Lincoln (30 page)

D
AVID
was helping Mr. Thompson to shut up shop when Annie Surratt appeared at the door. Since this was the first time that she had come to see him at Thompson’s, David asked her to come in, but she shook her head. She seemed nervous; and flushed. “It’s your mother, Davie. She’s been taken ill.”

“What’s wrong with Mrs. Herold?” asked Mr. Thompson, coming from the back of the shop where the woman-of-all-work was doing no work at all. “Oh, it’s you, Miss Surratt. How is your father?” Mr. Thompson knew just about everyone in the town; and most of their illnesses, as well.

“Sick, too. He never leaves his bed. Davie, your mother’s had a fall. The doctor’s with her now. They’re not sure what she’s broken. But she’s asking for you.”

“Which doctor?” asked Mr. Thompson, who sat in constant judgment upon the entire profession.

“I don’t know, Mr. Thompson. It was Davie’s sister who saw me in the street and said, ‘Fetch Davie, Mother’s asking for him.’ So I came straight away.”

David looked at Mr. Thompson, who nodded, benignly. “We’re finished for the day. You go on now. If she needs special medicine, let me know. I’ll make a discount for her.” This, David knew, would be five percent off the hundred-and-fifty-percent profit that Mr. Thompson made on each sale. If the life was not so dull and confining, David knew that he could do a lot worse than setting up shop as a druggist. He pulled on his linen hot-weather jacket and hurried after Annie.

At Fifteenth Street they were obliged to wait ten minutes while an artillery battery moved slowly down the middle of the street and guards kept the pedestrians to the sidewalk. As David suspected, there was nothing wrong with his mother. “It’s Father wants to see you. Something urgent, he said.”

“How is he?”

“Oh, the same. He still goes across the river from time to time but it’s wearing him out fast. I think he wants you to go across.”

That was exactly what Mr. Surratt wanted. David sat in a flimsy straight chair beside the old man’s bed. Mr. Surratt was paler than usual; and, as always, the cough came and went according to its own mysterious series. The room smelled of medicine; and dying flesh. Over Mr. Surratt’s bed hung a blue-tinted picture of the Virgin; beneath the picture was a large crucifix. As usual in the Surratt household, David wondered how anyone could change from real religion to Irish mummery. “I should go, Davie; but I can’t. It’s short notice: too short for me. I’m not strong. So you’ll have to move fast as you can. Cross the Long Bridge before nightfall; make contact with our friend at the tavern.”

“What do I give him?”

“You don’t give him nothing but a spoken message.”

“So what do I … speak?”

“Lucifer, the son of morning, and Satan.”

“That’s easy enough. What does it mean?”

“He’ll know. It’s better that you don’t. Now get moving, quick as you can.”

“Yes, sir.”

Annie was at the piano in the front parlor; but she did not play. She looked up at him, anxiously. “You’re going to the other side?”

David nodded; he felt, suddenly, not only entirely grown-up but of supreme importance in the scheme of things. He had, also, recently, begun a moustache. He smoothed its dark silkiness. “What do you think?”

“I think something’s about to happen. I think the Yankee troops—”

“I meant about my moustaches.”

“Oh, they look nice. You look … older.”

“That’s good?”

“Yes. That’s good. I’ll walk you as far as the river.”

Arm in arm, like any young man in a linen jacket, with a moustache, and a pretty girl on his arm, David strolled along the dusty streets. Washington was a city where if you did not choke on the dust you got stuck in the mud. Today the heat had been considerable; but now a cool dusty breeze dried the trickle of sweat at David’s temples.

Troops were everywhere. Somewhat nervously, David and Annie tried to look like young lovers, or the way that David thought that young lovers should look on an early evening late in May, with the evening star not yet visible in a violet sky over the Potomac Heights.

In the President’s Park, troops were bivouacked. Rows of tents had been pitched; and the stoves for cooking had all been lit. A group of soldiers was singing sad songs. A cow was being milked. An officer shaved himself in a mirror hanging from a tree. As they turned into Ohio Avenue, which led to the nearest bridge across the canal, they could see even more troops encamped among the white stone blocks at the base of what was to be, one day, Washington’s monument. Nearby, an aged black man sat fishing for catfish in the stagnant canal. The smell was appalling—like rotted flesh.

“There must be fifty thousand Yankees in the town,” said Annie. “I would never have believed it if I hadn’t seen them, practically all of them, I’d say, with my own eyes since I got back from Surrattsville. They’re in the Capitol, sleeping on the floor. They’re in the Patent Office. They’re …”

“They say
we’ve
got fifty thousand men across the river, all set to take the city.”

“Well, I haven’t
seen
any of them. I’ve only heard tell. But I’ve seen these.” Annie held tight his arm. How many men of eighteen, with
practically full moustaches, were embarked on a mission which would spell the doom of the Yankee capital? David was certain that his diabolic message had something to do with the much-predicted and much-longed-for attack on Washington. As formidable as the Yankee boys looked, they were no match for the wild boys, who lived only to fight. “Where is Isaac?” David asked, put in mind of Southern valor.

“I don’t rightly know. But I suspect that now Richmond’s capital of the whole Confederacy, he’ll be there, right next door to us.”

“Hope he’ll help try and kick the door in!” David was fierce; then he sighed. “Oh, what I’d give to go to Richmond, and work for President Davis, or something.” Actually, David had once been to Richmond, which was no more than a hundred of the crow’s miles from Washington, and he’d thought it a poor sort of city compared to Washington or even to Baltimore, a town more to his liking, in some ways, than either.

“Father says you’re better off where you are, keeping an eye on what’s going on in the White House.”

“I don’t pick up much. But I’ve noticed that when something’s up, they do have a way of just disappearing over there. They disappeared yesterday, come to think of it.”

“What do you mean, disappear?”

“Well, things get very quiet. And Mr. Lincoln sneaks across to the War Department, and everyone else acts like nothing’s going on and then something happens. I could swear the President’s been out of sight for over a day now, so something is about to happen.”

“What do you hear at Thompson’s?”

“Well, I hear that Mrs. Lincoln went up to New York City to buy things for the Mansion and that the President’s told this Mr. Wood who’s in charge of public buildings that he didn’t keep a good enough eye on her because she spent too much at the stores …”

“I saw all that in the papers. What else do you hear?”

“I heard that the President is all riled up because he thinks that Mrs. Lincoln and Mr. Wood was having this love affair together at the Metropolitan Hotel in New York City.”

Annie stopped in her tracks. Behind her the dark red Gothic fantasy of the Smithsonian Institution was turning to black in the now silver light. “Mrs. Lincoln? A woman
her age
, carrying on?”

“That’s what people are saying.”

“I was told that she was crazy.” Annie shook her head. “I never heard of a woman of her age—what is she? forty-five?—carrying on like that, unless, of course, she is a professional like your friend Mrs. Austin.”

“Well, sometimes they do, Annie.” David was not about to tell her that
he knew at firsthand that they did. There was a handsome stout widow of more than forty-five, who owned a grocery shop back of the Navy Yard. She had kept one of the wild boys in groceries until he had gone South. She had now made it plain to David that he, too, could become the owner of an occasional ham if he were to dally with her and enliven the sadness of her widowhood. Annie, David decided, did not know much about women. But then she was a nice girl; educated by nuns.

“Anyway, Mrs. Lincoln’s back now, and Mr. Wood is still around and as thick as thieves with Mr. Watt, the head groundsman, who makes a fortune every year, stealing from the Mansion, selling jobs, and filling up the Center Market with all the truck he grows on the sly in the park.” As David spoke, he was surprised at just how much Mansion gossip he had picked up without particularly meaning to. But, of course, the doings of the permanent staff at the Mansion were of great, even vital, interest to the town’s tradespeople, all of whom had to keep on Old Edward’s good side, and give him an occasional tip. Then there was Mrs. Cuthbert, the housekeeper—and a power to reckon with; also, the mulatto Elizabeth Keckley, who was close to Mrs. Lincoln but a distant woman to others, and new to the Mansion game, unlike Mr. Watt, who had made his fortune ten times over by simply charming each new Administration.

At the Long Bridge, Annie kissed David on the cheek; and whispered in his ear, “I’m playing like we’re sweethearts.”

“Ain’t we?” David nuzzled her ear; she gave a little cry; giggled; fled.

David approached the small guardhouse that had recently been erected at the Washington end of the bridge. He knew that the sergeant had been watching his performance with Annie; and he felt a lamb’s innocence as he presented his pass to the sergeant, who was new to him.

“Thompson’s Drug Store,” the man read. “Aren’t you a bit late to be delivering prescriptions?”

“No, sir. At least not late for Mrs. Alexander, who’s sinking fast, they say …”

“Go on.”

As David crossed the bridge, he found himself walking straight into a splendid sunset. Dazzled though his eyes were, he could see that there was practically no traffic from the Virginia side except for an occasional wagon of farm produce, while from the Washington side there were a few lone walkers like himself but no carriages. Those who had intended to leave the Union for the Confederacy had long since done so. Halfway across the bridge, he stopped and looked downriver to Greenleaf’s Point, red as blood in the sunset, as was the Capitol on its hill farther to the east. It was
then that David noticed an odd metallic glitter just below the point where Maryland Avenue converges with the Long Bridge.

“Move on,” said a voice. He looked up. A patrol of Union infantry was marching from the Virginia side to the Washington side. A corporal had spoken to him.

“Yes, sir,” said David; and he moved on, aware that what he had seen in the swamp south of the bridge was, at the very least, a regiment of infantry, and the flashing lights were bright bayonets reflecting the red sun.

On the Virginia side, David was recognized by the Confederate sergeant, a large-limbed fellow a few years older than himself. “Off to the tavern, Davie?” The sergeant winked at him.

“Well, I’m a bit dry in the throat, if the truth were known.”

“See you then,” said the sergeant. “When I go off duty.”

David made his way straight to the tavern. The main barroom was half empty. Before the trouble, the musty, beer-and-sawdust-smelling room would have been crowded with local farmers as well as with thirsty travellers from the South, having one last drink in Dixie before proceeding on to the capital; but now there were only gray-uniformed soldiers, and a few travelling-salesmen types, all standing at the bar, feet on the never-polished brass rail.

David ordered a beer; ate a pickle; asked the bartender, “Is Mr. Mayberry here?”

“No, Davie. He’s over to Alexandria.”

“When’s he due back?”

“Most any time, I guess.”

David waited until midnight. He drank and swapped stories with the Confederate sergeant and his friends. From time to time he would go outside to relieve himself beneath a full white moon that made the night like day. All was quiet at the Virginia end of the bridge, where soldiers whispered passwords to one another as they came and went, while, to the south, the lights of nearby Alexandria made a yellow glow in the black sky.

At midnight, David was beginning to feel the effect of all the beer that he had drunk; he took the barman to one side. “Maybe I should go looking for him.”

“I don’t know where to tell you to look. He should’ve been back hours ago.” The barman was plainly disturbed. “There’s rumors,” he said in a low voice.

“That’s why I got to get my message to him.”

“I don’t honestly know how you can, Davie.”

Despite the beer that he had drunk, David took seriously his mission. He walked the six miles into Alexandria, where he went straight to the Marshall House, a small hotel on whose roof was visible the Confederate flag. In the hotel’s barroom, David found the owner, a man named Anderson, whom he knew by sight. Anderson was seated at a table with what looked to be a number of local businessmen. David gestured from the bar that he would like to speak to the owner, who joined him at the bar.

“I know you, don’t I?”

“Yes, sir. I’m David Herold. Thompson’s Drug Store. I visit with Mr. Mayberry some, when I come over here on errands.”

“That’s where I know you. Whiskey,” said Anderson to the bartender. “You growed a moustache since I saw you last.”

“Yes, sir.” David downed the whiskey. “I got to find Mr. Mayberry, sir. I got an important message for him.”

Anderson frowned. “I saw him earlier. He looked in to say all was well—for now. He was in a hurry, I thought. Can I help you?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Good boy. Trust nobody. Well, drink all you like. Wait here if you want.” Anderson went back to his table. David was now sleepy from drink. He had also been up since five. He asked the bartender if there was a place where he might lie down; and he was shown to a shed back of the hotel where he stretched out on a bare cot; and slept.

David was dreaming that he was caught in a thunderstorm on the river’s bank when, suddenly, the thunder was right on top of him. Awakened by the sound of gunfire, David flung himself from the cot to the earthen floor; then got himself out of the shed to find that the moon was down and the sun almost up, and the street crowded with people; some still in their nightshirts; others half dressed. Everyone was hurrying toward the Long Bridge.