Illinois is the west in 1835. Conesta
wagons and flatboats on swollen creeks bring pioneers. Settlers take down virgin forest to build log houses and bust
sod never planted before. No one knows where the growth will be. Chicago in the north has a hundred people. Vandalia
in the south and larger is the capital, but Springfield is more central and wants the job.
Springfield
has a thousand people, two dozen stores, six churches, a courthouse, and a glazier selling real glass windows. A two-hour
horseback ride through the farms northwest of Springfield is New Salem, a village of one hundred souls in twenty-five log
cabins hacked into an oak woods near a grist and sawmill at a crook in the Sangamon River. Farther north from New Salem, another
hour’s plod up seven miles of rutted roads across mostly unplanted prairie, are some outlying farms in a place called
Sand Ridge.
The main room in the largest farmhouse in Sand Ridge has two rocking chairs
and a drop-leaf table not far from the fireplace, hooked rugs on the board floor, cooking pots hanging on the walls, and cabinets
and counters and more chairs off to the side. There is a big four-poster bed for sitting as well as sleeping in a corner next
to a window. There is another room next to this one, and a loft upstairs. Seven people live in the house.
Two people are there on a Saturday evening in late March, 1835.
Ann Rutledge
is twenty-two. She came to this area with her family six years ago when it was wilderness. Her father and uncle built the
mill on the Sangamon and two houses and founded New Salem. Two years ago her father sold the mill, and the house they had
turned into a tavern as the village grew, and moved the family up here to farm at Sand Ridge. Ann, like the other women in
her family, farms and sews and cleans and takes care of the younger children.
Abraham
Lincoln is twenty-six. He came to New Salem four years ago when he left his father’s farm in another Illinois county
to make a life of his own. He is not yet a lawyer in 1835, but the part-time New Salem postmaster, as well as a surveyor,
rail-splitter, corn-puller, and all-around laborer. He is recently back from his first months of elective office, representing
his muddy and brambly region in the frontier Illinois legislature at Vandalia.
Ann speaks
first.
It was the dam.
I had to get over the dam and you were watching.
There wasn’t much to watch in New Salem.
That’s
how we got here.
Rowan Herndon trying to make
it home drunk.
On this bed.
So
we got here because I watched you struggle your long log barge full of corn and hogs over the mill dam.
You watched hard.
You rolled up your pants and waded to shore.
I could feel your eyes. Should we close the door?
I watched, but we wouldn’t be here if you didn’t come back like I wanted. Mother wants it open.
You wanted me to come back?
A town can always use more fools getting boats stuck on dams.
I think it was part
of a plan.
You’re going beyond the facts,
counsel.
Ann, you’re teasing me. I’m not a….
I’m doing a lot more than teasing and you know it, Mr. Lincoln.
Is it bad, Ann? Is what we’re….
Kissing on my mother’s bed? It’s one of the best parts of the plan. If there’s….
All right then, and if it please the court I will establish the facts that establish a plan.
But why does she want it open?
Objection!
Why?
First of all, you’re sitting up, and second I hear a story coming. She says it’s
the only way the house will dry out.
A story can be evidence. Look, there’s green moss on
the doorsill. It’s never going to dry out, open or closed.
A
story can be evidence unless it’s just a story. Are you cold?
Not when I’m with you,
Ann. I just think it’s silly to have the door open when it’s starting to rain. But as for stories, isn’t
everything a story? And how do you know so much judge and lawyer talk?
Maybe
it’s part of the plan, Mr. Lincoln. Now silence until I rule, or I will hold you in contempt.
Hold
me in contempt? What are you holding me in now?
Are you trying to embarrass
a lady? This is… the opposite of contempt.
You should be the lawyer -- not me.
No more of that, Mr. Lincoln or I will hold you in laughable
contempt. And sentence you to farm work.
I hear and obey.
A counterclaim has come to the court’s attention, averring –
is that the word, Abraham?
Aver. A-v-e-r. To affirm with confidence or allege as fact.
Alex Trent averred that he had not given Henry McHenry two hundred dollars but had loaned it to him.
Exactly. And so the court has before it the averral -- averrance? -- that you are not
here -- at least until recently pressing me warmly to you -- because while attempting to pass through New Salem, Illinois,
on your way to New Orleans your boat got caught on the mill dam and you looked at me, but because you were in the employ of
one Denton Offut – known entrepreneur, flashypants, harum-scarum, and braggadocio – who after traveling to New
Orleans with you on said leaky barge of corn and hogs determined that he would come back to New Salem to open a general store,
and you being his employee and chattel….
Chattel!
Yes, chattel. Perform the word, please, Mr. Lincoln. Listen to the roof!
Are you the
judge or the schoolmaster?
I, as I believe you know, am everything.
You are everything, Ann.
Perform the word?
Chattel. C-h-a-t-t-e-l. Property that is movable. The frontier family came to New Salem in an ox cart piled high
with chattel.
Yes. Thank you, Mr. Chattel. And so, being said
Mr. Offut’s chattel, you had no choice but to come back to New Salem and….
Touche,
Miss Rutledge, but where do you think said Mr. Offut got the idea to come back to this particular tiny village of one hundred
souls in twenty some log buildings to sell his gun-powder and gingham?
Really?
Really, Ann.
All because I watched you?
The way you watched me.
And then what happened?
There was nothing after that. Ever.
Now you’re
teasing me.
You’re a good teacher.
I
could be a teacher, couldn’t I?
You could, can, and will, Ann. And I’ll be a lawyer
and wear suits and you’ll wear lacey dresses and sip coffee from China cups….
And we won’t smell bad, ever.
Smell? Does something smell?
When you took your boots off….
I’m sorry, Ann.
I’ll forgive you if you come back here.
Not until I wash my feet. Where’s the pan?
With the
pitcher in the dry sink.
According to plan.
Stop,
Abraham. Stop it.
Why? It’s going to work out. We can do the things we want, Ann. They’re
not too much to ask.
Why? You know why. I want
there to be a plan for us as much as you do but we’ve got a problem. You know that. And don’t get the water on the rug. Sit by the table. Wait. I’ll help you.
The plan will take care of the problem.
If there’s a
plan, eh Mr. Lincoln? But whose plan would it be? You say you don’t believe in God like your daddy did. Sit back and
let me do it. But who else could make a plan that our parents would have us, and then the woodsy watery courses of our lives
would bring us together when you got stuck on the dam?
Your dam.
Mine, yes. It was my father’s dam. His and Uncle John’s.
Your
father… like in a fated old English ballad… the father who built the mill that needed the dam that caught his
daughter the boatman.
As part of the….
Right. It brought us together. I’ll dry them, Ann.
No, you won’t. And let’s hide these socks where we can’t smell them and you leave them and I’ll
wash and mend them. They’re not fit for a legislator.
You agree then about the plan?
On the contrary I hereby hold counsel in… let me think….
Just hold me, Ann.
Hold you by your feet? Here, they’re
done. Now I can sit on your lap… like this… and hold you down. But no. I don’t want to hold you down,
I want to help you up, up and out….
And I’ll help you out. It’s a
plan!
Stop, then. Stop. You’ve got me so confused. The
past might be a plan that got us to this point. And there might, or might not be, a God. But for sure there’s a John
McNeil, and I don’t… I just….
I’m sorry, Ann.
Why do you want to upset me?
I don’t, I don’t. I just get….
I don’t know. But my feet, Ann. I feel strange in my bare feet….
Here.
I’ll take my stockings off too and we’ll both be barefoot like children. You’re like a child, anyhow. Do
you know that? You get hopefully romantic about the future…. Which is fine for you. You’re free to go where you
want. What’s that you say? "… just an aimless piece of floating driftwood"? But I’m still….
Just throw that water out the door.
You can be what you want, Ann.
I can’t! I’m chattel! I’m the one who’s chattel! I am! I’m Daddy’s
chattel. I’m John McNeil’s chattel!
I thought we weren’t going to talk about
John until you’ve heard from him. Look, it’s coming in now. Should I….
How can we not talk about him? Yes, close it! Close it!
Have you heard from him?
You know I’d tell you if I’d heard from him.
You wrote him months ago. How long can we wait?
Maybe
you’d better go.
Maybe I should. No! Listen! It’s hammering!
It’s a torrent!
A torrent?
Torrent, t-o-r-r-e-n-t, an extremely heavy rain? Make sure
that door’s tight and come up on the bed and we’ll look out the window.
Tell me what you see.
My god! It’s Noah’s flood
out there!
When do you expect your family home? Move over a little.
The meeting ends with tonight’s conversions, so
they’ll leave in the morning and get back tomorrow afternoon.
Look, the stream’s higher already. Are they all there?
Anyone
who’d bother us. David’s at college in Jacksonville. Jean and her family were meeting them at Rock Creek. The
little ones were probably catching fish behind the tent when the rain started pounding. I hope somebody’s gone out to
get them.
Sometimes I can’t believe my good luck, Ann. Just days back from my first legislative
session with a stack of borrowed law books to study, when the only other thing I could want is some time with you, and your
family goes off to camp meeting. But are you sure they won’t be back? Where do they sleep?
You haven’t gone to a weekend camp meeting, Mr. Lincoln?
I declined
coverage under that policy, Your Honor.
They sleep right there in the
big tent and wake up and make coffee and scramble eggs on cook fires and praise the Lord.
Aha.
Well, if they weren’t planning to come home tonight anyhow, and now we have the rain…
The torrent.
How long were we lying together?
Eons.
And if they aren’t coming home we can lie here another….
An age, a golden age, until the end of time, when time doesn’t
matter, when nothing matters and anything can happen and we break every rule….
