Bible Stories for Adults (14 page)

Of course it was good. Walter had gone into orthodontics for the flexible hours, the dearth of authentic emergencies. That, and never having to pay for his own kids' braces. “See you then,” he replied, laying a hand on his shattered heart.

 

The President strode out of Northeast Federal Savings and Loan and continued toward the derby-hatted Capitol. Such an exquisite building—at least some of the old city remained; all was not glass-faced offices and dull boxy banks. “If we were still on the gold standard, this would be a more normal transaction,” the assistant manager, a fool named Meade, had whined when Abe presented his coins for conversion. Not on the gold standard! A Democrat's doing, no doubt.

Luckily, Aaron Green, Abe's Chief Soothsayer and Time-Travel Advisor, had prepared him for the wondrous monstrosities and wrenching innovations that now assailed his senses. The self-propelled railway coaches roaring along causeways of black stone. The sky-high mechanical condors whisking travelers across the nation at hundreds of miles per hour. The dense medley of honks, bleeps, and technological growls.

So Washington was indeed living in its proper century—but what of the nation at large?

Stripped to the waist, two slave teams were busily transforming Pennsylvania Avenue, the first chopping into the asphalt with pick axes, the second filling the gorge with huge cylindrical pipes. Their sweat-speckled backs were free of gashes and scars—hardly a surprise, as the overseers carried no whips, merely queer one-chamber pistols and portable Gatling guns.

Among the clutter at the Constitution Avenue intersection—signs, trash receptacles, small landlocked lighthouses regulating the coaches' flow—a pair of green arrows commanded Abe's notice,
CAPITOL BUILDING
, announced the eastward-pointing arrow,
LINCOLN MEMORIAL
, said its opposite. His own memorial! So this particular tomorrow, the one fated by the awful Seward Treaty, would be kind to him.

The President hailed a cab. Removing his stovepipe hat, he wedged his six-foot-four frame into the passenger compartment—don't ride up front, Aaron Green had briefed him—and offered a cheery “Good morning.” The driver, a blowzy woman, slid back a section of the soft rubbery glass. “Lincoln, right?” she called through the opening like Pyramus talking to Thisbe. “You're supposed to be Abe Lincoln. Costume party?”

“Republican.”

“Where to?”

“Boston.” If any city had let itself get mired in the past, Abe figured, that city would be Boston.

“Boston,
Massachusetts?
”

“Correct.”

“Hey, that's crazy, Mac. You're talking seven hours at least, and that's if we push the speed limit all the way. I'd have to charge you my return trip.”

The President lifted a sack of money from his greatcoat. Even if backed only by good intentions, twentieth century currency was aesthetically satisfying, that noble profile on the pennies, that handsome three-quarter view on the fivers. As far as he could tell, he and Washington were the only ones who'd scored twice. “How much altogether?”

“You serious? Probably four hundred dollars.”

Abe peeled the driver's price from his wad and passed the bills through the window. “Take me to Boston.”

 

“They're so
adorable!”
Tanya exclaimed as she and Walter strolled past Sonny's Super Slaver, a Chestnut Hill Mall emporium second in size only to the sporting goods store. “Ah, look at
that
one—those big ears!” Recently weaned babies jammed the glass cages, tumbling over themselves, clutching stuffed jackhammers and toy garden hoses. “Could we get one, Pappy?”

As Walter fixed on his daughter's face, its glow nearly made him squint. “Tanya, I've got some bad news. Jimmy's real sick.”

“Sick? He looks fine.”

“It's Blue Nile, honey. He could die.”

“Die?” Tanya's angelic face crinkled with the effort of fighting tears. What a brave little tomato she was. “Soon?”

“Soon.” Walter's throat swelled like a broken ankle. “Tell you what. Let's go pick out a whelp right now. We'll have them put it aside until . . .”

“Until Jimmy”—a wrenching gulp—“goes away?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Poor Jimmy.”

The sweet, bracing fragrance of newborn chattel wafted into Walter's nostrils as they approached the counter, behind which a wiry Asian man, tongue pinned against his upper lip, methodically arranged a display of Tarbaby Treats. “Now
here's
a girl who needs a friend,” he sang out, flashing Tanya a fake smile.

“Our best slave has Blue Nile,” Walter explained, “and we wanted to—”

“Say no more.” The clerk lifted his palms as if stopping traffic. “We can hold one for you clear till August.”

“I'm afraid it won't be that long.”

The clerk led them to a cage containing a solitary whelp chewing on a small plastic lawn mower,
MALE
, the sign said,
TEN MONTHS
. $399.95. “This guy arrived only yesterday. You'll have him litter trained in two weeks—this we guarantee.”

“Had his shots?”

“You bet. The polio booster's due next month.”

“Oh, Daddy, I
love
him,” Tanya gushed, jumping up and down. “I completely
love
him. Let's bring him home tonight!”

“No, tomato. Jimmy'd get jealous.” Walter gave the clerk a wink and, simultaneously, a twenty. “See that he gets a couple of really good meals this weekend, right?”

“Sure thing.”

“Pappy?”

“Yes, tomato?”

“When Jimmy dies, will he go to slave heaven? Will he get to see his old friends?”

“Certainly.”

“Like Buzzy?”

“He'll definitely see Buzzy.”

A smile of pride leaped spontaneously to Walter's face. Buzzy had died when Tanya was only four, yet she remembered, she actually remembered!

 

So hard-edged, the future, Abe thought, levering himself out of the taxi and unflexing his long, cramped limbs. Boston had become a thing of brick and rock, tar and glass, iron and steel. “Wait here,” he told the driver.

He entered the public gardens. A truly lovely spot, he decided, sauntering past a slave team planting flower beds—impetuous tulips, swirling gladiolus, purse-lipped daffodils. Not far beyond, a white family cruised across a duck pond in a swan-shaped boat peddled by a scowling adolescent with skin like obsidian.

Leaving the park, Abe started down Boylston Street. A hundred yards away, a burly Irish overseer stood beneath a gargantuan structure called the John Hancock Tower and began raising the scaffold, thus sending aloft a dozen slaves equipped with window-washing fluid. Dear Lord, what a job—the facade must contain a million square yards of mirrored glass.

Hard-edged, ungiving—and yet the city brought Abe peace.

In recent months, he had started to grasp the true cause of the war. The issue, he realized, was not slavery. As with all things political, the issue was power. The southerners had seceded because they despaired of ever seizing the helm of state; as long as its fate was linked to a grimy, uncouth, industrialized North, Dixie could never fully flower. By endeavoring to expand slavery into the territories, those southerners who hated the institution and those who loved it were speaking with a single tongue, saying, “The Republic's true destiny is manifest: an agrarian Utopia, now and forever.”

But here was Boston, full of slaves and steeped in progress. Clearly the Seward Treaty would not prove the recipe for feudalism and inertia Abe's advisors feared. Crude, yes; morally ambiguous, true; and yet slavery wasn't dragging the Republic into the past, wasn't retarding its bid for modernity and might.

“Sign the treaty,” an inner voice instructed Abe. “End the war.”

 

Sunday was the Fourth of July, which meant the annual backyard picnic with the Burnsides, boring Ralph and boorish Helen, a tedious afternoon of horseshoe tossing, conspicuous drinking, and stupefying poolside chat, the whole ordeal relieved only by Libby's barbecued spare ribs. Libby was one of those wonderful yard-sale items Marge had such a knack for finding, a healthy, well-mannered female who turned out to be a splendid cook, easily worth ten times her sticker price.

The Burnsides were an hour late—their rickshaw puller, Zippy, had broken his foot the day before, and so they were forced to use Bubbles, their unathletic gardener—a whole glorious hour of not hearing Ralph's thoughts on the Boston sports scene. When the Burnsides finally did show, the first thing out of Ralph's mouth was, “Is it a law the Sox can't own a decent pitcher? I mean, did they actually pass a
law?
” and Walter steeled himself. Luckily, Libby used a loose hand with the bourbon, and by three o'clock Walter was so anesthetized by mint juleps he could have floated happily through an amputation, not to mention Ralph's vapid views on the Sox, Celtics, Bruins, and Patriots.

With the sixth drink, his numbness segued into a kind of contented courage, and he took unflinching stock of himself. Yes, his wife had probably bedded down with a couple of her teachers from the Wellesley Adult Education Center—that superfluously muscled pottery instructor, most likely, though the drama coach also seemed to have a roving dick—but it wasn't as if Walter didn't occasionally use his orthodontic chair as a motel bed, wasn't as if he didn't frolic with Katie Mulligan every Wednesday afternoon at the West Newton Hot Tubs. And look at his splendid house, with its Jacuzzi, bowling alley, tennis court, and twenty-five-meter pool. Look at his thriving practice. His portfolio. Porsche. Silver rickshaw. Graceful daughter flopping through sterile turquoise waters (damn that Happy, always using too much chlorine). And look at his sturdy, handsome Marge, back-floating, her pregnancy rising from the deep end like a volcanic island. Walter was sure the kid was his. Eighty-five percent sure.

He'd achieved something in this life, by God.

At dusk, while Happy set off the fireworks, the talk got around to Blue Nile. “We had Jimmy tested last week,” Walter revealed, exhaling a small tornado of despair. “Positive.”

“Good Lord, and you let him stay in the house?” wailed Ralph, fingering the grip of his Luger Parabellum P08. A cardboard rocket screeched into the sky and became a dozen crimson starbursts, their reflections cruising across the pool like phosphorescent fish. “You should've told us. He might infect Bubbles.”

“It's a hard virus to contract,” Walter retorted. A buzz bomb whistled overhead, annihilating itself in a glittery blue-and-red mandala. “There must be an exchange of saliva or blood.”

“Still, I can't believe you're keeping him, with Marge pregnant and everything.”

Ten fiery spheres popped from a Roman candle and sailed into the night like clay pigeons. “Matter of fact, I've got an appointment with Grant on Monday.”

“You know, Walter, if Jimmy were mine, I'd allow him a little dignity. I wouldn't take him to a lousy clinic.”

The pièce de resistance blossomed over the yard—Abe Lincoln's portrait in sparks. “What would you do?”

“You know perfectly well what I'd do.”

Walter grimaced. Dignity. Ralph was right, by damn. Jimmy had served the family with devotion and zest. They owed him an honorable exit.

 

The President chomped into a Big Mac, reveling in the soggy sauces and sultry juices as they bathed his tongue and rolled down his gullet. Were he not permanently lodged elsewhere—rail splitter, country lawyer, the whole captivating myth—he might well have opted to settle down here in 2010. Big Macs were a quality commodity. The entire menu, in fact, the large fries, vanilla shakes, Diet Cokes, and Chicken McNuggets, seemed to Abe a major improvement over nineteenth-century cuisine. And such a soothing environment, its every surface clean and sleek, as if carved from opaque ice.

An enormous clown named Ronald decorated the picture window. Outside, across the street, an elegant sign—Old English characters on whitewashed wood—heralded the Chestnut Hill Country Club. On the grassy slopes beyond, smooth and green like a billiards table, a curious event unfolded, men and women whacking balls into the air with sticks. When not employed, the sticks resided in cylindrical bags slung over the shoulders of sturdy male slaves.

“Excuse me, madam,” Abe addressed the chubby woman in the next booth. “What are those people doing? Is it religious?”

“That's quite a convincing Lincoln you've got on.” Hunched over a newspaper, the woman wielded a writing implement, using it to fill tiny squares with alphabet letters. “Are you serious? They're golfing.”

“A game?”

“Uh-huh.” The woman started on her second Quarter Pounder. “The game of golf.”

“It's like croquet, isn't it?”

“No. Golf.”

Dipping and swelling like a verdant sea, the golf Held put Abe in mind of Virginia's hilly provinces. Virginia, Lee's stronghold. A soft moan left the sixteenth president. Having thrown Hooker and Sedgwick back across the Rappahannock, Lee was ideally positioned to bring the war to the Union, either by attacking Washington directly or, more likely, by forming separate corps under Longstreet, Hill, and Ewell and invading Pennsylvania. Overrunning the border towns, he could probably cut the flow of reinforcements to Vicksburg while simultaneously equipping the Army of Northern Virginia for a push on the capital.

It was all too nightmarish to contemplate.

Sighing heavily, Abe took the Seward Treaty from his vest and asked to borrow his neighbor's pen.

 

Monday was a holiday. Right after breakfast, Walter changed into his golfing togs, hunted down his clubs, and told Jimmy they'd be spending the day on the links. He ended up playing the entire course, partly to improve his game, partly to postpone the inevitable.