Lincoln's Dreams

“I won’t tell a soul where you are, son. Let McLaws and Herndon talk to the answering machine. That’s what the damned thing’s for. How’re you coming on the galleys?”

“Fine. I looked up your Dr. Barton. He died last fall, but I talked to his son. He couldn’t remember his father talking about any unusual dreams. He’s going to call his sister and ask her. Oh, by the way, I’ve got another dream for your collection. Lincoln had a dream the night before he died. He told his Cabinet about it. He dreamed he was in a boat.”

“‘A singular and indescribable vessel,’” Broun said. “I know.”

“You knew about the boat dream?” I said. “Then why didn’t you tell me?”

There was a silence at the other end so long that I had plenty of time to think of all the things we hadn’t told each other in the last week. I wondered what would happen if I told him I thought the fortune-teller was right, and down in Annie’s subconscious Lee was fighting the Civil War. Would he call that a cock-and-bull story, too?

“Are you all right?” he asked. “Are you taking care of yourself?”

“I’m sleeping till noon every day,” I said, “and don’t worry about the galleys. I’m over halfway through the book already.”

“I’m not worried about the galleys,” he said.

After I hung up I went and woke Annie up. We drove down to Bowling Green for dinner. Annie didn’t show any of the tension I’d seen the day before, and the color in her cheeks was back to normal. Even after we got back to the inn and were reading galleys up in her room, me in the green chair and she sitting cross-legged on the bed, she was relaxed and interested.

“Why don’t you go ahead and go to bed, Jeff?” she said at a little after eleven. “You didn’t get much sleep last night. I don’t think I’ll have a dream.”

“Okay,” I said. “Call me if you need me.”

I left the door of the room open and the light beside the bed on. I took off my shoes and settled down with the book I’d bought in Bowling Green. It was a pop history moment-by-moment account of the day Lincoln died, but it had a long description of the Cabinet meeting.

Lincoln had told his boat dream before the meeting started, while they were still waiting for Stanton. Grant said he was worried about Sherman, and Lincoln said not to worry, that he had had a sign, and told them his dream. He said he had had the same dream before every victory in the war and named Antietam and Gettysburg and Stone River.

Grant, who didn’t believe in dreams, said Stone River wasn’t his idea of a victory and a few more victories like that would have lost the war, and Lincoln said, “It must relate to Sherman. I know of no other important event which is likely just now to occur.”

I looked at my watch. It was a quarter to twelve. I turned off the light. What if Grant had believed in dreams? Would he have been able to figure out where the danger lay in time to bring up reinforcements, to set up a line of defenses that would have stopped John Wilkes Booth?

He didn’t believe in dreams. He knew a cock-and-bull story when he heard one, even when Lincoln was the one telling it. But I wondered if, afterwards, he ever dreamed that Cabinet meeting?

“My house is on fire,” Annie said.

I turned on the light. She was standing in the door in her white nightgown, holding the galleys. She came over to the bed and handed them to me. “He’s dead, isn’t he?” she said, and the tears streamed down her unseeing face. “Isn’t he?”

CHAPTER EIGHT

Lee and Traveller were well matched. If Lee demanded more stamina and spirit than the average horse could give, Traveller had too much stamina and spirit for the average rider. He chafed at being reined in, had to be exercised strenuously, and had an uncomfortable, high trot. When Rob Lee had to ride him down to Fredericksburg for his father in 1862, he complained, “I think I am safe in saying that I could have walked the distance with much less discomfort and fatigue.”

It took me almost an hour to get her back to bed and sleeping more or less peacefully. I had tried to wake her up, even though I had read someplace that you weren’t supposed to wake sleepwalkers—or maybe that was one of Richard’s theories—but I couldn’t.

“Annie!” I said, and took hold of her hands. They were hot. “Wake up, Annie!”

“Is he dead?” she said, the tears running down her face and under her chin.

Is he dead? Who? General Cobb? He had died at Fredericksburg, but I wasn’t convinced we were still there. We could be anywhere. Armistead and Garnett had died at Gettysburg, A. P. Hill at Petersburg two weeks before the surrender. It could even be Lincoln.

“Who, Annie?”

Her nose was running from all the tears, but she didn’t make any effort to wipe it. I led her gently by the hand into the bathroom and got a Kleenex. “Tell me what’s happening,” I said gently and wiped her reddened nose. “Can you tell me, Annie?”

“My house is on fire.”

I dabbed clumsily at her cheeks with the wadded-up Kleenex. “What does the house look like, Annie?” I asked, and wiped her nose again.