It was the best part of Skyscraper Abe, pointing heavenward from his raised right hand, big as a Volkswagen. His other arm ended with a wooden fist that clutched the Gettysburg Address. Those arms could be laid across the river and used for bridges. They could be chopped up for the next thirty years' firewood. They were outrageous as the sculpture itself, taller maybe than any building in Central Illinois. But the finger, long and pink and strident: that was just the right size to shoot at.
   
Whenever one of us felt like one more thing, just one more bad thing and the earth would crack under our feet and those cracks would bleed lava that would scorch the meat off our pathetic bones and the world would be better off for the loss, we'd drive out to the edge of town, to where Skyscraper Abe stood abandoned in his field, looming over the freeway. We'd stagger out of our idling cars, headlights splashing Abe's ankles with light, and we'd swipe the tears and snot from our faces, and we'd pull out a pistol or a revolver or a shotgun and take aim at the finger.
   
The scene was always the same, though our cars changed—from new Bonnevilles and Mustangs and Chevy C-10s to Grand Wagoneers, Gremlins, Rabbits, Camrys with mud-slapped sides, to busted-up Civics, rusty Windstars, third-hand Optimas. Shots fired, birds scattered. Sometimes a lone sob as bullet connected with pointer.

Some had missed. One of us had blasted Abe in the cheek with buckshot. The holes are pockmarks that have been worked away by wind and weather, where sparrows nest. One of us shot himself in front of Skyscraper Abe, a messy blast to the hand, and spent the next twenty-five years trying to convince the rest of us he wasn't drunk at the time. Some of us forgot to load the gun at all.

But most of us were good shots. Connection with the finger meant the bullet sank inside: only a pok! of bullet meeting wood, and then silence. That was the best silence. It made a silence in our bodies. A silence we held onto as we climbed back into our Camaros, our Rabbits, our Optimas, our Windstars, and drove the dark ribbon of highway back to town. A person who'd shot Abe's finger had that little shove behind them that kept them living. It was the same for doctors as for kindergarten teachers as for mechanics: the look that said, I shot Abe Lincoln, hung over the face.

Hard to say what happened. Whether the finger took one too many bullets and came off at the root, whether a tornado tipped down at fingerpoint and lifted it away, or whether it was amputated by some cosmic surgeon who wanted it gone. God, say. It's missing, is all. Where there was once a finger, now only air: a fingerspace of our own sky.

Horrible feeling, driving out to shoot Abe Lincoln's finger only to find there's nothing to shoot. For weeks after the initial shock, we searched for the finger. Peeked under tarps in pickup trucks and backyards, revealing heaps of wood, dead dolls, fallen branches, dirt sold by the shovelful. Broke into the old abandoned shoe factory, handling its rusting lasts, and the derelict Lincoln School where, years ago, we first learned to count and read the same books that now lie, splayed open, in dust. Scoured Craigslist for clandestine ads. Pawed away at fresh-turned earth in our graveyard, as if someone might sneak a giant finger into a grave.

That finger, our finger. It pointed straight up. It stood for something.

Now, we've gathered here in Abe's shadow: all of us who've ever driven out to his field, ever taken a shot. How we got here, all together, all at the same moment, none of us is sure. We only knew to come. We circled our idling cars, making a ring of light. We came to stand in the circle.

The thing to do is look at each other, each face ghosty in the summer night, each pair of eyes doglike and wet. What surprises are here, in the faces? Plenty, even though we thought we knew everything about shooting Abe Lincoln, about the people who do it. Faces of people we'd never suspected had picked up a gun in their lives. Elderly neighbors, always, when we see them, toddling the brick walkway between house and car, carrying some plastic bag. The mayor-slash-dentist, in a button-down shirt that looks like it's been asleep in the back of his closet since 1988. The man from England who coached our kids in soccer, landed in rural Illinois somehow by chance, very nice. Our own kids, who look at us like our pain was their pain all along. Our kids' friends, who, even now, try to hide their own pain.

Someone steps into the center of the circle: a man we don't much notice, who keeps a garden full of imported plants. His face is ruddy in the carlight, sweat pressing through his skin. A mosquito rests on his cheek, sucking the fruity blood that's risen there.

He raises his arm to the sky. Finger pointed Abeward, he's a copy of that totem, gaze as solid and wooden as Abe's, angry welt rising on his cheek. Everyone quiets. There is something in this man. A gentleness and something else: a resolve.

That finger, he says, is still ours.

Little murmurs of agreement. How can we not agree?

He stops to cough, a little hack into his fist. The wait is unbearable.

We lean in to hear. The elderly tune their hearing aids; the young tone down their whispers.

We'll find it, you better believe we will, he says.

Yes, yes, yesses all around.

He looks up from his cough, his eyes watery and bright, his smile jammed full of hope.

And when we do, whoever took that finger, he lowers his arm, slow, until it's out in front of him, finger pointing straight forward, thumb cocked.

This gesture: it's what we played with as kids when we played cops and robbers, played cowboys, played Germans vs Allieds, North vs South. It's what we played with before we grew too old for it, before all our problems came. Before we shot Abe Lincoln.

Pow, somebody says, way back in the crowd.



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Bess Winter's work has appeared in American Short Fiction, Ecotone, The Gettysburg Review Norton's FLASH FICTION INTERNATIONAL and many others. Her collection of stories, MACHINES OF ANOTHER ERA, is forthcoming from Gold Wake Press.

Read her postcard.

Read more of her work in the archive.

Detail of woodcut on main page by Boris Artzybasheff.





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