Lincoln's Dreams

D. H. Hill had three horses shot out from under him at Antietam. Lee rode Traveller through the whole battle, though he had trouble controlling him with his bandaged hands. When General Walker brought the last of his men across the ford into Virginia the following night, Lee was sitting on Traveller in midstream. “How many divisions are left?” Lee asked, and when Walker told him he was the last except for some wagonloads of wounded that were right behind him, Lee said, “Thank God!” It was Walker’s impression that he had been sitting there all night.

Annie didn’t have any more dreams. I dozed in the green chair until it was light outside and then went to bed and slept until after nine. Annie was still dead to the world, but Richard was up. He had already called Broun’s house and left another message for me.

“It’s obvious that you’re projecting your hostility onto me as an authority figure, but of course Broun is the real object of your anger. You’re superimposing your own revenge fantasy on Annie’s emotional illness, but it’s Broun who’s your real enemy.”

He stopped long enough for me to say, “You’re the enemy, you bastard.”

“Your conscious mind can’t acknowledge the rage you feel toward Broun for getting his name on the books you’ve researched, so your subconscious cloaks that rage by distorting Annie’s neurotic dreams into Robert E. Lee’s dreams. By so doing, your subconscious can declare war on Broun, as Lee declared war on Lincoln. It’s a common phenomenon in neurotic patients.”

“How about drugging patients? Is that a common phenomenon in neurotic psychiatrists?”

Annie was standing in the doorway in her nightgown. She looked frightened. “Who were you talking to, Jeff? Richard?”

“I wasn’t talking to anybody,” I said, and held the phone out to her so she could listen. “It’s the answering machine. Richard doesn’t know where we are, so he’s trying to get you back this way, by remote psychoanalysis. You’ll be glad to know I’m the one who’s crazy today.” I put the phone back up to my ear. “This may take a while. Broun’s answering machine can hold three hours of messages. Why don’t you get dressed and we’ll go have breakfast. We’ve got to go see the vet at eleven.”

She nodded and disappeared into the other room. I listened to the rest of Richard’s harangue, made sure Broun hadn’t called in another message, and erased everything on the machine. Broun usually didn’t call in to pick up his messages when he was out of town. He left messages for me as to where he could be reached and then let me get back to him with a list of the things that couldn’t wait. I didn’t think he’d pick up his messages this trip, especially when he thought I was there to do it, but I thought I’d better call the machine once a day to collect them and erase the tape just in case. I didn’t want Broun hearing Richard’s ravings.

Annie came and stood in the doorway again. “You were friends, weren’t you?” she said. “Before all this?”

“We were roommates. I guess we were friends, but we were headed in different directions all along.” I picked up my jacket. “He thought I should study something useful instead of history.”

“I’m sorry,” Annie said.

“About what? My studying history?” I grinned at her. “It hasn’t turned out to be all that useless.”

We went over to the coffee shop. It was crowded with people who looked like they were on their way to church. We had a different waitress from the one who had drenched us in coffee the night before, a pretty redhead not much older than Annie, but she came over immediately with the coffeepot, too. “You two must be tourists,” she said when she saw the map of Virginia I’d brought along. She pulled two menus out from under her arm and handed them to us. “Have you been out to the battlefield?”

“No,” Annie said. “We haven’t been out there yet.”

“Well, you’ve got to go. It’s the only thing Fredericksburg’s famous for.” She set the coffeepot down and fished an order pad out of her pocket. “The National Park Service has it fixed up real nice. They’ve got an electric map and everything. Now, what’ll you have? Eggs? Hotcakes?”

The waitress took our order, gave our still-full cups what she called a warmup, and went off to the kitchen.

“Did you say the appointment with the vet was at eleven?” Annie said.

“Yeah, but it’s out of town so we’d better allow a little time to find it. You didn’t have any other dreams last night, did you?”

She shook her head.

“Was the dream different from the other dreams? I mean, I know it was about Fredericksburg, but was it the same kind of dream as the others?”

She thought about it a minute. “It was clearer than the other dreams. I don’t know how to describe it exactly, but they make more sense.” She shook her head again. “That’s not it, exactly. I still don’t have any idea where I am or what the things in the dream are until you tell me afterward, but it’s as if I’m getting closer to understanding the dreams.”

“You mean what’s causing them?”