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A crash. A metal whine of one immense object forcing its way unnaturally over the other. Then screaming. Horrible screaming.
And then his feet fell out from under him.
Franklin Pierce was falling.
He tumbles, forward and over. His body slams against a cold metallic surface, and for a second he is not falling. But the room twists and he is falling again. No way is up. Forever he is falling.
Plummeting.
Until he lands.
President Pierce jerked awake with a start. His body was covered in a cold sweat. He had the same dream every time he closed his eyes, and it always ended an instant before impact. In a way, he was thankful. For as awful as the sensation of falling was, what followed was a nightmare. However, he was spared the ending, and when he awoke he would always start over where it began. And it began on a train.
Rickaticktick — Rickaticktick — Rickaticktick
Pierce lay face down on a couch somewhere in the White House, but he could still feel the vibration of the train moving toward its destination. The clicking of train tracks swelled in Pierce’s ears.
His right hand was free, draped over the edge of the couch, and it had already begun scouring for a bottle on its own. His fingers found several within reach, but most betrayed themselves to be empty as he lifted them. Franklin’s lips were parched. His head throbbed. His soul ached to be free of this infernal train ride. But he knew he never would be, so he sought to quiet his soul with drink.
Franklin’s hand grasped a bottle neck. It gave a satisfying slosh, and he eagerly brought the vial to his tremulous lips. Bourbon. It burned on the way down, and Franklin was content for the moment.
With considerable effort President Pierce hauled himself over onto his back. George Washington loomed above him, stoic and saintly. He appeared particularly ominous for the room was dark, and the Founding Father stared at President Pierce from the haunting shadows. Pierce groaned, wondering why he tortured himself by taking residence under the portrait of the first president this evening. The couches in the East Room were more comfortable than most, but the company was unbearable. Franklin turned from the unrelenting gaze of President Washington.
A single gas lamp had been left burning on the opposite side of the massive ballroom Pierce found himself in. Finger-like shadows splayed out in all directions, grasping into every hidden nook of the room that other presidents had used for state functions and meetings with dignitaries from foreign lands. Franklin Pierce used it as another place to drink, as he did with every room in the White House. Liquor bottles, most of them empty, were littered about the chartreuse carpet.
Few servants had stayed on in service from Millard Fillmore’s residency, but those who remained kept mostly to their quarters on the ground floor below. They dared not intrude on the grieving president, content to allow Franklin to drown himself in alcohol and sorrow. As sporadically as the servants ventured onto the first floor, they avoided the second altogether. Mrs. Pierce haunted the second floor, and her frightful presence set others ill at ease, Franklin included.
Franklin mourned the condition of his wife. As broken and debilitated as he was, his wife was worse. She had not left the living quarters of the White House since moving in a month previous. The servants avoided her completely out of fear. Franklin mostly kept to the first floor out of contempt. Not contempt for his wife, but contempt for himself. He drank and slept in random rooms of the first floor, and then drank again. Franklin took a large indulgence from his bourbon, emptying the bottle. He apathetically discarded it, leaving it to lie scattered with the others.
Rickaticktick — Rickaticktick — Rickaticktick
Franklin Pierce stood and turned to face his predecessor, stumbling only slightly as the motion of the train moved underneath his feet. President Washington was larger than life. Not only in the painting, but his legacy bore down on Franklin like the world upon Atlas’ shoulders. Washington stood there, unconcerned with the cares of paltry men playing president. He was dressed modestly in black. His right hand was held aloft, outstretched as if to present the country he had helped create to those who would dare to come after him. In his left hand he held a sheathed sword — a reminder of the price he paid to forge this experiment in democracy.
Franklin wondered what Washington would think of this country now. What would he think of the man who was now president? If the dead could speak, and Franklin painfully knew the dead did not, what words of wisdom might Washington bequeath to the living? Would he even care to speak with one such as Franklin Pierce?
There had been a time, which now felt a lifetime ago, when Washington was everything Franklin Pierce aspired to be. It was the greatest thrill of his life to receive the news that he had won the election. Pierce had ascended to a position few men could have dreamed. Fewer still attained. He was only the fourteenth man alive to receive such an honor. It was all he could have hoped for.
That all changed in January, two months before he was to be inaugurated.
For Franklin Pierce, reaching the presidency was like training his entire life to scale the tallest mountain, and upon finally climbing to that lofty peak, worn and weary, found none of the glory he imagined was there. Only wind-weathered rocks and loneliness, and no way to return to earth but to fall. Franklin Pierce had not been president two months, and he ached for it to be over. He was jaded with this journey. One month being president was an eternity of torment. This White House was his prison. His term of office, his purgatory. Pierce would not be free until his train reached its destination. Until then, his train continued on.
Rickaticktick — Rickaticktick — Rickaticktick
A fog as thick as cotton had clothed the District of Columbia in white that early March morning Pierce was to take the oath of office. His mind was in a fog all its own. He still had not recovered from two months prior. People walked on eggshells around him, careful not to mention the incident. Whispered conversations were quickly hushed the moment Franklin Pierce happened nearby. He could not blame them. They were fearful if some errant word of theirs should cause the President-elect to lose himself in sorrow. They just did not know he already had.
Snow began to fall as the crowds of onlookers eager to see their new president gathered for the inauguration. There was an eerie silence that followed so massive a crowd, as if they were attending a funeral, not an inauguration. Franklin Pierce wore a mask of civility as he watched his fellow Americans gather. How envious he was of them all, to be ignorant of the true horrors that could befall a man. He wished to be as ignorant as they.
Chief Justice Taney cradled the Holy Bible in his hands. The sight of it stirred Pierce’s indignation. He would not suffer it. He could not place his hands on something conceived by a Being as cruel as the Almighty. With great agitation, Pierce convinced the Chief Justice to substitute a book of law, which Taney did reluctantly. “At least the laws of men have yet to fail me,” Pierce told Taney.
Franklin Pierce affirmed, rather than swore, his oath on that sullen March day. He then addressed the gathered host.
“My countrymen,” he said, “no heart but my own can know the personal regret and bitter sorrow over which I have been borne to a position so suitable for others.”
Pierce’s speech continued on the same well-worn paths that all political speeches follow. The words came by rote, having earlier committed the entire speech to memory. One moment Franklin was speaking, and the next it had been over for quite some time, and the crowds were already dispersing. The snow continued to fall. And Franklin Pierce was president.
The gloomy weather settled around Washington, D.C. like an unwelcome house guest throughout March and into April. Nature herself attempted to reclaim the capital for the swampland it had originally been less than fifty years prior. Rain fell nearly every day, saturating the earth. The sun failed to penetrate the veil of dark clouds above, leaving Washington in perpetual dusk. Dusk only gave way to evening. And evening returned to dusk. Day after day. The morning never broke into dawn. Ever there was only darkness, and dim light fading back into darkness.
Rickaticktick – Rickaticktick – Rickaticktick
“Trains only follow the tracks laid out before them,” Pierce says. Maybe to no one. Maybe to the president overhanging him. “Their course is set; their destination fixed. There is only forward motion to a certain end.”
Franklin leans over and finds another decanter with liquid left to drink. “Life is a train ride, and every stop is a funeral. Until eventually you arrive at your own. If only there was a way to turn back the clock. If only there was some way to escape this contemptible journey to death.”
Pierce empties his flask. He throws it on the floor. It clinks, settling with the others.
Franklin Pierce curses his life.
This was an excerpt of Franklin Pierce in Death of a Vice President. Continue reading the gothic tale of madness and murder.