Lincoln's Briefs

by Wayne, Michael

  Yale Templeton nodded.

  “Then now I must paint you a picture on a grander canvas, a national canvas.”

  And with that he launched into his own version of the history of Canada. It was not a plodding narrative made up of dreary facts and even drearier statistics. It was not, in other words, the sort of account likely to appeal to Yale Templeton. Quite the contrary. It was a rich, vividly imagined pageant filled with legendary figures and epic deeds. It was also quite unlike any interpretation of the Canadian past that Yale Templeton had heard in seminars given by his colleagues. It celebrated what Louis called “the grand partnership”—“l’association formidable”—between French and English.

  He began, in restrained tones, with reference to the “amicable relations” between Scottish traders and French coureurs-du-bois, “symbolized so eloquently, I might point out, by the Beaver Club, whose memory is preserved today in the magnificent restaurant of the same name at the Queen Elizabeth Hotel in Montreal. You must go there someday and have the chateaubriand.” He skipped lightly over “that minor misunderstanding that was the Seven Years’ War,” but did point out that in the Quebec Act of 1774, the British had “wisely” reintroduced French civil law “to ensure that Canadian society would be built on mutual respect for the traditions of both founding nations.”

  His depiction of the nineteenth century revolved around paired sets of heroes: the rebels Papineau and Mackenzie; Baldwin and LaFontaine, champions of “responsible government”; and of course, John A. Macdonald and George-Étienne Cartier, “the principal architects of that brilliant compromise we know as Confederation.” And here he paused for dramatic effect.

  “But,” he continued, “it was only during the twentieth century that the full promise of a truly bicultural nationalism was realized.” He paid tribute in turn, with increasing passion, to each of the prime ministers from Quebec. To Laurier. To St. Laurent. But above all to Trudeau. “All other politicians pale in comparison. A brilliant, brilliant man.” His eyes glowed as he spoke of the repatriation of the Constitution and the enactment of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. “It was with the Charter,” he said, his voice now muting in reverence, “that Canada achieved that union of individual liberty and social responsibility that has forever eluded our myopic neighbours to the south.” And he took a deep breath.

  “But there remained one grave threat.” His tone now grew ominous. “Within la belle province there lurked a traitorous band of conspirators, men who used misrepresentations of the past and false promises for the future to beguile the honest citizens of Quebec into forfeiting their patrimony. I am speaking, of course, of the separatists, René Lévesque and his hirelings in the Parti Quebecois.”

  At this point Bobbi Jo Jackson appeared in the doorway, cutting his lecture short. Yale Templeton gave a barely suppressed sigh of relief, buckling as he had been under the heavy weight of Louis’ intensity.

  “Ah, mademoiselle, your timing is no less exquisite than your smile,” said Louis. “Sit down. I will boil up a new pot of potatoes for us this very moment. Then I will regale you with the wit of Jean Chrétien.”

  “I’m afraid, monsieur, we have no time,” she replied.

  “You mean René Purelaine did see the Great White Moose?” said Yale Templeton.

  “Uh-huh. Or some sort of moose that looked white, anyway,” she replied. “He says it swam across the river. Over to the Ontario side. Then it disappeared into the forest.”

  Louis chuckled. “I knew my brother was insane. It appears now he’s having trouble with his eyes as well.”

  Bobbi Jo Jackson ignored the comment. “We’ll have to drive back across the river,” she said to Yale Templeton.

  “Quite so,” he replied. And he pulled on his balaclava and fumbled in his jacket pocket for his kazoo.

  “It seems my brother is not the only insane person around here,” Louis murmured to himself. Then he headed off to the kitchen to boil up some potatoes for his lunch.

  XXXI

  “I’m sorry I took so long with René,” said Bobbi Jo Jackson as she started up the car, “but I just had to ask him about James Bay.”

  “James Bay?”

  “You know … So I could figure out why I was sent there.”

  “Oh, yes. And did you learn anything useful?”

  “No. Nothing. Absolutely nothing. He says the only thing on James Bay are Cree Indians and hydroelectric plants. Now why would the American government be interested in Cree Indians?”

  He had no response.

  “And to top it all, then he starts off on this rant about Canada. It was pretty interesting, though. Historical stuff, mostly. About how awful the French have been treated here. Like first it was the Scots stealing their furs. And then they lost the Seven Years’ War and the British took away their rights. And after that, when the different colonies came together to form Canada—from what you’ve told me, this would have been just around the time Abraham Lincoln moved to Ontario—the Québécois pretty much lost the ability to protect their way of life.”

  “And did René say anything about the separatists?”

  “Who?”

  “The separatists. René Lévesque—”

  “Oh, yeah. René Lévesque. For sure. René Lévesque was the greatest of all politicians. ‘Un homme sans égal.’ The prophet of ‘le Québec libre,’ a free and independent Quebec.”

  “And Pierre Trudeau?”

  “Trudeau?! Trudeau was a traitor to his own people! He invented something called the October Crisis so he could strip French Canadians of their civil liberties.”

  Yale Templeton shook his head. “A remarkable story,” he said. “Truly remarkable. Just the opposite of what Louis told me. Louis sees the history of Canada as a spectacular achievement. The men who are villains to René, Louis calls heroes; the acts that René describes as shameful, Louis thinks of as honourable.” And he shook his head again.

  “How bizarre is that!” exclaimed Bobbi Jo Jackson.

  “Bizarre, indeed,” replied Yale Templeton.

  “But I don’t get it,” she said. “History is history! It’s not like there can be more than one true story!”

  “You have to remember,” Yale Templeton cautioned, “Louis and his brother are not professional historians. They assume that there is room for imagination in the writing of history. But real history is facts, statistics, carefully documented footnotes. Anything more than that is just fiction.”

  “Oh, I see,” Bobbi Jo Jackson replied. But she didn’t. Not really. After a lifetime spent in voluntary bondage to dogma, she had suddenly discovered she had a hunger for explanation, a yearning for the interpretive leaps that connect cause to effect. At some level she was already beginning to recognize that, for her, facts and statistics would never be enough.

  XXXII

  Each summer, when government activity in Washington would effectively grind to a halt, the President liked to retreat to his ranch in west Texas and ride bucking broncos. Well, not bucking broncos, exactly. A rocking horse. But a big rocking horse, almost the size of a Shetland pony. Not one of those toys parents buy for their children at Christmas.

  The ranch, the President decided, would be the most discreet place for his meeting with the underworld figure who would serve as a go-between for the bribe to Yale Templeton. The man’s name was Vito Pugliese, although the President always thought of him simply as “the Don.” Vito had been the front man for the Mob when buying off the manicurist who knew that the President had a weakness for Primal Chic nail polish by Revlon. For putting it on his toes. This was back when the President was still a governor.

  I said Vito was a front man for the Mob. That is something of a misrepresentation. The Governor had asked the aide responsible for scheduling his appointments with beauty care professionals to see that the manicurist “was dealt with in an appropriate way.” Since the aide knew the Governor to be a great admirer of John F. Kennedy—or, to be more precise, a great admirer of John F. Kennedy’s
private life—he took this to mean that the Governor wanted the Mafia to handle the matter. The problem was, the aide himself had no personal contact with anyone in organized crime. However, he had seen The Godfather and reasoned that the bank officer who had approved his student loan, the aforementioned Vito Pugliese, probably had the necessary ancestry to pass for a member of the Mob. So he approached Vito with a proposition: Make sure the manicurist keeps her mouth shut, and I will see to it that the Governor quashes the current investigation into the bank for fraudulent issuing of student loans.

  The manicurist was surprised (though not displeased) to receive an unsolicited fifteen-hundred-dollar student loan (at a favourable interest rate) from the bank. Not that she ever learned why the loan was issued. Vito was much too much of a gentleman to consider bringing up the subject of toenails in the presence of a lady. But here his silence proved fortuitous. Since the manicurist provided Primal Chic nail polish to almost half the male members of the legislature and two justices of the state Supreme Court, she had never imagined that the information might be worth anything to anybody. We’re talking about Texas here, after all.

  In any case, when it became clear that his reputation was safe, the Governor decided he wanted to meet with Vito. To thank him, but also, as he explained to his aide, “because a man with his connections might prove very useful to the nation somewhere down the road.”

  And so the aide—who we have already encountered in his later incarnation as the Executive Assistant to the Assistant Undersecretary of Transportation—contacted Vito to arrange a time for the meeting. “You’ll have to act like an underworld figure,” he advised him. But that presented some difficulties. Vito was no more acquainted with underworld figures than was the future Executive Assistant to the Assistant Undersecretary of Transportation. And, unlike the future Executive Assistant to the Assistant Undersecretary of Transportation, he had not seen The Godfather. Instead his entire knowledge of the Mafia came from the gangster movies that were popular back when he was a teenager in the 1940s. So he slicked back his hair, dressed himself up in a shiny black suit with sharp lapels, a black shirt, and a white tie with a ruby stick pin, put a toothpick in his mouth, and went off to meet with the Governor. In his pocket he carried a quarter, to flip during their conversation.

  “This is truly a great honour for me, Don Pugliese,” said the Governor. “I want to thank you so very much for the valuable service you have provided to this state.”

  “‘Ey! Dat’s a my pleasure, Boss,” replied Vito, who had gained his knowledge of Italian dialect from watching Marx Brothers movies.

  “You didn’t have to hurt her, I hope?”

  Vito shrugged. “Maybe I rough her up a little bit. Maybe I no rough her up.” And he gave the Governor a sly smile.

  The Governor was entirely satisfied. And so it was that years later, after he became President and needed someone to offer a bribe to Yale Templeton, he immediately thought of Don Pugliese.

  By now Vito was living in a retirement home, just outside Phoenix. His eyesight was failing, and on those all-too-frequent days when his sciatica acted up, he needed a walker to get around. He had not been more than five miles from the retirement home for a decade, and so when he received a request from the President, relayed through the Executive Assistant to the Assistant Undersecretary of Transportation, to come to Texas on a matter of national importance, he asked his grandnephews—Hugh, an Iyengar yoga instructor in Taos, and Charles, a television producer in Los Angeles—to accompany him. “A nice touch, Vito, bringing along your ‘godsons,’” said the Executive Assistant to the Assistant Undersecretary of Transportation with a wink when he met them at the Dallas-Fort Worth airport. Charles and Hugh looked at him blankly.

  On the long drive west the Executive Assistant to the Assistant Undersecretary of Transportation explained to Vito why the President needed him. There was a history professor in Toronto who had information that was potentially dangerous to the nation. Perhaps Vito had read about it in the newspapers? Vito had not. No matter. His job would be to fly to Toronto and convince the professor to turn over certain incriminating documents—it was still not clear what those documents were—in return for a substantial sum of money. The President hoped two million dollars would be enough but was quite prepared to defer to Vito’s judgment on the appropriate sum.

  Hugh, who had chosen an asana that required him to balance on his forearms on the floor of the limousine with his feet placed on top of his head, did not take in much of the conversation. But Charles, who made weekly trips to the casinos in Las Vegas and knew that Caesars Palace was currently offering 3:1 odds that the Lincoln assassination had been faked and 13:1 that Lincoln had secretly fled to Ontario after the Civil War where he had been involved in a commune in the northern woods so he could live openly as a transvestite, paid close attention.

  The President greeted them all warmly when they arrived at the ranch. “It’s been a long time, Don Pugliese,” he said to Vito. “Much too long. It’s good to see you.”

  “Is a good to see you too, Boss,” Vito replied.

  Hugh was shocked. “Uncle Vito!” he exclaimed. “You must refer to the President as Mr. President.”

  Vito slapped him across the back of the head. “‘Ey! Shaddup a you face!”

  “That’s all right, son,” said the President with a smile. “Don Pugliese and I, we’re old friends.”

  “‘At’s a right,” said Vito. “I’m a da Don and ‘e’s a da Boss!” And he whacked the Executive Assistant to the Assistant Undersecretary of Transportation across the back of the head for no apparent reason.

  “Why is Uncle Vito talking like that?” Hugh whispered to Charles.

  “You mean like Chico Marx?”

  “Yes.”

  “I think that’s just the way he talks now.”

  “But he went to Amherst!”

  “I know.”

  “Wrote his honours thesis on the meaning of the whiteness of the whale in Moby Dick.”

  “Who didn’t back then?” shrugged Charles.

  “Yeah. But he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa in his junior year. Was a member of the Bond Fifteen. Graduated magna cum laude.”

  Charles just shrugged again.

  “Lowell,” the President said to the Executive Assistant to the Assistant Undersecretary of Transportation, “why don’t you give the boys a tour of the ranch while Don Pugliese and I sit down over a little vino to discuss our, uh, business.”

  “It would be my pleasure, Mr. President,” said the Executive Assistant to the Assistant Undersecretary of Transportation, whose ears were still ringing from the slap Vito had given him.

  XXXIII

  “Now you will see,” said the Executive Assistant to the Assistant Undersecretary of Transportation after he led Charles and Hugh outside, “that the President has turned his ranch into a celebration of the distinguished men who preceded him in the White House. Here, for example,” and he directed their attention to the left, “is a grove of cherry trees. The President cuts one down each morning, then dutifully phones his father to confess what he’s done. His father forgives him and commends him for his honesty. This allows the President to retain his sense of moral incorruptibility for the rest of the day while telling all those lies that the public expects from a chief executive.”

  “Ah,” said Hugh.

  “I see,” said Charles.

  Just back of the grove of cherry trees was a man-made hill. “Identical in every detail to San Juan Hill in Cuba, where Teddy Roosevelt led his famous charge during the Spanish-American War.”

  “Actually,” said Charles, who had once produced a documentary on the war, “Roosevelt rode up the much smaller Kettle Hill, which was virtually undefended. And he had to dismount and finish the climb on foot. He fabricated the story of a charge up San Juan Hill to boost his political career.”

  “Precisely the reason why the President holds him in such high esteem,” replied the Executive Assistant to the Assistan
t Undersecretary of Transportation, who had thought that the point was too obvious to make.

  At the foot of the hill was an exact replica of the Union cemetery at Gettysburg. “The President likes to come out here from time to time and deliver Lincoln’s famous address,” he said. “It’s his second favourite among all the great orations by American statesmen, right after Nixon’s Checkers speech. He admires it so much, he has committed most of the first sentence to memory.”

  “Do you think he delivers it wearing a dress?” whispered Charles to Hugh, with a smirk.

  “Only on infrequent occasions,” said the Executive Assistant to the Assistant Undersecretary of Transportation, who had overheard the remark.

  Off in the distance was a lake the size of San Diego Harbour. Here they could see an aircraft carrier built to the exact dimensions of the USS Abraham Lincoln. “Would you like to visit it?” asked the Executive Assistant to the Assistant Undersecretary of Transportation. They said they would. So he called for the limousine to drive them all to the President’s private landing strip where an S-3B Viking jet flew them out to the ship. They donned flight suits and, carrying their helmets, strolled around the plane, where they were greeted with enthusiasm by the actors hired to play the part of midshipmen. Aloft flew a banner that read, “Mission Accomplished.”

  “During the Vietnam War, as you probably know, the President was denied his dream of taking a place in the front lines because of the Constitutional amendment prohibiting military service below the rank of major for sons of white corporate executives and politicians. However, he has consistently shown his devotion to our dedicated fighting men by putting on a neatly pressed uniform and bravely posing in carefully staged settings and by investing trillions of dollars in equipment designed to make their jobs obsolete.”