The Lightning Keeper (47 page)

General Electric men knitting for the war effort

Although the sun was now so bright and hot that both Toma and Stefan had stripped off their shirts, it was still early in May and the cool of the morning lingered a few paces away in the shade of young leaves, where the hobble bush bloomed white and the litter of dead leaves was punctuated by shoots of new grass and a pale scattering of spring beauties.

“Such a day,” mused Stefan, resting his pry bar on the top of the wooden crate, “who would believe…”

“Help me with that corner, Stefan, and we're done with this one.” Toma spoke without looking up at Stefan. He did not wish to be abrupt with his friend, but neither did he wish to discuss the war, not again, not now. There were several crates lying on the scarred rock of Lightning Knob, and he wanted to get the equipment inside before the rain promised by massed clouds to the west.

From the open crate he lifted a dull metal box with instrument leads sprouting from its sides and cable receptors like wounds, top and bottom.

“Which one is that?”

Toma turned it over in his hands. Something about the device, perhaps its color, reminded him of the bombs his brother had carried across the border, the bombs he had died for. “It doesn't say.”

“Then I hope they had the brains to send a packing list.” Stefan scrabbled in the excelsior, found a piece of paper, and drew a long
breath. “Already in Schenectady they have the fighting spirit. There is maybe something dangerous in this box?”

“Stefan, just tell me what the paper says.”

“‘Security Alert.'” Stefan's stilted delivery, squeaky and clipped, was a Hungarian version of a German accent, perhaps a parody of Steinmetz himself. “‘This device is intended for use by authorized General Electric personnel only. Tampering or unauthorized use will be punished to the fullest extent of the law.'” He let the paper drop, took the box from Toma's hands, then fumbled with the lid. “And what is this precious, secret device? What do you think? Look: a fuse box, a fucking fuse.”

Toma wondered how he could reply without further upsetting Stefan. Ever since the declaration of war, now over a month ago, his friend had been preoccupied by dark consequences and ramifications that he was all too eager to elaborate. The more recent draft legislation was another link in the noose of malign circumstance that would drag him back to die in Europe. Toma had tried to reassure him that at thirty-nine he was hardly the pick of the litter, and now, with his shirt off, he was a most unlikely subject for the martial imagination: the skin like parchment, the arms not much thicker than the cotton straps of his undershirt. Toma had never seen him stand up straight.

“It's just a piece of paper they put in every box, Stefan. It doesn't mean anything. See if you can find that packing list in there. Besides, who are we if not authorized personnel?”

Stefan dumped the fuse box back into the wood shavings and began rifling the pockets of his shirt, vest, and coat, muttering as he went: “Authorized. Where is it? I'll show you authorized. Ja, here it is.” He thrust the folded envelope at Toma. “This one is yours. I have already signed mine. We are authorized to unpack crates, and maybe to get killed by lightning up here.”

Toma read the two pages, then began again at the top, to Stefan's impatience. “How many times you got to read?”

“I just want to make sure I didn't miss anything. It is a security clearance.”

“It is an oath. See there at the bottom? ‘So help me God.'”

“That part doesn't apply to me or to you.”

“What matters to me is that they tell me exactly where I am al
lowed to go on GE property—premises, they put—and anything they don't mention is out. I can't go where I was before, down below, the desk where I do the drawings and the numbers, the shop where we make the prototype. What do they think, suddenly I'm a criminal? They don't say about the crapper. I'll ask Piccolomini about that one next time I see him.”

“You should leave Piccolomini alone. You don't want to be seen as a troublemaker.”

“I'm a troublemaker already, as soon as I open my mouth. ‘Be careful who you talk to about your work,' it says there. ‘You never know when the Enemy may be listening.' So how do we know who this Enemy is? He probably sounds a lot like me, is what I think.”

“Everyone in America comes from somewhere else. Unless you're an Indian.”

“It's easy for you to say, because you talk like an Englishman, and with that foot of yours you aren't going to get called up.”

“People aren't so stupid as you think, Stefan.”

“Probably they are more stupid. I tell you I get some funny looks, and from men I have worked with for two years. Already they are talking about the Liberty Loans down there. I'm going to have to buy double just to shut them up.”

Stefan had talked himself out, and fell to the labor in surly silence. Fuses, gauges, junction boxes, cable connectors, meters, transformers, the crucial lightning arresters, and a variety of switching devices were freed from the packing material and set on benches under the canvas awning, awaiting their hierarchical connection in the nearly completed stone building. Scraps of white paper—the security reminders—skittered over the rock like confetti until they caught in the branches of the low blueberry bushes.

Toma sent Stefan inside to ask if the work on the observation room would be finished in time to begin the installation this afternoon. It was not quite a make-work errand, but he could have called the foreman out. He turned again to the document in his pocket. The layout and functions of the Lightning Laboratory were described in punctilious detail, as were his responsibilities as the manager of that installation. Mention was made in passing of the offices in the old
foundry. But of the works below the falls, the ever-expanding Experimental Site called into existence by the Peacock Turbine, not a word.

He could refuse to be drawn by such a bureaucratic provocation, which might be innocent enough; he would refrain from the consolation of Stefan's sympathy; but it was hard to put aside the pang of anonymity or isolation at having been so casually dismissed from history, a history to which he had, until now, paid little mind.

He thought suddenly and without exaltation of Harriet, of his boast to her that the Peacock Turbine would make him rich. The implied syllogism there—that being rich he would win her—had been hopelessly false at the time, as subsequent experience had revealed to him in cruel increments. The paper meant simply, and stupidly, that he was denied access to his own invention. But his reaction, his despair, was an acknowledgement, at last, that a larger hope lay in ruins.

Stefan saw at once the alteration in his friend's mood, and said only: “They will be finished soon. Perhaps you should go and encourage them.”

Toma smiled, as if at a joke, and looked up at the bulk of the stone fortress that enclosed the excavation on three sides and braced the soaring aerial. “It will be quite something if it works.”

Stefan thought, but did not say: And if it doesn't work it will kill us.

 

H
E WAS SUDDENLY AWAKE
and thought it must be the calling of the birds everywhere around him in the gray light before dawn, for it was the month of the warblers. But he had woken directly out of a vivid dream of his brother, who was climbing the rock wall to the cave where he kept the fatal devices, and he, below, could not keep pace. Through the birdsong now—the one that sounded like the working of a musical hinge—he heard again the muted clank and recognized it as a sound from his dream.

More curious than alarmed, he pulled on his boots and felt his way along the trail to the stream where it would intersect a wider footpath up the mountain. Voices ahead, low, and the brief gleam of a light. They were not coming in the direction of the Knob, but passing up toward Rachel's Leap. They did not seem accustomed to this work, whatever it was.

“Who is there?” He did not expect a reply and got none. Over the sound of the stream he heard quickened footsteps in the brush, a curse, and again the clanking as they made haste to escape down the mountain. He would not pursue them, would not provoke a fight. He walked a few paces down the familiar path, assuring himself of their retreat, and tripped headlong over a thin metal rod that had lodged in the underbrush.

 

S
HE WAS AMAZED AT
her inability to coax the flowers into an arrangement that pleased her. Columbine, Johnson's blue geranium, and the earliest peonies: these were her favorites, and she had once written in her journal that she could look at them and find affirmation of her faith, proof of His existence in the world around her. Ordinarily the flowers arranged themselves when she dropped them into the vase. Fussing could not improve upon the eccentric frailty of geranium stems, the poise of sentinel columbines, the organizing weight of peonies. And still she fussed, cutting an inch off the geraniums to curb their sprawl. At each touch the geranium shed a snow of petals until the counter was covered with those tiny, perfectly blue hearts. The familiar scents were making her feel slightly ill.

She was disgusted with her weakness. The fact, now irreparable, was that she ought to have told him when she first had the chance, before her silence progressed from delicacy to deception, before she had time to think so much on the consequences. No one else would yet know—no one did know—that she was carrying a child. The delay in disclosure would hardly matter to Fowler: What, after all, did he know about these things? More so, undoubtedly, to Lucy, who would have a greedy curiosity about the fruits of her advice. And most of all, to Toma, who could conceivably hate her for what she had not told him.

Her secret, in other moments, had this liberating effect on her: she no longer worried, as she had in the wake of her confrontation with Lucy, about what other people might think, or how they would interpret her association with Toma. Only yesterday they had met in the office and had spent almost an hour talking about birds and their songs in this season of migration and mating. Did he know the one that
called out over and over the name Sam Peabody, the first syllable low, followed by three higher notes, quavering? He did not, and she must whistle it for him. He caught her hand and reprimanded her vulgarity. His hand relaxed, and now lay comfortably, but not possessively, on hers, which she did not withdraw. She told him the name of that bird—the white-throated sparrow—and how sometimes in the spring they got it wrong, the young ones she imagined, and sang the whole thing on the same note. Three birdsongs later she wondered aloud if he would come to see the indigo buntings down at the foot of the lawn: she was sure it was a nesting pair.

“Perhaps not.” A look of indefinite regret, a reluctant release of the joined hands.

“She is gone, you know. Dr. Crowell himself supervised the move, made sure they got her safely down to the ambulance. She will be better cared for there.” She had meant to add “at the Home” but lost her courage at the brink, and so her sentence trailed off, oddly inflected. They had talked obliquely before about Olivia's treatment, the chances of recovery from what was said to be a disabling seizure.

“For the best, I suppose,” he had murmured, but she could not tell what he thought or felt about this resolution. She realized that she had used his sadness as an excuse, just as she had used happiness, their happiness, this season of discovery.

Their business transacted, the correspondence finished, the afternoon was in danger of ending on this subdued note. Let's stand outside, she said, and see if the rain has brought the veery out. And there it was, unseen as always, the song spiraling down in a minor key like the winged descent of maple seed. She whispered in his ear, I am so very sorry about Olivia, and let her lips brush his cheek, almost an accident.

“It's Mr. Peacock,” said Lily from the doorway behind her.

“Here?”

“Yes, ma'am; he'd like to talk to you.”

She came out to him, her hands still damp, her mind on indigo buntings, but the strange metal rod in his hand told her they had other business.

“Toma. You have saved me from making a mess of the most perfect flowers. I am almost afraid to show you.”

“Have you any idea what this thing might be?”

“None.”

“I found it this morning, dropped on the path by someone who did not want to meet me.” He gave the rod a shake and it hummed in his hand, an angry noise.

“What is that there, the blue cloth on the end?”

“A marker, I suppose.”

“The color is distinctive.”

“You have seen it before?”

She did not answer him, but went out to the porch, where she took up her binoculars and scanned the shore of the lake.

“There's another one. Look where the hemlock has fallen into the shallows, in the clearing behind it. I have seen others.” She handed him the binoculars.

“And the others are at the same distance from the water?”

“More or less.” Her voice was soft; she gave up her information unwillingly, knowing where the inquisition must end.

“Then perhaps you know what they mean.”

“I have an idea, yes.”

“I thought as much. For some reason, on the way down here, I remembered seeing those footprints in the snow, yours and his, on the day of the New Year. You must tell me.”

There was no way to assert her innocence in this matter, to tell him that the expedition with Dr. Steinmetz to the high lake had been an adventure, not to mention an escape from Lucy, and that every step of the way she had been thinking about him, recalling with perfect clarity the pressure of his arm about her waist. She wondered, even as she set forth the few facts of her apparent complicity, how these flags had appeared around her own pond without her knowledge. Perhaps Fowler had agreed and had forgotten to tell her? And she did not say, as she might have, that she had argued against the pump-storage project as best she could, or that Dr. Steinmetz had assured her he would tell Toma. When the time is right, he said, when I have made the calculations. She spoke only of what she had done or seen, and described the idea as Steinmetz had explained it to her, a child's version of some complicated grown-up matter. She made no excuse for herself: Would he not trust her in this?