by Alex Myers
“I’m just saying if she was acting erratic, maybe there was a reason for it.” He checked his pocket watch. “The swearing in ceremony is going to be in three hours, I’m going to need to get to work. We can definitely talk later, Jack. I’ve missed you.”
“Thank you, Alan. Sorry, I didn’t mean to get into this,” Jack said.
“Don’t be sorry, because I did mean to get into it. Martin Riggs, your dad is sitting at the front table right next to President Arthur. Teddy Roosevelt will be sitting in the second row far right. And as I remember, Garrett Fairbanks and what was the name of the other man? Wilson?”
“Woodrow Wilson.”
Still consulting the room diagram he said, “I don’t have either one of them in the room at all, unless they try crashing the party, which I guarantee damn well they won’t. My men can give extra attention to your dad and Roosevelt. Don’t fret, I’ve got a man—a good man—at each service entrance and my two best at the front.
Pinkerton closed his paperwork in a leather portfolio.
“One thing I have to ask, Pink, how could my dad rise so fast to power, essentially out of nowhere?”
“When you’ve got JP Morgan, JD Rockefeller, and William Vanderbilt backing you, no one dares to ask too many questions. I guess they figure these tycoons have already done their due diligence. About the only thing I can come up with is that your dad was unheard of, or should I say unverifiable, more than a few years ago and that he is a gambler.”
“Gambler? Like cards and dice?”
“Some, but usually sporting events or just random things. He does seem to win a lot.” Pinkerton mused.
“Like you would expect someone from the future to be able to do?”
“Oh, he’s from the future also. I didn’t think that automatically. How far into the future are you two from?”
“We’re from one hundred and thirty-two years into the future.”
Allan Pinkerton shut his eyes and shook his head. The concept seemed hard for him to grasp. Finally, Pinkerton said, “I will be standing to the left of the table. If you see or suspect something, point, signal something. I’ll be watching for some kind of sign.”
“Goodbye, and I’ll see you after we have a new vice president,” Jack said.
“Talk to Frances, she’s a great person, but of that I’m sure you know.”
CHAPTER 28
It was twenty-five minutes before the start of the press conference and the swearing in of the vice president, and the hall was already starting to fill. Sam, Robbie, and Jack were in the center—the only people so far in the front row. The press filled the three rows of seats behind them. They were abuzz with the excitement that this would probably be the biggest news day of their career—little did they know.
Sam turned around again, smiled, and waved into a barrage of camera flashes. The flashing lights assaulted each VIP entering the room, and the gunpowder smell from the bulbs hung heavy in the air.
The front row filled and Jack wondered how he managed to be front row center. It was either Sam’s clout, Robbie’s clout, or Alan Pinkerton wanting to put him in the middle of the action. Front right was Rockefeller, then Morgan, Speaker of the House Benjamin Harrison, Sam, Jack, and an empty chair where Frances was supposed to sit. The row continued with Robbie, Vanderbilt, and Westinghouse. Directly behind George Westinghouse was Teddy Roosevelt, who still wouldn’t make eye contact with Jack, but was always looking his way.
Then she walked in. Frances came in the side of the room around George Westinghouse, glanced to the far corner of the room, and gave a small wave to Allan Pinkerton. When Jack saw her, his heart stopped and he forgot to breathe. When Robbie had mentioned earlier that Frances thought she was too old for Jack, he saw her in his mind as an old gray, matronly, spinster. It was the image he wanted her to be. It was a delusion that would have made things easier. Frances look nothing like what he imagined. She was vital and vibrant. Her hair was luxurious and pulled back from her face. And that face. He had fallen in love with that face. In it, he saw kindness, intelligence, companionship, and love.
He was staring at her and didn’t realize that she had asked if it was her seat.
“Yes, yes,” he said once he realized she was talking to him. She wanted to sit next to him. He stood and they did an awkward dance—not knowing whether to kiss, hug, or just say hello.
He stood frozen in front of her, wanting to kiss her. This surprised him even more than his reaction upon first seeing her.
She forged ahead through the awkwardness, took the lead, grabbed him, and hugged him tight.
He melted. Her smell or touch, the proximity all came rushing back to them. For the last week he had focused on the hurt and humiliation and had pushed out of his mind the boundless love for this woman he held in his arms.
She pulled away and looked at him. “Jack, why didn’t you come to me?”
Jack looked at Sam and then to Robbie for support. They were doing their best not to look at them. People filed in at the front table. Frances didn’t let him off; she held him tight and wasn’t letting him go. Her gaze never faltered.
“Why, Jack?”
“Frances, how can we talk about this now? This room is filled with people and the meeting is about to begin.”
“You know, I briefly thought it was my age, but I knew it was much more than that. You look exactly the same—the same as you did the day I married you.”
“It’s only been four months for me,” Jack said. “We were married four months ago in my world.”
“Wait, only four months?”
“Just four months.”
“Is it another woman?”
“No, of course it’s not another woman.”
“You say of course not, but nothing is obvious here. Just say it.”
“You had Abner Adkins baby.”
She let him go. Remaining without expression, she sat quietly in her seat and stared straight ahead with her hands in her lap.
He sat down just as everyone else was standing. The president and Frederick Douglass entered the room and took their seats in the center of the stage. President Arthur indicated with his hands that everyone should sit.
The dignitaries were seated at the long table facing the crowd. President Arthur sat in the center, to his left was Martin Riggs, and then came associate Supreme Court Justice William Woods. To President Arthur’s right was Frederick Douglass, Secretary of War Robert Todd Lincoln, son of President Lincoln, and the only member of Garfield’s staff who chose to stay on. On the far right was Chief Justice of the Supreme Court Morris R. Waite, the same man who swore in President Arthur on the day that Garfield died.
Now, Frances and everyone sat down and Jack was still standing. He looked at her intently, but she remained looking straight ahead.
Jack sat and as he did, he could see her lip quivering, her eyes glassy.
President Arthur looked around the room, then at his water glass, and drank it in one pull. “If I can get some more water here, we probably need to get started.” Two impeccably dressed black waiters rushed to the table with a pitcher of water and poured the president another glass. The taller servant poured the water and the shorter offered cubes of ice.
Jack watched the waiters return to their ready station at the side entrance of the room. He turned again and looked at Frances.
President Arthur began to speak. “Just becoming vice president was such a dream for me, a much higher station that I ever thought I could get or deserved. Anyone who knows me knows the presidency is nothing I’ve ever sought, but those same people would tell you that I would place that duty and honor even above that of my own life. Only my love of God and my family would I place on a higher rung.”
“He raped me. Abner—he raped me,” Frances said with her eyes still looking straight ahead.
“We live in a country where all men are created equal. Not just some of the men, not just the rich, and not just the white men, but all men. I feel that we have hinted at t
his greatness with our actions forever afraid to make the full commitment. This is not a time to be timid or to go at equality halfheartedly. It’s time to embrace the diversity in our own citizenry and embrace it as we do the diversity of this great land. I am ready today to make that commitment for equality as I hope we all are. And as the living embodiment of that commitment, I offer you the next vice president of the United States, Frederick Douglass.”
“Raped you? Why didn’t you tell me?”
Everyone stood to applaud Fredrick Douglass. His confidence, strength, and intelligence exuded to every corner of the room. “From my humble beginnings as a slave, a person owned by another man, to the honor that is now bestowed me, nothing has ever been as easy as black and white.”
The crowd applauded.
“Because if I would’ve told you, you would’ve killed him,” Frances said.
“I want to assure the citizens that I am a man of the people, for the people. I will not fight a campaign for only the colored man; it will be for the common man. Whites, colored, North, South, Indian, farmer, there are issues that separate us all, but I will fight for the things we have in common, things like in our great living Constitution. Things like life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness for all.”
“You’re darn right I would’ve killed him.” Jack wanted to kill him now, his fists were bunched, and he pounded his thighs.
“I would’ve lost you—we would’ve lost everything.” Frances put her hand over Jack’s to stop his hammering.
Jack took a moment to drink in her words. He saw the room around him jovial and happy, talking and backslapping, but he could only hear the words Frances had spoken.
“Why didn’t you tell me that the child wasn’t mine?”
“Jack, to this very moment I don’t know that that’s true. How do you know?”
“See that man up on stage next to Frederick Douglass, that’s my father.”
Frances squinted her eyes, then looked at Jack and then back to his father. “That’s what you based this on? I wait twenty-four years, every day, every knock at my door, every phone call, and all I do is wait. Jack, that man looks like an older version of you. I nearly broke up with you the night after Abner did it because I couldn’t face you. Rape is funny like that. Often times the victim feels like she deserves what she got, that it was her fault. I’ve worked through this over the years.”
There was something extremely odd about the two black waiters standing by the service entrance. The smaller man was having words under his breath with the taller. The shorter man handed the taller man something solid under a serving towel. They didn’t look like black men at all, they had European features, and the color of their skin was too black and too even.
“Jack, Emily was a month and a half premature. That would have put the conception date around the beginning of August. She was born March 1. I was only with you then. Emily is your daughter. I never really thought about it because there was never really anything to think about. Every time I see her, every time I talk to her, I see you in everything about her.”
The smaller black waiter had something in his hand too. He was holding it under a towel. It had to be a gun.
Jack sprung from his chair. He looked toward the corner of the room and saw that Allan Pinkerton had seen the same thing as him.
The smaller man stood in front of President Arthur and the larger man stood in front of Douglass. They dropped the towels and held pistols at arms’ length.
Jack moved toward the men. Martin Riggs stood and pulled a pistol out of his pocket and aimed it in the direction of the waiters. The tall man fired at Frederick Douglass. The curtain behind him and to the right of his head moved. Douglass was all right, the man had missed.
President Arthur was trying to back away from the table when the smaller man fired. The president’s double chin exploded in bright crimson. He had been shot in the throat.
Martin Riggs shot his pistol at the smaller man. The gun sounded like it had fired, but nothing except a small wad of cotton came out. He shot again with the same result. His gun was firing blanks.
With nowhere to go, Frederick Douglass stood with the table in front and the wall behind.
“No,” Jack yelled and hurled his chair at the tall man taking aim again at Frederick Douglass. The tall man turned and fired at Jack. A bullet whizzed by and there was a scream behind him. The flying chair first hit the gun, then the arms, and then finally the chest of the taller man knocking him backward into the table.
Jack turned from the crumbling larger man toward the standoff between his father and the smaller man. Martin fired first with a loud bang, but the smaller man didn’t flinch. The small waiter switched his aim from Martin, pointed his gun at Frederick Douglass, and pulled the trigger.
Martin stepped in front of Douglass and took a bullet in the chest. Associate Supreme Justice William Woods stood and ran around the end of the table at full speed right into Allan Pinkerton. Jack hammered the small man, hitting him in the middle of the back so hard that the gun flew out of his hand and he fell toward Pinkerton who had broken free of Justice Woods. The small black waiter hit the floor, picked up the fallen gun, and aimed it with both hands at Allan Pinkerton. Pinkerton, having already unholstered his gun, shot the man. He tumbled from a seated position to flat on his back.
The taller waiter stood and ran for the side service door. Teddy Roosevelt stepped in front of a Secret Service agent and slammed the taller man with an uppercut in the face so hard that it lifted him off his feet. As the waiter fell backward on to the ground, he managed to pick up the pistol he had dropped earlier and tried to take aim. He was shot by the same Secret Service that Teddy had cut off.
Jack bounded up and over the table where Frederick Douglass stood with the two men bleeding on the floor on each side of him. Jack got to President Arthur first. The pool of blood around him was as big as his body. There was no place to even check for a pulse on his neck. The president was dead.
“Excuse me, Mr. Douglass,” Jack said as he moved to his father. His dad was holding a hand over his heart, but he had a smile on his face. Jack sat on the floor and put his father’s head into his lap. “Are you hit?” Jack asked, but as soon as he asked, he could feel the blood that had soaked into his father’s dark suit.
“It wasn’t supposed to happen like this, Jacky boy. They were the ones that were to be shooting the blanks, not me. No one was supposed to be hurt, especially me. The three of them were to be caught and their careers over.” Martin coughed and blood spurted.
“Why would they risk everything—even the presidency—to do something like this? It doesn’t make sense.”
“I convinced them that the only way they would be president would be if they helped. We were to take out Pinkerton and the other Secret Service agent and they were to get away scot-free.”
“Why them?” Jack asked.
“Because they were the three people most responsible for us turning our backs on minorities.”
“You mean genocide?”
“I saw the timeline…I saw what they did…I just couldn’t let it happen,” Martin said. There was a racking cough and a big bubble of blood rolled over his lips and onto his chin. The color drained from his face and he began to shiver.
“Dad, don’t talk, I have nanobots, and I can help you.”
“No, I’m going back, this is a two-way street for me. Not so with you son, remember that. You die here you stay here. I didn’t know this time travel crap was so painful.”
“You did this all—all for what?”
“I did it to make things right. I’ve done a lot of horrible things in my life, but now there’s at least one thing that I’ve done right. And right now,” he coughed uncontrollably, trying to clear the blood from his lungs, “I got my ass run over by the karma train.”
“Who were those two thugs you had trying to kill me?”
“Kill you?” Martin managed to crack a thin smile, “Savoy and Weldon? They were just tr
ying to find you. I didn’t want you to mess things up or get hurt.”
“So you’re not the selfish bastard I thought you were?”
“Oh yeah, I am,” Martin coughed again and barely said, “I’m gonna be even richer when I get home.” More coughing, more blood. His eyes were starting to close. “Sorry for sucking so bad as a dad.”
“Dad!” Jack yelled.
He opened his eyes just for a second.
“Look up your daughter when you get home.”
Okay,” he was barely audible, “but you do the same, Jack, you too.”
He felt his father’s body go limp.
“Jack!” It was Robbie sticking his head over the table, “There you are. Frances has been shot and she’s bleeding like crazy.”
CHAPTER 29
Robert Todd Lincoln and the president’s personal physician were checking President Arthur. Jack laid his father’s lifeless body on the ground, stood, and saw a crowd gathered around Frances’ seat. He jumped up and over the wooden table, landing on the main floor. Pinkerton was over the short waiter’s dead body and Teddy Roosevelt and the Secret Service agent were checking the lifeless body of the taller thinner waiter.
Jack and Robbie made their way through the crowd. Sam was on the ground holding Frances. A saucer sized stain of blood was on his white suit. He handed her to Jack as he sat on the floor beside her.
“Jack?” Frances asked. She was holding her upper stomach with both hands; blood was seeping through her fingers. “I always knew you would hurt me, but not like this, Jack Riggs,” Frances was smiling yet wincing with pain.
“Oh God, Frances. I never meant for you to get hurt,” Jack said brushing hair out of her eyes. “Try not to talk.”
“Why not talk?” She asked. “This feels really, really bad. Jack, I think I might even be dying.” She paused, caught her breath, “I don’t want to die—I want to be with you.”
“Please, we’ll get you through this.”
