The Lightning Keeper (28 page)

They sat in the front parlor, a formal room, oval in shape, with gray walls trimmed in gilt and yellow silk upholstery. Harriet called for tea. To the maid she said in a low, urgent voice: “Tell Powers that he must go to the shed. I cannot bear that noise.” And to Toma she said: “I am sorry. I hope it will not spoil your visit.”

Toma shook his head and occupied himself with his tea. He had not wanted her to be unhappy in this way. It was difficult now to recall the elation that had borne him from the Patent Office to this house.

“Has your visit to Washington gone well? Fowler never mentions your work without praising it. He says that great things may come of it.”

“He is generous. If not for him I don't know how I could have gone on after what happened.”

“Yes, we all had to go on. And I think generous is the best word to describe my husband. He has been very tolerant of Papa and his whims. Now, then, your day? And afterward I long for news of Beecher's Bridge.”

They talked as the tea cooled and the twilight in the room thickened. She did not call for light, and still there was no sign of Fowler Truscott. When he told her of the arrow in the Patent Office that had pointed his way, she mistook his meaning.

“To Georgetown? That can't be true!”

He laughed aloud, remembering the time they had spent in her
closet of an office and how her earnest habit of mind had often led her into the ambush of his humor. “No, no…the road to my success. I spent the afternoon in that temple of invention, and it was shown to me that I have a place there. I believe I shall be rich someday. That is why I am glad to visit your home. I must gather ideas on how to spend my wealth.”

It was a stupid thing to say, whether he was hoping to impress her or hoping to make her laugh. She said nothing at all, and because she sat in the striped chair with her back to the garden and the dying light, her face was hidden. Was she looking at him, or at the fine objects and materials in these shadows? Or did her fingers seek the reassurance of that great stone in her ring?

“And may I not joke with you now that you are married?”

“Of course you may. I am out of practice, that is all. I thought for a moment that you were laughing at me. Please go on. I don't understand what it was that you saw.”

“I think it will sound foolish if I try to tell you, so now you must promise not to laugh at me.”

“Go on.”

“It was like being in a wood and knowing where I must go, because I could see there was a light beyond the wood. And the great trees that I must not touch are the designs of Tesla, of Parsons, of Curtis…all of them inventors.”

“And what was the light, in this dream of yours?”

“The light? I didn't get there, so I cannot tell you. If I had to guess, it is the Peacock Turbine, crowned with success and radiant. What else could it be?”

“If I had seen such a thing, and had to guess what lay beyond the wood, I think it must have something to do with holiness, or salvation.”

“Perhaps. Salvation is a good enough word. But here we are, speaking of such things, and sitting in darkness, which may stand for sin in your way of thinking. Shall I call for light?”

“No, please, not now. Powers will light the dining room when it is time for supper, and I do dislike Mr. Edison's lamps, though Fowler says we must have them. Do you remember how we would keep the one lamp trimmed to save the expense?”

“Of course I do. And did I not tell you that even the one lamp seemed wasteful, and that in my home we could go for weeks without lighting one?”

“So you did.” He could tell from her voice that the memory pleased her. “In the dark this seems more like home.”

“You will be back there soon?”

“Yes, soon enough.”

“I forgot to tell you: just yesterday, at the depot, I saw a crate with your name on it, and it was half the size of this room.”

“The piano…I had forgotten the piano.”

“And the new room is almost finished.”

“I'm sure it will be wonderful, and that I shall grow to love it in time. But what I remember is our own home.”

He had no lighthearted comment to make. His fingers were clenched on the teacup. He groped for the tray to put it down.

“Do you ever wish, Toma, that we could go back?”

“Go back?”

“To the way things were.”

“Did you not say we had to go forward? I think perhaps you have forgotten the way things were.”

“Some days it seems I can do little else but remember. Is this not true for you?”

“I remember that you once asked me to do something, and I tried to do it because that was the only chance I had…for you. But I failed, and we both knew what the consequences would be, even if we could not speak about it. The rules were simple. You were the prize I did not win.”

The harshness of these words caused a catch in her breath whose meaning he knew. He went to her and took her hand. He knew her face was turned up to him, for he felt the sweetness of her breath.

“And now?”

“And now I have my work, which is my life, and if I think about what might have been I cannot go forward.”

“You do not think of me?” If he turned his hand in hers his palm would lie against her cheek. But she released his hand abruptly and stood. “I hear Powers in the pantry. You must give me a moment. There are matches and a candle there where you were sitting.”

Powers came, and the Edison lamps were lit, and they went through to their supper. In the dim second parlor, Toma laid his hand admiringly on the case of the grand piano.

“Yes,” said Harriet, without enthusiasm, “Fowler has encouraged me greatly in my music. Shall I sing for you afterward?”

“If you will. That was one of the pleasures of the old days.”

As the soup was being served, Harriet caught him glancing at the third place setting.

“We won't wait for him. There is no telling when he will come, or if he will come, though he did so want to see you. He is very busy now. He will call by ten if he has to stay in town.”

“Perhaps your father will dine with us?”

The glare of the electric lamp made her look pale, and sharp. “I think not. Surely you see how it is? He takes his meals in the shed out there to save time, otherwise they will never be ready. Oh.” She put her spoon down. “It is unbearable.”

“They? Is he still making the wheels?”

She nodded, staring at her soup. “We cannot live in town. And my husband no longer feels that he can entertain here. It is part of his job, you see.”

“But you are doing what you must do. You cannot doubt yourself.”

They ate in silence, taking no pleasure in the cold capon or the jellied veal. At one point, Harriet laid down her knife and her fork and cast her eyes around the room, as if looking for something that was not in its place.

“Do you still live in the silk mill?”

“I do.”

“And…?”

“Olivia sends her regards.”

“And mine to her, of course.”

Toma had been filling his glass with Madeira from the decanter. Now he pushed it with his forefinger across the polished mahogany until it rested by her water goblet. “Could you think of this as medicine?”

She drank once and gave a little sigh of surrender, then finished the whole glass. “I would never have done that on my own.”

“I could not leave you in such low spirits.”

“Are you going, then?”

“Soon.”

“Could you not stay until Fowler returns? Or until he calls?”

When the plates were cleared they went to the second parlor, where she lit the candlesticks on the piano and the gas jet in the sconce beside her bench. “Mr. Edison is not welcome in my music room. What shall I play for you?”

“Come.” He held out his hand and she took it. Out through the dining room and the pantry and the kitchen they went, then onto the back porch and down into the garden. In the shed, surrounded by a clutter of tools and bits of iron scrap, they found the old man asleep in his chair, a flurry of insects around his lamp.

Amos Bigelow did not know Toma, but he knew his daughter; and although he complained about his lost hammer, he allowed himself to be led to the music room and seated in the curve of the piano, under the dark canopy of the lid.

“Now, play what you think he would like to hear,” suggested Toma.

Play she did: a march, then a mazurka, and finally, when it was clear that the old man was keeping himself awake by an effort of will, a lullaby, with which she sang him to sleep. Toma was no judge of music, or of singing, but he was moved by this performance. When the last chord settled on them, she folded her hands in her lap and they looked at one another without attempting a conversation.

The telephone rang once in a distant room. “That will be Fowler to say he is not coming home. I'll turn on the light at the gate to summon a cab.”

When they were saying good night, out on the curb, he asked: “Will you be long in coming to Beecher's Bridge?”

“I have not even wanted to think about the move. There is so much to do. Three weeks, I think.”

“And how long will you stay?”

“As long as I can.”

“The change will do you good.”

“Yes. Now good night.” Instead of the dry peck on the cheek he might have expected, or her hand, she gave him her mouth, full and soft, if only for a moment.

 

T
HE HORSEHAIR UPHOLSTERY
was unyielding and the carriage smelled of mold. The jolting of the cobbles cleared his mind. He had spent an evening alone with her, and ended up wishing that her husband would return and deliver them from their pantomime of courtship. He had embarrassed her with an ill-chosen remark about becoming rich, words that seemed to mock the emptiness of her life.

What good had been accomplished? He would have the rest of the night and all his tomorrows to reflect on the things that would not change. There was that moment in the darkened parlor when a slight pressure of his hand would have resulted, perhaps, in a blind, hopeless, compromising embrace. Hopeless, that was the word. He must remember to buy that plaster mold of the Washington Monument on his way through the station tomorrow. Olivia would know that he had thought of her when he was away.

 

“MODERN JOVE HURLS LIGHTNING AT WILL—MILLION-HORSE-POWER FORKED TONGUES CRACKLE AND FLASH IN LABORATORY

 

“And what do you make of our friend's letter, Stefan?”

“Do you really think he will come here?” Stefan's equine features, normally so inexpressive, struggled to accommodate this extraordinary possibility.

“I am certain of it.”

Stefan looked around the shop. “See what a mess this place is.”

“How long will it take us to jump through all his hoops?”

“I do what I am told, boss. I am used to jumping through the hoops. It'll take me a while to measure and check and run through these sets of tests. But I think you must worry about the other, ja?”

“You mean the mathematical questions.”

“That and his ‘theory'…if only he knew.”

“Well, I will come up with something to satisfy him.”

“I don't think you understand, boss, about Dr. Steinmetz. Have you ever seen one of his books?”

“No, have you?”

“Certainly. Why else do I ask this question? It is one equation after another, more numbers than words.”

“Tell me, Stefan, what is his field of expertise?”

“Ach, whatever he wants he can do. He starts in motors, alternating-current motors, and sometime in the nineties General Electric buys out old man Eichmeyer's company to get their hands on Steinmetz and his patents, otherwise he is killing them with his streetcar motors. Then he goes into the problems of high-voltage transmission that nobody else can touch, like eddy currents, magnetic leakage, hysteresis.”

“And now?”

Stefan paused to spit out his tobacco plug and replace it with an equivalent chew of Mr. Wright's driest and most pungent salami. He seemed to live on this stuff, and the reek of it overpowered the smell of new pine construction. He held the knife ready to cut another piece.

“Thank you, no.”

“So now Dr. Steinmetz has his own little part of the General Electric Company, and when some engineer has a problem with this or that, he comes hat and hand to him.”

“Hat
in
hand.”

“Ja, okay, and when he is left to himself he thinks about lightning.”

“How do you know that?”

“I read the magazines, what do you think? Every few months he is writing something about transient currents and arresters, which are the protection devices. This is a big headache, I can tell you, if lightning hits the line.”

“I see.”

“Anything else, boss?”

“If you have those magazines I would like to see them.”

“Sure, sure. I have them, I give them to you.”

Toma left Stefan to his meal and went to the kitchen end of the mill. Olivia ladled cold beans into a tin plate. This was a long way from being rich.

“You stop by the store to see if my things come yet?”

“No, I forgot.”

“You wouldn't forget if they was yours. You'll be sorry, maybe.”

She said this with a smile. The Washington Monument had been a fine idea. Even more welcome was his report of Patent Examiner Flaten's praise of her drawings.

“You talk to the lawyer about those papers?”

“No. The patent agent took my money and gave me bad advice, as I found out almost too late. He puts his hand in my pocket and steals like a thief. So now I keep my eyes open and rely on no man.”

“Just so you know, that was my money that got stole. And I bet you the General Electric knows some things that you don't, even if it is your machine.”

“The money will come now every month, and when the patent is granted, there will be more. Read his letter if you want.”

Olivia smoothed the paper of the letter on the table and read, sounding the words aloud as she did so. It made Toma think of Horatio to see this, and he laid his hand gently across the back of her neck.

“Well?”

“At least you know where he stands.”

“And how shall I answer him?”

“You don't need to be wasting time on that. Just do what he says.”

Toma sighed. It was a bad day when Stefan and Olivia agreed on anything.

Toma finished what was on his plate, and when Olivia went back to the laundry he poured himself a cup of cold coffee and took out the other letter that had arrived that morning, the one he had already read twice.

B
ILLINGS LEANED ON
his shovel. He was a short, sturdy man and his years as a stoker at the Bigelow works had made him an expert in the employment of that tool. But now he was dissatisfied, for this was not dignified work, nor was he working at his own pace.

“Does it ever occur to you, Sandy, that these folk have their heads up their asses, for all the money they've got?”

“And spending it too, which is the important bit to you and me.” Foster thought that it was more tiring to listen to Billings complain than to keep shoveling. “A house as big as this one is a bugger. Always something to fix, which is why I wouldn't have it if you paid me. But if she wants a new drain, I'll dig it for her, because I get paid.” As an afterthought he added, “Which is more'n I can say for you, and you don't get on with it.”

Still Billings did not move. The day was just getting warm, and although he had stripped to his undershirt, the sweat made a dark mat of the hair on his shoulders and chest. “But it makes no sense, man. First it's a kind of greenhouse thing, then it's someplace you sit and play music where you can look at the sky, I suppose, and now it's both at the same time, and needs a furnace and I don't know what all. You ask me, the poor woman don't know what she wants. Hasn't the faintest idea.”

“Nobody asked you, Billings. Now for Christ's sake dig.”

Harriet Truscott, at her desk, looked out the window and knew she must speak to the workmen again or they would never be finished in time, never get the sod back in place and the dirt swept up. As it was, the construction looked raw enough, in spite of the new planting of shrubbery around its edge. But she would not go outside and engage in conversation with that half-naked man who looked like a bear. How odd it was, she thought. Fowler, though she had never seen him thus, was not so…hairy. In fact…She opened the window enough to be heard.

“Mr. Foster, I beg you to hurry. The train comes at eleven, and I want everything to look perfect. I am sorry to disturb you.”

“Yes, missus. I'm sure we'll have her done by then.”

She shut the window again and moved her chair so that she could not see the hairy man. But she had a sudden concern for his wife. What did one do if one's husband were like that? It was Lucy's fault that she was thinking such thoughts. Eleven o'clock. She must finish her letter and then see to the arrangements for lunch. It might be days before she found another opportunity to write. Had she foreseen how much fuss was involved in Dr. Steinmetz's visit, she would have planted in Fowler's mind the suggestion that he stay in one of the hotels.

Her cousin Lucy, she felt, must have grown bored, or bold, or both, to write such things, using as an excuse the familiarity of their girlhood, that fond and distant memory.

“You will never guess,” began Lucy, “what I have come across after all these years. You will remember the party we had for New Year's and your papa allowed you to come because your mother was so ill? It must have been just after your trip to Italy. What fun that was, and the snow so perfect for days on end, and the men had shoveled the snow off the entire pond to the black ice below. We could have skated all night by the light of the bonfire if we had been allowed to. And on the Eve of the New Year, as was the custom, the lead was melted in the fire for fortune-telling, and all the unmarried girls—even we, who were hardly of an age for such things—must cast for our husbands.

“Mary Parkhurst, you remember her, was such a timid girl and her hand holding the door key shook when she tried to pour the ladle of lead through it. A drop of it spattered on her wrist and she let everything fall into the pan of water and made such a noise. But when we fished it out, there was something that looked very like a book, and in the end she did marry a minister, so I suppose it really does work. I got only drops of no shape at all, and they said I probably would not marry, or that my husband would have no particular calling, and I said Poo to that. And now that I
am
married—and more proof, would you believe it, due in October—and Cecil doing so well in his uncle's office, I see that all those little sprinklings of lead were so many coins, and I am vindicated after all.