Lincoln's Assassin

by J F Pennington

  V

  The divine thirst for vengeance, held by the heavens and which I thought had already drunk its fill of my life, my career, my love, will be sated with nothing less. As I walk, stumbling and half-asleep, into the deep of winter storm, I can still hear the night echo this single phrase: The villain must die; the villain must die.

  That night, as I raised my spirits and my hand to do the deed, having secured again the sanctuary of my act and its accomplishment, rehearsed my part as never before, I yet faltered. His daughters had retired promptly at nine and he was to be working on his codices in the study. But he was not.

  Oh, he was there, but not at work, as I had planned. Not at all as I had planned. For though he toiled in his study, it was not over volumes of classical scholarship. It was a simple task that had the attention of the grand commander. Simple and particularly identifiable.

  As I approached the outer door from the corridor connecting to the main receiving hall I thought at first to hear echoes of those uncertain chords of celestial judgment and anticipation—but stopped short to listen to the poetic lessons of my youth, eerily familiar, yet not altogether remote. Pike was practicing his violin. No, playing.

  Once else only in my life did I cry so spontaneously, so ashamedly. Not even at the death of Hand, whose body froze still for no good reason save that of his own friendship and devotion. Not even at the loss of Ella, nor of the bright, dashed hopes of fatherhood. It was a greater loss to which I was witness. The complete and utter loss of everything I had ever been. Everything I had never been.

  I was witness to the world of accomplishment wherein I held no place, but as a fiend. The thousand dreams of youth carelessly deferred for any reason but their own until a single moment smashed them with its steadily increasing if unanticipated weight. I could not kill this man. At least he had done something with his life, however vigorously I might have taken exception. If I were to kill, but once more, my true target was never so uncertain.

  VI

  How can I not but think of her when it rains? The steady, cooling rhythm that once matched our every loving breath. Promises of cleansing passion and fresh beginnings, the laughing shelter from thunderous outbursts she playfully sought within my arms. The striking shadows flashing her face like some envious photographer’s ferrotype, vainly seeking to capture a fragment of her soulful eyes. And this night the spring’s own proclamation of her rite could do no less for my memory of her.

  What perfect form she from the first displayed. That night we met. Her ruffled hem finding rightful censure about her graceful ankles and tiniest feet. I remember wondering at the impossibility of their size. As if she wore the shoes of some child angel who, having no more use for them upon a winged body, bequeathed them to this earthly child of heaven. And with them too relinquished part of the heavenly spirit. For that was unquestionably hers.

  And that spirit is now forever inside the rain I hear. This rain that stills the songs of nightingales and sends the tracking hunger of forest wolves deep within their starving dens; recites the chords of inner melody, stirs a different need within the tireless animal of desiring man, quenches other spirits.

  And while the rhythm quickens upon my crudely roofed cabin and streams of heaven’s fear and respite form veils outside my only window, these thoughts of her too grow. And as they slake my thirst, I shall keep them dry, safe, warm.

  My heart pumps louder with the glowering night. Once more I turn my head to end my day without her. Once more I close the eyes that opened once, on her; asleep, dream that same and only dream. And hold my breath that somewhere she might sense and fret my despair, whispering through the dark, “Breathe, my darling, and know my love.”

  VII

  This is not the first time I have had this thought. Until now I have scarcely known how to express it. Still am not sure.

  Could there yet be a time when I could return. Could walk as a free man for a short time. Pass my children on some side street or broad avenue. Would we recognize each other? Would the report of my character confuse your ability to embrace the father, the kinsman in me? Would your mother’s features alone be enough to call my memory back from what has been an endless time of forced forgetfulness?

  It would be so simple, you will think, if all that has befallen you, demanded you be different, isolated, protected from certain truths, had itself been different. If at any moment—be it morning’s ritual revival, or any other—you might wake to find your lives serene, unhurried. What of late has been termed normal.

  VIII

  But tonight the mists have cleared and heaven’s supporting clouds hover moonlit on a lingering harpoon of horizon. Her vision, sweet upon my brain, breathes new life, and mine can matter no more, while all the world cares again.

  IX

  You have cause, and with reason, to hate the name you will never own, the father who could never be. The life of simple ease that should have been yours. But if you feel the fool of some fiendish plot of mine, if you even slightly sense betrayal or deceit, a moment’s uncertainty in the tenor of my heart, be calm.

  Rest sure in this: What I performed I may not say I did for you, yet it is so. What I have dreamed was certainly with your wellbeing in my mind. What could not be was not the fault of what was never wished.

  If I could do again what I have done, what surely held no other feasible outcome, I would not change my course. Could I regret that now you live? For what I risked was never mine but in the power of a larger life. And what we choose when we submit to a greater welfare than our own must be done.

  X

  I have sinned but not without cause. I have surrendered all but only known that I had not forsaken more. I am without comfort, certainty or the esteem of my fellows, but I would dare to say, I have, though in truth it is impossible for my flesh to know just what.

  Then hate me, if that hate will in any way relieve your souls. Curse my name and memory, you could not damn me further than providence has already. Abhor our kinship and rue my ever having lived. Hate me, yes, but know, I love you—always.

  Antistrophe

  I could not look into those eyes. I could no longer murder.

  ***

  Father,

  Mother,

  Sisters all,

  God, and myself, I have lost by my fall.

  The veriest wretch that goes shivering by

  Will take a wide sweep, lest I wander too nigh;

  For all that is on or about me, I know

  There is nothing that’s pure, but the beautiful snow.

  How strange it should be that his beautiful snow

  Should fall on a sinner with nowhere to go!

  How strange it would be, when the night comes again,

  If the snow and the ice struck my desperate brain!

  Fainting,

  Freezing,

  Dying alone,

  Too wicked for prayer, too weak for my moan

  To be heard in the crash of the crazy town,

  Gone mad in its joy at the snow’s coming down;

  To lie and to die in my terrible woe,

  With a bed and a shroud of the beautiful snow!

  Epilogue

  The Dawn

  The bearded tyrant sits grim and still. The makeshift door-brace eases precisely into the knife-cut mortise as a fragile darkness assumes its place with eternal acceptance. No guard is there at the top of my quick, rose-carpeted steps. No guard except the conscience I have long persuaded to watch me past the carved colonnades of the outer balcony. And from my temporary cloister, these twice theatrical wings of daring that can wax or melt in an instant—my heart speeding as if the deed were done, the labyrinth sprung—I once more study my final entrance.

  The moment holds its breath as next my fingers move to part, if slightly, the damask curtain that now alone separates our cause from his unbearable will, true victory from an untenable surrender, my haunted night from the all-harkening day.

  The tyrant’s gnarled knuckles claw int
o the lupine-scrolled arms of his rocking chair perch and his eyes fix upon the evening’s play, while he is yet aware that half the house rather watches him—for a movement, a sign, some memento to take home from the theater. The monograph, perhaps, of a once favorite player. This will my hand supply as never before.

  Fine powdered ladies in their veils and bonnets, tall grinless gentlemen with their canes and capes, although forgetful of the solemn night’s duty, force appreciation of fatuous comedy while surely urged beyond noting the execution of a well-framed speech. Their ancient spirits cry for them to witness the justice done to nature’s two-thousand-year-old ritual, turned westward toward the fractured summit. The fabled robe of old stretches as velvet upon the seats throughout the house, its purple plush full-soaked with scents of perfume or cigars. Again, the dice profane the cause with play.

  Their usurping standard presumes its place in folded drapes out front the box wherein their blasphemous master dreams. The rifting stripes and impenitent stars signifying only a shroud to trip his steps from imagined resurrection. And his plump Calpurnia, decked in more finery than her frame or character can support, drunken with her pride and porto, clutches at his side, somehow knowing that next, this eve of ides, this modern feast of sacrifice and expurgation, this Gessler will be mine.

  Mrs. Mountchessington exits in a flurry and there, too, a single player stands upon the stage. His cue well-met, his lines well-spoken, I cross and play my business out. Half a stride, then face-to-face, I cheer the motto of my faith and countrymen. The powder flashes, the bullet rings, those steel gray eyes last look on me.

  I cannot look them back.

  ***

  In my dreams I often see the bearded tyrant sitting grim and still. But it is not Lincoln; and it is not Pike. It is my own untended face. It is that part of all men that would abuse and forsake their souls.

  He will not be quieted by violence or forgotten through ignorance. He must be confronted and brought to justice, to the true light. He will tell you he prefers the shadows, that they are enough. You must not yield. You must insist. But do not await or blame another to urge you to accomplish what your soul already understands.

  I imagine my grandchildren laying flowers on the grave of President Lincoln, cursing the man who put him there. And I curse him, too. His stage play seemingly unfinished, his part is yet complete. The house lamps lit, the apron backed and still, the wings and flies of the benefit production silenced at last, that none other should ever know nor fear this man in any future.

  Yet, does not the classic form always demand a fifth and final act? Might not beauty make another entrance?

  Curtain