Lincoln in the Bardo(39)

janice p. dwightson

I give her dimonds and perls and broke the harts of wife and children and sell the house from under us to buy more dimonds and perls but she thows me over for mr hollyfen with his big yellow laughing horseteeth and huge preceding paunch?

robert g. twistings

Sixty acres with a good return & a penful of hog & thirty head cattle & six fine horses & a cobbled stone house snug as a cradle in winter & a fine wife who looks adoringly at me & three fine boys who hang on my every word & a fine orchard giving pears apples plums peaches & still Father don’t care for me?

lance durning

One thing I dont like is I am dumb! Everyone treats me like I am dumb all my life. And I am! Dumb. Even sewing for me is a hard one. My aunt who raised me sat hours showing me sewing. Do it like this, hon, she would say. And I would. Once. Then next time I needed to do it that way I would just sit there, needle raised. And auntie would say lord child this is the nine-millionth time I am showing you this. Whatever it was. See, now I cant remember! What it was. What auntie showed me that I forgot. When a young man come a-courting he would say something such as about the guv’ment and I would say, oh, yes, the guv’ment, my aunts teaching me to sew. And his face’d go blank. Who would want to hold or love one so dull. Unless she is fair. Which I am not. Just plain. Soon I am too old for the young men to come and be bored and that is that. And my teeth go yellow and some fall out. But even when you are a solitary older lady it is no treat to be dumb. Always at a party or so on you are left to sit by the fire, smiling as if happy, knowing none desire to speak with you.

miss tamara doolittle

Lugged seventy-pound pipe-lengths up Swatt Hill—Come home hands torn to hell & bleeding—Rolled gravel nineteen hours straight ––& look how I am rewarded—Edna & girls shuffling in and out, gowns stained attending me—Always worked hard, worked cheerful—& once I am better will get right back at it—Only, my left boot needs resoled—& need to collect what Dougherty owes me—Edna knows not of it—& it will go uncollected I fear—It is much needed just now—As I cannot work—If you could kindly inform Edna—So she may collect—It is much needed just now—As I am ill & abed and of little use to them.

tobin “badger” muller

Mr. Johns Melburn did take me to a remote part of the manse and touch me in an evil way. I was just a boy. And he an eminence. Not a word of protest did I (could I) speak. Ever. To anyone. I should like to speak of it now. I should like to speak of it and speak of— vesper johannes

Mr. DeCroix and Professor Bloomer came blundering up, shouldering Mr. Johannes rudely aside, lurching bumpily up into the doorway, conjoined at the hip from their many years of mutual flattery.

the reverend everly thomas

In my time, I made many discoveries previously unknown in the scientific pantheon, for which I was never properly credited. Have I mentioned how dull my peers were? My research dwarfed theirs in importance. Yet they believed their research dwarfed mine. I was regarded by them as a minor figure. When I knew very well I was quite major. I produced eighteen distinct brilliant tomes, each breaking entirely new ground on such topics as— Many apologies.

I find myself temporarily unable to recall my exact area of study.

I do, however, recall that final ignominy, when, after my departure, and before I was propelled here (as I lingered, agitated, in that familiar maple), my house was emptied and my papers lugged into a vacant lot and— professor edmund bloomer

Don’t get worked up, sir.

When you lurch about like that it pains me at our juncture.

lawrence t. decroix

And burned!

My brilliant unpublished tomes were burned.

professor edmund bloomer

There, there. Do you know what became of my pickle factory? Not to change the subject? It stands. Of that, at least, I am proud. Although pickles are no longer made there. It is now some sort of boat-building establishment. And the name of DeCroix Pickles has been all but— lawrence t. decroix

So unfair! My work, my ground-breaking work, went up in a cloud of— professor edmund bloomer

I feel that way too, you know, about my factory. It was so vital, in its day. The morning-whistle would sound, and from the surrounding houses would pour my seven hundred loyal— lawrence t. decroix

Thank you for agreeing it was so unfair. Not many are so keenly discriminating. So intuitively sympathetic. To my work. I believe you would have recognized me for the great man I was. If only we had met! If only you had been the editor of one of the premier scientific journals of my day! You could have published my work. And seen that I got my due. At any rate, I thank you, from the heart, for acknowledging that I was the foremost thinker of my time. I feel some measure of redemption, having been at last recognized as the finest mind of my generation.

professor edmund bloomer

Say, did you ever taste one of my pickles? If you ate a pickle in the Washington area during the early part of the century, the odds are good it was a “DeCroix Ferocious.”

lawrence t. decroix

The jars had a red-and-yellow label, as I recall. And upon each, a drawing of a wolverine in a waistcoat?

professor edmund bloomer

Yes! Those were my pickles! Did you think they were good?

lawrence t. decroix

Very good.

professor edmund bloomer

Thank you so much, for saying my pickles were excellent. Thanks for saying that, of all of the pickles being made in the nation at that time, mine were, by far, the best.