The Evil B.B. Chow & Other Stories by Steve Almond Page A

Frederick!” Others now start to crowd the rail.
    â€œI must ask you gentlemen to cease—”
    â€œIs this your house nigger, Douglass?”
    Lincoln steers away from the barge, but a cross flow drags them back.
    â€œAnd where is Mrs. Douglass?”
    â€œCome dance a waltz, Douglass.”
    â€œWith your goon here. We’ve never before seen two niggers dance a waltz.”
    D ISREGARDING THE ADVICE of his advisors, Lincoln invites a group of rail workers to the White House to celebrate the completion of a line to the Oregon territory. The men move about in rented waistcoats, a sea of nervous mustaches. Lincoln presses the men for accounts of the West. He is fascinated by buffalo, the talk of mountains and endless ridgelines. Long after the men have been marched off, Lincoln can be seen in the West Garden, his arms extended from his body, holding twelve-pound axes in either fist. He looks terribly sad planted there, like a scarecrow trembling in the wind.
    L INCOLN DROPS A cube of sugar in the flask and holds it out to Douglass.
    â€œThank you, no.”
    â€œIntemperance does you no favor, friend.”
    â€œStill.”
    â€œAs you wish.” Lincoln swallows. “Tell me again about the good widow Glenwood, Douglass. Ah, now there was a woman who knew not to hide from virtue. And its tender erosions. Do not look upon me with such reproach, Douglass. It is not
I
who rhapsodizes my dreams. Also, I have found some sketches among your papers. I did not know you worked on the easel, Douglass.”
    â€œI do not.”
    Lincoln snorts with glee. “Good man! Have a nip!”
    Douglass’s cheeks redden. “Perhaps just a taste.”
    Lincoln stands and appears to wobble a bit. He snatches up his stovepipe, turns it onto his head. Sheaves of paper, stashed there with a pair of white kid gloves, flutter about. “What is all this rubbish?”
    â€œYou should keep your affairs at the desk,” Douglass frets.
    â€œHow very important I am!” Lincoln cries, hopping about. “Coded dispatches from the front! Commendation order for one Corporal Bryce Riley! A speech in longhand!”
    Douglass picks up the sheet at his feet. “What is this then?”
    â€œHow does it go?”
    Douglass sniffs the flask and winces another swallow down. He clears his throat and reads: “‘It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God’s assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men’s faces.’”
    Lincoln shrugs. “Just a notion I’ve been playing with.”
    â€œNot bad, Lincoln. A bit tentative, perhaps.”
    Lincoln watches the wind hurl his papers, some landing on the rippled current. Others dance high in the golden noon, as if to drunkenly alight, before tangling in the bank’s undergrowth. The merriment drains off Lincoln in dark sheets; his brow collapses. He stoops to collect the floating documents, a motion somber with the weight ofundesire.
    Douglass, suddenly feeling the effects of drink, improvises an awkward jig. “Cheer up, Lincoln! You are yet the president of these United States!”
    Lincoln sucks in his cheeks. “So I am given to understand.”
    A FTER HE TROUNCES McClellan in the election of 1864, rumors begin to circulate around the capital of a plot to depose Lincoln and appoint a dictator. The president, suffering an intense bout of melancholia, refuses to see members of his cabinet.
    â€œIf anyone can do better than me, let him try his hand,” he writes, in a note to congressional leaders. “You boys at the other end of the avenue seem to feel my job is sorely desired. Listen: I am but one man in this ruinous union, which has become nothing but a white elephant, impossible to steer or manage.”
    â€œA ND WHY SUGAR , L INCOLN ?”
    â€œThe effects of the elixir reach the brain faster.”
    â€œIt is not just a matter of taste?”
    â€œCertainly