That Nation Might Live: One Afternoon with Lincoln’s Stepmother Page 4

  “Before long Tom had built me a loom, and when I heard of some lime burners being round Gentryville, I made Tom mosey on over and git some lime, and whitewash the cabin. And he made me an ash hopper for lye, and a chicken house nothing could git into. He put in a real door, cut out a window we filled with glass pane - I wouldn’t stand for no such oilpaper as Tommy thought we should. He patched the crumbling from the stick-n-mud chimney and made the oak floor smooth as glass. With the door fixed the warmth stayed in while soft comfort was plenty available. Downstairs was two plump feather beads in the corners, piled high with warm quilts I’d made back in Liztown. The loft didn’t get much of the heat from the fire, so the boys were most comforted by warm bedclothes. My kitchenware was plentiful around the clean fireplace, the dishes were clean and stacked on my $45 black walnut bureau.

  “There were eight of us then to do for. Purty soon we had the best house in the country. There was no school that winter in Pigeon Creek as there weren’t enough children. We got all fixed up soon enough and the children had time on end to enjoy the forest. Tommy and me made an easy peace. He was darn tickled to have me for a wife, and listening to me clearly done him some good, so we set out to get to know one another while the chillern were freed up with a blessed wilderness.

  “Abe showed my young’uns how they could eat fox grapes right off the hanging vines. Then Betsy and Tildy showed Abe and Sairy how the kids in Liztown were using the ropes for funning. They cut down some vine and give one end to Abe and the other to John D. and had them swing it around so it was steady in rhythm, then they figure till the time was just right and jump right under it, and when it come round again they’d jump over it, and then just as soon, under it. They done that a plenty until they would find something else. Abe showed them how to make hoops using hickory saplings and rawhide, and so they went on, clowning along the day. Life was huckleberry pie.

  I am going away from you, Abraham,

  and shall not return.

  I know that you will be a good boy;

  that you will be kind

  to your Sister and Father.

  I want you to live as I have taught you,

  and love your Heavenly Father.

  3

  Live as I have Taught You

  “Deaf and blind to the movements of others, we were surrounded by the tallest trees of the Good Lord’s creation. Folks were settling closer as time went on. The Brooner family was half mile away. Still wilderness, but the men didn’t have to wait for Gentry’s store to get to jawing about Missouri coming into the Union. Alabama coming in Slave made it the same number as the Free states. Missouri being Slave would mean we just as quick have more Slave than Free states. Most in Indiana was up in arms about it. So we brung in Maine as Free, and we were all even again. It was the year 1820 when them men finally quit their yippin about it.

  “Abe, when old folks spoke, was a silent and attentive observer, never speaking or asking questions til they were gone and then he must understand everything, even to the smallest thing, minutely and exactly. He would then repeat it over to himself again and again, sometimes in one form and then in another; and when it was fixed in his mind to suit him he became easy, and he never lost that fact or his understanding of it. Sometimes he seemed pestered to give expression to his ideas and got mad, almost, at one who couldn’t explain plainly what he wanted to convey.

  “As company would come to our house, Abe would sometimes take a book and retire aloft, or go to the stable or field or woods and read. Abe was always fond of fun, sport, wit and jokes. He was sometimes very witty indeed. He never drank whiskey or other strong drink. He was temperate in all things, too much so I thought.

  “Abe never told me a lie in his life, never evaded, never equivocated, and never dodged nor turned a corner to avoid any chastisement or other responsibility; was honest as they come. He never swore or used profane language in my presence nor in others that I now remember of, and he duly reverenced old age though he loved those best about his own age. But he played with those younger than him. He listened to those older and argued with his equals. Abe loved animals, generly, and treated them kindly. He loved children well, very well. He treated everybody and everything kindly and humanely, though he didn’t care much for crowds of people; he chose his own company which was always good.

  “Time pass on and we got our routines and it wasn’t too long afore we felt like the eight of us had never been apart. On the clearing was nothing but chores and family.

  “When Denny was say twenty years old and Betsy was fifteen and then some, she come round asking my opinion if they were to marry. Wasn’t no stopping it, my pestering would be about as discouraging on Betsy as my Ma’s and Pa’s was on me. Tommy said we’d just ask in a few in particular and do it soon. I plague him a bit on his new habit of proposing quick weddings. I figure what Tommy was having to say, which was, we were poor.

  “About that time harvest was still a ways yet, there were eight of us to feed. Ate mostly game. Was a time when Tommy led the family in blessing the meal we were about to eat. All we had in front of us a few boiled taters as the fellers weren’t too apt or lazy to bag us game. Quiet settled all round when Abe squeak out:

  “Mighty poor blessings.”

  “Tommy might a cuffed him good had it not been for all the other chillern grinning like eejits. Abe was right of course.

  “I sent Abe with a jug to a certain distiller, being there were expectations for a wedding, even if Tommy didn’t partake. Got us a date with a preacher, and a short guest list, maybe fifteen in all.

  Denny went back to Kaintuck to fetch his half brother, John Hall. He must a gone hopping and skipping across the Ohio, thrilled by marrying my baby girl. Seem early to me but no point in figuring once young’uns get it in their heart. On the clearing there ain’t much but chores and family. Best git them married off afore things become shameful. No need for that.

  “Denny come back from Kaintuck with John Hall, and the Preacher done it at noon that day. Betsy was flush in the cheeks like a young bride should be. Denny was goodness to the core, iffin a little peculiar and prone to speeching. Betsy could a done as poorly as her Mama done first time around, but she done OK with Denny. After the ceremony they sat by themselves in a corner, Betsy seeing nothing but Denny, and Denny looking like a cat that swallowed a bird.

  “It begun to peck at Abe it seem, gittin to feel so much normal all of us together as family. He was not quite as upright. I see him try to fun his way out of this empty well. He’d get to firing his yarns, and he’d a scratch his arm with excitement as he’d get going. It would work for a little while. I resolved to stay a hawk above my far-eyed boy.

  “We’d sit for evenings and hardly say but a word. Abe would read mostly, sitting on the floor folding his long form into the darnedest positions I ever seen. Times where he’d come and set next to me just as you and I are, right now. We ain’t said but a word or two, and it comfort him I think, for me to set with him and not ask nothing of him. Speaking wasn’t always necessary, the two of us. His mind and mine, what little I had, seemed to run together, move in the same channel.”

  “Abe begun to disappear now and again. I spy him closely, speak nothing of it. Only way to outfox a fox, Mr. Herndon... One day I took the horse path to the first fork and then circled back to a special knoll. Just as I figured, there was Abe. Was a field of graves, mostly unmarked. Abe lay there, lay where Nancy was buried. I come back to the cabin and let him be.

  “One day I excused myself just as he was fixin to go. I went to Nancy’s grave. Time come long when I heard Abe rustling through the trees and just hold up all at once. Paying him no mind, I prayed for Nancy while he stayed hidden. We done that once or twice more. Finally Abe come down to see me as I knelt at Nancy’s grave. By the time he reached me, he’d been carrying his hurt heart for so long and I could see he was done hauling it. I pulled him to me and told him how much I missed his Ma. Abe was all boy for the first time for me, just then. I m
ade sure to hold him up tight so he didn’t have to carry that weight alone no more, and he let go.

  “Abe told me the story, said how the cows started stumbling and struggling something awful just to brace themselves, and how their heads drop, knees lock, and then the trembling begins. Milk-sick plague come on. Was a pizon (Writer clarifies—poison) the cows were taking into their udders from grubbing on a root in the shade. Come to find out that it was drought that brought milksick. Herds were driven to the trees and the grass was dry, so they chewed on the roots for their moisture. Some roots run with the poison. The sight of a cow trembling was the shadow of death, and that begun the most God awful time which I ought not think on. Poor Nancy!

  “Wasn’t a doctor nearer than thirty-five miles. They didn’t have no answers nohow, except for whiskey mostly, or baking soda. It wasn’t no use. Pray for mercy, that’s all. Whole families were laid to the ground in a week’s times, dragging around like skeletons, afore they succumb. Nancy’s own parents, Tom and Betsy Sparrow, were the first to pass. Those that were living tried boarding up their houses, or just moved off, but it done them no good. They were just waiting for that darned plague to move along and git.

  “When it come, it begun with vomiting mostly, and then it was suffering one horror to the next, the tongue gets black as night, screaming belly pain, and blocked up every which way. The Brooners were the closest thing the Lincolns had for neighbors. Abe and the Brooner’s boy… Henry was the Brooner boy’s name. Abe and Henry were at times inseparable, and insufferable. They once walked to Vincennes, a distance of more than fifty miles, and while there they purchased a rifle gun in partnership for fifteen dollars. Times I wanted to turn it on both of them, but boys will be boys, and that’s OK I reckon. When we moved to Illinois Henry purchased Abe’s interest in the gun.

  “Lord above, I’m fixin to talk you down all sorts of wilderness trails Mr. Herndon, seeing as what come next was plain awful. Plague was all around the Lincolns when Mrs. Brooner begun vomiting. Nancy Hanks done as Nancy Hanks done, and she went to her neighbor and cared for her, just as she done for her Ma and Pa.

  “When Nancy came to tend to her, Mrs. Brooner said, ‘I believe I will have to die.’ Nancy was encouraging her not to give up hope and said, ‘Oh, you may outlive me.’ And Mr. Herndon, don’t you know they were both gone but ten days later. Maybe Nancy put herself at risk tending to her neighbor, but that’s what Angels do, and that’s what Nancy was. Her heart couldn’t stand it no other way.

  “Nancy knew what was coming for her, having treated her Ma and Pa, and Mrs. Brooner. She know’d how it worked by then, so she called Abe and Sairy to her bed one at a time. Her words were calming and measured, just as Nancy was. Abe told me many a time, she said, ‘I am going away from you, Abraham, and I shall not return. I know that you will be a good boy; and that you will be kind to your sister and father. I want you to live as I have taught you, to love your Heavenly Father and keep His commandments.’

  “Tommy made those her last words to the chillern, keeping Abe and Sairy busy choring while they lived with Dennis, who was grieving over his parents too. Denny’s parents, Tom and Betsy Sparrow, they were Abe’s Granmarm and Grandpappy. Abe thought them blood kin till much later in his life. He never forgot the misery in that little green-log cabin in the woods when his Gram and Grandpappy died, then come his Ma. Few things tax a heart greater in this world than a babe without a Mama, just as innocent as the Good Lord creates. Easy pickens too.

  “Abe said how he helped Tom make the coffin. He took a log left over from building the cabin, and helped Tommy whipsaw it into planks and plane them. Abe held the planks while Tom bored holes and put them together with pegs Abe’d sat and whittled. There weren’t scarcely any nails in the country and little iron, except in knives and guns and cooking pots. Appears to me like Tom was always making a coffin for someone.

  “They laid Nancy close to the deer run in the woods. Deer were the only wild critters women weren’t afraid of. Abe was somewheres round nine years old, but he never got over the miserable way his mother died. I reckon she didn’t have no sort of care—poor Nancy! She was taken on a sled to the graveyard. Abe and Sairy rode the horse hitched to the sled. Abe remembered the driver was Old Man Howell, and that the man’s long beard bothered him.

  When Mrs. Lincoln’s grave was filled, Mrs. Brooner’s husband, Pete, extended his hand to Tommy and said, ‘We are brothers, now.’”

  While Mrs. Lincoln rests, Writer reflects on Nancy Hanks Lincoln:

  The poor woman sleeping under the winter’s snow had done her work in this world. Stoop-shouldered, sad—at times miserable—groping through the perplexities of life, without any prospect for the betterment of her condition, Nancy Hanks Lincoln passed from this earth, little dreaming of the grand future that lay in store for the ragged, hapless little boy who stood at her bedside the last days of her life.

  Amid the miserable surroundings of a home in the wilderness Nancy Hanks passed across the dark river, God bless her. If I could breathe life into her again, I would do it. If only I could whisper in her ear, “Your son was President of the United States of America from 1861 to 1865,” I would be satisfied.

  I have heard much of this blessed Nancy Hanks Lincoln from Mr. L. Though of lowly birth and the victim of poverty and hard usage, she takes a place in history as the mother of a son who liberated a race of men. At her side stands another Mother whose son performed a similar service for all mankind eighteen hundred years before. God selects unpromising cradles for his greatest and best servants. At his Will and Tender Mercy, this very woman resting before me will stand among them, the sprightly woman who knew what education could do for people.

  William H. Herndon, Sept, 1865 (Writer requires refreshment, retires).

  The respite does my mind and hand good. Mrs. Lincoln mumbled unitelligably about Nancy as she rose to consciousness; her present mind able to resume what was begun, or continued, in dream state. “Nancy Hanks was base born,” she spilled out clear enough. She continued:

  “She told me herself once. Her Pa was from Virginny, a well-bred man, and he loved Nancy’s Ma, but he did not live up to his commitments and Lucy Hanks was left with a baby that become the talk of the Shenandoah Valley. Hanks family had to pick up and git. Went West a course, to Kaintuck. Crossed through the Cumberland Gap as most done.

  “I was born on the clearing, Mr. Herndon, never stepped a foot in any kind of a civilized Virginny. Lucy Hanks come from there with baby Nancy on her bosom. Soon after they arrive in Kaintuck, Lucy give baby Nancy up to her parents and just cut loose of her moorings. Taken enough shaming that she just set free. Wasn’t long after she was brought afore the judge, on a charge that a lady does not speak of.”

  Mrs. Lincoln whispers her story to Tildy, who relays to Writer that Lucy Hanks was charged with fornication.

  “Lucy’s Pa wasn’t for the clearing, he up and died. Lucy’s Ma wasn’t for the clearing as a widow, so she up and return to civilized Virginny. She went home alone, so Nancy was given up again. Lucy wasn’t for taking her babe back. She was all new. A good man - distinguished like, come a courting Lucy Hanks. She was broken like a wild horse, and settle in for six children with this man who’s name I can’t recollect. No mind, Lucy taught all them six young’uns to read and write, and she died a real woman of society.

  Lucy was there when Nancy married Tommy. When I come across her she was kindly, and civilized. Never could tell by watching her that day she was there at her babe’s wedding pretending to be her Aunt.

  “The woman that walked her beautiful Nancy to Tommy’s side at that wedding was by blood kin, Aunt Betsy. By her heart, she was Nancy’s Mama. Poor babe been passed around until finally Betsy and her husband, Tom Sparrow, raised Nancy as their own. Called their home ‘the Sparrow’s nest.’ May just be that the one thing we can come to count on is to count on nothing! Time comes when a babe needs a home. With the Good Lord’s tender mercies, loving hearts will make room for one
more precious soul. The Sparrows done the same when Denny need a home later on. Denny was base born. He’s prone to mention that to you soon after the how-do’s, iffin not afore.

  “Nancy was gracious and kind as the day is long, the portrait of beauty and grace as I seen it, as we all seen it. Never a harsh word to no one, never one directed at her, she was like that. Could stay with a family and blend right in. Was passed off for a time to a well-to-do family, name of Berry, I recall it. The Berry’s had slaves. Fact, there were slaves cooking and serving, some fiddling too, at the very wedding of Thomas Lincoln and Nancy Hanks. Was done on the Berry’s property.

  “Nancy wasn’t blessed with the roots I got by being under Christopher and Hannah Bush. We Bushes were plentiful, and stuck with one another like honey to a critter’s paw. We were fortunate when I look round. No figuring for what become of families. Nancy was dears with a girl I know’d some - name was Sarah Mitchell. She is the woman Nancy named little Sairy after, not me, as some have said.

  “Sarah Mitchell was a girl of the clearing, such as myself. Her Pa swam the Ohio trying to get his baby girl back from them Injins that were paddling off with her. She seen him drown afore she was ripped from all she known. She come back years later as part of a trade with the Injins - Abe told me it was called a treaty. What those two spoke of when they were alone, Nancy and Sarah, only the good Lord knows it. They had the same eyes, sad and still somehow at peace too. Abe got them eyes too, from Nancy no doubt.

  “Nancy could ease my mind, comforted me without so much as a word, that was a gift from the Lord, for certain. I was an uppity horse, kicking and blustering for attention, times I just needed Nancy Hanks to stand by my stall to calm me down. She seen into people without a lick of judgement to her. She seen what folks need. It was Nancy that started Abe on books. He worked on the alphabet with her til he got up to simple sentences like, ‘No man may put off the law of God.’ Or, ‘The way of God is no ill way.’ It wasn’t long before he mastered those and begun to take his turn during the family’s daily Bible readings.