Otherworldly Maine

by Noreen Doyle

  I deliver my speech, then sit down. I’m no Pericles, that’s certain. Hardly even a scattering of applause—and that’s mostly for politeness sake. They don’t know what to make of my speech, I guess. I shake my head. That speech won’t scour.

  Johnny was right. I do feel bone tired. Maybe I can sleep on the train back.

  John Hay’s Diary

  November 19, 1863—p.m.

  Writing this on the train back from Gettysburg. His great speech has been given—for all the good it did the Pennsylvania vote.

  The cost was high enough: Lincoln is quite ill. The doctors said it’s variola, a form of smallpox.

  Lincoln is feverish, sometimes delirious and sometimes even babbling at times. I’ve ordered everybody out of his train compartment and turned it into a sickroom. I’m not thinking too clearly. Worried sick about Lincoln.

  Lincoln has started mumbling again. Claims he’s going to die. That was the bargain. Then he starts asking who’s to be the dead, who’s to be the living. Other questions, too, just as nonsensical as that.

  Maybe I’ve come down with varioloid, too. I keep imaging Lincoln asks his questions in Greek.

  I keep asking Johnny if he’d found the professor’s grave yet. Didn’t I come to dedicate it? Isn’t it marked on the plans?

  Johnny clucks at me and tells me I have a fever and to rest.

  I cannot.

  I cannot rest until I know which one of us is the dead, my professor or me.

  Johnny tells me again I have a fever. Maybe I do. It’s so hard to think. The train jounces and jars the life out of me. My joints ache. Why is it so dark in here?

  I turn my head toward the windows. Why are the curtains black, Mary?

  But she is not here. I am alone.

  Alone with my professor.

  John Hay’s Diary

  November 21, 1863

  Lincoln still sick. Doctor says two or three more weeks. I do not know if I can last that long. Been getting little sleep. Lincoln was delirious throughout the night again. He told me about what he calls his professor dreams. Finally told me the whole sad story.

  Would that I could believe it was all just part of the fever, pass it off as fever dreams. I can’t. It’s the Greek.

  But for the Greek, I would laugh it away.

  “One must die,” he says repeatedly. “One must live. Parainesis must have its epainesis.”

  John Hay’s Diary

  November 23, 1863

  Lincoln on the mend at last, but still too sick to read so he asks me to read the clippings to him.

  Chicago Times tore the speech to shreds. There is no Constitutional promise of equality for the Negro, they thundered. How dare Lincoln stand on the graves of those dead and misstate the cause for which they had died? Lincoln has swindled the nation. They claim he has changed history to suit his needs.

  Maybe he has.

  John Hay’s Diary

  June 19, 1864

  I was just on my way to his office, carrying some new dispatches, when I heard this terrific crash and the clatter of objects falling from Lincoln’s desk. I entered to find his inkwell upset, books and things all scattered on the floor.

  Lincoln was just sitting there, arms hanging at his side, staring off in the distance. Today’s copy of Harper’s Illustrated Weekly lay at his feet, blotched by a puddle of ink.

  Lincoln, after some length, said simply, “Well, Johnny, I know my professor’s name now.”

  I picked the newspaper up and scanned the opened pages. I saw the engraved portrait of a Brigadier General Chamberlain. The accompanying article said he’d been a professor of rhetoric and oration before the war. Said he’d been fatally wounded in one of those intermittent battles around Petersburg. The papers listed some of Chamberlain’s previous services: Antietam. Fredericksburg. Gettysburg.

  Chamberlain was not expected to survive his wounds.

  Lincoln gave a little shrug. “It appears I shall be the one who lives after all.”

  John Hay’s Diary

  April 11, 1865

  I tried to hide the newspapers, but that fool Seward blundered in with some right in front of Lincoln’s eyes.

  May God help him. May God help us all.

  Johnny, I say. “What’s with this sad face? You look lower than a snake’s belt buckle. Lee surrendered two days ago—hadn’t you heard? Johnny won’t answer.

  Seward comes in carrying a stack of newspapers. Johnny tries to grab them away, but my reach is just a mite longer than he thought.

  I didn’t even have to open it up to see the headline Johnny was trying to hide. There it is. Page one.

  GEN. JOSHUA CHAMBERLAIN RECEIVES

  SURRENDER OF REBEL ARM

  15,000 STAND OF ARMS & 72 FLAGS SURRENDERED

  THE DAY OF JUBILEE!

  My professor lives after all.

  I set the paper on the table. Johnny sees Seward out, leaving me alone with my professor.

  John Hay’s Diary

  April 14, 1865

  All day today Lincoln was as giddy as a boy out of school. “Johnny,” he says to me. “A great weight has been lifted off my shoulders. You know what I call that millstone that’s dropped from around my neck?”

  I shake my head.

  “Uncertainty,” he winks back at me.

  He held a cabinet meeting that morning. He was positively . . . buoyant is the only word I can think of. He spoke openly about his barge dream, as he refers to it. He told them how he dreamed again last night of this singular, indescribable vessel, about his boarding it and moving with great rapidity towards an indefinite shore. He told them when he had that dream it always signified some portentous event. “Means good news,” he said and smiled.

  It is a solemn smile, a wistful one. Then he laughs and shakes their hands and claps them on the shoulders.

  I imagine a meaning to his smile it cannot possibly hold. Men do not smile so at their own death. Or do they?

  He goes to the theater tonight. I fear for him.

  I have proved myself wrong and am glad for it.

  I know my dream barge for what it is now: a ship crossing the River Styx, sailing on some stranger tides to a far distant shore.

  I am ready.

  I had thought for a short time that perhaps it had sailed past and had taken another passenger aboard, but the plans of Divine Providence are immutable. He has taken me, gripped me tightly in His hand as His instrument.

  I was the one to offer up my life that day so long ago. My life for the Union’s.

  I am content with the bargain.

  Dedication of the Maine Monuments at Gettysburg

  Evening of October 3, 1889

  Joshua Chamberlain stepped before the crowd to give his last speech of the day. The chill evening air condensed his breath. His old wound from Petersburg burned with fire from yet again climbing up this rock-strewn hill.

  He blinked against the flickering torchlight. Squinting his eyes, he could almost imagine he saw Lincoln in the back of the crowd.

  Someone coughed and Chamberlain realized the audience was shifting about nervously, waiting for him to start. The young man from the committee held up a lantern so Chamberlain could read.

  He pulled a folded sheet of paper from his jacket. He started to unfold it, then slipped it back into his pocket unused. He knew what he needed to say.

  “In great deeds . . .” Chamberlain began. His voice faltered.

  Deeds, he thought to himself. Words and deeds, deeds and words. As indivisible a couplet as parainesis and epainesis. Wars are fought not just over the territory of maps, but the territory of hearts. Sometimes words are needed more than great deeds. And sometimes they exact just as high a price.

  And Lincoln had paid that price.

  Chamberlain’s hand brushed his side. The wound from Petersburg should have killed him, but he had been spared for a reason, as if part of a bargain. It was up to the living to remember the dead and honor all that they had fought for. Lincoln had off
ered up his life; the least Chamberlain could do would be to offer up his heart.

  His voice sure now, he spoke to the hearts of the crowd and felt them finally understand:

  “In great deeds something abides. On great fields something stays. Forms change and pass; bodies disappear, but spirits linger, to consecrate ground for the vision-place of souls. And reverent men and women from afar, and generations that know us not and that we know not of, heart-drawn to see where and by whom great things were suffered and done for them, shall come to this deathless field to ponder and dream; And lo! the shadow of a mighty presence shall wrap them in its bosom, and the power of the vision pass into their souls.”

  “Parainesis of the living,” he whispered to himself. “Epainesis of the dead.”

  FLASH POINT

  Gardner Dozois

  Ben Jacobs was on his way back to Skowhegan when he found the abandoned car. It was parked on a lonely stretch of secondary road between North Anson and Madison, skewed diagonally over the shoulder.

  Kids again, was Jacobs’ first thought—more of the road gypsies who plagued the state every summer until they were driven south by the icy whip of the first nor’easter. Probably from the big encampment down near Norridgewock, he decided, and he put his foot back on the accelerator. He’d already had more than his fill of outer-staters this season, and it wasn’t even the end of August. Then he looked more closely at the car, and eased up on the gas again. It was too big, too new to belong to kids. He shifted down into second, feeling the crotchety old pickup shudder. It was an expensive car, right enough; he doubted that it came from within twenty miles of here. You didn’t use a big-city car on most of the roads in this neck of the woods, and you couldn’t stay on the highways forever. He squinted to see more detail. What kind of plates did it have? You’re doing it again, he thought, suddenly and sourly. He was a man as aflame with curiosity as a magpie, and—having been brought up strictly to mind his own business—he considered it a vice. Maybe the car was stolen. It’s possible, a’n’t it? he insisted, arguing with himself. It could have been used in a robbery and then ditched, like that car from the bank job over to Farmington. It happened all the time.

  You don’t even fool yourself anymore, he thought, and then he grinned and gave in. He wrestled the old truck into the breakdown lane, jolted over a pothole, and coasted to a bumpy stop a few yards behind the car. He switched the engine off.

  Silence swallowed him instantly.

  Thick and dusty, the silence poured into the morning, filling the world as hot wax fills a mold. It drowned him completely, it possessed every inch and ounce of him. Almost, it spooked him.

  Jacobs hesitated, shrugged, and then jumped down from the cab. Outside it was better—still quiet, but not preternaturally so. There was wind soughing through the spruce woods, a forlorn but welcome sound, one he had heard all his life. There was a wood thrush hammering at the morning, faint with distance, but distinct. And a faraway buzzing drone overhead, like a giant sleepy bee or bluebottle, indicated that there was a Piper Cub up there somewhere, probably heading for the airport at Norridgewock. All this was familiar and reassuring. Getting nervy, is all, he told himself, long in the tooth and spooky.

  Nevertheless, he walked very carefully toward the car, flat footed and slow, the way he used to walk on patrol in ’Nam, more years ago than he cared to recall. His fingers itched for something, and after a few feet he realized that he was wishing he’d brought his old deer rifle along. He grimaced irritably at that, but the wish pattered through his mind again and again, until he was close enough to see inside the parked vehicle.

  The car was empty.

  “Old fool,” he said sourly.

  Snorting in derision at himself, he circled the car, peering in the windows. There were skid marks in the gravel of the breakdown lane, but they weren’t deep—the car hadn’t been going fast when it hit the shoulder; probably it had been already meandering out of control, with no foot on the accelerator. The hood and bumpers weren’t damaged; the car had rolled to a stop against the low embankment, rather than crashing into it. None of the tires were flat. In the woods taking a leak, Jacobs thought. Damn fool didn’t even leave his turn signals on. Or it could have been his battery, or a vapor lock or something, and he’d hiked on up the road looking for a gas station. “He still should have ma’ked it off someway,” Jacobs muttered. Tourists never knew enough to find their ass in a snowstorm. This one probably wasn’t even carrying any signal flags or flares.

  The driver’s door was wide open, and next to it was a child’s plastic doll, lying facedown in the gravel. Jacobs could not explain the chill that hit him then, the horror that seized him and shook him until he was almost physically ill. Bristling, he stooped and thrust his head into the car. There was a burnt, bitter smell inside, like onions, like hot metal. A layer of gray ash covered the front seat and the floor, a couple of inches deep; a thin stream of it was trickling over the doorjamb to the ground and pooling around the plastic feet of the doll. Hesitantly he touched the ash—it was sticky and soapy to the touch. In spite of the sunlight that was slanting into the car and warming up the upholstery, the ash was cold, almost icy. The cloth ceiling directly over the front seat was lightly blackened with soot—he scraped some of it off with his thumbnail—but there was no other sign of fire. Scattered among the ashes on the front seat were piles of clothing. Jacobs could pick out a pair of men’s trousers, a sports coat, a bra, slacks, a bright child’s dress, all undamaged. More than one person. They’re all in the woods taking a leak, he thought inanely. Sta’k naked.

  Sitting on the dashboard were a 35-mm Nikon SI with a telephoto lens and a new Leicaflex. In the hip pocket of the trousers was a wallet, containing more than fifty dollars in cash and a bunch of credit cards. He put the wallet back. Not even a tourist was going to be fool enough to walk off and leave this stuff sitting here, in an open car.

  He straightened up and felt the chill again, the deathly noonday cold. This time he was spooked. Without knowing why, he nudged the doll out of the puddle of ash with his foot, and then he shuddered. “Hello!” he shouted, at the top of his voice, and got back only a dull, flat echo from the woods. Where in hell had they gone?

  All at once, he was exhausted. He’d been out before dawn, on a trip up to Kingfield and Carrabassett, and it was catching up with him. Maybe that was why he was so jumpy over nothing. Getting old, c’n’t take this kind of shit anymore. How long since you’ve had a vacation? He opened his mouth to shout again, but uneasily decided not to. He stood for a moment, thinking it out, and then walked back to his truck, hunch-shouldered and limping. The old load of shrapnel in his leg and hip was beginning to bother him again.

  Jacobs drove a mile down the highway to a rest stop. He had been hoping he would find the people from the car here, waiting for a tow truck, but the rest area was deserted. He stuck his head into the wood-and-fieldstone latrine, and found that it was inhabited only by buzzing clouds of bluebottles and blackflies. He shrugged. So much for that. There was a pay phone on a pole next to the picnic tables, and he used it to call the sheriff’s office in Skowhegan. Unfortunately, Abner Jackman answered the phone, and it took Jacobs ten exasperating minutes to argue him into showing any interest. “Well, if they did,” Jacobs said grudgingly, “they did it without any clothes.” Gobblegobblebuzz, said the phone. “With a kid?” Jacobs demanded. Buzzgobblefttzbuzz, the phone said, giving in. “Ayah,” Jacobs said grudgingly, “I’ll stay theah until you show up.” And he hung up.

  “Damned foolishness,” he muttered. This was going to cost him the morning.

  County Sheriff Joe Riddick arrived an hour later. He was a stocky, slab-sided man, apparently cut all of a piece out of a block of granite—his shoulders seemed to be the same width as his hips, his square-skulled, square-jawed head thrust belligerently up from his monolithic body without any hint of a neck. He looked like an old snapping turtle: ugly, mud colored, powerful. His hair was snow-white, and his eyes were bl
oodshot and ill-tempered. He glared at Jacobs dangerously out of red-rimmed eyes with tiny pupils. He looked ready to snap.

  “Good morning,” Jacobs said coldly.

  “Morning,” Riddick grunted. “You want to fill me in on this?”

  Jacobs did. Riddick listened impassively. When Jacobs finished, Riddick snorted and brushed a hand back over his close-cropped snowy hair. “Some damn fool skylark more’n likely,” he said, sourly, shaking his head a little. “O-kay, then,” he said, suddenly becoming officious and brisk. “If this turns out to be anything serious, we may need you as a witness. Understand? All right.” He looked at his watch. “All right. We’re waiting for the state boys. I don’t think you’re needed anymore.” Riddick’s face was hard and cold and dull—as if it had been molded in lead. He stared pointedly at Jacobs. His eyes were opaque as marbles. “Good day.”

  Twenty minutes later Jacobs was passing a proud little sign, erected by the Skowhegan Chamber of Commerce, that said: HOME OF THE LARGEST SCULPTED WOODEN INDIAN IN THE WORLD! He grinned. Skowhegan had grown a great deal in the last decade, but somehow it was still a small town. It had resisted the modern tropism to sky-scrape and had sprawled instead, spreading out along the banks of the Kennebec River in both directions. Jacobs parked in front of a dingy storefront on Water Street, in the heart of town. A sign in the window commanded: EAT; at night it glowed an imperative neon red. The sign belonged to an establishment that had started life as the Colonial Cafe, with a buffet and quaint rustic decor, and was finishing it, twenty years and three recessions later, as a greasy lunchroom with faded movie posters on the wall—owned and operated by Wilbur and Myna Phipps, a cheerful and indestructible couple in their late sixties. It was crowded and hot inside—the place had a large number of regulars, and most of them were in attendance for lunch. Jacobs spotted Will Sussmann at the counter, jammed in between an inverted glass bowl full of doughnuts and the protruding rear-end of the coffee percolator.