Nicolay nodded at me from his desk in the outer office as I came in. Nothing strange there but silent bearded John himself. Grave Nicolay did Lincoln’s weightier correspondence, but the Ancient’s appointments were my business, and I had to keep moving. Sometimes the Old Man ran his customers through the store on a schedule so tight that they overlapped. This not only created all-day havoc, it also meant that if I wanted private moments – whether for political guidance or general wit and wisdom – I had to get in before he opened the land office, or wait until the end of the day.

I put my hand on the presidential door handle, shouted something back to Nico about slivering in Gardner, the photographer, tomorrow between 5 p.m. and 5 p.m., and went in to find His Eminence turning my way.

"Good morning, Hay. Run the gauntlet, have you? Any good new wants out there?"

"No sir," I said, "but one of the aspirants claims he can cure consumption, so maybe he can stop the smallpox sweeping the city."

"Hmmm. Maybe I should get the smallpox, Hay. Then I’d have something I could give everyone."

That was a better line the first time he’d used it, but the Man was an innocent "re-tailer," and deserved not to be detected, so I smiled. He didn’t. He seemed to have been slowed by his own sad wit, and I settled down to find his rhythm. Like other unique men, Lincoln had to be taken at his own pace, which meant the pace of the moment.

"Washington was here again," he said.

I sat in the chair across from him.

"I looked up from signing papers to take a drink of coffee," the President said, "and there he was, where you’re sitting now, working his jaw."

I looked down at the big wing-backed leather armchair I was sitting in, then stood up and brushed myself off. It was one thing for the Tycoon to have spectral contacts. He was a deep man, with great… what?… magnitude. He had room for this.

The President watched my hasty exorcism with an amused look. The first I’d seen him smile in days. He went on with the story. "‘Hello, George’ I said. ‘Teeth bothering you again?’

"‘Of course they are,’ George said in that stubborn way of his. ‘Immortality eliminates death, not dental problems.’

"I said ‘What does overcome the problems of this world, George?’

"He said, ‘I always enjoyed a good horse.’

"Now, Hay," Lincoln said as if to confide something, "to tell you the truth, having Washington appear at all has been unsettling, but somehow in the stormy exhaustion of this damned war, I’ve gotten used to it. Things aren’t normal, and there’s no time to figure everything out. But I get testy when I suspect that old George is lessoning me."

Thus confessed, the Prez went back to his story: "‘Is this what you came to tell me?’ I said.

"‘In fact it is,’ George said. ‘Do you have a good horse?’

"Then, Hay, your voice came from the outer office, and as you opened the door George disappeared."

"Should we worry about this, sir?"

"Of course not, Hay. My horse is fine."

I’m sure I looked exasperated.

"I’m sorry, Hay. Let me amend that. Our only worry is when others worry, and what they don’t know they can’t worry about."

"Yes, sir," I agreed with him, which was easy because he was one of those men who are usually right but have no lordship about it. Truth was just truth. But now that his amusement was passing off, I thought I saw in his normally grief-carved face some shadow deeper than his daily fear of losing war and nation.

"You look tired, sir."

"I’ve looked tired all my life, Hay. Did you see Tad on your way in?"

I caught myself. "No, sir. Nobody sees Tad until he leaps from beneath a desk to terrify the French ambassador."

His smile came back. "You’re right, Hay. Tad’s like the Almighty. He works in mysterious ways."

That agreed on, I thought we should get to business. "Is there news from General Grant?"

I heard the scrape of a chair in the next room and Nicolay’s surprised voice: "Senator, you can’t…," and the door swung wide and florid Ben Wode filled the frame. Senator Wode was not only self-important, he was – as chair of the Congressional Committee on the Conduct of the War and a constant communicant with his Bourbon bottle – loaded with importance, and he advanced on Lincoln in proud bombardment from his blustery jowls.

"Soft, Sir! You are soft on the South! No wonder there. You have relatives in the South. Or are they here in the very White House pursuing without unseemly interruption their French and dancing? And have they brought their slaves?"

Lincoln glanced at me, closed his eyes briefly, and reopened them doleful as a dog. Lincoln closed his eyes frequently, as if he had another world inside that he could retreat to, if only for a moment. In my own inner secrecy I thought how Wode, no matter his rectitude, or perhaps because of his rectitude, reminded me of those times in city life when one viewed the well-dressed on the street in the smell of a nearby privy.

"And worse, sir! Worse!" Wode flamed on, "The Committee I represent will not permit you to lose this war you seem bent on giving to your southern kinsmen…." Red-faced with indignation, Wode fished a document from his jacket pocket and waved it at Lincoln. "And you shall not coddle the treason of Louisiana – the one state you’ve bought into laying down arms – Louisiana, that boiling hell of fleshly sin – by welcoming its traitors back in the Union on the terms in this sniveling policy of appeasement."

"Senator…," Lincoln began gently.

"The South must be punished, sir! It is not some erring child to be petted, but a criminal fit for chains and dungeons…." But Wode got no further, because a force more powerful than his own burst into the room at that moment through the door he’d left open: Tad Lincoln with his bleating white goat Solomon.

Tad leaped on his seated father in tears while Solomon bounded twice around the room and settled his bearded chin into chewing a hooked rug Mrs. Lincoln brought from Springfield.

The Great Wode, swept from the field by an unassailable foe, thundered a final threat: "We are many, Mr. Lincoln, and well-positioned, and we shall soon put an end to your romance with the rebel states!" And he turned and hurried out with his flowing white hair lashing the air behind him and slammed the door.

The only sound then was Tad’s sobbing on his father’s lap, miserable despite the jaunt of the little straw boater he wore back on his head like a country boy. I remember Tad used that odd name he had for his father. Tad had a lisp, and as if he knew that his lisp kept him from saying "Daddy" clearly, he’d prefixed the easier "Papa" to the front of his version of it.

"Papa-Daay! Papa-Daay! Nurse says it’s my birthday, and Momma says it’s my birthday, but it can’t be my birthday. You’re President, Papa-Daay – make it not be my birthday!"

"Oh, Taddie, Taddie," his father said, always ready to replace his own problem with his child’s, whatever it might be, and he hugged the distraught boy on his lap. "You have to realize. I’m only the president of ordinary things, not big things like birthdays. What’s wrong?"

"Hannah was going to come play all day for my birthday," Tad said, "but she hasn’t come, and it can’t be my birthday without her! It can’t!"

Lincoln stood up and threw the boy over his shoulder. "I think we’d better go for a walk." Lincoln lowered Tad head-downward behind his back, and his boater dropped off, and the little boy giggled red-faced as his father walked him around the room upside down. Tad was 12 today, and not as light as his father made him seem with his powerful rail-splitter’s upper body, but Lincoln, at 6 feet 4 inches and more than 200 pounds, could still, as one old-timer from his prairie days told me, "carry what 3 ordinary men would grunt and sweat at."

"Let’s see," Lincoln said. "It’s Tad’s birthday, but Hannah hasn’t come… maybe busy somewhere eating candy… and Tad can’t think of what to do… he feels like his mind is upside-down… ah, yes… he needs to see… the Commander-in-Chief!"

He put Tad down smartly and barked an order.

"Attention!"

Tad snapped to attention and saluted, and Lincoln returned his salute and went on.

"Tad Lincoln! Higher authority will locate the girl Hannah and secure her presence here at 3 p.m. for birthday cake! In the meanwhile, you will report immediately to Secretary of War Stanton’s office on military business, and then to your Nurse for a wonderful present! This is an order!"

"Yes, sir!" Tad was grinning now.

"Dismissed!" cried the Commander-in-Chief, and Tad ran off with Solomon galloping after and his straw hat left behind on the floor.

The President of Ordinary Things turned to me with a serious look that I knew was about Senator Wode though he spoke instead of Tad’s friend Hannah.

"Send someone out, will you Hay, to find the girl? Ask the front gate guard if she’s come in… he must have noticed her… if he was awake. Maybe she went to the gardens on her own, or the barn. If not, find out where she lives and send someone to ask if she’ll come."

"Yes, sir. And will that be all?"

Lincoln turned to the low fireplace coals and stooped to build up the fire with the wood stacked off to the side.

"Well," he said, "while you’re in the detective trade, Hay, you might see if you can find out where Mrs. Lincoln is rushing off to with such secrecy these nights…." He broke off and nodded toward his kindler’s art. "You build small to large in the fire business, Hay." Although he’d brought me with him from frontier Springfield, Lincoln seemed to have convinced himself, and probably rightly, that my having a Doctor father and attending Brown University meant I lacked his command of practical skills.

"Inquire into m’lady’s imperial privacy, sir? Not if I value my head."

"It’s true that Mary’s been prone to more than the usual gnashing of teeth since our Willie died, and it was a horrible sorrowful loss for us both. But it’s… what?… three years now? She’s got to be a human being. And I’ve got to find out where she’s going. You know as well as I do that it’s in poor taste for a husband to insist on knowing where his wife is going. If she were having an affair of the heart, he would embarrass the poor woman."

"With all respect, sir," I said, "your reasoning is very delicate for a frontier rail-splitter."

He said, "Thank you, Hay. I think. My wife has discovered delicacy too… at least at slipping away. I work so many evenings I wouldn’t have noticed, but Tad complained that no one’s putting him to bed."

"Routine intrigues of the leisure class, sir?"

"Probably," he replied. "But as you know, the Radicals on the War Committee… Wode and Julian and their friends… you heard Wode just now… they’re all too aware that Mary was born in a Kentucky mansion where her family has slaves to this day."

"Treasonous family connections!" I erupted like the volcanic Wode.

"Rebel Jezebel in the White House!" Lincoln spat with Radical scorn.

"Lincoln’s no match for her!" I shouted.

"We must take over the war!" he intoned.

I pounded my fist on his desk: "Scorch the South into submission!"

He lifted his eyes to the lord. "And seize the slavers’ immoral but glorious wealth…"

"And control it ourselves…." I opened my arms to receive heaven’s bounty.

"For the good of the nation!" He pressed his hands together in prayer.

"Forever and ever," I said submissively as I bowed my head, and Lincoln lowered his eyes beside me then raised one eyebrow in my direction and intoned the final word.

"Amen."

We looked at each other ready to grin, but clouds darkened his war-worn face. This was the way it was. Lincoln joked. But his joking was not flippant but crucial. Call it levity in the deepest sense -- a lifting from the descent in death-filled messages from the front and embodied in senselessly-crippled soldiers – and we saw them both by the hundreds every month. God, did our hearts weep and so God did we joke the God-forgive-us more.

Did we joke most when we were under the greatest threats? This was such a time. Let me be clear about what was at stake.

After a long and bloody campaign, General Grant had Lee on the run in the woods of Virginia with every escape cut off. The good news had two terrible dimensions. First, it was unbelievable that anyone could actually catch and pen the Silver Fox, who had escaped every desperate clinch in the past, usually inflicting damage as he fled. The end of four years of murderous hell seemed at hand, but it also seemed impossible, and the tension was nearly unbearable.

Second, the end-game of the military war was igniting a political war for control of the reunified nation. If Wode and his Radical faction gained leverage over Lincoln they would use the Congress to punish the South, drain its resources, and guarantee Northern control forever.

"It’s not just the Radicals, Hay," Lincoln said. "Even before this intrigue business, half the Congress suspected Mary of passing state secrets to her Southern relatives. If she’s disgraced and disgraces me, the greatest loss is reunion. If Congress sees me as a sturdy statesman, I can let the rebel states up easy. But if I look like a dupe for Southern interests, they’ll go with the Radicals. Wodes’s peace terms are so harsh the South would rather have war forever. I can’t let Mary risk the future of the nation for the sake of some nightly rendezvous with a gaggle of scheming who-knows-who’s."

It was one thing when Mary embarrassed him overspending on drapes or promising political plums to fools. Now such powerful weights were in such delicate balance that her willful laying-on of some final straw might cost him the victory he’d so long fought for.

"Have you forbidden her?" I asked.

"Mary’s the forbidding one," he said. "Not I."

"Is it every night?

"Just about. At eight she whisks into her carriage with or without a member of her cabinet and dashes to the dark of god knows where."

"Have you had her followed?"

"Hay, if the far-fetched were true and she were having an affair… would I want anyone else to know?"

His kindling job was paying off now, and we paused, too full of puzzlement about everything else to do anything but admire the rising fire.

For all the scope of his human and political powers, Lincoln was truly humble, but he also knew how to be proud. "That, Hay," he said as we warmed ourselves, "is a fire."

"Small to large," I mused. "Like children growing."

"Low to high," he said, "heat rises."

"Professor Lowe’s secret…." I said absent-mindedly.

"That’s right!" he exclaimed. "Did I see Lowe camped out back with that thing again?"

Four years ago the balloon scientist Professor Thaddeus Lowe had come to the White House to entreat The Magnate’s blessing for an Army Balloon Corps. True to Lowe’s promise, his lofty aerial observers, once presidential push installed them over conservative military objections, spied on enemy fortifications and troop movements for miles around, giving armies in the field and cities targeted for attack more than a day’s advance knowledge of who to go after, defend against, or flee.

The President and I went to the window and looked down past the cows grazing the marshy grass-patched park behind the Manse. Beyond the cows and beyond the tumble of great gray stone blocks destined for the monument to General Washington, we could see the Professor’s colossal and buoyant orange and yellow balloon.

"And why is it he’s come back to us?" Lincoln asked.

"Political assistance, sir. He wants you to convince Congress to better fund his Air Corps and institutionalize it as part of the military. He says that if the war ends without this, government attention will turn away and the efforts he’s launched to great heights by his war success will be set back as if they never left the ground. If you join him for an ascension, he says, you will see the vision and assure the future of military flight."

When inventors brought better rifles to the White House, Lincoln always took them out on the Mall to fire. He had patented an invention for low-water flotation chambers in his early river-boating days and had a wily frontiersman’s eagerness for new ways of doing things.

"I wanted to go up when Lowe first came," he said. "But as you might know, I was forbidden by Secretary of War Stanton, who was afraid I would become a target for Rebel snipers across the river in Virginia; by Secretary of State Seward, who was afraid I would be ridiculed by the crowned heads of Europe; by Mrs. Lincoln, who was afraid that if I were ridiculed she would be ridiculed; and finally by Tad, who wouldn’t let me go if he couldn’t go too.

I sensed a shifting in the executive heart. "And now, sir?"

"Desperation is like prayer, Hay."

"Sir?"

"It changes things. Do you think Lowe can be trusted?"

"New Hampshire, sir."

"All right. Send to tell him we’ll want to be aloft at eight p.m."

"Eight then," I said, and left the President warming himself at the fire as I went off to distribute the stack of edicts he handed me as I left, initiate a search for Tad’s missing playmate, arrange a clandestine balloon ascension, and generally do my duty shepherding Powerful Visitors to and fro in that drafty big white house in that city mixed of cow plop and champagne which in its own poor-boy way was captaining what was probably already the most powerful nation on earth – if it didn’t destroy itself by civil war.