The Lincoln Highway

Emmett’s detour upstate brought them four hours north, where they checked into a motel for the night. Emmett explains to Sally he intends to find Duchess and Woolly while Sally remains at the motel with Billy. Once Emmett has concluded his business with them, though he can’t tell her how long he will be gone, the three will be back on the road and will drop Sally off in Morgen on their way to California. Sally informs him that she is not going back to Morgen, and she intends to accompany them all the way to San Francisco. Emmett appears to Sally as if he feels forced to address the issue of whether he might have given her the impression he wanted a future for them as romantic partners, and he begins to explain to her he thinks that he and Billy need to “make a fresh start together. Just the two of us” (528). Sally scoffs and explains she has no plans of trying to coerce her way into their new life in San Francisco. What Sally wants more than anything is to have a house of her own to care for where her only responsibilities include taking care of herself and her own needs. “Last time I checked,” she informs him “there were plenty of fresh starts to go around” (529). After Emmett leaves, Sally goes to check on Billy, who is in the bathtub, but when she opens the door after several knocks, she finds the bathtub running, the window open, and Billy gone.

Arriving at the Wolcott residence, Emmett notices a boat with a hole in its bow arranged on a pair of sawhorses outside a shed. Finding the door to the house unlocked, he calls out to Woolly and Duchess as he enters. He reads the green sign above the rifle cabinet featuring the 10 steps for closing the house for the season, beginning with 1. Remove firing pins. He doesn’t find anyone on the first floor, so Emmett goes upstairs. Moving through the house, Emmett begins to consider the similarities between the Wolcotts’ lifestyle and the life that his father left behind, experiencing mixed emotions when reflecting on the resolve it took his father abandon this life to seek another. Upstairs, Emmett hears the radio playing and opens the door to the room where Woolly lies. Emmett observes the empty medicine bottles beside Woolly on the bedside table, and with dread he touches his friend and finds his body stiff. Emmett notices the second bottle is unfamiliar to him and discovers the medication is prescribed to Sarah.

Emmett is interrupted by the noise coming from the study. Emmett finds the room in utter chaos, objects scattered throughout the room, Duchess hacking away at the safe with an axe. Emmett asks him if he was aware of what happened to Woolly, and when Duchess acknowledges it, Emmett asks how he could have let Woolly do such a thing. Duchess claims if he knew, he would not have left him alone. Emmett asks if he called an ambulance when he discovered Woolly. Duchess claims it was too late by the time he found him. Emmett tries to call the police, but the phone has not yet been connected for the season. Emmett tells Duchess they will be going to the police station together. As Duchess attempts to manipulate him, Emmett’s his patience wears thin. “Don’t you get it?” he asks Duchess “There is no trust. No inheritance. No money in the safe. It’s a fairy tale. A fairy tale Woolly cooked up so you would take him home” (541). Suddenly, Emmett hears Billy’s voice, finding him standing in the doorway insisting that there is indeed money in the safe. Emmett is knocked to his knees as Duchess smashes him in the face with a rock, grabbing Billy and retreating into the house, locking Emmett outside.

Duchess decides to go to the hardware store for substantial tools to break into the safe. When he returns, he ransacks the office, hoping to find the combination written down. Duchess goes upstairs to ask Woolly which of the bedrooms was his great-grandfather’s. In the bedroom, Woolly’s arm is dangling to the floor, Duchess lifts it and crosses it over Woolly’s chest, leaving the radio on, “thinking about in the hours ahead, Woolly would probably appreciate having the occasional commercial to keep him company” (546). When he leaves Woolly’s side, he knows that Woolly is not yet deceased, and Woolly has several hours yet before he succumbs to the overdose of prescriptions, but he does nothing to intervene and save Woolly. He goes downstairs, makes himself something to eat, and falls asleep before waking up to work on the safe again.

Duchess spends the entire day trying to break into the safe and is pummeling it with an axe when Emmett appears. Duchess insists that Emmett is “crazy” in his determination to ensure that Duchess returns to Salina, and when they end up outside heading to the car and Billy surprises them both, Duchess hits Emmett with a rock and takes Billy hostage inside the house. Billy is terribly upset and surprised that Duchess lashed out against Emmett. Billy begins his incantation of Emmett’s name as Duchess attempts his version of reasoning with Billy. Having distracted Duchess into thinking he had retreated into a terrified state, Billy lashes out, kicking Duchess in the shin and escaping into the house. Searching for Billy, Duchess calls his name, attempting to reassure him, before using a croquet ball to break the glass on the rifle cabinet. 

Billy had expected that Emmett was going to try leaving him at the motel with Sally while he went alone to confront Duchess, so he carefully planned how to escape from her. Knowing Emmett to be a hero just as brave and selfless as any other in Professor Abernathe’s Compendium, Billy has always understood why Emmett has unwaveringly protected those he cares about and regularly shouldered the burden of placing himself in danger alone. Billy believes, however, that because Emmett does not know about Xenos, it is up to Billy to make certain that this role, Billy’s role, is one that he is able to play for Emmett. Xenos is not one person but a figure, any figure, in a hero’s story who arrives at precisely the right moment to ensure the hero’s mission succeeds. Billy believes himself, in this instance, to be the Xenos figure to Emmett’s hero figure. It is for this reason Billy sneaks out of the motel room and places himself in the trunk. Billy waits until he believes the moment is right and sneaks out of the trunk and into the house. He pauses in the mudroom to read the rules for closing the house.

Proceeding through the house, Billy finds himself in the study, observing the destruction Duchess has caused in his attempt to break into the safe. Billy uses what he knows of Woolly’s family and their affinity for American history to attempt to figure out the combination. His sixth attempt opens the safe, carefully closing it again. While Emmett and Duchess are arguing, he slips back into the kitchen to hide. Billy becomes afraid that his brother will lash out in anger against Duchess, and Billy believes it is time for him to intervene, interrupting with his assertion that there is money in the safe. When Billy is pulled inside and Duchess attempts to make excuses for hitting Emmett, Billy feels the threat of danger he felt when Pastor John grabbed him by his collar. Kicking Duchess in the shin to escape, Billy runs to a hiding place Woolly had mentioned, a small storage cabinet under the stairs.

Emmett breaks in, observing Duchess in the process of looking for Billy. When Duchess reappears with a rifle in his hands, Emmett stands his ground. Standing with the rifle pointed at him, Emmett insists that Duchess is going to turn himself in. Emmett tells Duchess he wants to be free of the shadow of pursuit for something for which he is not responsible. This can only be insured if Duchess accepts responsibility for the attack on Ackerly. When Duchess raises the rifle and threatens to shoot him, Emmett advances on him but pauses when Billy emerges. Billy informs Emmett that neither of them are in any danger because Duchess can’t read. Duchess is incensed, asking who ever said such a thing. Billy knows Duchess can’t read just like he knows Duchess can’t swim because he is always observing. Emmett questions the relevance of Duchess’s illiteracy. Billy explains that Duchess cannot have read the list of the procedures for closing the house. First on the list is removing all of the firing pins from the rifles, rendering them useless. Emmett grabs the rifle and strikes Duchess with the butt.

As Emmett begins to move the unconscious Duchess, Billy draws Emmett’s attention to Woolly’s letter. Though Billy has not seen Woolly’s lifeless body upstairs, he somehow understands that Woolly is indeed absent. In the letter, Woolly bequeathed his trust fund, in equal thirds, to Emmett, Billy, and Duchess. Billy reads over Emmett’s shoulder and asks if Woolly was sick, and Emmett can only reply that he was. Drawing Emmett into the study, Billy opens the safe and reveals the $150,000 in cash inside. Emmett asked how Billy had known the combination, and Billy explains how his successful guess was 1119, the date of the Gettysburg Address. The two Watson boys clean up the mess in the house. Emmett goes upstairs to pay his final respects to Woolly, taking Sarah’s prescription bottle with him. Dividing the money equally in three paper bags, Emmett places two in the trunk of the Studebaker. Emmett suggests to Billy that they pick up Sally and head back to Times Square, where they can restart their trip at the beginning of the Lincoln Highway, with plenty of time to make it to San Francisco by the 4th of July.

When he awakens, groggy and disoriented, Duchess realizes he is in a small boat. He looks to the shore in time to see the Studebaker pulling away. Duchess realizes that he is floating in the middle of the lake with a pile of stones at his feet in the bottom of the boat. In the bow, Duchess sees the paper bag full of his share of Woolly’s money. When he leans forward to reach for the money, water begins spilling into the bow through the unrepaired hole. Duchess must either remain in place to keep the bow from flooding with water, or risk sinking and drowning in an attempt to access the money. There are no paddles in the boat, so Duchess carefully tries to use his hands to paddle himself back to shore. As the wind kicks up over the lake, the bills begin to be picked up by the breeze, sailing out of the open paper bag, scattered across the surface of the water. Duchess lunges forward, thinking he can grab the bag quickly before any more bills are lost. Unsteady and weak, he falls and water rushes into the small craft, toppling Duchess into the water as it sinks. Unable to swim as Billy predicted, Duchess loses consciousness as he begins to drown, and he has a vision of the people he considered his friends, Woolly, Billy, Emmett, Sally, and Sarah. He hears chiming, the sound of Marceline’s gold watch, his last thought a quote from Shakespeare, though he cannot recall which of the bard’s leading characters had uttered it.