Who Broke Lincoln's Thumb?

“So do I have to call you Miss Corcoran now?” Marshall Li asked his friend KC Corcoran. KC's mom had married President Zachary Thornton, and KC was now living in the White House.

KC and Marshall were walking toward the Lincoln Memorial.

“No, you can still call me KC,” she said. “But don't forget to bow every time you see me.”

Marshall laughed. Then something caught his eye. He squatted down in front of a rosebush. “Wow, look at that!” he cried. A fat black and yellow spider was
dangling from its web in the bush.

“No thanks!” KC said. “You look at it for me!”

“But he's so beautiful,” Marshall said, inching closer to the spider. He loved most animals, but especially the kinds with six or eight legs. Marshall dreamed of getting a job in the insect room at the Museum of Natural History.

KC pulled him back. “Come on, Marsh, before it decides to rain again.”

The morning had started out cloudy, and then the sky had turned black. Wind had howled through Washington, D.C., and large raindrops had pelted down.

By ten o'clock, the rain had stopped. The sun broke through the clouds as KC and Marshall crossed the lawn near the Reflecting Pool. Gusts of wind
blew leaves all around their feet.

“I don't understand why you need to take pictures of Abraham Lincoln's statue,” Marshall said. They had reached the wide lawn in front of the Memorial.

“I told you on the phone this morning,” KC said. “But you were feeding Spike and you weren't paying attention.”

Spike was Marshall's pet tarantula, who slept inside a baseball cap in Marshall's room.

“So tell me again,” Marshall said, grinning. “I promise to listen!”

“Mr. Alubicki told us to do a report on a famous person, right?” KC asked.

“Right,” Marshall said. “I'm doing mine on Spider-Man.”

KC looked at him in amazement. “Marshall, Spider-Man is a comic-book
character, not a real person,” she said.

Marshall grinned. “Mr. A didn't say the person had to be real. Spider-Man is definitely famous!”

“Well, mine will be about Daniel Chester French,” KC said.

“Who's he?” Marshall asked as they walked toward the Lincoln Memorial.

“A famous sculptor! He sculpted Abraham Lincoln's statue,” KC said. “It took him four years!” She reached into her backpack and pulled out her new digital camera, a gift from the president.

“How do you know all this stuff?” Marshall asked.

KC planned to become a TV anchor-woman someday. Her hobby was memorizing a lot of facts.

“I read a lot about him in the newspaper,”
KC said. “The president has declared today Daniel Chester French Day. There was a big article about the ceremony at five o'clock tonight.”

“Will there be cake and ice cream?” asked Marshall.

“Probably,” KC said, nodding toward the Lincoln Memorial. “Look, isn't that prettier than some hairy old spider?”

Now that the storm had passed, people were on the lawn in front of the Lincoln Memorial enjoying the day. A couple of little kids were trying to fly a kite, but the wind kept crashing it to the ground. Two young men were tossing a Frisbee back and forth.

KC and Marshall climbed the wide steps and walked between the columns in front of the Lincoln statue. They
stared up at Lincoln's calm face, high above them. Daniel Chester French had sculpted him sitting in a big chair, which stood on top of a ten-foot platform.

An aluminum ladder leaned against the platform. A black ladder lay on the floor next to two buckets of cleaning supplies.

“I read that the statue is nineteen feet high from Lincoln's feet to the top of his head,” KC told Marshall. “And if Lincoln could stand up, he'd be twenty-eight feet tall!”

A man and woman were standing in front of the statue with a little kid who was sucking his thumb. The man was snapping pictures. The camera's flash blazed each time the shutter clicked.

Suddenly the man pulled his camera away from his face. He stared at the
statue, then said, “I don't believe it!”

“What?” the woman asked.

The man pointed upward toward Lincoln's left hand. “His thumb is gone!” the man said.

KC and Marshall rushed forward. “Oh my gosh!” KC cried. “One of his thumbs
is
missing!”

Where Lincoln's left thumb should have been, there was just a stump.

The man grinned down at his son. “That's what happens when people suck their thumbs,” he joked.

“Do you suppose the thumb just fell off?” the woman asked.

“If it did, it should be here,” the man said, glancing down at the area near the statue. “But it's not.”

“Come on, Daddy,” the little boy said.
“You promised we could see the Air and Space Museum!”

The family hurried away, passing two men coming up the steps. One was tall and skinny. The other was short and stumpy, like a fire hydrant.

They were wearing gray work shirts with NATIONAL PARK SERVICE stitched over the pockets.

“Did you come about Lincoln's thumb?” KC asked when the men reached the statue.

“What thumb?” the tall man asked.

Marshall pointed up to Lincoln's left hand. “That thumb, only it's gone,” he said.

Both men stood under the statue gazing up.

“Well, I'll be darned,” said the tall man. “It was here a while ago, wasn't it, Stub?”

The man named Stub nodded. “Righto, Ralphie. When I dusted his hands, Abe had both his thumbs,” he said.

“Why did you dust him?” KC asked.

“We're cleaning the statue for the ceremony tonight,” Stub answered. “We just took a little coffee break. When we left, he still had his thumb!”

Ralphie pulled a snapshot out of his pocket and handed it to KC. “Some tourist took this and gave it to me,” he said.

KC and Marshall looked at the picture. In it, Stub was standing on the black ladder with a dusting cloth in one hand. The ladder was up on the platform, leaning against Lincoln's right knee.

KC and Marshall could easily see that Lincoln still had both his thumbs.

“Do you mind if I go up on your ladders for a minute?” KC asked. “I want to see that hand close up.”

Ralphie shook his head. “Sorry, miss,” he said. “We could get in trouble for letting a civilian use our equipment.”

“I'm not exactly a regular civilian,” KC said. “My mother is married to President Thornton.”