Lincoln's Briefs

by Wayne, Michael

  And then, from directly above him, the Great White Moose heard a strange sound. He stopped thrashing about and stood perfectly still to listen. A jar of Strub’s pickles had tipped over on its side and was rolling along the top shelf. And because Slinger had been careless when he put the jar away (an inevitable consequence of his choice of accompanying beverage when he ate pickles), the lid was loose. By the time the jar dropped over the end of the shelf, the lid had fallen aside, leaving the contents to spill onto the head of the moose. Pickles bounced off his nose. Brine followed, rolling across his lips.

  Now moose, like all mammals, are fond of salt. As the Great White Moose stood there licking his lips, his disquiet began first to subside and then to give way to epicurean delight. He bent over, picked up a pickle, and sampled it. It was tangy, refreshing. He finished it, ate another, and then another. And when all the pickles were gone, he continued to gorge himself, though now on the brine-saturated records at his feet. Which is why it is possible to say with some authority that, in addition to moss and lichens, in addition to the twigs, leaves, and bark of a variety of maples, in addition to willow, birch, alder, poplar, mountain ash, and witch hazel, in addition to the stems, roots, and pads of water lilies, and in addition to young spruces and ground hemlock and the leaves and twigs of other coniferous plants, moose like to dine on legal briefs. Or at least legal briefs that are well over one hundred years old and have been soaked in pickle brine.

  The question of whether moose can experience a sense of guilt is intriguing but currently unresolved. Even if the answer is yes, we might well wonder whether the Great White Moose would have felt guilty about consuming—consuming in its entirety by the time he was done—a set of documents whose immeasurable historical significance was of interest only to a species he had long ago learned to mistrust. But then again, how else are we to account for the surging pain he began to feel in the pit of his stomach only minutes after finishing his meal?

  LXIX

  But now we must return to the car chase. You can visualize it by recalling the famous chase scene from Bullitt: Steve McQueen in his Ford Mustang GT careering through Russian Hill in San Francisco, pursued by and pursuing the bad guys in their Dodge Charger, both cars reaching speeds better than 120 miles per hour, both cars becoming airborne on Taylor Street. Not that downtown Toronto looks much like San Francisco. I mean, apart from maybe Spadina over by Casa Loma, the few hills would hardly inconvenience a small child on a tricycle. In any case, Yale Templeton, Bobbi Jo Jackson, and their pursuers have long ago escaped the city boundaries. Still, the scene from Bullitt does conjure up the vehicular gymnastics, the extreme danger, the riveting tension, and as we shall see, the spectacular climax now being played out in the vastness of Northern Ontario.

  Of course, in Bullitt, professional stuntmen performed the more dangerous manoeuvres. Only Bobbi Jo Jackson among our three drivers has the skill and experience to handle a car over difficult terrain at speeds three, four, or five times the legal limits. Joel and the Executive Assistant to the Assistant Undersecretary of Transportation have taken turns careening off street signs, parked cars, fire hydrants, trees, utility poles, and each other. And then there is the carnage the two of them have left behind. Only my regard for your tender sensibilities, dear reader, prevents me from providing the truly gory details: the awful, and it must be said, needless, sacrifice of life, both human and porcupine.

  You might suppose that the El Dorado, with Joel behind the wheel, would have been demolished in the chase. But in fact it has survived relatively unscathed. We can attribute that principally to the foresight of the Dean Responsible for Relations with the Mafia, who equipped all his vehicles with bulletproof glass, heavy-gauge reinforced steel, and special torsion bars and shocks. Still, how are we to explain Joel’s ability to stay in visual contact with Yale Templeton and the Corolla or, when he loses sight of them, to find them again? Is it the overpowering love he feels for the woman barking out commands in the seat next to him? Is it maybe fear of the very same woman? Can we ever really separate the two emotions, fear and love?

  And what about the Executive Assistant to the Assistant Undersecretary of Transportation? Is he driven by love as well? By fear? The Mercedes, unlike the El Dorado, suffers massive damage: The windshield is shattered, the grille, trunk, and doors crumpled like used aluminum foil. Two days later the rear bumper will be found at a construction site in Toronto near where the old Downsview Air Force base used to be. Three days later the convertible top will be found hanging, next to the pink boa, from the branches of a birch tree along an ATV trail. “Good thing the agent talked us into taking out collision insurance,” commented the Executive Assistant to the Assistant Undersecretary of Transportation after broadsiding a tractor-trailer. But the President made no reply, busy as he was touching up his lipstick at the time.

  Not that either love or fear alone can entirely explain how it was that Joel and the Executive Assistant to the Assistant Undersecretary of Transportation were able to keep pace, more or less, with the Corolla. Fortune played a role as well. When Bobbi Jo Jackson had cut across the construction site in Downsview—one of several unsuccessful diversionary tactics she attempted before heading out of Toronto—her front wheel kicked up a spike, which drilled a small puncture into her gas tank. After that she had to keep down her speed to conserve fuel. Even so, she was able to elude her pursuers long enough to pull off the highway and improvise a plug for the leak out of her thong and kazoo. But moments after she returned to the road, there they were again, in her rear-view mirror. Later on she was able to elude them for a second time. But now she was running low on gas. And when she stopped to fill up at a small convenience store just off the highway near Espanola (not far, as it happens, from the Ojibwa reserve where the Great White Moose spent the first, untroubled years of his life), the El Dorado and Mercedes shot past her. That gave her the opportunity to slip back a few kilometres and detour along an old logging road. But somehow, near Elliot Lake, Joel and the Executive Assistant to the Assistant Undersecretary of Transportation picked up her trail again. The chase resumed, continuing right through Sault Ste. Marie and on up the eastern shore of Lake Superior.

  Which is where we find them now:

  Swerving through a trailer park, where Joel and the Executive Assistant to the Assistant Undersecretary of Transportation flatten the shower stalls and slam into half a dozen mobile homes.

  On to a garbage dump, where Joel and the Executive Assistant to the Assistant Undersecretary of Transportation plough into a pyramid of discarded car parts, sending more than a dozen tires bouncing across the ground and onto the highway. One manages to find its way into the back seat of the Mercedes.

  Across the carefully manicured lawn and tennis court of a holiday resort (where remnants of the net end up entangled on the aerial of the Mercedes), and then down to the shore of Lake Superior, where Joel and the Executive Assistant to the Assistant Undersecretary of Transportation send tourists bouncing across the beach and onto the highway.

  It is at this point, amidst all the mayhem, that Bobbi Jo Jackson decides her best hope for escape is sheer speed. Normally, of course, the Corolla would be no match for a Mercedes and customized Cadillac. However, she made some adjustments to the engine after she picked up the car from the rental agency. The Corolla—for some reason she always asked for a Corolla—is capable of travelling much faster than the maximum 180 kilometres per hour indicated on the speedometer. She swings back onto the highway and slashes past a convoy of truck drivers, who stare at her in amazement. Her wheels seem to barely touch the asphalt. The way ahead looks clear.

  For more than half an hour she is able to run flat out. Then the highway starts to climb. A steep climb. On the right are trees and outcroppings of Canadian Shield granite. On the left is the awesome panorama of Lake Superior. Up and up the Corolla goes, higher and higher. Eventually the highway curves around a bend and then straightens out along a stretch that skirts the edge of a cliff. There is a l
ookout here where tourists can pull over and enjoy the spectacular view. Not that a man and woman travelling at speeds upwards of 280 kilometres an hour are likely to take advantage of that particular opportunity. But at least they appear to have escaped their pursuers. Bobbi Jo Jackson smiles as she virtually rises out of her seat to put full weight onto the accelerator. It takes her completely by surprise when Yale Templeton shouts, “Stop!!!”

  LXX

  The creature was every bit as majestic as Yale Templeton had imagined. Well, as majestic as a moose can be while rolling around in a wallow. A wallow, I might add, that included the last undigested bits of Lincoln’s briefs. Which presumably explains why the Great White Moose was so obviously filled with happiness.

  The wallow was in a clearing off to the right, elevated just a little above the highway. But after he stepped out of the car, Yale Templeton did not move toward the moose. Nor did he even bother to put on his orange balaclava or reach for his kazoo. He simply stood by the side of the road watching in mute admiration. The Great White Moose, if he noticed Yale Templeton at all, was evidently not the least bit concerned.

  Meanwhile, Bobbi Jo Jackson had sprinted back down the road and into the woods just a little past the bend. She found the decaying trunk of a tree that had been uprooted in a storm and dragged it out onto the highway. Then she ran back into the woods and rolled first one and then a second boulder out next to the tree trunk. “That should do it,” she said to herself, slapping her hands together. Then she scrambled back to the car and gathered up the jars of currant jelly, strawberry, raspberry, and apricot jam, honey, hot fudge, and marshmallow sauce (not to mention the litre-sized bottle of Mazola oil) that she had packed for the trip, that she packed for all their trips. She carried the containers down the highway and dumped them out in front of her makeshift barricade. Then she grabbed two flares from the glove compartment and concealed herself behind a large white pine.

  It was not long before the El Dorado came hurtling around the bend. She took aim with one of the flares and fired it directly at the windshield. “Christ!” shrieked Felicia Butterworth, as flames scorched the glass. The car started to plane through the Mazola oil, honey, preserves, and sauces. It caromed off one of the boulders, spun backwards, then slid sideways across the highway toward the edge of the cliff. “Hit the brakes! Hit the brakes!” screamed Felicia Butterworth. But Joel was remembering advice his father had given him some years earlier. “My boy,” his father had said, “if your car ever spins out of control on a slippery road, do not apply the brakes. Remain calm and turn your wheels in the direction of the skid.” Since Joel always made it a practice to ignore advice his parents gave him, he did as Felicia Butterworth ordered and slammed on the brakes. The El Dorado shuddered to a stop centimetres from the cliff, flipped up on its rear bumper, bounced backward across the highway, then finally came to a violent halt in a stand of fir trees. Car, driver, and passenger were all left upside down, the latter two seemingly as inanimate as the former; although, on a more positive note, at least they remained in compliance with the provision of the Ontario Highway Traffic Act requiring use of seatbelts at all times.

  Only seconds later the Mercedes also shot around the curve. Once again Bobbi Jo Jackson fired off a flare. Unlike Felicia Butterworth, the President did not panic, mainly because at that moment he was bent over painting Primal Chic polish on his toenails. “Damn!” he yelled, as the car started to slide and nail polish splashed up on the ruffled hem of his dress. As if in imitation of the El Dorado, the Mercedes planed through the Mazola oil and preserves and sauces, caromed off one of the boulders, spun backwards, then slid sideways across the highway toward the edge of the cliff. At that instance the Executive Assistant to the Assistant Undersecretary of Transportation remembered advice his father had given him many years earlier. “My boy,” his father had said, “if your car ever spins out of control on a slippery road, do not apply the brakes. Remain calm and turn your wheels in the direction of the skid.” Being a dutiful son, the Executive Assistant to the Assistant Undersecretary of Transportation had always done exactly as his parents had instructed. And so he allowed the car to continue spiralling. The Mercedes responded by executing a complete revolution and then coming to a standstill. However, its wheels continued to spin furiously, spitting up hot fudge and currant jelly and marshmallow sauce and Mazola oil. You might almost have thought it was taking a moment to consider its options. But then, as if bowing to the inevitable, it suddenly gripped the asphalt and rocketed ahead. Rocketed ahead straight over the precipice. Straight over the precipice, carrying its passenger and driver out into that oblivion to which, depending on your point of view, Divine Providence or the laws of physics so deservedly consigned them.

  Or perhaps not.

  LXXI

  Or perhaps not. Some weeks after the magnificent state funeral for the President, carried live on satellite TV around the world, the National Enquirer ran a special edition with the following headline emblazoned across the front page: “PRESIDENT ALIVE AND WELL IN CANADA!”

  The accompanying article, based on the testimony of an “eyewitness,” claimed that the President had not been killed in a car accident, as the White House had reported, but had faked his own death so that he could escape to Canada and realize his childhood dream of living as a transvestite. If that sounded strangely familiar, it was hardly a coincidence. The President had gone, the article said, to take up residence in the very same community of expatriate Americans that Abraham Lincoln had helped to establish in the wilderness of Northern Ontario more than a century before.

  Apparently in the first years of its existence the community had served solely as a refuge for transvestites. But Lincoln came to conceive of it as “a grand experiment in freedom.” Not freedom the way so many of his fellow countrymen had come to define it, as mere license to pursue material advantage without restraint. Rather, freedom as an alternative to the vacuousness of everyday life. Freedom of imagination. Freedom to choose a personal identity unconstrained by conventions of race, ethnicity, religion, or even sex.

  Of course, Lincoln was above all else a practical man. He recognized that, to create an environment in which imagination could soar, it would be necessary to adopt a social contract based on a realistic assessment of the human condition. In order to ensure that no person had to devote himself or herself exclusively to the necessary but mundane task of securing sustenance, the settlement would be a true commonwealth: a society in which material goods and the demands of labour would be equitably shared. Decision-making would be democratic, but approval of initiatives affecting the community as a whole would require consensus. In this Lincoln was drawing on the wisdom of the local Native population.

  Of course, it would be forbidden for one individual to exercise dominion over another. To Lincoln, slavery was the inevitable result of all systems of hierarchy. Mutually agreed upon fantasies were the only exceptions he was prepared to allow. So, to use one of his favourite examples, if a woman (or man, for that matter) adopted the identity of the Queen of England, that would be perfectly acceptable, provided she made no attempt to prevent those she thought of as her subjects from pursuing their own personally satisfying forms of self-imagining. In terms of religion, individuals were free to practice whatever rituals they wished in their own homes but not to preach or proselytize. So-called sacred texts, Lincoln believed, were best understood as products of the human imagination, no less, no more. All who joined the community were expected to concern themselves with the here and now, not the hereafter, which he regarded as unknown and unknowable.

  During the years that Lincoln remained alive, members of the community worked hard to turn his dream into a reality. But after his death, some of those who had been especially close to him became disheartened and returned to the United States. Left behind was a core group of only about a dozen settlers, bolstered from time to time by an unexpected arrival who had heard rumours about the “experiment in freedom.” The most notable and surpr
ising newcomer was President William McKinley, who, like Lincoln, staged his own assassination to cover his flight to Canada. However, during the early part of the twentieth century the population slowly dwindled, until by the 1930s there were only three men left and no women.

  The rejuvenation of the community can be traced to 1935, when the famed humorist Will Rogers, in the wake of reports that he had been killed in a plane crash, slipped into Canada, and with the help of an Ojibwa guide, located what remained of the settlement. He set about to revive Lincoln’s dream, a task made easier the following year when Amelia Earhart arrived and began airlifting in more disaffected Americans. Among her passengers were many well-known figures, including George Gershwin and Bessie Smith in 1937, and the brilliant blues guitarist Robert Johnson, a year later. Smith and Johnson had heard about Earhart’s “underground airline” through a grapevine tracing back to the days before the Civil War, when slaves from the Old South had escaped to freedom in Canada West.

  F. Scott Fitzgerald and Nathanael West reached the settlement together in 1940. They established a literary society, founded a small publishing house, and later collaborated on a novel based on life among the settlers, which painted a decidedly more optimistic view of human relations than either The Great Gatsby or Day of the Locust. Only a few years later the first professional athletes appeared, Lou Gehrig and Josh Gibson. The two renowned sluggers organized a softball league as well as a summer camp for children, both of which continue to this day. Glenn Miller arrived in late 1944, and during the following years took some of the burden for air transportation off the appreciative Earhart. Miller also brought his own mellow version of jazz to the community. Bebop followed in the person of Charlie Parker, who was of course attracted by the promise of artistic freedom. Parker recruited the young trumpet player Clifford Brown as well as Billie Holiday and the saxophonist Lester Young. Holiday and Young started up a small café, where they delighted patrons for many years with their haunting duets. It was just a two-minute stroll through the woods from the scaled-down version of Ryman Auditorium where Hank Williams performed.