I Am Abraham (3 page)

“Son, why do you have such a miserable mien? I have never met a longer face or a sadder face on a man.”

I could not read my own sadness, not even in Offutt’s straitened mirror.

“I’m deficient,” I said, and he let out a boisterous laugh that was like the bark of a sea lion.

“A lad who can wield an axe the way you can is far from deficient.”

“But I’ll never understand the tricks of grammar, Mr. Offutt. I can treasure up words and all their sounds, but not their proper placement. Every sentence I uncover is like a bear trap.”

He laughed, but it was more like a grunt than a loud guffaw.

“Best run to Justice Green. He’ll grammar you into marvelous condition.”

Now Bowling Green was a portly man—near three hundred pounds—and our justice of the peace, who presided over whatever court we had. Bowling Green took a shine to me, but he wasn’t much of a grammarian. So he borrowed a grammar book from the circuit judge in Springfield, and we studied together, Bowling Green and I. And after a month he said, “You’re the master, and I’m the pupil.”

There wasn’t much truth in what he said. He was just as mindful of all the snares.

“Squire, look at
bunglingly
. It’s handsome as hell but hard to pronounce.”

“And just as hard to use with the right persuasion,” he said and winked with one eye. “
Bunglingly
the Clary’s Grove Boys wandered into town and ripped up the streets.”

The Clary’s Grove Boys had become a sore point with Justice Green. He couldn’t control them, for they were wild and without a touch of pity. They stole from men and women alike, and went around on painted ponies with black nostrils and yellow eyes as fierce as the Boys’ own fiery nostrils and eyes. Bowling Green could have begged assistance from the sheriffs of other townships. And he might even have had one or two of the Boys sit in the dungeon at the capital in Vandalia. But that would have meant open warfare with Clary’s Grove. The Boys could have charged through town on their Indian ponies, trampled every one of our dogs, torn the blacksmith’s arm out of its socket, destroyed our livestock, ransacked both general stores, and left us in a ruination we’d never recover from. Some wizard must have fashioned them from the
fiercest
clay.

That’s why Bowling Green looked upon them with all the wonder of the world. He might have been as lawless as they were in his own secret heart. He’d watched them rip a prize sow from ear to ear, steal an old man’s wooden limb and whittle it into a lance. You could no sooner stop the Clary’s Grove Boys than you could stop a storm.

So it amazed me that Denton Offutt would interfere with the Boys. He might have been drunk or mad with his own power because he challenged them in my name. Did he want a whirlwind from Clary’s Grove to wreck his store? He let it be known to one and all that New Salem now had a
prodigy
, Abraham Lincoln, who could outwrestle and outrun the living and the dead in Illinois. He must have lost his reason, or he wouldn’t have wagered ten dollars on his own untested clerk.

Still, New Salem was my new home, and I wasn’t about to run. So I attended to the store until that hurricane of Indian ponies arrived from Clary’s Grove—and a hurricane it was, of wind and dust. There were ten Boys, with short jackets and calico shirts, pantaloons foxed with buckskin, and held up with one suspender rather than two, as was the style of Clary’s Grove. Their eyes were painted black, their noses masked with bits of red cloth, making them look sinister as ghouls; they had spikes in their arms and straw hats with missing crowns and rough, rawhide boots; their single ornament was a neckerchief with yellow polka dots that flashed in the sun and could be observed a quarter mile away. That and the wind and dust were the only warning we ever had. You couldn’t hear the noise their ponies made, because the river roared night and day on account of the dam. And then they were upon you, ripping wood and flesh with the spikes in their arms. The Boys had mutilated themselves, punctured their arms with metal that must have been filled with poison and pus. But they’d wrapped leather bands around the spikes to hold them in place, and they sucked at the poison and spat it out.

Their leader was Jack Armstrong, who had studs around his eyes like a Comanche and wore on his left hand the metal glove of some Spanish knight; each of the digits was speckled with dry blood. He leapt down from his pony in front of Offutt’s store, his boots blistering in the hot dust. I was a head taller than this champion, but he didn’t have my scrawny shoulders; his were wide as a country barn. He alone among the Boys didn’t wear a crownless straw hat; he had no ornament but the bits of metal around his eyes and his regal glove, made of the finest mesh. I didn’t bother to count the number of men he must have scarred with those nimble digits. I had noticed gloves like that in Orleans. The bodyguards of gamblers and brothel owners wore them on their left hands as the mark of some grand seniority, I suppose. But I never got near enough to the crib-houses on my wanderings as a flatboatman to assay the value of a metal glove. What I learned, I could only learn by littles.

Jack Armstrong didn’t waste much time. He shouted into the store in a voice that rattled the window panes.

“Mr. Offutt, where in thunder is your clerk? I’ve come from the Grove to wrassle him and rip out his eyes.”

Jack didn’t wait for an answer. He spat in the dust and turned to his own war party. “Boys, how many champions have I blinded?”

“Six, Jack—maybe seven. We cain’t rightly recollect.”

A crowd had already swelled up—men and boys from townships within a thunder’s throw of New Salem to bet whatever coins and tobacco tins they had on the might of Jack Armstrong and his metal glove. I heard their idle chatter. Jack had blinded a man from Indian Point, had even vanquished the champion of Vandalia, pummeling him to pieces. But the matchmaker himself cowered in the back of his store. Offutt was hoping to drum up a little trade, but he hadn’t reckoned that Jack Armstrong would bother coming from Clary’s Grove to wrassle with a clerk. I doubt he had ten dollars in his cashbox. There wasn’t that much cash in all of New Salem, with its collection of cabins on a cliff. The town was money poor. We bartered saddles and salt for a farmer’s eggs and a hunter’s strips of fur. And Offutt had to ride into Springfield to cash out whatever commodities we collected.

I stepped out the store. The Clary’s Grove Boys eyed me up and down.

“That’s the ugliest man on earth,” they hooted. “Jack, his cheeks are as sunken as a sow’s ass.”

Jack’s mind was on other things.

“Are you Mr. Offutt’s giant?” he asked with a great growl. “Odds are twenty to one I’ll ditch you in five minutes or under.”

“And after you win?”

Jack Armstrong guffawed and revealed all the gaps in his teeth. “Well, son, you can come to Clary’s Grove and be my blind body servant.”

“Then I can’t afford to lose,” I said. Damn if I would mourn my own demise as a reader of books. I’d come out from under my slavery to Pa—my servitude—and I didn’t intend to be Jack Armstrong’s blind little boy. I needed both my eyes, and I meant to save them, no matter what fix I was in. Squire Green had rushed over from his little court at the tavern; he moved into the wind with all the gravity of a three-hundred-pound cruiser. He was the most graceful man I had ever seen, but he didn’t have the manpower to arrest Jack Armstrong, so he offered to serve as our referee. I understood Justice Green’s maneuvers. He wanted to keep Jack Armstrong from killing me.

“Armstrong,” he said, “you can’t wear that gambler’s glove—not in this match.”

“And why’s that, Your Judgeship?” Jack asked, favoring his own left hand.

“Lincoln’s not the local champion—he’s a clerk.”

“Then Offutt shouldn’t have offered him up as a champion. He’ll have to suffer the consequences.”

And Jack shoved that three-hundred-pound man to the side with one swipe of his hand. He relished the situation he was in, pulled on each metal digit to excite the crowd.

I wasn’t sure
how
to wrassle Jack. My bondage to Pa had served its own stubborn will. I couldn’t recall a time when I didn’t have an axe. Even as a boy I could wield it with one hand. And I loved to split a rail in the light of the moon. I near broke my back building fences when Pa pawned me off, but I grew stronger with every bite of the axe. You didn’t have much of a swing unless you planted your feet into the ground. And so I had to protect my eyes
and
fight Jack Armstrong like a man who was readying to wield an axe.

We stood toe to toe, with our heads cradled in each other’s arm, and commenced to tug. He must have been startled as hell. Jack Armstrong couldn’t move me an inch. Next he tried to lift me off the ground and hurl me across the road. I could hear him grunt and groan.

“Boys, this damn fool’s gonna bust my balls. I ain’t no Hercules.”

“Jacky,” the Boys muttered with consternation in their voices, “should we ditch the cock-sucker for you? He ain’t fightin’ fair.” They brandished the spikes in their arms. “We could do him with our own damn picks.”

“Hurt him,” Jack said, “and you’ll have hell to pay.”

He continued to grunt, but he still couldn’t lift me off the ground. I might have thrown Jack Armstrong after all his straining, but I didn’t even try. His Boys would have burnt every building in New Salem while Jack sat in the dust, recovering from his ordeal. I could imagine the Indian ponies kicking at people in fear of that pitiless fire.

He tried to pull himself loose and rip at me with his metal glove, but I pinned both his arms until Jack shouted, “Justice Green, ain’t you supposed to preside over this match?”

“Ladies and gents,” the Squire sang out, “considering the powers vested in me, I pronounce this match a draw.”

Jack did flop into the dust, and that’s when his Boys shoved Squire Green out of the way and charged at me with their spikes. I wasn’t going to rush back into the store and barricade myself. My arms were much longer than any of the Boys’, and I used them to slap at their foreheads and hold off the spikes that were starting to nick my eyebrows and draw some blood. So I knocked one of the Boys right through Offutt’s window and tossed another into the road, with blood flying like gobs of red spit. But there were nine of them, and they attacked front and rear, with the damn spikes. I fell to the ground, and they commenced to kick at me with their hobnailed boots.

The Justice tried to intervene. “Murder,” he shouted, moving his enormous paunch between me and the Boys, but they knocked him down and returned to kicking me. The nails of their boots near took out my eyes. Then suddenly Jack himself rose up and shouted, “It ain’t murder until I say so.”

The Boys remained in a rebellious mood. And Jack had to plead with them.

“Boys, can’t you tell? Abraham’s as big a desperado as we are.”

That calmed them, quieted them. And while Jack smoothed the mesh on his gambler’s glove, they constructed a makeshift ambulance out of a few boards and carted me back to their
wild
oasis
, Clary’s Grove—a pathetic copse of trees—so I could convalesce among them.

N
AME
ME
A
BACKWOODS
BOY
who don’t believe in witches and I’ll give you all the valuables in my pantaloons. Hannah Armstrong was Jack’s devoted wife. But she was also the double of my own Angel Mama, Nancy, who died of the
milk sick
when I was nine. Ma had puked out her guts for a week, her tongue all white, and before she fell into a deep swoon, she clutched my hand and said, “I’m going far from this place, Abraham, and I won’t ever be back. You look after your Pa.”

And here was Hannah Armstrong, with Mama’s opal eyes, as if some sweet angel had delivered her to me after my battle with the Boys. I must have been a great curiosity at Clary’s Grove—the first of Jack’s victims who ever survived. Hannah took pity on the lone survivor and fed me milk and corn mush, repaired my rough clothes, and chatted with me while she did her chores. I carried the milk pail for her, and I wasn’t lonesome for the first time since I’d come to New Salem. Still, Clary’s Grove wasn’t much more than a pig pen in a little clearing beside a creek. Hogs rooted everywhere. Every shack in Clary’s Grove was forlorn—there wasn’t one solid wall. The roofs kept caving in. Jack and his Boys couldn’t carpenter anything but their own chaos. They went on scouting missions to grab whatever spoils they could. Predators and pirates, the Boys left their hogs, their babies, and their women all alone. Problem is there was only one woman in Clary’s Grove—Hannah Armstrong—and these babies belonged to Jack. Every other Boy was a bachelor, who might bring an occasional squaw into camp, and frolic with her under an indigo sky, but these squaws didn’t last. And if they happened to leave a baby behind, Hannah would welcome that baby into her own brood.

“I’m fond of orphans,” she said. And I don’t know why I opened up to Hannah, but I did.

“I’m a bit of a bastard myself,” I muttered, startled at my own words. “My Mama was born out of wedlock. She never knew her own Pa, but I like to imagine he was a Virginia planter—a cavalier.”