“Now, Thunder, you be still,” she said.
I’d never seen such a specimen. That dog’s whole body pointed toward someone else’s destruction. Thunder’s eyes were yellow; his paws gripped the earth like talons.
He didn’t take much notice until Joshua included me in the hunting party; then he bumped me with his skull; it was a kind of initiation rite, I reckon. I had to hold on to a musket with a barrel longer than my leg—it was used to hunt deer, large birds, and runaways. I didn’t know what to do with this deer gun. I carried a bullet pouch and a bandolier, but I wouldn’t have shot a buzzard or a runaway, even if my life depended on it. Yet there I was, in the middle of a hunt.
Joshua let that pack of hounds have a good whiff of Abraham’s work clothes—a woolen sock, a slouch hat with sweat marks, a worn pair of pantaloons. Thunder’s nose quivered with the raw delight of Abraham’s sweat.
“Speed,” I whispered, “you ain’t gonna shoot that boy, are ye? You taught him Shakespeare, for God’s sake!”
“I might not have a choice,” he said. “We’ve had a rash of runaways.”
And so we went on into the woods with five plantation boys—one was part Injun and meant to be Thunder’s pilot, but Thunder piloted him; the dogs leapt about in their own twisted, crazy arc; they seemed to crash right through trees. The forest was an enigma to us, with beaver dams, holes and traps, and hidden bear dens, but a battery of pleasures to the dogs; they trampled snakes and ran down a doe, with Thunder breaking her legs in one long stride and leaving her with a gash in her neck, while he was still tracking Abraham.
Soon the hounds returned to us, whimpering like babies; they’d lost Abraham’s scent; their yellow eyes commenced to cloud. Thunder was bewildered and yelped louder than the rest; he’d never suffered such a defeat. He still had the doe’s blood in his mouth; but his ears flopped and his coat twitched, as if infected with flea bites.
Miss Fanny raged under her silk ribbons. “Joshua, are we hunting that boy, or chaperoning a bunch of worthless, lazy dogs?”
The whimpering stopped as some naked god stepped out of the woods with a stride as perfect and muscular as the dogs. The different pieces of him glowed in the forest’s bewildering light—it was a black man who’d bathed himself in lime to mask his own scent. Abraham. He was translucent where he stood.
Miss Fanny cupped a hand over her eyes. “Joshua, punish him, you hear? I will not be obliged to look at that boy’s testicles.”
I would have hit her until her teeth clattered in her mouth, but she wasn’t my fiancée.
“Mr. Josh,” the boy sang in that Shakespearian tongue of his, “I went to visit my wife.”
Joshua seemed chagrined, as if that coat of lime the boy wore had chastened him.
“You could have asked my permission, Abraham. I wouldn’t have denied it.”
“Then I will ask your permission, sir—after the visit.”
“How is your Kate?”
“I did not get to see her. Captain Jones’ hounds were barking up a storm, and I might have been shot as an intruder. I did not want my Kate to mourn while she was looking after that little girl with the measles.”
And he marched right past us in that suit of lime. I could have sworn he signaled to me with one eye. But the forest light was no better than a mirage. And that image stays with me still. Joshua was obliged to whip him, of course. But he didn’t have his heart in it, though Miss Fanny incited him, her tongue twisted in her mouth, like some reptile with a horn in the middle of her head.
“One more stroke, dearest. Another! Another! Teach that boy a lesson. He has no business attending to his wife while Captain Jones has an illness in the family.”
Josh had to cage Thunder, who was delirious over the smell of Abraham’s blood and took to whimpering and whining and banging against the bars of his kennel with such force that the damn contraption spilled and spun around like an iron boulder; the dog made such a racket that Joshua had to hurl an old boot at him.
“Thunder, be still, or I’ll sell your hide to the glue man.”
And that hound sat like a sergeant in his ruined kennel without whimpering once.
Josh returned to the whipping post, which was nothing more than a legless chair strapped to a rail. Abraham sat on this throne with his arms tied to the rail, leaving his back exposed to Josh’s lashes and the raw wind. Josh used a fresh-cut switch. Abraham kept his eyes open and winced not once. He didn’t look at man or beast, as the lashes bit into his back, while every soul at the plantation—colored and white—stood around the throne, as if they were at some raree show. Neighbors were there, too, from plantations near and far. The children had long strings of candy. They looked drunk with a kind of pernicious joy.
Miss Fanny was in a frenzied state. “Joshua, salt up his wounds and feed him gall.”
And then a little colored boy arrived from one of the cook houses with some kind of snuffbox, as if he were carrying a silver chalice. Josh removed a yellow salve from the box and traced every wound with a bit of balm. Then he untied Abraham, slid him out of the chair, covered him with a cloth, and the little colored boy accompanied him to a cook house.
Abraham never appeared at our dinner table again. Mrs. Speed pretended he didn’t exist. Miss Fanny talked about her latest shopping bonanza in Louisville, how she was gathering up her trousseau like some avaricious spider with pearl-black eyes. I doubt Joshua listened to a word she said. I wondered if he was thinking about the plains, about all the prairie dust and the hogs roiling in the rain. He’d marry his black-eyed Fanny, remain the manor lord of Farmington, but that punishment of Abraham must have cost him plenty, like some public auction of the soul.
I ain’t sure why, but my melancholia had wrapped itself around that whipping post, as if Josh was a magical man who could drive out unholies with a sharpened stick, while I drank up all that blood on Abraham like a backwoods demon. I was no demon. I was a solitary man who breathed in a parcel of that boy’s pain, shrank from Josh’s fiancée, and lit out of there as fast I could.
12.
Puss in the Parlor
I RODE ACROSS THE prairie for months at a time in that curious pilgrimage of a circuit court. We were entertainers—I was as adroit as any juggler who had to juggle between judge and jury. The judge, in his ermine robes, was king of our little court. And you couldn’t mock him in front of the jury. You had to maneuver around him if you wanted to win your case. But if our king was dead against your client, you had to let him go. It was known as the morbidity rate of frontier justice.
That summer I was invited to a soiree at the home of Simeon Francis, editor of the Sangamo Journal. I wondered why his Missus kept insisting—I went to the soiree. There were the usual nabobs and the latest crop of belles. I didn’t take a shine to any of them. Their necks were too long, their talk a little too shrill. I tired of ’em after twenty minutes. I thanked Mrs. Francis and muttered goodbye when I picked up Molly’s scent, the sweet nectar that sat between her bosoms. So I wasn’t startled when she walked in, but I was shivering like a holy man, and had to clutch a wall.
Her hair wasn’t half as red as I had remembered. Her eyes still had that oceanic pull. I wanted her to shrivel without me, to look as sad and forlorn as a Widder Lady. I kept staring at her bodice like some creature at the monster show who hadn’t been near a woman in a hundred years and was made mad by her scent.
It didn’t embarrass her, not at all. She had a gorgeous swelling under her throat.
“Molly,” I said, but I was frozen in my pantaloons—and lost, like King Richard, in one of his melancholy fits. It was Molly who loved to chide me the moment I had a fit.
“When will my poor Richard be himself again?”
She didn’t chide me now. She marched right past with the least little nod and entered Simeon’s parlor. I wanted to run howling to the wolves with the skirts of my coat in my hands. I stayed there and watched her chat with all those Quality people. Still, I couldn’t stop staring. She
drank some cider, hiccupped once or twice, and pounded on her chest with her fat little fist. Then she turned and glanced at me with a beehive of contradictions. That glance was as mercurial as her own nature, as if she could devour Illinois in a hurricane of hate and then have that hurricane melt away.
I marched over to her without a word, squeezed her hand in front of Mrs. Francis and all the other matrons. Molly’s eyes darted for a moment—like a pinprick of fear—and then her face settled into a pale smile.
“Molly, Richard will never be himself again—but he’s trying.”
And she roared in the middle of that soiree. It was a reckless sound, a deep-throated laugh that flew up from her bodice.
WE MET BEHIND closed doors, in Mrs. Francis’ salon, far from Quality Hill. I hated the intrigue. It was against my nature to steal looks at Molly like a liar and a thief. We were never alone. “Puss,” I said, “couldn’t we scurry somewhere, or drive through town in a rented carriage?”
But Puss was much more of a lawyer than I ever was.
“Lincoln,” she said, “I do not trust the women and men of Springfield—they’re uncertain and slippery. It’s best to keep the business of our courtship from all eyes and ears.”
So I had Puss in the parlor, clutching her hand, and listening to her breathe and trying to imagine the bump of her heart.
“Lincoln, I will not have another long engagement and watch it melt into nothing.”
And so I played out my hand, like my old allies, Jack Armstrong and the Clary’s Grove Boys, who love to bluff and could never win at liar’s poker.
“Puss,” I said, “we’ll marry up this year.”
“Come out of the wilderness, Mr. Lincoln. We’re not children. I’ll be fifty before you make up your mind.”
“November,” I whispered.
“That’s not exact enough,” she said like a circuit judge. “We’d slip into December if we aren’t careful.”
“The fourth,” I said. “The fourth of November.”‘
And my Molly smiled. The little creases had gone out of her eyes—what some people called an old maid’s web. But then that little fork appeared in her forehead, like the Devil’s own mark, and much, much bluer than the little fork Ann Rutledge had.
“You must not tell a soul. Not my sister and my brother-in-law. I don’t want their meddling.”
“We’ll need a minister . . . and I’ll need a best man.”
“Then you’ll walk through enemy lines, Mr. Lincoln, and be as stingy as you can.”
I made my maneuvers, went to that Episcopal man, the Rev. Charles Dresser, and asked him to perform the service in his own parlor, on the night of November the fourth, 1842, but he was not to breathe a word. I went to Chatterton’s jewelry shop on the west side of the square and ordered up a gold wedding band with the inscription, Love Is Eternal. Was it Molly’s own devil mocking me? Did I inherit that fork of hers in my forehead? Fool that I was, I realized that the fourth of November was a Friday. And Fridays had never been lucky for the Lincolns. My own sister had given up the ghost on a Friday, with her dead infant in her arms. And Friday was when it first began to snow on poor Annie’s grave, but I couldn’t go to Mrs. Francis’ parlor and ask Puss to postpone our marriage. It would have been like a curse.
I went to the Globe Tavern, on the north side of Adams Street, and rented out a room for matrimonial purposes—we’d have our bed and board. I’d dream of undressing Molly, of solving the little cords and bows of her bodice, reaching under her crinoline, cracking every little wire until the whole contraption dropped to the floor like a shattered bell, and then pulling her underskirts over her head, while I breathed in her aromas with both nostrils, and ran my rough hands through every sweet curve of her flesh. What if I failed Molly and couldn’t perform my matrimonials? And my jelly spilled before I ever had a chance? I was mighty discouraged. That room wasn’t much bigger than a coffin with a couple of pillows . . .
Mrs. Elizabeth came to visit my law office on the eve of the marriage. I hadn’t seen her in over a year. The strings of her bonnet were all entangled. She’d been crying, and she had a handkerchief knotted in her fist. At first I thought her Pa was coming with his own Kentucky rangers to ride me out of Springfield. It had nothing to do with her Pa.
“You cannot wed Molly in a minister’s office. I will not abide it.”
I had all the ammunition now. “But it’s Molly’s wish,” I said.
“Then you must dissuade her, Mr. Lincoln. I am her sister, her flesh and blood.”
It was like going on a skunk hunt for aristocrats, but that skunk was Molly’s kin. So I went to Puss and pleaded with her, and she flared up. Her face was on fire.
“She’s a hypocrite. She said all the Todds would cut me dead if I married a Lincoln. And now she’s faced with a fait accompli. And she doesn’t want to be left out.”
“Molly, you’ve been staying with her and Ninian for over two years.”
“Yes, as my father’s little ambassador. But how long will she welcome me once my father cuts us?”
“Aw, Puss,” I said, “you’ll have to include her.”
And we did. I walked into a howling rain in my wedding suit and went up to that mansion on Quality Hill. The minister was there. A fire had been lit. Puss came down the stairs in a white muslin dress skirt without a bride’s veil or flowers in her hair. And her sister trolled out of the kitchen with trembling hands and panic in her eyes—the wedding cake had fallen flat.
Puss wouldn’t even console her.
“Gingerbread is good enough for Mr. Lincoln . . . and his wife.”
And so we were married in that parlor. I slipped the ring onto Mary’s finger and intoned the Episcopal vows. “With this ring I thee endow with all my goods and chattels, lands and tenements.”
I didn’t remember much after that, except that I had no goods and chattels—nothing but a whimsical law practice and a bridal suite at the Globe Tavern. We rode there, under the beating rain, in Ninian’s carriage. Puss didn’t complain, though that barren little room must have felt like a slap in the face. I dried her hair while she played with the ring. We were both in some kind of torment and nervous state. We undressed in the dark. I approached that coffin-bed in my nightshirt. She wasn’t wearing a nightgown. I could see the swoop of her shoulders in the little light coming off the rain. The rest of her was woven into the dark.
“Mr. Lincoln,” she sang in that cultured voice of hers. “I’d be much obliged if you took off that damn shirt. I want to feel your manliness.”
I closed the curtains and we lay down together like wolf cubs wild with wonder, and I was maddened by my own paucity of knowledge—about ardor and its acrobatics, and all the fine little ravelments of love. First thing I felt was the soft bump of her belly, and then her fat little fingers on my cock. I wasn’t prepared for the wisdom of Molly’s touch. I leapt up like a man with St. Vitas, and I could have spilled all my jelly right on the spot if I hadn’t asked the Lord to lead me out of this affliction. It was the delicate burn of Molly’s eyes in the dark that calmed me down, not my prayers to the Lord. I licked the sweetness of her bosoms, reveled in the perfumery between her legs. Molly moaned like a little girl at a nun’s palace. And that soft, almost painful purr deepened into a croak as I crept into Molly, and it was as if I had lived forever inside her wet well.
13.
Duff & the Shadow in the Glass
IT WAS SIXTEEN years—a flat sixteen—since our honeymoon at the Globe, with the constant rattle of the Springfield stage right outside our window to remind us of our narrow circumstances, with other guests at the tavern barking day and night, and I wondered when Mary would abandon the Globe, abandon me, and race back up Quality Hill. But she never complained, never winced once. She was Mrs. Abraham Lincoln, the wife of a country lawyer who et his vittles with a knife. And our habitation together was like a clothesline that leapt across the high plains during an Illinois ripper and still hooked itself to something—our own liv
es.
I was the culprit, a circuit rider always on the road, and Molly felt stranded in Springfield. It was the beginning of the deluge—that invisible cloth between us, the silence of wear and tear, the moodiness, the uncertainty, the anger deep under the skin. The childish dimple had gone out of her eyes. Marriage had become a broken bower where she had to boil my shirts and watch me stride into the kitchen, almost like a stranger, covered in dust. Yet she often smiled at that puzzling picture of my rawness and took some pleasure in scrubbing the dust off my bones, with her little hand as a washrag, circling over my skin with all the artistry of a harem girl.
That was our moment of delight. There’d been births and desolation and a terrible dying, and we still survived. Molly did have some solace, a little boy who smashed her heart from the moment he was born.
Bob was Mother’s first. She had suckled Bob like some Arabian prince—the boy was unknowable, always would be, and could have been a fallen angel who landed in our lap. He commenced to run away from home before he was six, would hide in some root cellar or wander to the edge of town. What was he looking for? Where was he trying to alight? Lord knows. Molly had devoted half her life to Bob. When she had her blinding headaches, Bob would comfort her—he was the only one who could.
Her blinders were more frequent after our second boy was born—Eddie had a weak lung and coughed so hard he couldn’t stand. I prayed we could keep Eddie with us if we didn’t let any sinister angels into the house. Mother tried with all her might, fed him honey from her own mouth, while his lungs filled with black blood, until some angel grabbed him up when he was a few months shy of four. That was eight years ago now. Mother still couldn’t stop grieving—and we didn’t have much matrimonial bliss. Molly grew more and more mercurial, like that big sister of hers, Mrs. Elizabeth; she’d have boxing matches with the maid, hurl a book at my head. Bob soothed her some; he could spend an entire afternoon holding her hand.
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