Lincoln shook his head and held up his hand to Croft. Leave us, he seemed to say.
Milton's serpent must have had that same curled snarl to his lips after offering the fruit in the Garden. Croft stepped back into the shadows, supremely confident he had brought down the Eden dream of Southern Arcadia, a paradise lost.
Lincoln looked back to Lee with eyes ancient in holy pain. Those very words of Lincoln's chiseled upon Lee's heart now flew up unbidden from Lincoln's still, unmoving lips. The mystic chords of memory will yet swell.
"I tried to save you," pleaded Lee.
We are not enemies, but friends.
"I did everything I could."
We must not be enemies.
Lee's knees buckled. He grabbed a chair for support. "What would you have of me?" he cried.
You have no oath, Lincoln's eyes answered. You have no oath registered in heaven to destroy the government, while I shall have the most solemn one to preserve, protect, and defend it.
I had the same oath, Lee screamed to himself, and I betrayed it. And for what? The Cause? Tell this man about the telegrams. Tell this man about Louisiana and how tonight you must now betray your precious Cause itself.
Lee turned from Lincoln only to see Croft's smug face, his lidded eyes hurling silent accusations. Was Lee's duty truly nothing more than vain pride?
Which way I flie is Hell, Milton's serpent smirked, and no place for pardon left but by submission and that word Disdain forbids me.
Lincoln rose from his chair. His thin, frail body unfolded as he stood, towering over Lee. With the halting shuffle of the aged and infirm, Lincoln stepped slowly across the room to Lee. He placed those massive hands on Lee's shoulders.
We are not enemies but friends. Let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation's wounds-to all which may achieve and cherish a just, and a lasting peace, among ourselves.
"I cannot." That word Disdain forbids me, and my dread of shame. "You're asking me to turn against my own people, against Virginia." He hath descended below them all. Art thou greater than he? "I cannot."
Lincoln turned from Lee. He stepped toward the window, as if to say as he had before the war-In your hands, my fellow countrymen and not in mine, is the issue.
Lee took one halting step toward him. "You trusted in my sense of duty once and I failed you! I'll only fail you again." Pain raced upward along his arm. He shrunk back. "Do not ask this of me!" Art thou greater?
Duty. Lee tried to cling to his only lifeline, but this time it held him not afloat, but pulled him down, ever farther down. Duty-duty to what? To whom? The works of him that sent me? What kind of works were betrayal and dishonor and slavery? What kind of master demanded such works?
What kind of servant obeyed?
What kind of man was born so blind he could not see it?
"Help me," Lee whispered.
Lincoln slowly turned, his eyes brimming. With firmness in the right. As God gives us to see the right. He reached his long arms wide and embraced his former enemy.
Lee shook in pain. His chest burned, his heart raced fearfully. He could hardly breathe. And yet, for the first time in years he felt at peace. He suddenly realized it was in this room Lincoln had written the words that could heal his nation. It was in this room Lee could write the words that could heal his nation.
Our nation.
Croft stepped up with pen and paper. Lee at last saw him for what he truly was: not a serpent holding forth the fruit of knowledge, but a friend cradling a precious gift, offering Lee not a bargain for his soul, but a sacrifice to save Virginia-and himself.
Lee looked at the squalid, shabby room of exile, looked into Lincoln's pain-filled eyes of true Lost Causes, looked at the price he, too, would have to pay.
"I will pay that sum," Lee said.
He reached for the pen.
Murdering Uncle Ho
Chris Bunch
I was quietly running F Company, 5th Special Forces (Airborne), Lai Khe, in what had been South Vietnam, when Bull Simon called on the scrambler phone to ask if I wanted to get killed.
Naturally, I accepted immediately.
At the time-April 1969-I was simultaneously the youngest lieutenant colonel in the Army, and at the absolute bottom of said Army's shit list.
Both events came from the same cause:
I had been John F. Kennedy's favorite Green Beret.
Naturally, when Kennedy's hand-picked successor, Hubert Humphrey, got his head handed to him by Nelson Rockefeller in the 68 elections, and Kennedy was sent off in disgrace to Hyannisport, I was doomed. If I'd had a brain, I would've quietly arranged a nice soft assignment, teaching ROTC at a women's college maybe, until my time ran out, then found an honest job mugging drunks somewhere.
Instead, I volunteered to go back to Vietnam, back into the nightmare that wouldn't end until we pulled out, hollowly proclaiming "victory," in 1987.
All of this deserves a bit of explanation.
In 1963, I was a comfortable junior at Georgetown, majoring in international relations.
I probably shouldn't have gone to Georgetown at all, because it developed a taste for politics in me, without adding the ability to compromise and equivocate any good politician or statesman must have.
Like most Americans, I'd heard Kennedy's immortal "Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country" speech, and determined my place of service would be in the State Department.
My father, a career officer who'd gone to work for "State," actually the CIA, after being badly wounded during the Korean War, snorted in dismay. He considered State, in his words, "a bunch of worthless pussies who couldn't find their dick with both hands and a White Paper."
But the Army wasn't for me. I somehow thought I was above marching from here to there with mud up my ass.
Then Kennedy went to Dallas, in November 1963. Three men hired by extreme rightist H. L. Hunt and a cabal of his equally crazed Texan cronies tried to assassinate him, almost succeeded, and my world changed.
Suddenly, pushing red-ribboned papers around the world didn't do anything for me. In spite of Hunt's giving the right wing a bad name, the Republicans were stupid enough to nominate ultraconservative Senator Barry Goldwater, and Kennedy was returned to office in the biggest margin in US history.
They say that he believed he then had a mandate from Heaven, as the Chinese say, and could do whatever he chose.
In 1964, I graduated from Georgetown, and immediately joined the Army.
That was just in time for Kennedy to overreact to the intelligence disaster in the Gulf of Tonkin, and subsequent pinpricks against US «advisors» in South Vietnam, just as he'd overreacted to Berlin, the Cuban missile crisis, and the Dominican nonsense.
But this time, he didn't get away with it.
A Brigade Landing Team of Marines went ashore in Da Nang, Special Forces were built up throughout the country, and a brigade of the 82nd Airborne Division was sent to Bien Hoa as a fire brigade.
I barely noticed.
I was one of a herd of young warriors, sure there was about to be a war, a real war, and we wouldn't get to Vietnam before the gooks were hammered into oblivion.
It's interesting to note that less than ten members of my Officer's Candidate School class are still alive.
The war did wait on us.
I finished OCS, got my butter bars as a second lieutenant, and went to Jump School and Ranger School.
Kennedy announced the reformation of Rangers as full units, companies, then a full battalion, based at Fort Benning. I got assigned there as soon as I got my tab.