by Ewing, Al
At this point, Franklin tried to escape; but the door was firmly locked, and the questions continued inexorably, despite his desperate, unheard pleas.
Question the twenty-fourth and last: Do you see any thing amiss in the present customs or proceedings of the Junto, which might be amended?
“Franklin lives!” came the cry from ten throats. “Franklin lives! Franklin lives!”
And as one, they fell upon him.
He was beaten senseless, and dragged in the dead of night up to my father’s top field. The Sheriff, feeling unable when the moment came to involve himself directly, stood watch; Newton, for his part, merely looked on. The other nine – good, noble men of Philadelphia! – each plunged their knife up to the hilt into Franklin. I pray to God he was not awake for it! I pray to whatever God or Devil will hear it that he was not still alive when they severed his organs of generation and forced them into his mouth!
I pray he was not alive for the burial!
Scorpio did not stay for the full meeting, but slipped away to report back to me. He had agonised about whether or not to let me know the full truth, and I could not tell you to this day if he thought it was worthwhile; for myself, I would say that it was that awful truth that slew whatever force of life lay in me, leaving me the shell I am today. And yet, perhaps it is better to have the truth, and not a lie, no matter how painful the truth may be.
And it was a painful truth indeed. For my father had also left that meeting early, and he had returned home to hear Scorpio in the middle of his tale. He had silently listened himself, long enough to know that I had defied him a third time. He had listened, and the rage had built in him slowly, and now his face was a livid purple and his hands clenched so hard his knuckles were white.
And he stood in my doorway to kill me.
IN THE DREAM, the lightning strikes the key and travels down the string, crackling like fire, proving a point, creating a future, and when it hits the wooden stake buried in the earth it sets it alight, and the flames illuminate the face of Benjamin Franklin, forty-four years old and only begun...
SCORPIO PUT UP his fists, but too late; Father hit him hard enough to black his eye and send him crashing to the floor like a sack of potatoes. Then my father’s hands were around my throat, squeezing my windpipe shut, and his eyes contained nothing but fury and madness. Perhaps it was the poison Newton whispered in his ear, or perhaps he had been drinking, or perhaps this was my father’s true face.
What did it matter? He had come too late to kill me, for I had already died. All he could do was wring the life from a corpse.
He sensed my lassitude, my apathetic refusal to fear him, and it seemed to enrage him still further. I felt him prepare to snap my meagre neck...
Then, abruptly, there came the sound of crunching bone, his eyes rolled back in his head, his grip loosened and he fell to the floor, quite dead. Abraham, hearing the commotion, had run into the room and stove in his Master’s skull with a candlestick.
I feel grateful to him, even thought he only saved a husk; for he must have known the penalty for such an act. Scorpio said it first, upon regaining his full consciousness. Should anyone find out what Abraham had done, he would instantly be hanged.
I, in my shock and to my shame, was beyond caring, and Scorpio did the only thing he felt he could. He took the candlestick in his own hand, explaining that he would run through the house and let the other slaves get a good look at him. He would take the blame upon his own head, for he felt he was more capable of running and hiding from the forces of law, having done it many times before; in fact, it was a problem with the authorities in Italy that had necessitated his journey to Philadelphia. Abraham, to his credit, tried to talk Scorpio out of it, but one of the maids walked in as Scorpio hefted the candlestick, and after that the plan was in motion whether it was agreed or not; Scorpio punched Abraham in the face for verisimilitude, barged past the maid, and was away.
The crime followed him. Four months later he was hanged for it in the port of New York, where he was living in sin with a negress; rumour has it she took his name after, and even bore his child.
Abraham, as I have said, died only recently. My father left his farm and his slaves to my uncle, Jebediah Steele, who sold everything off at a pretty profit, save for Abraham, who I insisted come with me. The two of us made the long journey down to Texas, where my uncle put Abraham to work in the fields; having been a house-slave all of his life, his constitution was not best suited to the work and he began to grow sickly. At the same time, his quick mind grew dull under the rigors of the work and the brutal treatment of my uncle. Where once his conversation was lively and his head was high, now he slumped and barely had a word to say. I soon stopped talking with him on any regular basis, though he will always mean the world to me.
The truth of Benjamin Franklin’s death never came out, of course; nobody would have taken a boy’s word and a slave’s against the great James Newton. I have followed the latter’s career with some dread, as he seems to be making increasing inroads into the political sphere. I cannot help but wonder whether Franklin, had he survived and somehow ended Newton – had he even known the nature of the strange, unholy duel Newton had fought against him – would have walked the same path. What would the course of our nation have been like? A shade warmer, certainly, which would be no bad thing.
Benjamin Franklin still lies in the soil underneath the fields that were once owned by my family, but his spirit is not entirely gone from Philadelphia. The town gossips were right, and Deborah Reed was with child, a fine boy she called Franklin; for she never stopped loving him, even when he vanished from her life so completely, without a goodbye. He is now twenty-two himself, and in matters of intelligence, the son seems likely to eclipse the father.
He has just invented a wonderful device called a steam engine.
Perhaps one day I will find the strength to hurl myself underneath it.
THE DREAM IS coming to an end, and I will forget all but the vaguest impression of it. Benjamin Franklin has finished his show of magic, having harnessed the lightning with kite and key, and brought it down for man to play with; he does not speak, but he turns to his audience, gives a small bow, and offers the dreamer a warm, broad smile that speaks for him. The memory of the dream will fade, yes; but the dream goes on.
The dream goes on.
“But the work shall not be lost;
For it will, as he believd, appear once more
In a new and more elegant Edition
Corrected and improved
By the Author.”
– Ben Franklin’s epitaph.
THE LONESOME RIDER AND THE LOCOMOTIVE MAN
THOMAS STOOD ATOP the mesa and looked down at what was left of his hand.
Most of the flesh had rotted away from the fingers, so that the white bone peeped mockingly through. He felt no pain – just a tingling warmth at the end of his left arm, and then nothing beyond.
He could not let go of the stone.
He mopped the sweat from his brow with his good hand, licked his dry lips, and concentrated. Tiny bursts of galvanic power crackled over his skin, and his matted black hair began to rise slowly from his brow until it was standing straight up on his head. Almost against his will, he found himself smiling, a madman’s idiot-grin. He couldn’t help himself. The power running down his arm, across his chest, pulsing and throbbing in every part of his body – he’d never felt anything like it. No-one ever had.
When the soles of his worn-out shoes left the ground, he barely noticed.
He blinked the sweat from his eyes, looking up now, concentrating on the makeshift scarecrow he’d built, standing in front of him. The effigy. The target.
The power was building inside him, and that good, hot, tingling feeling was growing more intense, a sensation of pins and needles across his arm and back, like some crawling insect or a lover’s touch.
He held his breath.
After six seconds, perhaps a little more, the prickli
ng sensation intensified, becoming pain, then agony, roaring over his flesh like fire and quickly becoming too much to bear. He held it as long as he could, gritting his teeth, until the stone glowed a bright white and the mesa below him seemed to fade and shimmer – and then he forced the power out of him with a high, thin scream, directing it through the stone, at the head of the dummy.
Lightning arced across the space between them, blinding him for a moment. When his sight returned, the scarecrow was on fire.
Slowly, he succumbed to gravity, his feet drifting back to rest on the rock. He realised that he was grinning again. He wanted to laugh, to laugh and laugh and never stop, but he just didn’t have time. He had to make the long walk down into the town. He had a telegram to send.
He would send it that very day, and soon after that, the man who’d tried to destroy him, who’d treated him more cruelly than any of them, his enemy... his enemy would come to him. Come and be burned like the scarecrow. And after his enemy was dead, he would begin to build his new America.
Eyes dancing under a mane of wild black hair, Thomas Alva Edison licked his lips and spoke his enemy’s name.
“Westinghouse.”
“HEY, BOY!”
The man in black finished securing his horse to the rail, giving no heed to the words. Jonah snorted, stamping his hooves – he was a fine horse with fine ears, a sagacious animal who knew a jackass when he heard one. The man patted his flank, gently, so as to calm him down some. A jackass wasn’t nothing worth getting upset over, after all.
“Hey! Boy! I’m talkin’ to you!”
Then again, it never did to let a jackass get away with being a jackass. He’d only be a jackass again.
The man in black frowned, looking over towards the office George kept in the town – he could see some young fella in a brown suit and round glasses in George’s window, looking out at him. Some accountant or secretary, most likely.
“You hear me, boy? You deaf, or just yeller?”
Loud laughter.
Hell with it. Give the accountant a show.
The man in black turned around and took stock of the situation. Four men, a little drunk in spite of the early hour. Cowhands, by the look of ’em. Big fellas – the one talking was about a half a head bigger than he was, and he was a good six foot. Rounder, too, so that was all right.
The man lifted the brim of his black hat a tad and shot the jackasses a hard look. “Took four of you to say that?”
The ringleader – the big talker – sneered and looked around at his sidekicks for support. “Only takes the one of me to handle your kind, boy.”
He spat. The man in black’s eyes narrowed, and when he spoke, there was gravel in his tone.
“I got a name, mister. Figure you might know it.”
“Aw, sure I do!” The big talker guffawed, sneaking another quick glance at his fellow rowdies to make sure they were with him, and a beat later they were laughing right along, sure enough. “Why, you’re Jacob Steele, ain’t you, boy? The famous Lonesome Rider of the plains, isn’t that right? Well, we done heard all kinds of stories ’bout you, boy!”
Jacob Steele nodded curtly, pulling a cigar from the inside pocket of his black duster coat. “Is that right. Well, mister, I should tell you a lot of them stories the newspaper boys tell... they ain’t entirely correct.”
The big talker laughed again, turning back to his coterie. He didn’t seem to be able to say a word without checking it with them first. Bad quality in a leader of men.
“Didn’t I say so, fellas? Huh? Didn’t I say there weren’t no negro could outgun a hundred men?”
A small crowd was gathering. A couple of them nudged each other and grinned – jackasses in training. Steele shook his head, amused despite himself.
“Well, now. Is that what they say about me? That I done put a hundred men in the dirt? Well, don’t that beat all.” He chuckled softly, holding a flickering match to the end of the cigar.
His eyes narrowed.
“Truth is, it was a hundred thirty-six.”
The men stopped laughing.
“And every single one of them sons of bitches drew first.”
There was a moment of silence, and then the rightmost man – a mean-looking cuss with a ragged moustache and hate in his eyes – reached for the holster at his belt. Steele held off an extra split-second or two just to let him clear leather, and then he put a bullet through the varmint’s hand.
“Case in point.” He nodded to the owlhoot, who was screaming like a banshee, clutching what was left of his fingers and looking at Steele like he was the devil himself risen straight up out of Hell. “Go find a doctor ’fore you bleed to death, you dumb bastard.”
The moustached man started off like a scalded cat, and the Lonesome Rider addressed the other three. “Like I said, them newspaper boys... they tone things down. They don’t want it to seem like it’s crazy talk. But there’s two things about me you mighta heard, and them two are the gospel truth. First is, I never drew down on an unarmed man.”
He watched a single drop of sweat trickle the length of the big man’s face, and then all three of them unbuckled their holsters and let them drop into the dirt, guns and all.
Steele nodded. “Second thing is that I never suffered a damn fool my whole life. Never have and never will. Now, you folks got a choice. Either you can apologise for startin’ this conversation off so ungentleman-like, or you can put up your dukes and fight. All of you.”
The big man blinked, and the other two looked at each other, then all three of them seemed to recover some of the bluster they’d had a minute before. “Boy, you got to be out of your damn mind to make a challenge like that. There’s three of us here –”
“That’s right, fat man. There’s three of you and there’s one of me. And I am gonna beat you until your blood runs and your dead mama cries.” He blew out a ring of smoke. “Make your choice.”
They chose wrong. Jackasses always did.
The big man charged, swinging one arm like a mace. Steele could see he was way off balance – like as not it’d been a dog’s age since he’d had to fight with a fella who could fight him back, and he’d gotten sloppy, if he was ever much good to begin with. Hell, maybe the big talker had been living off his size and his mouth since he was born. Waiting his whole damn useless life for this one moment.
The moment the talking had to stop.
Steele stepped to his left, grabbed the swinging arm and twisted it. There was a loud crack, and splintered bone tore through the big man’s forearm and shirt, sending a gout of blood into the dust at his feet. Immediately the big talker went down to his knees, screaming – no, squealing, like a stuck pig. Steele shook his head sadly and stepped away. Then he spoke.
“Get up.”
The big man looked up at Steele through tears, uncomprehending. The other two stepped back, looking white as ghosts, but the crowd pushed at them, refusing to let them leave. “W-what you mean, get up?” The big man whined, looking into Steele’s eyes – maybe he was hoping to find some kind of mercy there, but there weren’t no mercy to be had.
Steele’s voice was like stone on stone.
“You bought yourself a whole mess of trouble today. You bought it and now you gotta pay for it. So get up, fat man. Get up and get ready.”
He took a last drag on the cigar, then dropped it into the dirt and ground it out with the heel of his boot.
“I ain’t near done with you yet.”
“IT’S A BARBARIC display,” Franklin Reed III breathed, shuddering. He took his glasses off, cleaning them with the handkerchief he kept in the breast pocket of his brown tweed suit. When he put them back on again, all three men were on the ground, bleeding. He leaned closer to the glass.
“If the sight offends your sensibilities, Mister Reed, then I suggest you step away from the window to prevent yourself gawking at it like a damned rooster.” George Westinghouse leant back in the leather office-chair – not quite as fancy as the one he kept in hi
s main office in New York, but certainly good enough for Fort Woodson – and grinned. “Those scofflaws knew the man they were dealing with, and so do I. Frankly, I’d be more than a little disappointed if he’d done otherwise.”
Reed looked at Westinghouse for a moment, but did not step away. Through the murky glass, he saw that one of the cowhands had staggered back to his feet, only for Steele to land another sledgehammer blow to his jaw, sending a tooth flying. A man in the crowd caught it in his hand, gave a yelp of delight, and showed it to an older man he was with, just as if it were the winning ticket in a raffle. Reed stared for a moment longer before he realised that both the men wore badges.
He sighed and shook his head. “Well, I call this a disgusting spectacle, sir, on a par with the Roman circus. In my opinion, the man’s made his point, and they won’t soon forget it. He should let them walk away –”
Westinghouse snorted. “Walk away, you say? If they can walk at all, then in my humble opinion Steele ain’t made his point well enough. And considering he’ll be protecting your hide, and your creation, I’d have thought you’d be pleased to see him demonstrate the skills that’ll keep you both in full working order.” He chuckled to himself, as if he’d made some great joke, and indicated the ornate wooden box on his desk. “Cigar?”
Reed shook his head. “I won’t be needing a bodyguard, sir, and neither will my ‘creation,’ as you very well know. And tobacco is a noxious weed,” he murmured absently, “ruinous to the constitution and destructive to the tissue of the lung, which I will have no truck with.”
Through the window outside, he saw Steele standing over the broken bodies of the men he had felled, once and then again, over and over until they could no longer rise and honour – or bloodlust – had finally been satisfied. Steele spat into the dirt and the crowd cheered for him, and Reed could not help but wince. “The bloody sport is over with, Mr Westinghouse. I trust Mr. Steele will not allow any other street brawls to delay our business further?”
