“Oh, Mr. Linclum! Mr. Linclum! I admires you so. Now you come on down to the kitchen and let me make you and your party a nice cup of coffee.”
“But I have very important business to do on The River Queen, the tide of battle …”
“Shush your mouth and come on down here get some of this coffee. Steaming hot. What’s wrong with you, man, you gone pass up some of this good old Southern hospitality?”
Lincoln shrugs his shoulders. “Well,” he says, smiling, “I guess one little cup won’t hurt.” She waltzes around with Abe Lincoln, who follows awkwardly. She sings, “Hello, Abbbbbe. Well, hello, Abbbbbe. It’s so nice to have you here where you belong.”
The President blushes; he finds it hard to keep in a giggle. Swille and Robin join in, clapping their hands: “You’re looking swell, Abbbeee. I can tell, Abbeeee. You’re still growin’, you’re still goin …”
Barracuda and Lincoln waltz out of the room. Uncle Robin follows with the bag of gold, doing his own little step. Delighted, Swille chuckles from deep in his belly.
5
INSIDE THE KITCHEN OF the main house of Swille’s plantation, Uncle Robin sits on a high stool reading some figures over the phone which have been scribbled on a sheet. He is, at the same time, munching some white-frosted Betty Crocker glossy cake and drinking coffee that Aunt Judy, his wife, has prepared for him. Next to his hand is a copy of 60 Families.
“… and slave quarters number 3 wants to put 259, 344, and 544 in the box … What you mean? Chicago, it’s an hour behind in your time, it ain’t too late.” He hears footsteps approaching. “Hey, somebody’s coming. I got to go.” Uncle Robin takes a sip of coffee, looks innocent and begins to hum a spiritual. It’s Moe, the white house slave.
“Uncle Robin, are you abusing your phone privileges? I don’t know why the Master lets you use it. He doesn’t let any of us use it.”
“Oh, Mr. Moe, I was just ringing in the supplies for the week. I didn’t mean no harm.”
“I don’t know why he trusts you, Uncle Robin. He thinks you’re docile, but sometimes it seems to me that you’re the cleverest of them all, though I can’t prove it.”
Uncle Robin stares blankly at him.
“Well, I guess you are pretty simple. I don’t know what gives me the notion that you’re more complex than you seem.”
Moe goes to the kitchen table. Uncle Robin rises, fetches a cup of coffee and places it in front of Moe.
“What did you think of President Lincoln’s visit?”
“What you say, Mr. Moe?”
“That visit. You were right there in the room.”
“Oh, that. I don’t understand what they be saying. I never did understand good Anglish — it takes me even an effort to read the Bible good.”
“You are impoverished, aren’t you? No wonder they call you an Uncle Tom.”
Uncle Robin ignores this, eating another slice of cake. “I don’t know, Mr. Moe, suh. Sometimes it seems to me that we are all Uncle Toms. Take yourself, for example. You are a white man but still you a slave. You may not look like a slave, and you dress better than slaves do, but all day you have to run around saying Yessuh, Mr. Swille, and Nossuh, Mr. Swille, and when Mitchell was a child, Maybe so, l’il Swille. Why, he can fire you anytime he wants for no reason.”
“What! What did you say? How dare you talk to a white man like that!”
“Well, sometimes I just be reflectin, suh. Ain’t no harm in that.”
“Well, you can just stop your reflectin and if I hear you talkin like that again, I’m going to report to Massa Swille of your insolence, do you hear? Now you behave yourself and don’t you ever let me hear you making such statements.”
But before Uncle Robin can issue some apologies, saying that the devil must have gotten ahold of his tongue or that he will promise not to express such notions again, the red light above the kitchen door begins to blink, which means that Massa Swille wants Moe to come into his office. Moe wipes his mouth with a napkin, gulps the coffee down so quickly it stains his junior executive’s shirt.
“Oh, dammit, now what will I do?”
“Hold on, Mr. Moe.” Uncle Robin rushes to the cabinet, takes out some spot remover and dabs it on Moe’s shirt. The button-down collar’s stain disappears. Moe rushes out of the kitchen.
PART II. LINCOLN THE PLAYER
6
LINCOLN SALUTES THE CONFEDERATE soldiers Lee has sent up to escort him and his party back to The River Queen. He climbs into the carriage and sits next to an aide.
“Did you sell him some bonds?” the aide asks.
“Yeah,” Lincoln says, leaning back in his carriage, removing his stovepipe hat and boots; he takes off his white gloves last.
“Gilded Age ding-dong if there ever was. Hands like a woman’s. I feel like a minstrel …”
“But you did sell him some bonds?”
“Yes. First I gave him the yokel-dokel — he saw through that. And then he went on about my lack of culture and poked fun at my clothes. Talked about my shiny suitcoat and pants. Then he said some nasty things about Mary. Well, I know that she’s … she’s odd. Well, you know, I couldn’t stand there and listen to that, so I blew my top.”
“And he still gave you the gold?”
“Yeah. You know, if we lost this war we wouldn’t be able to repay Swille. We’re sticking our necks out, but with the cost of things these days, we have to turn to him. Why, we still owe a bill for that Scotch plaid cap and cloak I bought so I could enter the Capitol in disguise. The Confederates thought I was frightened, but that wasn’t it at all. I was trying to duck the bill collectors who were holding me responsible for the debts owed by the last administration. Buchanan said there’d be days like this. No wonder he was trembling when he shook my hand at the inaugural ceremony, and when I was sworn in — whiz — he took off down the platform steps. Said he had to catch a train. Said ‘Good luck, Hoosier.’ Now I know what he meant.”
“It was a close call, when the Confederates came up to the house just now. You should have seen the secret service men in the next carriage scramble from the Queen Mary. I don’t think they know what in the hell they’re doing. And I think one of them, that fat one, is a little off into the bottle. Mr. President, you ought to fire that one.”
“I don’t plan to fire that one. Just put him on detail at insignificant events. The theatre. I might need Swille’s support some more and so I’m going to start doing more for culture. Tidy up my performance. I want you to get me and Mary Todd some tickets to a theatre from time to time and invite Ulysses and his wife.”
“Look, sir.”
On the side of the road some of the colored contraband were appearing. They started waving their handkerchiefs at the President. The President waved back. One man ran up to the carriage; Lincoln stuck his hand out to shake the slave’s hand, but instead of shaking the President’s hand the man began kissing it until he dropped back behind the carriage. He stood in the road waving.
“They love you, sir.”
“Curious tribe. There’s something, something very human about them, something innocent and … Yet I keep having the suspicion that they have another mind. A mind kept hidden from us. They had this old mammy up there. She began singing and dancing me around. The first time in these years I took my mind off the war. I felt like crawling into her lap and going to sleep. Just sucking my thumb and rolling my hair up into pickaninny knots. I never even gave spooks much thought, but now that they’ve become a subplot in this war, I can’t get these shines off my mind. My dreams … She must do Swille a lot of good.”