Lincoln's Dreams (3 page)

“What’s it about?” she asked.

“Antietam,” I said. “It’s in the press release.”

“Not that one. The new one he’s starting.”

“Your guess is as good as mine,” I said, and turned her over to Broun and went back into the study with the books I’d found and looked up Willie Lincoln. He had died in 1862, when he was eleven years old. They had had a reception downstairs in the White House while he lay dying upstairs. And probably people had kept ringing the doorbell, I thought, when the doorbell rang.

It was more reporters, and then it was somebody from the caterer’s and then more reporters, and I began to think Richard wasn’t coming after all, but the next time the doorbell rang it was Richard. With Annie.

“We can’t stay very long,” Richard said before he even got in the door. He looked tired and strung out, which wasn’t much of an endorsement for the Sleep Institute. I wondered if the way he looked had anything to do with his having called me when I was in West Virginia.

“I’m glad you both could come,” I said, turning to look at Annie. “I’m Jeff Johnston. I used to room with this guy back Before he became a hotshot psychiatrist.”

“I’m glad to meet you, Jeff,” she said gravely.

She was not at all what I’d expected. Richard had dated mostly hot little nurses when he was in med school, and Washington’s Women on the Way Up since he started working at the Institute. He had never so much as glanced at anyone like Annie. She
was little, with short blonde hair and bluish gray eyes. She was wearing a heavy gray coat and low-heeled shoes and looked about eighteen.

“The party’s upstairs,” I said. “It’s kind of a zoo, but…”

“We don’t have much time,” Richard said, but he didn’t look at his watch. He looked at Annie, as if she were the one in a hurry. She didn’t look worried at all.

“How about if I bring Broun down here?” I said, not at all sure I could get him away from the reporters. “You can wait in the solarium.” I motioned them in.

It was, like every other room in the house, really a room for Broun to misplace books in, even though it had been intended for tropical plants. It had greenhouse glass windows and a neater that kept it twenty degrees hotter than the rest of the house. Broun had stuck a token row of African violets on a table in front of the windows and added an antique horsehair loveseat and a couple of chairs, but the rest of the room was filled with books. “Let me take your coats,” I said.

“No,” Richard said with an anxious glance at Annie. “No. We won’t be here that long.”

I tore up the stairs and got Broun. The caterers had just set out the buffet supper, so he wouldn’t even be missed. I told Broun that Richard was here but couldn’t stay and herded him toward the stairs, but the reporter from
People
latched on to him, and it was a good five minutes before he could get away from her.

They were still there, but just barely. Richard was at the door of the solarium, saying, “It’s almost nine. I think …”

“Glad to meet you, Dr. Madison. So you’re Jeff’s old roommate,” Broun said, putting himself between Richard and the front door. “And you must be Annie. I talked to you on the phone.”

“Yes,” she said. “I’ve been wanting to meet you, Mr. Brou—”

“I understand you wanted to talk to me about Abraham Lincoln,” Richard said, cutting across her words before she even got Broun’s name out.

“I do,” Broun said. “I appreciate your coming. I’ve been doing some research on Lincoln. He had some mighty strange dreams,” he smiled at Annie, “and since you told me Dr. Madison here tells people what their dreams mean, I thought maybe he could tell me about Lincoln’s dreams.” He turned back to Richard. “Have you had supper? There’s a wonderful buffet upstairs if the reporters haven’t eaten it all. Lobster and ham and some wonderful shrimp doodads that…”

“I don’t have very much time,” Richard said, looking at Annie. “I told Jeff on the phone I didn’t think I could help you. You can’t analyze somebody’s dreams just by hearing a secondhand account of them. You have to know all about the person.”

“Which Broun does,” I said.

“I mostly need some information on what the modern view of dreams is,” Broun said, taking hold of Richard’s arm. “I promise I’ll only take a few minutes of your time. We can all go up to my study. We’ll grab something to eat on the way and—”

“I don’t think …” Richard said, with another anxious glance at Annie.

“You’re absolutely right,” Broun said, his hand clamped firmly on Richard’s arm. “Why should your young lady have to be bored by a lot of dry history when she can go to a party instead? Jeff, you’ll keep her company, won’t you? Get her some of those shrimp doodads and some champagne?”

Richard looked at Annie as it he expected her to object, but she didn’t say anything, and I thought he looked relieved.

“Jeff’ll take good care of her,” Broun said heartily, like a man trying to make a deal. “Won’t you, Jeff?”

“I’ll take care of her,” I said, looking at her. “I promise.”

“The dream I’m having trouble with is one Lincoln
had two weeks before his assassination,” Broun said, leading Richard firmly up the stairs to his study. “He dreamed he woke up in the White House and heard somebody crying. When he went downstairs …” They disappeared into the roar of noise and people at the top of the stairs. I turned and looked at Annie. She was standing looking up after them.

“Would you like to go up to the party?” I said. “Broun’ll be upset if you don’t have some of the shrimp doodads.”

She smiled and shook her head. “I don’t think Richard will be that long.”

“Yeah, he didn’t seem all that enthusiastic about the prospect of analyzing Lincoln’s dreams.” I led the way back into the solarium. “He kept talking about having to leave. Is one of his patients giving him a rough time?”

She went over to the windows and looked out. “Yes,” she said. “Richard told me you’re a historian.”

“Did he also tell you he thinks I’m crazy for spending my life looking up obscure facts that don’t matter to anybody?”

“No,” she said, still watching the rain turn into sleet. “That’s a term he reserves for me these days.” She turned and looked at me. “I’m a patient of his. I have a sleep disorder.”

“Oh,” I said. “Can I take your coat?” I said, to be saying something. “Broun keeps this room like an oven.”

She gave it to me, and I went and hung it in the hall closet, trying to make sense of what she’d just told me. Richard hadn’t contradicted me when I’d called her his girlfriend, and Broun had told me she answered the phone at Richard’s apartment, but if she was his patient, what was he doing living with her?

When I came back into the solarium, she was looking at Broun’s African violets. I went over to the windows and looked out, trying to think of something to talk about. I could hardly ask her if she was sleeping with Richard or if her sleep disorder had anything to do with him.

“I’ve got to go out to Arlington National Cemetery in this mess tomorrow,” I said. “I’ve got to try and find where Willie Lincoln was buried, for Broun. Willie was Abraham Lincoln’s little boy. He died during the war.”

“Do you do all of Broun’s Civil War research for him?” Annie said, picking up one of the African violets.

“Most of the legwork. You know, when Broun first hired me, he would hardly let me do any of his research. It took me almost a year to talk him into letting me run his errands for him, and now I wish I hadn’t done such a good job. It looks like it’s turning into snow out there.”

She put the flowerpot back down on the table and looked up at me. “Tell me about the Civil War,” she said.

“What do you want to know?” I asked. I wished suddenly that I had had that nap so I could give my full wits to this conversation, tell her stories about the war that would get that somehow sad expression out of her blue-gray eyes. “I’m an expert on Antietam. Bloodiest single day of the Civil War. Possibly the most important day, too, though Broun will argue with that. General Lee needed a victory so England would recognize the Confederacy, and so he invaded Maryland, only it didn’t work. He had to retreat back to Virginia and …”

I stopped. I was putting myself to sleep, and God only knew what I was doing to Annie, who had probably never heard of Antietam. “How about Robert E. Lee? And his horse. I know just about everything there is to know about his damned horse.”

She brushed her short hair back from her face and smiled. “Tell me about the soldiers,” she said.

“The soldiers, huh? Well, they were farm boys mostly, uneducated. And they were young. The average age of the Civil War soldier was twenty-three.”

“I’m twenty-three,” she said.

“I don’t think you’d have had too much to worry about. They didn’t draft women in the Civil War,” I
said, “though they might have had to if the war had gone on much longer. The Confederacy was down to old men and thirteen-year-old boys. If you’re interested in soldiers, there are a whole slew of them buried out at Arlington,” I said. “How would you like to go out there with me tomorrow?”

She picked up another of the potted violets and traced her finger along the leaves. “To Arlington?” she said.

Richard and I had roomed together at Duke for four years. I had never even looked at one of his girls, and tonight I had told him I would take care of? her for him. “Arlington’s a great place to visit,” I said, as if I hadn’t spent the last three days and nights living on No-Doz and coffee and wanting nothing more than to get back to Broun’s and sleep straight through till spring, as if she weren’t living with my old roommate. “There are a lot of famous people buried there, and the house is open to the public.”

“The house?” she said, bending over another one of the violets.

“Robert E. Lee’s house,” I said. “It was his plantation until the war. Then the Union occupied it. They buried Union soldiers in the front lawn to make sure he never got it back, and he never did. They turned it into a national cemetery in 1864. I’ve done a lot of research on Robert E. Lee lately.”

She was looking at me. And she had put her hand in the flowerpot. “Did he have a cat?” she said.

I turned and looked behind me at the door, thinking Broun’s Siamese had come down here to get away from the party, but it wasn’t there. “What?” I said, looking at her hand.

“Did Robert E. Lee have a cat? When he lived at Arlington?”

I was too tired, that was all. If I could just have gotten a nap instead of looking up Willie Lincoln and talking to reporters, I would have been able to take all this in—me asking her out when she was living with Richard, her asking me if Lee had a cat
while she scrabbled in the dirt of the flowerpot as if she were trying to dig a grave.

“What kind of cat?” I said.

She had pulled the violet up by its roots and was holding it tightly in her hand. “I don’t know. A yellow cat. With darker stripes. It was there, in the dream.”

I said, “What dream?” and watched her drop the empty flowerpot. It crashed at her feet.

“I’ve been having this dream,” she said. “In it I’m at the house I grew up in, standing on the front porch, looking for the cat. It’s snowed, a wet, spring snow, and I have the idea that he has gotten buried in the snow, but then I see him out in the apple orchard, picking his way through the snow with little, high, funny steps.”

I did not know what was coming, but at the words
apple orchard
I sat down on the arm of the loveseat, looking anxiously over my shoulder to see if Richard and Broun were coming. There was nobody on the stairs.

“I called to him, but he didn’t pay any attention, so I went after him.” She was holding the violet like a nosegay in front of her, tearing the leaves off in absent, desperate movements. “I made it out to the tree all right, and I tried to pick the cat up, but he wouldn’t let me, and I tried to catch him and I stepped on something….” She had torn all the leaves off now and was starting on the flowers. “It was a Union soldier. I could see his arm in the blue sleeve sticking out of the dirt. He was still holding his rifle, and there was a piece of paper pinned to his sleeve. Somebody had buried him in the orchard, but not deep enough, and when the snow had started to melt it had uncovered his arm. I bent down and unpinned the paper, but when I looked at it, the paper was blank. I had the idea it might be some kind of message, and that frightened me. I stepped back, and something gave under my foot.”

There was nothing left of the violet but the roots, covered in dirt, and she crushed them in her
fist. “It was the cap of another soldier. I hadn’t stepped on his head, but where the snow had melted I could see him lying face down with his gun under him. He had yellow hair. The cat went over and licked his face like he used to lick mine to wake me up.

“Whoever had buried them had just shoveled sod over them where they’d fallen, and the snow had hidden them, but now it was melting. I still couldn’t see them except for a foot or a hand, and I didn’t want to step on them but everywhere I stepped I went through to the bodies underneath. And the cat just walked all over them.” She had dropped what was left of the violet and was looking past me at the door. “They were buried all over the orchard and the lawn, right up to the front steps.”

I could hear somebody clattering down the stairs, and I moved, for the first time that night, as if I were wide awake. I reached past Annie and scooped up a handful of dirt and torn leaves off the floor. When Richard came in with his coat over his arm, we were both bending down, heads together, picking up the shards, and my hands were as dirty as hers.

I straightened up with a handful of dirt and clay triangles. Did you two figure out what was causing Lincoln’s dreams?” I asked.

“No. I told you I couldn’t tell him what he wanted to know,” Richard said. He looked past me at Annie. “We’ve got to go. Get your coat.”

“I’ll get it, I said, and went out to the hall closet.

Broun came plummeting down the stairs. “Is he still here?”

I motioned toward the solarium. He hurried in, and I followed with Annie’s coat. “I’m so sorry, Dr. Madison,” Broun said. “That damned
People
reporter caught me on the way down. I wanted to say …”