Connie Willis: Lincoln’s Dreams

“Not interested,” I’d said. “I haven’t figured out the long-term effects of the Civil War yet.”

“This would be a job where you could do something important instead of wasting your time looking up obscure facts nobody cares anything about for some hack writer,” he’d said.

I had just spent that whole day trying to find out why General Longstreet was wearing a carpet slipper at Antietam. He’d had a blistered heel, a tact that Richard would most certainly put in the category of “facts nobody cares anything about.” Longstreet had probably cared, though, since he was trying to run a war, and so did Broun, which was why I worked for him, but I hadn’t been about to try to explain that to Richard.

“If this Pentagon job is so great, how come the guy’s a patient of yours?” I’d said instead.

“He has a sleep disorder.”

“Well, I sleep great nights,” I’d said. “Tell him thanks but no thanks.” I wondered if he was calling now with another job offer. Broun had said Richard wouldn’t tell him what he wanted to talk to me about, which meant it probably was, and I was in no shape to listen to it.

I took a hot shower instead and then tried for a nap, but I found myself still thinking about Richard and decided to call him and get it over with. I went back into Broun’s study to use the phone. I thought maybe the girlfriend Broun had talked to would answer, but she didn’t. Richard did, and he didn’t have any job offers.

“Where in the hell have you been? I tried to call you,” he said.

“I was in West Virginia,” I said. “Seeing a man about a horse. What did you want to talk to me about?”

“Nothing. It’s too late, anyway. Broun said he’d have you call me,” he said almost accusingly. Why was I constantly finding myself in conversations I couldn’t make heads or tails of?

“I’m sorry I didn’t call. I just got home. But listen, whatever it was, we can talk about it tonight at the reception.”

There was dead silence on the other end.

“You are coming, aren’t you?” I said. “Broun’s really anxious to talk to you about Lincoln’s dreams.”

“I can’t come,” he said. “It’s out of the question. I have a patient I—”

“We’re closer to the Sleep Institute than your apartment is. You can give the Institute Broun’s number, and they can call you here if there’s an emergency. I’d really like to see you, and I want to meet this new girlfriend of yours.”

Another dead silence. He said finally, “I don’t think Annie should—”

“Come with you? Of course she should. I’ll take good care of her while you talk to Broun. I’ll tell her all about your wild undergraduate days at Duke.”

“No. Tell your boss I’m sorry, but I don’t have anything to tell him about Lincoln’s dreams that he’d want to hear.”

Somewhere along in there I started to ache all over. “Then tell him that. Look,” I said, “you don’t have to come for the whole thing. The reception starts at eight. You can talk to Broun and still have this Annie person home in bed by nine watching her rapid eye movements or whatever it is you psychiatrists do. Please. If you don’t come, Broun’ll send me to Indiana in this blizzard to look up nightmares Lincoln had as a kid. Come on, for me, your old roommate.”

“I can’t stay after nine.”

“No problem,” I said. I gave him Broun’s address and hung up before he could say no, and then just sat there in front of the fire. Broun’s cat jumped on my lap and I sat there petting it, thinking I should get up and go lie down.

Broun woke me up. “How long was I asleep?” I said, rubbing my hands over my face to try and wake up. However long it had been, the aches were worse than ever.

“It’s six-thirty,” Broun said. He had changed into a dinner jacket with a pleated shirt and string tie. He still hadn’t shaved. Maybe he was trying to grow a beard. If he was, it was a terrible idea. The grayish black stubble seemed to take all the color out of his face. He looked sharp and disreputable, like an unscrupulous horsetrader. “I wouldn’t have wakened you, but I wanted you to take a look at this.” He thrust a sheaf of typewritten pages into my hand.

“What’s this?” I said. “Willie Lincoln?”

He poked at the fire, which had died down to almost nothing while I was asleep. “It’s that first scene, the one I was worried about. I just couldn’t see Ben signing up for no reason at all, so I rewrote it.”

“Do McLaws and Herndon know about this?” Broun’s cat jumped off my lap and started batting at the poker.

“I’m calling it in to them tomorrow, but I wanted you to look at it first. Ben had to have some motivation for enlisting.”

“Why? What about later in the book when he falls in love with Nelly? He doesn’t have any motivation for that. She gives him one spoonful of laudanum, and bang, he’s ready to do anything for her.”

The cat wrapped a paw firmly around the poker, but Broun didn’t notice. He stared into the fire. “It was the war. People did things like that during the war, fell in love, sacrificed themselves—”

“Enlisted,” I said. “Most of the recruits in the Civil War didn’t have any motivation for enlisting. There was a war, and they signed up on one side of it or the other.” I tried to hand the scene back to him. “I don’t think you need a new scene.”

He put the poker back in the stand. The cat lay down in front of it, tail switching. “Anyway, I’d like you to read it,” Broun said. “Did you call your roommate?”

“Yes.”

“Is he coming.”

“I don’t know. I think so.”

“Good. Good. Now we’ll run this dream thing to ground. Be sure and tell me when he gets here.” He started out the door. “I’m going to go check on the caterers.”

“Hadn’t you better shave?”

“Shave?” he said, sounding horrified. “Can’t you see I’m growing muttonchop whiskers?” He struck a pose with his hands in his lapels. “Like Lincoln’s.”

“You don’t look like Lincoln,” I said, grinning. “You look like Grant after a binge.”

“I could say the same thing about you, son,” he said, and went downstairs to talk to the caterers.

I tried to read the new scene, wishing I had the time to run a few dreams of my own to ground. I felt tireder than I had before the nap. I couldn’t even get my eyes to focus on Broun’s typing. The reporters would be here any minute, and then I would stand propped up against a wall for endless hours telling people why Broun’s book wasn’t ready, and then tomorrow I would go out to Arlington and poke around in the snow, looking for Willie Lincoln’s grave.

If I could find out where he was buried, I might not have to spend tomorrow out wiping snow off old tombstones. I put down the rewritten scene and looked for Sandburg’s War Years.

Broun has never believed in libraries—he keeps books all over the house, and whenever he finishes with one, he sticks it into the handiest bookcase. I offered once to organize the books, and he said, “I know where they all are.” He might know, but I didn’t, so I had organized them for myself—Grant and the western campaign in the big upstairs dining room, Lee in the solarium, Lincoln in the study. It didn’t do much good. Broun still left books wherever he finished with them, but it was better than nothing. I had at least an even chance of finding what I needed. Usually. Not this time, though.

Sandburg’s War Years wasn’t where I’d put it, and neither was Oates. It took me almost an hour to find them, Oates in the upstairs bathroom, Sandburg down in the solarium underneath one of Broun’s African violets. Before I even got upstairs with them, a young woman from People snowed up and tried to pump me about Broun’s new book.