Lincoln's Dreams

  She dreamed about Gettysburg, the retreating soldiers sometimes coming back into the orchard from a burning house, sometimes carrying a chicken in their arms. She tried to reform them under the apple tree, but she couldn’t because Annie Lee was asleep under the tree.

  There were no tears or sleepwalking during the dreams, and afterwards she recited her horrors to me gravely and I explained them as best I could, but she scarcely heard me. She seemed to be conserving all her strength for the dreams, lying perfectly still under the green-and-white coverlet. Her cheeks no longer burned, and when I touched her hands or her forehead, they were cold.

  In the early hours of the morning I called the answering machine. Richard said, “Annie’s records show low levels of serotonin, which is indicative of a suicidal depression. The symbolism of her dream corroborates that. The rifle represents the desire to inflict harm, the dead soldier is obviously herself.”

  “I was right about the Dreamtime thing,” Broun said. “They were a bunch of quacks. Imaginative quacks, though. They said the dreams were warnings sent by Willie Lincoln to his dad, and when I asked them how Willie Lincoln happened to be sending messages, and why, if they knew what was going to happen, the rest of the dead didn’t warn us of impending disaster, they came back with this theory that the dead normally sleep peacefully, but that Willie’s rest had been disturbed when Lincoln dug him up.

  “I’m flying up to Sacramento Wednesday to a sleep clinic there. I’ll be home sometime Tuesday. I’ve got an autograph party Saturday in L.A. and an appointment on Monday. I hope you’re doing okay on the galleys, son. I’m going to be impossible to get in touch with for the next few days.”

  “I know,” I said.

  I didn’t get any sleep to speak of. “Did you manage to get some sleep, Jeff?” Annie asked at breakfast. She looked as it she hadn’t. Her face was pale and there were dark, bruised-looking shadows around her eyes. She sat stiffly in the booth, as if her back hurt, and occasionally rubbed her hand along her arm.

  “Some. How about you?”

  “I’ll be all right,” she said, and handed me the stack of manuscript. She let the waitress pour her some coffee while she tried to find the place we’d left off.

  “You know that big front they were talking about?” the waitress said. “It got stalled over the Midwest for a few days, but now it’s moving again. We’re supposed to get six inches of snow tonight. Can you believe that? In April.”

  “Where are we?” Annie said after she left.

  “Page six-fifty-six,” I said. “Where it starts, ‘ “No,” Nelly said.’ Page six-fifty-six.” I separated the manuscript into two piles, one only fifty or so pages thick. We were almost done, and what would we do then while we waited for the dreams?

  “No” Nelly said, (Annie read) “and Ben tried to come awake to help her, but it was like trying to roll out from under the horse that had fallen on Malachi.

  “He’s dead,” Mrs. Macklin said. She sounded impatient, as if Nelly had done something stupid.

  “I know he’s dead,” Nelly said, and the need in her voice brought Ben completely awake. He pushed himself up in the bed. Pain roared out from his ankle, and he opened and closed his mouth in little gasps, trying to keep from screaming, pinned down by the pain.

  He turned his head and looked at Nelly, She was sitting on a wooden chair next to Caleb’s bed. She was holding Caleb’s hand, gently, as she had every night since he had been brought in. His fingers clung to hers, and his eyes were closed, but he didn’t look like he was asleep. He must have been dead the whole night.

  “You can’t do anything for him,” Mrs. Macklin said, and took hold of Nelly’s wrist.

  “Let go of her,” Ben said, and then had to breathe in and out rapidly again so the pain wouldn’t overtake him, “Leave her be.”

  Mrs, Macklin ignored him. “Twenty men downstairs half dead and you sit here,” she said accusingly, “Let go of his hand.” Still holding Nelly by the wrist, she yanked her to standing, and Caleb’s arm came up smartly, as if he were saluting.

  “No,” Nelly said desperately, “please,” and Ben lunged for Mrs. Macklin, but he didn’t make it. His foot got shot off again, worse than the first time, and he thought they must have had to cut it off at the knee.

  When he opened his eyes to see, Nelly was still sitting beside the bed, but the boy’s body was gone, and somebody had laid a gray blanket over the ticking.

  “I’m sorry,” Ben said.

  Nelly rubbed her wrist. It looked red and puffy. “Do you know what he said to me yesterday?” she said. “He said that as long as I was holding on to him he had beautiful dreams.” She rubbed at her wrist, making it redder.

  “You done the best you could,” Ben said. “He ain’t dreaming no more now anyways,” and he wanted to take her hand and hold tight, but he knew he’d be shot again before he reached the edge of the bed.

  “I broke my promise,” she said.

  “My friend Toby Banks that I told you about promised his mama he’d come home without a scratch on him. Some promises they just… you done the best you could. After he was,” he stopped and cast around for some way to say ‘dead,’ “after he was passed on to glory, he couldn’t feel whether you was holding on nohow.”

  “Promise me you won’t reenlist when your foot gets better,” she said.

  “I promise,” he said, but she went on sitting by the bed, rubbing her wrist.

  After a while Mrs. Macklin came in and asked to look at Nelly’s wrist. “No,” Nelly said.

  “It’s all swollen,” Mrs. Macklin said angrily. “I’m a nurse. It’s my duty to tend to …”

  Nelly stood up, knocking the wooden chair over. “Don’t you talk to me about duty,” she said, cradling her arm like a baby against her, “not when you wouldn’t let me do mine.”

  Annie stopped reading. “I want to go to Arlington,” she said.

  We had been through all this before. “There’s no reason to go to Arlington. We know what the dreams mean. Lee blamed himself for Annie’s death. Maybe he thought it wouldn’t have happened if Annie had been at home, if they hadn’t had to leave Arlington. We even know what the message is. It’s the letter telling him Annie’s dead. There isn’t any reason to go back to Arlington.”

  “I have to …” She didn’t finish what she was going to say. “The dreams are going in circles. It’s like when I kept dreaming about the cat, and then when we went out to Arlington, it helped.”

  Helped who? I wondered. You or Lee? She was helping him have the dreams, helping him sleep in that marble tomb of his at Lexington, and what was he doing to her?

  “I think he is trying to atone,” Annie had said. Lee had loved his daughter. Surely he wouldn’t do anything to hurt Annie. I wished I could believe that. I wished I could believe this atonement of his didn’t mean dragging Annie through the Civil War till both their hearts were broken.

  “Look,” I said, “you heard what the waitress said. The weather’s supposed to get bad, and anyway the vet’s not back from his conference. I think we should wait till we hear from him. That way we can finish the galleys, too. We can take them up to New York and stop at Arlington on the way.”

  The waitress brought our eggs. “It’s snowing in Charleston,” she said. “I just heard it on the radio.”

  “See?” I said, as if that settled it.

  Annie cut her ham up but didn’t eat it. She just kept cutting it into smaller and smaller pieces. “It isn’t supposed to snow till tonight,” she said. “You could call the vet from Broun’s, Jeff. We could take the galleys with us and finish them in D.C.” She put the knife down and rubbed her wrist.

  “Annie, you’re not in any shape to go to Arlington or anywhere else. You haven’t had any sleep for two days, and your wrist is obviously hurting.”

  She stopped rubbing it. “I’ll be all right.”

  “You could have sprained it when you hit it on the dashboard. Maybe we should go have a doctor look at it.”

>   “No,” she said and put it in her lap as if to hide it from me. “It isn’t sprained.”

  “But it hurts. And you’re exhausted. We’re both too tired to think straight. I think the best thing for both of us to do is take some aspirin and try to get some sleep, and then we’ll talk about Arlington.”

  “All right,” she said and looked, I thought, relieved.

  We went back to the inn, and Annie did what I’d told her to, even though she protested that her wrist really didn’t hurt, took some aspirin and went straight to bed. I called Broun’s West Coast agent. He would know where Broun was if anybody did, and I had meant what I said about our being too tired to think straight. Broun wouldn’t be dead on his feet. He would know what to do, how to help.

  His agent’s call referral service told me he was in New York. When I said I was trying to get in touch with Broun, she gave me a number to call. It was the number of Broun’s answering machine.

  Broun hadn’t left any new messages. Richard had. I fast-forwarded over it to see if Broun had left a hotel name or a number and found a call from Broun’s agent. “You’ve got to get the galleys in now,” she said. “McLaws and Herndon is screaming bloody murder. They’re not the only ones who’ve called. Everybody’s looking for you. I got a call from a Dr. Stone, head of the …” there was a pause and a rustle while she looked at the message, “head of the Sleep Institute. He called to say that he had checked out the Gordon thing for you, and—”

  “The Gordon thing?” I said. Gordon? I didn’t remember any Gordon.

  “—that there was no clinical verification for Dr. Gordon’s theory that dreams can prefigure illness. You’re supposed to call him for the results.”

  I called Broun’s agent and told her the galleys were almost done. “You don’t know how I can get in touch with Broun, do you?” I said. “There are a few errors I want to check out with him before I turn in the galleys.”

  “All I’ve got is his West Coast agent’s number,” she said. “If you do get in touch with him, have him call me. I’ve got a lot of messages for him. What’s he doing out there?”

  “He’s working on a new book about Lincoln’s dreams.”

  “Oh, good,” she said. “I was afraid he was still messing with The Duty Bound. Oh, and Jeff, there was a call for you. A Dr. Richard Madison. He said it was urgent that he get in touch with you. I thought you were in California with Broun, so that’s what I told him. I’m sorry,”

  “That’s okay. I’ve been hiding out trying to get the galleys done. When did he call?”

  “Oh, gee, it was two or three days ago. He didn’t leave a number. Shall I try to find him in the phone book?”

  “No!” I said and then laughed, hoping it sounded apologetic and not unstrung. “I’ve got to get these damn galleys in before I talk to anybody. If he calls back, I’m still in California, okay?”

  “Okay.” There was a pause. I was so used to talking to the answering machine I almost punched in the erase code. “Jeff, all these psychiatrists are just helping Broun with his research, right?”

  “Yeah. He’s trying to find out what caused Lincoln’s dreams.”

  “Oh, good,” she said. “He had so much trouble with The Duty Bound I thought maybe … I’ve been worried about him.”

  “He’s fine. I’ll have the galleys in to McLaws and Herndon by Monday.”

  I went in to check on Annie. She was already asleep, one hand cradling the other. I wondered if I had done the right thing, trying to get her to sleep, or if I was only letting her in for more nightmares. I knew how Lee felt sending his son Rob back in at Antietam. I had told her I would try to get some sleep, too, but I doubted if I’d be able to. I was too worried about her. I took my shoes off and settled down in the green chair with the acknowledgments sheets for The Duty Bound.

  “I’m going to the battlefield, Jeff,” Annie said, bending over me. She had on her gray coat. “Go ahead and sleep.”

  “Are they open at night?” I said. I sat up, spilling the acknowledgments everywhere. I had fallen asleep and she had dreamed about Fredericksburg again. “I don’t think they’re open at night.”

  “It’s three o’clock,” she said, and picked up her purse and the room key. “Go back to sleep.”

  It was almost dark in the room. She had turned on the lamp by her bed. Three o’clock. I couldn’t let her go out to the battlefield in the middle of the night. I had to get up and get dressed and go with her.

  “I’ll go with you,” I said, and bent over to put on my shoes. “Wait for me.”

  “Go back to sleep,” she said, and shut the door behind her.

  I stood up, still convinced that it was three o’clock in the morning and surprised to find myself dressed. I must have slept through the afternoon and on into the night while Annie dreamed about Fredericksburg or worse. Asleep on duty. They shot soldiers for that.

  I grabbed my coat and racketed down the outside stairs to the little parking lot, but the car was still there. She wasn’t in it. I stood looking around the parking lot for a long, stupid minute, trying to think where she had gone and waking up to the fact that it was not the middle of the night.

  It was getting dark out, and some cars had their lights on. The weather the waitress had predicted had come in. It was windy, and the sky was a gray blanket of cloud. The waitress was right, I thought, and would have given anything if she’d been hovering by my shoulder waiting to pour me a cup of coffee to wake me up.

  And where was Annie? What if she hadn’t gone out to the battlefield at all? What if she’d caught a bus to Arlington? What if she’d taken off altogether, afraid I was going to try to stop the dreams, afraid I was going to put Thorazine in her food like Richard?

  Richard. He had called Broun’s agent. Who else had he called? Nobody knows where we are, I thought desperately. But what if Annie had told Richard her second dream after all, and he had recognized it as Antietam? And when we weren’t in Antietam, he had gone on to the next battle? Which was Fredericksburg.

  I raced back up the stairs, across the hall, and down to the desk. “Did you see a man in here, about my height, dressed like a doctor?”

  The clerk grinned. “You looking for Mrs. Davis?” he said, emphasizing the Mrs. “She asked us to call her a taxi.”

  A taxi? She wasn’t in a car with Richard, drugged and helpless, on her way back to Washington. She had taken a taxi to Arlington because I wouldn’t take her. “Did she say where she was going?”

  “She didn’t say anything to me,” he said, still grinning. “When she called for the taxi, though, I heard her say she wanted to go out to Fredericksburg battlefield.”

  I took the stairs two at a time, grabbed my car keys, and raced back out to the car and across town. But before I’d gone two blocks I knew I was too late.

  Lincoln pardoned the sentries who fell asleep on duty, saying it was hard for farm boys to break their country habits. He wouldn’t pardon me. I had let Annie go out to the battlefield by herself, and it was starting to snow.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Lee never forgot his love for horses, even at the end. One of his chief concerns that last week, while Five Forks fell and Sheridan cut off all hope of escape to the north, was with the starving mules and horses. He had had to give their rations of parched corn to the men.

  The morning of the surrender Colonel John Haskell rode up “like the wind” with news that Fitz Lee had learned of a road over which the army might still be able to escape. He had only one arm, and he couldn’t get his horse stopped until he was nearly a hundred yards past Lee. “What is it?” Lee cried, running up to the winded horse. “Oh, why did you do it? You have killed your beautiful horse!”

  The blue taxi was sitting just outside the National Park gates. I tore up the terraced slopes to the cemetery. I didn’t even look for her in the Visitors’ Center or on the brick paths. There was only one place she was going to be.

  She was standing on Marye’s Heights where Lee must have stood, th
e skirt of her gray coat whipping around her in the wind. It was snowing, stray angled flakes like rifle fire. Annie was holding a brochure but not looking at it. And what was she looking at? The flash and shine of sun on metal, the whipping of flags, the breathless hush before the men on the naked plain were cut to ribbons, the flags toppling one by one and the horses going down? Or the graves, terraced row on row below her?

  I came up the last step, panting. “Are you all right?” I said, and had to take a breath every other word.

  “Yes,” she said, and smiled at me, her face grave and kind.

  “You should have woken me up,” I said. “I would have brought you out here.”

  “You needed to get some sleep. I’ve been worried about you. You stay up with me all night and don’t get any sleep.”

  She turned and looked down the long terraced slope at the graves.

  “They didn’t build this cemetery until after the war,” I said, still having trouble getting my breath. “It isn’t like they buried the soldiers here after the battle. This wasn’t made into a national cemetery until 1865. A lot of the soldiers buried here probably didn’t even die in the war.”

  She looked down at the brick path we were standing on. There were grave markers set into the path. She bent and swept snow off the granite square. “This is where the unknowns are buried, isn’t it?”

  “None of these graves are Confederate dead,” I said. “They’re not even from the battle of Fredericksburg. The Confederate soldiers are all buried in the city cemetery.”

  She stood up and looked at the brochure. “This says there are over twelve thousand unknown soldiers buried here,” she said, “but there aren’t really, you know. There aren’t any.”

  I took the brochure away from her and pretended to read it. The snow was melting on it in big spots that blurred the ink.

  “You said nobody knows what happened to the chicken, but it isn’t true,” she said. “I know what happened to it. It got killed. One of the soldiers wrung its neck for dinner.”

  “You don’t know that. Maybe it ran away into the woods and became a wild chicken. Maybe some little girl found it and kept it for a pet.”