The Lincoln Highway

by Amor Towles

  That it is his car is precisely my point. (Woolly’s brother-in-law always made his points precisely. Even when he was very, very upset, he was very, very precise.) When a young man is fortunate enough to be given something of great value from his own father, he should treat it with respect. And if he doesn’t know how to treat it with respect, then he doesn’t deserve to have it at all.

  Oh, Dennis, said Sarah. It’s not a Manet, for God’s sake. It’s a machine.

  Machines are the foundation of everything this family has, said “Dennis.”

  And everything it hasn’t, said Sarah.

  There she goes again, thought Woolly with a smile.

  —May I? asked Duchess, gesturing to the car.

  —What’s that? Oh, yes. Of course, of course.

  Duchess reached for the handle of the driver’s door, hesitated, then took a step to his right and opened the door to the back.

  —After you, he said with a flourish.

  Woolly slid into the back seat and Duchess slid in after him. After closing the door, Duchess gave a sigh of appreciation.

  —Forget the Studebaker, he said. This is how Emmett should arrive in Hollywood.

  —Billy and Emmett are going to San Francisco, Woolly pointed out.

  —Either way. This is how they should make the trip to California.

  —If Billy and Emmett would like to make the trip to California in the Cadillac, they’re welcome to do so.

  —On the level?

  —Nothing would make me happier, assured Woolly. The only problem is that the Cadillac is much older than the Studebaker, so it probably wouldn’t get them to California anywhere near as quickly.

  —Maybe so, said Duchess. But in a car like this, what’s the rush.

  * * *

  • • •

  As it turned out, the door inside the garage was locked, so Woolly and Duchess went back outside, and Woolly took a seat on the front step beside the flowerpots as Duchess removed the bags from the trunk.

  —It could take me a few hours, said Duchess. Are you sure you’re going to be all right?

  —Most definitely, said Woolly. I’ll just wait here until my sister comes back. I’m sure she won’t be long.

  Woolly watched as Duchess got in the Studebaker and backed out of the driveway with a wave. Once alone, Woolly retrieved the extra bottle of medicine from the book bag, unscrewed the eyedropper, and squeezed a few extra drops onto the tip of his tongue. Then he took a moment to admire the enthusiasm of the sunshine.

  —There is nothing more enthusiastic than sunshine, he said to himself. And no one more reliable than grass.

  At the word reliable, Woolly suddenly thought of his sister Sarah, who was another paragon of reliability. Putting the bottle in his pocket, he stood, lifted, and looked—and, sure enough, waiting patiently under the flowerpot was the key to his sister’s house. All keys look alike, of course, but Woolly could tell that this one was the key to his sister’s house because it turned in the lock.

  Opening the door, Woolly stepped inside and paused.

  —Hallo? he called. Hallo, hallo?

  Just to be certain, Woolly gave a fourth hallo into the hallway that led to the kitchen, and another up the stairs. Then he waited to see if anyone would answer.

  As he waited and listened, he happened to look down at the little table at the bottom of the staircase where a telephone sat. Shiny, smooth, and black, it looked like a younger cousin of the Cadillac. One thing about it that wasn’t shiny, smooth, and black was the little rectangle of paper in the middle of the dial on which the phone number of the house had been written in a delicate hand—so that the phone would know exactly who it was, thought Woolly.

  When no one answered Woolly’s hallo, he stepped into the large, sunlit room on his left.

  —This is the living room, he said, as if he were giving himself a tour.

  Not much had changed in the room since he had been there last. His grandfather’s grandfather clock was still by the window unwound. The piano was still in the corner unplayed. And the books still sat on their shelves unread.

  One thing different was that there was now a giant oriental fan in front of the fireplace, as if the fireplace were shy of its appearance. Woolly wondered if it was there all the time, or if his sister removed it in winter so that they could build a fire. But if she did remove it, where did she put it? It seemed so delicate and awkward. Perhaps it could be folded up like a normal fan, thought Woolly, and tucked away in a drawer.

  Satisfied with this notion, Woolly took a moment to wind the clock, then exited the living room and continued with his tour.

  —This is the dining room, he said, where you will have dinner on birthdays and holidays. . . . Here is the only door in the house that doesn’t have a doorknob and that swings back and forth. . . . And this is the kitchen. . . . And this is the back hallway. . . . And here is “Dennis’s” office, in which no one is supposed to go.

  Working his way through the rooms in this manner, Woolly completed a circuit such that he was right back at the foot of the stairs.

  —And this is the staircase, he said as he ascended it. This is the hall. This is my sister and “Dennis’s” room. This is the bathroom. And here . . .

  Woolly stopped before a door that was slightly ajar. Easing it open, he entered a room that both was and wasn’t what he expected.

  For while his bed was still there, it had been moved to the center of the room and was covered with a great big piece of canvas. The canvas, which was a dingy white, had been splattered with hundreds of blue and gray driplets—like one of those paintings at the Museum of Modern Art. The closet, where Woolly’s dress shirts and jackets had hung, was utterly empty. Not even a hanger had been left behind, or the box of mothballs that used to hide in the shadows of the upper shelf.

  Three of the room’s four walls were still white, but one of them—the one where the ladder was standing—was now blue. A bright friendly blue, like the blue of Emmett’s car.

  Woolly couldn’t take issue with the fact that his closet was empty or that his bed was under a tarp because the room both was and wasn’t his. When his mother had remarried and moved to Palm Beach, Sarah had let him use this room. She had let him use it over the Thanksgiving and Easter vacations, and for those weeks when he had left one boarding school and had yet to go to the next. Even though Sarah had encouraged him to think of the room as his own, he had always known that it wasn’t meant to be a forever room, at least not for him. It was meant to be a forever room for somebody else.

  From the lumpy shape of the tarp, Woolly could tell that some boxes had been stacked on the bed before it had been covered—giving it the appearance of a very little barge.

  Checking first to make sure that none of the driplets on the tarp were wet, Woolly folded it back. On the bed were four cardboard boxes with his name written on them.

  Woolly paused for a moment to marvel at the handwriting. For even though his name had been written in letters two inches tall with a big black marker, you could still tell it was his sister’s handwriting—the very same handwriting that had been used to write the tiny little numbers on the tiny little rectangle in the telephone dial. Isn’t that interesting, thought Woolly, that a person’s handwriting is the same no matter how big or small.

  Reaching out to open the box that was nearest, Woolly hesitated. He suddenly remembered the troubling theory of Schrödinger’s Cat, which had been described by Professor Freely in physics class. In this theory, a physicist named Schrödinger had posited (that was the word that Professor Freely used: posited) that there was a cat with some poison in a box in a state of benign uncertainty. But once you opened the box, then the cat would either be purring or poisoned. So it was with a touch of caution that any man should venture to open a box, even if it was one that had his name on it. Or perhaps, especially if it had his name
on it.

  Steeling his nerves, Woolly opened the lid and breathed a sigh of relief. Inside were all the clothes that had been in the bureau that was and wasn’t his. In the box below, Woolly found all of the things that had been on top of the bureau. Like the old cigar box, and the bottle of aftershave that he had been given for Christmas and never used, and the runner-up’s trophy from the tennis club with the little golden man who would be serving a tennis ball for all eternity. And at the very bottom of the box was the dark blue dictionary that Woolly’s mother had conferred upon him when he was headed off to boarding school for the very first time.

  Woolly took the dictionary out and felt its reassuring heft in his hands. How he had loved this dictionary—because its purpose was to tell you exactly what a word meant. Pick a word, turn to the appropriate page, and there was the word’s meaning. And if there was a word in the definition you didn’t recognize, you could look up that word to find out exactly what it meant.

  When his mother had given him the dictionary, it had been part of a set—tucked in a slipcase alongside a matching thesaurus. And as much as Woolly had loved the dictionary, he had loathed the thesaurus. Just the thought of it gave him the heebie-jeebies. Because the whole purpose of it seemed to be the opposite of the dictionary’s. Instead of telling you exactly what a word meant, it took a word and gave you ten other words that could be used in its place.

  How was one to communicate an idea to another person if when one had something to say, one could choose from ten different words for every word in a sentence? The number of potential variations boggled the mind. So much so that shortly after arriving at St. Paul’s, Woolly had gone to his math teacher, Mr. Kehlenbeck, and asked him if one had a sentence with ten words and each word could be substituted with ten other words, then how many sentences could there be? And without a moment’s hesitation, Mr. Kehlenbeck had gone to the chalkboard, scratched out a formula, and done a few quick calculations to prove incontrovertibly that the answer to Woolly’s question was ten billion. Well, when confronted with a revelation like that, how was one to even begin writing an answer to an essay question during end-of-term exams?

  Nonetheless, when Woolly left St. Paul’s to attend St. Mark’s, he had dutifully carried the thesaurus with him and set it down on his desk, where it remained snugly in its case, smirking at him with its tens of thousands of words that could be substituted one for the other. For the next year, it taunted, teased, and goaded him until finally, one evening shortly before Thanksgiving break, Woolly had taken the thesaurus from its case, carried it down to the football field, doused it with some gasoline that he’d discovered in the crew coach’s launch, and set the dastardly thing on fire.

  In retrospect, it probably would have been peaches and cream if Woolly had thought to set the thesaurus on fire on the fifty-yard line. But for some reason Woolly couldn’t quite remember, he had put the book in the end zone, and when he’d thrown the match, the flames had quickly followed a trail of gas that had been sloshed on the grass, engulfed the gas can, and triggered an explosion that set the goalpost on fire.

  Backing up to the twenty-yard line, Woolly had watched at first in shock and then amazement as the fire made its way up the center support, then moved simultaneously along the two shoulders and up the posts until the whole thing was in flames. Suddenly, it didn’t look like a goalpost at all. It looked like a fiery spirit raising its arms to the sky in a state of exultation. And it was very, very beautiful.

  When they called Woolly before the disciplinary committee, it was Woolly’s intention to explain that all he had wanted was to free himself from the tyranny of the thesaurus so that he could do a better job in his exams. But before he was given a chance to speak, the Dean of Students, who was presiding over the hearing, said that Woolly was there to answer for the fire he had set on the football field. A moment later, Mr. Harrington, the faculty representative, referred to it as a blaze. Then Dunkie Dunkle, the student council president (who also happened to be captain of the football team), referred to it as a conflagration. And Woolly knew right then and there that no matter what he had to say, they were all going to take the side of the thesaurus.

  As Woolly placed his dictionary back in the box, he heard the tentative creak of a footstep in the hall, and when he turned, he found his sister standing in the doorway—with a baseball bat in her hands.

  * * *

  —I’m sorry about the room, said Sarah.

  Woolly and his sister were sitting in the kitchen at the little table in the nook across from the sink. Sarah had already apologized for greeting Woolly with a baseball bat after finding the front door wide open. Now she was apologizing for taking away the room that was and wasn’t his. Sarah was the only one in Woolly’s family who said she was sorry and meant it. The only problem, it seemed to Woolly, was that she often said she was sorry when she hadn’t the slightest reason to be so. Like now.

  —No, no, said Woolly. There’s no need to apologize on my account. I think it’s wonderful that it’s going to be the baby’s room.

  —We thought we might move your things to the room by the back stairs. You would have much more privacy there, and it would be easier for you to come and go as you please.

  —Yes, said Woolly in agreement. By the back stairs would be dandy.

  Woolly nodded twice with a smile and then looked down at the table.

  After giving Woolly a hug upstairs, Sarah had asked if he was hungry and offered to make him a sandwich. So that’s what was in front of him now—a grilled cheese sandwich cut into two triangles, one pointing up and one pointing down. As he looked at the triangles, Woolly could tell that his sister was looking at him.

  —Woolly, she said after a moment. What are you doing here?

  Woolly looked up.

  —Oh, I don’t know, he said with a smile. Gadding about, I suppose. Traveling hither and yon. You see, my friend Duchess and I each got a leave of absence from Salina and we decided to take a little trip and see some friends and family.

  —Woolly . . .

  Sarah gave a sigh that was so delicate, Woolly could hardly hear it.

  —I got a call from Mom on Monday—after she got a call from the warden. So I know you don’t have a leave of absence.

  Woolly looked back down at his sandwich.

  —But I phoned the warden so that I could speak to him myself. He told me that you have been an exemplary member of the community. And seeing as you only have five months left on your sentence, he said if you were to come right back of your own accord, he would do his best to limit the repercussions. Can I call him, Woolly? Can I call and tell him that you are on your way back?

  Woolly turned his plate around so that the grilled cheese triangle pointing up was now pointing down, and the grilled cheese triangle pointing down was now pointing up. The warden called Mom who called Sarah who called the warden, thought Woolly. Then he broke into a smile.

  —Do you remember? he asked. Do you remember when we would play telephone? All of us together in the great room at the camp?

  For a moment, Sarah looked at Woolly with an expression that seemed so sorrowfully sad. But it was only for a moment. Then she broke into a smile of her own.

  —I remember.

  Sitting up in his chair, Woolly began remembering for the both of them, because while he wasn’t any good at rememorizing, he was very good at remembering.

  —As the youngest, I always got to go first, he said. And I would lean against your ear and hide my mouth behind my hand so that no one else could hear me, and I would whisper: The captains were playing cribbage on their ketches. Then you would turn to Kaitlin and whisper to her, and Kaitlin would whisper to Dad, and Dad would whisper to cousin Penelope, and cousin Penelope would whisper to Aunt Ruthie, and so it would go—all the way around the circle until it reached Mother. Then Mother would say: The Comptons ate their cabbage in the kitchen.

 
At the recollection of their mother’s inevitable befuddlement, the brother and sister broke into laughter that was almost as loud as the laughter they had laughed all those years ago.

  Then they were quiet.

  —How is she? Woolly asked, looking down at his sandwich. How is Mom?

  —She’s well, said Sarah. When she called, she was on her way to Italy.

  —With Richard.

  —He is her husband, Woolly.

  —Yes, yes, Woolly agreed. Of course, of course, of course. For richer or for poorer. In sickness and in health. And till death do them part—but not for one minute longer.

  —Woolly . . . It wasn’t a minute.

  —I know, I know.

  —It was four years after father died. And with you at school and Kaitlin and me married, she was all by herself.

  —I know, he said again.

  —You don’t have to like Richard, Woolly, but you can’t begrudge your mother the comforts of companionship.

  Woolly looked at his sister, thinking: You can’t begrudge your mother the comforts of companionship. And he wondered, if he had whispered that sentence to Sarah, and she had whispered it to Kaitlin, and Kaitlin had whispered it to his father, and so on all the way around the ring, when it finally reached his mother, what would the sentence have become?

  Duchess

  With the cowboy at the courthouse and Old Testament Ackerly, the balancing of accounts had been pretty straightforward. They were in the manner of one minus one, or five minus five. But when it came to Townhouse, the math was a little more complicated.

  There was no question I owed him for the Hondo fiasco. I didn’t make it rain that night, and I sure as hell didn’t intend to bum a ride from a cop, but that didn’t change the fact that had I just slogged my way home through the potato fields, Townhouse could have eaten his popcorn, seen the feature, and slipped back into the barracks undetected.