Having given them ample time to answer, I knocked again. Another moment passed with no noise from the other side. Just as I was weighing whether to knock again or not, I heard the creaking of the bed, followed by the creaking of someone walking across the wooden floor. I prepared to strike. The door opened.
It was him. Curly hair, the color of weathered wood. Nothing but a long shirt between his skin and the cold.
“What in the hell is it?” he asked.
Abe struck the tip of the martyr against the wall.
Nothing.
The damned thing failed to light, it having been left in the damp pocket of my coat for so long. The vampire looked at me quizzically. His fangs did not descend, nor his eyes blacken. But on seeing the ax in my other hand, they doubled in width, and he shut the door with such force as to rattle the whole building. I stood there, looking at the door like a dog looks at a book, all the while allowing the vampire time to escape on the other side. This having occurred to me at last, I took a step back and let the door have the full force of my heel. It sailed open with a tremendous noise—a noise I mistakenley [sic] attributed to the splintering of wood. I did not recognize it as a gunshot until after the lead ball had passed my head, missing it by no more than an inch and burrowing into the wall behind me. I will admit that I was a good deal shaken by this. So much so that on seeing him drop the pistol and climb out the window headfirst (his naked backside bidding me farewell) my first thought was not to pursue, but to examine my head lest I be bleeding to death. Satisfied this was not the case, I hurried into the room after him—the two ladies quite undressed and screaming in the bed next to me. I could hear doors opening down the length of the hallway as curious customers stepped out to investigate the commotion. On reaching the window, I saw my prey pick himself off the snowy street below and run barefoot into the night, slipping and landing on his bare hide at least twice before he escaped my view, screaming for help.
This was no vampire.
I cursed aloud most of the ride home. Never in my life had I been so embarrassed or made such a drunken error. Never had I felt like such a fool. If there was one comforting prospect, it was this: soon I would finally be free.
The winter of 1831 was an especially harsh one, but with March came the thaw, and with it the first birds in the sky and blades of grass on the earth. For Abe, the March thaw brought an end to twenty-two years with Thomas Lincoln. Years that had grown increasingly cold. It’s unlikely that they parted with anything more than a handshake, if that. Abe had only this to write on the day he left home for good.
Off to Beardstown by way of Springfield. John, John, and I hope to make the trip in three days.
Lincoln rode west with his stepbrother John and cousin John Hanks. The three young men had been hired by an acquaintance named Denton Offutt to build a flatboat and ferry goods down the Sangamon River to New Orleans, a round trip of about three months.
Offutt was remembered by at least one contemporary as “a hot-tempered, strict, noisy son of a bitch.” But like most people who encountered Abe Lincoln, he’d been impressed by the young man’s hard work, intelligence, and general disposition. On reaching Beardstown (in three days, as they’d hoped), Abe led his team in building the flatboat and loading it with Offutt’s cargo.
My second flatboat was twice as long and much improved from the first, and built with a great deal more speed—for not only did I have the experience of having done it once before, but I was gifted with additional hands to share the work. We were off about three weeks after we arrived, much to Mr. Offutt’s surprise and satisfaction.
The Sangamon River twisted through 250 miles of Central Illinois. It was a far cry from the “mighty Mississip”—more of a stream or a creek in some places than a river, and burdened with low-hanging branches and countless pieces of driftwood, each one at the mercy of the current. This troubled body wound its way down to the more forgiving Illinois River before reaching the Mississippi.
The quartet of flatboatmen (Offutt having elected to go along for the ride) had a terrible time getting down the Sangamon. Each day brought a new disaster—running aground; coming upon a fallen tree in the river. Legend holds that their flatboat became wedged on a dam near New Salem, Illinois, and began taking on water. As locals gathered on the shore, offering advice and laughing at the young men scrambling to save their vessel, Lincoln was again struck by one of his ideas. He bored a hole in the front of the boat (which hung over the dam) and let all the water run out of it. This raised the back of the boat enough to safely float it over. With the hole plugged, the men were on their way, and the people of New Salem were mightily impressed. Denton Offutt had been impressed, too—not so much by Abe’s ingenuity, but by the booming little settlement of New Salem.
Regardless of the river and its obstacles, Abe managed to find something of that elusive peace again during the trip. He took the time to record drawings, lengthy remembrances, and random thoughts in his journal nearly every night after they’d tied up. In an entry dated May 4th, he begins to expand on his one-sentence statement of the connection between slavery and vampires.
Not long after the first ships landed in this New World, I believe that vampires reached a tacit understanding with slave owners. I believe that this nation holds some special attraction for them because here, in America, they can feed on human blood without fear of discovery or reprisal. Without the inconvenience of living in darkness. I believe that this is especially true in the South, where those flamboyant gentlemen vampires have worked out a way to “grow” their prey. Where the strongest slaves are put to work growing tobacco and food for the fortunate and free, and the lesser are themselves harvested and eaten. I believe this, but I cannot yet prove it to be true.
Abe had written Henry about what he’d seen (and asking what it meant) after his first trip to New Orleans. He’d received no reply. With his departure from Little Pigeon Creek imminent, he’d decided to venture back to the false cabin and check in on his undead friend.
I found the place deserted. The furnishings and bed were gone, leaving the cabin nothing more than an empty room. On opening the door in the back, I found not a staircase leading down to the rooms below, but smooth, hard-packed dirt. Had the whole of Henry’s hiding place been filled in? Or had the whole been dreamed by me in my delusional state?
Abe didn’t stay in Indiana long enough to find out. He wrote something in his journal, tore out the page, and hung it on a nail over Henry’s fireplace.
ABRAHAM LINCOLN
WEST OF DECATUR, ILLINOIS
CARE OF MR. JOHN HANKS
New Orleans held little of the wonder it had the first time around, and Abe found himself eager to conclude their business and catch a steamer north. He stayed on for a few days to give his stepbrother and cousin a chance to explore, but barely ventured out, not wishing to happen upon another slave auction or wayward vampire. He did, however, stop by the saloon near Mrs. Laveau’s—not to drink, but to indulge the slim hope that he might run into his old friend Poe. It wasn’t to be.
Denton Offutt had been so impressed with the way Lincoln performed that he offered him another job upon their return to Illinois. Offutt saw the Sangamon River as a 250-mile stretch of opportunity. The frontier was booming, and towns were springing up all along its banks. Many believed that navigation would soon be improved, and that steamboats would soon bring passengers and goods through their backyards. Offutt was one of the believers. “Mark my words,” he said, “the Sangamon is the next Mississippi. Today’s settlement is tomorrow’s town.” If there was one thing Offutt knew, it was that every growing town needed a general store and a pair of men to run it. And so it happened that Abraham Lincoln and Denton Offutt returned to New Salem, Illinois, the scene of their infamous boat rescue, to stay.