Connie Willis: Lincoln’s Dreams

I took Annie to Broun’s. “We can take the galleys over to Federal Express later,” I said. “This stuff’s going to turn into snow if we go any farther north. I’m not driving up to New York tonight. I need to check for messages and look at the mail.”

I had told Richard to park several streets over so Annie wouldn’t see the car, but the front door wasn’t locked and Broun’s Siamese was crouched on the bottom step. My first thought was that it had somehow gotten locked in when we left for Fredericksburg, but then I saw that the mail was neatly stacked on the hall table and that there was a jacket hanging over the bannister. Annie was standing in the door of the solarium with her gray coat and her gloves still on, and her left arm still cradled in her right, looking at the African violets. They had been watered—there was muddy water standing in puddles on the table.

“Is that you, Jeff?” Broun said, and came clattering down the stairs. He was wearing a black overcoat that looked like he’d slept in it. “Thank God!” he said, and hugged me. His beard hadn’t grown at all in the week we’d been gone, and the rough stubble scratched my ear. “Are you all right? I called every motel in Fredericksburg, but nobody had you registered.” He pushed me out to arm’s length and peered at me with his sharp little eyes. “You got Richard’s message then?”

“What message?” I said. I pulled away from him, and shrugged out of my coat. “I’m fine, now that the damn galleys are finished. What a mess! Transposed chapters, missing chapters, the works. I finally called Annie here and talked her into coming down to help me finish them. You remember my boss, don’t you, Annie?” I said. I draped my coat over the newel post. “The man who is responsible for all our misery these last few days? Broun, you remember Annie?”

“Yes, of course,” Broun said, and shook hands with her.

“Hello,” she said gravely. I couldn’t read her face at all.

“It’s freezing out here in the hall,” I said. “Didn’t you turn the heat up? Let’s go in the solarium.” I took Annie’s arm and led her into the room. “Good, it’s warmer in here. Annie, let me take that wet coat.”

Broun came and stood in the doorway. “Why didn’t you tell me you were sick, Jeff?” he said. “I thought there was something wrong that night you got in from Springfield. Why didn’t you tell me you were having chest pains? I would have canceled my trip. Have you been to see a doctor?”

“The records from the family doctor show a problem with the EKG,” Richard had said. “Have you noticed any chest pains?” Broun had thought the message was about me, had flown home to help me, but it was too late. I looked at Annie. She had taken her gloves off and had backed up until she was against the table that held the African violets. She stood there twisting her gloves and watching me, waiting to hear what I would say.

“I’m not the one who’s sick,” I said. “Annie is. I brought her home to put her in the hospital.” I took hold of her hands. “I called Richard,” I said. “He’ll be here any time.”

She stood very still for a moment, as though she were going to speak, and then lurched forward, the way Lee had when Traveller bolted, the gloves still in her hands.

“You’re suffering from angina,” I said. “That’s what’s making your wrist hurt. Lee had angina all through the war, pains in his shoulder, along his arm, in his back. He died of a heart attack. The dreams are a warning. Like Lincoln’s dreams. You’ve got to see a doctor.”

“And so you called Richard.”

“Yes.”

She sat down on the couch. “You promised,” she said.

“That was before I knew the dreams were killing you. I’m doing this for your own good.”

“Like Richard,” she said, twisting the gloves in her lap.

I knelt beside her. “Annie, listen to me, the dream you had this morning, it wasn’t about Antietam. I lied to you. The meeting you dreamed was at Grace Church in Lexington. Lee went to that meeting and sat there all afternoon in the cold and then walked home in the rain and had a heart attack! I’m not going to let that happen to you!”

“I have to do this.” She twisted the gloves. “I have to see it through. Please try to understand,” she said, gravely, kindly. “I can’t leave him. I promised to have his dreams. Poor man… I have to try and help him. I can’t leave him. He’s dying.”

“He’s not dying, Annie!” I shouted. “He’s dead. He’s been dead over a hundred years. You’re holding on to the hand of a corpse. You can’t do anything for him! Don’t you see that?”

“I promised.”

“And I made some promises, too, but I’m damned if I’m going to let you die for the sake of a goddamned answering machine! That’s what it is, some kind of biological prerecorded message that switches on when you’re going to have a heart attack and leaves a message for you to call the doctor.”

“No, they’re not,” Annie said. “They’re Lee’s dreams.”

“Lee’s dreams,” Broun said. He took hold of the door jamb and leaned against it as if he couldn’t stand.

“They’re prodromic dreams, Annie! They’re caused by the angina!”

Broun took a step toward Annie. “Are you having Robert E. Lee’s dreams?” he said in a labored, uncertain voice, as if he could not get his breath.

“No,” I said.

“Yes,” Annie said.

Broun groped blindly behind him for a chair and sat down heavily. “Lee’s dreams,” he said.

“Annie, don’t you understand?” I said. “You’re in danger. I have to get you to a hospital.”

“I can’t. I promised.”

“What did you promise? To march up to the Bloody Angle and get yourself killed? You’re not one of Lee’s soldiers! His soldiers had to stay with him. They’d have been shot for deserting.”

“That isn’t why they stayed,” Annie said.

It was true, barefoot and bleeding, they still hadn’t deserted him, not even at the end. We’ll go on fightin’ for you , Marse Robert.

“Lee’s soldiers knew when they signed up they could get killed. You didn’t. You didn’t sign up at

“I did sign up,” Annie said. “That day we went to Shenandoah. I realized then that I couldn’t leave him, that I had to stay and help him have the dreams.”

“That day we went to Shenandoah you didn’t know you had angina!”

“Yes, I did.” She put the gloves down on her lap. “I figured it out that morning in the library. My wrist hurt, and I thought maybe it was a side effect of the drugs I’d been taking, so I looked it up. It said Elavil was contraindicated for patients with heart conditions.”

“Elavil?” I said stupidly.

“A year ago when I went to my doctor for the insomnia, he told me I had a minor heart condition.”

“Why didn’t you tell me? I could have taken you to a doctor.”

“I couldn’t go to a doctor.” She looked at me. “The dreams are a symptom. If you cure the disease, the symptoms go away. And I can’t leave him.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?” I said again.

She didn’t say anything. She sat with her hands in her lap.

“Because I would have tried to stop the dreams,” I said for her. Like I was doing now.

The doorbell rang. Broun put his hands on the arms of the chair and made a motion to get up, then sat down again watching Annie. She stood up. Her gloves fell to the floor, unnoticed. “You promised,” she said.

“I’m doing this for your own good,” I said, and opened the door to Richard.

He didn’t have a coat on. His sweater and jeans were wet clear through. His hair was wet, too, and he looked tired and worried, the way he had the night of the reception when he was still my old roommate, still my friend.