An Unlikely Friendship Read Free Page B

crowds, through the alleyways, and along the paths that she knew. She could smell the Potomac River as they rushed along past hovels and huts of the poor, with the rain beating down on them now. Milk wagons and mail carts rushed past them, only to be turned back at the first corner by soldiers.
    Finally they came to a great open space and saw the back of the White House looming up before them, like a giant birthday cake about to melt in the rain. Lights shone from all the windows. Lizzy opened a gate on the far end of the grounds and led the Lewises past the carriage house, the horse stables, the pen where Tad's pet goats were housed.
    But there was another gate to go through now. And, as she feared, armed soldiers were guarding it. Oh well, they would know her. All the guards did.
    "Halt there, identify yourselves."
    Rifles with bayonets attached to the ends were pointed at them. A large lantern cast its light in their eyes, blinding them.
    "I'm Elizabeth Keckley, Mrs. Lincoln's dressmaker. I'm here to help her. She'll need me."
    One of the guards, a tall soldier with a Yankee twang, approached her. She didn't know him, didn't recognize any of them. Oh, this was bad.
    "Who are these other people?" he asked.
    "My landlords. The Lewises. Responsible people. We live on Twelfth Street."
    "I don't care where you live, lady," another one of them said as he stepped forward. "The president's been shot this night and is near death. We're letting nobody in. And one thing's certain: Mrs. Lincoln isn't going to need any dressmaker tonight. No sir. So you just take yourself and your responsible friends and go home and stitch a fine seam."
    They were treating her like a nobody! How could she make them understand? Inside her heart was breaking. Mary would be looking for her, expecting her. How could she explain? She couldn't. She was just another of hundreds of colored women to these war-weary soldiers. Just another threat on a nightmare of a night.
    "Come on, let's go," she told her friends. And the three of them turned and left.

    M EANWHILE, THE CARRIAGE and driver Robert had dispatched to fetch Elizabeth Keckley in her house on Twelfth Street was searching and searching for her, but the driver got lost, what with the crowds, the armed soldiers, and the stopping and searching of each carriage on the streets.
    So Mary Lincoln had to go back to the White House alone that terrible rainy morning after they pronounced her husband dead.
    As she left the lodging house on Tenth Street, a doctor was putting silver dollars on Lincoln's eyelids. "Oh, that dreadful, dreadful place," she was saying of Ford's Theater. "That horrible place."
    Apparently others felt the same, for crowds gathering on Tenth Street were already shouting "Burn it down, burn it," at Ford's Theater.
    As she climbed into the carriage, a group of people were carrying a long coffin down the steps of the Petersen house. A group of army officers followed the coffin, bareheaded, back to the White House. Robert Lincoln followed on his horse.
    In the White House Mary Lincoln wandered around upstairs aimlessly. She could not bring herself to go into any of the familiar bedrooms. She wrung her hands and cried. Her head pounded. She needed Lizzy Keckley. Oh, where was Lizzy? Mammy Sally had always been around when she needed her. Where was Lizzy?
    Finally she allowed two friends, Elizabeth Dixon and Mary Jane Welles, to put her to bed in a small, unused room.
    She cried all through the early rainy morning, hearing the crowds outside on Pennsylvania Avenue, listening to the church bells toll, seeing lights and shadows cast on the flowered wallpaper. Robert came and went, gave her a powder and some water. She finally dozed, and when she awoke on that Saturday morning, she gave the order again.
    "Go and get my friend Elizabeth Keckley. She is the only one who understands me."

Mary Todd
Lexington, Kentucky

I HAVE LONG SINCE learned not to believe idle stories. Heaven knows I grew up on