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This writing was accepted for publication in the 84 page perfect-bound issue of cc&d (v245) (the September / October 2013 Issue) You can also order this 5.5" x 8.5" issue as an ISSN# paperback book:

Order this writing in the book Art is not Meant to be Touched cc&d 2013 collection book		get the 374 page July - Dec. 2013 cc&d magazine issue collection 6" x 9" ISBN# paperback book:

Macabre Abe

W. Scott R. Brownlee

    Abraham Lincoln was lying on his bed. Blankets were clad about at his sockless feet. He watched the alabaster skin of his thin belly, hair covered, move up and down as he breathed. Breathing was a start. His eyes were swollen inside the sockets of his aching skull, empty after a river of tears had flushed through them. The skin of his body was stretched across the bones of his cheeks sullenly; wrinkled and worn from the burden of war and pestilence. Grief was sprinkled with sadness on his lingering depression, that despondent dark motor inside his brain that had captured his soul from time to time, a trepid balancing act throughout his life of fighting off sadness with his now waning buoyant optimism. Those days when optimism was reliable enough to return as seasons do, blossoming like a flower pushing throughout the rich, moist, black soil of Illinois prairie, had now long since passed. Willy died one year ago today.
    President Jefferson and General Lee had since fought aggressively in the bloody war, at Shiloh where more American soldiers were killed in one day than in the Mexican War and both wars with Great Britain combined. At Bull Run fierce, smoky battles were fought twice, almost within shooting distance of the White House during the second battle. New Orleans was the one bright light, where at least the Union held the city and cut off the Rebels from the Gulf of Mexico. At Antietam hope had glimmered for victory like young infatuation, always doomed to fade into something coarser, realism bordering on nihilism as the bodies mounted on each side with nothing accomplished except tens of thousands of graves having been dug. Finally, at Fredericksburg, where the Confederates were sitting the winter out. The President stayed in bed until well past breakfast time.
    Abraham Lincoln glanced at the window of the White House without moving his head. The grey sky outside reminded him of dusk, the twilight of hope and life, the essence of both fading faster than one is comfortable with. It was gloomy outside, soggy and cold. He stared at the slowly swirling grey clouds for a long time.
    Downstairs the screams of his sobbing wife stirred him from his hypnotic gaze. He looked now at the ceiling and then he sighed sadly, mournfully. A tear bubbled up in his eye and it ran in a long wet streak down his haggard, stubbly cheek. It was as if a mountain sat on his chest. His ribs stuck out from his flesh. Laboriously his breaths came as he slid his heavily exhausted calves and feet off of the mattress, the springs beneath squeaking as he moved. Seemingly to have taken years, Abraham stretched slightly and his bones felt ancient as they creaked. The floor boards felt cold on his calloused feet.
    The President of the Union slid his feet languidly, morbidly along the cool, polished floorboards at a sluggish pace and his chest was aching from the heaving he had done as he wept silently and alone through the night as his wife wandered through the dark haunts of the White House screaming. Upon coming to the buffalo skin rug, his trod ceased as he stared numbly at the oak door. The screams echoed up the hallway into his room beneath the crack at the bottom of the door. He turned his head one last time to gaze longingly at his bed as his fingertips gently caressed the shiny door knob.
    Abraham Lincoln did not recall having dressed himself. A stove pipe hat was in his hand. He walked down the steps and as he passed his screaming wife, the crescendo of her screams grew louder yet to her husband’s ears it had become a numb, steady monotone, a shrilly cry he was immune to, a treble beat that was tweaked to a point of seeming to be able to tear apart the fibers of skin itself but Abraham had far more sober matters to contend with this grey morning. As he passed her, Mary lunged at him, clawing at his hat, screaming maddeningly, but he took her firmly with his other hand, long fingers grasping her dress from the evening before, pressing her so hard that finally blood pumped vigorously inside of him, bringing color to his hand. Abraham pointed his hat at the asylum they could see through the window, sitting on a nearby hillside just past a couple of horse drawn carriage filled streets. Mary placed her trembling hands on the cold window, gazing at the tufts of snow on the lawn as she gasped for him to not go there again.
    Abraham Lincoln walked outside into the cold air and put his hat and gloves on. Shivering from the cold and raw nerves, he summoned his carriage and he climbed in, never looking back at his sobbing wife’s breath condensing on the pane of glass. Drifting in a haze of misery, the President watched the wheel of carriage spin around and around in the mud sodden streets until his meditative state was disturbed by the rhythm of the carriage coming to a halt. He looked up to see the sign of Oak Hill cemetery.
    The President felt the blood running inside of him now. Color could be seen in his pale, haggard face as he walked alone along the cemetery path until the driver could only see his top hat bobbing ever so slowly downward below the line of the descending hill. The path was covered in an inch of snow. Mausoleums dotted the rolling hill of the cemetery. Headstones were covered in a dust of snow. The leafless trees shook in a slight wind. Snow on their barren branches sifted away in light wisps. Stepping through the snow in his polished shoes, Abraham turned down another path, a windy path that went downhill further until he came across two marble mausoleums. One had a black iron gate. Clutching the keys in his hand, he opened the gate, stepped inside the vault and he heard his shoes clicking on the floor echo slightly as his breath floated in hurried clouds outside past the iron bars. He shut the gate. A metallic coffin sat on a stone slab.
    Abraham opened the coffin. Willy’s body was lying inside and his attire, a jacket with a white collar folded over the black cloth, was dust free and seemingly brand new. The father sat on the stone beside the casket to view his son’s tender face. The cheeks were gaunt now below closed eyes. The make-up powder on the body’s face was soggy and coagulating in beads, revealing the pallid, colorless flesh that death brings. Abraham sprinkled powder onto his son’s face, applying it with a small barber’s brush and once done, he placed the articles onto the stone slab next to the coffin. He tenderly used his fingertips to swipe away the hair from his son’s powdered forehead up further onto his son’s forehead to make the part. Abraham then leaned his elbow onto his knee. He sat there forlornly. His long, wrinkled palm held up his chin as tears ran over his lips and through his shaking fingers.

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