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Thursday, July 13, 2017

Let’s Dig Up the Body of President Lincoln


My name is Holt, Judge Allen Holt.  It’s not a title; I work - worked - at Alvin’s Speedy Lube and and Parts until recently. Until David George convinced me to join him in his plan to dig up the body of President Abraham Lincoln.

“Let’s do it,” he said to me after work. We sat in Lindsey’s Tavern, as we occasionally did after our shift at the Lube and Parts. David George was the lead mechanic. I switched back and forth between mechanic and sales; David George said I wouldn’t know a wrench from a wrestling match. He said stuff like that ‘cus he was clever, I suppose.

“I mean it. I’m serious, Holt.”

“What?”

“Why, what we’ve been talkin’ about for the last week,” he said. “Let’s dig up the body of President Lincoln. We could do it. No problem. It’ll be easy.”

“Dig up??” I sputtered. David George had some weird ideas now and then - like the time he wanted to spray-paint the Lube and Parts’ manager’s car pink.  But this was the craziest. “Why would you want to do something like that, anyway, David George.”

David George ignored my question. He usually did. “It’s easy. Lincoln’s buried less than an hour from here, in Springfield. We can do it all in a couple of hours overnight, when it’s dark. Sneak in and out, no problem.”

“Yeah, but why?” I insisted. “Why would do you want to do this?”

“Listen,” David George looked  up and down the bar, then leaned close and whispered. “It’s not exactly a secret, but it’s not widely known - President Lincoln kept secret, important papers inside his hat. The stovepipe hat, right? That’s why he wore such a tall hat.”

David George is from Enid, Oklahoma. I don’t know if that’s important; maybe they do things differently in Enid.  Maybe they know things in Enid that the rest of us don’t know.  It’s all crooked lines from there to here. There are murderers living side by side with CEOs and investment bankers, slave-owners and rapists next to venture capitalists.  At least that’s the way that it is here. Enid, Oklahoma’s gotta’ be better than this, right?

“That’s the way the world is, Judge,” said David George. “It’s the only way to succeed,” he said. “It’s the only way to make something of ourselves. Suspicion, rumor, innuendo, unchecked allegations of obscene tax evasion, recriminations - these are the watchwords of successful leaders. We’ve been workin’ at the Lube and Parts since high school; do you really want to be working there for the next twenty years? I sure dont.”

David George downed the last of his beer. “I want to be something. Not like my old man.”

“What happened to your dad?” I asked. I’d known David George for a long time and he’d never said much about his dad, or any of his family really.

“He died.”

“Oh.” I said and sipped my beer as I waited for elaboration. I waited several minutes.

“It’s not so much that he died.” David George continued. “I mean, everyone dies. It’s the way he died.” I waited in silence again for more details. Then, “He was run over by a truck as he slept in his bed.” I waited again. Then he asked me a question: “What about your old man? Is he dead?”

“No.” I said and took off my ball cap to scratch my head for a second. Dandruff.  I got pretty bad flakes.  “No. My daddy’s a missionary in an undisclosed location. It’s top-secret priority.”

“He’s a preacher?”

“I suppose you might say it that way.”

“I ain’t known many preachers modest enough to be good at it.”

I thought that might have been the end of it. I thought he’d maybe order another round of drinks and that we’d sit in LIndsey’s another couple of hours. That’s we’d go to work at the Lube and Parts just like always and that David George would forget all about grave robbing. But no.

“I’ll do it,” he said. “Alone if I have to. I’ll walk with a firm step through a thousand of his friends to find out what’s in those papers, Holt. I need something more tempestuous than this gilded lithium-salt regulated equilibrium. If I can’t shoot the president, I'll steal his corpse.”


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