Lincoln Raw

by DL Fowler

  “He’ll come back, and if we run out of food before he does, Dennis can hunt.”

  Sally laughs, her voice strained by bitterness. “Dennis is useless,” she says. “Just like Father, he’ll wait ‘til our stomachs are knotted with pain before he picks up a gun to hunt. And when he does, he’ll come back empty-handed as always.”

  My heart sinks. I am ten years old. Dennis Hanks, ten years my elder, is more of a child than me. If the survival of this household is on my shoulders, we’re doomed. I walk to the uncovered doorway and stare at the horizon. I can’t even make a door.

  In due time, Father returns, but he doesn’t stay long. Having sold all our pork, he’s off to Kentucky to find a new wife. Now it’s November, and the weather is turning foul. If winter’s fury holds off for a week, it’ll give him time to make it to Kentucky and its comforts.

  Sally and I are not so fortunate. Our food stocks are low, and if we were fortunate to have a gun, I’m unskilled at hunting. I’m more useless at setting traps. One day as I’m making my usual trek to the creek to draw water, the skies unload a torrent of rain and sleet. In my haste to escape the storm, one of my boots gets lost in thick mud. The sole of the other is already worn through.

  On seeing me stumble into the cabin, Dennis teases me. “Got yer head in them clouds again, Abraham? If ya come down here with the rest of us, ya might notice ya got one boot missin’.”

  My feet sting from the cold. “Not funny.”

  Dennis stands, shaking his head. “Off to the Turnhams to see if theys got spare vittles. When I git back I’ll give ya a hand makin’ some mocksakins.”

  Shivers run through me. “How long will you be?”

  “Be goin’ huntin’, too.” His eyes widen. “Plan to git a big deer, so likely be gone a while.”

  Sally glares at him. “Well, be quick about it. Pickins getting mighty slim.”

  He grins. “A week, maybe.”

  Days later Dennis still hasn’t returned, and Sally and I wake to a smattering of snowflakes flying about in an icy wind. Hoping to beat the storm, I rush out in bare feet to gather kindling. By the time I return to the cabin, the snow is up to my ankles, and my toes are nearly frostbitten.

  A few nights later, during another fierce storm, Sally sets two half-full cups of gruel on the table. “This is the end of our corn meal,” she says, wiping a tear from her cheek. She drops onto her stool and bites her lip.

  “Dennis is bound to scare up something soon.”

  “He’s as lazy as Father.” She laughs and points to the neglected doorway. She and I already tried hanging animal skins to keep out the storms, but the pelts were no match for winter’s merciless assault.

  I gaze about the cabin. Our woodpile is exhausted, and a mound of gray ashes in the fireplace is all that remains of the once glowing embers. Snow blows through our uncovered doorway, and a bitter wind howls through the still unchinked walls, sounding like a horde of ghosts.

  After licking the final scraps of gruel from our bowls, Sally and I huddle in bed, covering ourselves with animal skins, both of us quivering from the cold. Her body quakes from crying, as well. I nuzzle closer to her and whisper, “Shh….”

  She turns over and faces me, wiping away tears. “You know it’s all Father’s fault—even Mother’s dying.” She mutters, “If he hadn’t brought us here, chasing after such foolish dreams … we were happy in Kentucky.”

  “I know.”

  She buries her face in my chest and continues weeping. I wrap my arms around her and rehearse in my mind the scolding I’ll give Father when he returns. In time her quaking ceases, and her whimpering gives way to quiet, rhythmic breathing. My heart aches for her. She’s my only remaining love.

  Sleep is the only relief we have from the pain in our stomachs and the fear in our hearts. At dawn, our aching returns, but neither of us has energy enough to rise. In time our bodies become weary and surrender to numbness. Instead of leaving our bed to tend to the necessities of toilet, we lie in our own piss. For the ensuing days, the only blessing we can count is that our need to relieve ourselves is lessened by the emptiness of our bladders and bowels.

  When Father finally arrives with his new wife and her brood in tow, she gathers Sally and me to her side and smoothes our lice-ridden hair. She’s smaller than Mother had been before her sickness, but she’s sturdy as an oak. I gaze at her face, sweet and calm as an angel, her eyes warm and blue like the summer sky. Her gentle hand makes me forget my aching stomach. Winter’s chill evaporates from my half-naked body.

  Many times since Father left us to court the widow Johnston in Elizabethtown, I’ve wondered if a stepmother would make life less miserable, or more so. I’ve thought of Heaven with its golden streets and mansions, and wondered whether it would be better to die. Our new mother directs Father to gather wood for the fire, and she attends to bathing Sally and me. She dresses me in her eldest son’s clothing, and Sally dons one of our new mother’s own dresses. Once we’re refreshed and spanking clean, she prepares a feast from provisions brought from Kentucky and food Father gathers from our neighbors at her insistence.

  Chapter Five

  In the spring after I turn eleven, Mama, as we call her, sees to it that the cabin door is hung, wooden floors are laid, and a window is cut in the wall and covered with shutters. Our cabin is filled with furniture she brought from Kentucky, which Father would sell if he had the chance.

  She tells him, “There’s no excuse for a man’s family to want for the basics of life, even on the frontier.” She also makes fine new clothes for me and Sally, but her greatest gift is that I’m allowed to read and write without interference. All of us attend school when there’s a teacher, and no longer borrow books in secret.

  Father has taken a shining to Mama’s eldest, John, who is two years my junior and something of a dullard. He’s short and stocky, a likeness of my father that I am not. He might make me jealous, except that when John and I make mischief together, we get away with a great deal more than I would alone.

  One evening, John talks me into sneaking out with him and some other boys on a midnight coon hunt. They need one more for a proper contingent, but I won’t have to do any killing. They’ll let me just tag along. Our attempt falls short, however, when Father’s useless house-dog, Yellow Joe, sounds his alarm. We just get a mild scolding, since John confesses the excursion was his idea. He winks at me when Father looks away.

  Several nights later, John’s ready for another try at hunting coon and gets the idea of taking Yellow Joe with us. Come time to make our move, Yellow Joe follows us willingly, tail a-wagging. We meet up with the other boys and quickly snag our quarry. When they’re done skinning the furry critter, someone suggests we sew the hide onto Yellow Joe as a joke. That’s exactly what they start doing. I turn my eyes away to avoid seeing the needle going into the poor dog’s hide. Even so, its whimpers pinch at my heart, though the discomfort doesn’t prompt me to intervene. Instead, I allow their evil deed—tit for tat, torture Father’s favorite dog to pay for my pig’s death.

  When they let go of the desecrated mutt, he scampers off, whimpering. The boys all howl with laughter as we follow. There’s no catching Yellow Joe, though, and we figure he’ll find his way home in time.

  Come morning, Father’s hollering wakes us. John and I climb down from the loft and stand shivering in the doorway. Outside, Father is on his knees surveying Yellow Joe’s mauled carcass. Portions of the coon’s hide are still attached.

  John whispers to me, “A pack of large dogs must’ve mistook him for a coon.”

  I bite my lip, and my shoulders droop, weighed down by guilt. Of course, watching Father mourn isn’t what grieves me. My grief is over my complicity in a cruel act. I’ve shown myself no better than ol’ Zack Evans who abused his blind, decrepit horse that day at Mr. John’s mill back in Kentucky. I’m also no better than Father who kicked my dog Honey on his twisted leg the evening before Rev. Gentry went off with my hat
.

  Father experiences another renewal of his zeal for religion, but I’m not as impressed as Mama. In spite of my skepticism, I tag along as we begin attending services with regularity. Even though the preacher makes no sense, I recall his words precisely. Sometimes, I mount a stump and gather the other children around, distracting them from their chores, to deliver a parody of the sermon. My step-sister Matilda, who’s angelic like her mother, leads everyone in singing and I offer a prayer for the Lord to provide the chickens with stockings come winter.

  On one such occasion, I recite a particularly ridiculous Sunday sermon.

  Brethern and sistern. I rise to norate ontoe you on the subject of the baptismal. Yes, the baptismal! Ahem. There was Noah, he had three sons, ahem, namely, Shadadavack, Meshisick, and Bellteezer! They all went intoe Dannels den, and likewise with them was a lion! Ahem.

  At that point, I mimic the wild-eyed parson as he surveys his inattentive congregation. When the children begin to giggle, I continue.

  Dear perishing friends, ef you will not hear ontoe me on this great subject, I will only say this, that Squire Nobbs has recently lost a little bay mare with a flaxy mane and tail, Amen!

  Father runs up and chases the children back to their chores. As for me, he dishes out a double portion of work. In no way does this change my ways. Mama will come to my rescue if he punishes me too harshly, and she’ll remind him, “The boy needs to be about his readin’ and cipherin’.”

  In my twelfth year, Father conscripts me to help construct the new church building. I show myself no more talented at carpentry than the summer after Mother died. When he grumbles, Mama turns a deaf ear and demands we continue. She’s delighted to be gaining favor with the elders, so I fumble my way through until the job is done.

  My passion for reading the Bible wanes as other volumes, which are easier to comprehend, capture my imagination. Pilgrim’s Progress belongs to Josiah Crawford—we call him Old Bluenose on account of the purple veins in his large nose.

  He’s also a surly old miser. When the copy of Weems’ Life of Washington that he lends me becomes damaged in a rain storm, he makes me pay with three days labor at twenty-five cents per day. In the end he lets me keep it, as he prefers to buy an unblemished one for himself. On hearing the Ramsey biography of Washington is better than Weems’, I borrow a copy of it from another neighbor.

  Around my fourteenth year, I pose a question for Cousin Dennis while we’re taking a break from felling trees “Why do folks call you another Hanks bastard?”

  Dennis plops down on a log and laughs. “‘Cause no one knows who my pappy is.”

  I sit down next to him. “You don't have a father?”

  “We all got pappies,” he says. “Jest some of us don't know who they is.”

  “Wish I had a different one.”

  He shakes his head. “Watch what ya wishes fer. Us bastards always get the crumbs.”

  I pick at a loose patch of bark. “At least you get to keep the wages you earn. No father is waiting for you at the end of the day to snatch them out of your hands."

  “I’d trade my wages for a real pa any day.”

  A mosquito lights on my neck; I slap at it. “Just the same, it’s a sin to eat bread from the sweat of another man’s brow, that’s what the Bible says.”

  “Yeah, but when ya gits out into that big world ya keep dreamin’ of, where ya gits to hold onto yer own wages, ya don't want people knowin’ yas a bastard. They'll treat ya like them lepers in the Bible. No bastard's gonna get a good wife or be let to make a good life.”

  A bank of thick black clouds fills the sky, closing in on us. “How do you know if you’re a bastard?”

  “Well, from some of the stories folks tell …."

  I stare at him blankly.

  Dennis goes on. “Rumor has it yer pa was nowhere around when you was born’d. Folks say ya was named after a young neighbor named Abraham Enlow."

  I jump to my feet. “I’m named after my grandpa, Abraham. He was a hero in the Revolution.”

  He shakes his head. “Sure, that’s what yer pappy tells folks, but others say different.”

  I pound my forehead with the heel of my hand. “But a bastard can never be someone special."

  “Ah, ya jest thinks yer better ‘n the rest o’ us. Truth is yer nuttin more’n a Hanks bastard yerself.”

  I start pacing. “But I promised my angel Mother when she died … and the Weems book says ‘every youth may become a Washington.’”

  Dennis laughs. “Ha—maybe yer pa is right ‘bout one thing. Ya reads too much.”

  I stop pacing and study his expression. “So, you mean when Father calls you another Hanks bastard, I’m the other one."

  “Heavens boy, ‘eres not jest two o’ us. My mammy has six by herself. Bastards run in the Hanks’ blood."

  I run into the woods, tears streaming down my cheeks. When my legs give out, I sit under a tree and write a verse to salve the gashes Dennis’ words left in my heart.

  He speaks the cruelest words yet said

  As storm clouds gather o’er my head.

  No more dreams of Washington,

  Naked I stand in bastardom.

  At supper that night, a storm is raging, and I hardly touch my soup.

  Mama says, “Ya won’t be able to hear ya’ self read later over the growling in yer stomach.”

  I stare at Father and ask, “What do you mean when you call Dennis another Hanks bastard?"

  “Eat yer soup,” he says.

  Dennis chimes in. “‘Cause ere’s so many of us Hanks bastards."

  “Shut up,” Father says.

  I stand and glare at Father. “Why do you call Dennis another Hanks bastard?"

  Father points to my now cold soup. “Sit. Eat.”

  My lips tremble as I bolt for the door.

  “Abraham,” Mama calls.

  Her voice stops me. I turn and glare at Father. “Is that why you hate me? Am I a bastard, too?”

  He looks at me coldly.

  His expression is all that’s needed. I break for the door and rush outside, slogging through the driving rain. Mama calls after me. At the edge of the woods, near the stump where I often mimic the itinerant preachers, I collapse, weeping and shivering. Before long, Mama is kneeling next to me wiping the rain from my face.

  My words are almost incomprehensible through my blubbering. “I can’t keep my promise.”

  “I know ya misses yer ma. She was an angel.”

  “I do miss her. I love you, too. Sally and I wouldn’t be alive if you hadn’t come to save us.”

  Mama clasps my face in her hands and tells me, “I loves ya, too. Jest wants ya to know it’s okay fer ya to loves her and me both.”

  Her face is barely visible to me, my eyes blurred by tears. “Mother’s dying isn’t why I can’t be someone special.”

  She takes my hands in hers. “But ya is special.”

  I pull away from her and hang my head. “No, Mama, bastards ain’t special. They’re not even fit for pig slop.”

  She brushes my wet hair from my eyes. “There, there,” she whispers. “Ya ain’t slop … and, yer no bastard.”

  “You’re just sayin’ that.”

  “No, the gossip ya pro’lly hear Dennis Hanks spoutin’ about ol’ Enlow bein’ yer pa is rubbish.”

  I shake my head. “Father wasn’t with Mother when I was born.”

  Lightning streaks through the sky followed by a clap of thunder.

  Mama takes my hands again, kissing them. “A couple days before ya was born, yer pa went to Elizabethtown, where I hail from, on important business. Before he could head home, the great blizzard of that year comes along, and he’s stuck there for several more days. By the time ya come poppin’ outta yer ma’s womb, the fire is dead and there’s no food in the house. Yer ma is so weak and yer sister so little that all of yas almos’ perish.”

  She wipes the rain and tears from my face.
I look up, gazing into her eyes.

  She goes on. “Fortunate for everyone, the neighbor, Isom Enlow, stumbles upon the cabin where he finds ya all huddled in bed freezin’ to death. Yer ma begs him to save her baby which he thinks is yer sister … but when he pulls back the covers, he finds yer grey shriveled little body and can’t tell if ya got any breath. Fer sure though, he’s got to git ya warmed up in case yas still alive, and he rubs yer tiny body til ya begin a faint whimper.“

  I bite my lip.

  “After that, he goes out and collects wood to start a fire, then he scrounges around the cabin for food. Finding none anywhere, he reaches in his pocket and pulls out a jar of turkey fat he carries for cleanin’ his gun. He dips a string in it and holds it as ya suckles on it.”

  Salty tears drain into my throat.

  “Yer ma is so grateful for Mr. Enlow saving her baby she agrees to name him Abraham after his son. ‘Course yer pa claims he only allows it on account of it’s yer grand pappy’s name, too. You cain’t say he don’t love ya. The worst ya kin say is he sometimes is lax in caring fer the ones he loves … but I’m fixin’ that.”

  I jerk away. “No, he hates me.”

  Mama puts her hand to her mouth. “Ah, he don’t hate ya, Abraham. He’s angry at the whole wide world. Seems he’s always drawin’ the short stick in life. It’s just some people’s fate. I knowed yer pa before you was born. He’s a good man. Why, when he came courtin’ me, he paid off all my debts so we could marry. Most men wudda turned their backs on me and gone off lookin’ for another wife.”

  I roll back on my heels. “That was money he got from selling the last of our food. He left me and Sally with nothing. We could have died while he was courting you.”

  Mama buries her face in her hands.

  I stand. “Well, I can’t love a man I don’t respect. A man who can’t read or write, or who kicks a dog. I don’t want any part of someone who always leaves his family wanting and drags them to a God-forsaken wilderness where their mother shrivels and dies.”