Dog Diaries #13 Read online

The gang’s usual game was Town Ball. They played it with a rubber ball and a slat borrowed from a picket fence. Every so often, I’d grab the ball myself. That set off a brand-new game they called Get the Ball Back from Fido.

  Other times, they played Blindman’s Bluff. With all those young ’uns stumbling about, I had to look lively or I’d be trampled underfoot.

  But the most dangerous game was Mumblety-Peg. Each player took a turn throwing a jackknife into the dirt and then lunging after it in a single step. In those days, mothers let their sons play with sharp knives. When I heard the word Mumblety-Peg, I’d take cover in the nearest bush!

  My personal favorite was Circus. It was the kids’ own version of the circus that now and then came to town. The gang would post signs all over, string bunting along the fence, and charge buttons for admission. In our backyard, Willie swung from a tree branch like a trapeze artist. Link was a magician, pulling rabbits and pigeons from his pa’s tall hat. Daring Josie sailed high on a wooden swing. But the star of the circus was a certain yaller dog. In exchange for treats, I would sit, roll over, and fetch.

  Whenever Lincoln was home, he joined in the fun. Many was the afternoon he would take off from lawyering to shoot a game of marbles or spin a top or fly a kite with the boys.

  One summer’s day, he came home early from lawyering and said to Tad and Willie, “We’re goin’ fishin’, boys. Let’s hitch up Old Bob.”

  We came barging into the barn carrying fishing poles and a hamper of goodies. You should have seen the look on Old Bob’s face.

  Oh, happy day! the horse whickered. Lincoln picked the rocks from his hooves while the boys soaped up his bridle and harness. It’s one thing to take Little Missy to visit friends. But stepping out with Abe holding the reins is a rare privilege. It brings back the good old days of riding the circuit—and that’s a fact.

  With Bob hitched up, we all clambered aboard the buggy. The old horse proudly pulled us through town toward the Sangamon River. As we passed by, the other children poured out of their houses.

  “Grab your fishing poles and climb aboard!” Lincoln called out to them.

  The youngest Melvin boy blubbered, “I don’t got no fishing pole.”

  “Don’t worry, little man!” Lincoln called back. “We’ll rig you up something good.”

  Mrs. Melvin came out, shaking her head. “Abraham Lincoln, you’re a veritable Pied Piper.”

  “Don’t you worry, Mrs. Melvin. I’ll have your boys back before supper.”

  All afternoon, we dug for worms and fished for fish and feasted on the banks of the Sangamon. As the sun began to sink, we loaded up and Old Bob took us back to town. He stopped to let off each tired and muddy young ’un at their front door.

  When we got to our door, Little Missy was there waiting for us. She was tapping her foot and looking fit to be tied. “Just where have you been? I hope you don’t expect me to cook dinner.”

  “No worries. We’ve brought our dinner with us, Mother.” Lincoln held up a bucket of river trout.

  Little Missy made a face like she’d just eaten a rotten pawpaw. “You’ll have to clean them yourselves. I can’t stand the feel of fish guts.”

  “Don’t worry, Mother,” said Willie sweetly. “Taddy and Fido and me love fish guts.”

  * * *

  —

  But all was not fun and fish guts. One day, I followed Lincoln a ways out of town to the boneyard, otherwise known as Hutchinson Cemetery. There, Lincoln made his way in and out of the rows until we came to the small stone marker in the corner.

  Lincoln took off his tall hat and held it over his heart. He stared down at the stone and spoke:

  “Edward B.

  Son of A. & M. Lincoln

  DIED Feb. 1, 1850.

  Age 3 years 10 months 18 days

  Of such is the kingdom of Heaven.”

  After we had visited a few times, I understood. Lincoln had three sons in the house on the corner. And a fourth lying in the earth under that small stone.

  “Eddy wasn’t four years old when he went,” he said to me. “Once, when Mary and the two boys were visiting family in Lexington, Eddy adopted a stray kitten. How that child loved cats! Mary’s stepmother hated them and kicked the poor thing out of the house. Eddy screamed and yelled and carried on. I always say you can tell a lot about a person from the way he treats animals. He was a fine little boy and would have grown into a fine man.”

  Just like his father. Of that I had no doubt.

  Every Sunday, Little Missy dressed to the nines and went to church. Sometimes, she took the boys with her. Other times, she left them with Lincoln. Often

  as not, he would take them to his lawyering office in town. He’d get them settled in with some marbles. Then he’d go and bury his head in the pile of papers. He didn’t pay those lads the slightest mind. So what happened next? A mountain of mischief!

  Willie’s noggin was chock-full of mischief. And Tad had begun to make a fair study of it, too. They’d run around and build a tall mountain out of papers and books and anything else they could find that wasn’t nailed down. Then they’d sprinkle the top with ashes from the wood stove. Howling with wild glee, the two would climb up the mountain and stomp them ashes into the paper and books.

  Hey, Lincoln! I’d bark. Pay some mind to what’s going on right under your nose!

  But did he listen to me? Not one little bit. So I lay down, nose on paws, and fretted. Meanwhile, Lincoln’s partner, Mr. Herndon, sat at his desk and wagged his head in pure dismay.

  “Little devils,” he muttered. He looked like he wanted to wring their necks. But he held back.

  Still, even young Herndon had his limits—and he met them on a Sunday after the young ’uns had gotten into a shelf of lawyer books. As evening fell, Lincoln got up and shook himself off like a dog coming in out of the rain. He called the boys to him and took their hands and led them toward the door, stepping over the unholy mess they’d made. Either he didn’t notice it or he didn’t care. His mind was somewhere else. That’s the kind of feller he was. Head in the clouds.

  Mr. Herndon finally spoke up. “If they were mine, I’d take off my shoe and give them a licking they’d never forget.”

  Lincoln’s eyes flashed. “It is my pleasure that my children are free, happy, and unrestrained by parental tyranny. Love is the chain whereby to bind a child to his parents.”

  That was Lincoln for you. One deep thinker.

  Mr. Herndon wasn’t the only person in town who took a dim view of Lincoln’s methods of raising up his young. One day—I must have been three years old and then some—I followed Lincoln over to Judge Treat’s office.

  The two men sat playing chess and jawing about politics. Don’t ask me what politics is. It was a topic that got everyone in town all fired up. Every-

  one but me. They yammered. I slept. Suddenly, I woke as Tad came bursting through the door.

  He was a young lad now, of maybe five years, but he was still as tongue-twisted as ever. He stood there, struggling. I knew how he felt. We dogs often

  suffer when we try to express ourselves. Lacking human voice, we fail often as not. But Lincoln never had any trouble understanding Tad. That day,

  he was telling Lincoln to come home for supper.

  Lincoln waved Tad off. “Run along and tell Mother I’ll be home by and by, Taddy.”

  Tad went away. Some time later, he came marching back. The men were still at their game. Again, Tad asked and Lincoln said, “Soon, Taddy. Run along.” The third time rolled around. Lincoln was still at the game. In a fit of botheration, the lad brought his knee up beneath the table and jolted the board. Game pieces went flying.

  “Home NOW!” He stomped his foot.

  Judge Treat was madder than a wet hen.

  “You ought to punish the boy,” he said to Lincoln. “He has ruined our game!” br />
  Lincoln smiled slyly. “Considering the position of your pieces, Judge, at the time of the upheaval, I think you had no reason to complain.”

  Lincoln, an easy father and a wily lawyer, was about to become famous for his speechifying.

  In June of 1858, a big meeting called the State Convention had come to town. Men flocked from all over to meet and gab. When they were finished with their meeting and gabbing, they announced that Lincoln was their choice for something called the United States Senate.

  Lincoln told us that night at the dinner table: “It appears I am running for office.”

  Little Missy was thrilled to her toes. So were the boys. But I was puzzled. Running? Lincoln, running? Striding, always. Loping, sometimes. But I don’t believe I’d ever seen the man run. And not ever to the office.

  As usual, I looked to Old Bob for answers. He told me the office in question was not Lincoln’s lawyering one but a government office. He said Lincoln was running a race against another man to win that office, a slick feller named Stephen Douglas. People called him the Little Giant. He was a little man with stubby legs. I figured Lincoln, with his long ones, would lick him.

  The Little Giant and Lincoln didn’t see eye to eye. They took turns speechifying before crowds to see how many people they could win over to their side. That’s how they’d get votes and win this race.

  When I followed him to his lawyering office one day, Lincoln invited me in and then locked the door. He said to his partner, “Will you listen to my speech? I think Fido’s had his fill of it.”

  I’d heard him speechifying under his breath for days now.

  “If it’s the speech you’re giving tomorrow at the hall of the House of Representatives, I’d love to hear it,” said Mr. Herndon.

  I settled down to gnaw on a bit of cowhide I had stashed beneath the desk. Lincoln paced. In his high, twangy voice, he commenced:

  “Mr. President and gentlemen of the convention. If we could first know where we are, and whither we are tending, we could then better judge what to do, and how to do it.

  “We are now far into the fifth year, since a policy was initiated, with the avowed object, and confident promise, of putting an end to slavery agitation.

  “Under the operation of that policy, that agitation has not only not ceased, but has constantly augmented. In my opinion, it will not cease, until a crisis shall have been reached, and passed. A house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe this government cannot endure, permanently half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved—I do not expect the house to fall—but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing or all the other. Either the opponents of slavery, will arrest the further spread of it, and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in the course of ultimate extinction; or its advocates will push it forward, till it shall become alike lawful in all the States, old as well as new—North as well as South….”

  A dog’s age later, Lincoln finished. Mr. Herndon rubbed his face and sighed. “I don’t know, Mr. Lincoln….It may not be politic. Are people ready to hear it?”

  Lincoln unlocked the door and went outside. Soon, he came back trailing a passel of men. They listened as he gave the speech again.

  When he was finished, no one said a word for the longest time.

  Then one man leaned back in his chair and frowned. “Abe, you can’t say that! It will stir up a hornet’s nest.”

  A second man said, “It’s a good speech, but it is too far ahead of its time.”

  “I, for one,” put in a third, “would like to hear the words finally said.”

  The men fell to arguing in loud voices. Finally, Herndon’s voice rose above the din.

  “Lincoln, deliver it as it reads. If it is in advance of the times, let us lift the people to its level. The speech is true, wise, and politic, and will succeed now or in the future. Nay. It will aid you, if it will not make you president of the United States.”

  President of the United States. The words were new to my ears. But in time, they would become all too familiar. And that was just too durned bad for me, as you’ll see for yourself, by and by.

  Lincoln and Douglas did their speechifying all over the state. The Lincoln-Douglas debates, folks called them. I was nearly four years old, and I thought I had seen and heard everything. But when those two spoke in Springfield, you would have thought the circus had come to town. Banners flew and bands played and people marched in the streets.

  All this fuss and ruckus came as an unwelcome surprise to me. In case you haven’t already figured it out, I like to enjoy my peace and quiet.

  I was sleeping under a bush in the front yard, when I heard the terrible noise for the first time. It was a pop! pop! popping! so sudden and so loud that it came pretty close to stop-stop-stopping my heart. What in the world was it? I knew—and dreaded—the sound of gunfire. Had somebody come a-gunning for me?

  When Willie came upon me whimpering in the bush, he knelt down and stroked me, grinning ear to ear. “It’s all right, boy. Them’s just firecrackers. Folks are celebrating Father. He’s a regular hometown hero. They’re happy.”

  If this is what people did when they were happy, well then, I wished them a whole lot less happiness.

  Election Day came. It was cold and rainy, not fit for a dog. Still, all of Springfield turned out to vote. Lincoln was their man.

  But folks in other towns voted for the Little Giant. Lincoln lost the race. Stephen Douglas got the government office in the Senate, and Lincoln returned to lawyering. While defeat didn’t seem to bother Lincoln any, his sons were dashed. They had had such high hopes the old man would win.

  But wouldn’t you know there was a new election coming down the pike? And this one was even bigger than the last. The town was buzzing with talk of Lincoln running for president. I still did not know a president from a tobacco plug. But his little boys perked right up. I heard their excited whispers as they lay in their bed at night. I think they sensed that their pa would win this election and their lives would change forever.

  The idea of change didn’t do nothing but worry me. If there’s anything we dogs hate, it’s change.

  And things were changing, whether I liked it or not. I knew this because it was me who carried the mail home from the post office every day, holding the letters in my mouth. Unlike watchdogging, this was one chore I did well. But beginning one day—what was this?—there were too many letters to fit in my mouth!

  On the outside, Lincoln hadn’t changed. He still wore the same hat and the same swallowtail coat. He still wore the same high-water pants and dusty boots. But inside the man, a fire burned. It lit up his pale eyes and the spirits of everyone around him. Now, as he strode down the streets of Springfield, people would tip their hats and look at him in a new way.

  They noticed it at the barbershop, too. Three times a week, rain or shine, we went down to the shop with the shiny striped pole next to the front door. Inside, Lincoln would sit down in a big chair and get his hair cut and the fur shaved off his face.

  The barber was named Mr. William Florville. He was a man from a faraway island. Folks in town called him Billy the Barber. Every so often, he liked to strike up a tune on his fiddle. Lincoln would lounge around the shop with the other men. His long legs stretched out before him, he swapped stories and shared news. But nowadays he held forth on politics as well.

  Outside the shop, we dogs lay on the walkway, waiting for our humans to reappear. It was a chance to swap stories and share news, too. And, yes, hold forth on politics in our own way.

  Carlo, a white bulldog, was our leader. He was Billy the Barber’s dog. A little black poodle, name of Jenny Lind, was also a regular. She was the cunning little canine companion of a newspaperman. All three of us were decked out in collars made by Bart, the harness maker. We knew that these collars set us apart from the o
thers. Not that I’m putting on “hairs” as Lincoln would say. But the fact is, we knew more about what was going on in the world than your typical Springfield tramp.

  Carlo lifted his big head. Fido, my friend, they say your man is headed for the White House.

  I sure hope not, I said with a shiver. I like the house we’re in now.

  He’s hungry for it. Billy says so. And I daresay that no human in this town knows Lincoln better than my Billy, with the exception of his law partner. Just the other day, Herndon came in for a shave. He was saying that Lincoln’s going to be the next president.

  Let’s hope he’s wrong. I heaved a sigh.

  How can you be so selfish? Jenny poked her pretty little nose in my face. This country needs him! Slavery is dividing the nation.

  What’s this slavery business everybody keeps jawing about? I said.

  It’s about black and white, said Carlo.

  How do you mean? I asked.

  You can see with your own eyes that Lincoln and most of the people in this town are white. You can also see that Billy—like Reverend Brown and Mr. Jenkins on your street—is black, said Carlo.

  To tell you the dog’s honest truth, I never gave it much thought. Aunt Mariah, who cooks and does the laundry for us, is black, too. But all people are alike to me, black and white. All dogs are, too. You’re white and Jenny is black—but you’re both the same to me.

  Carlo and Jenny shared a look.

  Would that more people felt the way you do, dear Fido, said Jenny. This country wouldn’t be in such deep trouble. But some whites think that blacks are ignorant and inferior and should live in chains.

  From inside the shop, Billy struck up his fiddle. Usually, he played a lively jig. But today, the tune was sad. It brought to mind the way I’d felt trussed up in the feed sack. Was this what it felt like to be a slave? Helpless and afeared and unloved?