Abe purchased a black leather-bound journal on Dauphine Street the next day. His first entry, while a scant seventeen words, was a powerful statement of that truth, and one of the most important sentences he would ever write.
June 25th, 1828
So long as this country is cursed with slavery, so too will it be cursed with vampires.
PART II
VAMPIRE HUNTER
FIVE
New Salem
The way for a young man to rise, is to improve himself every way he can, never suspecting that any body wishes to hinder him.
I
Abe was shaking.
It was a bitter cold February night, and he’d been waiting for a man to put his clothes on for the better part of two hours. Abe paced back and forth… back and forth in the hard-packed snow, throwing the occasional glance toward the unfinished courthouse on the other side of the square, and at the second floor of the saloon across the street—where a light still burned behind the curtained window of a whore. He passed the time with thoughts of his weeks spent floating shirtless down the Mississippi in unbearable heat. “Heat a man could drown in.” He thought of mornings spent splitting rails in the shade; afternoons cooling off with a swim in the creek. But those memories were all more than three years and two hundred miles away. Tonight, on his twenty-second birthday, he was freezing on the empty streets of Calhoun, Illinois. *
Thomas Lincoln had finally given up on Indiana. He’d been receiving regular reports from John Hanks, a cousin of Abe’s mother, regarding the untapped wonders of Illinois.
John wrote of the “plentiful and fertile” prairies of that state. Of “flat land that needed no clearing. Free of rocks, and to be had cheap.” It was all the incentive Thomas needed to leave Indiana and its bitter memories behind.
In March of 1830, the Lincolns packed their belongings into three wagons, each hitched to a team of oxen, and left Little Pigeon Creek forever. For fifteen exhausting days they navigated mud-covered roads and forded icy rivers, “until at last we reached Macon County and settled just west of Decatur,” smack-dab in the center of Illinois. Abe was twenty-one then. It’d been two years since he’d witnessed the slave massacre in New Orleans. Two years of handing hard-earned wages over to his father. Now he was finally free to strike out on his own. Despite being desperate to do so, Abe stayed on an extra year, helping his father build a new cabin and helping his family settle into their new home.
But tonight he was twenty-two. And so help him, it was to be his last birthday under his father’s roof.
[My stepbrother] John was the one who insisted we ride to Calhoun to celebrate. I wouldn’t hear of it at first, not being one to make a fuss over the occasion. As usual, he nagged at me until I could tolerate no more. He stated his intentions while on our ride to town, which as I recall was amounting to “getting blind stinking drunk and buying you the company of a woman friend.” He knew of a saloon on Sixth Street. I do not recall the name, or whether it had one at all. I remember only that it had a second floor where a man could indulge himself for a price. John’s intentions nonwithstanding [sic], I can say that my conscience remains clear in this regard.
Lincoln may have resisted the temptations of the saloon’s perfumed ladies, but he drank its whiskey freely. He and John shared laughs at the expense of their father; their sisters; at each other. It was all “very good for the soul, and a very good way to spend one’s birthday.” Once again, John’s nagging had paid off. Near the end of the evening, however, while his stepbrother flirted with a voluptuous brunette by the name of Missy (“like the Mississippi, honey, but twice as deep, and a helluva lot warmer”), Abe saw an average-size man walk in, wearing clothes “hardly fit for a night so cold.”
His face bore none of the redness I had observed on the other customers as they hurried into the light and warmth of the saloon—nor had his breath been visible against the cold air as he entered. He was a pale gentleman of thirty years or less, but his hair was nonetheless a curled mix of brown and gray, the result being something like the color of weathered planks. He made straight for the barkeep (it was clear the two were acquainted) and whispered something to him, upon which the aproned little man hurried up the staircase. He was a vampire. He had to be—whiskey be damned. But how to know with certainty?
Abe was suddenly struck by an idea.
I barely spoke above a whisper. “Do you see that man at the bar?” I asked John, who had been occupied with the lady’s ear. “Tell me, can you ever recall seeing a man with such a repulsive face?” John—who had not the slightest idea what the man’s face looked like—laughed heartily all the same (such was his state). Upon my whispering this, the pale gentleman spun around and glared directly at me. I smiled back and lifted my glass to him. No other creature would have heard the insult over such a din, or across such a distance! There could be no doubt! Yet I could not take him. Not here. Not with so many people watching. I smiled at the thought of being dragged away and charged with murder. What would be my defense? That my victim had been a vampire? What’s more, my coat and weapons remained outside in my saddle bag. No—this would not do. There must be another way.
The barkeep returned with three women in tow and arranged them in front of the vampire’s table.
Having picked two of these, the vampire followed them up the staircase, and the barkeep rang out his last call.
Abe’s mind, half pickled with whiskey, churned until it received “the blessings of another idea.” Knowing that his brother would never leave him to wander the streets alone, he told John that he’d changed his mind and made “arrangements” to spend the night with a woman.
John had hoped (fervently, I suspect) that this would be the case, and promptly made his own arrangements. We bade each other good night as the barkeep snuffed out the lanterns and locked the bottles away. Having given my brother and his friend ample time to reach their room, I followed up the stairs, alone. Here was a single, narrow hallway lit dimly by oil light and papered with an elaborate pattern of reds and pinks. A number of doors ran down both sides, all of them closed. At the end, another closed door faced me which, judging by the shape of the building, led outside to a back staircase. I walked slowly down the center, listening for clues as to which room held my vampire. Laughter from my left. Profanity from my right. Sounds which I have not the words to describe. Having reached the end of the hallway with no success, I at last heard what I had been waiting for on my right side—the voices of two women coming from the same room. Leaving John to enjoy the warm embrace of a stranger, I turned back, headed out into the cold, and donned my long coat. I knew the vampire would likely finish his business and leave before sunrise. And when he did, I would be waiting for him.
But by the second hour of pacing in the street, he’d grown tired, cold, and bored.
