Lincoln's Dreams

He showed the handkerchief to Malachi. “I gotta pin this back on Toby, How will they know who he is? How will his kin know what happened to him? ”

“They’ll have a right good idea, but they won’t find out from that,” he said, and jerked his finger at the handkerchief Ben looked at it. It was covered with soot from the powder so badly he couldn’t even make the letters out, “Now come on! What the hell you doin now? ”

“I know him,” Ben said, scrabbling in his pockets. “I know where he’s from. Do you got some paper? ”

A bullet kit Toby’s arm and gouged out another red hole, “Come on,” Malachi shouted, “or that gal back home’s gonna be findin’ out about you.” He took hold of Ben’s coat and yanked him back through the corn till they couldn’t see Toby anymore.

After a while the shooting let up a little and Malachi said, “Me, I stick my pertinents in my boots. ”

“They can shoot you in the foot, too,” Ben said.

“They can,” Malachi said, “but most likely you won’t get kilt straight off and you kin tell ’em who you are before you die.

”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “We had no business reading that. ”

She was asleep. I took the galleys back from her and put in the proofreader’s marks till I began to feel sleepy myself, and then went and looked out the window a while at the Rappahannock. Union troops had camped on the far side of the river, no more than half a mile from here, their campfires hidden by the fog along the river, waiting for the battle to start. Everyone who had written about the Civil War, generals, platoon historians, journalists, said the waiting was the worst part. Once you were in the battle, they said, it wasn’t so bad. You did what you had to do without even thinking about it, but beforehand, waiting for the fog to lift and the signal to be given, was almost unbearable.

“It’s so cold,” Annie said. She sat up and tugged at the blankets with both hands, trying to pull them free of the foot of the bed.

“I’ll get a blanket,” I said, and then realized she was still asleep. She yanked hard on the coverlet and it came free.

“Get Hill up here,” she said, wrapping the flounced muslin around her shoulders and holding it together with one hand at her neck, as if it were a cape. “I want him to see this.” Her cheeks were flushed almost red. I wondered if she would be feverish if I touched her.

She let go of the coverlet and leaned forward as if looking at something. The coverlet slipped off her shoulders. “Bring me a lantern,” she said, and fumbled with the satin edge of the blanket.

I wondered if I should try to wake her up. She was breathing fast and shallowly, and her cheeks were as red as fire. She clutched the edge of the blanket in a desperate pantomime of something.

I moved forward to take the blanket away from her before she tore it, and as I did she looked directly at me with the unseeing gaze of the sleeping, and let go of it.

“Annie?” I said softly, and she sighed and lay down. The coverlet was bunched behind her neck, and her head was at an awkward angle, and I gently eased the coverlet out from under and pulled the blanket up over her shoulders.

“I had a dream,” Annie said. She was looking at me and this time she saw me. Her cheeks were still flushed, though not as red as they had been.

“I know,’ I said. I hung the coverlet over the end of the bed and sat down beside her. “Do you want to tell me about it?”