The Lincoln Highway

by Amor Towles

  Once outside, Ulysses picked up his pace in order to put some distance between them and the warehouse. As before, they were walking in the narrow gap between the boxcars and the guardrail. But when they finally passed the locomotive, a great vista opened on their right.

  Anticipating Billy’s sense of wonder, this time Ulysses stopped.

  —The Hudson, he said, gesturing toward the river.

  After giving Billy a moment to appreciate the ocean liners, tugboats, and barges, Ulysses made eye contact with Emmett, then continued on. Understanding the point, Emmett took his brother by the hand.

  —Look how many ships there are, Billy said.

  —Come on, said Emmett. You can look at them while we walk.

  As Billy followed along, Emmett could hear him counting the vessels under his breath.

  After they had walked a bit, the way forward was blocked by a tall wire fence that transected the elevated from guardrail to guardrail. Stepping into the middle of the tracks, Ulysses took hold of a section of the fence that had been cut and pulled it back so that Emmett and Billy could pass through. On the other side, the rails continued receding southward, but they were overgrown with weeds and grass.

  —What happened to this stretch of the line? asked Emmett.

  —They don’t use it no more.

  —Why?

  —Things get used and then they don’t, said Ulysses in his impatient way.

  A few minutes later, Emmett could finally see where they were headed. On a siding that abutted the abandoned tracks was a makeshift encampment with a scattering of tents and lean-tos. As they drew closer, he could see the smoke rising from two separate fires and the rangy silhouettes of men in motion.

  Ulysses led them to the closer of the two fires, where two white tramps sat on a railroad tie eating from tin plates and a clean-shaven black man stirred the contents of a cast-iron pot. When the black man saw Ulysses, he smiled.

  —Well, look who we have here.

  —Hey, Stew, said Ulysses.

  But the cook’s expression of welcome transitioned to one of surprise when Emmett and Billy emerged from behind.

  —They’re with me, explained Ulysses.

  —Traveling with you? asked Stew.

  —Didn’t I just say so?

  —I guess you did. . . .

  —There space over by your hut?

  —I believe there is.

  —I’ll go see. In the meantime, why don’t you fix us something to eat.

  —The boys too?

  —The boys too.

  It seemed to Emmett that Stew was about to express surprise again, then thought better of it. The tramps who had stopped eating looked on with interest when Ulysses drew open a pouch that had been in his pocket. It took a moment for Emmett to realize that Ulysses intended to pay for his and his brother’s meal.

  —Wait, Emmett said. Let us pay for you, Ulysses.

  Removing the five-dollar bill that Parker had stuffed in his shirt pocket, Emmett took a few steps forward and held it out to Stew. As he did so, he realized it wasn’t a five-dollar bill. It was a fifty.

  Stew and Ulysses both stared at the bill for a moment, then Stew looked to Ulysses, who in turn looked to Emmett.

  —Put that away, he said sternly.

  Feeling the color rising to his face again, Emmett returned the money to his pocket. Only once he had done so did Ulysses turn back to Stew and pay for the three meals. Then he addressed Billy and Emmett together in his presumptive fashion.

  —I’m going to claim us some ground. You two sit and have something to eat. I’ll be back in a minute.

  As Emmett watched Ulysses walk off, he was disinclined to sit or to eat. But Billy already had a plate of chili and cornbread in his lap and Stew was fixing another.

  —It’s as good as Sally’s, Billy said.

  Telling himself it was the polite thing to do, Emmett accepted the plate.

  With the first bite he realized how hungry he was. It had been some hours since they had eaten the last of the food from the Pullman car. And Billy was right. The chili was as good as Sally’s. Maybe better. From the smokiness, you could tell that Stew used a good deal of bacon, and the beef seemed of surprisingly good quality. When Stew offered to bring a second helping, Emmett didn’t object.

  As Emmett waited for the return of his plate, he cautiously studied the two tramps who were sitting on the other side of the fire. Given their worn clothing and unshaven faces, it was hard to tell how old they were, though Emmett suspected they were younger than they appeared.

  The tall, thin one on the left was not paying Emmett or his brother any heed, almost purposefully. But the one on the right, who was smiling in their direction, suddenly waved.

  Billy waved back.

  —Welcome, weary travelers, he called across the fire. From where do you hail?

  —Nebraska, Billy called back.

  —Nebraskee! replied the tramp. Plenty’s the time I’ve been to Nebraskee. What brings you to the Big Apple?

  —We’ve come to get Emmett’s car, said Billy. So we can drive to California.

  At the mention of the car, the tall tramp who’d been ignoring them looked up with sudden interest.

  Emmett put a hand on his brother’s knee.

  —We’re just passing through, he said.

  —Then you’ve come to the right spot, said the smiling one. There’s no better place in the world for passing through.

  —Then why can’t you seem to pass through it, said the tall one.

  The smiling man turned to his neighbor with a frown, but before he could respond, the tall one looked at Billy.

  —You’ve come for your car, you say?

  Emmett was about to interject, but Ulysses was suddenly standing at the edge of the fire, looking down at the tall man’s plate.

  —Looks like you’re done with your supper, he said.

  The two tramps both looked up at Ulysses.

  —I’m done when I say I’m done, said the tall one.

  Then he tossed his plate on the ground.

  —Now I’m done.

  When the tall one got up, the smiling man winked at Billy and rose as well.

  Ulysses watched the two of them walk away, then he sat on the tie where they’d been sitting and stared across the fire at Emmett, pointedly.

  —I know, said Emmett. I know.

  Woolly

  If it had been up to Woolly, they wouldn’t have spent the night in Manhattan. They wouldn’t even have driven through it. They would have gone straight to his sister’s house in Hastings-on-Hudson, and from there to the Adirondacks.

  The problem with Manhattan, from Woolly’s point of view, the problem with Manhattan was that it was so terribly permanent. What with its towers made of granite and all the miles of pavement stretching as far as the eye can see. Why, every single day, millions of people went pounding along the sidewalks and across the marble-floored lobbies without even putting a dent in them. To make matters worse, Manhattan was absotively filled with expectations. There were so many expectations, they had to build the buildings eighty stories high so they would have enough room to stack them one on top of the other.

  But Duchess wanted to see his father, so they took the Lincoln Highway to the Lincoln Tunnel, and the Lincoln Tunnel under the Hudson River, and now here they were.

  If they were going to be in Manhattan, thought Woolly as he propped up his pillow, at least this was the way to do it. Because once they emerged from the Lincoln Tunnel, Duchess had not taken a left and headed uptown. Instead, he had taken a right and driven all the way down to the Bowery, a street on which Woolly had never been, to visit his father at a little hotel, of which Woolly had never heard. And then, while Woolly was sitting in the lobby looking out at all the activity in the street, he happened to see a fellow wa
lking by with a stack of newspapers—a fellow in a baggy coat and floppy hat.

  —The Birdman! exclaimed Woolly to the window. What an extraordinary coincidence!

  Leaping from his chair, he rapped on the glass. Only to discover when the fellow turned about that he wasn’t the Birdman, after all. But having been rapped at, the fellow entered the lobby with his stack of papers and made a beeline for Woolly’s chair.

  If Duchess was, as he liked to say, allergic to books, Woolly had a related affliction. He was allergic to the daily news. In New York City, things were happening all the time. Things that you were expected not only to be knowledgeable about, but on which you were expected to have an opinion that you could articulate at a moment’s notice. In fact, so many things were happening at such a rapid pace, they couldn’t come close to fitting them all in a single newspaper. New York had the Times, of course, the paper of record, but in addition, it had the Post, the Daily News, the Herald Tribune, the Journal-American, the World-Telegram, and the Mirror. And those were just the ones that Woolly could think of off the top of his head.

  Each of these enterprises had a battalion of men covering beats, questioning sources, hunting down leads, and writing copy until well after supper. Each ran presses in the middle of the night and rushed off delivery trucks in every conceivable direction so that the news of the day would be on your doorstep when you woke at the crack of dawn in order to catch the 6:42.

  The very thought of it sent chills down Woolly’s spine. So, as the baggy-coated fellow approached with his stack of newspapers, Woolly was ready to send him on his way.

  But as it turned out, the baggy-coated fellow wasn’t selling today’s newspapers. He was selling yesterday’s newspapers. And the day before yesterday’s. And the day before that!

  —It’s three cents for yesterday’s Times, he explained, two cents for two days ago, a penny for three days ago, or a nickel for all three.

  Well, that’s a different kettle of fish altogether, thought Woolly. News that was one, two, and three days old didn’t arrive with anywhere near the same sense of urgency as the news of the day. In fact, you could hardly call it news. And you didn’t have to receive an A in Mr. Kehlenbeck’s math class to know that getting three papers for a nickel was a bargain. But, alas, Woolly didn’t have any money.

  Or did he . . . ?

  For the first time since putting on Mr. Watson’s pants, Woolly put his hands in Mr. Watson’s pockets. And would you believe, would you actually believe that out of the right-hand pocket came some rumpled bills.

  —I’ll take all three, said Woolly, with enthusiasm.

  When the fellow handed Woolly the papers, Woolly handed him a dollar, adding magnanimously that he could keep the change. And though the fellow was pleased as could be, Woolly was fairly certain that he had gotten the better part of the deal.

  * * *

  • • •

  Suffice it to say, when evening arrived and Duchess was running around Manhattan in search of his father, and Woolly was lying on his bed with his pillow propped and the radio on, having taken two extra drops of medicine from the extra bottle he’d put in Emmett’s book bag, he turned his attention to the newspaper of three days past.

  And what a difference three days made. Not only did the news seem much less pressing, if you chose your headlines carefully, the stories often had a touch of the fantastic. Like this one from Sunday’s front page:

  ATOM SUBMARINE PROTOTYPE SIMULATES A DIVE TO EUROPE

  This story went on to explain how the first atomic submarine had completed the equivalent of a voyage across the Atlantic—while somewhere in the middle of the Idaho desert! The whole premise struck Woolly as incredible as something you’d find in Billy’s big red book.

  And then there was this one from the front page of two days past.

  CIVIL DEFENSE TEST IS AT 10 A.M. TODAY

  Normally, defense and test were just the sort of words that made Woolly uneasy and generally prompted him to skip an article altogether. But in the two-day-old Times, the article went on to explain that in the course of this test, a fleet of imaginary enemy planes would be dropping imaginary atomic bombs on fifty-four cities, causing imaginary devastation all across America. In New York City alone, three different imaginary bombs were to drop, one of which was to land imaginarily at the intersection of Fifty-Seventh Street and Fifth Avenue—right in front of Tiffany’s, of all places. As part of the test, when the warning alarm sounded, all normal activities in the fifty-four cities were to be suspended for ten minutes.

  —All normal activities suspended for ten minutes, read Woolly out loud. Can you imagine?

  Somewhat breathlessly, Woolly turned to yesterday’s paper in order to see what had happened. And there on the front page—above the fold, as they say—was a photograph of Times Square with two police officers looking up the length of Broadway and not another living soul in sight. No one gazing in the window of the tobacconist. No one coming out of the Criterion Theatre or going into the Astor Hotel. No one ringing a cash register or dialing a telephone. Not one single person hustling, or bustling, or hailing a cab.

  What a strange and beautiful sight, thought Woolly. The city of New York silent, motionless, and virtually uninhabited, sitting perfectly idle, without the hum of a single expectation for the very first time since its founding.

  Duchess

  After getting Woolly settled in his room with a few drops of medicine and the radio tuned to a commercial, I made my way to a dive called the Anchor on West Forty-Fifth Street in Hell’s Kitchen. With dim lighting and indifferent clientele, it was just the sort of place my old man liked—a spot where a has-been could sit at the bar and rail against life’s iniquities without fear of interruption.

  According to Bernie, Fitzy and my old man were in the habit of meeting here every night around eight o’clock and drinking for as long as their money held out. Sure enough, at 7:59 the door swung open and in shuffled Fitzy, right on cue.

  You could tell he was a regular from the way that everyone ignored him. All things considered, he hadn’t aged so badly. His hair was a little thinner and his nose a little redder, but you could still see a bit of the Old Saint Nick hiding under the surface, if you squinted hard enough.

  Walking right past me, he squeezed between two stools, spread some nickels on the bar, and ordered a shot of whiskey—in a highball glass.

  A shot looks so measly in a highball glass, it struck me as an odd request for Fitzy to make. But when he lifted the drink from the bar, I could see his fingers trembling ever so slightly. No doubt he had learned the hard way that when a shot is served in a shot glass it’s a lot easier to spill.

  With his whiskey safely in hand, Fitzy retreated to a table in the corner with two seats. It was clearly the spot where he and my father were in the habit of drinking, because once he got comfortable, Fitzy raised his glass to the empty chair. He must be the last living soul on earth, I thought, who would raise a glass to Harry Hewett. As he began to move the whiskey to his lips, I joined him.

  —Hello, Fitzy.

  Fitzy froze for a moment and stared over the top of the glass. Then for what must have been the first time in his life, he put his glass back on the table without having taken a drink.

  —Hey, Duchess, he said. I almost didn’t recognize you. You’ve gotten so much bigger.

  —It’s all the manual labor. You should try it some time.

  Fitzy looked down at his drink, then at the bartender, then at the door to the street. When he had run out of places to look, he looked back at me.

  —Well, it’s nice to see you, Duchess. What brings you to town?

  —Oh, this and that. I need to see a friend up in Harlem tomorrow, but I’m also looking for my old man. He and I have got a little unfinished business, as it were. Unfortunately, he checked out of the Sunshine Hotel in such a hurry, he forgot to leave me word of where he was
going. But I figured if anyone in the city of New York would know where Harry was, it would be his old pal Fitzy.

  Fitzy was shaking his head before I finished speaking.

  —No, he said. I don’t know where your father is, Duchess. I haven’t seen him in weeks.

  Then he looked at his untouched drink with a downcast expression.

  —Where are my manners, I said. Let me buy you a drink.

  —Oh, that’s okay. I still have this one.

  —That little thing? It hardly does you justice.

  Getting up, I went to the bar and asked the bartender for a bottle of whatever Fitzy was drinking. When I came back, I pulled the cork and filled his glass to the brim.

  —That’s more like it, I said as he looked down at the whiskey without a smile.

  What a cruel irony, I thought to myself. I mean, here was the very thing that Fitzy had been dreaming of for half his life. Prayed for even. A highball glass filled to the top with whiskey—and at someone else’s expense, no less. But now that it was sitting there in front of him, he wasn’t so sure that he wanted it.

  —Go on, I encouraged. There’s no need to stand on ceremony.

  Almost reluctantly, he raised the glass and tipped it in my direction. The gesture wasn’t quite as heartfelt as the one he’d shown my old man’s empty chair, but I expressed my gratitude nonetheless.

  This time, when the glass made it to his lips he took a healthy swallow, like he was making up for the drink he hadn’t taken before. Then, setting the glass down, he looked at me and waited. Because that’s what has-beens do: They wait.