I don't remember how it started but when my brother Ivan was very young, like three or four years old, he was terrified of Abraham Lincoln. Not just any old Abraham Lincoln, mind you, but that special, personal version of our--was it fourteenth president?--the one that lived quietly in Ivan's closet and could only be seen late at night when the door was accidentally left slightly open.
Sometimes when it was way past dark and Ivan was trying to get to sleep, all tucked into his wee tiny bed and the light from the hallway would filter into his bedroom. It would be just enough light for him to catch sight of Abraham Lincoln where he was silently standing--tall and proud--wearing his standard issue stove-pipe top-hat, with the classic bow tie around his neck. Honest Abe never moved so much as quietly loomed, beady little eyes glistening. Needless to say, this scared my brother shitty and he would scream for our mom to come and shut the closet door for fuck's sake already.
My mom would come running to shut the closet door and be smiling slightly in that knowing and motherly way so that it was almost as if she and Abraham Lincoln had been in bed together in the next room and had planned the whole event--you know--for a lark.
Ivan was not amused. Ivan was never amused by the antics of Abraham Lincoln--not the one in his closet and certainly not the mechanical version at Disney World. I can't remember if this was before or after he began the late night house calls to Ivan's bedroom, but we also had a run in with Old Abe in The Hall of the Presidents at Epcot Center. As you are wheeled into the room on the roller-coaster like seats, being horrifically seat-belted in so there is no escape, you see Abraham Lincoln seated on his giant chair, much like his statue in DC. When you are front and center an easy target for the man, Abraham Lincoln, the robot, jankily stands up, cogs popping and wheels turning not-too-smoothly--the man needs some oiling--and his mouth begins to move, slightly off with the words, like the mechanical bears at Chuck E Cheese pizza. But the effect is twice as eerie because it's a dead president, giving an undead speach, his mouth gaping open and shut
like a fish on dry land gasping for water:
"Four score and seven years ago..." That was as far as he got before I heard Ivan screaming from the car next to mine, where he sat with my sister. He tried to unbuckle himself and climb out of his seat, to no avail, and then he began to cry. Eyes shut, mouth wide open to almost the full size of his head, which was thrown back in the most abjectly miserable wail. Now I've never been to the wailing wall, but I'd bet that it had nothing on this...and the band played on: "Our father's fathers..." droned mechanical Abe. And all the rest of it.
I'm certain that there is nothing more miserable than childhood. Unless, of course, it's being haunted by Abraham Lincoln...which you should really hope like hell you never are.
