Skeletons (31 page)

That night she took her own life, in her room, alone, with a knife to her breast. She left a sealed note, which only I read:

Good-bye, Father, and my darling boys. I know it is selfish of me, but I cannot bear to lose you again. So I go back to where we came from. Hopefully, I will truly, finally, find paradise.

That was when I almost lost hope. A blacker depression than I had ever known dropped down upon me. It was not only the loss of Mary, which was as deep as any I had ever known. It was that she had taken with her a part of me that believed that what I was doing was right.

At her funeral, a state affair attended by the myriad politicians who now peopled the Congress and the cabinet, as well as ministers from the various countries of the world, I sat in stone silence. Tad, Eddie, Willie, and Robert sat next to me. I felt as dead as if I had rejoined her in the grave. Her last written words ran through my mind, as truthful and direct as any I had ever penned myself:
I go back to where we came from. Hopefully, I will truly, finally, find paradise.

Where did we come from? Where had we been, all of us here in this cathedral, all of us seeking to wipe out the human race around the world, before we had risen again? Why were we back here? Did we truly have the right to take possession of this world?

Suddenly the biggest part of me wanted to be with her, in whatever place she had returned to.

I did not go with her remains, the collected dust in a silver urn, back to Springfield. She was flown there, and Robert went and saw that she was put back to rest in her original spot. The public was told that the pressing needs of the republic bade me stay in Washington. But those closest to me, Billy Herndon in particular, knew that if I went back, I might try to reenter my old tomb myself.

Over the next weeks I took to sitting in my office with the lights darkened, looking out the window, signing whatever papers came across my desk automatically. I ate sporadically, even more so than I always had, not tasting the food, seeing or talking to no one unless it was absolutely necessary. I became so morose that Billy Herndon came in one day, locking the door behind him.

"Mr. Lincoln," he said, "you can't go on like this. It's beginning to affect everyone around you. Soon it will affect the country."

I looked up slowly from my desk. I tried a tired smile. "You don't look so hale yourself, Billy. Have you by any chance joined General Grant's anti-temperance league?"

"Mr. Lincoln," he said, "things are going very well. We're almost at the stage where we can call it a mopping-up exercise. General Eisenhower reports that things are even better overseas. Europe is almost at the point of total victory. Some of the smaller countries, such as Romania and Turkey and Greece, have already declared one hundred percent turnings. I doubt there will be any humans left soon."

"Yes . . ." I gave a heavy sigh and looked up at him. "But do you think, Billy, that we're doing the right thing?"

He was startled. "Of course, Mr. Lincoln! We've been over this a hundred times. You yourself told me that you looked into the bottom of your soul, to see what you were, and knew that by our nature we were doing the right thing."

"But is our nature correct, Billy?"

He gave me a puzzled look. "Mr. Lincoln, I don't understand—"

"You heard my third inaugural speech, Billy. You heard me quote scripture: 'Woe to any man by whom the offense cometh.' Suppose that humanity is not the offense, but we are instead?"

"Mr. Lincoln—"

"Hear me out, Billy. If, for argument's sake, we are the offense . . ." I studied the paper before me, a copy of my address, and read: ". . . which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through the Almighty's appointed time, He now wills to remove."

I looked up at Billy, who stared at me. "Mr. Lincoln, that's preposterous. That's—"

"What if it were true, Billy? What if I—all of us—have it backward?"

Billy had lost all signs of his hangover. "Mr. Lincoln, you cannot deny your own nature. We can only act upon our own nature!"

"That's true, that's true. And as far as it goes, there's justice in it." I felt some of my old strength, a new kind of anger, pour into me. "But what if our cause, which seems so just to us, is not, in the larger scheme, just at all?" I pulled another paper from beneath the first, a copy of my second inaugural address. "With malice toward none, I read, "with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in."

I looked up at Billy. I fear I scared him a bit with the Old Testament fury of my words: "Do you feel malice to-ward none, Billy? Do you feel charity for all?"

"Mr. Lincoln, as our nature goes . . . As you said, 'with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right—'"

"But if your nature is
wrong
, what then! What if it is not God-given!" I pounded upon the table in anger. "
I just don't know why we're here
!"

Billy was speechless for a moment. "Mr. Lincoln—"

"I don't know that we come from God! I
despise
this anger in me, Billy, this hatred toward the human race. I despise the anger I feel toward those of our own who do not bend to our will! I killed John Wilkes Booth with my own hands, because I felt I must, but I
despise
myself for it! I know what I am, I know my nature down to my soul,
and I do not like it
!"

"Mr. Lincoln," Billy said, "you wouldn't . . .

I managed to smile feebly. "No, Billy, I don't have it in me. I may be melancholic, but I'm not a fool. There's work for us to do. I don't propose to step out in the middle of it."

"Yes, Mr. Lincoln."

"The thing that truly puzzles and intrigues me, Billy, the thing which poor Mary made me look at for the very first time, is that if we're back here on earth, where did we come from?" I looked at him directly. "And who sent us here, Billy? All I want is a sign. . ."

He left me then, brooding, in the dark, with only my thoughts for company.

More bad news a week later. Grant's campaign in the east went brilliantly, at first. In no time the Atlantic states were solidly in federal hands. He headed inland, with at first similar results. But whether by fate or design, he formed a pincer around a large human force in Pennsylvania, forcing them toward Gettysburg for the final confrontation. By telephone, I tried to convince him to fight where he was and avoid Gettysburg at all costs.

At that moment his transmissions from the front became garbled. I was positive that the drink was upon him again and that now he was partaking even in the heat of battle. But Grant claimed that he wanted to fight on familiar ground.

"Meade had his glory here; now let me have mine!"

The familiar ground was not, of course, familiar, and our forces were routed by a determined human contingent with modern weapons. In his cups Grant had ordered that muskets be used, and I was told that he tried to have cannons on the Gettysburg historic site, which hadn't been used since 1863, loaded and fired, with miserable results. His last telephone call to me came from what he described as the gift shop. I could practically smell the liquor on his breath as he spoke.

"Not going at all as planned, Mr. President," he said.

"General, I must say I'm not surprised."

"There are
picnicking
tables here now, where there used to be pickets! How can a man fight like this!”

“General Grant . . ."

"They're charging, Mr. President! And they have helicopters!"

I heard a strafing sound, heard Grant swear an oath. "I made all such weaponry available to you, General Grant," I said evenly.

"Damned foolishness! Will Sherman be here soon, Mr. President?"

"Sherman is in the south, and will stay there, General. You were provided everything necessary to secure your area. If . . .” Remembering the great warrior he had been, I softened my tone. "General, perhaps we should talk about a change in command . . .”

At that moment Grant swore another oath. "Dammit, McClellan, get me another bottle! And—"

That was all I heard. Later they told me that a sniper had hit the general as he stood talking on the phone, and that a moment later he was gone.

At Gettysburg the humans carried the day. They occupied the grounds for the next seventy-two hours, until McClellan, too, was felled, and a low-ranking officer who had tried to hide in the midst of Grant's army was elevated, on his discovery, to ranking officer and brigadier general in the army of the United States of America.

It was then that I traveled to Gettysburg to give a short address and meet my new, and all too modest, army commander, Robert E. Lee.

If there has ever been a more melancholy man than myself, Robert E. Lee was that man. I admit I felt instant communion with him. We met in his temporary headquarters, on a ridge overlooking the historic grounds. I felt a chill of memory. Gettysburg, at least, hadn't changed all that much in all these years. The many deep holes where the buried dead had risen to their present state simulated with uncanny accuracy the cannon craters I had seen on my last trip here.

"The battle will be won within the day," Lee said sadly.

"I have no doubt in your abilities, General," I said.

He pointed to a spot to the east, in a valley. It was ringed with the metal carcasses of broken tanks and downed aircraft. I could not make out individual soldiers, but could see the meagerness of their gathering.

"That is what they have left in all the eastern part of the country. There are house-to-house searches under way, mostly in the countryside now. The cities are secure." He pointed to the corners surrounding the valley. "They're surrounded on four sides. I estimate two thousand or so. I've sent surrender terms, but"— he smiled grimly—"they've told me to go to hell."

"They're good men. Is there a . . . way to make it quick?"

"Is there ever?" Lee said. "We've thought of gas . . ."

I shook my head. "That will not do. You know my feelings on the subject, and on all the other horrible weapons we have. These nuclear devices . . ."

"They're . . . evil," Lee said.

"Yes. It's all evil, of course."

"But there are degrees of evil, aren't there, Mr. President?"

Our eyes met. "You're bothered by it, too, aren't you, General? By all of it, I mean."

"Yes, I am, sir. But there isn't another way, is there?”

“No, General, there isn't."

"Then let's get on with it."

His blue eyes were tired but set as we shook hands and parted.

My speech was slated for the following hour. I had a few remarks set down on paper, which I had worked over and over on the plane trip down to Pennsylvania. But I was still not happy with them. General Lee had been kind enough to provide a camp stool and table for me to work on as the hour approached. It was while I sat here that a soldier appeared, standing quietly at attention until I noticed him.

"Can I help you, son?" I said, looking up.

The ghostly features surrounding his skeleton were unbearably young. He was perhaps seventeen years old, with longish shaggy hair and the look of the battle worn. He carried a new M-16 rifle but looked as though he'd be more comfortable with a musket.

The young man saluted. "Sir, General Lee thought I should talk to you."

"Go on, son," I said. For the first time in weeks I felt a genuine smile of warmth spread over my features.

"It's just that . . ."

"Don't be tongue-tied. You obviously have a bellyful of words, and if you don't let them out, I'm afraid they'll growl away in that stomach of yours forever."

"Yes, sir," he said nervously.

"That reminds me," I said, "of the man on the rolling log. Ever hear the story?"

"Sir?"

"It's like this. There were some
logmen
once who cut a big tree and put it out in the middle of the river. One after another they got up on that log, but kept falling off. Then one of them climbed up on the log, started it to rolling, and was able to stand in place and walk at the same time."

The soldier looked baffled.

"Roll your log, son!" I said, laughing.

"Umm, it's just this, sir. I was buried over there." He pointed to a spot near the bottom of the valley in which our present foes waited. "I was here in 1863, during the battle."

"I see . . ."

"And I just wanted to say, Mr. President, that what you said the first time here was true."

"And what was that?"

He drew a slip of paper from his pocket and opened it. He searched for a moment, then read, "That we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain; that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom; and that government of the people, by the people, and for the people shall not perish from the earth."

He looked up at me, and, I admit, there were tears in my eyes.