I Am Abraham by Jerome Charyn

in the woods was unnatural. The wind had died, or fled to another county. And that’s when I saw him, a great big black bear prowling in all that whiteness, his eyes red as a silk garter strap, but raw red, with a crazy dance. He must have been starving. I clutched my pony’s ear, kept him from kicking and shying, yet I couldn’t look away from the bear’s red eyes. The Lord might have sent him searching for sinners. He rose up on his hind legs, swiped at the air with his claws, and raced into the wilderness like a furry black furnace breathing yellow fire.

8.
    Unholies
    G OD WAS ABSENT from Illinois that summer of 1835. The rain pounded relentless and wouldn’t let up until the wells overflowed and washed cabins over the cliff, and New Salem was like some ark on the Sangamon River, but with an outbreak of brain fever . It was the hottest summer in history—apples fell from branches like dry little bombs; flowers closed tight as fists—and the fever struck like lightning. Sam Hill wandered in the streets, with his galluses near his ankles, his eyes ablaze, his cheeks flooded with a green fluid. The blacksmith’s wife ran into a wall and split her head so deep, we feared she wouldn’t survive. Our doctor’s little girl went raving mad; she bit her own Pa and ripped at whoever came near her with her long fingernails. Coffins had to be built, and I became the coffin builder.
    One of Annie’s younger brothers sought me out while I was building a coffin in the blacksmith’s shop. He couldn’t stand still, that’s how nervous he was. He kept pawing at my shirt.
    “Are you Senator Lincoln, sir? I don’t mean to bother ye none, but can I speak with you, Senator?”
    I tried to calm him down. “I’m not a Senator, son. What’s wrong?”
    “Sister’s sick,” he said, his eyes bulging with sadness and a hint of fever. “She’s begging for you, Senator.”
    He’d run seven miles, all the way from Sand Ridge, his Johnny suit covered in mud thick as molasses. We couldn’t slosh around in all that muck on my little horse—he would have failed us in the middle of the journey, fallen down. I’d have had to lash that pony until he bled. I didn’t have the stomach for it, and no amount of lashes would have gotten us a minute closer to Ann.
    I carried the boy on my back, because he was ill with the fever and worn out, and we navigated through the mud until we came to Sand Ridge. The Rutledges should have been against me, caught as they were in McNeil’s grip, but they worried over Ann, and their faces were raw with the signs of that worry. For the first time they felt like kin.
    Jim Rutledge clasped my hand with his own red paw. I could see the veins on his nose. He must have had too many drams.
    “Is that you, Lincoln?”
    I nodded yes. He couldn’t have mistaken a man who was as high in the shoulder as King Saul. But he kept scrutinizing me.
    “Is the dyin’ bad in Salem?”
    I didn’t want to scarify him. We lost Preacher Martin’s wife this morning—found her stiff as a board, and bathed in green bile. “Where’s Miss Ann?”
    “You won’t let her cross to the other side, will you, Abraham?”
    “I’ll cling to her best I can, Mr. Jim.”
    Ann lay behind a closed door in the Rutledges’ sickroom—a kind of storage closet. I knocked gently as I could and entered the room. Her sick bed loomed like a gigantic cradle. Her beautiful red hair was all knotted out, and as bumpy as a copper mine. Her sered mouth was like a blister, and her silver eyes were sunk deep inside her head, as if Satan’s own assistant had been gouging at her with a stick. But she smiled so, so wanly when she saw me and held out a quivering hand. All her ripeness was gone. She was a rattle of bones.
    “I was hoping you’d come, Abraham. I’ve been adding trinkets to my trousseau. Pa says you’ll have to pick the preacher.”
    Her hand was spittin’ hot. I trembled at the touch.
    She shut her eyes. “Postman,” she rasped