A House Divided

by Jonathan F. Putnam

  Lincoln finished his document. He held it up to the light and read it over quickly, his lips moving slightly as he did. He blew on the sheet to dry the ink and handed it to Hay.

  “You’re to deliver this immediately to Browning. Tell him it’s my answer to his motion in the second Wrenwag matter.”

  Hay bobbed his head up and down, swallowing rapidly. The office boy was of sixteen years, thin as a willow and flighty as a hummingbird. He hoped to read law one day and join the bar himself, but I thought this prospect very dim as I watched him stand nervously in Lincoln’s shadow.

  Lincoln looked up at the boy, surprised to see him still at his side. “Get going!” Hay gasped and flittered past me. “Remember—the second Wrenwag matter,” Lincoln called as Hay disappeared through the door. Lincoln pulled out a blank sheet of paper and began scratching away again.

  “I hate to interrupt,” I said, “but I think you should come at once, Lincoln. With apologies to your suit, Belmont.”

  “Come where?” asked Lincoln.

  “To Mary’s—Miss Todd’s—house. She and my sister found something important for Archibald’s case.”

  Lincoln’s head shot around. He pushed himself rapidly to his feet, and his chair toppled over and clattered to the floor. A shout of “Quiet!” carried through the boards.

  “You sought out Miss Todd again?” Lincoln asked. His prominent jaw was clenched and the muscles in his neck bulged.

  “Not exactly,” I said, taking a step back at the force of Lincoln’s challenge. “I was taking a turn around the square when I came upon her. She was with my sister and Miss Matilda Edwards. Quite a sight, actually, the three of them stuck in the mud.”

  “Tell me what happened,” demanded Lincoln, a deep frown creasing his face.

  Belmont gathered his walking stick and rose to his feet, giving a little cough. “I’ve just recalled another appointment,” he said unconvincingly. “We’ll find another time to resume, Lincoln. Good day, Speed.” Neither Lincoln nor I turned his direction as the door closed in his wake.

  I explained to Lincoln about the trunk Mary and Martha had found. Scowling, he put on his coat and followed me out the door. We slopped through the muck and mire up to Quality Hill, barely exchanging two words. An angry conversation raged inside my head, where I imagined Lincoln’s voice telling me to stay away from Miss Todd while my voice answered that he was being presumptuous in the extreme. There had been no resolution to my internal debate by the time we reached the top of the hill.

  We made much faster progress through the mud than could Hart’s sturdy draft horse, burdened by his cart and its cargo and passengers, and we reached the curving drive in front of the Edwards home just before Hart did. Lincoln and the ladies exchanged greetings, and Lincoln held out his hand and helped them down in turn from the back of the cart.

  “Do you want to change first?” I asked, gesturing at their muddy clothes.

  “To the contrary,” said Mary, “we’re perfectly dressed to go mucking around in a barn.” Martha smiled in agreement.

  “I’ve had enough adventure for one day,” said Miss Edwards. She lifted her ruined skirts as she headed for the front door.

  “Don’t tell my sister or brother-in-law we’re out here,” Mary called. “You can say you turned around first and that Miss Speed and I will be on our way back soon enough.”

  “Speed told me you’d found a trunk belonging to William Trailor,” Lincoln said to Mary. “Can you show us?”

  “This way,” said Miss Todd. She and Martha linked arms, while Lincoln and I trailed after them, not deigning to look at each other.

  The barn was located on the eastern slope of Quality Hill, off to the side of the Edwards house. As the prevailing winds in central Illinois blew from west to east, all men who could constructed their barns to the east of their houses, so that the winds would carry the pungent smells of the barnyard away from their dwelling places. It was a one-story “English barn,” a framed, side-gabled structure divided into three bays. It was well made, with regular oak joists, beams, and overhead trusses. The peaked ceiling was open to the rafters. The scent of fresh manure hung in the air.

  We entered the center bay, the widest one, which featured double doors at either end to allow carriages to be driven in and out. The Edwardses’ coupe carriage, the same one I’d seen picking up Martha at the Hutchason house several days earlier, stood in the middle of the bay. The black paint on the side panels and four wheels shone and the window glass of the enclosed compartment glistened.

  “The trunk’s up there,” said Martha, pointing to a hayloft in one of the side bays.

  Lincoln and I hurried after one other and climbed the ladder that had been built into the wall. It was a small, rectangular platform, covered by a broad pile of loose hay several feet deep. Both of us had to stoop to avoid the low, slanted roof.

  “Under the hay,” called Martha. “We buried it again, after we found it locked.” Lincoln and I dug through the hay and soon struck something solid. The trunk was a rectangular box, constructed of polished elm and held together by banded iron straps. It measured about four feet wide and three feet high and deep. A shacklebolt lock hung from its latch.

  “It’s too small to hold a body,” said Lincoln, his voice touched with irritation.

  “That’s what the women said,” I replied, nodding at them, below us on the ground level. “But if it’s William Trailor’s, there’s no telling what might be inside. Something proving his guilt, I don’t doubt. And therefore something exonerating Archibald. Let’s get it open at once.”

  But Lincoln took a step back. “I can’t be party to breaking into another man’s possessions,” he said. “Especially one charged with a crime and represented by other counsel. Perhaps if we sought Conkling’s blessing—”

  “Turn around,” I ordered, and after a slight pause Lincoln complied. I’d seen a loose nail among the hay straws, and I grabbed it and started working on the lock. There was a satisfying click. “Hoy, now! The trunk wasn’t locked after all.” I threw open the lid. “Let’s have a look.”

  Lincoln and I swore.

  “What is it?” shouted Martha and Mary from below.

  I reached in and carefully pulled out a bone-handled pistol. There was a box of ammunition of a sort I carried in my store next to the gun, and I grabbed that as well. I held up the weapon so the ladies could see it.

  “Is it loaded?” asked Martha.

  I shook the pistol and cracked open the barrel. “No.” I sniffed the end of the barrel. “But it was discharged not long ago, I’d judge.” I opened the ammunition box; five balls rolled around, not the six it was sold with. “And a ball is missing, too.”

  “So William Trailor shot Fisher with his gun,” said Martha. “It practically proves Archibald’s innocence!”

  “I’m afraid it does no such thing,” said Lincoln from behind me. He was still crouched down, sorting through the rest of the trunk. “For one thing, Henry said Fisher was suffocated, not shot. Isn’t that right, Speed?”

  I allowed that it was.

  “For another,” continued Lincoln, as he swung the trunk lid shut and relocked the lock, “even if someone was shot with that gun, there’s no proving William pulled the trigger.” He started to climb down the ladder and motioned that I should follow.

  Mary and Martha exchanged disappointed glances, the thrill of finding a useful clue ebbing away. “Still, it’s something,” I said. “And we have Miss Todd and Miss Speed to thank for its discovery.”

  “What else was inside the trunk, Mr. Lincoln?” asked Martha.

  “What you’d expect from a canal contractor’s traveling trunk. Several changes of work clothes. Maps. A shovel for exploratory digging. And surveyor tools—a compass and chain. I know them all too well myself from my time fighting through the brambles. There’s nothing to suggest anything other than the story William Trailor told to Ninian.”

  Martha’s face fell further.

  “But t
he pistol,” I said. “Surely that’s not a contractor’s tool.”

  “I suspect it is in many parts of the state. You’ve led us on a wild-goose chase, Speed. A waste of time I didn’t have. I’ll go inside and give Ninian the weapon and balls for safekeeping. Then I need to return to my office.”

  CHAPTER 19

  Back inside Hoffman’s Row, Lincoln and I confronted each other across his worktable. The argument that had previously existed only inside my head burst out into the open.

  “There was no call to criticize me in front of the women,” I said. “I wanted to learn at once what was in the trunk they found. I was trying to help you and Archibald. A fine thing, seeing how busy you seem to be with your other obligations.” I gestured at the papers and pleadings strewn across his table.

  Lincoln was pacing back and forth, agitated. He hadn’t said a word on our walk back down the hill, but now he expelled his breath loudly. “You should have come for me as soon as you heard Miss Todd might have learned something of importance.”

  “I did. And why does it matter, anyway, if I learned it from Miss Todd, as opposed to from any other person in town?”

  “Don’t take me for a fool, Speed. And don’t be one yourself.”

  I felt emotions welling up inside me. Anger—fury, even. At Lincoln. And then at myself. Why was I letting him speak to me like this? On what basis, exactly, did he purport to inhabit the moral high ground?

  “I happened upon Miss Todd on the square,” I said deliberately, holding my tone as level as I could. “She told me William Trailor had asked Ninian for a place to store a trunk. I thought you might think that significant.”

  “What I find significant, Speed,” said Lincoln, his eyes boring in on mine, “is that you have the leisure time to engage in so much frivolity and casual conversation. Meanwhile, I am hard at work at my profession, trying to save people’s lives. Do you know, I have not had a single conversation with a member of the female sex since the gathering at the American House? I haven’t had the time.”

  “And you blame me for that?” I put my hands on the edge of the table and leaned forward. “You blame me for your unartfulness when it comes to dealing with women?”

  “I blame you for a lack of true friendship,” Lincoln said, leaning forward himself, so that our faces were only a few feet apart, although the table remained between us. I could hear his fast, shallow breathing. “A true friend would not be pursuing Miss Todd with the zeal you’re showing. Would not be pursuing her at all, in point of fact.”

  I felt the blood pulsating at my temples, and I knew I was losing control of my emotion. “Merely because you command it to be so?” I fairly shouted.

  “You know my feelings for her, Joshua. I would have hoped that knowledge would be sufficient for you to stand down.” Lincoln’s fingers were pressing into the tabletop with such force that his knuckles were turning white.

  “But you know I harbor similar interests myself. Surely it’s for the lady to make up her own mind.”

  “Do you ‘harbor’ them, Speed, or do they merely flit through your mind, as does so much else? Meanwhile, my intentions regarding Miss Todd are steady and true.”

  “Your intentions? Why should those matter to me? I say to hell with your intentions!” I could barely hear my own shout over the rush of blood in my head.

  Lincoln sighed, and he leaned back and spoke in a quieter voice. “Something’s changed with you, Joshua. I cannot but think your family would be aggrieved if they could see you now.”

  For the briefest of moments, Lincoln’s words registered, and I knew in that instant that the first of his sentiments certainly was true and that the second one might be as well. But then I lost the capacity for any thought. I launched myself across the table, scattering Lincoln’s precious stacks of papers, toppling him onto the floor, and landing on top of him. I could feel his ribs protruding through his miserable, worn coat.

  “Don’t you dare speak of my family!” I shouted.

  Lincoln shouted something in reply, but I could no longer process words. The entire world was emotion. Rage. Hatred. Heartache.

  I threw my fists at my friend with as much force as I could muster, striking his face, torso, legs—anything I could reach. At first it seemed Lincoln was merely trying to hold me at bay, but then I felt him striking me in return. He managed to roll over on top of me, such that my back was against the floorboards while he loomed high above and matched me blow for blow.

  All the while we were shouting terrible things at each other. Things I doubted could ever be taken back.

  There was a loud crash from the side of the room, and we both paused from the struggle. Judge Treat stood in the doorway, breathing heavily, his long black robe billowing behind him and his red face bursting with anger.

  “Stop it!” bellowed Treat. “Stop this nonsense at once!”

  Lincoln rolled away from me, pushed himself to his feet, and straightened his clothes. His face was bruised, his right eye was starting to turn purple, and a trickle of blood ran from his nose. I imagined I looked about the same.

  “I am ever so sorry, Your Honor,” said Lincoln. He wiped the blood off his face with his sleeve. “I hope we haven’t disturbed you.”

  “You’re goddamned right, you’ve disturbed me,” Treat hollered. “I am trying to conduct the judicial business of the county, but all we can hear in the courtroom is the din and racket from above. What in the name of the devil himself is going on?”

  I lay on the floor, my heart beating wildly. My mind was a conflagration.

  “I do apologize, Your Honor,” said Lincoln. “I tripped over my own chair, Judge, and I must have called out involuntarily in the course of my fall. Speed here was just helping me to my feet.”

  The judge stared at Lincoln, looked down at me, and then back at Lincoln. Shaking his head furiously, he slammed the door shut.

  CHAPTER 20

  In the week that followed, I learned it is possible to share a room—indeed, a bed—with another man and yet go through life without sharing a single word, or glance, or emotion with that same man. Lincoln and I slept, woke, and dressed side by side, without ever once making a human connection with one another.

  By habit, we would head down the back stairs from our bedroom one after the other in the morning and walk in silence to the Globe. But upon entering the public room, I peeled off to sit at a small table near the front door, while Lincoln proceeded to what had been our usual spot at the long common table in back. On the first day this happened, the innkeeper Saunders called out in surprise and nearly dragged me to my normal seat opposite Lincoln. Only Lincoln’s gloomy, stony glare alerted him that he should desist. By the third day, Saunders had accepted the new routine without comment.

  I spent my days behind the counter of A.Y. Ellis & Co., trying to keep my place in small talk with my customers even though my thoughts were elsewhere. I felt simultaneously hot with anger and cold with sorrow, the hot and cold seeping down into the very marrow of my bones. I replayed the fight endlessly in my mind. At times I was sure Lincoln alone had been to blame: had it not been for his pretense, his imperiousness, punches never would have been thrown. But other times I recognized I had acted shabbily and bore an equal measure of blame. And one evening, as I sat alone on a bench at the Globe and stared at my bowl of cabbage soup until it had gone cold as winter, I convinced myself I had been wholly in the wrong. Certainly, there was no evading the truth that I had struck the first blow.

  I considered whether I should apologize to Lincoln, but whenever I had finally decided to do so, my pride took over and argued my intellect out of the decision. After several turns around the same circle inside my mind, I reached an internal truce: I would apologize, just as soon as it was evident Lincoln was willing to make an apology to me. But I saw no sign he was, and that was that.

  As far as I knew, Lincoln was busy with his law practice. He dressed for court every morning, sliding his black frockcoat over his bony shoulders. And he
came to our bed late at night, several hours after I had retired, as was his habit when the Circuit Court was in session. When he wasn’t looking, I tried to discern his sentiment by examining the corners of his eyes, which often gave away his inner mood. But I found I could not read them without facing him directly, and I wasn’t about to take that step.

  Martha, of course, noticed right away the change that had overtaken us. “Is there something funny between you and Mr. Lincoln?” she asked as she came into the store several days after our fight. Martha and I hadn’t seen each other since we’d left the Edwards barn upon examining William Trailor’s trunk.

  “No. Why do you ask?”

  “He came to visit Archibald at the jail cell yesterday evening, to talk about the case. I was surprised you weren’t with him.”

  “I was busy.”

  “With what?” Martha stared at me intently, hands on her hips.

  “With … I don’t remember. What does it matter?”

  “Archibald is suffering in jail and needs all the help he can get. I thought you were committed to his cause.”

  “You know I am.” I paused. “I doubt Lincoln learned much of use from talking to him anyway. I imagine William took over the conversation and turned it to how Lincoln could get him freed, Archibald be damned.”

  Martha gaped at me with wide eyes. “But surely you know William is no longer in the cell?”

  “What!”

  She nodded. “It happened the very day we all searched the Edwards barn, although I didn’t learn about it until after I returned home. William spent the whole time during the rainstorm screaming at the top of his voice for the sheriff to move him to alternate quarters. It got so bad that a group of the sheriff’s neighbors came over to complain.”

  “So where is he now?”

  “After the storm finally passed, the sheriff got together with Mayor May. They decided William could be placed in the new jail cell in the basement of the capitol building until trial. Big Red said it was complete enough to hold William securely for a few weeks. He can’t complain about the elements there. And it’s way down in the foundation, so William won’t bother anyone even if he starts yelling again. Mr. Lincoln told me he was happy to agree to the transfer, as it will let him work with Archibald without interference to prepare for the trial.”