Lincoln's Dreams

“Nine to five,” she said in that impossible Southern belle voice. “The battlefield itself is open until dark, I believe.”

I went and found Annie, who was in the encyclopedias, surrounded by the Ls. “I found what I needed. Let’s get out of here,” I said.

The librarian was standing at the front desk looking as forbidding as ever. I hustled Annie past without even telling her thank you, for fear she would say something to Annie about the battlefield, and suggested we walk downtown and get something to eat. “I saw a drugstore on the way up that had a soda fountain, believe it or not,” I said.

“I’m not very hungry,” Annie said.

“Well, then something to drink. A lemonade or something.”

The drugstore did have a fountain, though it was pretty decrepit-looking. The faded pictures of ice cream and grilled cheese sandwiches and root beer floats looked like they’d been up since the Civil War, and there was nobody behind the counter. A balding pharmacist was filling prescriptions in a booth at the back, but he didn’t look up, even when we sat down on two of the plastic stools.

“I’ll go ask if the fountain’s open,” I said and started toward the back, but before I got there the phone rang and he answered it. I waited for him to look up, reading the labels on the medicines. Half the rack was devoted to sleeping pills: Sominex, Nytol, Sleep-Eze. Richard would have felt right at home.

The pharmacist cupped his hand over the mouthpiece of the phone and whispered, “Be right with you.”

I nodded and went back up to the front. Annie was looking at the rack of postcards next to the counter. I hoped to God they didn’t have one of Arlington.

“The pharmacist said he’ll wait on us as soon as he gets oft the phone.” I leaned over her shoulder to see the postcard she was holding. It was a photograph of Lee’s tomb at Lexington. The marble statue was of Lee asleep on his camp cot in his dress uniform and boots, with a blanket draped over him. One arm lay at his side, the other was folded across his chest. “I think I know what’s causing the dreams,” I said. “The girls on the porch were Katherine Stiles and Annie Lee.”

She put the postcard back in the rack with infinite care. “Annie Lee?”

“Lee’s daughter. You were right about it being one of his daughters. Annie didn’t want her friend to leave. Both girls were crying, and Lee told them, ‘No tears at Arlington.’”

Annie sat down at the counter. “No tears,” she said and put her hands on the volume of Freeman, one over the other.

“Don’t you see what this means? The dreams aren’t meant for you. Lee was thinking of his daughter, and through some freak of time, the message got sent to you by mistake. I don’t know how. Maybe you heard your name being called down in the collective unconscious or something.”

“Mistake,” Annie said, and shook her head. “He’s trying to tell me something. That’s what the paper on the soldier’s sleeve is, only I can’t read it. It’s a message of some kind.”

“But not to you,” I said. “You were right in more ways than one when you said they weren’t your dreams. They belong to Annie Lee. Her father was sending them to her.”

“There are messages in all the dreams except this last one,” Annie said. “There’s the message that the Union soldier was carrying when he got captured at Fredericksburg, and the message about Jackson’s arm being amputated. And Special Order 191.”

“And the reason you can’t make out the messages is because they weren’t meant for you. They were meant for Annie Lee. She’d recognize Katherine Stiles and she’d remember that day at Arlington and Tom Tita. She’d know what all of it meant. They’re her dreams, Annie, not yours.”

The pharmacist came bustling up to wait on us and tell us a long and involved story about Lila who usually took care of the front for him but who had broken her foot. “Messing around with horses at her age,” he said without explaining what she’d been doing. He stuck two paper cones into metal bases. “She should have known better.” He squeezed lemons into the paper glasses. “You folks tourists?”

“Sort of,” I said. “We’re here for a few days.”

He held the glasses under the soda water siphon one at a time, stirring the lemonades with a long-handled spoon. “You been out to the cemetery yet?”

“Cemetery?” Annie said.

“The battlefield. It’s a national cemetery now. Union soldiers. Confederates are buried over on Washington Avenue.” He scooped ice into the glasses.

“How far is it from here?” Annie said.

“Two miles maybe. You go down Caroline, that’s this street, till you come to Lafayette Boulevard,” he said, drawing a map on the damp counter with his finger. “That’s US 3. Turn right on Lafayette and follow it all the way out to Sunken Road. You can’t miss it.” The phone rang. The pharmacist plopped two lemon slices into the glasses, shoved them across the counter at us, and hurried back to answer it.