by DL Fowler
“I’ve been greatly distressed of late.”
She sneers. “Yes, Ninian told me about your window jumping escapade. Quite dignified.”
“Nearly everything I’ve ever wanted has fallen apart.”
“Nearly, you say?”
I lower my head. “Maybe more than nearly.”
She glares at me. “What are you saying, Mr. Lincoln?”
I stare into the black sky, dotted with tiny pins of light. “Providence is a fickle master, don’t you think?”
“No. Providence is resolute. Its servants are the ones who vacillate.” The edge in her voice softens. “Fate brought us together. Are you wavering, Mr. Lincoln?”
I wince. “Molly, I’m not sure I love you enough to be a faithful husband.”
Tears trace the edges of her eyes. “What are you saying?”
“Ever since I met your young cousin I’ve not been able to get her out of my mind.”
“That little witch!” She purses her lips.
“Don’t blame her. I’m the one ….”
Her round face grows taut, and her voice turns hoarse. “You’re the one who what?”
“I did nothing, but I’m afraid of the things I imagine doing….”
She throws herself at me, pounding my chest with her fists. Tears cascade down her cheeks.
I grab her wrists and pull her into my arms. “Molly, please don’t cry. I never wanted to hurt you.”
She buries her face in my shirt, sobbing.
“Molly dearest, I’m so sorry.”
Her heaving relents, and she gazes up at me. “Do you love me at all?”
I wince. “Yes Molly, of course.”
“You know that evil little girl makes a sport of crushing every young man’s heart she captures.”
“Yes. Reckon she does.”
Molly’s doe eyes brighten. “Do you suppose we can make another go of it?” She rises on her tip toes, stretching to bring her lips close to mine.
I gaze into her blue-gray eyes, still moistened by tears, wondering if she is right. Maybe I’ve been too quick to let go. How was it so easy to forget what a magnificent woman she is?
She closes her eyes, and I lean down; my lips meet hers. She wraps her hands around the back of my neck and draws me closer. We kiss the way lovers kiss. When our lips separate she leans her head back and smiles.
“Your brother-in-law doesn’t want us to marry.” I bite my lip.
Her nostrils flare. “My brother-in-law and little cousin be damned.”
After walking Molly home, I go to Speed’s store and plop myself on the stoop until he returns. When he arrives, his grin is as wide as the Mississippi, but on surveying my countenance, he turns somber.
“What went wrong?” he says.
I tell him about my talk with Molly, unable to explain how it happened that the engagement is still on.
He furrows his brow. “If you ask me, that kiss of yours was a bad lick … but it can’t be helped now.”
I knead my knuckles. “What should I do?”
“Suppose you’ll have to give it a try for now.”
I hang my head. “That’s not how things were supposed to turn out.”
He clutches my shoulder. “She’s not going to let you off easy, friend. You’ll just have to be more resolute than she is.”
For a moment, I’m lost in thought, imagining how to get loose from her grip. Then I look up at Speed. “How did your business go tonight?”
He looks away. “I’ll know soon.”
Silence fills the space between us for a long moment.
After a while, Speed sits next to me. “Say, I have an idea.”
I cock my head. “Okay.”
“You want to get some?”
“What?” I stare at him in disbelief.
He digs into his pocket and pulls out his card and a pen. Scribbling a note on the back of it he says, “Here. There’s a girl who can take care of you. This is where you can find her. If you give her my card she’ll see you.”
I shake my head. “Are you sure about this?”
“Yes,” he says. “This is the perfect thing.”
“Last time it ended in disaster.”
“Hey, this girl knows how to take your mind off your troubles. Besides, what better way to prove to yourself you don’t love Molly?”
I trudge over to the inn, following Speed’s directions; my shoulders sag and my feet weigh like anchors. When I stand at the door to her room, my face turns hot and my palms sweat. My balled up hand is poised next to my ear, waiting to knock.
After a seeming eternity, I rap on the door. Another eternity passes before she answers. Had she waited one more second, she wouldn’t have found me there.
She studies Speed’s card. A smile unfolds across her face, and softly she says, “Come on in.”
I stand just inside the closed door and watch her disrobe, a war waging in my head. My hands hang at my sides as if pinned in place. Am I so determined to prove I’m unfit to marry?
The girl turns, displaying two twists of chestnut hair cascading over her pale shoulders.
My gaze stops at the base of her throat.
She glides up to me, gently manipulating the buttons on my shirt. My breath weakens to a mere whisper as she unfastens my frayed suspenders and guides my trousers to the floor. She takes my hand and leads me to the bed where we lie beside each other.
After a moment of silence I turn to her and say, “How much do you charge?”
She laughs. “How much …?”
My face turns hot from embarrassment.
“Five dollars.”
My throat is dry. “I only have three.”
She laughs again. “You can owe me the two. If you don’t pay, I’ll take it out of Speed’s hide.”
“I can’t.”
She rolls over and glares at me. “Why not?”
“I just can’t.” My skin itches. I get out of the bed and start to dress.
She furrows her brow. “I can’t believe this.”
My fingers fumble with the buttons on my trousers. “I’m sorry, I’m too much in debt already.”
I let myself out.
On my return to the Butlers, I sit quietly in my room—my hat pulled down over my eyes—and enter that dark space that’s become so familiar to me of late.
A few days later, on the eve of the New Year, I stand at the basin in my room, washing. Welts cover my body. My heart freezes. Is the syphilis returning to take its vengeance? I stare in the mirror. Tonight ends a leap year, and according to the customs of society, I must declare my intentions for Molly before the midnight hour.
On the way to the Edwards’ mansion I labor over each step, no different from a condemned man climbing the gallows steps. Turning the corner past Speed’s store, I find him locking the front door.
I ask him if all is well.
He replies, “Yes, but probably too well.”
“What does that mean?”
“The store sold. I leave in the morning.”
My breath catches in my chest. I can’t swallow. The world around me begins to spin.
Speed grabs me, steadies me. “Are you all right?”
“Just give me a minute.”
He guides me to a chair he keeps on the porch.
I take slow, deep breaths. My shoulders relax.
He lays his hand on my shoulder. “This isn’t the end, you know. A friendship like ours can never die.”
“But it will never be the same.”
Silence fills the space between us.
After a few moments I stand and ask, “Will you be sleeping at the Butler’s tonight?”
“No,” he says. Have some other goodbyes to say.
We embrace without saying another word. What good are words anyway?
Later in the evening when I arrive at the Edwards’ mansion, Molly is in a gay mood dancing with Edwin Webb, a stylish wido
wer who’s much older than she. Lizzie walks up beside me, smiling. “They make a fine couple, don’t you think?”
My mouth hangs open. I turn and rush outside, down the pathway, onto the street.
Just after midnight, after hours of wandering the streets, I return to the Edwards’ to have words with Molly. Lizzie shows me to the parlor where I wait for hours, seated on the sofa, seething. When the last of the holiday guests leave, Molly appears. Her lips are drawn tight, her nostrils flared.
I stand. My jaw set. “We can’t marry.” My resolve is as strong with her as it was with Speed’s girl.
Her face turns red. “Go,” she shouts as she stamps her foot and points to the door.
I plod through the muddy streets for more than an hour before finding myself at the law office seated at my desk, staring at mounds of paper. If only Stuart was here.
The longer I stare at my desk, the darker my mood grows. In time I’m caught in a black whirlpool. It sucks me downward, just like the creek that nearly swallowed me when I was a boy. Days later I wake up in Dr. Anson Henry’s infirmary. As he’s my friend, I’m accustomed to the brusque manner in which the doctor tells me I suffer from hypochondria brought on by anxiety, overwork, and exhaustion.
I tell him, “I am now the most miserable man living. If what I feel were equally distributed to all of humanity, there would not be a single cheerful face on the earth. To remain as I am is impossible; I must die or get better.”
Speed comes to visit, having postponed his departure until I could see him. He tells me they have removed all the knives and razors from my room. I’ll be in good hands with the Butlers and Dr. Henry, he says. The nurse interrupts us, handing me a cup of dark peppery water. “Here, take this,” she says. Almost instantly my stomach wrenches into knots.
Later, Dr. Henry applies heated glass cups on my temples and behind my ears, drawing blood to the surface. Then he applies leeches to suck out the blood. Over the ensuing days, he feeds me arsenic, strychnine, and little blue mercury pills. My puking is interrupted only when a soupy discharge rushes out of my bowels.
He says, “You’ll feel weaker, but once we force out the black bile from your entrails, you’ll be on the mend.”
By week’s end I’m emaciated—dehydrated and malnourished. My stools turn green, and the doctor is pleased. I would pay a king’s ransom for a little sleep.
I regain enough strength in late January to return to the legislature for an important vote. Though my body is present, my spirit teeters at the edge of a dark abyss. My evenings are made passable by joining friends around the fireplace in the Butlers’ parlor, telling stories and reading poetry. Often, I recite my favorite poem:
Oh! why should the spirit of mortal be proud?
Like a swift-fleeting meteor, a fast-flying cloud
A flash of the lightning, a break of the wave
He passeth from life to his rest in the grave.
The leaves of the oak and the willow shall fade,
Be scattered around, and together be laid;
And the young and the old, and the low and the high,
Shall moulder to dust, and together shall lie.
…
Yea! hope and despondency, pleasure and pain,
Are mingled together in sunshine and rain;
And the smile and the tear, the song and the dirge,
Still follow each other, like surge upon surge.
'Tis the wink of an eye -- 'tis the draught of a breath—
From the blossom of health to the paleness of death,
From the gilded saloon to the bier and the shroud:—
Oh! why should the spirit of mortal be proud?
On mornings when I can’t drag my body down to the legislature, I’m in my room dressed in bedclothes with the window coverings drawn, writing verse. Stories and poetry are better medicine than the little blue doses of mercury Dr. Henry prescribes to subdue my “hypos”—his pet name for my condition.
The pills make me irritable, as if seeing Molly strolling on Douglas’ arm isn’t unsettling enough. My failures in the legislature haunt me as well. When I think of Speed leaving for Farmington, a dull pain pinches my heart. I would bury myself in legislative work to keep my mind off those things, but I’m lost this session without Stuart’s guidance.
At Dr. Henry’s urging I write to Dr. Daniel Drake, a renowned physician who resides in Louisville. I describe my condition as well as the brutal treatment I’ve recently survived, telling him I’d rather die than endure the likes of it again. I add a note about my fears over the syphilis I may have contracted due to a devilish passion in Beardstown. My hopes are not high that he’ll have good news for me. In his response, he invites me to pay him a visit.
In early March, Stuart returns from Washington and begins reciting a tedious litany of details regarding the recent Congressional session.
I swallow hard. “Stuart, I cannot continue as your partner. I’m only a little better off now than I was as my father’s hireling. I make the bread, but you get to eat most of it.”
“Be patient,” he says. “Your time will come.”
“That’s not all. Even when you’re not away, you’re always preoccupied. I can never amount to much of a lawyer without someone to tutor me.”
He puffs out his chest. “You’re doing your country a service by making it possible for me to continue in Congress.”
“If I work on improving myself, I can go to Congress someday and do greater good.”
He folds his arms across his chest. “Since it seems you’re determined to leave, I hope we can still be friends.”
“Yes. I would like to remain friends.”
As I’m packing my few belongings, Ned Baker drops in to be sure I’m well. I tell him I’m leaving Stuart. He says he’s dissolving his partnership with Stephen Logan, and the Judge would like for me to take his place. Logan’s invitation is a great compliment as I have tried cases before him when he was a judge on the Circuit. I’ve also argued against him a few times since he re-entered private practice. He’s a hot tempered old prune, but a master lawyer and the leader of the Springfield Bar.
When my things are packed, I visit Judge Logan. He makes an offer, and I readily accept. Whereas Stuart was always absent, Logan hovers over me as I work, always poised to correct me. Even when his manner is callous, his criticism inspires me to become a better lawyer. His chief aims are succinctness, clarity, and avoiding technicalities which clutter up the salient points of a case. When examining my briefs he crosses out page after page of nonsense, legal formalities, and the like, saying, “This is what we want to say, just these twelve lines, not these fourteen pages.”
By keeping me focused on work, Logan distracts me from miseries that besiege me—seeing Molly in the company of other men, knowing my word and my honor were spoiled by my broken promise, imagining Speed lording over his slaves, Dr. Henry’s medical persecution. All of it haunts me, even in my dreams. The law becomes my refuge.
In the July term of the State Supreme Court, although we’re partners, Logan and I argue opposite sides of a case under appeal. The suit involves collection of a promissory note given in exchange for the sale of a slave girl. The trial court in Tazewell County found in favor of Logan’s client, the creditor. I represent the debtor on appeal.
In my summation I say, “Under the Ordinance of 1787 and the Constitution of this state, the presumption of the law is that every person is free without regard to color. Accordingly, the sale of a free person is illegal, and any debt given in exchange for such purchase is void.”
The judges agree, and my client is absolved of the debt. Logan’s mentoring has cost him dearly. In a small measure, the court’s decision salves the lingering injury I bear from times when Father hired me out as a laborer and kept my wages to pay off his imprudent debts. The case also fuels my resentment over his indolence, which led him to drive us into the wilderness where my angel mother withered and died.
Chapter Twenty Three
One afternoon in early August, Molly and Douglas are strolling down the street, arm-in-arm. A punishment I deserve. My pulse runs wild. I hurry to my room at the Butlers’ and plop in my chair, pulling my hat down over my eyes. If only Speed were here to lift me out of the mire.
Sometime later, Mrs. Butler knocks on my door, calling me to supper. After joining the family at the dining table, I announce, “I have a mind to leave tomorrow for a visit with Speed in Kentucky.”
Farmington. The Speed family plantation is a place I’ve not wanted to believe exists, but now I’m almost there.
Along the five mile carriage ride to Farmington from the Louisville steamboat dock, Speed attempts, with little success, to coach me on the etiquette of fine living. As the carriage turns down a dusty lane bordered by lush gardens he says, “Just follow my lead. Whatever you see me do, copy it.” The elegant two story brick mansion looms before us. He tells me there are fourteen rooms, and the estate was built by his father on a plan laid out by Thomas Jefferson.
When the Negro driver pulls to a stop in front of the mansion, Speed’s mother, his twelve siblings, and an aunt are lined up to welcome us. A battery of household slaves flanks them on either side. I poke Speed. “Are they expecting a crowned prince?”
After greeting each member of the family, I follow Speed inside where embroidered fabrics cover plush furniture, elegant tapestries hang the entire length of walls, and lavish draperies frame massive windows. Strategically arranged around the entry and down the great hallway is an assortment of polished wooden tables, each bearing a large porcelain vase stuffed with flowers. I nearly trip over my feet while gawking.
My room—to the left as we enter the hallway—is larger than my boyhood home. Waiting for us in the room is a Negro who will serve as my valet. I argue that I’d feel more comfortable dressing myself, but Speed silences me. He goes on to apologize for being unable to provide me with a formal jacket as there are no men in the family with a frame as long as mine.
Later that evening when the dinner bell is rung, I put on my jeans suit according to Speed’s instruction. On entering the colossal dining room, I survey his family, all clad in their finery. An ornate table stands in the center of the room bearing gleaming silver and settings of fine bone china. Even the slaves are better dressed than me. I step quickly to Speed’s side and say, “I’m out of place here.”