The Lincoln Highway

by Amor Towles

  After watching them race past, Ulysses turned back to look in the direction from which they’d come. That’s when he saw that the sky in the east was turning from blue to green. Which in that part of the country, as Billy well knew, could only mean one thing.

  Behind Ulysses was nothing but knee-high corn for as far as the eye could see, but half a mile ahead was a farmhouse. With the sky growing darker by the minute, Ulysses began to run.

  As he drew closer, Ulysses could see that the farmhouse had already been battened down, its doors and shutters closed. He could see the owner securing the barn, then dashing to the hatch of his shelter, where his wife and children waited. And when the farmer reached his family, Ulysses could see the young boy pointing in his direction.

  As the four looked his way, Ulysses slowed from a run to a walk with his hands at his side.

  The farmer instructed his wife and children to go into the shelter—first the wife so that she could help the children, then the daughter, and then the little boy, who continued to look at Ulysses right up until the moment he disappeared from sight.

  Ulysses expected the father to follow his family down the ladder, but leaning over to say one last thing, he closed the hatch, turned toward Ulysses, and waited for his approach. Maybe there was no lock on the shelter’s hatch, thought Ulysses, and the farmer figured if there was going to be a confrontation then better to have it now, while still aboveground. Or maybe he felt if one man intends to refuse harbor to another, he should do so face-to-face.

  As a sign of respect, Ulysses came to a stop six paces away, close enough to be heard, but far enough to pose no threat.

  The two men studied each other as the wind began to lift the dust around their feet.

  —I’m not from around these parts, Ulysses said after a moment. I’m just a Christian working my way to Des Moines so I can catch a train.

  The farmer nodded. He nodded in a manner that said he believed Ulysses was a Christian and that he was on his way to catch a train, but that under the circumstances neither of those things mattered.

  —I don’t know you, he said simply.

  —No, you don’t, agreed Ulysses.

  For a moment, Ulysses considered helping the man come to know him—by telling him his name, telling him that he’d been raised in Tennessee and that he was a veteran, that he’d once had a wife and child of his own. But even as these thoughts passed through Ulysses’s mind, he knew that the telling of them wouldn’t matter either. And he knew it without resentment.

  For were the positions reversed, were Ulysses about to climb down into a shelter, a windowless space beneath the ground that he had dug with his own hands for the safety of his family, and were a six-foot-tall white man suddenly to appear, he wouldn’t have welcomed him either. He would have sent him on his way.

  After all, what was a man in the prime of his life doing crossing the country on foot with nothing but a canvas bag slung over his shoulder? A man like that must have made certain choices. He had chosen to abandon his family, his township, his church, in pursuit of something different. In pursuit of a life unhindered, unanswered, and alone. Well, if that’s what he had worked so hard to become, then why in a moment like this should he expect to be treated as anything different?

  —I understand, said Ulysses, though the man had not explained himself.

  The farmer looked at Ulysses for a moment, then turning to his right, he pointed to a thin white spire rising from a grove of trees.

  —The Unitarian church is a little less than a mile. It’s got a basement. And you’ve got a good chance of making it, if you run.

  —Thank you, said Ulysses.

  As they stood facing each other, Ulysses knew that the farmer had been right. Any chance he had of making it to the church in time was predicated on his going as quickly as he could. But Ulysses had no intention of breaking into a run in front of another man, however good his advice. It was a matter of dignity.

  After waiting, the farmer seemed to understand this, and with a shake of the head that laid no blame on anyone, including himself, he opened his hatch and joined his family.

  With a glance at the steeple, Ulysses could tell that the shortest route to the church was directly across the fields rather than by way of the road, so that’s the way he went, running as the crow would fly. It didn’t take long for him to realize that this was a mistake. Though the corn was only a foot and a half high and the farmer’s rows were wide and well kept, the ground itself was soft and uneven, making for cumbersome work. Given all the fields he’d slogged across in Italy, he should have known better. But it seemed too late to switch back to the road now, so with his eye on the steeple he pressed ahead as best he could.

  When he was halfway to the church, the twister appeared in the distance at two o’clock, a dark black finger reaching down from the sky—the inversion of the steeple both in color and intent.

  With every step now, Ulysses’s progress was slowing. There was so much debris kicking up from the ground that he had to advance with a hand in front of his face to protect his eyes. Then he was holding up both hands with his gaze partly averted, as he stumbled onward toward the upward and downward spires.

  Through the gaps in his fingers and the veil of the unsettled dust, Ulysses became aware of rectangular shadows rising from the ground around him, shadows that looked at once orderly and in disarray. Dropping his hands for a second, he realized he had entered a graveyard and he could hear the bell in the steeple beginning to toll, as if rung by an invisible hand. He couldn’t have been more than fifty yards from the church.

  But in all likelihood, it was fifty yards too far.

  For the twister was turning counterclockwise and its winds were pushing Ulysses away from his goal rather than toward it. As hail began raining down upon him, he prepared for one final push. I can make it, he told himself. Then running with all his might, he began closing the distance between himself and the sanctuary—only to stumble over a low-lying gravestone and come crashing to the ground with the bitter resignation of the abandoned.

  —Abandoned by who? asked Billy, with his book gripped in his lap and his eyes open wide.

  Ulysses smiled.

  —I don’t know, Billy. By fortune, by fate, by my own good sense. But mostly by God.

  The boy began shaking his head.

  —You don’t mean that, Ulysses. You don’t mean that you were abandoned by God.

  —But that’s exactly what I mean, Billy. If I learned anything in the war, it’s that the point of utter abandonment—that moment at which you realize no one will be coming to your aid, not even your Maker—is the very moment in which you may discover the strength required to carry on. The Good Lord does not call you to your feet with hymns from the cherubim and Gabriel blowing his horn. He calls you to your feet by making you feel alone and forgotten. For only when you have seen that you are truly forsaken will you embrace the fact that what happens next rests in your hands, and your hands alone.

  Lying on the ground of that graveyard, feeling the old abandonment and knowing it for what it was, Ulysses reached up and took hold of the top of the nearest gravestone. As he hoisted himself upward, he realized the stone he was pushing on was not weathered or worn. Even through the maelstrom of dust and debris he could see it had the dark gray luminescence of a stone that had just been planted. Rising to his full height, Ulysses found himself looking over the shoulders of the marker down into a freshly dug grave, at the bottom of which was the shiny black top of a casket.

  This is where the caravan of cars had been coming from, realized Ulysses. They must have been right in the middle of the interment when they received warning of the tornado’s approach. The reverend must have hurried through whatever verses would suffice to commit the soul of the deceased to Heaven, and then everyone had dashed for their cars.

  From the look of the coffin, it must have been for a m
an of some wealth. For this was no pine box. It was polished mahogany with handles of solid brass. On the lid of the coffin was a matching brass plaque with the dead man’s name: Noah Benjamin Elias.

  Sliding down into the narrow gap between the coffin and the wall of the grave, Ulysses bent over to unscrew the clasps and open the coffin’s lid. Inside was Mr. Elias lying in state, dressed in a three-piece suit with his hands crossed neatly on his chest. His shoes were as black and shiny as his coffin, and curving across his vest was the thin gold chain of a watch. Though only about five foot six, Mr. Elias must have weighed over two hundred pounds—having dined in a manner suited to his station.

  What was the nature of Mr. Elias’s earthly success? Was he the owner of a bank or lumberyard? Was he a man of grit and determination, or of greed and deceit? Whichever he was, he was no longer. And all that mattered to Ulysses was that this man who was only five foot six had had a big enough sense of himself to be buried in a coffin that was six feet long.

  Reaching down, Ulysses took hold of Elias by the lapels, just as you would when you intended to shake some sense into someone. Pulling him up out of the coffin, Ulysses hoisted him into a standing position so that they were almost face-to-face. Ulysses could see now that the mortician had applied rouge on the dead man’s cheeks and scented him with gardenia, giving him the unsettling semblance of a harlot. Bending his knees in order to get under the weight of the cadaver, Ulysses raised him up out of his resting place and dumped him at the side of the grave.

  Taking one last look at the great black finger that was swaying left and right as it bore down upon him, Ulysses lay back in the pleated white silk that lined the empty coffin, reached up a hand, and—

  Pastor John

  When the vengeance of the Lord is visited upon us, it does not rain down from the heavens like a shower of meteors trailing fire. It does not strike like a bolt of lightning accompanied by claps of thunder. It does not gather like a tidal wave far out at sea and come crashing down upon the shores. No. When the vengeance of the Lord is visited upon us, it begins as a breath in the desert.

  Gentle and undaunting, this little expiration turns three times above the hardened ground, quietly stirring the dust and the scent of the sagebrush. But as it turns three times more, and three times again, this little whirlwind grows to the size of a man and begins to move. Spiraling across the land it gains in velocity and volume, growing to the size of a colossus, swaying and sweeping up into its vortex all that lays within its path—first the sand and stones, the shrubs and varmints, and then the works of men. Until at long last, towering a hundred feet tall and moving at a hundred miles an hour, swirling and spinning, turning and twisting, it comes inexorably for the sinner.

  Thus concluded the thoughts of Pastor John as he stepped from the darkness and swung his oaken staff in order to smite the Negro called Ulysses on the crown of his head.

  * * *

  Left for dead. That’s what Pastor John had been. With the tendons of his right knee torn, the skin of his cheeks abraded, his right eye swollen shut, he lay among the bushes and brambles preparing to deliver his own absolution. But at the very moment of his demise, the Lord had found him by the side of the tracks and breathed new life into his limbs. Lifting him up from the gravel and scrub, He had carried him to the edge of a cool running stream, where his thirst was slaked, his wounds washed, and into his hands delivered the branch of an ancient oak to be used as a staff.

  In the hours that followed, not once did Pastor John wonder where he was going, how he would get there, or to what end—for he could feel the Spirit of the Lord working through him, making of him Its instrument. From the riverbank, It led him back through the woods to a siding where ten empty boxcars had been left unattended. Once he was safely inside, It brought forth a locomotive that hitched the cars and carried him eastward to the city of New York.

  When Pastor John disembarked in the great railyard situated between Pennsylvania Station and the Hudson River, the Spirit shielded him from the eyes of the railway guards and led him not into the crowded streets but up onto the tracks of an elevated line. With his weight on his staff in order to spare his knee, Pastor John moved along the elevated, casting his shadow down upon the avenues. Once the sun had set, the Spirit led him onward—through an empty warehouse, through a gap in a fence, through the high and scraggly grass, through the darkness itself, until in the distance he could see a campfire shining like a star.

  Drawing closer, Pastor John saw that in His infinite wisdom the Good Lord had lit the fire not only to guide him, but to illuminate the faces of the Negro and the boy—even as it made Pastor John’s presence invisible to them. In the shadows outside the circle of the fire, Pastor John stopped and listened as the boy finished a story and asked if the Negro would tell one of his own.

  Oh, how John had laughed to hear Ulysses rattle on about his frightful tornado. For that little twister was nothing compared to the widening gyre which is the vengeance of the Lord. Did he seriously think that he could throw a pastor from a moving train without fear of retribution? That his actions would somehow escape the eyes of the Divine and the hand of judgment?

  The Lord God is all-seeing and all-knowing, Pastor John said without speaking. He has paid witness to your misdeeds, Ulysses. He has paid witness to your arrogance and trespass. And He has brought me here to deliver His reprisal!

  With such fury did the Spirit of the Lord breathe into the limbs of Pastor John, when he brought his oaken staff down upon the Negro’s head, the force of the blow snapped the staff in two.

  When Ulysses slumped to the ground and Pastor John stepped into the light, the boy, complicit with the Negro at every step, stretched out his hands in the silent horror of the damned.

  —May I join you by your fire? asked the pastor with a loud and hearty laugh.

  His staff truncated, Pastor John was forced to limp toward the boy, but this didn’t worry him. For he knew the boy would go nowhere and say nothing. Rather, he would withdraw into himself like a snail into its shell. Sure enough, when Pastor John pulled him up by the collar of his shirt, he could see that the boy had clenched his eyes closed and begun his incantation.

  —There is no Emmett here, said the pastor. No one is coming to your aid, William Watson.

  Then with the boy’s collar fast in his grip, Pastor John raised the broken staff and prepared to deliver that lesson which Ulysses had interrupted two days before. To deliver it with interest!

  But just when the staff was poised to fall, the boy opened his eyes.

  —I am truly forsaken, he said with a mysterious gusto.

  Then he kicked the pastor in his injured knee.

  With an animal howl, Pastor John let loose the boy’s shirt and dropped his staff. Hopping in place with tears of pain falling from his one good eye, Pastor John became more committed in his intent to teach the boy a lesson he wouldn’t soon forget. But even as he thrust his hands outward, he could see through his tears that the boy was gone.

  Eager to pursue, Pastor John looked frantically about for something to replace his broken staff.

  —Aha! he shouted.

  For there on the ground was a shovel. Picking it up, Pastor John stuck the blade into the dirt, leaned on the handle, and began moving slowly toward the darkness into which the boy had disappeared.

  After a few steps, he could just make out the silhouettes of an encampment: a small pile of firewood covered with a tarp, a makeshift washstand, a line of three empty bedrolls, and a tent.

  —William, he called softly. Where are you, William?

  —What’s going on out there, came a voice from inside the tent.

  Holding his breath, Pastor John took a step to the side and waited as a stocky Negro emerged. Not seeing the pastor, he walked a few feet forward and stopped.

  —Ulysses? he asked.

  When Pastor John hit him with the flat of the shovel, h
e fell to the ground with a groan.

  Off to his left Pastor John could hear other voices now. The voices of two men who may have heard the commotion.

  —Forget the boy, he said to himself.

  Using the shovel as his crutch, he hobbled as quickly as he could back to the campfire and made his way to where the boy had been sitting. There on the ground were the book and flashlight. But where was that damnable rucksack?

  Pastor John looked back in the direction from which he had just come. Could it have been by the bedrolls? No. Where the book and the flashlight were, the rucksack was sure to be. Leaning over carefully, Pastor John dropped the shovel, picked up the flashlight, and switched it on. With a hop, he trained the beam onto the back side of the railroad ties and began moving from right to left.

  There it is!

  Sitting down on a tie with his injured leg stretched before him, Pastor John retrieved the rucksack and set it in his lap. Even as he did so, he could hear the music within.

  With growing excitement, he undid the straps and began withdrawing items and tossing them aside. Two shirts. A pair of pants. A washcloth. At the very bottom he found the tin. Liberating it from the bag, he gave it a celebratory shake.

  Tomorrow morning, he would pay a visit to the Jews on Forty-Seventh Street. In the afternoon, he would go to a department store for a new set of clothes. And tomorrow night, he would check into a fine hotel, where he would take a long, hot bath and send out for oysters, a bottle of wine, perhaps even some female companionship. But now, it was time to leave. Returning the flashlight and tin to the rucksack, he cinched its straps and hooked it over his shoulder. Ready at last to be on his way, Pastor John leaned to his left in order to pick up the shovel, only to find that it was no longer where he had—

  Ulysses

  First there was darkness without recognition. Then slowly, an awareness of it. An awareness that it wasn’t the darkness of space—cold, vast, and remote. It was a darkness that was close and warm, a darkness that was covering him, embracing him in the manner of a velvet shroud.