The Last Ballad(51)
Overman was old and white-headed, and he’d shuffled along before the group of young women and their chaperone and pointed out everything they’d hoped to see: the Washington Monument; the Capitol Rotunda; the White House, where the senator had promised that President Hoover was in residence at that very moment, since the two men had spoken that morning.
Their last stop of the day had been the Lincoln Memorial. Their chaperone, Mrs. Barnes, had stood with her back to Lincoln, as he sat on the chair that seemed so much like a throne. The monument was barely seven years old. Its white marble shone glossy and smooth in the late afternoon light.
“People don’t ever believe this story,” Mrs. Barnes had said, “so none of you have to believe it either.”
The girls had all stopped talking and turned and looked toward Mrs. Barnes. Some of them had even drawn closer to hear her more clearly. She was an old woman, perhaps as old as seventy, and she rarely spoke, except in the classroom, and even then she spoke in such a way that the girls had to focus their ears to fully understand what she said.
Claire had been standing by Senator Overman, who was certainly older than Mrs. Barnes, and when she began her story with her back turned on Lincoln, the senator seemed to sense something in her tone that hinted that her story might be his own story as well. He’d stopped midsentence, stopped telling Claire about witnessing the completion of the statue’s body just a few years earlier. He’d dropped his hands where they were gesturing and drifted toward Mrs. Barnes, who stood on the edge of the shadow cast by the portico above them.
“It was early April 1865,” Mrs. Barnes said, “and I was just three years old, but my birthday was coming up in June, and I’d already been told that my daddy wouldn’t be there. My sister, Margaret, who I called Sissy—called her that until she died—had already told me that Abraham Lincoln had killed my daddy at a place called Chancellorsville. It sounded like a far-off place, and I had no idea where it was. I don’t think I even knew what killed or dead meant then. I was so young. But I knew those words made Sissy and my mother sad, and I hated Abraham Lincoln for doing those words to my father, for making my mother and sister feel that way.
“Richmond was already burning. Our boys had set the fires themselves during their retreat: the bridges, the munitions, the harbor. Maybe they didn’t expect for it to keep burning after they’d left. It was after midnight on the second night of the fires when we finally left our home and made our way down Bank Street toward my mother’s sister’s house, my aunt Jess. Her husband was away at the war too, but he would come home that summer. She was lucky. He was lucky too.
“We were coming down Ninth Street right by the Capitol. Parts of the city glowed in the distance, and you could smell the smoke and all the different smells of the things that were on fire. We were coming down the hill right by the Capitol and it was all right there before us, the whole city on fire, burning right there before us.
“We turned east on Bank Street. I don’t know who recognized him first, my mother or Sissy, but I know it wasn’t me because I didn’t know what he looked like. I was carrying my doll and a little parcel of clothing that Mother had given me. There were some stockings and a pair of shoes stuffed down inside there too. I remember I was crying because Mother wouldn’t hold my hand. Her arms were full, and she couldn’t have held my hand if she’d wanted to. Sissy’s arms were full too, and I was too young to understand that to hold my hand would’ve meant that they would have had to leave something behind. I cried and cried. I was mad, but I was scared too.
“Now that I think of it, Sissy was the one who recognized him out there on the steps. He had his arms folded across his chest. He had on a dark suit just like you see in photographs of him. No hat, nothing on his head. He was just standing there all by himself, watching. I remember seeing the light from the fire shine on his face where he was sweating. It was a warm night, probably even hotter because the city was burning, and he had on a jacket and a tie. He’d probably just come up from the river.
“But I know it was Sissy who first whispered his name. Mother hushed her as if saying it again would get his attention, would draw his eyes away from the fires to look at us. But when I understood who he was I called out to him. I wanted to ask him why he killed my daddy. I wanted to tell him how sad I was that my daddy wouldn’t be coming to my birthday party in June. That he wouldn’t be able to sing me camp songs or bring me candy like he’d done the first time he’d come home from the war. I wanted to tell him those things.
“And he must have heard me when I called his name. You may not believe it, and you don’t have to believe it, but he turned and looked at us from where he stood right there on the steps on the south side of the Capitol, Richmond burning all around us, the smoke almost choking us to death. He looked right at us, and I swear he nodded his head. What he meant in doing that, I can’t say. It could’ve meant hello or good evening or nice to see you, but I know for a fact that it did not mean I’m sorry, and sorry was the only thing I wanted him to be.”
Claire and the other girls stood there staring at Mrs. Barnes’s back while she looked out over the mud and grass that led toward the Washington Monument, her black hat pulled low and her black coat pulled tight around her against the late afternoon chill.
Claire’s heart had swelled at the romance of the story, but it was Donna who’d broken the silence, the spell that Mrs. Barnes’s story had cast, a story that had enraptured the old senator just as much as it had enraptured Claire. Donna’s white skin was soft and beautifully pale in the waning light, and when she turned to stare at the monument behind her, the setting sun caught her coppery hair and burned it a brilliant red. Donna leaned toward Mrs. Barnes and raised her hand and pointed at Lincoln.