A Once Crowded Sky (25 page)

Not being a man of subtle subterfuge and assuming his immigrant wife to be as weak as he, the clerk nonchalantly explained the plan to her, emphasizing that after she went through with this slight ruse, he would reward her handsomely, allow her to quit her work, ensure that she was cared for the way a husband was honor-bound to care for a wife. If she decided to betray his brilliant plan, well, he would hurt her and the child, and no one would ever believe a Negro-fucking, leprechaun whore over a man of respectability. The offer was not received as well as he might have expected, and Mary borrowed a gun from a young, redheaded kitchen woman of Asiatic descent, snuck down the hall into his room, and killed him that very night.

Before they hanged her, they allowed Mary to bear the child, and he was born on March 21, 1860. The men who took him from his mother incuriously bestowed upon him the name of his supposed father, but the women who were charged with caring for him—Mary’s fellow maids, the only people who really gave a damn for her, who knew the truth of what had been done to her—discarded this identity and simply called the boy Soldier, due to the quick laughter he’d break into when the boys in blue saluted through the nation’s capital on their way south.

The first years of the child’s life were passed in the corridors of a world at war. The help staff at the White House shared in raising the boy, lugging him around the mansion as they cleaned up after President
Lincoln and his staff. But a lad of such energy who lacked any sense of precaution could not easily be hidden; and Soldier was soon discovered by Lincoln’s young sons, who took a liking to the child and treated him as a playmate, another member of the family.

They were quite a group in those halcyon days: the three boys raising as much hell as they could as the men of the household tried to do the same. At times, it seemed as if the only person in the mansion who could handle the lads was that same redheaded kitchen woman of Asiatic descent whom no one remembered hiring and who seemed to resemble other redheaded servants who had lingered among the corridors of power at times of strife.

Mostly she kept them subdued by singing stories: old tales of titans and heroes, men and myths, Achilles and Heracles, Jason on his ship sailing above the gods. Throughout the night, she’d whisper to them about these men, their battles and their powers, their successes in wrestling between good and evil, their glances toward a heaven serenely perched above as their fists sank into the demons below. The stories never ended, she said, there was always another battle won, well done, well done—but the boys still enjoyed them immensely. When the sun came, one could usually find them acting out roles they’d heard recited to them the night before.

Eventually, Lincoln himself developed a fondness for the young orphan, especially after the loss of his own child. The help of the house had told Soldier of his origin as the son of George Jr. and Mary, and the boy took no small pleasure in repeating these facts, with some natural exaggerations, to anyone who’d listen. And the president, that particularly acute man, enjoyed being regaled with the young boy’s knotted yarns of legacy and fate, destiny and guns.

In need of comfort in his final days, Lincoln would often invite the little Soldier to accompany him in his study as he wrote this or that order directing the conflict to move forward or backward. By the end of the war, even Lincoln’s wife was not surprised when he elected to bring the boy to Ford’s theater for a relaxing, distracting performance. By that time, Soldier was one of the few things that brought the ancient man any solace from the torched world around him.

While overlooking a stage, Soldier was shot for the first time. The bullet was meant solely for the president, but after it pierced Lincoln’s
skull, it managed to slice down through the left cheek of the young child on his lap. Soldier can still remember the well-dressed assassin leaping from their balcony, twisting his ankle, and limping off to safety. Or maybe that was just something someone told him and it’s since become a memory, a part of his own shifting story.

After the shooting, the president and the boy were both brought across the street and placed in adjacent beds in preparation for their release from this world. Lying there, Soldier kept trying to reach out and feel this kind man’s skin, but strangers would slap his hand down every time he made the attempt.

By any reckoning, this should be the end of this tragic tale: Soldier should have died there, and his odd origins would soon have been forgotten. But this story has a way of continuing on when it might have ended at a more natural point, for it was in that room that the greatest doctors in the country proposed to the greatest statesmen in the country a great plan for a great man. A nascent technology existed that might be used to save the president: he could be frozen in ice and revived at a time when his wounds could be healed.

Amazing! Astounding! Incredible!

But such a thing had never before been attempted, and no one knew if it would work or if it might instead kill the mortally wounded Lincoln even faster than the bullet’s festering trail. They needed to test the process, and they needed to test it quickly. How fortunate for them that next to the famous man lay a lost orphan suffering from such similar wounds. If things went wrong with the boy, why, no one would remember, would they? And even if his wounds could be healed, wasn’t it the boy’s patriotic duty to test the process for the health of his dear leader?

Interestingly, these men, who were certainly powerful and intelligent, were not easily cruel, and though convinced it was the right thing to do, they found themselves hesitating from actually hurting the lad. They were after all scientists, not killers. However, they had grossly underestimated young Soldier. It wouldn’t be the last time. Interrupting their trade on the pros and cons of such an experiment, the boy—his face still bleeding from Booth’s bullet—jolted up and volunteered.

Yes, he would do it, he said. Yes, for his country. Yes.

And so Soldier was hurriedly taken to the edge of the Potomac and immobilized in pure ice. Much to the joy of the men present, the project
was an ecstatic success—the boy appeared to have survived—and they rushed back to the small cabin across from the theater only to find that they had run just too late and their leader had passed from life to history.

In a crisis radical decisions become commonplace, but after that crisis fades those same decisions can seem to have been made in haste, to have perhaps been made in error. The men who trapped Soldier in ice could not help but regret their actions, thinking that if these maneuvers were to be discovered, the population would condemn them, not only for polluting the last moments of a martyr’s struggle with fairy-tale science, but for possibly killing a young boy.

The various influential people in that room acted, and they acted swiftly. Talk of the young Soldier, his role in Lincoln’s life and death, would be obfuscated and denied to the writers and journalists who would color in that day for the rest of the world. The boy would be kept in a clandestine basement far beneath the White House. The evidence of his imprisonment would be concealed, but he would not be killed, because again these were not cruel men, they still harbored some hope they had not needlessly slaughtered the child.

This manageable plan was easily enough executed, and Soldier was expunged from the record—not a hard thing to do considering the boy’s somewhat tainted lineage and the paucity of persons who cared that he was gone—and he was subsequently stored in a deep hole, not unlike furniture.

Once placed, so Soldier remained for forty years, until President Theodore Roosevelt made an executive decision of sorts. Roosevelt sought to fashion an American Empire and assessed that such an undertaking would require an American Soldier, a symbol of the destiny he found so remarkably manifested in the country’s makeup. Inspired by the science-fiction literature that permeated the media of that time, he charged his scientists to produce such a figure: a Superior-Man capable of defending America’s borders—borders that, he noted, were soon to expand.

As usual with such happenings, a committee was formed, scientists were assembled from a number of exotic locals both domestic and foreign, rustled men with bristly mustaches who sucked on a wide variety of pipes. Soon these preeminent experts were commenting to their commander that they were in need of a man upon whom they could perform
certain delicate testings. They desired someone who could possibly strengthen some of the more fragile intricacies of their new technology before they put it to actual productive use. This individual, they were careful to emphasize, might not have a good time of it. Having been briefed on the ice-man in the basement, the perceptive Roosevelt recognized a useful parallel when it was laid before him and offered this elite grouping the boy-Soldier for whatever purposes they might deem necessary to achieve success.

No one knew if he would survive the thawing, and after he did, certainly no one was prepared for him to survive the injections, electroshocks, transfusions, and whatnot that followed. After these onlookers witnessed the pain the boy had to endure under these thoroughly classified bombardments, they honestly expected him to give up and keel over; no one could tolerate such distress, no one could do it without withdrawing, without even a hint of surrender.

But then they were unaware of the blood in his veins: the grandfather, the slave, the father, the mother; they were ignorant of the upbringing in his bones: the kitchen woman, the president, the shooting. Before the indoctrination began, Soldier’s love for his country was deeper than Neptune’s grave, and it was certainly deeper than any wound they could scrape into his flesh. It’s how he survived long enough for the training to begin, how he became hard enough to undergo twenty-three-hour days of running, shooting, and fighting for thirteen years, until 1914, when it was finally decreed he was ready.

He became the first man to emerge successful from this illustrious program. Sadly, he was also the last. Others tried, strong men of strong conviction; unfortunately, all of them died, and they died screaming.

It was Woodrow Wilson actually who bestowed upon him his name. “Son,” he said, before sending the eighteen-year-old abroad to fight with French and British forces, “you can’t just be a Soldier anymore. You can’t fight for fighting’s sake, for empire. America doesn’t stand for expansion, my boy, we stand for freedom now. So we shall make you The Soldier of Freedom. Go forth and fight for self-determination, for honesty, for America.” Then Wilson added with a pat on the back, “And don’t let the Negro parts of you get in the way; you’re better than that.” A laugh, a shake of hands, and The Soldier of Freedom was off to his first war.

Five years later he returned to the same president, Soldier’s name
now recited in awe throughout the country. As he was paraded through the streets, the crowds shouted out the slogan some forgotten Wilson electioneer had begun promoting, a phrase taken from Soldier himself: “Another battle won! Well done! Well done!”

A grand new hero for a grand new age. But that wasn’t enough. The new peace was tentative at best, and the country could sense it crumbling even as its structures were hastily pasted together. He was in his best shape now; he was a master of war and tactics, his aim was perfection, his fists were stronger, faster, tougher, than any man ever known. This battle was won, yes. Well done, well done, yes; however, the country would need him again, but they would need him as he was now. Not aged. Not spoiled. What a waste that would be.

So they politely asked him, would you be willing to go back, back into the ice? Would you be willing to make that sacrifice for your country? Yes, you have done some good, but there is more good to be done. You are still needed.

Though he was tired, Soldier did not hesitate. There was a scar on his cheek from the first bullet, and now he had a few more from some other strays: lines crisscrossing his face, patterns formed from paths of dried blood. Yes, sir, said the good Soldier. Of course, sir. Into the ice, back to the cold.

Nineteen thirty-nine: the Germans invaded Poland, and the Americans awoke their secret weapon and again sent him abroad. He fought and fought, until he couldn’t go on anymore, and then he went on some more, until he was called back in 1946. Another battle won. Well done. Well done. But it was a tentative peace. Would you be willing to go back, back into the ice? Yes, you’ve done some good, but there’s more good to be done. You are still needed.

Nineteen fifty: Korea, and three years later he returned. Another battle won. Well done. Well done. But it was a tentative peace. Yes, you’ve done some good, but there’s more good to be done. You are still needed.

Nineteen sixty-five: Vietnam, and ten years later he returned. Another battle won. Well done. Well done. But it was a tentative peace. Yes, you’ve done some good, but there’s more good to be done. You are still needed.

Nineteen ninety-one: Iraq, and two years later he returned. Another battle won. Well done. Well done. But it was a tentative peace.
Yes, you’ve done some good, but there’s more good to be done. You are still needed.

Years later, some senator with some scam decided to release him into Arcadia City and pretend it was a war. Ultimate and PenUltimate broke up the corrupt ring right in the nick of time and saved Soldier from killing hundreds of the people for whom he’d fought all this time.

He was forty-five years old, though the shots and the training had kept his body young or at least younger. He’d been at war for more than a quarter century, and he was a legend: George and Mary’s bastard son—the greatest hero the country had ever known. He’d gotten there, through fists and guns, he’d gotten here.