The Crystal City Page 0,102
of it, and wherever it's coming from, there's Abe Lincoln, cause either he's causing the laughter or doing the laughing himself."
"Why thank you, sir," said Verily. "But now I fear I've taken too much of your time, and not on proper legal business at all, so I'll step on out of here before I get you in some kind of trouble."
"Oh, no trouble," said the clerk. "Any friend of Abe's is a friend of everybody's."
Verily bade him farewell and stepped back out into the afternoon sunshine.
Abe Lincoln sounds for all the world like the town drunk- or a ne'er-do-well, in any case. Failed at a store. No job to do so he can be found in a tavern or a general store. And this is the one I've been sent to find?
Though a drunk or ne'er-do-well would probably not get such a warm description from someone as precise and well ordered as that clerk.
To his surprise, when he stopped two men coming out of a barber shop-sporting that new clean-shaven look that required a man to spend ten cents a day getting his beard removed-and asked them if they knew the current whereabouts of Abraham Lincoln, they both held up a hand to hush him, listened, and sure enough, the sound of a distant gale of laughter could be heard.
"Sounds like he's over at Cheaper's store," said one man.
"Just straight on down the street," said the other, "kitty-corner from here."
So Verily followed the sound of laughter and sure enough, when he walked into the cool darkness of the store's interior, there were a half a dozen men and a couple of ladies, sitting here and there, while leaning up against the wall was about the ugliest man Verily Cooper had ever seen, who wasn't actually injured in some way. Tall, though, just like they said, a giraffe among men.
Lincoln was in the middle of a story. "So Coz says to me, Abe, isn't the front of the raft supposed to point downriver? And I says to Coz, And so it is. And he says to me, No, Abe, that's the front. And he pointed upstream, which made no sense at all. Well, now, that kind of illogic always riles me, not a lot, just a little, and I says, Now Coz, that was the front of the raft this morning, I agree, but wasn't it us decided which end of the raft was front? And therefore are we not entitled to change our minds and designate a new front, as circumstances change?"
Now Verily hardly knew what the story was about, and he certainly did not know this Coz fellow Abe was talking about. But when the people in that store laughed-which they did about every six words, on average-he couldn't help but join in. It wasn't just what Lincoln said, it was how he said it, such a dry manner, and willing to make himself the fool of the story, but a fool with a sort of deeper wit about him.
What was most interesting to Verily, though, was the way Lincoln fit with the other folks in that room. There was not a soul there who had even the slightest friction between him and Lincoln. They all fit with him like a bosom friend. And yet he couldn't be best friends with every one of them. A man doesn't have time to make more than a couple of friends so close and dear that they don't envy you when you do well or scorn you when you do badly or become irritated with you for any number of little habits you have.
It went way beyond being likable. Verily had met a few who had something of a knack for that-you find them rather thick on the ground in the lawyering profession-and he found that no matter how good their knack was, when you weren't with them, you were really angry at being taken in, and even when you were in that spell, some of that anger remained with you. Verily would sense it, but it wasn't there. No, these people weren't being hoodwinked, and Lincoln wasn't doing it by some sort of hidden power. He was just telling stories, and they were enjoying both the tale and the teller.
It didn't take Verily Cooper much time to notice all this-it was his knack, after all. The story continued and Lincoln showed no sign of noticing that Verily Cooper was there.
"Now Coz, he thinks about this-so he's holding really still, because you