‘Well I’ll be damned.’ Darnell’s mouth dropped open and his heart raced. He ran down and stepped into the water, which rushed into his shoes and up to his ankles. Muddy water poured over his pristine trousers. He looked down at the remains of the man who was once his hero, and glared. Lifting up his drenched foot out of the water, he hammered it down onto the top of the case, kicking the casket hard which rattled the corpse inside.
‘You bastard!’ Darnell cried. ‘I believed in you! You were my hero for my entire life! But it was all a damn lie!’
The detective threw his fists down onto the case lid and fell into the brook. The sharp cold of the icy water cut at his knees. He sobbed, placing his head over the glass case.
‘Why! Why were we sold this lie? You didn’t do any of this for me or my family. You did it all for your own glorified power over the Union!’
He sat on the side of the muddy bank, catching his breath, and watched the former president pathetically lying there; useless and unable to defend his actions. Lowering his head, Darnell shook himself back to reality and reminded himself of the job at hand. He had found the president’s body. He began to chuckle as he considered his mission complete.
Using all of his strength, he pulled the weighty coffin onto the bank and slid it onto the path. The skeleton rolled over and stared at Darnell with its large hollow holes where Lincoln’s eyes once filled. The detective shuddered and continued to pull at the box until it was on dry land.
Darnell took out his phone and texted Vanessa, updating her on the situation. As he put his phone away, he felt a movement behind him. He turned around. On the bridge was a boy, smartly dressed in a mustard shirt and a blue jumper. He stood staring at the dishevelled man furiously tackling a 150-year-old corpse.
‘Aaron.’
‘Hi, Dad,’ he replied.
‘What… what are you doing here?’ asked the detective, staring at his youngest son with a look of dismay.
‘I’ve come to tell you what this has all been about.’
Chapter 26
They sat on the bridge a metre away from each other. Darnell’s grey suit was covered in mud and water poured from his shoes. Sitting across from him, Aaron, his youngest son, looked relatively pristine compared to his father. His blue jeans didn’t have a blemish on them.
‘How did you know I’d be here?’
‘Where else would you be, Dad? Your ancestors died here. You couldn’t go on this journey without a visit to this place. I know how much these battlefields mean to you.’
‘I thought you were at Gettysburg on a school trip?’
‘That was a ploy. I needed money and authorisation to fly so I made up a form on a word processor and printed it out for Mom. She’s so busy and stressed with everything else going on that she didn’t even question it.’
‘How are you involved in all this? Is this Thomas’s doing? I’ll kill him!’
‘No, Thomas doesn’t have anything to do with this. He introduced me to the people involved, sure, but no he doesn’t hate you as much as you think. He just acts up most of the time.’
‘But you do hate me?’ asked Darnell, sure of the dreaded answer.
‘No I don’t hate you, Dad. I just wanted to show you what it feels like to have the respect for the hero that you’ve held all your life utterly destroyed right before your eyes.’
‘I don’t comprehend.’
‘You see all your life you’ve looked up to Lincoln, the man who saved the Union but, more importantly, freed your ancestors and gave you the life you have today where, as an African-American, you can do anything. I know it’s nowhere near a perfect country. But we have a black man in the White House for God’s sakes and, in your eyes, that was all down to President Lincoln starting off a roadmap of change.’
‘Uh huh.’
‘And in the last few weeks you’ve watched this heroic man’s legacy destroyed into something which was far from what you once believed.’
‘You’ve got that right.’
‘That’s what I had…’ Aaron paused. ‘With you.’
‘Me?’ asked Darnell, his head tilted and his hands clasped around his chest.
‘That’s right. For years you were my hero. You gave me all the privileges I had. You gave me the safety and security which Lincoln gave to you. But like you, I’ve discovered what my hero really thought of people like me. You are intolerant of gay people. You would have people like me cast off to some island if you could, just like Lincoln would’ve done with you.’
‘All this was because I struggled to accept you were gay?’ Darnell barked. His fist clenched as he stood up, but Aaron gently held up his hand, calming his father.
‘No, not all of it. Just my involvement in all of this and, in turn, yours. I hung out with Thomas and his crew for a while. His friends, Rick and Lae, told me about their plan to expose Lincoln’s real intentions for slavery in America, which hasn’t been taught to us in our schools or museums. They’re part of some Confederate conspiracy club, I don’t particularly care for them, they’re not nice people. They wanted to be martyrs, self-sacrificing their freedom for the cause. It’s quite pathetic really. But I wanted to spend time with my brother and it seemed the only way. Thomas
