Unpardonable

Prologue

Fall 1937

With his Springfield Model 1861 rifle cocked and loaded, the assassin waited nervously behind a patch of oak trees beyond the old horse trail. Soon, he spotted his target—a tall, thin, black-haired man in his mid-fifties riding quickly uphill on a chestnut brown horse. The target’s speed made for a much tougher shot, affording the assassin with only a single opportunity. He set, aimed, and fired.

But the rider maintained too fast of a pace for the assassin, and the bullet disappeared into the trees. The sound of applause competed with the sound of the assassin’s rifle as he dropped it to the ground.

The spectators offered a standing ovation to the actors that had reenacted this famous scene outside Abraham Lincoln’s summer cottage, as the target and the assassin took their respective bows.

The crowds gathered daily for the Lincoln Assassination Attempt on the grounds of the Old Soldiers’ Home in Washington, DC. A retirement home for veterans from the Great War, the Spanish-American War, and Indian conflicts, this extensive facility with its rolling hills and mature trees had served as President Lincoln’s summer home decades before in the 1860s. This free reenactment had become a very popular attraction among cost-conscious Depression-era families.

Seventy-six-year-old Benton Steuben frequently watched the early afternoon showing of the reenactment. Still a stocky and strong man with curly white hair, age had softened the intensity of Benton’s facial features to present a more grandfatherly and approachable look. Only a small child at the time of the real assassination attempt during President Lincoln’s first term, Benton would often entertain crowds after the show with stories about Washington, DC during that time period. Financially sound in his retirement, Benton always refused tips. But, he never refused requests for stories, and he always answered the questions fielded by any children.

The Lincoln cottage area used to stage the reenactment only constituted two of the 250 acres in Old Soldiers’ Home. While originally designed for the veterans, the neighborhood children would use much of the remaining 248 acres for its trails, hills, and grassy fields to sled in the winter, ride bikes in the summer, and play baseball and football year-round. Eight-year-old Stanley and five-year-old Wally Peckertski spent more time playing at Old Soldiers’ Home than any of the neighborhood kids after finishing their school days at the red brick school building on Decatur Street known as Barnard Elementary School.

One day in October 1937, after finishing the last story with a crowd of spectators, Benton Steuben walked the grounds of Old Soldiers’ Home where he saw an older boy teaching a younger boy the finer points of football tackling. Both boys wore knickers, as they used their school book bags to mark the sidelines. First, the older boy with jet-black hair tackled the brown curly-haired younger one. Demonstrating that practice makes perfect, he took down the smaller boy ten straight times. Both were still smiling after, but three of their four knees were now bleeding.

Before going home to treat their wounds, the boys changed places where the younger boy tried to tackle the older boy. The younger boy made the tackle the first three times as his shirt ripped and his face bloodied, but finally the older boy used his superior strength to burst through on the fourth try. So excited to break the tackle, the boy kept accelerating well past the book bag sidelines. The younger boy looked up, and saw the older boy running at full speed without looking forward, and heading straight into an older man.

Benton Steuben felt a thud and noticed the young Stanley flat on the ground. Soon, guards and doctors from the medical facility ran to the scene to try to help.

“Please leave me room to look at him!” The young doctor quickly but efficiently examined Stanley, who remained on the ground unconscious.

After what seemed like much longer than a few seconds, Stanley’s black eyes fluttered open.

Everyone breathed a sigh of relief to find that Stanley had sustained no injuries.

Once Stanley fully regained consciousness and stood up, Wally laughed. “Stanley, you fell just like you ran into a brick wall.”

Recovered from the fall, Stanley regained his manners and approached the older man, “I’m very sorry for running into you, Mr. …”

Offering a wide smile, the man focused his warm eyes on Stanley. “Steuben. Benton Steuben. And there’s no need to apologize, young man. It’s the most excitement I’ve had in a long time. I guess I’m just getting old—I saw you coming towards me, but I just couldn’t react fast enough to get out of your way. Now that you know my name, maybe you two football players can tell me your names.” Benton offered Stanley a hearty handshake.

“Well, I don’t know. My parents always told us not to talk to strangers, so we probably shouldn’t,” Stanley said, while shaking Benton’s hand.

“I understand that, but I think the guards and doctors here will need to get your names anyway so that they can tell your parents that you’re OK,” Benton smiled.

Wally was relieved to see his older brother unharmed, and he liked listening to Mr. Steuben. He blurted out with a trace of a lisp, “Yes, I’m Wally.” He gestured toward his brother. “My brother Stanley tackled me pretty hard out there. I tried my best to stop him, but I just missed that last tackle.”

While shaking Wally’s hand, Benton looked at the brothers and said, “Well, my father used to tell me that a little bullying is a good thing. It toughens you up. I know I didn’t like it when I was a kid, but I still remember that my older brother used to push me around and wrestle with me all of the time. I think my father was right. It’s still a lot better than ending up like our neighbor, Harold Simpson. He stayed away from us boys as a kid. I don’t know if that is why, as a grownup, he’s been scared of his own shadow. He has to ask his wife permission to do anything. I’m pretty sure Stanley would have sent poor Harold to the hospital if he ran into him instead of me.”

As the two brothers walked slowly around the grounds of Old Soldiers’ Home laughing with Benton, Wally’s ears perked up. “When did your older brother stop pushing you around, Mr. Steuben?”

“Well, my brother Nathan stopped pushing me around after I got old enough to push him back harder and win some of those wrestling matches. But, we never stopped competing against each other. Races. Wrestling. Baseball. Billiards. Darts. Push-ups. You name it. I never met a more competitive person than my big brother. He always said that he would rather compete and lose than to not compete at all,” Benton said.

Stanley stood transfixed—this is not the kind of thing most old men would say. Mostly, he had heard old people tell him how different it was back in the “old days” before cars and electricity, but Benton Steuben just sounded like one of their friends from the neighborhood. By now, he felt it safe to speak with Benton Steuben as they approached the living quarters of the veterans. “I know what you mean. My brothers and I compete for everything from food to clothes to chores. Anyway, do you live here? Were you in one of the wars?”

Soon enough, Stanley and Wally began to find out a little about Benton Steuben. He lived a few blocks away in a row house at 4319 2nd Street NW. It had been built twenty years ago, and he had moved in seven years ago. Benton’s spent every Wednesday afternoon at the Old Soldiers’ Home, first watching the reenactment, and then catching up with some of his friends.

Stanley thought that Benton must have been a football player since he was so strong. But Benton had to disappoint Stanley on this point and told him there really wasn’t much football being played when he was a young man in the 1860s and 1870s. Baseball had become popular, but Benton never was a serious player. At that news, Wally felt some disappointment as well.

The brothers left Old Soldiers’ Home excited that evening, though, when Benton told them he had collected a lot of old baseball relics over the last sixty years. He wasn’t sure how valuable they were, but he promised to bring them there for the boys to see the following Wednesday if they could take a break during their football training.

Visitors to the Old Soldiers’ Home the following Wednesday could easily locate Benton Steuben. One could not help but notice that Benton was the only adult man on the grounds not wearing a hat. At a green picnic table in front of Scott Hall, Benton sat at the highest elevation in the area, in front of one of the city’s tallest buildings as if he wanted the superior vantage point to anyone who might approach him.

Benton had been sorting through a pile of ancient baseball cards, pictures, programs, pins, caps, and shirts for fifteen minutes. His new friends soon came into view, racing toward him as if they had waited all week to see him. They arrived at his table, breathless, and shook Benton’s hand.

“Boys, I forgot to mention that while I never played outside of my neighborhood, my brother was a pretty famous ballplayer. You may remember that my last name is Steuben and I told you that my brother’s name was Nathan. If you are baseball fans, you have probably heard...