1901

His ears took in a heavy buzzing, humming sound and he tried to place it. Then it dawned: flies. All about were flies. Flies by the hundreds, by the millions, by numbers uncountable, a living, moving cloud that hovered a few feet above the ground. They covered every corpse and every living wounded, and buzzed and munched their disgusting way to contentedness.

What horror, he thought as he gazed about. The entire field covered with bodies dressed largely in Union blue, but with a speckling of Confederate gray. Antietam, another name for horror.

“Now this, William, is a war. A real war!” Teddy Roosevelt stood in front of him, his wide-brimmed cowboy hat rakishly back on his head, his face a wide grin. “Not like what I saw against those Spanish pussycats!”

“Theodore, do you actually enjoy this?”

“Certainly, and so do you.”

McKinley was shocked. “No, I hate it,” he said vehemently.

Roosevelt laughed derisively. “Then why do you keep getting us involved in wars?”

“I didn’t start the Civil War.”

“Of course you did. You and millions like you from the North and South who wouldn’t see reason and the reality that the other side would fight. And you are certainly responsible for the Spanish war.”

Sadly, McKinley accepted the latter point. He had allowed himself to be manipulated by yellow journalists like Pulitzer and Hearst, and the other Manifest Destiny warmongers like Roosevelt, into accepting the dubious verdict that the explosion on the Maine was sabotage.

“William, don’t forget the Germans.”

“You blame me for that?”

“William, you are the president, the captain of the ship of state, and the invasion occurred on your watch. Of course you’re responsible.”

“But you’re the vice president!”

Roosevelt shrugged and stepped over an armless corpse. “People will forget. In normal times, the citizenry doesn’t even know, or care, who its vice president is. Besides, would you have listened to me?” McKinley agreed he would not have. “Oh, look,” Roosevelt said, “Spaniards.”

They had walked to a different portion of the field. Now it no longer looked like Maryland. The farm grass had been replaced by thicker and more luxuriant vegetation, more evocative of the Tropics. And these dead wore white and had sombreros and darker, Latin skins. But they were just as dead, just as maimed.

Then it dawned on him. He was dreaming. He laughed. A dream. Of course. Dreams were often terrible things and this certainly was one of the worst he’d had since he’d been a lad in Ohio.

“William, the Germans are coming.”

Despite himself, he started. “Where?” Then he saw the line of men clad in dark gray that was almost black. They wore funny helmets with spear points on the top and they were marching toward him rapidly.

“William, run! Hurry! Run!”

McKinley tried to turn but his legs wouldn’t respond. He knew the unreasoning panic of a nightmare when the evil cannot be avoided. The line of Germans was only yards away, and one man in particular had his bayoneted rifle pointed directly at him. He tried again to run but his legs were leaden and unresponsive. A dream, he thought, it is a dream! This creature, now upon him and grinning, cannot hurt. Despite this thought, he screamed and tried to thrash himself free. It’s a dream, he said, as the bayonet entered his chest. It cannot hurt me.

The pain began in the center of his body and it felt as if his chest would explode. The German was gone, replaced by visual waves of red ocean that sought to engulf him. It can’t hurt, he continued to think as further torrents of agony continued to rack his body. It’s a dream. It can’t be hurting, he continued as the red waves were replaced by black. After a bit, he could no longer hear his own voice protesting that it was only a dream.

They stood around the table in the Red Room, a shocked and confused group. Theodore Roosevelt entered and nervously took the place of honor at the head of the table. His normally ruddy complexion was pale, and he looked as if he might have been crying.

“We shall begin,” he said, “with a moment of silence for the soul of the late William McKinley. Although many of us, myself included, disagreed with him, often vehemently, we all respected him. His untimely death this afternoon leaves a void that will be difficult to fill. For those who did not witness it, I was sworn in just a few moments ago by Chief Justice Fuller. The late president will lie in state in the rotunda for two days; then he will return to Ohio, where his widow says he will be interred. Canton, I believe.”