Mr. Lincoln's Wars: A Novel in Thirteen Stories by Adam Braver

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Adam Braver's 13 short stories add up to a vivid glimpse into the life of Abraham Lincoln and the inhabitants of his divided America. Braver captures history so completely, and readers come to know Lincoln not just as a great statesman, but as a grieving father, a clumsy husband, a weary leader, and a man with a predilection for using morphine to dull the pain.

America mired in the horrors of a ruthless civil war, Braver's characters have something to say about the 16th U.S. president. A demented, grief-stricken father makes his way to Central Park to hear Lincoln speak and to absolve him of guilt for the death of his son. An undertaker describes the peaceful look on the face of Lincoln's young son the night he died, providing Lincoln with a bit of solace. John Wilkes Booth plans to upstage his father -- once and for all -- with his most dramatic performance ever; and Mary Todd Lincoln tearfully begs for a lock of her dead husband's hair moments before Lincoln's autopsy.

Mr. Lincoln's wars weren't just "civil" but emotional, unbearable, and universal. And in Braver's capable hands, it's easy to forget you're reading about a former president. Reaching back in time to the establishment of the modern nation under Lincoln's leadership -- in all its gritty complexity -- Braver imagines, with astonishing clarity, what must have been felt by this great leader and by millions of Americans long ago. (Winter 2002 Selection)

From the Publisher

In this highly ambitious collection, Adam Braver explores Abraham Lincoln's inner life and personal turmoils -- while also reflecting on the indelible impact Lincoln had on the nation during the last year of his presidency. Braver brings the president to life, not just as the strong and resilient leader of history books but also as a grief-stricken father, heartbroken over the loss of his young son.

Across a rich canvas of truth and imagination, Mr. Lincoln's Wars reveals a president within the White House walls. We see Lincoln as he explores the meaning of loss through a chance encounter with the father of a slain soldier. And a good-hearted young Union soldier is quickly turned into a killer in the name of President Lincoln. Finally, there is the assassination and the autopsy, as seen through the eyes of John Wilkes Booth, Mary Lincoln, the assistant surgeon general, and one of Lincoln's closest friends.

Brilliant in its depiction of the country during the waning days of the war, this book is an insightful and moving exploration of the myth of celebrity and the passions it arouses. More than anything, Mr. Lincoln's Wars introduces a talented new writer whose storytelling ability knows no bounds.

New York Times - Janet Maslin

Historical facts surrounding Abraham Lincoln help to shape another new work of fiction in Mr. Lincoln's War.

Publishers Weekly

Just when it seems there isn't much left to write about Abraham Lincoln, Braver attempts a fresh take on America's 16th president in this bracingly unusual debut. Although called a novel, the book is really a collection of 13 short stories, which take an imaginative and warmly human look at the man who saved the Union at great personal cost during the Civil War. In "The Undertaker's Assistant," the eponymous protagonist discusses with Lincoln the burial of Lincoln's son Willie; the same undertaker will prepare Lincoln's body after he is assassinated in 1865. In "Zack Hargrove," a Union soldier, bitter at having to abandon his wartime adventures, rages at Lincoln when the South surrenders. In "Crybaby Jack's Theory," good-for-nothing Jack tries to save the president after he has a chilling premonition of Lincoln's death, but nobody heeds his warnings. Best are three tales that explore the depths of grief and pain. In "The Willie Grief," Mary Todd Lincoln visits a military hospital after Willie's death where she comforts wounded and shattered soldiers while dealing with her own grief. In "The Ward," Lincoln meets a father who does not blame him for the death of his son. And in "On to the Next Field," Lincoln visits a battlefield where a badly wounded boy asks him what it's like to be president. "It's like fighting a thousand wars," Lincoln answers. No folksy humor or homespun anecdotes lighten Braver's multifaceted portrait of a president tormented by the burdens of war and weighed down with responsibility. Somber yet graceful, these stories draw on Lincoln's public image while venturing a visceral intimacy (on "his feet... no shoes, just white socks with brown rings around the heels"). Agent, Nat Sobel. Southern regional author tour. (Feb. 4) Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.

Library Journal

Though stylistically interesting, this novel in 13 stories falls as flat as a spent bullet. The stories take place throughout the Civil War and include a variety of characters all somehow connected to Abraham Lincoln, if only because of the war. The honeycombed structure of the communities affected by the war is initially intriguing, but the unadorned writing, which contrives to affect antebellum speech and manner, instead needlessly simplifies the characters and events. What is most unfortunate, however, is the sense throughout that the author has conflated the Civil War with an attitude that "it's boys dying is what it is," which irritates rather than enlightens. In that regard, stories like "The Idiot Brother" are ultimately tiresome in their irreverent predictability, as are the secondary characters (abusive husbands and vicious wives) that grace this novel with all their meanness and ignorance. The result is a quick read that feels more like a historical romance than a well-considered work.-Lyle D. Rosdahl, San Antonio P.L. Copyright 2003 Cahners Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

A "novel in thirteen stories" is really twelve fine tales and one novella, all partly interactive history and partly narrative, and all about our most-explored president. The Lincoln we get here is mostly stripped down and humanized: "He sat in his second-floor office outlined in blue moonlight, kicking his feet high up against the wall, no shoes, just white socks with brown rings around the heels . . . ." Standout pieces include "A Rainy Night in Springfield, Illinois-1849," about a pre-presidential Lincoln on the occasion of his having decided to lead a more meaningful life than that of a Springfield lawyer; "The Necropsy," the novella-length account of the assassination; and "No More Time for Tears," about a good talking-to Lincoln receives from Mary as she wonders in no uncertain terms what the point of the war has been. Often the stories come from chance meetings regular folk manage with the prez: A semi-crazy father ("The Ward") loses his son to the war, then has a conversation with an Abe who's perhaps more honest than the father counted on. And a sad conversation ("The Undertaker's Assistant") occurs between Lincoln and the man who prepared the president's son for burial. These pieces are often as charming and poignant as many Civil War letters, including Lincoln's, but the modern voice that is apparently intended to make Lincoln relevant and palatable all over again is too often flip with hip rhythms, or simply incongruous, as with casual references to the typewriter or the photograph (both so new as to be hardly casual), or with the offhand, albeit vivid, letter detailing rape and promiscuity written by a young woman to her president in "A Letter to President Lincoln from a GoodGirl." Ultimately, what we have here is Lincoln as he is remembered when plopped down in history: the result is historicized fiction rather than fictionalized history. Still, lyric and often pleasing.

Product Details

• ISBN: 0641920830
  
• ISBN-13: 9780641920837
• Format: Paperback, 308pp
• Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
• Pub. Date: January 2004
• Edition Description: Bargain
• Series: Harper Perennial

• Table of Contents
• Reading Group Guide
• Read a Sample Chapter

Table of Contents

Reading Group Guide

Introduction

"History and fiction are not so far apart -- they are both about taking existing structures and trying to find the meaning inside them, not allowing sepia-toned mythology to take the place of history and the triumph of human endurance. They are about seeing truths. Finding and keeping heroes. And not fearing the ugly underneath." -- Adam Braver

Indeed, author Adam Braver does not fear the "ugly underneath." In Mr. Lincoln's Wars, he exposes not only a president's conscience darkened by his country in turmoil and the death of his own son, but reveals gruesome details of war and its characters -- from the soldier's agony in the hospital to their decay on the battlefield, from an abused wife's glee over her husband's death to a father's neglect that fueled an assassination, and from the autopsy of a child who died too young to the autopsy of a president who was before his time. In 13 short stories, Braver has weaved together history and fiction to create a haunting vision of our country in the waning days of The Civil War.

Throughout these tales, Abraham Lincoln appears as we have never seen him before. In "No More Time for Tears," he is the emotionally unavailable husband to his grief-stricken wife Mary; in "His Stepmother's Sister," he is an angry and bitter son and, later, a drug-using president; and in "The Necropsy," he is a cadaver on a table, his brain resting in the hand of a surgeon. But he is also the Lincoln we want him to be -- holding the hand of a soldier whose leg is being amputated in "Onto the Next Field"; confiding in a mental patient, father to father, in "The Ward"; and comforting his frightened wife in "A Rainy Night inSpringfield, Illinois -- 1849."

"Richly imagined" (Washington Post) and "brilliant and heroic" (Los Angeles Book Review), Mr. Lincoln's Wars, through fiction, unveils the truths and triumphs of a president and his people ... despite the ugly underneath.

Questions for Discussion

1. In "No More Time for Tears," Mary Todd Lincoln says to her husband: "I don't want no one coming in this room. It's safe now from all evil and I don't want you or anything you've touched to contaminate this room" (page 7). Why is her room safe now? Or do you think these are just ramblings of a mad woman?
   
   
2. When preparing Lincoln's body in "The Undertaker's Assistant," why did Seth Jackson "take the pair of pants and slice a razor up the back seams, then lay the open pant over the legs" (page 22)?
   
   
3. Discuss the symbolism of horses used in "Zack Hargrove" (pages 39-40) and "Crybaby Jack's Theory" (page 156).
   
   
4. In "The Idiot Brother," Thaddeus pulls his father "to the precise spot where Jesse had boarded the train some eight months back. Thaddeus knelt down and touched his palm to the planks, running his hands back and forth, feeling for something ... The boy couldn't stop crying ... His chest heaved up and down while his hand grasped at the floor like a blind man lost" (pages 65-66). What is Thaddeus trying to communicate to his father in this scene? Do you think he understands the fate of his brother here?
   
   
5. Lincoln and his wife are torn apart by the death of their son Willie. Both reveal the same supernatural experience in "The Willie Grief" and "The Ward" that, if they shared with each other, might bring them closer together. What is it?
   
   
6. Why doesn't Lincoln go to the funeral in "His Stepmother's Sister"?
   
   
7. In "A Letter to President Lincoln from a Good Girl," Mrs. Ansel tells the President: "I won't make angels out of devils. I will bring the light back to my eyes" (page 105). What does she mean by this?
   
   
8. What do Zack Hargrove, John Wilkes Booth, and Lincoln himself have in common with each other?
   
   
9. "When you fuck the ordinary it fucks you back, until you're just like the rest of them" (page 194). Discuss the irony of this statement and West's actions in "The Sad and Familiar Ballad of Captain Carson West."
   
   
10. "In moments of righteousness all actions are possible" (page 165). "If you have it inside you, you can make anything work (page 202). Explore the similarities between the quests of Crybaby Jack and John Wilkes Booth and what personality traits are responsible for distinguishing one as a patriot, the other as a traitor.
    
    
11. Why is this line, in "A Rainy Night in Springfield, Illinois -- 1849," so heartbreaking?: "And every time we look at him, or think about him, we will just know happiness" (page 303).
    
    
12. Which story in Mr. Lincoln's Wars did you find most compelling? Do you think this format -- a novel told in short stories -- worked well for a historic topic? Why or why not?

About the Author

Born in Berkeley, California in 1963, Adam Braver has an MFA from Goddard College. His stories have been published in the Cimarron Review and Pittsburgh Quarterly. He teaches at Roger Williams University and lives with his wife and son in Providence, Rhode Island. His second book, Divine Sarah, will be published in July 2004.

Read a Sample Chapter

The Willie Grief

Mary Todd Lincoln had just about taken all that she could take when Edwin Stanton chuckled at her assertion that the war had seemed like it would never end, and maybe there had already been enough dying to make the point. "There are some things that you needn't concern yourself with," Stanton admonished. Another Washington bureaucrat who knew nothing of the war besides what the maps and telegrams showed him, no doubt using it to bolster his credentials. And there he stood, in the president's office, a stout little pudge barely knee high to the lanky Mr. Lincoln, the two of them in comic disproportion.

Sometimes her husband could be so sterile. Since Willie's death he had hardly been able to look her in the eye. She couldn't recall him ever even saying Willie's name to her. As if to ensure that the subject was never broached, he began working through the night, crawling into bed under the dying light of a blown-out candle, and pulling back the covers with a cool draft that drifted over her legs like a nervous ghost. She wasn't easy to be around. She acknowledged that truth. Her days stretched long, and the nights were frightful with the knowledge that the first sprig of sunlight would reveal a new day, one more without Willie. The indulging pity wearing her down until there was nothing left other than a pleading cry to be noticed. Sometimes she wished her husband would just hold her. Squeeze the maniacal grief that possessed her. Taste her tears. Get really mad and scream out that he missed Willie like a sonabitch. They couldstruggle for breath together, writhing on the bed angry and sad, cursing the injustice that a man who is potentially more powerful than God cannot find peace in this world. Then maybe they could hold each other with the passion they had known in Springfield. She could tell him that Willie was still here, and if they held on long enough, he too would see the light that sometimes darted across the bedroom window and know that it was their son passing by, checking in to make sure that his mother's grief didn't fatally consume her. Instead her husband had turned scared. The fear made him cold. And by the true definition of a man, he swallowed back his emotions and threw himself into his work. As though it were the only truth.

Lincoln stepped aside from Stanton and looked down at his secretary. "Mr. Stanton," he said formally, "the first lady has been personally touched by this war in a way that you and I wouldn't understand." The office turned pallid as a passing cloud shadowed the sun from the window, reinforcing the dullness of the decor's stale antiquity.

Stanton prodded his fingers through the coarse gray bristles of his beard. His spectacles had fallen to the tip of his nose, highlighting its dented bulb and flared nostrils, and he peered his veiny blues over the tops of the frames. "Please pardon my neglect at remembering the loss of your brother."

"Sam Todd was a good man," Lincoln said. "And even if he died with a Confederate flag in his hand at Shiloh, he was still a man of principle." He reached for her hand, and held it in chivalrous mourning. "Mary's right. The war has dragged on too long. And it has bared its shame in the tearing apart of families like the Todds."

"My prayers," Stanton offered.

In her husband's hand she understood the commitment that made so many people believe in him, how the power of his fingers wrapped around her sweating palm in righteous honesty. But the death of her half brother had hardly stunned her. She couldn't remember the last time she had seen him, could barely remember what he looked like other than having the same almond eyes and symmetrically round face as all progeny of the Robert Todd seedling. There were fifteen brothers and sisters to complete the Todd set, each one as boring as the next. She hadn't liked most of them while growing up, and she had certainly lost all feeling for them when her husband had become president and they said the things they did, proving that politics is indeed thicker than blood. Her husband didn't understand that, and she hadn't bothered to try to explain. It would be beyond his comprehension that a sister wouldn't mourn the death of her brother. So he felt compelled to comfort her, and that was okay. But she didn't understand why he never did that when Willie died. Even holding her hand as he did now would have staved off a million miles of misery.

Mary's stomach started to turn light, and her hands grew tingly and shaky. The grief over Willie's death was washing through her, as it could randomly do. She saw the familiar picture of her boy, pale and consumed with disease, as he had looked desperately to her without a sense of peace or calm, as the preachers would like to believe, but with a gut-wrenching fear of feeling his life slipping away. She felt the sick helplessness that she harbored at not having the ability to stop Willie's suffering, or even comfort him -- a feeling that never went away, only sometimes hibernated if she was lucky. She ran her tongue over her cracked dry lips, and fought for air through her panting nostrils. She dropped her husband's useless hand when the sweat turned a clammy cold, and turned her head to swallow, instantly nauseated by the must and mites that inhabited the red velvet chairs of her husband's office.

Lincoln stepped away. His eyes fixed stiff and cold, as though watching a concoction of clouds turn to storm. He stepped closer to Stanton, nervously pushing the hand that had just held hers into his pocket. His big yellow teeth worked themselves into his bottom lip, gnawing and chewing, while his Adam's apple lumped in and out.

Stanton spoke in a voice of semi-authority to deliver the exit line. "Mr. President, we are expected at the State Department to review the battle reports."

Lincoln nodded too quickly, as though the patron saint of relief had just spoken, and added, "We shouldn't keep them waiting."

Mary focused her stare out the window behind her husband's desk, watching the sunlight wind its way down the wisteria vines in thin green streams, with some points just touching the edges of the shriveled brown buds with a teasing glow. The blood gathered in her stomach and welled into a fury that kicked and screamed to come out, but her exterior remained staid, padded by a thick layer of cultured gentility. "Then you better go," she said, followed by a long inhalation.

Stanton looked back, his head half bowed. "Once, again, Mary, my prayers.""Save them for a just god," she muttered. Then she said it again as he walked out the door, so he could hear her loud and clear.

Mary Todd Lincoln sat in the carriage riding backward on a slow, lonely trip up Seventh Street heading toward Campbell Hospital on the north end of town. The horses seemed bitterly restrained, barely moving, perhaps in protest at having to tug a carriage through Washington on what might have been the coldest day ever to have come sweeping down the Potomac. The sky was clear, with an icy blue edge to it. The boards of the sidewalk looked shiny and new pushed up against the empty streets. Brownstones stood tall and still, with curled whiskers of smoke winding out the chimneys, their windows frosted and steamed with hand-smeared peepholes wilting in condensation, behind which the illusion of ordinary life played itself out without tragedy.

When her grief overtook her, making it nearly impossible to move or sit still, she liked to go out to the military hospitals to visit the wounded boys. Talk to them. Maybe hold their hands. Try to feel the power of life fighting for a chance, instead of hopelessly expiring in shattered deliverance. Sometimes she took her boy Tad along and let his tiny little grip escort her through the wards as though he were a guide dog. Other times she needed to be alone, in order to not be weighted by the expectations of being Mother and having to monitor her expressions and emotions to prevent uncertainty or distress in the boy. The visits went better when she was alone. Without Tad by her side, the infirm rarely recognized her as the first lady. The anonymity liberated her to comfort from compassion and not from politics. For once she could just listen without having to indulge in her own misery.

With the road turned to ice, the carriage bumped over frozen divots and shimmied an occasional slide from side to side. She closed her eyes and tried to imagine how the young debutante who had boarded at Shelby's and Madame Mentelle's studying French and dance, the belle of Lexington who was living proof of God's exquisite plan, had come to be this fragile shell of a woman whose soul was left pillaged by the deaths of two of her children. Her once-thick dark hair now appeared teased and light. The skin that had defined her proud jaw now pouched into little jowls, and her watery eyes were loosely set upon dark half-moon pillows. Her hands, once delicate and smooth as porcelain, were ragged and bent into odd positions, resting on a waistline that had expanded into a permanent reminder of her unhappiness.

The wards of Campbell Hospital were long and narrow. They were separate buildings made of rough gray boards and built low to the ground, with a dining area in the middle, and surrounded by a sprawl of pale landscape textured in rotted tree trunks. Injured boys by the hundreds lined the interior of each ward with their cots evenly spaced. They stayed there until they recovered. Or went to the dead house next to the Negro quarters. These boys were lonely and scared, casualties from all over the map who had been sent to the military hospital because the field hospitals had run out of treatments. Most didn't know a soul. Delirious from pain. Stunned by the cold. Starved by the rations. Only able to count on the goodwill of the nurses and women who took the time to touch their arms, or sing a mother's melody, or just tell them that they would be all right while the infections bore away their insides worse than any rebel bullet could ever do.

Mary Lincoln stepped down from the coach red-cheeked against the bitter cold, and told the driver to circle for an hour. She quickly tucked her hands under her overcoat when she felt the joints stiffen, feeling the cruel intentions of the elements.

She entered Ward 3 shamelessly aware of how free she felt from the confining burdens of being Mrs. Lincoln. Her step fell lighter as her shoes touched the plank floors, the sounds of the convalescent machine in full operation gracefully lifting her out of the silent bitterness of the bedroom walls. At home in this company of mangled strangers.

She had been here twice before, each time startled by the smell -- the stench of rotting flesh, diarrhea, and sour mold. A thin streak of bile rose up her throat and stung the back of her tongue. She forced herself to swallow it back, and marched deeper into the ward. Powerless men lay side by side on green cots spaced no more than six inches apart, pails filled with blood-soaked towels set between them. Their warm breath, visible against the cold, rose above them like hovering souls. The uniform moans of pain and melancholia made a low vibrating hum, a basslike bottom against the frantic treble of the nurses barking orders back and forth across the cots, desperately trying to gather the attention of the doctors, who looked worn and exhausted by their idle attempts to heal and cure.

Mary carefully walked down the center aisle looking for someone who seemed in need of company. A hand latched on to the back of her black coat and tugged, startling her. She turned to see the desperate face of a woman about her age, skinny and tired, with dry eyes shifting in fear. "Are you a nurse?" the woman asked Mary. "Are you a nurse?"

"I'm not," Mary said. She looked at the woman's white-knuckle hold on her sleeve. "I'm sorry."

The woman dropped her hand, letting it dangle awkwardly before bringing it up to her neck, nervously scratching a red spot. "My boy is in so much pain . . . so much . . . I'm just looking for some help, is all. Just looking for some help."

Mary had to turn away. She didn't want to see a desperate mother holding on with the fruitless belief that her terminal son might make it. She couldn't bear to see the false hope or the wishing or the naked fear. That was not why she came here. Even as she walked briskly down the row, she could hear the woman repeating that her boy was in pain. Maybe she wanted Mary to turn around with the kindness of a stranger and grab both of her hands and look her in the eye and tell her not to worry. Mary just walked faster. She couldn't handle hearing that selfish self-pity for one more second.

At the last cot in the row, a boy lay flat on his back, his ghost-white face peering above an olive blanket cinched around his neck. A pillow pushed against the crown of his head. There must have been at least 150 boys warehoused in this ward, and for some reason this nondescript one caught her attention. Maybe it was the diffident expression on his face, gone beyond resignation and self-pity into a state of nothing other than existence. His hands were tucked in at his sides, while his teeth chattered from the cold. He shifted his eyes up to Mary and spoke in a confident whisper, "They say you lose ninety percent of your body heat from your head."

Mary Lincoln took that as an invitation. She asked if she might, and sat down in one of the visitor's chairs made from whittled pine and straw -- gifts from some old man's rotary to help the cause. She self-consciously shifted her bottom from side to side to test it against her weight, then settled in. The boy rolled his eyes over to her, and kept a plain expression that was neither welcoming nor off-putting. He kept his stare fixed on her without moving an inch of his body. Maybe he was one of those boys who had been caught in the cannon fire and only survived from the waist up, with arms and legs severed from infection. She imagined the grotesque figure that would lie beneath that wool blanket, a chest and abdomen that might at first have the appearance of a strong healthy boy's, but made hideous by the wretchedly crude carvings of shrapnel and a hurried field doctor. And maybe at the bottom of the awkward and uneven torso, his penis hung nestled against his testicles, forever useless except to involuntarily wet the bed.

"That's why I keep the pillow on top of my head," he said. "Keeps me warm." He wrestled an arm out from under the covers and clumsily adjusted the pillow up over his forehead, just above his grimacing eyebrows, like a malformed bishop's crown.

"It is cold in here, isn't it?" she said, relieved to know that he indeed had arms.

"Like a witch's tit." He spoke again in that hard whisper, as though that was all that his lungs would allow. "Not one ounce of heat pumped into this joint. Stoves don't do a thing. Never even this kind of cold in Brooklyn."

Mary leaned in, almost seduced by the will of his struggle to talk, and the care he took in the choosing and eliminating of words in context with his shortened breath. "You're from New York?" she asked.

"No. Brooklyn." He tried to roll to the side to face her, arching his knee (thank God!) up for support, but instead rocked back again to his vulnerable position like a helpless beetle. His face turned a deep red as he struggled for breath, then all his features, maybe Irish or Scottish in physiognomy, contorted and contracted into one long grimace that quickly released itself. He rolled his eyes back over to her with a sigh.

"You are a long way from home, soldier."

"Go where they tell you to." The pain in his voice surrounded his words in a nearly visible warble.

"My name is Mary." She placed her hand on his chest. His shallow breaths felt oddly dry against her fingers. The pure simplicity of his life, with the only mission being to take in air, made her eyes begin to water. She began to swallow back every urge to cry, until she realized that she wasn't really sad. Just moved.

"You're not coming to sell me something, no religious speech, or anything? Fruitcakes come through that door like it's a free-for-all."

Mary smiled, and for once the smile felt genuine, not the mannered dilettante expression guided by protocol. "I'm just here to visit anybody who wants the company."

He looked her over again, then nodded. "I could use the company."

"And so could I."

They sat in the white noise of crippled screams and hollow cries. The nurses' shoes squeaking along the planks. Odd rhythms of metal clanging so disjointed that it had nearly become symphonic. The bitter timbre of hard, frozen fear. The boy never stopped looking at Mary. His eyes were sea green, deep as an untouched cove, brilliant against his pale skin. A tuft of red hair mussed out from the pillow, its luster dulled by lack of nutrition and oil. When he smiled to introduce himself, his teeth looked charred but straight. His name was Sean. "Sean Connely," he elaborated.

Mary told him it was a pleasure to make his proper acquaintance, and said the name sounded Irish.

"The name is," he spoke freely, despite his pained whisper, "but not the boy. Folks left Ireland before they were too old to leave."

"I'm sure they're good people," Mary said.

"Seamus and Moira Connely are their names. Two brothers. We all went to enlist. The folks were relieved of the responsibility. They can barely handle one another."

"I'm sure they are proud of you."

Sean turned his head a little more to the side. "Mary, could you do me a favor?""I don't know."

"If I get you the address, tell my parents that I'm doing okay? How I am.""I can help you write a letter."

"I don't have that much to say."

"I will tell them I met with you," she said. "I can wire a telegram. I'll tell them where you are, what's been going on, and whatever else they want to know."

"They don't ask much. The caring scares them."

"I'll tell Moira and Seamus that I met with you."

Behind them the crazed mother came wandering down the aisle crying out, "Nurse, nurse! My boy needs a dusting of morphine. Nurse, nurse! Somebody help me. Him. An opium pill." Mary inhaled in contempt, disgusted at the woman's lack of humility and total disregard for everyone else who didn't want to hear it; then she exhaled, willing that woman to keep to her end of the ward.

"You hear all kinds of things in here," Sean said.

Mary nodded, embarrassed by her selfishness, and hoping it was not too transparent, because she really did feel calmness in being here with Sean. Something about the struggling will of the boy's voice inspired hope, and she wanted to just keep listening. "And what happened with you?" she asked. "How did you get here?"

"Don't really know. A battle in Virginia. Pure craziness all around, and I tripped over the leg of this clumsy pisser named Peters. Then a sound over my ear buzzing like a million-pound mosquito. Woke up here with a bullet cornered in my lung, and aimed right at my heart. Been out cold for five days.""And that's why you don't -- "

"If I move too sudden the bullet goes right into my heart." His voice was tighter, as though he could barely dislodge the words from his chest. "If I'm real unlucky, it'll push backward into my lung and drain me flat."

"What do the doctors say?"

"Hope that it works itself out."

One thing Mary hated about doctors was how they all walk around so high and mighty, like they hold the key and password to enter God's most exquisite creation, but when you really call upon them, when you need real help, they toss out some drugs and throw their hands up and use words like hope and pray, and tell you that some things are greater than man. "Maybe I can get someone here to look at you," she offered. "Not one of these washed-up army kinds, but a real doctor."

Sean didn't answer. His eyes didn't even brighten at the prospect. Maybe he didn't want to be a charity case, or maybe he just really didn't care at this point. Or perhaps he knew the real truth, the same one that kept Mary from continuing on: that even a real doctor wouldn't know shit about what to do except hope and pray.

"Is there anything I can do for you right now?" she asked.

He shook his head, causing the pillow to lose its place. "Maybe just sit for a few more minutes until the nurse gives me my morphine. Pain sneaks up on you and stabs you blind. Nurses here are psychic when it comes to needing morphine . . . Please wait. At least until the shit knocks me out."

Mary leaned forward and maternally edged the pillow back into place. She ran the back of her hand along his cheek, feeling the moist tenderness of his skin, cheeks too young to be roughened by whiskers, just the softness of the thin blond hairs he was born with. She might have broken down and cried right then, tortured by the fact that Willie was so much younger on his deathbed; instead she felt calmed and oddly reassured, as though some preserved precious moment was deliberately being shown to her.

She started to draw her hand away. Sean rolled his face over and trapped her fingers against his cheek. He didn't say anything. Just a sad childlike smile."It's okay," she told him.

The nurse appeared by the bed. She was tall and young, her amber hair twisted and layered into a bun that she pinned to the back of her head. The beauty of her face was hidden in exhaustion, with eyes that seemed like they could care but had instead been willed and trained to professionalism, knowing the caring could destroy her. She spoke tenderly, with a trace of southern laziness that punctuated the ends of her sentences. "Well, hello, Mr. Connely," she said. "How's the chest today?"

Sean peered up at her. "Like hell, Sharon."

She reached into her pocket and pulled out a syringe, the metal dulled in fingerprints, the tip of the needle fogged from the cold.

"I'll have the usual," he said.

Sharon smiled politely at the joke she had no doubt heard a thousand times over on her rounds. She glanced down at Mary's hand tucked under the boy's face, then looked over at her. "Are you a relative?" she asked in what appeared to be a tone of genuine interest.

"Just a friend." Mary smiled.

The needle caught the reflection of a lamp. It looked like a flame. "Thank goodness for boys like Mr. Connely here," Sharon said. "Wouldn't you say so?" A lightning scream from across the ward seemed to penetrate the whole room, then died just as quickly.

Mary looked down at Sean's pale face.

"Giving their hearts and souls so we can keep our dignity." She tapped the syringe twice to remove excess air. A chemical tear balled on the edge of the hypodermic.

Without moving his head, Sean offered his left arm. Sharon squinted one eye for aim, and slid the needle under his skin. She depressed the syringe's head with her thumb in a manner so mechanized that its precision seemed perfection. "Very good, now," she said. "You rest up, Mr. Connely, and I'll check back after a couple of hours. And, remember, no sitting up. You'll rip the stitches from your chest." Sharon smiled at Mary. "Nice meeting you. Pity the circumstance." She dropped the spent syringe into her pocket, then walked into the aisle under a dull yellow light that outlined her hipless figure. Gone to the next bed. As though she was never there.

Sean's eyes followed Sharon, then settled back on his visitor. "Used to get whiskey before the shot."

"Is it better now?" Mary stroked his shoulder with her free hand.

"Springwater driving through my veins," Sean narrated. "No cold anymore. I forget how hard it is to breathe. Just lay back and go to sleep. Lucky to get to forget."

Mary felt his cheeks flushing warmer. His eyelids seemed to be swelling, with his green irises in full bloom bathed in sleepy tears. "Glad you came by," he said in a whisper that was dropping into sleep. "I'll live a little stronger. Thanks for the comfort."

Mary nodded. "Thank you for the comfort." She watched his eyes close and felt his breathing lighten against her hand. She cautiously worked her palm out from under his cheek, although it appeared that now nothing would disturb him. She pulled the blanket up to his neck and fixed his pillow back into place. She thought about kissing him, but that felt too intimate and she wasn't really sure she had that right.

When Mary Lincoln stood up, the reality of the ward came rushing over her in a tumbling, jostling wave that nearly knocked her off her feet. The cries. The writhing. The rot. The reality that this was not going to end. That she would walk out that door and go back to the mansion, and mothers would still be screaming, and boys begging for anything to kill the pain, and doctors cutting and hacking and drugging and praying, and nurses and women staking their responsibility for comfort, and in every minute of every day knowing that the pain she has felt for Willie is being replayed over and over in wards like this throughout the country. She thinks of how embarrassed she is by her last name, and that maybe she'll just go by the name of Todd because she can't bear the thought of being associated with any of the responsibility for this suffering.

A nervous humming panicked over the top of her skin. Mary ran down the hall without looking at any of the patients. Past the screaming mother. Past the weary nurses. She slammed the door of her waiting coach and turned down the bolt until she was certain that it locked.

The horses trotted their way down Seventh Street back toward Pennsylvania Avenue. Washington still felt quiet, content to be quarantined from the terror and misery that breathed beyond its borders. Mary watched the frozen city float by through the window. She had the odd sensation of feeling better. Even when she felt an echo of her own grief wash over, she noticed that it didn't hurt as much. Mary closed her eyes and tried not to understand. Just let herself be taken along by the rhythm of the horses.

She never got Sean Connely's parents' address that day. Nor did she ever go back to Campbell Hospital again. Her husband tried once or twice to get her the information, but nobody at the hospital could seem to produce that kind of detail.

The grief for Willie still washed over her.

Sometimes she thought of Sean.

Sometimes it made her feel better.

Sometimes it didn't.