The Lincoln Highway

by Amor Towles

  Exiting the other dining-room door, Woolly reentered the great room, where, after admiring it from corner to corner, he picked up Emmett’s book bag and began climbing the stairs, counting as he went.

  —Two, four, six, eight, who do we appreciate.

  At the top of the stairs, the hallway shot off in both directions, east and west, with bedroom doors on either side.

  While there was nothing hanging on the wall to the south, on the wall to the north were photographs everywhere you looked. According to family legend, Woolly’s grandmother had been the first person to hang a photograph in the upstairs hallway—a picture of her four young children, which she put right above the side table opposite the stairs. Soon after, a second and third photograph were hung to the left and right of the first photograph. Then a fourth and fifth were hung above and below. Over the years, photographs had been added leftward and rightward, upward and downward, until they radiated in every direction.

  Setting down the book bag, Woolly approached the first photograph, then began looking at all the others in the order that they had been hung. There was the picture of Uncle Wallace as a little boy in his little sailor suit. And there the picture of his grandfather out on the dock with the tattoo of the schooner on his arm, getting ready to take his twelve o’clock swim. And there the picture of his father holding up his blue ribbon after winning the riflery contest on the Fourth of July in 1941.

  —He always won the riflery contest, said Woolly, while brushing a tear from his cheek with the flat of his hand.

  And there, one step farther from the side table, was the one of Woolly with his mother and father in the canoe.

  This picture was taken—oh, Woolly didn’t know for sure—but around the time that he was seven. Certainly before Pearl Harbor and the aircraft carrier. Before Richard and “Dennis.” Before St. Paul’s and St. Mark’s and St. George’s.

  Before, before, before.

  The funny thing about a picture, thought Woolly, the funny thing about a picture is that while it knows everything that’s happened up until the moment it’s been taken, it knows absotively nothing about what will happen next. And yet, once the picture has been framed and hung on a wall, what you see when you look at it closely are all the things that were about to happen. All the un-things. The things that were unanticipated. And unintended. And unreversible.

  Wiping another tear from his cheek, Woolly removed the photograph from the wall and picked up the book bag.

  As with the chairs around the dining-room table, there was one bedroom on the hallway that you weren’t allowed to sleep in because it was Great-grandpa’s. Everyone other than Great-grandpa would sleep in different bedrooms at different times depending on how old they were, or whether they were married, or how early or late in the summer they happened to arrive. Over the years, Woolly had slept in a number of these rooms. But for the longest time, or what seemed like the longest time, he and his cousin Freddy had slept in the second to last room on the left. So that’s where Woolly went.

  Stepping inside, Woolly set down the book bag and leaned the photograph of him and his parents on the bureau behind the pitcher and glasses. After looking at the pitcher for a moment, he carried it down the hall to the bathroom, filled it with water, and brought it back. Pouring water into one of the glasses, he picked it up and moved it to the bedside table. Then after opening a window, so that the breeze could find its way into the room after five, he began to unpack.

  First, he took out the radio and placed it on the bureau beside the pitcher. Then he took out his dictionary and placed it beside the radio. Then he took out the cigar box, in which he kept his collection of the same version of different things, and placed it beside the dictionary. Then he took out his extra bottle of medicine and the little brown bottle that he’d found waiting for him in the spice rack and placed them on the bedside table beside the glass of water.

  As he was taking off his shoes, Woolly heard the sound of a car pulling into the driveway—Duchess returning from the general store. Moving to the doorway, Woolly listened to the screen door in the mudroom open and close. Then footsteps passing through the great room. Then furniture being moved in the study. And finally, the sound of clanging.

  It wasn’t a dainty sort of clanging, like that of a cable car in San Francisco, thought Woolly. It was an emphatic clanging like that of a blacksmith who’s beating a red-hot horseshoe on an anvil.

  Or perhaps not a horseshoe . . . , thought Woolly with a pang.

  Better that it was a blacksmith beating something else. Something like, something like, something like a sword. Yes, that was it. The clanging sounded like an ancient blacksmith hammering on the blade of Excalibur.

  With that happier image in mind, Woolly closed the door, switched on the radio, and went to lie down on the bed on the left.

  In the story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears, Goldilocks has to climb into three different beds before she finds the one that’s just right for her. But Woolly didn’t need to climb into three different beds, because he already knew that the one on the left would be just right for him. For as in his youth, it was neither too hard nor too soft, too long nor too short.

  Propping up the pillows, Woolly polished off the extra bottle of his medicine and made himself comfortable. As he looked up at the ceiling, his thoughts returned to the jigsaw puzzles that they would complete on rainy days.

  Wouldn’t it have been wonderful, thought Woolly, if everybody’s life was like a piece in a jigsaw puzzle. Then no one person’s life would ever be an inconvenience to anyone else’s. It would just fit snugly in its very own, specially designed spot, and in so doing, would enable the whole intricate picture to become complete.

  As Woolly was having this wonderful notion, a commercial came to its end and the telecast of a mystery show began. Climbing back out of bed, Woolly turned the volume on the radio down to two and a half.

  The important thing to understand about listening to a mystery show on the radio, Woolly well knew, is that all the parts designed to make you anxious—like the whispering of assassins, or the rustling of leaves, or the creaking of steps on a staircase—were relatively quiet. While the parts designed to set your mind at ease—like the sudden epiphany of the hero, or the peeling of his tires, or the crack of his pistol—were relatively loud. So if you turned the volume down to two and a half, you could barely hear the parts designed to make you anxious, while still getting to hear all the parts designed to set your mind at ease.

  Returning to his bed, Woolly poured all the little pink pills from the little brown bottle onto the table. With the tip of his finger, he pushed them into the palm of his hand, saying, One potato, two potato, three potato, four. Five potato, six potato, seven potato, more. Then washing them down with a big drink of water, he made himself comfortable again.

  With the pillows properly propped, the volume properly lowered, and the little pink pills properly swallowed, you might think that Woolly wouldn’t know what to think about, what with Woolly being Woolly and prone to all the old Woolly ways.

  But Woolly knew exactly what to think about. He had known that he would think about it almost as soon as it had happened.

  —I’ll start in front of the cabinet at FAO Schwarz, he said to himself with a smile. And my sister will come, and we’ll have tea at the Plaza with the panda. And after Duchess meets me at the statue of Abraham Lincoln, he and I will attend the circus, where Billy and Emmett will suddenly reappear. Then we’ll go over the Brooklyn Bridge and up the Empire State Building, where we’ll meet Professor Abernathe. Then it’s off to the grassy train tracks where, sitting by the fire, we’ll hear the story of the two Ulysses and the ancient seer who explained how they could find their ways home again—how they could find their ways home, after ten long years.

  But one mustn’t rush, thought Woolly, as the window curtains stirred, and the grass began to sprout through the seams between
the floorboards, and the ivy climbed the legs of the bureau. For a one-of-a-kind kind of day deserves to be relived at the slowest possible pace, with every moment, every twist, every turn of events remembered to the tiniest detail.

  Abacus

  Many years before, Abacus had come to the conclusion that the greatest of heroic stories have the shape of a diamond on its side. Beginning at a fine point, the life of the hero expands outward through youth as he begins to establish his strengths and fallibilities, his friendships and enmities. Proceeding into the world, he pursues exploits in grand company, accumulating honors and accolades. But at some untold moment, the two rays that define the outer limits of this widening world of hale companions and worthy adventures simultaneously turn a corner and begin to converge. The terrain our hero travels, the cast of characters he meets, the sense of purpose that has long propelled him forward all begin to narrow—to narrow toward that fixed and inexorable point that defines his fate.

  Take the tale of Achilles.

  In hopes of making her son invincible, the Nereid Thetis holds her newborn boy by the ankle and dips him into the river Styx. From that finite moment in time and pinch of the fingers, the story of Achilles begins. As a strapping young lad, he is educated in history, literature, and philosophy by the centaur Chiron. On the fields of sport, he gains in strength and agility. And with his comrade Patroclus, he forms the closest of bonds.

  As a young man, Achilles ventures forth into the world, where he proceeds from one exploit to the next, vanquishing all manner of opponents until his reputation precedes him far and wide. Then, at the very height of his fame and the peak of his physical prowess, Achilles sets sail for Troy to join the likes of Agamemnon, Menelaus, Ulysses, and Ajax in the greatest battle ever fought by men.

  But somewhere on this crossing, somewhere in the middle of the Aegean Sea, unbeknownst to Achilles, the widening rays of his life turn their corners and begin their relentless trajectory inward.

  Ten long years, Achilles will remain on the fields of Troy. Over the course of that decade, the area of conflict will grow smaller as the battle lines draw ever closer to the walls of the besieged city. The once countless legions of Greek and Trojan soldiers will grow smaller, diminishing with every additional death. And in the tenth year, when Hector, prince of Troy, slays the beloved Patroclus, Achilles’s world will grower smaller still.

  From that moment, the enemy with all its battalions is reduced in Achilles’s mind to the one person responsible for the death of his friend. The sprawling fields of battle are reduced to the few square feet between where he and Hector will stand. And the sense of purpose that at one time encompassed duty, honor, and glory is now reduced to the single burning desire for revenge.

  So perhaps it is not surprising that just a matter of days after Achilles succeeds in killing Hector, a poison arrow lofting through the air pierces the one unprotected spot on Achilles’s body—the ankle by which his mother had held him when she dipped him in the Styx. And in that very instant, all of his memories and dreams, all of his sensations and sentiments, all of his virtues and vices are extinguished like the flame of a candle that has been snuffed between a finger and a thumb.

  * * *

  • • •

  Yes, for the longest time, Abacus had understood that the great heroic stories were like a diamond on its side. But of late, what had taken up his thoughts was the realization that it wasn’t simply the lives of the renowned that conform to this geometry. For the lives of miners and stevedores conform to it too. The lives of waitresses and nursemaids conform to it. The lives of the ancillary and the anonymous, of the frivolous and the forgotten.

  All lives.

  His life.

  His life too began at a point—on the fifth of May in 1890, when a boy named Sam was born in the bedroom of a small painted cottage on the island of Martha’s Vineyard, the only offspring of an insurance adjuster and a seamstress.

  Like any child, Sam’s first years were spent in the warm circumference of his family. But one day at the age of seven, in the aftermath of a hurricane, Sam accompanied his father to a shipwreck that needed to be assessed on behalf of the insurers. Having journeyed all the way from Port-au-Prince, this vessel had run aground on a shoal off West Chop, and there it remained, its hull breached, its sails in tatters, its cargo of rum washing ashore with the waves.

  From that moment, the walls of Sam’s life began to branch outward. After every storm, he would insist upon going with his father to see the wrecks: the schooners, the frigates, the yachts. Whether blown upon the rocks or swamped by a turbulent tide, Sam did not simply see a ship in distress. He saw the world the ship embodied. He saw the ports of Amsterdam, Buenos Aires, and Singapore. He saw the spices and textiles and ceramics. He saw the sailors who hailed from every seafaring nation around the globe.

  Sam’s fascination with shipwrecks led him to fantastical stories of the sea, like those of Sinbad and Jason. The fantastical stories led him to histories of the great explorers, his worldview widening with the reading of each additional page. Eventually, Sam’s ever-growing love of history and myth brought him to the ivy-covered halls of Harvard, and then to New York, where—having rechristened himself Abacus and declared himself a writer—he met musicians, architects, painters, financiers, as well as criminals and derelicts too. And finally, he met Polly, that wonder of wonders who brought him joy, companionship, a daughter, and a son.

  What an extraordinary passage were those first years in Manhattan! When Abacus experienced firsthand the omnivalent, omnipresent, omnifarious widening that is life.

  Or rather, that is the first half of life.

  When did the change come? When did the outer limits of his world turn their corner and begin moving inexorably toward their terminal convergence?

  Abacus had no idea.

  Not long after his children had grown and moved on, perhaps. Certainly, before Polly died. Yes, it was likely at some point during those years when, without their knowing it, her time had begun to run out while he, in the so-called prime of life, went blithely on about his business.

  The manner in which the convergence takes you by surprise, that is the cruelest part. And yet it’s almost unavoidable. For at the moment when the turning begins, the two opposing rays of your life are so far from each other you could never discern the change in their trajectory. And in those first years, as the rays begin to angle inward, the world still seems so open, you have no reason to suspect its diminishment.

  But one day, one day years after the convergence has begun, you cannot only sense the inward trajectory of the walls, you can begin to see the terminal point in the offing even as the terrain that remains before you begins to shrink at an accelerating pace.

  In those golden years of his late twenties, shortly after arriving in New York, Abacus had made three great friends. Two men and a woman, they were the hardiest of companions, fellow adventurers of the mind and spirit. Side by side, they had navigated the waters of life with a reasonable diligence and their fair share of aplomb. But in just these last five years, the first had been stricken with blindness, the second with emphysema, and the third with dementia. How varied their lot, you might be tempted to observe: the loss of sight, of lung capacity, of cognition. When in reality, the three infirmities amount to the same sentence: the narrowing of life at the far tip of the diamond. Step by step, the stomping grounds of these friends had shrunk from the world itself, to their country, to their county, to their home, and finally to a single room where, blinded, breathless, forgetful, they are destined to end their days.

  Though Abacus had no infirmities to speak of yet, his world too was shrinking. He too had watched as the outer limits of his life had narrowed from the world at large, to the island of Manhattan, to that book-lined office in which he awaited with a philosophical resignation the closing of the finger and thumb. And then this . . .

  This!

&nb
sp; This extraordinary turn of events.

  A little boy from Nebraska appears at his doorstep with a gentle demeanor and a fantastical tale. A tale not from a leather-bound tome, mind you. Not from an epic poem written in an unspoken language. Not from an archive or athenaeum. But from life itself.

  How easily we forget—we in the business of storytelling—that life was the point all along. A mother who has vanished, a father who has failed, a brother who is determined. A journey from the prairies into the city by means of a boxcar with a vagabond named Ulysses. Thence to a railroad track suspended over the city as surely as Valhalla is suspended in the clouds. And there, the boy, Ulysses, and he, having sat down by a campfire as ancient as the ways of man, began—

  —It’s time, said Ulysses.

  —What’s that? said Abacus. Time?

  —If you’re still coming.

  —I’m coming! he said. Here I come!

  Rising to his feet in a copse of woods twenty miles west of Kansas City, Abacus scrambled through the underbrush in the dark, tearing the pocket from his seersucker jacket. Breathlessly, he followed Ulysses through the break in the trees, up the embankment, and into the boxcar that was destined to take them who knows where.

  Billy

  Emmett was asleep. Billy could tell that Emmett was asleep because he was snoring. Emmett didn’t snore as loudly as their father used to snore, but he snored loudly enough that you could tell when he was sleeping.

  Quietly, Billy slipped out from under the covers and climbed down onto the rug. Reaching under the bed, he found his backpack, opened the upper flap, and removed his army surplus flashlight. Being careful to point the beam at the rug—so he wouldn’t wake his brother—Billy switched the flashlight on. Then removing Professor Abernathe’s Compendium of Heroes, Adventurers, and Other Intrepid Travelers, he turned to chapter twenty-five and took up his pencil.