George Atzerdot

Abraham Lincoln

I sat at the barstool, back hunched over the dark counter and with my head in my hands.  The knife jabbed me in the side from the pocket I had stashed it in.  I sat up, adjusting my coat.  It went just past my hips�" my father, who was just taller, left it for me when he went up north with my sister after the war.  He would always ask “George, what’s wrong with you?” and “George, why can’t you be more like my little girl?”  I guess he didn’t really want the answer.  I wonder if Andrew Johnson had kids.  The Vice President lay upstairs in the Kirkwood House, awaiting nothing but the room service knocking on his door.  I ordered my fifth beer.  I pressed the edge of my key to room 126, the one directly above my victim’s, into the wooden ledge.  I tucked it back into my chest pocket, with a gentle clink as it nicked my guns barrel. 

            “Does the Vice President have any kids?”  I asked the tender, who placed what was actually my eighth glass in front of my hands.  He looked at me and shrugged. 

“4 or 5, last time I checked.”  I looked at my hands.  They were shaking.

“Siblings?”  The man looked to his left, calling over the other server, asking him the same. 

 “A brother, a sister once, but she died young.”  She said, before drying my used glass.  Tenth? I checked my watch.  10:10 p.m.  Jonny Booth was probably at the theatre by now, scoping out the area before settling down in a seat to observe Lincoln from afar.  My glass was empty.  I looked at the man behind the counter who nodded no at me.  I stood up, pushing my stool backwards, knocking the seat to the ground.  I turned around and pushed open the door.

The rain was cold against my sweaty hands. I stumbled of the edge of the walk down the road before turning back to the Kirkwood House.  The heavy doors of the building were blocked by mobs of people�"reporters, fans, protesters.  I stood staring, dropping my key with the water soaking through my old boots and tears burning my eyes.  I ran.  I ran past the door to the saloon, across the way to drop my knife into a puddle outside the store I purchased it at just the other day, and stumbled through the crowd forming in my way before realizing they were screaming and crying and pushing each other to pass, fleeing from Ford’s Theatre as doctors arrived and guards hustled spectators away from the scene at which the man I was supposed to kill was just named the President.