Asimov's Science Fiction 10-11/2001

by Dell Magazines

  “Shhhh!” someone said, and she hushed, but didn't let up on my poor shoulder none. I was stuck like a pig on a spit, and my only comfort in the world at that moment seemed to be Mr. Lincoln's hard-timey gentle face.

  “Now, y'all probably know by now that I have some differences of opinion with Mr. Jefferson Davis. I think Mr. Davis is an American, same as me, same as you all, no worse than any of us and better'n some. But the plain fact of the tragedy is, he just don't accept that honor; if it's Americans that's invited to the party, he says, nossir, I better sit outside in the dirt with my lip poked out, and be all suscautious, cause that party ain't for me. And that's how come me sitting down with Mr. Davis and jabbering with him and breaking out the Four-X ain't gone do any good to get this war over and done with. Mr. Davis was a Senator, you know, before he become a professional Southerner, and a Senator can out-talk any man—can make you think a horse-chesnut is a chestnut horse. And Mr. Davis’ egg bag ain't gone rest easy till I'm willing to tell him, all right, Mr. Davis, you win, you ain't an American no more, and now that I think bout it, Mr. Davis, why, I don't rightly know who is, if not being an American is as easy as that, as easy as changing your flannels in springtime. And I ain't a-going to tell him that, because friends, I don't believe it. But Mr. Davis don't pay no rabbit-foot to what I believe.

  “So Mr. Davis and all those Sesesh that agree with him, they gone have to be made to listen. Y'all ever try to get the attention of a mule? It ain't easy to get, is it? And once you get it, you got to keep on getting it. And that's what General Grant and General Thomas and General Sherman are helping me do. They're helping me get Mr. Sesesh's attention the only way they is to get it—to fret him and fret him, and chew him and choke him, and shoot him when shooting will do any good.”

  Maum Hannah was one of those who said Amen at this, and she give me a little shake besides, like this was gone be my lot too.

  “We got a lot of work yet to do,” Mr. Lincoln went on, “yes Lord and no mistake. They's places in this country so parched up the people got nothing left to cry with. Following around ahead of this army, I seen hell, I seen heaven, I seen all kinds of things I never expected to see on this earth. But God never made two mountains without putting a valley in between. And I'm counting on all the good people of Frogmore, every God one, to stand reformed and ready. And General Sherman is counting on you, and General Grant is counting on you, and what's more, your generations here are counting on you, too. So that when you tell your babies, Honey, you were born a slave, and you lived through a civil war, they'll look up at you and say, Mama, what's that mean? And all your suffering will seem to them like some made-up story, from a country far away. I'm finished and through.

  "The saddle and bridle is on the shelf,

  If you want any more you can get it yourself."

  “Mr. Cephas, will you lead us in song?”

  “Yessir, Mr. President,” said the big bald man I had walked to the praying ground with, and he commenced to singing, low but strong:

  "Go down, Moses, way down in Egypt land,

  Tell old Pharaoh, let my people go!"

  And others picked it up and sang along, a-swaying a little, mamas holding their babies, and men holding their women, and Mr. Lincoln not singing but walking around the circle shaking hands with people and hugging them and even kissing some of them. I never seen white and colored kiss before. I seen even old Fuss-X Quall stand up straight to shake Mr. Lincoln's hand, with his other hand a-resting on the ragged lapel of his old tore-up jacket, looking so proper you'd think he was the mayor of Charleston.

  “Mr. President, sir,” I heard Fuss-X say, “I been drunk since you was elected the first time.”

  Mr. Lincoln laughed and patted Fuss-X on the shoulder and said: “You're an honest man, sir. But you'll need to be a sober man, too, if you're going to be any help to me.”

  “Yes, sir,” Fuss-X said. “For you, sir, I'll be that sober man, yes indeedy. Bless you, sir.”

  "Mr. Sherman burned Atlanta town,

  Let my people go!

  The pillar of fire again come down,

  Let my people go!"

  When Mr. Lincoln got round to us, he patted Maum Hannah on the shoulder and looked down at me right kindly and said, “Why, Maum Hannah, who is this here fine young strapping man?”

  “Don't you get too close to this one, Mr. Abe. He ain't no bigger'n kindling, but he sparks like the Devil himself. I told Shad and told him to stay at the home place, but for all the good it done I mights well brought the word of Jesus to a hog. I got to light his shucks a few times fore he's fit to talk to decent folks.”

  “Oh, now, Maum Hannah, I'm sure he's not as fearsome as all that.” Not minding his fine britches, he knelt down closer to where I was, one knee mashing into the soggy grass. He still was a lot taller than me, but he'd evened it up some. He reached out and shook my hand with both hisn—big hairy monkey hands, to look at, but so gentle they held my hand like they was cradling a chick. “I'm sure this boy is here for a reason, same as the rest of us,” Mr. Lincoln said.

  "Long years to come before the dawn,

  Let my people go!

  Too soon our leader will be gone,

  Let my people go!"

  Lots of folks were still singing, but I was starting to think I misremembered the words. I didn't much like the way they were going, neither. But Mr. Lincoln didn't pay the song no mind. “Always obey your elders, Shad,” he said. “I always obeyed mine—till I was old enough to stop.” He winked and let go my hand. I wanted to say something back, but I just stood there rooted and dumb as a yambo, as he stood and hugged Maum Hannah again, whispering something I couldn't hear. She finally let go my poor achy shoulder. Man! Old Sherman was a caution, but he didn't have nothing on Maum Hannah.

  Old Pharaoh robbed us of our youth,

  Let my people go!

  But the worst robber is old John—"

  And right there Cephas stopped singing—stopped, and stood still, eyes staring at nothing, like he was harking to something a ways off. And because he was leading the song, everybody else noticed, and the singing trailed off, and then all the folks was quiet, and listening. I strained and strained, but couldn't hear nothing but the pine knots sputtering, and a little breeze that swayed the moss overhead and made the shadows move funny in the praying ground. I saw that Mr. Lincoln heard it, too, though, whatever it was. His face was a study, like nothing I can line out for you in words. It was the face of a man who sees his death coming, and is ready for it.

  Then I heard, away off in the swamp, something like a bridle jingling.

  “Paterollers,” Cephas said, and not loud neither, but in the next second the pine knots and the oil lamp snuffed out and everybody was in the dark and on the move. I could hear the branches cracking and bushes thrashing and reeds snapping and mud plopping as that praying ground emptied out, as fast and as quiet as people could go, in all directions, path or no path, and me and Maum Hannah and Mr. Lincoln in the middle standing stock-still, like the man in a hurricane who hears the water coming and knows there's no place to run. The coal-tip of Maum Hannah's pipe was the only light left that wasn't the moon and the stars. Even the skeeters and the bullfrogs had hushed, so the only sound in the pitch-black praying ground was the picking-up breeze and the jingle, jingle, jingling of bridles, of coffles, of chains.

  “Lord have mercy,” Maum Hannah said.

  “It's me they want,” Mr. Lincoln said. “I'm sure of it. They're between us and the Sound, too. You and this child skedaddle, Maum Hannah. Get as far into the swamp as you can, and lie low. I'll make sure they can find me.”

  “No!” I cried. It was the first thing I had managed to say for the longest time, and it blew out of me like the cork from a jug. Then I was pulling on Mr. Lincoln's sleeve, on his swaller-tails, on his britches leg, on anything I could grab hold of, trying to haul him away from the path we come in on. “Come on, Mr. Lincoln, please sir, you can't let ‘em get you, you just can't, I'l
l show you the way, you and Maum Hannah both, I'm in the swamps all the time, Maum Hannah licks me for it but I go there anyways, I know all sorts of paths to the Sound, to Frogmore, anyplace you wants to go, why, I'll lead you to Washington town, but please, Mr. Lincoln! Tell him, Maum Hannah. Don't let the paterollers—or whoever that is a-coming—don't let ‘em get you! Mr. Lincoln, Maum Hannah, please!”

  The grownups looked at each other.

  “The boy's talking sense,” Maum Hannah said. “He knows these swamps, for sure. He's half snake, half possum, half bobobo bird. You keep up with him, you might make it to the Sound, sure enough.”

  “But this child—” Mr. Lincoln started to say.

  “Don't talk back to me like I was Congress. You done enough talking for tonight. You said we had to help, now we gone help, and you stuck with it. Now get on, both of you.”

  “What about you, Maum Hannah?” I asked.

  She sucked on her pipe, and the coal flared up a funny color, sorta purple-red, so's I could see a little of her broad, set face, flickering like it was lit from inside, like a gourd at Christmastime. “I got my own ways home,” she said. “Old slow ways. Don't study bout me.” She took hold of her pipe and stuck her thumb into the bowl and hist, the light went out, and out of the dark her voice said: “Get on, now, both of you.” And then she just wasn't there no more—it was so pure dark, she coulda been a foot away, and me not known it. But I don't think to this day that she was. Maybe Maum Hannah could tamp herself down the same as the pipe, and wink out like a coal.

  “Come on, sir,” I said, half-crying but trying not to sound it.

  “Wait!” Mr. Lincoln said, and for a second I thought he was gone, too. Next thing I knew a match was struck, and the oil lamp on that rickety table come back alive. He trotted back with something long and pipe-shaped in his hand. “That light'll give ‘em something to aim for that ain't us,” he said. “Besides, I'd be purely lost for sure, Shad or no Shad, without my hat.” He breshed it with his sleeve and settled it on his head as delicate as if he was on the front porch of the big house. I couldn't see the hat too good in that light, but I could see it made him stand up a good deal straighter. He looked bout eight feet tall, and half comical, but only half, and if he got comfort from that hat, well, I got comfort, somehow, from looking at him. “What you waiting on,” he asked, “Judgment?” He snapped his fingers. "Wake up, Jacob, day's a-breaking."

  I grinned and finished it: "Get your hoecake baking and your shirt tail shaking! Yes, sir.” I turned and ran across the praying ground, past the persimmon tree at the far end, and into the swamp, Mr. Lincoln right behind me. He made more noise than me a-going through the bresh, but less than I expected—as much as a buck deer, I guess, when it's running flat out. And ma'am, let me tell you, any deer on St. Helena woulda had a time outrunning us that night.

  We splashed through creeks and crawled through brambly places and teeter-walked over logs and scrambled up one side and slid butt-first down the other of mounds plenty larger than the one at the praying ground—and plenty older, too, I reckon—and jumped half-rotted fences and wallowed through bogs and scared the life out of six or seven muskrats, two gators, and a squinch owl, though that old owl bout took it out of us, too, hollering any such a way. We were mosquito-bit, briar-scratched, mud-plastered, and salt-crackly with dried swamp water by the time the water rose up and left us to jump from cypress knee to cypress knee. Then—whoa!—we run out of knees, and there we were, hassling like dogs and draped across a low branch and looking out across the Sound, breathing that sweet rank mud-marsh smell, the tidewater lapping at the knees neath us and something we'd awaked, a moccasin probably, a-plopping into the shallows behind. Do you know that stovepipe hat was still on Mr. Lincoln's head—how, I don't know. The pace we set through that wild country, I was surprised we still had our britches.

  “What you reckon we do now?” I asked. I didn't have no idea myself, but I figured, shoot, he's the president, he must be smart. “You got soldiers waiting on you?”

  “Not with me,” he said, and I wasn't sure what that meant. He went on: “My boat's somewheres on this shore. I tied it up under a rotted pier. Beside a grove of palmetto.”

  “I know that place. Come on.” So we thrashed on down the water's edge to the palmetto grove—it wasn't more'n a half-mile south, but felt longer, the way so overgrowed and us so wore-out. There was the skiff, just like he'd said, though if you didn't know to look for it you'd a thought it was just another old plank a-floating there. He clambered around the rotted pilings and eased the skiff on out into the water, and undid the rope and settled down in the stern. Plumb filled the boat up, with his knees nearbouts in his face. The moon come out from behind a cloud then, and I saw for the first time that his hat was bent at a sorry angle, with a long raggedy strip hanging down.

  “Your hat's bout done its last do,” I said, not wanting to say goodbye but not knowing what else to say neither.

  “I know it,” he said. “It's a shame.” He took it off and looked it over. “I had to lie low in a thicket just after sunset, waiting on a patrol to pass by, and I left a big strip of my hat behind there.”

  I realized something. I felt around behind, and sure enough, there was that strip of cloth, the one I had wrestled from the fice, still stuck into my pants. I pulled it out and handed it to Mr. Lincoln. “You mean a strip like this right here?”

  “Why, that's it exactly. Where'd you find it?”

  “In the yard. The dog brought it up. I figured it wasn't none of this island.”

  “Well, I'll tell you what,” he said, handing it back. “You can keep it, and the hat too, with my thanks.” He stood, removed the stovepipe all solemn, and handed it over with a little bow, like he was offering me a crown. Nearbouts swamped the boat. “Whoa,” he said, settling down again. “Shad, I thank you again most kindly. I got to get back out to my ship, before the sun catches me. Will you be able to get back home all right?”

  “Yessir, it ain't far,” I said. What I wanted to say was Take me with you, but I didn't say it, and he didn't offer.

  “Well, thanks again, and goodbye,” Mr. Lincoln said, and commenced to pull on the oars.

  I don't know why I asked it. I guess I was just trying to keep him there awhile longer. What I asked, standing straddle-legged on two old pier pilings, was: “Do you like being the president?”

  That stopped him, and he laid down the oars in his lap and thought bout it, the skiff drifting sideways, already caught by the current and heading out to sea. When he finally made his answer, his voice got louder as he got farther away. “Shad, I'll tell you like this. There once was a man who'd got powerful unpopular, so unpopular that all his neighbors grabbed him and tarred him and feathered him and run him out of town on a rail. And in the middle of it all, one of the neighbors that tormented him so, asked him, Well sir, how do you like it? And the man said back, Frankly, sir, I'd just as soon walk, if not for the honor of the thing. Goodbye, Shad.”

  “Goodbye, sir,” I said, but he was way out in the Sound by then, a-pulling on the oars, and probably didn't even hear me. Just before he was out of sight, there was a flickering in the sky, and a rumble of thunder, and I heard him say: “God, how I love a storm.” And then he was just one more dark patch against the far shore, and then he was gone. Least I never saw him again. So I turned around and dragged myself on back home, got there just as the sun was coming up, and Maum Hannah was a-sitting there—

  No. I ain't gone tell it that way. I told you from the start, true enough for a book. I'm gone tell you the part of the story that I don't tell the young folks, and you can spice it or shuck it, same as all else.

  I stood there a while, feeling the smart cloth of that poor ragged hat between my fingers, watching and listening—for what, I didn't know. I tried putting on the hat, but it was too big, I couldn't see nothing that way. So I held it in my hands as I turned and stepped off that old pier and onto the muddy ground, and I hadn't gone two paces before I saw
a row of little stars about five feet off the ground, twinkling in the air between me and the trees. I stood there and blinked until the shapes around them firmed up some and I saw it was a row of soldiers standing in front of me, the moonlight shining off their buttons and hat-brims and rifle barrels.

  I dropped the hat and made a sound like, “Ah,” and wet my britches like a baby—the last time that ever happened, let me tell you, on that end of my life. But they weren't studying bout me. They were peering off across the water, over my head, looking toward where Mr. Lincoln went. They weren't Sesesh. Their uniforms were too new, their boots too shiny, their voices not Southern but sharp and squawky like chickens.

  “Lost him again, God damn him to hell.”

  “They'll pick him up when he tries to board.”

  “Stanton will court-martial the lot of us.”

  “The hell with old fuzz-face Stanton. Secretary of War, my ass. What outfit did he ever soldier for, huh?”

  They quarreled on like that, I couldn't understand the half of it. I started stepping real slow and careful off to the right, a-walking around ‘em. Maybe they hadn't seen me at all, or maybe didn't care. I was just bout to the edge of the old weed-choked road that led off from the pier through the woods, when one of ‘em said, all unconcerned-like: “What about the little pickaninny?”

  I froze up and nearbouts lost my water again.

  “Reckon he'll tell what he saw?”

  “I don't reckon he could help it.”

  “Looks like he stole himself a hat.”

  “A Southern thief in wartime. And thieving from the Gorilla in Chief, at that. Our duty is clear, gentlemen.”

  “Hey, pickaninny. Cuffee. Hey, Hercules. How fast can you run, d'you suppose?”

  “Faster than a Federal can shoot?”

  Then I heard a snick-snick sound. And then another one. And then another one.

  I'm ashamed to say now that I was too scared to pray even, but if I had prayed for anything, it wouldn't a been for what happened next. I couldn't have imagined such a thing. What happened was a voice from the trees, a new voice but sorta familiar, and praise Jesus a Southern one, too: