The Lincoln Project

by Dan Gutman

  “Get the gun!” one of the bodyguards shouted, as another one punched Luke in the face. The boy was on the ground in the fetal position now, protecting his head. His face was already swelling up.

  “Hey, leave him alone!” shouted David.

  “There’s been a misunderstanding!” yelled Isabel.

  “It’s not a gun!” Julia shouted. “It’s a camera!”

  Luke had stopped putting up any resistance, and the Nikon was next to him on the grass. One of the bodyguards picked it up and examined it, a puzzled expression on his face.

  “Don’t look like no gun to me,” he said.

  “I don’t care what it looks like,” said one of the other bodyguards, who grabbed the Nikon, threw it on the ground, and stomped on it with his boot.

  “No!” all four kids shouted, but it was too late. The Nikon was busted into little pieces.

  “Ain’t gonna hurt nobody now,” said the bodyguard who had destroyed the camera.

  The Flashback Four slumped against one another, crushed. They had been through so much already—arriving on the wrong day, stepping in horse manure, getting caught trying to steal the Gettysburg Address, fighting the president’s son, sleeping in a barn, almost getting blown up by a live shell, and now this. The camera was broken, they’d failed at the one task they had been assigned to complete, and Miss Z was not going to get the photo she wanted so badly. To make matters worse, the kids were now being arrested, with their hands cuffed behind their backs.

  “I didn’t do anything!” Julia shouted as she was led away.

  “You were part of the conspiracy, young lady,” one of the bodyguards told her. “That’s as bad as pulling the trigger.”

  “There was no trigger!” shouted Isabel. “It wasn’t even a gun!”

  “You’re making a big mistake!” shouted Luke as he was pushed from behind. “We’re innocent!”

  “Quit yer bellyachin’, sonny! Tell it to the judge!”

  While the others protested, David kept his mouth shut. As the only African American in the group, he was afraid that he would be treated even more harshly than the others if he put up any resistance.

  Two blocks from the cemetery was the small county jail. The Flashback Four were led down the street and shoved roughly into a cell. The door slammed shut behind them with a loud clang. A large padlock clicked shut. Then the bodyguards left, leaving the kids by themselves.

  It was dark and dingy, and it smelled musty in the jail cell. There was a filthy mattress on the floor, and nobody dared touch it. Luke slumped against the wall. He had a black eye, his face was bruised, and he was on the verge of tears. David came over to comfort him.

  “It’s gonna be okay,” he said, resting a hand on Luke’s shoulder. “We’ll get out of this.”

  “This place is gross,” Julia commented.

  I know what you’re thinking, reader. Are they even allowed to put kids in jail? Isn’t that against the law? Wasn’t it against the law in 1863? Whatever the case, the law didn’t matter. They were locked in, and they weren’t going anywhere.

  “What are we gonna do now?” David whispered. “We’re supposed to be at the square at three o’clock so Miss Z can zap us home, right?”

  “Home?” Luke replied. “That’s the least of our problems, dude! They may hang us. That’s what they did to the people who helped John Wilkes Booth when he shot Lincoln. They hung ’em, in public.”

  “They might use a firing squad,” Julia said.

  “For all we know,” said Luke, “they’re still using the guillotine.”

  Julia touched her neck and gulped hard at the thought of it.

  “They’re not going to execute us,” Isabel said, trying her best to be optimistic. “They don’t execute kids.”

  “You don’t know that for sure,” David said.

  “What are we gonna do?” Julia groaned.

  The question hung in the air for a few moments as everyone tried to think of a way out of the mess.

  “I got it!” Luke finally said, snapping his fingers. “The TTT! Send Miss Z a text, Isabel! Tell her to zap us out of here, now!”

  “But she said she was going to zap us back from the main square at three o’clock,” Isabel replied.

  “Tell her there’s been a change in plans,” Luke said. “Maybe she can do it from here. At least give it a try. Quick!”

  Isabel took the TTT out of her pocket. She was about to type on it when a uniformed man showed up on the other side of the bars. He had a badge that said SHERIFF on it.

  “Well, lookee here,” he said, sneering. “What are you, Rebel spies? They sure get ’em young these days.”

  “We’re not spies, sir,” Isabel said politely. “We’re just regular kids. We didn’t mean any harm to the—”

  “Quiet!” the sheriff barked. “You sure don’t look like no assassins. But maybe that’s why they picked you. So we wouldn’t suspect you. Them Rebs ain’t dumb.”

  “I want a lawyer,” said Luke. “We have the right to a lawyer.”

  “Oh, keep your britches on,” the sheriff told him. “You got the right to nothin’.”

  “Aren’t we supposed to get one phone call?” asked Julia.

  “Yeah,” David said glumly. “You can call up Alexander Graham Bell and tell him to invent the telephone.”

  As if on cue, the TTT began to vibrate in Isabel’s hand. Bzzz. She quickly hid it behind her back.

  “What in tarnation is that sound?” asked the sheriff.

  “Nothing,” Isabel said.

  Bzzz.

  “There it goes again,” the sheriff said, looking at the kids one at a time. “Somethin’s buzzin’.”

  Bzzz.

  “What’s that you’re holdin’ behind your back, Miss?” he asked Isabel.

  “Nothing,” she repeated.

  “Give it over,” the sheriff said, putting his hand through the bars.

  “Don’t give it to him, Isabel!” Luke told her. “It’s the only chance we’ve got to get out of here!”

  The sheriff grabbed at Isabel’s arm and yanked it, causing the TTT to fall on the floor. Luke tried to kick it away, but the sheriff bent down quickly and picked it up first.

  “What’s this thing?” he asked.

  “It’s nothing,” Luke said. “Leave her out of this.”

  “Did I ask you?” the sheriff said. “How’s about you sit down and shut your mouth, son? I’ll get to you in a minute.”

  The sheriff examined the TTT, turning it over like a seashell he had picked up off the beach.

  Bzzz.

  He almost dropped it. Then these words appeared on the little screen . . .

  SO DID YOU TAKE THE SHOT?

  The sheriff had never seen words scroll across a screen before. For that matter, he had never seen a screen before. He held it up to show it to the kids.

  “If that don’t beat all!” he said. “How’d them letters get there like that?”

  “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you,” Isabel replied.

  “It’s electrons,” said David. “It’s like magic.”

  Bzzz. The first text disappeared and was replaced by another message . . .

  DID YOU SHOOT LINCOLN YET?

  “Oh no,” Luke groaned.

  The sheriff’s eyes opened wide.

  “Y-you don’t understand,” Isabel stammered. “It doesn’t mean shoot as in shoot. It means—”

  “Oh, you kids are in a heap of trouble,” the sheriff said. Then he took the TTT, dropped it on the floor, and picked up a chair so he could use one of the legs to crush the TTT.

  “No!” all the kids yelled. But it was no use.

  Only after bashing it a few times was the sheriff satisfied that the device could never be used or fixed. The TTT had been rendered useless.

  “So, you were gonna shoot the president, eh?” he said. “I reckon I better go get the mayor for this one. You four sit here and think about what you did. I’ll be back in a minute.”

  The
sheriff turned and walked away, slamming the front door of the jailhouse behind him.

  It wasn’t long before the entire Flashback Four were in tears. First it was Julia, then David. That set Isabel off, and soon Luke was crying too.

  “I knew we never should have signed on to this,” Luke said. “Now we’ll spend the rest of our lives here. And that might not be very long.”

  “I was always one of the good kids,” Isabel said, wiping her eyes. “I study hard so I can get good grades and go to college someday. I never did anything wrong. Ask anybody. I don’t even jaywalk.”

  “As soon as that guy in the suit gave me the invitation, I felt like something was wrong,” David said. “I never should’ve taken it. I should’ve thrown it in the garbage right then and there.”

  “We’re never gonna get out of here,” Julia said. “They’re gonna kill us.”

  “Let’s think positively,” Luke said, seeing that somebody needed to step up and take charge of the situation. “What are we going to do now? There must be a way out of this.”

  “Maybe we can escape,” David suggested, looking around the cell. “I bet we could find a way to bust out of here.”

  They didn’t get the chance to try, because at that moment the sheriff came back with another man. He certainly didn’t look like a mayor. His hair and clothes were all messed up, and he staggered toward the cell, almost hitting his head against the bars. He smelled of alcohol.

  “Get in there, Charlie,” the sheriff said as he removed the padlock, opened the cell door, and shoved the man inside. “You can sleep it off in here.”

  The sheriff went away again, and the man he’d called Charlie fell heavily on the mattress in the corner. Then he looked up, seeing the four kids for the first time. He had a wild look in his eyes.

  “Don’t talk to him,” David advised his friends. “He looks crazy.”

  “What’re you in for?” Charlie asked the kids.

  “We’re not in for anything,” Luke replied. “It’s all a big mistake.”

  “Mistake, eh?” Charlie said. “I made plenty of them in my time. You wanna hear about the biggest mistake I made?”

  None of the kids replied, but Charlie didn’t care. He was going to tell them no matter what. He struggled to his feet.

  “When the battle was over, there was eight thousand dead bodies layin’ all over town,” Charlie said quietly. “They needed folks to bury ’em, so I volunteered. Big mistake.”

  “Why?” Isabel asked.

  Charlie turned to face her.

  “It was July,” he said. “Stinkin’ hot. And them bodies were everywhere. Blood everywhere. Arms and legs everywhere.”

  “What do you mean?” David asked. “Why were there arms and legs everywhere?”

  “’Cause them doctors were cuttin’ ’em off left and right trying to save the lives of those boys,” Charlie said. “But most of the time they couldn’t save ’em, and there were just stacks of arms and legs layin’ around.”

  “Ugh, gross,” Julia said.

  “We dug shallow graves,” Charlie continued slowly, “and did our darndest to bury all those boys. But a few days later, the rains come and uncovered the bodies. Rottin’ flesh. Wounds covered in worms. Flies all over. Then the hogs started eatin’ ’em.”

  “Oh my God,” Julia said. “I’m going to be sick.”

  “So we had to go and bury ’em all over again,” Charlie continued. “You ever smell a body decomposin’? We soaked our handkerchiefs in peppermint oil and held ’em to our noses, but it didn’t help.”

  Charlie staggered back to the mattress in the corner and began to weep.

  “Sometimes I think I can still smell ’em now,” he said. “No matter how much I drink, I can still smell ’em.”

  “He’s crazy,” Julia whispered.

  “I think it’s post-traumatic stress disorder,” Isabel said. “I read an article about it. Any of us would have it if we had to look at what he saw.”

  The sheriff came back again, this time with a woman.

  “Okay, Charlie,” he said as he opened the padlock. “The missus is here to bring you home. Try to stay off the booze, will ya?”

  Charlie’s wife had a sad look in her eyes as she took him by the elbow and led him away.

  “It was nice meetin’ you young ’uns,” Charlie said as he left. “You all stay out of trouble now.”

  The sheriff locked the cell door again and walked Charlie and his wife out of the jail.

  “Maybe he’ll let us go, too,” Isabel said hopefully.

  “Don’t hold your breath,” David told her. “He thinks we tried to shoot the president. He’s not gonna just let us out of here.”

  A few minutes went by before the sheriff returned. He looked all flustered, like he had just seen a ghost.

  “You got a visitor,” he told the kids.

  There was a boy standing behind the sheriff, and behind the boy stood a tall man in a stovepipe hat.

  CHAPTER 20

  THE DECISION

  ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE BARS, NOT MORE than three feet away, were President Abraham Lincoln and his son Tad. The Flashback Four stood there, eyes wide and mouths hanging open.

  “That’s them, Papa!” Tad told his father. “Those are the kids I was telling you about. They said they would give me a toy after your speech today. They promised.”

  “My good man,” Lincoln said to the sheriff, “might I have a few moments in private with these youngsters?”

  “Certainly, Mr. President,” the sheriff replied, not quite sure if he should salute, bow, or do both. “Of course. Anything you want, sir.”

  The sheriff backed away, never taking his eyes off the president. Lincoln pulled a chair up next to the cell and sat down. Tad, who seemed restless, pointed his toy gun at the Flashback Four and pretended to fire it at each of them.

  Close up, Abraham Lincoln looked older than his fifty-four years. His eyes were deep set, making them look darker. His face was furrowed, and his hair was graying at the temples. He had a melancholy look.

  You’ve probably heard that the pressure of being the leader of the free world ages a president. Well, Lincoln had more pressure on him than any of them. The Civil War started just a month after he took office. It would end six days after his death. He had suffered much personal tragedy. Tad’s older brother, Willie, had died the previous year, from typhoid fever. Another son, Eddie, had died as a toddler years earlier. It should come as no surprise that Abraham Lincoln’s wife, Mary, suffered from mental problems. The president himself had variola, a mild form of smallpox.

  And yet, behind the sadness, there was a kindness and gentleness in his face, too. The man had a subtle smile, like the Mona Lisa.

  “So,” he said, clearing his throat, “I have been informed that you youngsters are in a heap of trouble. Something about pointing a device of some sort in my direction. And my son here tells me you have been following us around. I figured I’d do a little investigation of my own. What have you got to say for yourselves?”

  It was one thing to see the man speaking in front of a large crowd at the doorstep of the Wills house, or from the stage at the cemetery. But here he was—Abraham Lincoln—sitting a few feet away and staring into the faces of Luke, Isabel, Julia, and David. He was the most famous president of the United States, and arguably the most famous man in the world. It was intimidating. None of the kids knew what to say.

  “Cat got your tongues?” Lincoln said. “Well, I’ve always believed it’s better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt.”

  “We . . . uh . . . well . . . ,” Luke finally stammered, “it’s hard to explain, sir.”

  “We come from the future,” Julia blurted out.

  “I beg your pardon?” asked the president.

  “The thing is, we live in the twenty-first century,” Julia told him. “We live in the future.”

  The rest of the Flashback Four rolled their eyes. There was no point in
telling Julia to keep quiet.

  “I know just one thing of the future,” the president replied. “It comes only one day at a time.”

  “Well, here’s what happened, Mr. President,” Julia continued. “This billionaire lady named Chris Zandergoth built a smartboard—do you know what a smartboard is? It doesn’t matter. Anyway, the smartboard can zap people to any place, any time. It’s really cool. And Miss Z—we call her Miss Z—is obsessed with collecting photos of great moments in history, y’know? She wants to start a museum filled with them. And she’s dying, so she’s kind of in a hurry. She sent us back here with a digital camera to take a picture of you giving the Gettysburg Address. I swear, we would never shoot you. We would never shoot anybody.”

  From the moment Julia said “smartboard,” Lincoln had no idea what she was talking about.

  “You spin quite a yarn, young lady,” he told her, shaking his head. “That reminds me of a story.”

  “Not another story, Papa!” Tad said, groaning.

  “Hush, Taddie,” the president replied. “You see, what happened was that about five years back, I was ambling down the street in Springfield. Do you know Springfield? It’s a town in Illinois. It doesn’t matter. I was walking down the street when an odd-looking gentleman stopped me and pointed a revolver at my face. Well, I quickly realized that resistance would be unwise. Trying to remain calm, I asked the gentleman what was the problem.”

  The president had a gleam in his eye as he told the story.

  “The odd-looking gentleman told me he’d sworn to himself that if he ever came across an uglier man than himself, he would shoot him on the spot,” Lincoln continued. “So I told the man to go ahead and shoot me. Because if I was uglier than him, I wouldn’t want to live.”

  Lincoln slapped his thigh and chuckled quietly. His face seemed happier now. It was like he used humor to mask his sadness.

  “That’s not funny, Papa,” said Tad.

  “Please believe us, Mr. President,” Luke said. “We didn’t come to shoot you. We came to shoot a photograph of you. It was just a misunderstanding.”

  Lincoln sat back in the chair and was quiet for a few seconds as he mulled over the situation.