“What?”
“It’s supposed to reverse the aging process. Said he got the idea from some fellow named Tennyson. Sir Baron Lord Tennyson. Sounds like one of those fellows we used to beat up and take lunch money from back in Springfield. Anyway, Swille says he got the solution from the hormone of a reptile, and that this Tennyson fellow wrote a poem about it. One depressing work, if you’d ask my opinion. All about immortality and ennui. These people down here don’t seem to do nothin but despair. This Tennyson guy was talking about flowers a lot. Do you know of him? Is he all right? And who is this ennui feller?”
“Ennui means … well … it’s like a languor, a general discontent concerning the contemporary milieu. Tennyson, he’s an aesthete, Mr. President.”
“Well, I’ll be as dull as a Kansas moon. You say he’s what?”
“An aesthete. He knows about flowers, reads poetry aloud lying on French Impressionist picnic grass. Visits the lofts of painters. Attends all of the openings. Is charming and fascinating with the women.”
“Well, I don’t think that this Swille fellow’s got all of his potatoes. He said something about a town named Camelot. Where is this town, aide? How far away is this town Camelot? Is it a train stop? Is it in Virginia?”
“Camelot is the mythical city of the Arthurian legend, Mr. Lincoln.”
“Well, I’ll be a flying fish on a worm tree. This Swille kept talking about the place and about how a king was going to rule America. I think he was trying to buy me off. That’s my last dealings with him. His kind make you feel like … what’s the name of the character in Mrs. Stowe’s novel?”
“Uncle Tom, sir?”
“That’s it. They have you tommy to them. The man started to talk strange, a lot of scimble-skamble, about knighthood and the ‘days that were’ … Hey, what the hell’s going on down here, anyway? Did you hear all that screaming back there? Nobody even noticed. I didn’t say nothin cause I figured if nobody noticed it, then I must be hearing things. Did you notice it, aide, all that screaming going on back there?”
Lincoln rested his head against the window and looked out into the Virginia night, the blackest night in the South. There was an old folk art cemetery with leaning tombstones behind an ornate black wrought-iron fence. A woman in white floated across the cemetery. A wolf howled. Bats flew into the dark red sun.
“Aide, did you see that?”
“I can’t see anything for the fog, sir. But I think I did hear some screaming. As soon as we entered Virginia we heard the screaming. First a little screaming and then a whole lot. As soon as the sun goes up out here you hear the screaming until the moon goes down, I hear tell, Mr. Lincoln.”
“Like hell.”
“What’s that, Mr. President?”
“The screaming, it reminds you of hell. This man Swille was talking about whips and said something about people being humiliated. Is that some kind of code?”
“Grant said it was decadent down here, Mr. Lincoln. Said it was ignoble. Others call it ‘immoral.’ William Wells Brown, the brown writer, called it that.”
“Grant said ignoble?” Lincoln laughs. “Swille offered me a barony. What’s that all about?”
“I heard talk, Mr. President. The proceedings from the Montgomery Convention where the slaveholders met to map the Confederacy have never been released, but there are rumors that somebody offered Napoleon III the Confederate Crown, and he said he’d think about it. It was in
The New York Times,
August—”
“The Crown!”
“But Nappy Three said that slavery was an anachronism.”
“Hey!” Lincoln said, snapping his fingers. “I got it! Of course.”
“What’s that, Mr. President?”
“Look, it’s common sense. Why, I’ll be a jitterbug in a hogcreek. Aide, when we return to Washington, I want you to return Swille’s gold. We don’t need it.”
“But, Mr. President, we just risked our lives coming through Confederate lines to get the gold. Now you don’t want it? I don’t understand.”
“We change the issues, don’t you see? Instead of making this some kind of oratorical minuet about States’ Rights versus the Union, what we do is make it so that you can’t be for the South without being for slavery! I want you to get that portrait painter feller Denis Carter to come into the office, where he’ll show me signing the … the Emancipation Proclamation. That’s it. The Emancipation Proclamation. Call in the press. Get the Capitol calligrapher who’s good at letterin to come in and draw this Proclamation. Phone the networks. We’ll put an end to this Fairy Kingdom nonsense. Guenevere, Lancelot, Arthur and the whole dang-blasted genteel crew.”
“A brilliant idea, Mr. President. A brilliant idea.”
“And I want you to clear the White House of those office seekers and others pestering me all day. Wanting to shake my hand. Do you know what some bird asked me the other day?”
“What, Mr. President?”
“The jackass called me long-distance collect when the rates are at their peak and wanted me to do something about a cow he’d bought that had been pumped full of water so’s to make it look like the critter weighed more than it did. Well, I called the fellow he bought it from and the fellow said that if the farmer produced a bill of sale he’d return the money. Well, I called the farmer and told him what the other fellow said and then the farmer said he couldn’t find the bill of sale and wanted me to take the first train out of Washington to help him look for it. Said he needed someone to watch the cow, who was some high-strung critter. Well, I don’t think we can tie up the federal machinery on business like that, aide. And another thing, Swille seems to know more about the government’s business than I do. I want you to investigate the leaks. Did you send Major Corbett away?”
“We put Major Corbett on active duty, Mr. President.”
“Good. Invite Mrs. Corbett to review the troops with me and General Hooker tomorrow. Tell her afterwards we’ll take tea. Give my boots a little lick of grease and go to the drugstore and get me some of that Golden Fluid hair slick.”
“But what will I do about Mrs. Lincoln, Mr. President? The press will be there. Suppose they take a picture?”
“Oh, tell Mother … tell her that I was detained. I don’t know which one’s going to be the death of me, Mother or the niggers.”
“How much gold did Mr. Swille give you, Mr. President?”
Lincoln counts. “He was supposed to give me five, but I only count four.”
“What could have happened, sir? The nigger?”
“I doubt it. Poor submissive creature. You should have seen him shuffle about the place. Yessirring and nosirring. Maybe he didn’t intend to give me but four. I’m tired. Can’t you make this thing go faster?”
“Yessir,” the aide says. “Right away, sir.”
He leans out of the window and instructs the coachman to go faster. Lincoln opens his purse and examines the five-dollar Confederate bill. Bookie odds favored the Union, but you could never tell when you might need carfare.
C
ATO THE GRAFFADO OVERSEER
, sandy hair, freckles, “aquiline” nose, rushes into Arthur Swille’s office.
“Massa Swille! Massa Swille!”
“What is it, you infernal idiot,” says Swille, scolding the man who bears a remarkable resemblance to himself, in fact, could be a butterscotched version of him. Cato is trembling, his silver platform shoes fixed to the floor, the carnation in his lapel twitching.
“Now what do you want? Speak up. I don’t have all day.”
“Massa Swille, I found out where them sables is hidin. 40s and them.”
“You what?” Swille says, now on his feet, staring at the man.
“Them sables, they hidin around the great lakes.”
“Good work, boy. How did you find out?”
“This girl I went to General Howard’s Civilizing School with. She … she got a job at
Beulahland Review,
and they gettin ready to publish his poem ‘Flight to Canada.’ In the poem he refers to our women in a most anti-suffragette manner. She said she smuggled it out and let some of her friends in the New York Suffragette Society read it, and she say they told her to burn it. They have meetings on Fourteenth Street in New York, she say …”
“Would you cut the trivial details and tell me where those rascals are?”
“Emancipation City. She say that she was fixin to play like it never came in and when he called up there asking about it, she told him that all the editors were in conference, or that they’d gone for the day. She was too late, Massa Swille, because the mens hab already writ the rascal that it’s comin out in a forthcoming issue. There’s nothing she can do about it now.”
“Which kink wrote it, Cato?”
“Raven Quickskill. The poem say that he has come back here to the plantation a lots and that he has drunk up all your wine and that he tricked your wife into giving him the combination to your safe. And he say he poisoned your Old Crow. And to add to the worser, Massa Swille, he say somethin cryptic. Somethin about … Well, I don’t precisely understand, Massa Swille, but he say somethin about your favorite quadroon giving him some … some ‘She-Bear.’ What on earth do that mean, Massa Swille?”
“Skip it, Cato. Nothing your puerile Christian ears would be interested in.”
“Oh, thank you, Massa Swille. Thank you, Massa Swille. The part about Canada is just done to throw you off his trail. That nigger ain’t in no Canada. There ain’t no such place; that’s just reactionary mysticism. I never seed no Canada, so there can’t be none. The only thing exists is what I see. Seeing is believing.”
“Call out my tracers, my claimants, my nigger catchers and my bloodhounds. Arm my paddyrollers. Call Maryland!”
Cato begins to run around the room, until he bumps into a bust of Caligula, Swille’s favorite hero of antiquity, and knocks it to the floor.
“Look what you did, you idiot. Busted one of my
objets d’art.
Never mind. Do you have a copy of the poem?”
“That I do, suh. That I do. I was clever enough to have a Xerox made. And if you ask me, it don’t have no redeeming qualities, it is bereft of any sort of
pièce de résistance,
is cute and unexpurgated …”
“Spare me the cotton stuffing, Cato. No one’s interested in your critical abilities and you know what they did in the old days to the messenger who brought bad news.”
“But, Mr. Swille, you sent me to school for that. To be critical about things. They gibbed me a Ph.D. Don’t you remember?”
“I do, Cato. [Calmer] I hear the slaves calling you names, vilifying you. Don’t pay any attention. Jump over the broom with any of the tar wenches you see.”
“Yes, sir! Thank you, sir! Thank you also for giving me such a good education. I knows the Bible by heart. I knows things like ‘standards,’ and how to pronounce ‘prolegomenon.’ I caught some of them praying to them old filthy fetishes the other day; they seemed to be habbin a good time too. I called in the overseer, and he give them a good flogging. That he did. Whipped them darkies. And last week I told them slaves: no more polygamy. This savage custom they brought from Tarzan country. They’s allowed only one woman, suh. I told the women anyone they see with another woman they can shoot. I armed the women slaves. They’ll keep order. They’ll dismember them niggers with horrifying detail.”
“So you’ve just about ended this heathenism, eh, Cato? Their ethnicity.”
“That I’ve done, suh. It was mighty helpful of you and Barracuda to end all them cults and superstitions and require that all the people follow only the Jesus cult. That make them work harder for you, Boss. The women especially be thrilled with the Jesus cult. They don’t ask no questions any more. They’s accepted their lot. Them other cults, Massa … there was too many of them. Horn cults, animal cults, ghost cults, tree cults, staff cults, serpent cults—everything they see they make a spurious cult out of it. Some of them kinks is worshipping the train, boss. They know the time when each train pass by on the railroad tracks. Leechfield even had a cassarette, Massa Swille.”
“A what?”
“One of them things you talk into, and your voice come back. Boss, even with my liberal education, it looked like magic. I was skeered. But I didn’t show it.”
“Oh, you mean a cassette.”
“That’s the one; it sure is the one, Massa Swille. The nigger was having runners going from village to village carrying messages refutin me and my Biblical arguments. I found them cassarettes and throwed them into the river, Massa. He was just confusin everybody. I’m glad that old Leechfield is gone.”
“Good, son. I mean—”
They freeze and stare at each other.
“Oh, figuratively, Cato. Only figuratively. I call all my sbleezers son. Now, Cato, I’m giving you new responsibilities. First, I want you to send in the Nebraska Tracers. Try to reason with them. Honey them with saccharin and seduce them through flowery, intelligent proposals.”
“Yessir, Massa Swille. Yessir. It sound like an exciting prospect.”
“And if they don’t go for that, I want you to permit the bloodhounds to sniff Xerox copies of that poem. The way you find a fugitive, remember, is to go all the way back and work your way up to him. That poem has trapped him once and it’ll trap him again. Now you go to it, Cato.”
“Yessir.”
“Hustle, Cato, hustle.”
“Yessir.” His arms thrown out in front, his heels kicking his behind, Cato rushes out of the door and knocks over Uncle Robin, who’s been listening through the keyhole; the glasses of Scotch he has placed on the tray tumble to the floor, spilling on Cato’s white shoes. Cato’s monocle drops to his chest. “Now look what you did, old splay-nosed rascal,” he says angrily.
“I’m sorry, Mister Cato, but I thought maybe you and Massa Swille would like some ’freshments.”
“ ’Freshments, ’freshments. When are you going to learn? Refreshments. How are we goin to gain acceptance if we don’t show that we know Dr. Johnson and them.”
“There’s some spot remover in the kitchen, Mr. Cato.”
“Oh, all right. And don’t get smart, either, just because Harriet Beecher Stowe came down and taped you. Ha! Ha! She didn’t even use your interview. Used Tom over at the Legree plantation. What did she give you?”
“She just gave me a flat-out fee. I bought a pig, a dog and a goose with it.”
“Ha! Ha! Eeeee. Ha! Ha!” Cato stands in the hall and slaps his head. “One of the best sellers of all time and you only received pig money. You are stupid, just like they say, you black infidel.”