Still, it was not until the election of 1860 that the United States faced the prospect of a tall in the White House. This would become the real test of how far the American mind had really broadened. After it was found that Seward and Chase were inexplicably despised by large swathes of Republican constituency blocks, and, furthermore, that they would have had difficulty capturing the western states, the 6′ 4″ Abraham Lincoln won the Republican Party’s nomination for President. Even for many Republicans, this seemed a dangerous choice. Some applauded Lincoln’s nomination as a “historical moment” in the democratic process. Others met Lincoln’s nomination with cooler receptions, ranging from worries that he would be under too much political pressure to serve the tall community all the way to allegations that he was actually a candidate from a tribe of undiscovered tall islanders in the Pacific.

Lincoln’s father, Thomas Lincoln, had married an average-height Virginian, Nancy Hanks, in 1805. When Abraham was born it was not yet clear whether he would inherit his father’s or his mother’s height genes. By the time the young boy reached his teens, however, it was obvious that he was a tall. Lincoln avoided discussing his height in most of his unsuccessful bids for various state nominations in Illinois. However, he could not escape the constant commentary of observers who saw him as a member of a new generation of tall politicians, and by the 1850s, many were already whispering about Lincoln’s possible future as the first tall president.

After news of the nomination was released, the newspapers and orators made a great fuss about the situation. Forums, editorials, and debate societies obsessed over whether America was “ready” for a tall president. Some cloaked the discussion in terms of ‘tradition’ and ‘change.’ Many tried to tie Lincoln’s bizarre figure in with growing fears about Irish and Italian immigration to the coastal cities. Others accused him of playing the “height card” and bullying other talls into voting for him out of solidarity. The choice of the squat Mainer Hannibal Hamlin as Lincoln’s running mate did little to blunt the accusations that he was out-of-line with the political altitude of the country.

This debate about whether a tall could really be President almost totally occupied popular discussion about the election, on both overt and obscured levels. There were some other trivial concerns facing the nation at the time—economic issues and some sectionalist tensions—but these were largely ignored by the great newspapermen.

All the same, Lincoln’s skills as an orator managed to woo over those who were skeptical of his physical stature. One man who was at Lincoln’s Cooper-Union speech in February remarked, “When Lincoln rose to speak, I was greatly disappointed. He was tall, tall—oh, how tall! and so angular and awkward that I had, for an instant, a feeling of pity for so ungainly a man.” But, as the speech continued, “his face lighted up as with an inward fire; the whole man was transfigured. I forgot his clothes, his personal appearance, and his individual peculiarities. Presently, forgetting myself, I was on my feet like the rest, yelling like a wild Indian, cheering this wonderful man.”

Lincoln’s opponents chalked up such sentiment to “Lincoln mania” and accused his supporters of wanting a “tall messiah.” They also mined a quote from Lincoln’s 1859 speech at the Wisconsin State Fair where he mentioned “trees, shrubs, fruits, plants, and flowers” to suggest that Lincoln was a “horticulturalist, like those from the Netherlands” who was so out-of-touch with normal values as to suggest that flowers were a major agricultural product. The leading newspapers carried weeks of columns on the “Botany Affair” with expert opinions on whether Lincoln could “understand” the concerns of workaday Americans. One column suggested that Lincoln’s “lofty” rhetoric was directly associated with his “lofty” height. Another political club organized a “Lincoln Trimming” day where members paraded through the streets with pruning shears cutting “Abe Bouquets.”

“The one in the purple tie?”
“Exactly.”
I gave him the look I would give the man.
“You’re hired.”

Ambrose wasn’t really so eccentric, he just did something like that every once in a while to keep a hand in the eccentric game. The truth is, he shopped at Sears without a shred of irony. Even so, he would never have said a word to me if I hadn’t somehow become reed thin over the summer and quite accidentally gotten the chic-est bob ever to sally forth from Supercuts.

Ambrose handed me a drink from a tray that was going around on the arm of a very worried waitress.

“Have you ever been a muse before?”
“Not to my knowledge.”
“Never?”
“Jim Jackson was once inspired to write about me on a bathroom wall.”
“What became of it?”
“Luke told everybody Jim was gay.”
“And what became of that?”
“It turned out Luke was gay.”
“Who’s Luke?”
“He’s over there.”
“He’s hired too.”

Of course I’m an orphan. What became of all this was the type of thing that never happens to people with concerned parents, or at least not to decent people with concerned parents. Decent people realize that it’s very important to value family ties. Besides, it wasn’t glamorous all the time. It mostly was, though. Luke and I had planned for just such an eventuality all along. We were entirely premeditated and wonderful at hiding it. That was why Ambrose needed us.

It’s late to be leaving the city, but we have to speak to Him. I know what He’ll say. No. I know how what He’ll say will feel. It won’t be a slap in the face so much as a long shallow gash exacted, maybe, with the sharpened edge of a monocle. We can’t do it without Him.

Nicholas is driving and talking to me. He is nervous-upbeat. We both wore trench coats, which is fortunate because it’s raining now. We didn’t know it would rain when we put them on. We didn’t know we would look the same. I’m not listening to him. I am watching God’s tears trace wet comet-tail trails across the windows, and uttering a gentle-gutteral “Mmm” in response. He isn’t satisfied by this. I tune in.

“I’m sorry. What were you saying?” “I couldn’t tell you.”

We laugh at this. So intimately, Nicholas and I. Is this how it was when there were only two people in the cart to the guillotine? Were there ever only two in the cart to the guillotine?

“You’re over-dramatizing this in your head, aren’t you? You’re making French Resistance analogies.” “French Revolution.” “Close enough.” “Not at all.” “How bad can it be?”

I won’t tell him if he doesn’t know, and he doesn’t because he was never under His thumb all the way. He was a father-figure of sorts to me. Of a very strange sort. Now I’ll be soothing.

“Nice coat.”

And he smiles. He turns on the radio and I put my head back to listen. The box rattles slightly on the backseat where he placed it so lovingly. Le Marseillaise echoes faintly in my brain. I wonder if Nicholas can hear it.

I will apologize to Dorothea for my forgetfulness, and she will laugh, because she will know the bar’s name, just as she knows the name of every bar in this city, which is to say in the same way as she knows the name of every brand of cinnamon and every of my friends’ mothers. It was during the “Morton Salt Girl” sessions that I first noticed this phenomenon. It is especially disconcerting because of the way she pronounces the third largest cinnamon manufacturer: “Talon” with an inverted emphasis, so that it rhymes with “salon.” As I am only of stable means, it upsets me to have the fixities of life interrupted in this way.

She will say: “Alan, you don’t know how to match colors. And you never have.” She will be wrong in this, because I have made a career of matching sounds, and the difference between this job and the job of putting on shirts is not so far off as she thinks.

A pigeon flying above will accidentally drop a bottle-cap, a tragic accident on account of the precious value the pigeon has assigned to the it, some feet from us. This will subtly disturb her, as if she has read of such things happening but cannot determine where.

“I think that you shouldn’t use so many banjos in this album,” I will offer to her once we have both had something to drink. “I think that they are a second-rate instrument. There are so many stringed instruments with that same obscure pretension to choose from: mandolins, autoharps, zithers.”

She will accuse me at this point of an unwielding genericism, although I will think she is accusing me of dilletantism, and she will think she is accusing me of coldness. The point of the meeting will be broken by this turn of events, and we will run out the clock talking about whether it is better to feel too constricted or too unrestrained in your clothes. Her cousin will pick her up on the corner outside of the bar whose name I still will not recall. Her cousin’s car will have a false European license plate on the front, and this will irritate me, although I will make a joke about stealing cars and shipping them across the Atlantic.

The pigeon will return home to the statue of Admiral Farragut, and the three—pigeon, wife, and Admiral Farragut—will wallow in disappointment.

So we washed onshore in Old New York – we wretched refuse—and tipped our hats to Liberty – we huddled masses yearning to breathe free. The Lady passed the chalice and we threw our heads back and opened our throats and let her flow into our blood. Blood is thicker than water and here I am the product. I am breathing in and out in Boston and I am not writing Why England Slept and I am not writing Ulysees. I am writing “Dear Kitty” and dropping my r’s and someday, Papa, you will find this. You will survive us all.

The United States Forest Service, a capitalized and henceforth entitled arm of the the nation’s federal muscle, takes its job seriously as a paranoiac. Enough ill-prepared hikers have wandered up to the alpine zone with supermarket bags full of Doritos and Aquafina to warrant this hysterical behavior. To remind humanity of its insignificance, the linemen of Smokey the Bear have attached the following warning to one of the penultimate trees: Hikers have died on this ridge—and then to close the loophole—even in summer. The calm rotogravure of the sign is unalarmed and friendly in its uniform Forest Service way. It is in a family with signs reading Viewshed 0.25 mile or Pit toilets only.

Three brothers have taken in the sign’s suggestion with equal parts amusement and sobriety. They know that the thirty feet of parachute cord in their backpack indicate that this sign was not meant to scare people like them, and also that the nasty part—the dying part—is true. Passing the sign and arriving at the beginning of the ridge, they hear the sepulchral moaning of the variable wind across the crest. Laden down with dampness, it seems old: furious at its own sluggish weight. It will pause for a second to take a wheezing breath and then wail down vengefully on the mountain which is forcing it upwards.

The oldest brother, the architect of this trip but otherwise fairly simple, has suggested a pause behind one of the last rocky shelters. He is not clever enough to carry out the dual heist of deciding accurately what to do and convincing the other two of it simultaneously, and knows it. Nutella-and-peanut-butter sandwiches are the way out of this (as they are the way out of so many things). The younger brothers, whose independence has been reigned in by the cold and damp, acquiesce, and the three settle down to add clothes and calories to themselves.

“I can hardly feel my fingers,” says the youngest, blowing into a Ziploc bag that has become a makeshift glove.

The middle brother quietly munches on some apricots and suggests: “It’d be better if we go back. You shouldn’t go above treeline in this weather.”

The oldest is just bright enough to realize the value of this suggestion, but not enough to beat down his prior instinct to make it to the summit. You achieve the summit or attain the peak in the guidebooks, he thought. They leave out any suggestive verb for people who only make it to the bottom of the ridge.

After struggling with this incompatibility for a few seconds, he offers: “Why don’t you two head back to the car, and dry off. I’ll just run to the top and then meet you back there. I can do it quick. I have better gear, anyhow.”

This is a third-rate suggestion at best, and they all know it, but it is a forty-degree August day and in those conditions third-rate suggestions flourish. The younger two take their warm clothes out of the pack and head down into the forest. An offhand “Be careful!” is exchanged between the three before they part.

Alone, now, the oldest moves faster, his thoughts dull away, and his focus sharpens on his steps. Rock to rock to root to mud-pit to rock. Each foot of elevation infuriates the soggy wind even more, and it tears mercilessly at the bare ridge. Rock to rock to crevice to rock. There is something holy about being on a mountain alone like this, visiting with something so permanent. Rock to puddle to rock. He is moving quickly now, his backpack a forgotten triviality, the wind an encouragement. Rock to rock to a long jump to another rock. He checks his watch quickly to see how long he has been gone, and in the distraction rock to rock to—

There is a curious absence of shock in putting your hand to your forehead and finding it absorbed in blood. It is a part of the environment, this blood this moment. It drips into the moss and makes a pleasant color in the union. Next to the gray sky its color is a welcome bit of arrogance.

And as that blood drips life out of the boy and into Mt. Jefferson, Mt. Mitten looks on from across the valley, saddened that it has never had such an experience.