The Lightning Keeper (23 page)

Horatio took the belting and wrapped it around his forearm to make a short noose that he could bring to bear as a friction brake if need be. Toma opened the cock partway. The wheel began to turn. In a matter of seconds it built to that familiar pitch, and then he turned the handle as far as it would go.

There were two adjustments that could be made to the jet, one to advance it toward the cupped blades, the other to alter its angle of access, and thus the trajectory of the exit water. The closer the jet, the greater force it imparted, but at such a rotational speed the tips of the cups deflected the water as if from a solid rim. Elevating the jet would allow it to clear the tips of the blades, would alter the vectors delivered to Horatio's parabolas. All of this could be calculated if he had the time and the right instruments.

Toma eased the right-hand crank from noon to two o'clock and the greased gearing elevated the jet by a couple of degrees. He could see almost nothing because of the dense spray, but his ears told him what he wanted to know.

“How is it, Horatio?”

“Well, it seems—”

“Wait, wait.” Toma backed away from the cranks, away from the spray, and bumped against Olivia. How long had she been standing there? He needed a clear view of the exit water, so that he could compare it to Horatio's precise renderings of the blades. She stumbled against him as he turned and did not pull away. One arm around his waist, hot whiskey breath on his face.

“Horatio, I'm coming.” He unwound Olivia's arm and gave her the metal rail as a support. “And don't you touch anything. Stand here.”

Horatio's stance spoke to his doubt: braced against some startling of the animal on the other end of his tether. “I'd say you've had your fun. Feel that.” Toma put his fingers to the belt, saw how it lay barely grazing the pulley, felt its hummingbird pulse. “I say we quit. I have to pull on this belt, there's no telling what happens to that shaft.”

“Give me just a minute and we'll shut it down. I need to—” Did she stumble against the cranks? Did she do it out of boredom? He could see nothing other than the path of the exit water from this new angle, and heard no alteration until the metal of the nozzle hit the wheel, and one of the cups struck him on the face and knocked him down.

He did not know, then or afterward, whether he might have been unconscious for a matter of moments, but when he was again aware of himself and of the blow to his head, so much had changed that it was hard to find sequence or order in his surroundings. One of the lanterns had been kicked over and Horatio directed a steady flow of invective at Olivia and at the wheel. He heard the woman screaming, or sobbing, “I can't! I can't!” and then the wheel, its pitch so altered that he had not located it there at the edge of his hearing. On either side of the wheel the exit water funneled out almost horizontally, a pair of spiral horns enveloping the axle and bearings, smashing into spray against the framing timbers. Were all the blades gone, then?

“Shut it off! You hear me? Olivia!” There was a pleading tone in Horatio's voice now, and as Toma darted through the spray at the other
side of the wheel—away from Horatio and the writhing belt—the eccentric treble of the axle sounded an alarm in his ear.

“It's going…can't hold it!” Horatio's cry was followed by a splintering as the shimmying axle tore from its bearings and stood on end, a vast and lethal top attached only to Horatio's belting. The water from the jet splashed harmlessly on the floor. Olivia's eyes were as wide and white as fried eggs. What did she see?

She saw Horatio talking to the wheel as if he might gentle it, saw the furious axle, as it found imperfections in the cement floor, begin to hop and skitter to a punctuation of piercing notes, the distress of tuned metal. Higher now each jolt in the erratic jig, and Horatio following it, trying to keep the belt clear of the wheel, muttering, “No…no…” as it made a stubborn gyroscopic progress across the floor. And when it reached a certain seam in the cement, well known to the soles of Olivia's feet, the wheel made a fantastic bound, the axle almost achieving the horizontal. The belt was caught at this angle, or looped upon itself, and when the axle touched the ground for the last time the wheel shot sideways through the wall of silk bobbins, bearing Horatio away into the night. It was so sudden that they were not sure what they had seen, what to believe or hope. There was his shoe on the floor, there the gaping hole in the wall. They could see nothing but rain beyond the splintered wood.

Perhaps they already knew that he was dead, though they pretended otherwise. Perhaps on another night with the help of a moon or even the stars they would have found him. But the lamp Toma held out into the rain was of no use even before it was drowned.

“Bring me a candle, anything. That thing on the nail by the stove.”

When she returned with the hurricane lantern he was sitting on the floor trying to jam his foot into the shoe Horatio had left behind. It was the wrong shoe and the foot was still swollen.

“You can't put a shoe on that foot yet. You can't go out.”

“You go then.”

She might have obeyed him but for the lightning strike. She dropped the lantern and he caught it in midair, burning his hand on the hot glass.

“I can't.”

“Then I'm going. We must do something.”

“If he ain't dead, he'll come back. He's a hard man, Horatio, hard to kill. Don't you go out there.”

Olivia watched as he dragged himself to the door, and when he had worked his way around to the drop-off she moved near the gap in the boards to watch his light. She heard him calling out the name, over and over, saw the light swerve and vanish in the tinkling of glass. There was no answer that she could hear. She set the remaining lamps on the floor out of the rain, one by the door, the other by the hole so he could see his way back. She waited, wondering if any of them would live through this night.

Toma appeared in the doorway on his hands and knees looking more than half-dead. She took him up in her arms, kept him from falling. “He's gone. Take those wet things off and come to bed. Don't let me sleep alone tonight.”

 

H
E SLEPT LIKE A
dead man in the clean sheets, slept through the wet, enfeebled daybreak, and would have slept longer but for a knocking at the door. He was trapped under the languorous warmth of her thigh across his, and his first thought was that Horatio had come back. Galvanized by this possibility, he struggled free, lifting the dead weight of her leg and flopping her ungently onto her back. She groaned but did not wake. He made to cover her with the sheet, then remembered his own nakedness and took it for himself.

It was not Horatio at the door but Mrs. Breen's boy, a red-haired lad on the cusp of adolescence with a head too small for his body. Judging by the bundle he carried, his journey down the path had been an adventure. The boy scraped the fresh mud from the laundry with his nails, would not meet Toma's eye.

“She says, my mother says, that she wants it all back day after tomorrow latest, or…”

“Or?”

“Well, that's when she wants it back, is all.” The boy thrust the bundle at Toma. “And, sir?”

“What?”

“It's about the darkie, I mean Mr. Washington.”

“What about him?” The sound of his own voice was making Toma's head ache.

“Is he dead or somethin'?”

“You saw him? Where?”

“I seen him up a tree and he ain't movin', though he seed me, and…” The boy's round-eyed narrative came to a halt.

“And what?” Toma shook him until his head bobbled like a flower on a broken stalk.

“And he ain't got no pants on, I mean you can…” Young Breen's courage failed him in the face of this awful comedy. He bolted from Toma's grip, scrambling up the path with remarkable agility, driven by terror of the darkie, dead or alive, and of the white man, dressed like an angel of vengeance, who stood bellowing for Olivia to come.

Jamie Breen would in time achieve a privileged status as the first witness to the Darkie's Last Ride, as the event came to be known in the town, would be able to describe every detail, down to the shimmer of silk threaded into snags and shrubs along the river, bright colors that suggested a celebration. In later years he sometimes varied the telling to put himself more or less on that path as the tragedy unfolded, and when his friends told the story for the benefit of some new visitor to McCreedy's Saloon, why, Jamie himself had seen the darkie flying out of the mill in his cloud of silk thread, and had heard his fatal groan as he lodged in the tree.

But Jamie's thought as he hurried away was to find his friends so that he could retail his unembellished news. Perhaps they wouldn't believe him at first; perhaps they would have to see for themselves that Horatio Washington was indeed stuck up a tree, buck-naked, and you could see his black thing. He wouldn't mind going back himself in the safety of numbers, in broad daylight. But nothing in the world could induce Jamie Breen to go back to Power City alone. He'd heard it said often enough that anything could happen down there, and now he knew that it was so.

 

S
EVERAL DAYS LATER,
after the excitement had run its course like a fever through Beecher's Bridge, Harriet sent a carefully worded note to
the bank. In response to Truscott's repeated requests, she managed the salutation “Dear Fowler.” The words looked odd to her, but she had neither time nor sheets of paper to waste and she needed Truscott's undivided attention.

The silence from the silk mill was palpable and inexplicable; her mind fed on it as it would on an obstinate physical symptom. She had already written twice to Toma, first a note of sympathy for the loss of his friend and collaborator, and then a message of concern about the schedule of repairs and her hope that she would see him at his earliest convenience. She could not visit the mill herself. She had written her condolence note to Olivia, and did not know her well enough to intrude on her mourning.

And so she turned to Fowler Truscott: no one else knew so thoroughly the affairs of the ironworks apart from Toma. But it was awkward sending him on this errand. What would they say to each other, or read into the other's response? She colored, glowing in the reflection of this dangerous, flattering speculation.

She finished the letter, signed it, sealed it. The weather had turned hot and dry; every day the level of the Buttermilk fell an inch or two.

Truscott, the letter safe in the pocket next to his heart, made a cheerful progress from the ironworks down to the silk mill. Though the path was now dry he had a staff in one hand; the
Wall Street Journal
served him as fan and flyswatter. This exertion in the sun, even going with the hill, had brought two very bright spots to his cheeks, and his linen jacket, cut to the Norfolk pattern, was already soaked through under his arms. But he did not mind, for the jacket now fit him quite comfortably. How these trees had grown up since he hunted here as a boy. He reflected on the common thread of natural progression, in trees, in himself, in human enterprise. It pleased him to think in terms of progress rather than aging.

Toma answered his knock with the air of a man deeply preoccupied, and for the briefest moment—until Toma thanked him for his letter—Truscott wondered if he had even been recognized.

“May I, Mr. Peacock?” Because his host was barefoot and shirtless, the senator thought he might remove his jacket.

“What? Oh, of course. We are not so formal in this place, as you can see. Will you come in?”

“Yes, yes, if it is no interruption. And if I might have a glass of water?”

“Olivia, some water.”

“I ain't decent yet.” The voice came from behind the calico curtain. Toma wiped a mug with a rag, filled it from the bucket, and offered it to Truscott, who had been surveying the shop. It reminded him of a train wreck, or what he imagined one must look like, and there was no evidence of a wheel. That other device there, with the wires running away and up through the gable, must be the electrical device.

“I offer you my condolences on the loss of Mr. Washington. I did not know him, except by sight, but Miss Bigelow has explained his importance to the ironworks. I hope, to put it delicately, that his expertise is not irreplaceable?”

“You speak of the wheel?”

“Exactly so. The wheel here in particular, the one that was implicated in your friend's death.”

“I have her letter.” Toma shrugged.

“Something stands in your way? You must excuse my ignorance of the substance of your work.”

“Something,” said Toma, hobbling to the bench. “You could say that something has come up.” He stared down at an untidy sheaf of papers, on which designs—quite abstract to Truscott's eye—were overwritten with calculations.

“Is it perhaps a matter of the shock? The accident must have…”

“Yes, yes…the accident, exactly so. The accident has changed everything. I see now what must be done.” He took from the benchtop a bit of wood curiously curved and broken at the heavy end.

“This is good news, then. Miss Bigelow will be happy to hear it.”

“Do you think so?” The unfocused gaze that accompanied these words had the effect of arresting the smile on Truscott's face before it had run its course. “I don't.”

“Unhappy, then? But what…Sir, in what sense do you speak?” Truscott had divined a depth in the connection of Harriet to this man. His ground was uncertain.

“It is a technical thing, and therefore perhaps difficult for you. Do you see this?” Toma handed him the wooden object. “This is the largest remaining fragment of the wheel, Horatio's wheel. It is the only clue I have.”

“Clue!” Truscott made an effort to control himself. “My dear fellow, try to understand what is at stake here. It is imperative that you rebuild that wheel. As I am sure you are aware, the future of the Bigelow Iron Company depends on fulfilling the Stephenson contract, which success, in turn, depends on reconstructing that wheel. Is it a question of money, perhaps?” Truscott's question had a taint of anger. He was aware that he was losing his temper, losing an argument to which he was the sole party. Toma's manner, his distraction, was most aggravating.