5
The boy who jumped out of the dark shadow of the bushes slapped his rifle hard, brought it to port sharply.
“Mr. President,” he gasped, “if I had been an assassin you’d be dead by now!”
Abraham Lincoln stopped, shifted his high hat. A few thin flakes of snow lay white against the silk.
“And what would you have been doing, Joe, while an assassin was making a corpse out of me?” he asked amiably.
“I’d have done the best I could to protect you, Mr. President, but it’s powerful dark out here,” stammered the flustered soldier.
“I knew you were here, Joe, or I wouldn’t be out here,” Lincoln said. “Cold out here. Have you got some warm gloves?”
“Can’t handle a gun with gloves, Mr. President. But I get relieved in an hour.”
Lincoln looked at the sky. “Some mean weather making up, I’m afraid. Bad for Christmas. You boys keeping warm in those tents?”
“Well, the way I figure, sir, we’re just as warm as those men of General Meade’s over across the river. And there ain’t nobody shooting at us, sir—I mean, Mr. President. The lieutenant ain’t going to like it, Mr. President, you walking out here alone. You want to walk, you need a couple of us boys along.”
“I make a good mark, don’t I, Joe? I sort of rear up on the skyline like a steeple. Good thing it’s too dark for them to spot me. I look at it this way. If the good Lord wants me to stay on this job He’ll look after me. God and Company K. You see Tad anywhere?”
“Yes, sir, Mr. President.” Joe stalked beside the tall figure, weapon alerted. “Tad’s down yonder to the corporal’s tent. He’s got his billy goat down there. Some of the boys fixed up an army cap for that goat and the corporal’s riveting a chin strap on it.” Joe trotted a little to keep up with the long stride of Lincoln.
“Better anchor it tight or the goat will eat his headgear,” remarked Lincoln. “Mrs. Lincoln sent Tad to bed so she could fix up his Christmas presents. Tad always sleeps with me but when I went to my room he wasn’t there, so I decided he’d slipped down here.”
“That goat sure means a lot to Tad, Mr. President. Tad treats him like he was folks. Nobody ever has found out what happened to the she-goat, sir. Last pass you give me I went all over that skinny town back yonder where the trash and niggers live but I never seen a sign of any goat—hide neither.”
“Tad misses his brother. Christmas will be a sad time for all of us, but we’ll try to make it happy for Tad.”
“Just about a year ago you lost your boy, wasn’t it, Mr. President?”
“Last February. Lung fever. He got wet and took a cold. Mrs. Lincoln hasn’t gotten over it at all. She idolized her sons. We lost another one, you know, in Springfield. Little Eddie. But we have company, Joe. A great sorrowful company of people who have lost their sons.”
Lincoln sighed heavily as he strode up to the lighted tent where a group of men hunkered down around Tad and his goat.
The corporal dropped his awl and leather and jumped up, eyes bulging.
“Attention!” he barked.
Every man sprang up to stand stiffly. Tad threw his arms around the goat, yelling desperately. “Help me hold him! He’ll get away.”
“At ease, boys,” Lincoln said “Grab that goat, some of you.”
“Yes, sir, Mr. President, sir,” gulped the corporal. “Get him, Bullitt. You, Joe—you’re on post!”
“Joe,” Lincoln said, “has been escorting me and protecting me from assassins, my orders. Very capably too. Tad, you’d better come along to bed. Tomorrow is Christmas and your brother will be here on an early train.”
“Yes, sir, Mr. President.” The corporal flicked a salute importantly. “Lieutenant detailed me and three of the boys to meet that train. We was just helping the boy here to pretty up his goat, sir, asking your pardon and meaning no offense.”
“No offense taken, Corporal. I appreciate your taking care of my boys.”
“Look, Papa,” shrilled Tad, “lookit Billy’s horns.” The animal’s rough pointed horns had been painted a bright scarlet and tipped with circles of brass. He shook them impatiently while Tad clung to his neck.
“Mighty pretty,” approved his father, “but you’re getting paint on your uniform jacket. Your mama will have something to say about that.”
“She’ll have a duck fit,” stated Tad disrespectfully; then his voice sank to a whimper. “Billy’s pretty but he’s not as pretty as a nanny goat, Papa. I want my nanny goat back.” He began to cry thinly, and the corporal looked anxious.
“I sure wish we could get his nanny goat back, Mr. President. That paint will dry by morning, sir. We’ll tie Billy out where he can’t rub it off on anything. You, Bullitt and Gibson, escort the President and young Mr. Lincoln back to the house, and lemme see them rifles first. Half the time,” he explained unhappily, “they ain’t got no load ready and a man might as well carry a broomstick. All right. About face, March!”
Tad clung to his father’s hand and Lincoln felt his palm sticky with undried paint. Behind them the goat blatted forlornly.
“He wants me,” mourned Tad. “I feed him biscuits and all the boys have got is hardtack.”
“Maybe we can find some biscuits,” suggested Lincoln. “Mr. Bullitt and Mr. Gibson can carry them back to him. Come along in, boys, and report back to your corporal that I’m much obliged for everything.”
He had never set foot in the White House kitchen. Now Abraham Lincoln walked timidly there as though he were an intruder who might be ordered out indignantly at any moment.
The long room, still odorous with baking bread and roasting meat, was warm, the huge ranges clinking as they cooled, water dripping from the spout of a pump. The cooks’ white aprons and caps hung from pegs on the wall and one long table was covered with trays spread over with white cloths. Lincoln lifted a corner of a covering. Beneath was a great array of small colored cakes obviously baked for the Christmas party.
“Have one, boys.” He took a pink dainty himself and bit into it. “Pretty good.”
Tad wolfed down two and the privates nervously accepted one each.
“Wonder where they keep the biscuits?” Tad began to explore.
“You ought to know,” said his father. “You snoop everywhere.”
Tad scurried about, opening ovens and cupboards, lifting lids of boxes and the great copper pots.
“Bread,” he uncovered a stack of loaves, “but no biscuits.”
“Your billy will eat bread, sir,” suggested Private Bullitt. “He eats hardtack. He’ll eat anything, Mr. President. He ate Sergeant Whipple’s box from home. Had a cake in it. Et box and all, sir.”
“Well have to see to it that Sergeant Whipple gets another cake.” Lincoln took down a long knife from a rack on the wall and whacked off the end of a loaf of fresh bread. “Good bread.” He tasted a crumb. “Go good if we had some jam to put on it.”
“There’s jampots up there, Papa.” Tad pointed to a high shelf.
“So there are.” Lincoln reached a long arm, slit the paper that covered the top of a jar, dipped in a knife. “Blackberry.” He sliced off a hunk of bread, spread it thickly with jam, handed it to Private Bullitt. “Have some, boys.” He spread another slice for Gibson and one for Tad and himself. Perched on the edge of a table he ate, wiped his beard and fingers on a handy towel, passed the towel around. “Some drizzled on your jacket, Tad. Wipe it off. Now, I reckon somebody will get blamed for this piece of larceny, so I’d better take care of that.”
The cooks’ pad and pencil lay on a shelf and Lincoln tore off a sheet and wrote rapidly: All provisions missing from this kitchen requisitioned by order of the undersigned. A. Lincoln.
“That will fix it. You boys take this bread back to that billy goat and tell your sergeant I’ll see that he’s recompensed for his lost cake,” he said. “Now Tad, you come along to bed.”
The wreaths of greenery were in place in the hall and up the stairs, and in the East Room a tall spruce tree awaited the lighting of the candles. Festival! And out there on the cold ground boys like Robert, boys like Tad would soon grow to be, kept warm in flimsy tents with little fires, slept on straw with blankets far too thin, and there were men he knew in the field, in grim military prisons, who likely had no blankets at all.
The great bed in his room with its huge, soft bolster and tufted counterpane, its enormous headboard shutting off drafts and elaborately carved and scrolled, suddenly wore the aspect of sinful luxury. He would gladly have taken a blanket and gone out to join his men, but he knew sadly that that would not do. He had known the ground for a bed many times—in the Black Hawk War and on expeditions into the wilds—but now he was growing old and he had to uphold the dignity of high office.
He pulled off Tad’s clothes, buttoned him into a long nightshirt, and tucked him into the big bed. Almost instantly the boy was asleep. Lincoln was struggling with his own boots when the door opened and Mary came in, buttoned into a vast blue wrapper, a ruffled cap on her head.
“Forevermore!” she exclaimed. “Where have you been? I looked for you to help me with the Christmas things and couldn’t find a hair of you or Tad either. Has that child been out in this cold wind?”
“We were having a little Christmas party with some of the boys, Mary. Tad’s all right. Don’t start scolding tonight; it’s already Christmas morning now.”
“You know how delicate he is. It will be just like Willie all over again and I can’t bear any more sorrow, Abraham. I’ll lose my mind if I have another grief to live through,” she cried.
“Tad’s tough, Mama. Not frail like Willie. We were in the kitchen anyway,” he evaded. “It was warm down there.”
“You didn’t eat up my cakes?” she demanded. “I had trouble enough getting them baked. The cook says the blockade is to blame for making sugar so scarce and high. They ought to know we have to have sugar. There’s no coconut either, nor nutmegs nor cinnamon.”
“It’s war, Mary. Some good people haven’t even got bread,” he reminded her.
She began to whimper, perching on the edge of the bed.
“Maybe I won’t need any cakes for my party. I’ve had at least a dozen regrets already. An invitation from the wife of the President should be like a command from the queen,” she declared, grimly. “I’m saving all those insulting notes and I think the people who wrote them should be properly dealt with.”
Lincoln sighed as he hung up his coat and untied his lumpy satin cravat. The starched collar rasped his neck. He was glad to be rid of it. “Don’t you cry now for Christmas, Mary,” he pleaded. “We have to keep things happy for the boys. Bob will be here in the morning.”
She dried her eyes on the ruffle of her sleeve. “I can’t help remembering that I’ve lost my son.”
“You’re one of a vast company, Mary. If all the tears that will be shed by bereaved mothers tomorrow were drained into one river we could float a gunboat on it. If only I could see a way so there would be no more—no more killing, no more graves, no more sorrowing women!” he cried, desolately.
It was a cry of anguish and Mary Lincoln felt a surge of terrible compassion for this gaunt, lonely man who was her love. She put her arms around him, standing on tiptoe, her cheek pressing the buttons of his shirt.
“You didn’t make this war. You’re doing all any man could do to end it!” she cried. “We could have ignored the country—we could have stayed in Springfield where nobody hated us. Here they all hate us. The ones who come to our party tomorrow will smirk and fawn to our faces and then sneer at our backs.”
“Not all, Mary. There are plenty of good folks, loyal folks, who believe I’m doing right. Plenty of people we can call our friends. A sight of them voted for me, remember.”
“They want something!” she argued. “Every last one of them wants something. That General Grant is even being puffed up to run against you for president next year. Even the Illinois newspapers are for him.”
“Well, he might make a good president,” admitted Lincoln, “though no soldier ever has made a good president since George Washington. And if I’m beat, we can always go home to Springfield.”
“Slink home like beaten dogs!” she exclaimed, her mercurial mood shifting again. “Well, we’ll not do it. They’re not going to get us down, Abraham Lincoln! Democrats nor Black Republicans either. And they’d better show up at my party if they want any more favors from you!”
“You tear up those regrets, Mary,” he said soberly. “Tear up every single one of ’em. And forget the names of the people who wrote them. That,” he added very solemnly, “is an order from the President.”