The Lightning Keeper (21 page)

But he had other things to offer than brash youth and well-turned legs. During the congressional season, when he had seen Harriet only twice during holidays, they had corresponded, ostensibly about the management and fortunes of the iron business. He knew, or had a strong instinct, that he occupied a special place in her life—the mother dead, the father distracted—and she was so young. The tone of her letters had become somewhat more familiar. While she still addressed him as Dear Senator Truscott, she entered into the pleasant fiction that she was his eyes and ears, and recorded the extraordinary hue of the turning swamp maples, the distant cry of loons (not sighted), and the early breakup of ice on his pond: all those little things that the country man in exile might long for. From the elegiac tone of these observations as much as from any details of iron manufacture and shipments, he deduced two things: that the business, in spite of her energy, was not going well, and that her responsibilities weighed upon her. And this third thing as well: she had, if only so slightly, and perhaps without knowing it, opened her heart to him.

It might be that the Stephenson contract could still be saved, but that would depend upon the weather. He had paid a ceremonial visit to the works after the opening of the old furnace, and from the evidence of his own eyes as well as from the anxious, eager explanations of the foremen, he understood that the enterprise hung by a thread. He hoped for the best, of course, but in strict banking terms the Bigelow Iron Company account would have to be seen as a bad debt, and Harriet Bigelow might be the sole remaining asset. Whether the crisis occurred now or a little further down the road was a matter of a few dollars. He tried to take a long view of what seemed an economic reality: The Bigelow Iron Company, lone survivor of the industry in these hills, must inevitably yield to the brute efficiency of the coal-fired empires of Pittsburgh. And something else would take its place here, though he was not so wise as to know what that enterprise might be. As his friend Mr. Coffin had commented, that fellow Darwin made a better economist than a biologist.

On a particular afternoon in late August the senator sat in his office at the bank with Miss Bigelow, who had responded to his note, and with the senior clerk, who may have wondered at such enthusiastic attention being devoted to such dismal figures.

“Nothing will change, you can depend on that,” was the senator's conclusion. “We stand behind you and have the utmost confidence in your success.” He said this, and might have noted the wondering abstraction of his clerk's expression except that he was watching Harriet.

There came a knock at the door to announce an urgent visitor for Miss Bigelow. “Who is it?” he asked. Who would dare? he thought. Her identity was not known, but she had been sent by Mr. Peacock with instructions to find Miss Bigelow. It was Olivia, hair askew and streaming perspiration, who entered and would look only at the carpet.

“He says to give you this. He says to read it now.”

And Harriet read to the accompaniment of Olivia's ragged breathing: “We are halfway home and confident of success. Tell me what money you can spare.”

 

“M
OTHER OF
G
OD
,” muttered Toma, “will you look at the price of these things!” The lines of Horatio Washington's mouth tightened as he scanned the catalogue pages.

“Perhaps they are too fancy?”

“A motor is a simple thing. They are too expensive, that's all.”

“And the others?” Horatio nodded at the stack of catalogues on the bench.

“The same. Cleveland Armature, Onan Generator…a matter of a dollar or two. I had no idea.”

“And Miss Bigelow says?”

“Fifty dollars. The payroll must be met on Friday. Fifty dollars, and I have another twenty.”

“What will you do? Without the motor all you can do with your dynamo is make sparks.”

Toma looked at the dynamo, which sat now on its separate bench, connected to the wheel by a belt running through a hole in the wall of the laundry. Horatio's collection of parts and scrap had been pushed back piece by piece to the east wall, and that space was now occupied by the coils of Stephenson's cable.

“I am thinking what you can do.”

“You would have to ask Olivia. She handles that, but I doubt she's got much saved.”

“I don't mean money. I want you to make me a motor.”

Horatio considered his left hand: two fingers were still numb from the jolt of touching the wrong part of the dynamo. “I don't know anything about that.”

“You don't need to know anything. You simply have to make a copy of the dynamo. An exact copy.”

“You have a dynamo. What would you do with another?”

“You are forgetting. They are the same thing. If I could apply enough electricity to the dynamo, and adjust the brushes, it would produce motion, mechanical energy. It would be a motor. One is the mirror to the other.”

Horatio said nothing. Toma continued, in the tone one might use to an obstinate child. “You take the dynamo apart, carefully, and see how it is made. I will purchase the wire for the windings and the brushes. There is enough money for that.”

Horatio sighed. “I'm tired. I don't understand your God-damned machine, and I don't trust it any more than I would a snake. What happens if we fail?”

“The same as if we don't try: You're out of a job.” They glared at one another. Two days ago Mr. Brown had ordered number 3 shut down, as there was not enough water to produce a blast for both furnaces. Horatio had set his men to working the tub bellows by hand, trying to keep the main furnace and number 3 in operation. It could not be done, not in this heat, not without killing someone.

“How long do I have?”

“Three days, if we place the order now. I'll be ready by Friday to test it and to string the cable.”

“And you think it will work? You think you can do this?”

“I think
you
can do it, Horatio. This is what you are good at: you told me so yourself. Think of the Springfield Armory. Think of all those interchangeable parts. That is what you must do now, the same job, the interchangeable parts.”

Horatio's eyes moved to his piles of scrap against the wall and Toma knew that he had won. “It might work,” said Horatio, “but it won't be much to look at.”

“One thing more. Would you speak to Olivia about the money? I
must have certain measuring devices. Everything up to now has been guesswork.”

Horatio grunted, and Toma held out his hand. “Thank you, Horatio.”

“I know why you're in this.”

“Perhaps you do.”

 

O
N
A
UGUST 30
, because it was a Friday, Amos Bigelow began tidying his desk at eleven o'clock, putting on the far left corner any items on which action might be deferred until the afternoon, or perhaps tomorrow. He did note that there were two pieces of correspondence from Mr. Stephenson in this pile. He and Harriet would have to put their heads together and come up with some answers that would ease the gentleman's anxiety. With his handkerchief he wiped away the fine dust that seemed to be everywhere these days.

The spirit level assured him that his surface was truly horizontal, and so he laid out his pocket watch and the old leather book in which he recorded the variations of chronometry along with his observations of temperature and weather, morning and evening. There was always a pleasant anticipation of noon in the sun's reflected progress across his ceiling. Rafter by rafter the muted image crept from west to east until at last it struck the second mirror fixed above his desk and was bent down to his purpose. On a good day the noon whistle would sound when the reflection of the sun was bisected by the dark crack in the surface of Amos Bigelow's desk.

It wasn't a perfect system, and he regretted that his hand was no longer steady enough to take these readings with the quadrant. He regretted as well, when he remembered to do so, that he could no longer hear the whistle from Titusville, which, being four miles downstream to the southwest, must necessarily have its own separate noon. But Horatio, that excellent fellow, had arranged these mirrors for him, and adjusted the exterior one seasonally, and it was in a way more convenient, for he could more readily observe the variance of watch and whistle from God's true time.

He knew from his reading of the newspapers that there was strong public opinion and growing legislative sentiment in favor of what was
euphemistically called Standard Time. He knew from Fowler Truscott that sooner or later the bill would pass, cleaving the country into four vast zones, time zones. Why would one wish for such a thing? Why tamper with such a simple principle that mirrored the divine order? How was a man to be sure of anything at all if noon were not noon? The senator's answer about efficiency and the requirements of the transcontinental railroads came so readily and casually that Bigelow perceived his partisanship and affected not to hear the explanation. One thing Amos Bigelow wished to avoid at almost any cost was a reopening of the old antagonism between the two families.

As the hour approached, anticipation acquired an edge of nervous energy, for there were three observations vying for his attention: the transit of the sun, the variance of his watch, and the timing of the whistle. The tension gathered in his shoulders; his right hand was poised with the pen above his note book; and the left hand rose slowly, palm open to the heavens, as a conductor might summon the brass section to a triumphant chord.

Today had the makings of a very good day, with the curve of the bright disk just grazing the mark and the second hand of his watch at a promising angle. But it was not to be. There was a disturbance at the edge of his vision that he tried to ignore.

“Go away!” It was the woman from Down There, Horatio's woman.

Olivia startled at this bellow and was only too ready to obey, but first she must put the envelope, Toma's envelope, where it would be seen, and since Amos Bigelow seemed to be staring fixedly at a particular point in the center of his desk, that seemed to be the sensible choice.

“Agghhh!” The whistle coincided with this cry of despair, and in swatting at the offending envelope Amos Bigelow managed to send his watch skidding to the edge of the desk, where Olivia intercepted it. There would be no observation today, no record of his efforts.

“Is this from Horatio?” Bigelow was already tearing at the envelope in his fury before he had looked at the writing.

“No,” said Olivia, “and it ain't for you. Toma sent me to find Miss Harriet, but I don't know where she's at. It's for her.”

“Yes, yes…” But Amos Bigelow unfolded the single sheet anyway and was baffled by the message, a single word: Tomorrow.

 

H
ARRIET
B
IGELOW AFFECTED
bewilderment and indifference to the note. This was for her father's benefit, but she really did not know what to make of it. Could it be a joke of some kind?

Throughout the afternoon she sustained a deliberate lack of curiosity about the meaning of the message, about what might happen tomorrow. Her father was too upset by the ruin of his chronometry to pursue the matter. In a way it could have been worse. Toma might have written her in much more explicit detail, or even about other things. Such a letter, suffering the same fate as the actual one, would have required a great deal of awkward explanation.

She and her father dined early, as usual, and afterward sat in the parlor, where Amos Bigelow liked to listen to Harriet's playing of the harmonium—hymns and popular tunes, for the most part—or to her reading aloud from Trollope or Dickens.

They were both tired, an effect of the heavy but rainless fog that had descended on Beecher's Bridge in mid-afternoon. She played the organ this evening, “Rock of Ages” and a Sousa march for her father, a bit of Schubert for herself, but she found her attention was drawn to a small vase of flowers on the table by her father's chair. She was a good soul, Mrs. Evans, and the dusty blooms were a kindly forethought. But Harriet was annoyed by the flowers, annoyed by the inclusion of those ghastly flesh-toned zinnias, which ought to be weeded out of the garden altogether. She remembered with an almost painful clarity the arrangement of bleeding heart and purple columbine that Toma had set in that very place, in the same vase, and how the flowers held such promise. Thus was the theme of hope quite innocently threaded back into her thoughts.

They retired to bed after going out onto the porch to observe how the glow of the unseen moon irradiated the fog, and when she sat down in her nightgown in front of the glass, she found that the damp air—it had already curled the pages of her music—now rendered her hair unresponsive to the brush. She was not flattered by her reflection in the glass, nor was she reassured by this ritual.

The interruption of his noon observation had preoccupied Amos Bigelow to a degree that his daughter found disturbing; and even more distressing was the way he kept introducing the incident into conversation as if it were an entirely fresh subject. Of course she hoped that
he might be more himself tomorrow. If he could be persuaded to take another reading, as he would in the case of bad weather, then today's disaster might be downgraded to an inconvenience. But she was enough of a realist to read the future of such odd behavior, her own future as well as his. Might not the horizon of her life be reduced to the care of this one soul? Tonight this idea, which had occurred to her before, presented itself not as an abstraction but as a foregone conclusion whose only uncertainty lay in its timing. And who then would tend to the affairs of the ironworks? There was only the one reflection in her glass, and those bare shoulders spoke only of frailty.

She went to bed with these thoughts and did not fall asleep as she had expected to do. In the end it was the fond thought of Toma—now forgiven—and what he might achieve tomorrow that brought her peace.