Lincoln's Dreams

I peeled the paper off a straw and jabbed the ice in my lemonade with it. Did everybody in this whole damned town own stock in Fredericksburg battlefield? It’s a great place to visit. Seventeen thousand dead. There’s even an electric map, red lights for the mortally wounded soldiers, blue for the ones who froze to death. You can’t miss it. Take US 3 to Sunken Road, where the bodies are lying ten deep in front of the stone wall.

Annie was still looking at the counter where the pharmacist had drawn the map. In a minute she would say, “I want to go out to the battlefield, Jeff,” or worse, “I think we should go to Arlington,” and what excuse was I going to come up with this time?

“Do you think they’d have any aspirin in those little tins?” Annie said. “I didn’t bring any with me today, and I’ve got kind of a headache.”

“Sure,” I said. I slid off the stool and went to the back to ask the pharmacist. He was still on the phone. “You of all people should know I can’t prescribe without a doctor’s orders, Lila,” he said loudly. There was a long, frustrated pause, during which he stared at the phone.

I searched along the rack of medicine but didn’t find any tins. I grabbed a bottle of a hundred and took it back up to Annie. “Are you all right?” I broke the seal, dug out the wad of cotton, and shook two into her hand. She took them with a sip of lemonade. “Do you want to go back to the inn?”

“Yes,” she said.

I went back to the pharmacist and handed him three ones, holding up the bottle of aspirin where he could see it. “Especially not for you!” he shouted at Lila. “With your heart condition?” I waited some more. He looked up, finally, and nodded at me.

Annie was standing by the door waiting for me, the four volumes of Freeman in her arms. “Here. Let me take those,” I said, tucking them under my arm. I opened the door for her. “you want me to go back to the inn and get the car?”

“No, I’m fine, Jeff, really.” She smiled wearily. “I think Lee must be thinking about his daughter again.”

“I can go get the car,” I said, and then saw the blue Ford sedan let an elderly black woman out a block down and start toward us.

“Taxi!” I shouted, jumping out into the street as if I were trying to stop a runaway horse. “Taxi!”

The taxi driver pulled over and opened the back door for us. He was at least sixty, with a huge cigar and a stubbly beard that looked even sharper and more disreputable than Broun’s. I gave him the inn’s address, and he pulled out into the street.

“You two tourists?” he said over his shoulder. “You been out to the battlefield yet?”

CHAPTER TEN

Pickett’s Charge was the worst moment of the war for Lee. In spite of his telling his men, “Don’t be discouraged,” he had to have known the war was lost with it. Generals Garnett and Armistead were dead. General Kemper was mortally wounded, and there had been over twenty thousand casualties in three days. Even if the army managed to retreat safely into Virginia, it would never have the strength again for a major offensive. The long retreat to the apple orchard was beginning.

That night, worn out, Lee had tried to dismount and been unable to. A cavalryman leaned forward to assist him, but before he could reach him, Lee had gotten down by himself and stood leaning against Traveller. “Too bad!” he said. “Too bad! Oh, too bad!”

* * *

Annie slept fitfully all afternoon, not dreaming but not getting any rest either. At six I drove to McDonald’s and got hamburgers. She got up then, but she ate hardly anything, and afterwards she couldn’t get back to sleep. She walked the length of the room, back and forth, like a penned animal.

“Do you want to read galleys?” I asked, remembering that she’d said they helped keep her mind off the dreams, but she shook her head and went on pacing, stopping now and then to lean against the window. She looked dead on her feet. Her eyes were shadowed with fatigue, and there was hardly any color in her face.

“Do you think the library would be open tonight?” she asked.

“It closed at six,” I said. “We could go take in a movie. I could go get a paper and we could see what’s on.”

“No, I …” She went over to the bed and lay down. After a while she said sleepily, “When does it open in the morning?”

“The library? Nine,” I said, wanting to ask her what she wanted at the library but afraid I’d wake her up. She seemed to be asleep already.

I read Freeman awhile. I didn’t try to find out anything else about Annie Lee. There was no point. I had thought Annie would be glad we had finally found out why she was having the dreams, but she hadn’t even acted like she cared. And the information hadn’t helped her sleep.