from West Virginia he was still making major changes.
“I’m thinking of adding a chapter at the beginning of the book, Jeff,” he said. “To explain why Ben Freeman enlists.”
“I thought you’d already sent the copyedited manuscript back,” I said.
“I did, son. Three weeks ago. But then I got to worrying about Ben. He signs up just like that, for no reason. Would you do that?”
“No, but a lot of recruits did. Listen, I’m calling because I’ve run into some trouble with Traveller. In a letter to one of his daughters, Lee says he bought Traveller in the fall of 1861, but the records here show he didn’t buy him until 1862, during the Carolina campaign.”
“They must have had some reason for enlisting,” Broun said. “What if Ben’s courting a girl who’s in love with somebody else?”
McLaws and Herndon would kill Broun if he started adding new characters at this late date. “I think the beginning’s fine,” I said. “Ben doesn’t have to have a good reason to sign up. Nobody else in the Civil War did. Most of the recruits couldn’t have told you what the war was even being fought about, let alone why they were in it. I’d go ahead and leave it as is, and that goes for Traveller, too. I’m going up to Lewisburg tomorrow to check the courthouse records, but I’m almost sure Lee didn’t buy the horse in 1861.”
“Will you be home in time for the reception?” Broun asked.
“I thought they’d postpone it since the book’s late.”
“The invitations were already out. Try to get home for it, son. I need you here to explain why the book’s taking so long.”
I wanted to ask him to explain it to me, but I didn’t. Instead, I chased all over Greenbrier County for three days, trying to find a scribbled note or a preliminary agreement that would settle the matter one way or the other, and then drove home through an awful snowstorm, but I made it in time for the reception.
“You look like you’ve been through a campaign, son,” Broun said when I got there late in the afternoon.
“I have,” I said, pulling off my parka. The snow had followed me all the way from White Sulphur Springs and then turned into icy rain fifty miles from D.C. I was glad Broun had a fire going in his upstairs study. “I found out what you wanted to know about Traveller.”
“Good, good,” he said, taking books off a straight-backed chair and setting it in front of the fire. He draped my wet parka over the back of it. “I’m glad you’re home, Jeff. I think I’ve finally got a handle on the book. Did you know Lincoln dreamed about his own assassination?”
“Yes,” I said, wondering what on earth this had to do with a novel about Antietam. “He dreamed he saw his dead body in the White House, didn’t he?”
“He dreamed he woke up and heard the sound of crying,” Broun said, dumping his Siamese cat out of his big leather armchair and pulling it around to face the fire. He didn’t seem to be in any hurry, even though the reception was supposed to start at seven. He was wearing the ratty-looking gray cardigan he usually wrote in and a pair of baggy pants, and he apparently hadn’t shaved since I’d left. Maybe they’d canceled the reception after all.
Broun motioned me to sit down. “When he went downstairs he couldn’t see anyone,” he went on, “but there was a corpse lying in a coffin in the East Room. The corpse’s face was covered by a black cloth, and Lincoln asked the guard standing at the door who was dead, and the guard answered, The President. He was killed by an assassin.’”
He was looking at me eagerly, waiting for me to say something, but I didn’t have a clue of what that something was supposed to be. “He had the dream, what, a month before he died?” I said lamely.
“Two weeks. April the second. I’d read it before, but while you were gone, McLaws and Herndon’s publicist called and asked me what book I was going to do after
The Lincoln book. That was what all this was about. I supposed I should be glad. If he got involved in a new book, maybe he’d quit messing with
“Tomorrow I want you to go out to Arlington, Jeff.” He scratched at the grayish stubble on his cheek. “I need to know if Willie Lincoln was buried there.”
“He’s buried in Springfield. In the Lincoln tomb.”
“Not where he’s buried now. During the Civil War. His body wasn’t sent back to Springfield until 1865, when Lincoln was assassinated. Willie died in 1862. I want to know where he was buried for those three years.”
I had no idea what Willie Lincoln had to do with Lincoln’s assassination dream, but I was too tired to ask. “You aren’t still having the reception, are you?” I said, hoping against hope that he would say they weren’t. “The roads are terrible.”
“No, it’s still on.” Broun looked at his watch. “I’ve got to go get dressed. Those damned reporters always come early.” I must have looked like I felt, because he said, “The battle won’t be joined till eight o’clock, and I’ll take care of the preliminary skirmishes. Why don’t you go have a nap?”
“I think I’ll take you up on that,” I said, and heaved myself up out of the chair.
“Oh, would you do one favor for me first?” Broun said. “Would you call Richard Madison and make sure he’s coming tonight? His girlfriend said they’d be here, but I’d like you to call and make sure.”
Lincoln’s dreams and Willie Lincoln’s body and now my old college roommate. I gave up even trying to look like I knew what he was talking about.
“He called while you were gone,” Broun said, scratching at the stubble. “Said he had to get in touch with you right away. I told him I didn’t have a number for you but you’d be calling in and could I give you some kind of message, but he just said to tell you to call him, and then when you called I didn’t have a chance to pass the message on, so I called him to tell him you’d be back today.”
There had to be a connection here somewhere. “You invited him to the reception?” I asked.
“I invited the girlfriend to the reception. Richard wasn’t there. The girl said he was at the Sleep Institute, and I asked her what he did there, and she said, ‘He tells people what their dreams mean,’ and after I hung up I got to thinking about Lincoln’s dreams and wondering what a psychiatrist would say they meant, so I called her back and invited them to the reception so I could ask him. But since I never talked to Richard and since he wanted you to call him, I think it would be a good idea for you to call and make sure they’re coming. And then you’d better go lie down, son. You look like you’re about to fall over.”
He went out. I stood in front of the fire for a minute, wondering why Richard had called me. We’d been good friends when we were roommates at Duke, but we’d hardly seen each other in the six years since we graduated. He’d gone to New York to do his internship and then come back to D.C. for his residency at the Sleep Institute, which meant he was too busy to see anybody. He’d called me exactly once in the last year, and then it was to make me a job offer. One of his patients, a Pentagon big-wig, was doing a study on the long-term effects of the Vietnam war and needed a researcher.
“Not interested,” I’d said. “I haven’t figured out the long-term effects of the Civil War yet.”
“This would be a job where you could do something important instead of wasting your time looking up obscure facts nobody cares anything about for some hack writer,” he’d said.
I had just spent that whole day trying to find out why General Longstreet was wearing a carpet slipper at Antietam. He’d had a blistered heel, a tact that Richard would most certainly put in the category of “facts nobody cares anything about.” Longstreet had probably cared, though, since he was trying to run a war, and so did Broun, which was why I worked for him, but I hadn’t been about to try to explain that to Richard.
“If this Pentagon job is so great, how come the guy’s a patient of yours?” I’d said instead.
“He has a sleep disorder.”
“Well, I sleep great nights,” I’d said. “Tell him thanks but no thanks.” I wondered if he was calling now with another job offer. Broun had said Richard wouldn’t tell him what he wanted to talk to me about, which meant it probably was, and I was in no shape to listen to it.
I took a hot shower instead and then tried for a nap, but I found myself still thinking about Richard and decided to call him and get it over with. I went back into Broun’s study to use the phone. I thought maybe the
