The Lightning Keeper (30 page)

“Mr. Coffin?”

“Yes. What do you think he is?”

“I think he is the chairman…no, a capitalist.”

“He is a system builder, and Mr. Insull, who directs the great electric utility in Chicago, is another. They look not at one invention or another, but ahead to the time when everything is interconnected, every resource is exploited intelligently and efficiently, and—”

“It is what you were saying at lunch. The grid, you called it.”

“Very good. You begin to understand. The grid is the interconnection of all energy and all enterprise, and the system that Mr. Coffin builds at General Electric is to hasten the day when that is possible.”

“And the machine, my machine, is a piece of that system.”

“Exactly so. It is not an end in itself, or not in the eyes of the General Electric Corporation.”

Toma nodded. He thought this might be the end of their chat, but Steinmetz's expression of inquisitive attention told him otherwise.

“I am ready to do whatever is necessary, anything that is in my power.”

“Anything, you say? Well, a very big first step would be to take everything of importance here”—again Steinmetz made the gesture with his cigar, and the trail of smoke hung in the air—“and move it to Schenectady.”

“With all due respect, Dr. Steinmetz, that is not necessary, and not reasonable. There is no waterfall in Schenectady of any importance, let alone a head of one hundred sixty feet.”

“Well, well, a waterfall is not such an important thing. Do you know, we have almost perfected a system for making artificial lightning in the research laboratory there, to test my lightning arresters? A matter of months, perhaps. And if we can do that, I assure you we can make a waterfall too, though not such an elegant one. A few pumps, and—”

Toma cut him off, speaking very low. He was afraid he might lose his temper if he spoke in a normal tone of voice. “Neither is it possible. I am sorry, but that has all been decided. It is stipulated in the contract.”

Steinmetz found that his cigar had gone out and asked for a match. “I know about that piece of paper, of course. It is discouraging that a matter of scientific importance has been left in the hands of lawyers. But I was thinking of the inconvenience of this arrangement. I am in Schenectady, you are here. The equipment must be manufactured in Schenectady and shipped here. If it is not right, it must be sent back. Yes, I know what the contract says, but I was hoping you would change your mind. You can understand my disappointment?”

“I understand how it must seem to you. Ask me for anything else.”

Steinmetz sighed. “I scarcely know where to begin. I will send a couple of men down from Schenectady who will be useful to you. They know how things are done at General Electric. We will see. Perhaps I have overestimated the difficulties. I am sure you are not afraid of hard work. So we roll up the sleeves, ja?” Steinmetz smiled at Toma, pleased with his own turn of phrase. He walked along the wall a few paces and stopped by the door that bore Olivia's sign, its message underlined by the crudeness of the lettering.

“And here is the laundry, I suppose?”

“That is Olivia's room.”

“I think I know the smell of bleach, and sheets do not grow on trees, even in Beecher's Bridge.”

“Yes, it is a laundry.”

“Can you imagine, Mr. Peacock, if I send my engineers down to work in a laundry? You must get rid of that, or we will be the laughingstock of Schenectady.”

 

T
HE VISIT TO
B
EECHER'S
B
RIDGE
of the Wizard of Schenectady coincided with a snap of glorious weather that unfurled over the Berkshires and the North West Corner like a fine new flag. The long, damp spring had caused farmers and gentlemen of the town to consult their almanacs or pocket diaries of seasons past, and left them wondering whether things were quite right. Conditions in March had been nearly perfect for the making of maple syrup, but that was a small comfort if you couldn't plow a furrow and get the crop down in April: 1884 was well within living memory, and the newspapers said later that the sunless summer had been caused by the eruption of Krakatoa, an island on the other side of the world. Perhaps the damned thing had gone off again like a Roman candle? And further back, not within living memory, but no less vivid for that, was the terrible year of 1816, or Eighteen Hundred and Froze to Death, as they called it back then, when cruel frosts came down in every month of the year, and the wolves walked the main street of town, right past the Congregational Church. Of these facts people were as sure as they were of the Bible itself, or nearly, for their authority was the printed texts of Dr. Robbins's sermons, in which the wolves were used to very good effect.

But now all that had been forgiven and nearly forgotten, and the soft wind—a perfect temperature, day and night—touched the land and released a season of bloom that was a kind of eruption. From the Truscotts' broad lawn one could see how the mountain laurel made its progress up the side of Great Mountain: the white glowing of full blossom at the swampy margins of the lake; the pink of opening flowers on the slopes; and far above, where the bushes were stunted and the dark green leaves rimmed patches of bald rock, a sprinkling of hard red buds. On the last day of his visit, Saturday, Dr. Steinmetz was persuaded by Harriet to come out before breakfast to find the yellow warblers along the lake, and she had given him her bird glasses so that he could see for himself how the laurel, blossom and bud, told a story about the climate of Great Mountain.

“Yes, I see it. It is a kind of litmus paper, yes? For the temperature.”

“And today, Dr. Steinmetz, we shall take our picnic up there. No excuses.”

“No, no, I would not miss it.”

For two days Toma had watched Steinmetz work, and had been
impressed by the restless curiosity, the almost manic energy. He was remarkably spry as well, and Toma had seen him throw himself under the wheel to get a better view of things. A variety of gauges and measuring devices sprouted from the pockets of his coat; he was forever asking Stefan to take down the notations he called out; and he could evidently solve equations in his head without having them written out.

To Toma he was polite, even cordial, and no allusion was made to the conversation of the first day. Stefan followed him around like a dog, hoping to be rewarded by some task, or a scrap of German. He even got on well with Olivia, who had no inkling of the fate of her laundry.

“Mr. Steinmetz, you have been lying in those puddles again. Let me take your coat before it soaks you through.” She had it off his back before he could protest, and for the rest of the morning Steinmetz wore a woolen shawl draped on his shoulders while his coat flapped outside with the other drying articles.

At last he pronounced his satisfaction—or acknowledged that no more progress could be made with the equipment at hand. He consulted his watch. “Nearly eleven. I think we must not keep Mrs. Truscott waiting.”

The picnic party gathered on the drive in front of the Truscott house and Harriet made a last appeal to her husband.

“Fowler, this is such a day. Look! Look! It is an eagle, I think. There, he's gone behind the mountain. Can't you come with us? We could try wrapping it in a bandage.”

“Nothing would give me greater pleasure, I assure you, but the knee does not want to go up the mountain, and it most certainly would not want to come back down. You take care of our guest. I think Toma may have to carry everything, but he's a young, strong fellow.”

She suggested they take the car around by the Five Mile Drive to give them a boost up the side of the mountain, but Steinmetz would not hear of it. “In my youth, you know, I climbed in the mountains, though you might not think so. And when the weather is acceptable, I ride my bicycle to work, even now. All summer long I am in my canoe at Camp Mohawk. Do not worry on my account.” He made an effort to stand taller, more upright, as he spoke his boast, and even made a joking pantomime of flexing his bicep.

Steinmetz's vigor on the trail, even under the weight of the small pack he insisted on carrying, was no surprise to Toma, although they had to stop often for the little man to catch his breath. His cigars, he said ruefully, were catching up with him. Then he laughed and admitted that he was looking forward to the pleasure of a smoke once they made it to the top. He was anxious to press on so that they might have another sighting of the eagle.

“I have never seen an eagle in Schenectady.”

They talked about birds, perhaps in anticipation of the eagle, and Steinmetz recounted the story of his pet crows. They were wild crows but they came to his window to be fed, and he talked with them, or at least came to know something of their language. The end was sad, though, as one of the crows, feeling a false sense of security, was ambushed and killed by the raccoon, which had somehow got out of his cage. The other crow had not long survived this grief. “But I have them both stuffed, so they are still with me. They are sitting on my bookcase now.”

By the time they had climbed up through the dark evergreens of Rachel's Leap into the sunlit clearing of the falls, they had passed from ornithology to botany. Steinmetz, in enumerating the treasures of his garden, mentioned his prized patch of
Cypripedium
. Harriet gave a little shriek and seized him by the hand to drag him away off the path and into the underbrush of laurel and scrub oak.

“Look there, Dr. Steinmetz! And was ever the ladyslipper in more perfect bloom?”

“It is the very same.” Steinmetz's voice ceded nothing to hers in enthusiasm. “And if I did not know better, I would think I am in my very own garden.”

They came back to the clearing still holding hands and stopped near the bank of the stream, with Steinmetz on a low hummock, so that he was nearly of an equal stature to Harriet. She seemed to be blushing; it might have been the exertion of the climb, or the happiness of her botanical discovery. And notwithstanding all the reasonable arguments to the contrary, one might suspect that the little man was in love with her, or at least with the idea of her.

Steinmetz went off with the binoculars and a cigar in search of his
eagle, leaving Toma and Harriet to lay the cloth. She knelt now where she had stood with Steinmetz, the same spot where she had earlier broken Toma's heart, and gave him a smile of generous and transcendent sweetness.

They began to tear at the chicken, and when Toma turned his back to dip a cup in the stream, Steinmetz cried out: “No, my friend, we can do better than that.” He drew from his pack a slender-necked bottle of hock and three stemmed glasses, each wrapped in a dish towel. He poured the wine and Harriet drank without a murmur, though she would not let him fill her glass again. After lunch, and after Steinmetz had smoked the other half of his cigar, they lay back, shaded their faces with the dish towels, and slept.

“I wonder where all this water comes from.” Steinmetz was awake and writing in his pocket notebook. He had his boots off and was bathing his feet in the water, still cold with snowmelt. “We are very near the top of your mountain, no?”

“Very near,” said Harriet, stretching but not yet risen from her spot on the grass. “The water must come from Dead Man's Lake, which is supposed to be very deep.”

“A lake on top of a mountain…” Steinmetz pursed his lips and cocked his head, then muttered a phrase in German that ended with the word
Walchensee
. He turned to Harriet. “And you have not been there?”

“Never.”

“And you, Mr. Peacock?”

“I think no one goes to Dead Man's Lake. There was a man at the works who said there was nothing to see, and damned hard to get there.”

“Then I will bet you he never went. We will follow the stream. What could be difficult in that? Come. We leave all this here for now.”

The Steinmetz expedition made a brave attempt on the lake: good progress at first along the open bank of the stream, then slower as they stooped under the boughs, then the trees became so thick they had to clamber down into the streambed. They had been climbing by degrees, but the stream had been slowing to their pace. Now they entered a zone where the water widened out into a dense growth of alders, and the current was imperceptible. But for the sun they would soon have
been lost, for there were no landmarks here. In fact there was no land at all. They were apparently in Dead Man's Lake even though they could not yet see it.

They felt their way cautiously along the bottom—rocks giving way now to an unpleasant ooze—using the narrow alders to support themselves. Harriet had abandoned her skirt to the water in order to have both hands free. Steinmetz, still leading the way, was soaked nearly to the top of his trousers, and no one had mentioned the temperature of the water, which was little better than freezing. Harriet looked back at Toma with a question in her eyes, and he made a violent thrusting motion with his head, which she took as encouragement to speak.

“Dr. Steinmetz, I am afraid I cannot go on. Forgive me.”

“Ah,” he said, concerned but still cheerful. “I think the mountain has beaten us today, yes? But it was good that we tried. Oh! I am sorry for your clothes. Will you lead us back, sir?”

In half an hour they were back at the clearing trying to warm themselves. Harriet murmured an apology and began to remove her shoes. Steinmetz turned his back, but Toma was not quick enough, or did not understand, and when he glanced up she had taken one stocking off and was beginning on the other. He saw that the flesh from ankle to mid-thigh was bluish white and he took the tablecloth, warm from the sun, and used it to towel her dry. She did not flinch or think to protest. When Steinmetz turned, it was as if nothing had happened; his attention was focused on his cigar.

“Thank goodness this is still dry. At moments like these…Ah, another surprise.” And from his coat pocket—the same coat pocket, Toma could have sworn, that held the micrometer—he produced a small silver flask. “We always carried this in the mountains.”