CHORUS: We prayed for divine intervention on this dark night, we offered Harriet incense and peppermints, meaningless nouns from songs of yore, to bring us a leader, but we prayed the night before, and the night before the night before. The God in Whom we Trust paid no attention. What brings you among us tonight in the form of Abraham Lincoln? Are you his spirit or a fake apparition?
Apparition: There is but a whisker’s difference ‘tween the two, good people. I am me, and you are you, me on my side, you on yours. The Secretary of War from my administration awakened me from a slumber in answer to your prayer. The incense and peppermint did the trick—nice touch. Sticks and carrots work with mules so long as you balance them in their application. The God in Whom we Trust is a might uneasy like an oiled cat chasing a banty rooster.
The God on our money has never interfered in our Elections—he’s left that job to the Russians—on High no luminary ever even conceived that the people themselves would try to interfere in the public’s voting. None of my advisors in Heaven, not even William Colby, a man who in life was a CIA operative working hand in hand with insurrectionists in Germany opposing the Nazis in the 1940s, who in Rome worked under cover to help insurrectionists battle the Communists in the 1950s, who in Saigon headed CIA efforts to shore up a trusted government struggling against Viet Congress insurrectionists in the 1960s, a man schooled in the arts on insurrection—not even William Colby glimpsed the possibility of so vile an attack on democracy from within.
To witness a white man wearing a buffalo headdress bellow like a cow about his rights and freedoms after trespassing on the inner sanctum of democracy doing its sacred work is too much for Heaven to stand. So here I am, by the will of America’s God, to see if I can shed some light and maybe help slow the infection. It’s your job to ascertain whether I am fake or authentic.
Chorus: How shall we address you during this tête-à-tête? As Abraham or as Mr. President?
Apparition: Well, it’s hard to mistake me for someone else, but I ain’t the same as I was when I was myself. I’ve evolved. So call me what you like, but don’t call me late for dinner.
Chorus: How fully, Honest Abe, have you been briefed on domestic terrorism and the chief election thief? He’s lost his tweet, he’s more discrete, but he’s morphed into a political leech living on the blood of his followers. All around us we see but a smattering of heroism among the his party, though they’re well aware of this festering terrorism. We know not the size of the schism of the prism the people are looking through, images and symbols bending left and right, but our people are so divided about race we fear another Civil War.
Apparition: Though I’ve been accused of it countless times, I am no fool. I’ve been reading the papers as the decades roll by. I sniff a whiff of hyperbole in the chorus. Your chief election thief is a bad wizard, a goblin conjured up by secessionists of transitory importance. Let us then turn this government back into the channel in which the framers of the Constitution originally placed it. Protecting the vote is tantamount to preserving the economy. The size of the schism of the prism between the left and the right when we sanctified the Constitution was roughly three-fifths of a gigawatt, in contemporary measurement, whatever a blamed gigawatt means. Political power to sustain a racialized slave economy was granted to the slave colonies by a factor of 1.6. This factor was Constitutionally reduced to 1.0 in January, 1863.
Deep State Actor 3 (exasperated): Oh, for Heaven’s sake, Honest Abe, this is like discussing the national debt. So our schism may not be as big as the founding schism or even your Civil War schism, but let’s avoid a schisming contest. Do you see the seriousness of this? Can we trust that you are on our side?
Apparition: You can trust that I’m on the side of the Union. All of you? Is there another side? (Pause). The Constitution spelled out my side. Now there are different sides when it comes to applying the Constitution to cases; I was a lawyer in life. But in the end we fight to honor the vote of the people for a representative federal government with the power to make war or peace. It’s not always the economy, stupid.
Deep State Actor 2: You’ve exceeded your quota of dumb questions, Ma—
Deep State Actor 3: Keep your trap shut or I’ll bite off your head.
Apparition (wagging a finger): A house divided against itself cannot stand, a wise man once said, quoting the Good Book, ha ha. I gave that speech the evening I was nominated as a Republican to run for the Illinois State Senate. I knew then as I know today that, half-free and half-slave, America could not be permanent. I believed then, as I believe today, that white supremacy is an evil sentiment. I did not and do not expect the Union to be dissolved. Insubordination to the rule of Constitutional law must not be absolved.
Chorus: Mr. President, though you are not real, we assume we are speaking with your soul. Can you say something to help us move ahead through this scourge of partisanship that renders our colleagues politically dead when they try to stand up as a profile in courage?
Apparition: With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation’s wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan—to do all which may achieve and cherish a just, and a lasting peace, among ourselves, and with all nations.
Chorus: We mean no disrespect, but we’ve heard those words before. Can you parse your words? Can you tell us what to do?
Apparition: If it were me walking in your shoes, I know precisely what I would do. Alas, I did not survive to see it through, shot as I was by John Wilkes Booth. As I lay dying, though I could not speak, a refrain kept running through my head. Reconstruction, a voice said. Build Back Better, you say today. With malice toward none, with charity for all, seek not to build more walls. My mistake was not a failure to punish the Confederacy with imprisonment and hanging. My mistake was to die too early, while the times they were a changing. My mistake, my gravest mistake? Andrew Johnson, the horror! Reconstruction, I say. Build Back Better.
[A rooster crows. The light brightens.]Apparition: I have faith in the American people. They are a good people—on both sides. The gravest mistake these good people can make, an error that comes with great human cost in suffering, is a stubborn refusal to separate the good ones on the right from the bad ones on the right, the good ones on the left from the bad ones on the left, under the rule of law. There are good people on both sides. Filter your view through the prism if you are called upon through a commitment to the rule of law for the good of all. Good people recoil from unfair, inhumane sights.
I recall a trip—I was nineteen years old… My friend, Allen, and I took a flatboat load of produce down the Ohio and Mississippi to New Orleans. Along the way we traded at plantations. I saw slaves in fields, their quarters, their children, I talked to them… I’d not seen nor met a slave where we lived.
My Lord, New Orleans was a whirlwind of a place in 1828. I was dead before the New Orlean’s slaughterhouse case reached the Supreme Court—you recollect, the dumping of entrails of butchered stock into the river to float downstream where people, mostly black, lived in poverty. The case was unsuccessful, of course, the Court decided for the slaughterhouse rules favoring the white capitalists, burn baby burn, but the single dissenter foretold future law, an unsung John Marshall Harlan. Don’t get me started on the absurdity of a Supreme Court deciding that Fourteenth Amendment protections cover former slaves’ ‘equal rights’ but do not extend to their ‘economic rights.’ Equal, up to a point…
In my lived experience the majority of good people recoil from an economy that produces as much human misery as gross national product. Not even death can diminish my memories, forged at such a tender age, nineteen I was, as I’ve said, young black men and women in shackles, poked, prodded, touched in ungodly ways. The slave auction I saw in that city chilled me to the bone. That such behavior could be not just condoned, but justified by the courts, completely legal, a cornerstone of the economy—again, it’s the economy, stupid, with human flesh and blood as currency—recall, I knew Frederick Lewis Douglass and was fully briefed on being born into slavery. Heaven is filled with American heroes. Frederick and Martin are not eager for the day, but they will be thrilled when Barack joins them, as he will someday, as will all of you.
There are good people—on both sides. Debates are healthy, arguments are good, compromise is necessary—taxes are fair game for debate and legislation. Remember: You can fool all of the people some of the time, some of the people all of the time, but you can’t fool all of the people all of the time. Elections—if you desecrate the vote, you desecrate democracy, wherefore the rituals of voting, guaranteed by law, are the heartbeat of democracy. (Pause) It’s not on life support, but it needs intensive care.
You’ve come a great distance along the arc of justice. Don’t let America slip backwards. As the poet of your times has written, our country was so much older then, when it forged its Jacob Marley’s chain, it’s younger than that now. The time is now. Search your heart. Now… I must return to my place in the sky. I bid you farewell and wish you well. Goodbye… goodbye… good bye…
Scene 1
[A local breakfast place. Carl and Teddy sit at a table, drinking coffee.]Carl: You recall this place?
Teddy: Oh, yeah, I remember this building. I imagine it was built in the late nineteenth century.
Carl: The year is stamped in concrete on a cornerstone. 1905. It was an ice cream store your last visit. We stopped here before we drove up to watch the fireworks. They sold magazines, candy, potato chips, snacks. Didn’t last long.
Teddy: My memory goes back further. Somebody gutted it at some point. In the early sixties it was a cigar shop, the walls were bare brick, it had a dark hardwood floor, and there was a bar. My dad used to drink in here at night.
Carl: My dad, too, ha ha ha, may he Rest In Peace.
Teddy: I came to this cigar shop after school in sixth grade. (Closes his eyes, sniffs) I can almost smell the stale odor—faintly. I had a shoeshine kit and made some money to buy batteries for my transistor radio.
Server: You boys decide on anything? Can I get you some breakfast?
Carl: Not me, Thelma. I’m good.
Server: Oatmeal with cinnamon and raisins?
Carl: No thanks. I had something when I got up.
Server: I don’t think I know you. You from around here?
Carl: This is Teddy. He grew up in this town. Him and me went to grade school together.
Teddy: I moved out west years ago.
Carl: Yeah, he got out of this hell hole while the gettin’ was good. I didn’t have the luxury.
Server: Oh, it ain’t so bad, Carl. I kind of like it here. Can I get you something, Teddy?
Teddy: Do you have any fruit?
Server: We have some fresh melon. It’s good.
Teddy: That’s fine.
[Server exits.]Carl: I tell you what, this is like the third or fourth time somebody’s tried to open a restaurant here. Thelma is the daughter of the guy that bought this restaurant just as they rolled out the vaccine. He’s a nice guy and all, but it’s hard to make a living. It gets harder and harder. Truth is, Hardcore makes more money than I do. It pisses me off. I’ve worked my whole life.
Teddy: Automation is a big part of it, especially in local economies built on agriculture or manufacturing.
Carl: Yeah, it has more to do with cheap labor over seas or immigration across the southern border. The bastards that run this state don’t seem to know I need to eat, too. The feds came after me for back taxes a few years ago. I went into business with a guy to flip a house, we took out a loan, you know, $40,000. The market dropped, hasn’t stopped dropping around here, and we defaulted on the loan. We paid back what we could. The feds treated it as income. Rather than throw me in jail, they put me on an installment plan.
Teddy: That’s not good.
Carl: Automation. That ain’t it. You can’t win with these people. They’ shove it up your ass and ask you to smile.
(Pause)
Carl: You know, you didn’t have to get a room at the motel last night. I have room for you to sleep.
Teddy: I felt like being by myself. I took a walk in the country along the river. I’ve always loved this place in the summer.
Carl: Beats the hell out of winter.
(Pause)
Carl: You know, I’m really sorry. I made a bad decision last night bringing Ray to the river. I thought you might want to see the dark underbelly of the MAGA monster. They’re fighting mad. Lots of cops like Ray, hard core, are standing by. It’s become a money maker for cops around here to run private military training facilities. I’m not sure what I think about it. Hardcore, he hates it.
Teddy (sighs): If I’m totally honest, I was an asshole, too. I should have listened and kept my mouth shut. I promised myseIf I would control myself. I lost it. I just lost it. But you can’t kill two people because one of them fired into the air.
Carl: I wasn’t there. I don’t know why he shot them. I mean they, had witnesses, but they were all white. Ha, ha, there was no body cam footage. It was deleted from the server. These cops—man, they want a race war. It’s crazy. I see young guys driving around with machine guns hanging out their windows dressed up like army men. I went to one of Ray’s training sessions. These guys are serious. There is danger out there. I understand it.
Teddy: Trump has created all of this.
Carl (laughs): I know that’s what people think. He’s a con man. He didn’t do this. He just lit the fuse. (Pause) Listen, I know Trump is an idiot. I’ve known all along. I know he’s a liar and a thief, he’s selfish, he’s a bad man, ok, a bad human being. But… I had no choice. The Clintons, the Democrats, and the Republicans, too, they’ve sucked the juice out of places like this, rural places. Even if we had health insurance, our hospitals aren’t any good. They don’t have enough money.
Teddy: Did you vote for Trump in 2020?
Carl: I don’t have to tell you that. This is America.
Teddy: So you voted for Biden?
Carl (laughs): There was nothing I could do. I didn’t vote. First time since I got a legal vote I didn’t vote.
Teddy: Jesus. What does not voting mean?
Carl (laughs): Means the same thing as a vote. Don’t mean shit. Now, I don’t suggest that the election was stolen. That’s Trump at his finest, pure garbage to keep crazy guys like Ray dancing to Trump’s tune straight to the ballot box.
Teddy: I can’t understand your logic. How is not voting going to bring more money to rural areas?
Carl: Well, I’m not sure you should be looking for any logic. I sure don’t see any in Joe Biden’s plan. It’s socialism. I’d rather deal with a capitalist than a socialist.
Teddy: Which is Donald Trump?
Carl: I thought he was a capitalist, a damn smart one, ruthless, tough, but I was wrong. He’s a common criminal and a blowhard. There ain’t no “ist” in him. Now logically, I know Ray was in the wrong, I know it isn’t right to kill people just for holding up a place, not hurting anybody, but it isn’t right that I have to live the way I do, either. I’m not going to go stick up a 24-hour truck stop. Why should they get special treatment? Because they’re black?
Teddy: Special treatment? They’re dead.
Carl: They parked in the lot, got out of the car, went in, used the bathroom, ordered a meal, ate it, and then pulled guns on the guy who brought them the check. If I’d a’ done that, I sure as hell would have known I might get killed. You don’t know, my friend. You haven’t lived in it.
Teddy: He didn’t have to kill them.
Carl: No, he didn’t. I understand that. But they didn’t have to pull their guns on a young kid. I’m supposed to put Ray away because he shot them?
(Pause)
Carl: People are struggling to survive. Hell, they were hiring painters and framers and sheet rockers to work on remodeling a shopping center twenty miles from here. I applied for it, lots of us did, it was a good job, but I’ll be damned if they didn’t bring in a bunch of Mexicans. That’s the way it is. I’ve broken almost every bone in my body, my hands and fingers are cut up and mangled, I’ve done every shit job you can think of, and now they give the jobs to the minorities. These black guys pull guns on a young kid working midnights at a truck stop? I’m supposed to put Ray away because he shot them?
Teddy: Why did you stay here?
Carl: Why? Why? I don’t know. It’s done.
Teddy: Think about all the people you would have known if you’d lived in other places.
Carl: Living here was great, a dream. I was married, we had a child, I was always working, in demand. We didn’t have much, but we had what we needed. Except for good health care. My wife is buried here. My child has moved to a city. Time passes. But you’re right this ain’t no place to be. Not no more. The money that the corporations has left for the common people has all gone to the government, and I believe there is a liberal deep state distributing that money to the minorities. I don’t begrudge the minorities, but I need food, too. I need to see a doctor occasionally. I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again: If there is such a thing as white privilege, I want some. I’m not greedy.
Teddy (uses his cell phone): Give me a second… definition of privilege: a right or benefit or advantage given to one individual or group but denied to other individuals or groups…hmm…
Carl (laughs): Exactly. That must be one of those smart phones like Hardcore has.
Server: Here you go. Enjoy your melon. I hope you have a good visit. It’s a sweet town. I know. I moved here from the city.
[Server’s cell phone rings. She exits.]Carl: Thelma’s dad runs a trucking company. McMillan’s Magic Infrastructure Incorporated. I remember a time when I thought men like that, owners of big businesses, well, I thought they were Kings, that we owed them good work and loyalty. I was naive. They ain’t Kings. They’re thieves. That’s why I voted for Trump. Fight fire with fire.
Teddy: If he runs again in 2024, will you vote for him?
Carl: Fuck voting. Voting is a waste of time.
Teddy: What? You’re turning your back on democracy.
Carl: No, democracy turned its back on lots of people like me. I’m not real sure we’ll have an election. January 6 was nothing compared to what’s coming. You should have listened to Ray instead of fighting with him if you want to know the whole truth. His little training camp is small potatoes compared to the big dogs. These private military training sites, they’re stockpiling weapons. They’re schooling these skinhead white guys to make bombs and shoot and fight hand to hand. There are women, too. It’s going to be tough for the FBI and the National Guard to defeat them. It’s going to take the military. The shit is going to hit the fan, man. Mark my words.
Chorus
[Six shadowy figures with the river as backdrop]Deep State (unison): For Heaven’s sake, is this the ghost of Christmas Yet to Come? Or are we hearing the clinking of Jacob Marley’s chains, each link, a national sin, as we sit in this auditorium? Jacob’s chain is an apt metaphor for our hop, skip, and jumping from war to war, crisis to crisis, frying pan into the fire, each link something else we’ve done to abhor. We have to get something right ‘lest we are forever no more.
Deep State Actor 1: An apt synecdoche perhaps more aptly put, since Marley’s chain might represent but a small portion of our nation’s history. Clearly, it can be viewed as a distortion out of proportion to the real mystery.
Deep State Actor 2: “I have sat invisible beside you many and many a day,” said Jacob to a frugal Scrooge. Remember that quote. Invisibility is too easily conflated with indivisibility. In figurative language we dare not take risk our future. Clearly, we can be viewed as the true distortions.
Deep State Actor 3: Let’s not wax melodramatic in response to this paltry skit. It doesn’t even touch upon the horrors our history holds for women, for children, for Native Americans, for Asians—which is not a monolithic group. It’s a work of fiction, not a visitation grounded in Holy Writ. It’s fiction, I tell you, a thin script written by a young screenwriter, that has us all buzzing. Jane Austen they is not. I know they well. They is experimenting with us.
Deep State Actor 1: Point of order, Madame Speaker, rather a fine point of grammar I raise. What meanest thou by they?
Deep State Actor 3: I wish you hadn’t done that, Mitch. You stupid man, you blew my cover. We agreed to do this chorus biz anonymously. Don’t giggle so sardonically. Who else would be Madame Speaker in 2021? Well, as I’ve said all along, this is a work of fiction, fiction, get it?
Deep State Actor 4: Now I have a point of order, or at least a point, that I feel I must raise if I’m to be faithful to my country above my state, as I must, now that I am Madame Vice President. Actually, I have two points. First, why in the world hasn’t Mitch learned the new rules around pronouns? I withdraw that question. I know why. I was that little girl riding the bus. I understand bias. Things change, Mitch. Second, fiction by no means under any circumstances always means fake. This is fiction fiction, not fake fiction. They’re different. I don’t do fake. No knock offs of any kind in this woman’s closet.
Deep State Actor 2: Well, since we’re revealing who we really are—or at least what the public thinks we really are, whoever the public is, do we really know anybody?—I will say that as the Senate leader I’m concerned. I’m concerned. I’ve never seen paralysis like this, a prolonged, agonizing cramp in the legislative muscle, protecting the cruelest form of capitalism since slavery. Of course, legally we’ve made progress, but we need many more of Madame Speaker’s paltry skits. Where else would we have the chance to speak with Lincoln? Perhaps fiction is more powerful than fact.
Deep State Actor 4: Sir, I have to ask: Do you agree that fiction isn’t necessarily fake?
Deep State Actor 2: Why quibble over the meaning of fake? Who could argue that Hamlet is fake?
Deep State Actor 1: Come, come, now, Mr. Majority Leader. Of course Hamlet is fake! Why, has he ever walked on this Earth? Has he ever breathed of the air? Has he ever visited Kentucky?
Deep State Actor 2: I suppose our recent conversation in the SCIF with Abraham Lincoln was fake? I recognized his quotes. His summary of William Colby was spot on.
Deep State Actor 3 (finishing a phone conversation she has been having): Yes, Harriet, I promise, I’ll no longer refer to it as a paltry skit. I can’t promise not to nitpick your paltry rhymes. What else rhymes with Holy Writ? Ok. Bye, bye. Hugs and kisses to the grandchildren. (to her colleagues) So I’ve spoken with the playwright. They agreed to add an Act to what they originally conceived of as a four act skit if we want to talk with Abraham Lincoln again. Do we?
Deep State Actor 4: He sounded pretty done when he left us, I mean, that was a formal goodbye.
Deep State (in unison sans Actor 3 and 4) What we’ve seen presented here has underscored our common fear of dissolution of the Union by none other than a former President. Although many citizens on both sides of the aisle see through his bluster and his guile, others of the White persuasion buy his lies. Abraham forfeited his life for the Union and continues in death to offer communion with living souls striving to keep alive the opportunity of life, liberty, and justice for all. Of course we wish to speak with him before the curtain falls.
Deep State Actor 3: Be careful what you wish for. I’ll confirm with Harriet. Whether he will show I cannot know, but I’ll pass along the request. We shall have Act V.
