I Am Abraham (44 page)

The fire brigade had arrived; these volunteers chopped at the stable door with their hatchets; but I could tell from the feeble grip they had that their hatchetings wouldn’t amount to much. Nothing but splinters flew from the door. I relieved a fireman of his hatchet and ripped the door away with two blows. The fire roared right into my face, and the flames licked at my eyebrows with some kind of tantalizing touch. I stood there, in the fire’s sway, like a man stuck in the middle of a bewildering waltz. But something pushed me out of my little fire trance. I had the awful taste of kerosene on my tongue. I could see the cracked blue
corpse
of the arsonist’s bottle.

The ponies were behind a wall of fire. I wanted to rush inside and rescue them, but these volunteer firemen grabbed my arms and legs and hurled me onto the ground.

“I’m President of the United States,” I hurled back at them.

“Sir,” said the chief of the fire brigade, “that’s why we’re protecting you—from yourself. The horses are goners. No one can save them now.”

We all stood there at that little requiem for ponies that were still alive, and we were utterly unmanned, as we heard hooves beating against the walls of the barn and a faint whimper through the constant crackle of fire.

T
HE
P
ROVOST
M
ARSHAL
wandered through the grounds with a bunch of Pinkertons, moving across a cradle of smoke. They talked of sabotage. Allan Pinkerton questioned the entire household staff, even my confidential secretaries. The culprit wasn’t hard to find. He was arrested the next day—a coachman Mary had sacked the morning of the fire. I felt a rage in me. I had this urge to shellac my wife. Her
violent
quarrels with the coachman had precipitated the violent death of all six horses.

Mary never uttered a word about the fire. It was as if she were floating in some tranquil balloon where nothing could encumber her, neither horses nor husbands nor her own little boy. I caught her at a fitting with Mrs. Keckly, who had a bunch of pins in her mouth. Mary kept looking into her mirror, and the face that looked back seemed to have an absent, silver sheen. She had as many pins in her as a porcupine.

“Mother, you shouldn’t have quarreled with that coachman.”

“What coachman?” she asked while plucking at the pins that could have been some portion of a martyr’s shirt.

“Timothy—Tim. He set fire to the stables.”

“But that wasn’t
our
Tim. Tim and I never quarreled. It was another coachman.”

I couldn’t reason with Mary, make her sense her own participation in the fire. I returned to my office. I could still hear the hot breath of those dying horses, as they kicked against their stalls—the strange, soft whinnying that rose above the fire with all the little plumes of smoke. Mrs. Keckly knocked. There were no more pins in her mouth. I took a little of my rage out on her.

“Madame, has Mary sent you here to make peace?”

I could see the disappointment—and the hurt—crawl onto her face. She’d been kind to Tad, could tear right through the flaws in his speech and understand every syllable. I shouldn’t have tanned her hide.

“Mr. Lincoln, Mrs. President doesn’t even know I’m here. She cries all the time, but she’s too ashamed to tell you. She lent the coachman money, that awful Tim. He’d gamble it away and ask for more. That’s why she got rid of him.”

“Why didn’t she tell me? I would have tossed him out the window.”

There was a pause, as if Keckly had a speech defect of her own.

Then she revealed how Tim had been part of Mother’s spirit circle. He’d drive her and Mrs. Keckly across Rock Creek, sit with them at séances in Georgetown. But he took advantage of Mother’s kindness, went on drunken brawls, raced down Missouri Avenue to Marble Alley, with a
regiment
of strumpets in the car.

“Mrs. President cannot sleep. She keeps hearing the dead ponies in the night.”

“Then I’ll calm her myself. I’ll . . .”

“You mustn’t. She’ll realize I betrayed her, and she’ll only feel worse.”

“Then it’s our secret, I reckon.”

Elizabeth returned to my wife. The fire continued to crackle—I could see the sparks slap at the horses’ flanks and sail into the burning wind. A minstrel song started to roll around in my head—humming always seemed to sooth my nerves.

To Dixie’s Land I’m bound to trabble

Look away! Look away! Dixie Land

I could feel the
unholies
coming, and even while I hummed, the stables went on burning. I could hear terrified ponies whimper through the wall, like the last, agonizing cries of battle. Then the whimpering got closer and closer, and I wondered if these phantom ponies had come right into the house.

I looked up—Mary stood there in her velvet coat of quills. But she wasn’t wounded—it was the sunlight dancing off the pins in her back.

“I was reckless with Mr. Tim,” she muttered, without looking into my eyes. “And now I have no peace. I keep hearing the ponies call for help. I must be mad.”

I wanted to tell her,
Mother, I hear ’em too
—
the ponies.
But I couldn’t resolve the mystery of dead horses that neighed like dying boys in hospital wards, and in some broken field. I couldn’t resolve anything at all. I knew I’d keep on hearing the ponies in time and in eternity, and I’d never reach some
bourne
, where I might be safe from their soft, persistent cries.

43.

Grant

F
RED
,
WHO
WAS
all but fourteen, had been to Vicksburg with his Pa, had lived through the siege and final surrender of the town, had seen the Rebels hurl hand grenades from their parapets, and watched his father’s men dart out of a rifle pit to catch a grenade and hurl it right back. His Pa intended to “out-camp” the enemy, which he did. Cannons couldn’t topple this little fortress town, the general told his son. “It can only be taken with the pick and shovel.” Grant surrounded Vicksburg with seven miles of tunnels and rifle pits, and waited while the town starved. “Whatever they have on hand cannot last always.” Fred saw the first surrender flags, and the elaborate caves that civilians had carved out of the dark red earth on the hillside. They’d abandoned their homes under the parapets—that’s how frightened they were of General Grant. His Pa did a kind of Indian dance in the privacy of their quarters. “Son, the fate of the
Secesh
is sealed. We control the Mississippi from its source to its mouth.” Ulysses Grant had not always been that sanguine. Fred had to watch over him during his drunken withdrawals, while the general stared at some chandelier for hours and wouldn’t eat a morsel.

His Pa was jittery about coming to the capital, where he would be fêted as the first three-star general since George Washington; Congress had revived that rank for Grant, who hated every kind of celebration. They’d never been to the District before, and the general wasn’t interested in any of the sights. He had a reservation at the Willard, but no one recognized him in his worn duster. What was this modest little man doing at the hotel of Presidents and diplomats? The clerk assigned him a tiny garret right under the roof. And then the little man scribbled his name in the register.

U. S. Grant & son, Galena, Illinois

The clerk started to tremble. He hadn’t recognized the hero of Vicksburg. Grant had attacked through the swamps with a python’s grip and nothing but a toothbrush in his pants. He walked into the dining room with Fred, cloaked in the anonymity of a little man with crooked shoulders, lusterless eyes, and a light brown beard—until someone at the next table noticed him. “There’s the general.” The whole dining room cheered. Fred was embarrassed for his Pa, whose eyes darted from wine bottle to wine bottle at the different tables. Guests at the Willard banged the tabletops with their fists, while the wine bottles wavered, and Ulysses bowed to each guest. He looked more like a grocery clerk than a general . . .

He dozed in the middle of the meal—trench warfare could awaken him, not the Willard. He wouldn’t talk about Vicksburg at the dinner table. He signed a dozen autograph albums and went up to his room with Fred. He’d rather have slept on dark clay with his men than have his own suite at the Willard. Ulysses put his son to bed, but he couldn’t find the key to his trunk. He walked out of the Willard in his old travel uniform with missing buttons and a frayed cuff, crossed the miasma of Pennsylvania Avenue, and wandered into the Mansion. Nicolay & Hay hadn’t expected Grant until tomorrow. And here he was in the middle of a White House gala with mud on his boots.

Folks swarmed around him—gloves were lost, crinolines collapsed, and shoes were trampled on in that swarm. It was like an invading army in our own salon. And that’s how I first met Ulysses Grant. I looked into his blue-gray eyes, and could feel that sense of
risk
I hadn’t been able to find in my other generals.
He fights, he kills.
He stole the Mississippi from the Rebels. And now he’d come to the capital in his rumpled uniform, a commander who made sure his mules were fed.

He seemed uncomfortable amid that blind thrust of people in the Blue Room. Ulysses blinked as he was shoved along, sweat pouring from his forehead. I loped toward him, grinning like a jackass. He was a soldier who could disappear into the swamps and survive without a servant or a camp chest or a caravan of clothes.

He didn’t have much use for shindigs and chandeliers. He could have had McClellan’s old headquarters on Lafayette Square, but he’d have to suffer a season of soirees, with Senators barking down his back. So he decided to make his headquarters at City Point, beside his war tents and his troops.

We all wondered why Ulysses hadn’t brought his wife—he was always with Julia. The Rebels had tried to capture her during the Vicksburg campaign, when they raided one of Grant’s supply depots; she outfoxed those butternut boys, disappeared from the depot in a squaw’s blanket, and managed to join Ulysses at the front. Julia wasn’t a great belle—she had a horseface and a permanent squint in one eye, but she was devoted to Grant. Yet he hadn’t brought her to the White House on the eve of his anointment as lieutenant general. She was cleverer than Grant
beyond
the battlefield. And she didn’t want to compete with Mary on Mary’s home ground.

Mother was delighted with the general. She wasn’t shy around this shy man. She kept nudging me with her elbow, while she looked at Ulysses.

“Father, we can’t have him leave the capital without a dinner in his honor. It isn’t fair. Invite him for Saturday. And don’t you fail!”

Swamped by politicians, he had to stand on a crimson sofa, or he would have vanished in that morass. The general blushed like a little girl as women leapt out of their lace shawls to clasp his hand.

“Speech, speech,” they shouted under the chandeliers. “Hurrah for the hero of Vicksburg!”

He turned ashen all of a sudden—that little girl’s blush was gone.

I could tell how mortified he was, and I invited him to climb down. He was no McClellan, who loved to pontificate on the littlest maneuver. Grant killed
quietly
and wouldn’t talk with civilians about the fake romance of blood.

We went upstairs to my war room. He sat in Mr. Seward’s Cabinet chair, lit up a cigar, and shut his eyes; there was a slight tremor in his eyelids. I was silent until he opened his eyes again.

“Grant, I never liked to interfere with my generals. It’s a bad policy. You can’t run a war from the White House. But I didn’t have much choice.”

Folks said I ought to fear him—as a rival, like Little Mac. But the general with the gray eyes was my wild card, perhaps the only card I had left. My own Party wanted to ditch me; my precinct captains said I’d never win another election—without Grant. I couldn’t read much into that ash gray color while he puffed on his cigar. I watched the smoke rings multiply, mesmerized a little. I’d made him my General-in-Chief—and I didn’t want those honors to bite my own back. No one could say when that Presidential grub gets to gnawing at a man, and I didn’t know if there was one gnawing at Grant. Yet that wasn’t what gnawed at me. Horace Greeley wrote that if I couldn’t find some prescription for peace, we would all drown in
new rivers of human blood.
But I could not preserve the Union without these rivers of blood. And I needed Grant as a great military captain. I still found it hard to talk to this quiet killer.