Abraham Lincoln_ Vampire Hunter - Seth Grahame-Smith [101]
“Rascals” Tad and Willie Lincoln—seven and ten years old, respectively—were the unquestioned life (some would say scourge) of the White House. The boys spent countless hours running rampant over the mansion and its grounds during the first year of their father’s presidency, a fact that aggravated some of Abe’s associates to no end, but offered the president a much-needed distraction from the stresses of running a country and a war.
The sound of my boys at play is (too often, I confess) the only joy between sunrise and sleep. I am therefore too happy to wrestle and chase them about whenever the opportunity presents itself—and regardless of who looks on. Not one week ago, [Iowa Senator James W.] Grimes walked into my office for an appointment, only to find me pinned to the floor by four boys: Tad and Willie holding my legs, Bud and Holly * my arms. “Senator,” I said, “if you would be kind enough to negotiate the terms of my surrender.” Mary thinks it beneath the dignity of a president to gambol so, but were it not for these moments—these tender little pieces of life—I should go mad in a month’s time.
Abe was a doting, loving father to all three of his boys, but with Robert off at Harvard (where he was guarded by a handful of local men and vampires) and Tad “too young and wild to be still,” he grew especially fond of Willie.
He has an insatiable appetite for books; a love of solving riddles. If there is a fight, he can be counted on to step in and make the peace. Some are eager to point to the similarities between us, but I do not see us as so very similar—for Willie has a kinder heart than I, and a quicker mind.
As he celebrated the good news that Sunday afternoon, Abe happened to catch a glimpse of his boys playing on the frost-covered South Lawn below his office window.
Tad and Willie were busy holding a court-martial for Jack * as they often did—accusing him of this offense or that. Not ten yards from where they played, two young soldiers (not much more than boys themselves) looked after them—both of them shivering, no doubt wondering what they had done to deserve such an assignment.
They were just two of the dozen living guards who patrolled the White House and its grounds around the clock. At Abe’s insistence, his wife and children were accompanied by no fewer than two men (or one vampire) whenever they ventured outdoors. There were no fences between the street and the mansion in 1862. The public was free to roam the grounds—even enter the mansion’s first floor. As journalist Noah Brooks wrote, “the multitude, washed or unwashed, always has free egress and ingress.” The multitude was not, however, permitted to carry firearms onto the property.
At half-past three o’clock, a small, bearded man with a rifle was spotted approaching the White House from the direction of Lafayette Square. The sentry assigned to the North Entrance leveled his weapon and ordered the man to stop—yelling at the top of his lungs.
FIG. 3A-1. - SOUTH LAWN OF THE WHITE HOUSE UNDER HEAVY GUARD, CIRCA 1862. THE MAN ON THE PORTICO IS BELIEVED TO BE A MEMBER OF ABE̱S TRINITY.
The commotion drew me to the north windows, where I watched the little man continue his approach, a rifle held across his body. Guards came running now from every corner of the grounds, alerted, as we had been, by the repeated shouts of “stop at once or be shot!”
Three of these guards came running quite a bit faster than the others, and made straight for the intruder with no fear of being shot. At the sight of their advance (and, I suspect, their fangs), the little man at last dropped his rifle and raised his hands in the air. He was nonetheless brought violently to the ground, and his pockets searched by Lamon while the trinity held his limbs. I was later told that he seemed frightened; confused. “He gave me ten dollars,” he supposedly said with tears in