Lincoln’s Dreams

He turned his head and looked at Nelly, She was sitting on a wooden chair next to Caleb’s bed. She was holding Caleb’s hand, gently, as she had every night since he had been brought in. His fingers clung to hers, and his eyes were closed, but he didn’t look like he was asleep. He must have been dead the whole night.

“You can’t do anything for him,” Mrs. Macklin said, and took hold of Nelly’s wrist.

“Let go of her,” Ben said, and then had to breathe in and out rapidly again so the pain wouldn’t overtake him, “Leave her be. ”

Mrs, Macklin ignored him. “Twenty men downstairs half dead and you sit here,” she said accusingly, “Let go of his hand.” Still holding Nelly by the wrist, she yanked her to standing, and Caleb’s arm came up smartly, as if he were saluting.

“No,” Nelly said desperately, “please,” and Ben lunged for Mrs. Macklin, but he didn’t make it. His foot got shot off again, worse than the first time, and he thought they must have had to cut it off at the knee.

When he opened his eyes to see, Nelly was still sitting beside the bed, but the boy’s body was gone, and somebody had laid a gray blanket over the ticking.

“I’m sorry,” Ben said.

Nelly rubbed her wrist. It looked red and puffy. “Do you know what he said to me yesterday?” she said. “He said that as long as I was holding on to him he had beautiful dreams.” She rubbed at her wrist, making it redder.

“You done the best you could,” Ben said. “He ain’t dreaming no more now anyways,” and he wanted to take her hand and hold tight, but he knew he’d be shot again before he reached the edge of the bed.

“I broke my promise,” she said.

“My friend Toby Banks that I told you about promised his mama he’d come home without a scratch on him. Some promises they just… you done the best you could. After he was,” he stopped and cast around for some way to say ‘dead,’ “after he was passed on to glory, he couldn’t feel whether you was holding on nohow. ”

“Promise me you won’t reenlist when your foot gets better,” she said.

“I promise,” he said, but she went on sitting by the bed, rubbing her wrist.

After a while Mrs. Macklin came in and asked to look at Nelly’s wrist. “No,” Nelly said.

“It’s all swollen,” Mrs. Macklin said angrily. “I’m a nurse. It’s my duty to tend to… ”

Nelly stood up, knocking the wooden chair over. “Don’t you talk to me about duty,” she said, cradling her arm like a baby against her, “not when you wouldn’t let me do mine. ”

Annie stopped reading. “I want to go to Arlington,” she said.

We had been through all this before. “There’s no reason to go to Arlington. We know what the dreams mean. Lee blamed himself for Annie’s death. Maybe he thought it wouldn’t have happened if Annie had been at home, if they hadn’t had to leave Arlington. We even know what the message is. It’s the letter telling him Annie’s dead. There isn’t any reason to go back to Arlington.”

“I have to…” She didn’t finish what she was going to say. “The dreams are going in circles. It’s like when I kept dreaming about the cat, and then when we went out to Arlington, it helped.”

Helped who? I wondered. You or Lee? She was helping him have the dreams, helping him sleep in that marble tomb of his at Lexington, and what was he doing to her?

“I think he is trying to atone,” Annie had said. Lee had loved his daughter. Surely he wouldn’t do anything to hurt Annie. I wished I could believe that. I wished I could believe this atonement of his didn’t mean dragging Annie through the Civil War till both their hearts were broken.

“Look,” I said, “you heard what the waitress said. The weather’s supposed to get bad, and anyway the vet’s not back from his conference. I think we should wait till we hear from him. That way we can finish the galleys, too. We can take them up to New York and stop at Arlington on the way.”

The waitress brought our eggs. “It’s snowing in Charleston,” she said. “I just heard it on the radio.”

“See?” I said, as if that settled it.

Annie cut her ham up but didn’t eat it. She just kept cutting it into smaller and smaller pieces. “It isn’t supposed to snow till tonight,” she said. “You could call the vet from Broun’s, Jeff. We could take the galleys with us and finish them in D.C.” She put the knife down and rubbed her wrist.

“Annie, you’re not in any shape to go to Arlington or anywhere else. You haven’t had any sleep for two days, and your wrist is obviously hurting.”

She stopped rubbing it. “I’ll be all right.”

“You could have sprained it when you hit it on the dashboard. Maybe we should go have a doctor look at it.”

“No,” she said and put it in her lap as if to hide it from me. “It isn’t sprained.”

“But it hurts. And you’re exhausted. We’re both too tired to think straight. I think the best thing for both of us to do is take some aspirin and try to get some sleep, and then we’ll talk about Arlington.”

“All right,” she said and looked, I thought, relieved.

We went back to the inn, and Annie did what I’d told her to, even though she protested that her wrist really didn’t hurt, took some aspirin and went straight to bed. I called Broun’s West Coast agent. He would know where Broun was if anybody did, and I had meant what I said about our being too tired to think straight. Broun wouldn’t be dead on his feet. He would know what to do, how to help.

His agent’s call referral service told me he was in New York. When I said I was trying to get in touch with Broun, she gave me a number to call. It was the number of Broun’s answering machine.

Broun hadn’t left any new messages. Richard had. I fast-forwarded over it to see if Broun had left a hotel name or a number and found a call from Broun’s agent. “You’ve got to get the galleys in now,” she said. “McLaws and Herndon is screaming bloody murder. They’re not the only ones who’ve called. Everybody’s looking for you. I got a call from a Dr. Stone, head of the…” there was a pause and a rustle while she looked at the message, “head of the Sleep Institute. He called to say that he had checked out the Gordon thing for you, and—”

“The Gordon thing?” I said. Gordon? I didn’t remember any Gordon.

“—that there was no clinical verification for Dr. Gordon’s theory that dreams can prefigure illness. You’re supposed to call him for the results.”

I called Broun’s agent and told her the galleys were almost done. “You don’t know how I can get in touch with Broun, do you?” I said. “There are a few errors I want to check out with him before I turn in the galleys.”

“All I’ve got is his West Coast agent’s number,” she said. “If you do get in touch with him, have him call me. I’ve got a lot of messages for him. What’s he doing out there?”

“He’s working on a new book about Lincoln’s dreams.”

“Oh, good,” she said. “I was afraid he was still messing with The Duty Bound. Oh, and Jeff, there was a call for you. A Dr. Richard Madison. He said it was urgent that he get in touch with you. I thought you were in California with Broun, so that’s what I told him. I’m sorry,”

“That’s okay. I’ve been hiding out trying to get the galleys done. When did he call?”

“Oh, gee, it was two or three days ago. He didn’t leave a number. Shall I try to find him in the phone book?”

“No!” I said and then laughed, hoping it sounded apologetic and not unstrung. “I’ve got to get these damn galleys in before I talk to anybody. If he calls back, I’m still in California, okay?”

“Okay.” There was a pause. I was so used to talking to the answering machine I almost punched in the erase code. “Jeff, all these psychiatrists are just helping Broun with his research, right?”

“Yeah. He’s trying to find out what caused Lincoln’s dreams.”

“Oh, good,” she said. “He had so much trouble with The Duty Bound I thought maybe… I’ve been worried about him.”

“He’s fine. I’ll have the galleys in to McLaws and Herndon by Monday.”

I went in to check on Annie. She was already asleep, one hand cradling the other. I wondered if I had done