The Lincoln Highway

by Amor Towles

  And then.

  And then!

  Just two hours later, when they were driving over the Brooklyn Bridge for a second time in one night, Billy stopped speaking midsentence in order to point in the distance.

  —Look! he exclaimed. The Empire State Building!

  Well, that definitely belongs on the List, thought Woolly. It was the tallest building in the world. It was so tall, in fact, a plane had actually crashed into the top of it once. And yet, even though it was located right there in the middle of Manhattan, Woolly had never, ever, not even once set foot inside.

  As such, when Duchess suggested they go there in order to pay a visit to Professor Abernathe, you might have expected Woolly to feel the same excitement that he’d felt when he realized they’d be driving over the Brooklyn Bridge. But what he felt was a pang of anxiety—a pang that stemmed not from the thought of riding a teeny little elevator up into the stratosphere, but from the tone of Duchess’s voice. Because Woolly had heard that tone before. He had heard it from three headmasters and two Episcopal ministers and a brother-in-law named “Dennis.” It was the tone that people used when they were about to set you straight.

  Now and then, it seemed to Woolly, in the course of your everyday life, you are likely to be blessed with a notion. Say, for instance, it’s the middle of August and you’re drifting in your rowboat in the middle of the lake with the dragonflies skimming the water, when suddenly the thought occurs to you: Why doesn’t summer vacation last until the twenty-first of September? After all, the season doesn’t come to its conclusion on Labor Day weekend. The season of summer lasts until the autumnal equinox—just as surely as the season of spring lasts until the summer solstice. And look at how carefree everyone feels in the middle of summer vacation. Not only the children, but the grown-ups too, who take such pleasure in having a tennis game at ten, a swim at noon, and a gin and tonic at six o’clock on the dot. It stands to reason that if we all agreed to let summer vacation last until the equinox, the world would be a much happier place.

  Well, when you have a notion like this, you have to be very careful in choosing whom you share it with. Because if certain people get wind of your notion—people like your headmaster or your minister or your brother-in-law “Dennis”—they are likely to feel it’s their moral responsibility to sit you down and set you straight. Having gestured for you to take the big chair in front of their desk, they will explain not only how misguided your notion is, but how much better a person you’re bound to be once you recognize this fact for yourself. And that was the tone that Duchess was using on Billy—the one that preceded the dispelling of an illusion.

  You can just imagine the satisfaction that Woolly felt, the jubilation even, when after elevating all the way up to the fifty-fifth floor, trudging down all the corridors, and squinting at every little plaque, with only two more plaques to go, they came upon the one that read: Professor Abacus Abernathe, AbC, PhD, Lmnop.

  Poor Duchess, thought Woolly with a smile of sympathy. Maybe he’s the one who will be learning a lesson tonight.

  As soon as they entered the professor’s inner sanctum, Woolly could see that he was a sensitive man, a genial man. And even though he had a high-back chair in front of a big oak desk, Woolly could tell that he was not the sort who would want to sit you down and set you straight. What’s more, he was not the sort to hurry you along because time was money, or of the essence, or a stitch in nine, or what have you.

  When you are asked a question—even a question that on the surface seems relatively simple and straightforward—you may have to go quite a ways back in order to provide all the little details that will be necessary for someone to make sense of your answer. Despite this, there are many inquisitors who, as soon as you start providing these essential details, will start to make a face. They’ll fidget in their seat. Then they’ll do their best to hurry you along by pressing you to leap from point A to point Z while skipping all the letters in between. But not Professor Abernathe. When he asked Billy a deceptively simple question and Billy went all the way back to the cradle in order to give a comprehensive reply, the professor leaned back in his chair and listened with the attentiveness of Solomon.

  So when Woolly and Billy and Duchess finally rose to take their leave, having visited two of the city’s world-famous sites in a single night (Check! Check!), and proven the irrefutable existence of Professor Abacus Abernathe, you might have thought that the night could not get any better.

  And you’d be wrong.

  * * *

  • • •

  Thirty minutes later, they were all in the Cadillac—the professor included—driving down Ninth Avenue to the West Side Elevated, another place of which Woolly had never heard.

  —You take that next right, said Billy.

  As instructed, Duchess took the right onto a cobblestone street lined with trucks and meatpacking facilities. Woolly could tell they were meatpacking facilities because on one loading dock, two men in long white coats were carrying sides of beef off a truck while over another was a large neon sign in the shape of a steer.

  A moment later, Billy told Duchess to take another right and then a left and then he pointed to some wire caging rising from the street.

  —There, he said.

  When Duchess pulled over, he didn’t turn off the engine. On this little stretch, there were no more meatpackers and no more neon signs. Instead, there was an empty lot in which was parked a car without its wheels. At the end of the block, a lone silhouette, stocky and short, passed under a streetlamp, then disappeared into the shadows.

  —Are you sure this is it? Duchess asked.

  —I’m sure this is it, said Billy while slipping on his backpack.

  Then just like that, he was out of the car and walking toward the caging.

  Woolly turned to Professor Abernathe in order to raise his eyebrows in surprise, but Professor Abernathe was already on his way to catch up with Billy. So Woolly leapt from the car in order to catch up with the professor, leaving Duchess to catch up with him.

  Inside the caging was a staircase of steel that disappeared overhead. Now it was the professor who looked to Woolly with his eyebrows raised, though more in excitement than surprise.

  Reaching out, Billy took hold of a patch of the fencing and began pulling it back.

  —Here, said Woolly. Allow me, allow me.

  Extending his fingers through the mesh, Woolly pulled so that everyone could slip through. Then up the stairs they went, going round and round, their eight feet clanging on the old metal treads. When they reached the top, Woolly pulled back another bit of fencing so that everyone could slip out.

  Oh, what amazement did Woolly feel when he emerged from the caging into the open air. To the south, you could see the towers of Wall Street, while to the north, the towers of Midtown. And if you looked very carefully to the south-southwest, you could just make out the Statue of Liberty—another New York City landmark that surely belonged on the List and to which Woolly had never been.

  —Never been, yet! Woolly pronounced in defiance to no one but himself.

  But what was amazing about the elevated tracks wasn’t the view of Wall Street or Midtown or even the great big summer sun that was setting over the Hudson. What was amazing was the flora.

  While they had been in Professor Abernathe’s office, Billy had explained that they would be going to a segment of elevated railroad that had stopped being used three years before. But to Woolly’s eye, it looked like it had been abandoned for decades. Everywhere you turned there were wildflowers and shrubs, and the grass between the railroad ties had grown almost as high as their knees.

  In just three years, thought Woolly. Why, that’s less time than it takes to go to boarding school, or to get a college degree. It’s less time than a presidential term, or the span between Olympics.

  Only two days before, Woolly had remarked to himself how te
rribly permanent Manhattan remained, despite being marched upon by millions of people every day. But apparently, it wasn’t the marching of the millions that was going to bring the city to its end. It was their absence. For here was a glimpse of a New York left to itself. Here was a patch of the city upon which people had turned their backs for just a moment and up through the gravel had come the shrubs and ivy and grass. And if this is what it was like after just a few years of disuse, thought Woolly, imagine what it will be like after a few decades.

  As Woolly looked up from the flora in order to share his observation with his friends, he realized that they had pressed ahead without him, working their way toward a campfire in the distance.

  —Wait up, he called. Wait up!

  As Woolly rejoined his party, Billy was introducing the professor to a tall black man, the one named Ulysses. Though the two men had never met, both had learned something of the other from Billy, and when they shook hands, it struck Woolly that they did so with solemnity, a great and enviable solemnity.

  —Please, said Ulysses, as he gestured to the railroad ties around the fire much as the professor had gestured to the couch and chair in his office.

  When they had taken their seats, everyone was silent for a moment as the fire crackled and sparked, and it seemed to Woolly that he and Billy and Duchess were young warriors who had been given the privilege of witnessing the meeting between two tribal chiefs. But in the end, it was Billy who spoke first, encouraging Ulysses to tell his tale.

  After nodding at Billy, Ulysses turned his eyes to the professor and began. First, he explained how he and a woman named Macie, both alone in the world, had met in a dance hall in St. Louis, fallen in love, and been joined in holy matrimony. He explained how, when the war began, Macie had kept him close to her side as his able-bodied neighbors joined the fray, and how she had tightened her grip once she was radiant with child. He explained how despite her warnings, he had enlisted, fought in Europe, and returned some years later to find that—good as her word—she and the boy had disappeared without a trace. Finally, he described how he had returned to Union Station that day, boarded the first train to anywhere, and been riding the rails ever since. And it was one of the saddest stories that Woolly had ever heard.

  For a moment no one spoke. Even Duchess, who was always eager to follow someone else’s story with a story of his own, kept his silence, sensing, perhaps, as Woolly did, that something of great consequence was unfolding right before their eyes.

  After a few minutes, as if he had needed the moment of silence in order to gather himself, Ulysses continued.

  —I am of the opinion, Professor, that everything of value in this life must be earned. That it should be earned. Because those who are given something of value without having to earn it are bound to squander it. I believe that one should earn respect. One should earn trust. One should earn the love of a woman, and the right to call oneself a man. And one should also earn the right to hope. At one time I had a wellspring of hope—a wellspring that I had not earned. And not knowing what it was worth, on the day I left my wife and child, I squandered it. So over these last eight and a half years, I have learned to live without hope, just as surely as Cain lived without it once he entered the land of Nod.

  To live without hope, said Woolly to himself as he nodded his head and wiped the tears from his eyes. To live without hope in the land of Nod.

  —That is, said Ulysses, until I met this boy.

  Without taking his gaze from the professor, Ulysses put a hand on Billy’s shoulder.

  —When Billy said that as one named Ulysses, I might be destined to see my wife and child again, I felt a stirring within me. And when he read to me from your book, I felt it even more strongly. So much more strongly, that I dared to wonder if, after all these years of traveling the country alone, I might finally have earned the right to hope again.

  As Ulysses said this, Woolly sat up straighter. Earlier that day, he had tried to give his sister Sarah some sense of how a statement disguised as a question could be an ugly sort of thing. But beside the campfire, when Ulysses said to Professor Abernathe, I might finally have earned the right to hope again, Woolly understood that here was a question disguised as a statement. And Woolly found it to be beautiful.

  Professor Abernathe seemed to understand this as well. For after a moment of silence, he offered an answer. And as the professor spoke, Ulysses listened with the same deference that the professor had shown to him.

  —My life, such as it is, Mr. Ulysses, has been the opposite of yours in many respects. I have never been to war. I have not traveled this country. In fact, for most of the last thirty years, I have remained on the island of Manhattan. And for most of the last ten, I have remained in that.

  Turning, the professor pointed to the Empire State Building.

  —There I have sat in a room surrounded by books, as insulated from the sounds of crickets and seagulls as from the reach of violence and compassion. If you are right, as I suspect you are—that what is valuable must be earned or it’s bound to be squandered—then surely, I am among the squanderers. One who has lived his life in the third person and the past tense. So let me start by acknowledging that anything I say to you, I say with the utmost humility.

  Ceremoniously, the professor bowed his head to Ulysses.

  —But having confessed that I have lived my life through books, I can at least report that I have done so with conviction. Which is to say, Mr. Ulysses, that I have read a great deal. I have read thousands of books, many of them more than once. I have read histories and novels, scientific tracts and volumes of poetry. And from all of these pages upon pages, one thing I have learned is that there is just enough variety in human experience for every single person in a city the size of New York to feel with assurance that their experience is unique. And this is a wonderful thing. Because to aspire, to fall in love, to stumble as we do and yet soldier on, at some level we must believe that what we are going through has never been experienced quite as we have experienced it.

  The professor turned his gaze from Ulysses so that he could make eye contact with everyone in the circle, including Woolly. But returning his gaze to Ulysses, the professor raised a finger in the air.

  —However, he continued, having observed that there is enough variety in human experience to sustain our sense of individuality in a locus as vast as New York, I strongly suspect that there is only just enough variety to do so. For were it in our power to gather up all the personal stories that have been experienced in different cities and townships around the world and across time, I haven’t the slightest doubt that doppelgängers would abound. Men whose lives—despite the variation here and there—were just as our own in every material respect. Men who have loved when we loved, wept when we wept, accomplished what we have accomplished and failed as we have failed, men who have argued and reasoned and laughed exactly as we.

  The professor looked around again.

  —Impossible, you say?

  Though no one had said a word.

  —It is one of the most basic principles of infinity that it must, by definition, encompass not only one of everything, but everything’s duplicate, as well as its triplicate. In fact, to imagine that there are additional versions of ourselves scattered across human history is substantially less outlandish than to imagine that there are none.

  The professor turned his gaze back to Ulysses.

  —So, do I think it is possible that your life could be an echo of the life of the Great Ulysses, and that after ten years you could be reunited with your wife and son? I am certain of it.

  Ulysses had taken in what the professor had said with the greatest gravity. Now he stood, and the professor stood, and the two clasped hands, each seeming to have found an unexpected solace from the other. But when the two men let their hands drop and Ulysses turned, the professor took him by the arm and drew him back.

  —But
there is something you need to know, Mr. Ulysses. Something that I didn’t put in Billy’s book. In the midst of his travels, when the Great Ulysses visited the underworld and met the ghost of Tiresias, the old soothsayer told him that he was destined to wander the seas until he had appeased the gods through an act of tribute.

  Had Woolly been in Ulysses’s position, upon hearing this additional piece of news, he would have felt a great sense of defeat. But Ulysses didn’t seem to. Instead, he nodded his head at the professor, as if this was just as it should be.

  —What act of tribute?

  —What Tiresias tells Ulysses is that he must take up an oar and carry it into the countryside until he has reached a land so unfamiliar with the ways of the sea that a man in the road will stop to ask: What is that you carry upon your shoulder? At that spot, the Great Ulysses was to plant the oar in the ground in Poseidon’s honor, and thenceforth he would be free.

  —An oar . . . , said Ulysses.

  —Yes, said the professor excitedly, in the case of the Great Ulysses, an oar. But in your case, it would be something different. Something pertinent to your story, to your years of wandering. Something . . .

  The professor began looking about.

  —Something like that!

  Bending over, Ulysses picked up the heavy piece of iron the professor had pointed to.

  —A spike, he said.

  —Yes, said the professor, a spike. You must carry that to the place where someone is so unfamiliar with the railways that they ask you what it is, and on that spot, you should hammer it into the ground.