Connie Willis - Lincoln’s Dreams

“It’s not about Antietam,” Broun had thundered, the only time I’ve ever seen him angry at one of my criticisms. “It’s about duty, damn it.” He had refused to take any of it out then, and now I saw that, although he had made so many changes I hardly recognized the book, all the passages about duty had been left in. It was chapter nine before we made it to the morning of September seventeenth and back to Malachi and Toby and Ben:

It was still dark when Ben woke up. “I thought I heard something,” he said, sitting up.

“Not yet,” Malachi said. It was too dark to see him.

“What time is it?” Ben asked. “I thought I heard guns.” It had stopped raining and there seemed to be a little light there to the east, but he couldn’t be sure.

“No more’n three o’clock,” Malachi said, and then Ben must have gone back to sleep because when he opened his eyes again, it was light enough to see Malachi. He was sitting by his little cookfire, stirring the cold ashes, trying to get a spark, but the fire was completely out. A cold fog was drifting through the cornfield they had camped next to, so low he couldn’t see the tassels on the corn.

“How’ll we see to fight if there’s fog?” Ben said, huddling his blanket around his shoulders. His teeth were chattering.

“Fog’ll burn off as soon as the sun comes up, and then it’ll be hot,” Malachi said, and he sounded as calm and wide awake as if he were back on the farm, up at three in the morning for a big day of planting.

“What would happen if we lit out beforehand?” Ben said. His teeth were chattering so hard he wouldn’t be able to hear the guns. “Couldn’t nobody see us in this fog. ”

“I thought you was the one just had to sign up. This here’s what you signed up for. ”

“I know,” he said. “I just hadn’t figured on getting killed.”

“How’s a body supposed to get any sleep with you two clucking like hens?” Toby said. He yawned. “Should you run? Will you git kilt? Me, I can’t get kilt. Not Toby Banks. No, sir, I promised my mama I wouldn’t.” He pushed his blanket down so it covered his feet and rolled over, and Ben lay down again and watched the fog drift across Malachi and the coin fire.

Toby poked him awake with his foot. “You set up all night worrying and then you sleep through the battle,” he said. “Don’t you let Old Fancypants see you sleeping. ”

Ben sat up. The sun was up and the fog was gone. Steam was rising like smoke over the cornfield, Malachi had another fire going. He was roasting ears of corn in the coals. “Me, I been up practicing my Rebel yell for close on an hour,” Toby said.

Ben got up and folded his bedroll, trying to wake up, Toby was whistling something, a jig tune, but when Ben turned to look at him he stopped. He was writing something on a dirty white handkerchief. “I want them Yankees to know who’s shooting at ’em,” he said. He whittled a twig down to nothing and used it as a pin to stick the handkerchief to his shirt. “Not that I’m letting any of ’em get close enough to read it.” He went over to the fire and plucked one of the roasting ears out of the coals. The husk was charred. It smelled wonderful.

She woke me out of a sound sleep. I had the idea that it was almost morning, and I couldn’t think who would be calling at that hour. I answered the phone, and, as I did, it rang again, and I thought, “It’s the answering machine,” and punched what I thought was “play” and had time to be surprised that there was no message before it rang again and I recognized the sound finally as the doorbell.

Annie was standing on the front steps. She had her gray coat on and was carrying a duffel bag. There was a suitcase on the step beside her. It was dark and foggy out, and I thought, “That will burn off when the sun comes up, and it will be hot tomorrow.”

“Can I stay here?” she said.

I still had the idea that the phone had rung. “Did you call?” I said.

“No,” she said. “I know I should have given you some warning, but… if this is a problem, Jeff, I can go to a hotel.”

“I thought I heard the phone,” I said, rubbing at my face as if I expected a scraggly stubble of beard like Broun’s. “What time is it?”

She had to transfer the duffel bag from one hand to the other to look at her watch. “Ten-thirty. I woke you up, didn’t I?”

No, you didn’t, I almost said. That was the problem. She had not, with all her ringing of the doorbell, managed to wake me up. I was still asleep and dreaming her, and they were not somebody else’s dreams. She looked beautiful standing there in her gray coat, her light hair curling a little from the damp fog. She looked as if she had just awakened from a long and refreshing sleep, her eyes clear and bright, and healthy pinkness in her cheeks.

“Of course you can stay,” I said, still not awake enough to ask her why she was here, or even to wonder. I opened the door and leaned past her to pick up the suitcase. “You can stay as long as you want. Broun’s not here. He’s in California. You can stay as long as you want.”

I led the way up the stairs to the study, still unable to shake the feeling that it was very late. The answering machine was blinking rapidly—I must have put it on “call return” in my sleepy fumblings. I wondered what poor soul I had been calling for the last ten minutes. I hit the “pause” button and yawned. I was still not awake. I’d better make some coffee.

“Do you want some coffee?” I said to Annie, who was standing in the door of the study looking rested and wide awake and beautiful.

“No,” she said.

I still had my hand on the answering machine buttons. “I’ve been worried about you. I tried to call you. Did you have another dream?”

“No,” she said. “The dreams have stopped.”

“They’ve stopped?” I said. “Just like that?” I still wasn’t awake.

The answering machine was still flashing. I stabbed at the buttons. The tape clicked. “Annie’s gone,” Richard said. “I think she’ll come to you. You have to make her come back. She’s sick. I only did it to help her. I didn’t have any other choice.”

“Did what?” I asked.

She pulled something out of the duffel bag. “He’s been putting these in my food,” she said, and handed me two capsules in a plastic bag. One of the capsules was cracked and there was a dusting of white powder along the bottom edge of the bag.

“What are they?” I said. “Elavil?”

“Thorazine,” she said. “I found the bottle in his medical bag.”

Thorazine. A drug strong enough to stop a horse in its tracks. “Richard gave you these?” I said, looking stupidly at the plastic bag.

“Yes,” she said. She sat down in the club chair. “He started putting them in my food when I got back from Arlington.”

When I called her I had asked her if she had been asleep, and she had said Richard had made her a cup of tea and sent her to bed. She had been so sleepy she could hardly answer my questions. Because Richard had put Thorazine in her tea. Thorazine. “They use Thorazine in mental hospitals. With uncontrollable patients.”

“I know,” she said.

“How many of these did he give you?”

“I don’t know. He… I didn’t eat anything last night and all day today.”

I had taken her out to Arlington three days ago. She couldn’t have been on the drug more than two and a half days, so there couldn’t be that much in her system, but what kind of dose had Richard given her? Any dose was too much.

“Annie, listen, let me call the hospital. They’ll know what to do. We’ve got to get this stuff out of your system.”