Long Island dunes
Previously in the novel: War Secretary Stanton holds the Lincolns captive under guard in the White House basement. Janitor Gabby Zook by accident must stay in the basement too.
Heat, pervasive and stultifying, filled every corner of the billiards room in the Executive Mansion basement during the last half of May 1863. Gabby Zook sat on his pallet behind the barrels and crates, took off his shirt, unbuttoned his union suit, and pulled down the top, revealing a ghostly white, flabby, gray-haired belly. Before reaching for a washcloth in a nearby porcelain basin, he lightly stroked his abdomen and thought back to the days on Long Island, playing on the beach with his buddy Joe. If he closed his eyes as he dribbled water from the cloth onto his face, Gabby could swear he smelled the salt air and felt the sun’s rays as he floated on the bobbing waves. Joe erupted through the water and landed across Gabby, sinking him below the surface. Gurgling, he came up and, laughing, pushed his friend’s head down repeatedly. The boys, choking on salt water, rolled in the surf until they landed on the beach.
Then, Gabby remembered, they had heard the reeds rustle on the dunes. Joe had sat up suddenly and looked around.
“What’s wrong?” Gabby asked.
“I think there’s somebody watching us.”
Gabby bolted up and turned to stare at the dune. Reeds rustled more rapidly. The boys scrambled for their pile of clothes, hurriedly slipping into their cotton undersuits which quickly soaked up the seawater and clung to their trim, tight bodies.
“Hello?” Gabby called out.
“I love to watch young men laughing and playing.” A tall, odd-looking man in his early twenties, wearing a wide-brim straw hat, stood nonchalantly among the reeds. He began to saunter toward them.
“Who are you?” Joe asked.
“Poet.”
“You shouldn’t be watching us, Mr. Poet,” Joe said.
“Poet is who I am,” he explained. “Words flow from my belly to my fingers.”
“Huh?” Joe knitted his brow.
“My friend meant your name,” Gabby said.
“My name is Legion.”
“What the hell does that mean?” Joe growled.
“It’s from the Bible.” Gabby turned to his friend confidentially.
“The ocean waves teach me always to see beyond the things on hand, as the ocean always points beyond the waves of the moment.” The man in the hat looked beyond the boys to gaze at the ocean.
“What the hell does that mean?” Joe muttered again, this time to Gabby.
“You two are so young and strong.” The eyes of the poet who called himself Legion returned to the soaked, lean white bodies before him. “You should serve your country. The army needs young men like you.”
“We’re going to West Point this fall,” Gabby said.
“Good.” He nodded as his hand reached out to touch Joe’s stomach, which showed through the unbuttoned undersuit. “Such strong, lean, white bellies.”
Joe stepped back, his eyes widening and his mouth dropping.
“Your nation needs you.” Suddenly, the man cocked an ear toward the reeds on the dune. “More raucous laughter. There’s nothing more alive than male laughter.”
Without further word, the odd-looking man walked away toward the laughter and disappeared behind the dune.
“Gabby, I know what that guy’s name is. Nancy.”
Gabby laughed, hitting Joe on the arm as he bent over to pick up his trousers and shirt.
“But what the hell did he mean,” Joe had continued, “with all that talk about ocean waves and pointing and things on hand?”
Sitting now in his suffocating hot corner of the billiards room in the basement of the Executive Mansion, Gabby pulled up the top of his union suit as he tried to remember what he had told Joe that day on the beach. “Ocean waves taught him always to see beyond the things on hand as the ocean always points beyond the waves of the moment.”
Now if Gabby could just remember what that meant…