Ben Franklin’s Fame

by Stacia Deutsch

  “In 1718,” Babs informed us, “children went to work. They became apprentices and learned about a business. When Ben Franklin was weighing his options, I suggested he talk to me because, as a stranger, I could offer him honest advice. I lied. Instead, I convinced him that he should work as a chandler in his father’s shop. Ben’s father was so grateful, he asked me to hold on to the contract for safekeeping.”

  “Are you kidding?” I said, moving in closer to see Ben’s signature on the document.

  “Ben is now an official apprentice to his father. He must study the craft of candle making and do whatever his father says.” She waved the contract around. The paper made a crackling sound.

  She glared at us with her beady eyes and teased, “See? Too late again!”

  I would have panicked, but suddenly I figured out exactly why Ben’s life was off track. I had to tell the boys.

  While Babs was watching Ben Franklin make more candles, I gathered the boys in a corner. I whispered to Bo, “I bet that Ben Franklin was supposed to sign an apprentice agreement with his brother James instead of with his father. That way he’d have been a printer instead of a chandler.”

  By the look on Bo’s face, I knew I was right. Babs had convinced Ben Franklin to sign the wrong apprentice document.

  “Well, then, we have to find James. He’s the only one who can help us now.” I flipped back a few pages in my notes. James had been in the shop a short time earlier. I wondered where we could find him.

  Jacob looked at the computer and reported, “We don’t have much time left.”

  Just like Bo, I rubbed my chin while I reviewed my notes. Ben had said that James had recently opened his own print shop. “What if we hurry over to James’s shop?” I asked Bo.

  “It won’t work.” Zack wasn’t just complaining this time. He was being realistic. “There’s no guarantee we’d find him there. He might be out on an errand. We don’t have enough time to run all over Boston looking for him.”

  It was starting to feel like all our hard work was for nothing. Babs was going to be in our history books. Forever.

  My head was spinning with ideas. “Maybe if we time-traveled again, we could visit James at night. He’d be asleep in bed. At least then, we’d be able to find him.”

  “That won’t work either,” Zack moaned. “James won’t sign something if we wake him up. He’ll think we’re thieves and have us thrown into jail.”

  “That’s it!” Bo called out.

  “Huh?” Jacob, Zack, and I said at the same time.

  “We have to go to jail,” Bo said softly so Babs wouldn’t hear him.

  “What?!” Zack blurted out. His voice echoed loudly through the shop. Babs looked over at us.

  “Trust me,” Bo said. He whispered some instructions to Jacob. Our green hole opened in the floor while Jacob began using the screwdriver to take the back off the cartridge.

  I ran across the room and, before Babs could stop me, I asked Ben Franklin if he wanted to time-travel. The inventor side of him was so curious, he immediately said he’d come—only if I promised to bring him back, of course. I swore I would. But I said it really softly so there was no way Babs knew we’d be coming back. I let her think we were taking Ben away forever.

  I grabbed Ben’s hand and we started running. The shop wasn’t very big, and Jacob was still fiddling around with the wires in the cartridge. “Put on the brakes!” I shouted at Ben before he flew into the wrong hole. We didn’t want to take him to school. We needed to keep him in the 1700s—only a different part of the 1700s.

  Ben had no clue about brakes. But he knew enough to stop. We were teetering on the edge of the time-travel hole.

  Babs was hustling across the shop after us. She was shouting that we had no right to take Ben anywhere.

  “You can’t take him away from here! He has a duty to his father.” Babs was coming at us, waving the candle apprentice contract. “As long as I have this contract, he’s an apprentice. And I’m a printer!” She was so close, I could smell her breath. Ew. “You’re too late!” she repeated.

  I looked back and replied, “Maybe this time, you’re too early.”

  “I’ll find you,” Babs said as she pulled her own time-travel computer out of her yellow coat pocket. “I’ll follow you.”

  “Not if you don’t know where we are going,” Zack teased. “And I’m not telling.” Very mature, Zack stuck his tongue out at her.

  That just made Babs mad. She put her computer back in her pocket, saying, “If I can’t follow you through my own time-travel hole, I’ll just come with you in yours! I will stop you wherever you go. Ben Franklin’s fame is my fame now.”

  She started coming toward our green hole, still grasping Ben’s apprentice contract in her fist.

  “Uh-oh,” Jacob cried out. He was having trouble opening the little screws on the back of the cartridge. He wasn’t going to be able to reset the wires and get the hole color changed in time.

  Babs was coming on fast. “Hurry up,” I begged Jacob to get a move on.

  “I have an idea,” Jacob said, bailing on the screwdriver. “But it’s going to be messy.”

  “Just do it, Jacob.” Zack took one look at Babs and shouted, “Whatever you have to do, do it!”

  At his brother’s encouragement, Jacob pocketed the small screwdriver. He ripped the top off the cartridge and yanked out a wire. He threw the wire on the floor.

  Then Jacob slammed the top on the cartridge. An explosion rocked the room. I held tightly to Ben Franklin’s hand, and together we fought the force of the blast. Through the explosion, I saw that the green hole had turned purple.

  Ben and I inched our way to the glowing purple hole. Jacob, Zack, and Bo had already time-traveled. Ben and I toppled into the hole like Jack and Jill on a hill.

  And Babs . . . the last thing I heard was her angry shout as the time-travel hole closed behind us, leaving her in 1718 all alone.

  James Franklin

  Ben Franklin and I landed in a tangle of arms and legs. We looked like a two-headed spider.

  “We’ve got a problem,” I told Jacob, who was standing the closest to us. Ben, slightly in shock, was trying to figure out which of the legs was attached to him.

  Jacob immediately came to help. He moved my arm left and Ben’s leg right. “There,” he said as Ben and I were finally able to stand up. “Problem solved.”

  I was grateful for the help, but getting up wasn’t the problem I was thinking of. “Babs still has the apprentice contract for Ben Franklin,” I moaned. “We can’t undo that contract and have Ben sign a new one until that one expires.”

  Jacob checked the computer. It read, TUESDAY, FEB. 12, 1723, and we only had eighteen minutes left.

  “I wish,” I began, “that there was still some way we could get that contract away from Babs.”

  “Hey, where is everyone?” It was Bo. He was over in a corner, a little ways from us. “Why’s it so dark?”

  I rushed over to Bo. He had a large piece of paper over his head. I whisked the paper away.

  “Thanks,” Bo said, rubbing his eyes. “I was worried I’d gone blind in the explosion.”

  “Maybe that’s why Mr. C always gives us goggles,” I replied. I started to crumple up the paper that had been on Bo’s head, when his hand shot out and stopped me.

  “Abigail, don’t!” Bo snagged the paper from my hand. It was crumpled at the top where I’d begun to squish it. I’d thought it was trash.

  Bo spread the paper out on his leg, wiping it with his hand to smooth the wrinkles I’d caused. “Sometimes wishes come true.” He smiled broadly.

  Ben and the twins came over to investigate. We all saw that Bo was holding Ben Franklin’s apprentice document!

  I did a little victory dance. “Babs must have dropped it in the blast, and it fell through the hole before she could get it back! Yippee!” I wiggled my hips and spun around.

  Bo ripped up Babs’s contract, and then, the boys started dancing too. All the b
oys, I mean, except Ben Franklin.

  “What’s up?” Jacob asked him. “Now all we have to do is get James to take you on and you’ll be a printer! American history will be back on track.” He paused suddenly. “You do still want to be a printer, don’t you?”

  “Of course I want to be a printer,” Ben replied. “But signing the chandler agreement was important to my parents. I do not want to disappoint them.”

  Boy, I understood that. I wondered if Ben would get in trouble with his dad. I mean, as a chandler, he was helping in the family shop and all.

  It was Zack who said, “I try a lot of things. I change my mind all the time. My dad just says that he wants me to be happy. I bet that if you told your dad that you’d rather be a printer, he’d be okay with it.”

  Ben looked a little scared to go to his father. He had his lips pinched together, and his eyebrows were raised. “All right,” Ben said at last. “If James agrees to take me on as his apprentice, I will ask my father for permission.”

  Just then, I screamed. My voice echoed through the small room where we’d landed. “Eak!” I shrieked again, jumping up and down and pointing at a mouse that had stepped on my toe and was now slipping beneath an old desk. I wasn’t scared. Just grossed out. Really.

  Seeing the mouse reminded us where we were. Turns out, Bo had known that on February 12, 1723, James Franklin was in jail. Stuck in a cell, James would have to listen to us. There was nowhere he could go.

  We left the room we’d landed in and ducked into the shadows of a long hallway.

  Ben discovered which cell his brother was in. “James is over there,” he said, and pointed.

  There was only one British soldier guarding James’s cell. The man was sitting on a wooden chair, right in front of the cell door. We were going to have to cause a distraction.

  “I have a plan,” I said, and asked Ben to lend me his work apron. He handed it over, and I quickly ran back to where I’d seen the mouse. My furry little friend was scurrying along the wall, searching for food. I bent down and, careful not to touch him, I led the mouse onto Ben’s apron and jiggled him into the pocket.

  I hustled to where the boys were hiding. I could see the soldier. He was reading a newspaper.

  Very softly and quickly, Bo told me the paper was the New England Courant. “That’s James Franklin’s newspaper. James is in jail for writing that he disagreed with the ideas of the church leaders. There wasn’t freedom of the press, like in our time. The church leaders were mad and had him arrested. He’ll be here for three months.”

  “What happens to the newspaper while James is in jail?” I whispered back. I could feel the mouse squirming to be set loose.

  “According to history, his apprentice, Ben Franklin, will be in charge. If we don’t succeed, I guess that—”

  “Babs Magee will take over instead,” Zack finished Bo’s thought. I didn’t even know Zack was listening to us. “Let’s make sure it’s Ben,” Zack whispered.

  I set Ben’s apron on the ground and positioned the pocket toward the soldier. “Okay, Mickey,” I said, giving my buddy a new name. “Let’s hope this guard isn’t as brave as he looks.”

  Feeling solid ground under his four little feet, the mouse began to scurry toward the soldier.

  “Aughhhhh!” The soldier jumped off his chair and started screaming. He was swiping at Mickey with the rolled-up newspaper.

  “Run, Mickey, run,” I cheered softly. And he did. Mickey hustled down the hall with the soldier close on his heels. Mickey turned the corner, and so did the soldier. Now was our chance.

  “Twelve minutes,” Jacob notified us.

  “James—” I started as I ran up to the cell.

  Bo stopped me. “Abigail,” he said. “It’s Ben Franklin’s turn. He needs to get his life back on track. We can’t do this part for him.”

  I stepped back away from the cell bars, and Ben stepped up.

  They were whispering. I could barely hear what they were saying, and it was driving me crazy.

  I did manage to catch James saying, “But I already have an apprentice.”

  Then more whispering, until Ben said, “I can run the paper while you are in jail. I will make deliveries. Sell newspapers on the corner. Clean the shop. I can write essays and draw cartoons.”

  James spoke a bit louder when he said, “I won’t give you any money for your work.”

  And Ben replied in a clear voice, “I only need enough money to purchase food.”

  I leaned over to Bo. “Are you sure we’re doing the right thing? It seems like a bad deal for Ben. Lots of work and no pay.”

  “That’s the way Ben’s apprenticeship worked,” Bo replied. “Ben will learn a lot from his brother. But James will also be really mean to Ben while he works there. In a few years, Ben will get sick of it all and run away.”

  “We’re convincing him to sign a document that he’s going to break. Won’t he go to jail?” I was worried.

  “Not if he leaves Boston,” Bo responded with a wink.

  I understood. Ben would learn to be a printer, then he’d move to Philadelphia in order to escape working for his brother. We’d already seen all the great things that would happen once Ben Franklin moved to Philadelphia.

  Ben and James had come to some kind of agreement. Ben turned away from the cell and said, “We need parchment and a quill in order to write the new contract.”

  I didn’t have any parchment, but I had my small notebook.

  Ben had never seen white paper with lines printed on it. Or a pencil. At first he looked a little afraid of them.

  I was about to show him how the pencil worked, when Bo said, “Hang on.” Bo rushed back to the first room and, when he returned, he had a piece of parchment and a quill pen. “I found these in that old desk. We can’t have a historic document written in pencil,” Bo explained.

  Ben took the parchment and quill and scribbled out an agreement. Then he rushed back to James’s cell.

  From down the hall, I heard the British solider calling, “Come back, you little varmint.” I smiled, knowing Mickey would be just fine. He was a clever mouse.

  Ben and James were still writing when Jacob pulled the cartridge out of the computer. The green hole opened in the hallway. Without feeling rushed, Jacob was able to concentrate on getting the back unscrewed. No more explosions. He attached two wires and closed the cartridge. Then the hole turned a lovely shade of orange.

  We told Ben Franklin we had to go. It was time to take him home.

  “Take me with you,” James pleaded. “Do not leave me to rot in jail.” I’m not sure if Ben had told him who we were. James just wanted out. He rattled the cell bars.

  I was conflicted. No one should go to jail for speaking their beliefs. On the other hand, part of me wanted to tell him he deserved the stay in jail for the mean way he was going to treat Ben.

  But what I thought didn’t really matter. The fact was: Jail was an important part of James Franklin’s history. Just like printing was part of Ben’s.

  We told James we were sorry we couldn’t take him with us.

  Jacob, Zack, Ben, Bo, and I all held hands and gathered around the pumpkin-colored time-travel hole.

  On the count of three we jumped, and on four we landed, because time travel is really fast.

  Home

  When we got back to Boston in 1718, Babs was gone. Once she’d lost the apprentice agreement through the time-travel hole, she must have decided to give up and start preparing for her next victim instead. The bummer of it was that the way time travel worked, we’d have to wait until next Monday to find out what kind of trouble she was up to.

  We were back in Ben’s dad’s candle shop. Jacob told us we only had three minutes left on the computer. Since James and Ben had made an apprentice agreement, we figured all we had to do was say good-bye.

  Suddenly the door of the shop flew open. The man who entered stomped into the room, shouting, “Where have you been?”

  “Well, we went to—” Za
ck began.

  “Not you!” the man bellowed. He turned to face Ben Franklin. “Benjamin Franklin! Where have you been?” He didn’t wait for an answer, though. He went on and on about how there had been customers and no one to help them. How the day’s candles hadn’t been poured. The tallow had gone cold.

  Ben Franklin was still holding the new contract he’d agreed to with James. I hoped he was brave enough to tell his father about it.

  In the future, Ben Franklin would do so many courageous things. Becoming James’s apprentice was the first step to his fame.

  Ben stared at his father for a long minute. Too long. Our computer started to beep.

  Because it was so important that we jumped home before our two hours ran out, Mr. C had installed a warning buzzer. And now, as the tension in the room was so thick, we could barely breathe, the beeping had begun.

  Ben Franklin cast a sideways glance at us.

  “We have to go,” Zack explained. “Our time is up.”

  Ben nodded. “Is American history back on track?” he asked.

  “The history of the Unites States is up to you now,” Jacob told him, looking quickly from Ben to his dad and then back again.

  There was curiosity in Ben’s eyes when he asked, “What are these ‘United States’?”

  I smiled. “When you’re a printer, you will write articles that will help turn the colonies into states. Later, someone else will come along to unite them.” I thought about Abraham Lincoln and winked at the boys.

  “Hmm,” Ben Franklin said thoughtfully, then repeated the phrase “United States.”

  Ben’s father was tapping his foot.

  I would have liked to hear Ben Franklin tell his father that the apprentice document had been destroyed. And that he wanted to be a printer’s apprentice to his brother instead. But there was no time.

  The computer was beeping wildly. “One second,” Jacob announced suddenly. He immediately pulled the cartridge out of the back. Our green time-travel hole opened in the floor nearby. And away we jumped.