldn’t make an exit at all, couldn’t tolerate the idea that he’d gone to the front while she was still asleep. He’d left her the shortest of notes.

Mother, I’m with my General.

Love, Robert

Her mind had taken flight to some far sea. Her blue eyes were no longer with me and Tad. Then she wrapped a white lace shawl around her, and her blue eyes came back from that far flight—with a
hint
of madness.

I should not have given Bob to those barbarians, she said, meaning Grant and his charger, Cincinnati, whom she considered a war monster that could belch fire and whiskey, like Grant, and foul the air with his stinking breath. She would never forgive me if Bob lost so much as a finger at the front. And she cursed the two Mrs. Generals for mocking her and belittling her station in front of the troops.

In her moment of folly she did not even say goodbye to Tad—she’d removed herself from City Point, since she couldn’t reign at some army camp where a President was just another privileged guest. Luckily I had wired Elizabeth to come and fetch my wife. She’d arrived from Sixth Street that same morning on a revenue cutter, and stepped onto the wharf wearing a simple black gown. It didn’t take Mrs. Keckly more than a single glance to estimate all the damage. But Tad was bewildered. He couldn’t understand why Yib was here. He wondered whether she was a war bride, who’d traveled up the James to be with a
soljer
boy.

Yib started to cry. She must have sensed that Tad was caught between the Titan in the tall hat and a First Lady in disrepair. And she was startled by the
abruptness
of City Point, how deserted the camp was without its generals. Even the sutlers had scattered, and the embalmers, and the array of concubines, as if the generals and their battle horses were never coming back. Their stables loomed above Grant’s cabin like a ghost town on a hill. But we did have our own chorus—the generals’ wives had come down to bid the Lady President adieu. Julia Grant and Mrs. General Ord were there on the wharf, with a kind of inexorable charm; they didn’t want to slight Mary, knowing she was unwell. But her eyes sailed right over their heads. She wouldn’t acknowledge them, and I couldn’t heal the rift, that war among the wives.

I let Mother have the
River Queen
, so she could hold on to her stateroom and all the little condiments of the Presidential steamer. Her luggage had been carried aboard, every one of her hatboxes and valises, with the extra curtains and footstools, but she dallied on the wharf, couldn’t seem to climb onto the
Queen
. And suddenly she was aware of all the faces around her, and that arctic face of hers unfroze. She waved her fist at Julia Grant, and I couldn’t tell if it was out of defiance. But she curtsied to all the generals’ wives, thanked them for their graciousness.