Lincoln's Assassin Read online

When I was released late Tuesday, my intuitions proved to have been valuable. Conner had been sent off post-haste to the nearby penitentiary as a token act of Union will and sentiment by the politically and nepotistically motivated magistrate. The otherwise silent and efficiently duteous guard who escorted me from my cell made two offhanded but telling comments. One was pointed at Conner’s belligerence as a product of his Catholic popery, the other was to cursorily admire my father’s signet ring, as members of the fraternity occasionally did.

  Not just a little appalled at the report of Conner’s incarceration, I went to DeBar and the rest of the company to organize a formal plea to affect his release. I even took credit for his remark that the whole damn Yankee government go to hell in order that his offense seem less particular. If the Union could not stand to the expression of opinion favoring any viewpoint, then perhaps it was best there was no Union at all, I posited. Some situations require the jarring of confrontational logic.

  But actors and troopers are a different kind of people, and though they can declaim and rave and deliver enthusiasm on the stage, they are most of them less than effective when off. Everyone agreed that Conner had been the victim of an injustice, yet none was willing to risk the possibility of the same for his release. With whispered reminders of DeBar’s hotbed, what guarantee was there the rest would not be similarly considered and the theater closed for good?

  Ultimately I was no better than the rest. Conner’s part recast and the engagement done, I boarded the South Western Limited for Albany to connect for Boston where I was to open at the Museum as Richard in Richard III the following Monday.

  I was sitting in my private cabin, a luxury I had only of late been able to afford, nor was yet altogether certain I enjoyed, when a strange knock came at my door. Before I could make reply a finely dressed gentleman entered. He had gray and raven hair under a flat-brimmed and belted hat, and a conspicuously diamond-studded vest hung with two gold chains. Scarcely seeming to notice I was there, he sat without reserve or apology. He carried a silver-tipped cane, but no luggage, and waxed his whiskers in the style of a groomed frontiersman—that is, gambler.

  His hands seemed dexterous enough to stack more than a deck or two of cards as he produced two cigars from his vest. With a gold-encrusted device built expressly for the purpose, he bored holes in the one end and clipped the other of each. Lighting them both with certain meditative ceremony, he offered one to me, kept one for himself, unfurled and arranged the newspaper he had brought in with him, and began to read.

  While he held the paper with one hand, he spindled five-dollar notes around the index finger of the other with only his thumb. He was forever to be doing this, though it was some time before I understood the secret of his habit. At this point I only saw him depositing them into his coat pockets. Their future application as timely, quick and effective bribes was yet unknown to me. How adroitly could he slip them into the palm of some young and impressionable officer with only a handshake. And never a question—no—not in those times. They were, after all, never Confederate notes. Only the currency of the North could speak so persuasively and uniformly.

  “Would you mind to open the window a bit wider,” he puffed casually and without removing his eyes from the paper. “Not just for the smoke. I would like to hear what goes on outside if we should make a sudden stop.”

  “Why should we?” understanding as I spoke the words that I was meant to ask this question.

  “Why indeed?” he returned, before I had scarcely finished asking, and with a sudden sweep let his paper drop. “We are at war, you know. And the rebels can be everywhere. Or don’t you believe that?” he demanded pointedly.

  Just then the brakes blew their steam past our car and I must say I was rather fearful. It was a comfort to see my companion even more so.

  “We met two weeks ago at the beginning of your engagement in St. Louis,” he said, rising to the window. “My name is Lutz. If anyone should ask, we spoke briefly one night after one of your performances and met by accident again just as the train left the Strand Street Station. Any questions?”

  I sat still and silent and the two of us remained so when the armed patrol came mechanically into my—now our—compartment and asked to see our transit papers. The fair-skinned intruder produced his with a certain amount of expertise and practiced nonchalance, which satisfied readily. Yet when it came to mine there was much ado.

  “‘Mr. J. Wilkes Booth,’” read the sergeant. “The actor?” I nodded.

  “Look ye,” he said to his sully-eyed corporal. “And signed by the general hisself. ‘General U. S. Grant,’” he read with a theatricality of his own. “And what does a man of your education think, Mr. Wilkes?” handing my papers back. “Do you think it be true that those there initials stand for these United States, as some says?”

  I smiled non-committedly as I refolded my papers into my pocket.

  “Not these days, ’course,” joked the sergeant, quite pleased with his own humor.

  The corporal shared his laugh, whether out of sentiment or device, and the two of them left us with a cursory tip of their hats.

  We sat there for some time before the engines started up again and I could see my visitor sigh a breath of relief. His look at me intensified. His eyes seemed fixed on their purpose.

  “I have a proposition, Mr. Booth,” he began, directing himself in such a way that, if I had any doubts, I knew then it was no accident he had stumbled upon my car. “News of your temporary confinement in St. Louis has traveled far and not without purpose. You may also be interested to know that your friend, Mr. Conner, is this moment being released. And who do you think paid the fine that liberated you?”

  He shifted in his seat, crossed his one leg high over the other and replaced in the boot of it a derringer I had not seen him withdraw.

  “That is not all. I tell you this only so you will know I am sympathetic to the same things as yourself," he said, pinching straight again the creases in his pantlegs. The same cause, as a son of the South, Mr. Wilkes.” He took me by my ringed hand. “A son of the South.”

  The train had come back to its full speed and was rumbling easily on the singing tracks. The endless beauty of the Illinois landscape floating past us with a repetition that never wearied—unlike, say, Indian Territory or Arkansas—but seemed now strangely uncanny, the rolling hills with their fingered rivulets anxiously pulsing where once they were poised and serene.

  “Did you see the way they handled your papers? Quite differently than mine. If you had first shown them yours, they may well have forgotten to look to mine at all.”

  “You need a traveling companion?” I suggested. “To allay some kind of suspicions?”

  He did not look like a criminal, but he did not look much like a businessman either. I could not imagine what was making him so cautious and nervous, but that he needed some kind of cloak or screen.

  “Not for myself, Mr. Wilkes.”

  “For whom?”

  “It is not who. It is what. For now, enjoy my cigar. It is the finest quality. Perhaps you would join me also in a spoon?”

  Scene II

  The town is alive, and its heart in a glow,

  To welcome the coming of beautiful snow.

  The night before I was to leave I went to say farewell. It being a Sunday evening, Bickley had only worked until some time after ten o’clock, but the orderly in charge of the hospital tent instructed me that the doctor expected me to go see him. I found him in his own quarters amusing himself at his desk where he continued to view glasses in a magic lantern as we talked. He had only some five or six, but exchanged them throughout our brief interview as if each were being seen for the first time. His smile flashed and his eyebrows raised on occasion, but throughout our conversation his voice remained steady. He did not offer to share his pleasure with me, only extended his hand when at last I said goodbye.

  Dearest Ella,

  I wanted so desperately to be loved by you—

  S
trophe

  I

  You know my reputation. Even before my present notoriety I was, I fear, somewhat the scoundrel. Scandal knew my name. Enough that I was my father’s son—though for that Edwin was forgiven. I could drink and curse and make love never, but that my several sins were counted and compounded to that original curse from which the other had been relieved.

  Leave Hemeya for Edwin, for he is that righteous sort, even in his waverings, his fears to face himself and difficulties accepting fate, cursed though it may be. I was created in my father’s image, and while an audience will ever shy from Pescara, Iago, and Richard Crookback, still they know somehow that these are, far above, the men to be essentially trusted. Not in their dealings with others but with themselves. Men of purpose—evil or dishonest, of direction—hell-bent, but undaunted. And if the deeds were examined of all, it would be my brother’s imitations that would first demand restitution. He meant to do or say the thing, but that was then. Yet is the public far more willing to forgive the flowery worded and apologetic hypocrite. What sympathy for a drunken libertine, and less his murderous son?

  And I would kill again to raise the cup of any tyrant’s blood, full-capable of wafting every draught from the deepest tankard.

  Curiously, I never heard the story of how I drank, only how I was drunken. The particulars of my misbehavior merely that it was thus. Nor the single name of my lovers, but that the list was ever-extending. One hears not why, nor how, yet what I did, and just as crudely of my death.

  I rarely drank in company that had not at least a great share in the cause. Never swore an oath that was not in response to one more fiercely put by another. Never made love to a woman who might not afterward be capable of denying all with less than protest or refutation from me. For in this case my father’s indiscretions had taught me better on my own affairs. And while you have ever read that I cried sic semper tyrannis before or after the pistol shots—in serious drama the line always precedes the action, tripped on this or that and broke one leg or the other—I shall not there begin to indulge your time or patience. But that someone, I know not certainly who or why, should have been, consciously or no, readily substituted for my own person, I would pray make mention. Of him I can only be sure that he too was suffering from a torn or swollen limb. Or how can I express the full extent of my horror that he should have been gunned down so helplessly when his very action saved my life, allowing for my nominal escape and salvation.

  Yet, I am as sure that his deceptive death was correctly assessed by at least one. He who hired me—and to do that to which I had fully resolved, informed me of the opportune time and place, assisted me in numerous preparations of the president’s box, suggested my escape route, supplied me with my horse, money and rude provisions. Provided me also with the evening’s password to run the capital blockade.

  You would not recognize me today, if ever you might have. And not, but for my wizening, the miles of years that walk upon my brow. For I have grown my beard and shaved it—my moustache, too—a hundred times regardless of the season, deferent only to the times of men whose course across my path would they rather inscribe and I could not avoid.

  Nor I am as coldblooded as you would believe. You, I say, because I know that is your wish to believe me ruthless and mad, an aberration. How fearful if otherwise, that my same blood might flow in your veins. Yet there is no shame in the possession of a patriot’s heart.

  Tonight I watched an owl make sure and easy prey of an errant pigeon, straying too far from the square. I wondered for a moment if my father would have approved—he who once called the undertaker to his New Orleans hotel room in order that six dead pigeons might be given a Christian burial. They thought him mad or hoped it was some attempt at giddy humor. But Junius Brutus Booth gave no specific indications of either.

  Was it sickness that drove the female owl to feast unusually upon a member of her own species? Or did she have the concerns of a nesting brood at heart? Concerns made more pressing by the steady encroachment of progress and man’s city-building follies? Was life not sweeter on the open farm and plantation than industry could ever hope to replace? Who are those who will use their strengths, talents and unfailing courage to do combat with even overpowering odds if they must be labeled mad? Then perhaps they are.

  You do not know me, yet know me you will. Not today, nor in these woods where I am safe. Yesterday, when I was known for some twenty-seven years by name and face and fame. And for tomorrow, when the truth of what I have done and do is measured, marked and balanced, doubted or believed.

  Let us call them this or that, or what we will, it matters not. You shall know them by their actions as you know me by my deed. For what had I known of them, their schemes and counter-schemes? Less—if it can be believed—than they of passion, honor, love of country. What moved me was not some proffered promise provoking further than my own heart’s desire. It was belief in what would be best. And if my Southern sympathies can today be seen as cruel and outmoded, if all mankind can sing, this day, that—black or white—men shall be free and equal, let this be my error, not that I delivered a tyrant to his timely end.

  II

  How might I have thought of them? Savages. It is so simple. I feel disgust that others could feel any different or less.

  I would not loose my Cola, for all my love and respect of her, in my mother’s garden and expect other than trampled roses and violets. She is a horse. Obedient to command, and strong of character, but a horse.

  My horse, pleasantly accepting my choices, my orders, performing my will. And yet, spurred to a gait, whipped to a gallop, asks no explanations, expects no apologies or false sympathies. Why did those Copperheads need offer both?

  III

  What must be done? Not for the deed, for its completion. My heart, my soul, are ready to heave my hands well into this. There is no doubt of his merit. The lives he imperilled, the webs he spun to achieve his own end. And I, no scheming spider, only some mindless drone, obeyed and performed all before the very meshwork was drawn tight around my neck and those of my fellows.

  There was no reward. There could be no redemption. No reception for heroic deeds. What heroism is there in removing one tyrant to unleash another?

  IV

  Twenty-five years have passed. Every stroke, silent as ever to the Fabian multitude, has peeled ten thousand times within my shattered soul. And each of those armored, brutish beats pulsed its throbbing minutes like furious knells over this my living, if cobwebbed crypt, for the trifling of a life. One thread mercilessly snipped, the other recklessly, dizzily, dustily unwound.

  What could have been is never known. And yet I cannot help but harp as if I might, through some clear vision and focused ideation, change all—rectify and restore my name. Or in more lucid moments, while I contemplate my fate, the result I alone have merited, still think to yield again to eternal perdition and kill once more.

  This night I greeted with a pint of brandy where perhaps one swallow still remains. And so I cannot choose to hide from this my testament or any less, my imagined readers.

  My desire to be a hero, fruitless and infatuate, is forgotten. If I worked and schemed and risked to avenge my South, or feel one-tenth part the accomplishment of my aim, how might I not the more forsake to plot and satisfy the vengeance of my honor?

  I have been a fool before. Here is nothing new. Only how can I explain the sincerity of a fool’s fancy? That at any moment, she might appear at my door. A smile on her pilgrim’s face and forgiveness folded into the fingers that clasp lightly just below the buttons of her perfect waist.

  V

  I am her slave. And who will set me free, that now I have sinned the great sin?

  Scene III

  How the wild crowd go swaying along,

  Hailing each other with humor and song!

  It was a faultless day in mid-October. I tucked a loose strand of peppered hair over my left ear and squinted through the spectacles to which I had long grown accustomed
. It was good to be old. My chest was tight but did not ache as it had even in my youth.

  An Indian summer had bronzed the edges of so many red and yellow leaves and given hope to a young generation of new others. I had sported my moustache again, no longer fearful of its association or even my possible recognition. Somehow, everything seemed wonderfully changed in the course of a single night.

  As I rode boldly into Hodgenville, it seemed all manner of transformations had occurred. People about their business returned my looks only to continue on their private ways. That one might nod, this one might salute a hat, that lovely other cast a coy and knowing glance somewhere between herself and me, perhaps at her laced boots, perhaps at my smooth ones.

  I was no longer the renegade and fearful assassin. People’s minds had changed. Seen through to the truth here, where the national frontier of Hardin County allowed more time and distance to survey that truth. What had been awful, even desperate, was become legitimate and comprehensible. Not that there had been a choice but that, in choosing, I had done more than many blind or wilfully disinterested others.

  I hitched Cola outside Murphy’s provisions and nearly had a conversation with Mrs. Purtella. That is, she said "Good day," and when I returned the compliment she went on by saying she hoped I was enjoying all of its benefits. Spoken by such a God-fearing woman, I understood her intentions to be of the highest character and felt I might have continued at some length had I not been pressed for time.

  As I entered the emporium I suddenly could not remember what it was I needed or why, indeed, I felt so pressed. Murphy was behind the right side counter making some kind of inventory and addressed me by name without looking up from his tablet. I returned his hello upon which he demanded, "The usual?" Before I could think to answer, he completed, "It’s wrapped up there under the front counter."

  Instinctively I reached beneath what seemed a large stack of yet more balance sheets and withdrew a small, but weighty parcel.