Franklin Affair (8 page)

“That's not funny. I once dropped a bowl of hot bean soup at a fancy party my mother was having,” Clara said to R. “I've had nightmares about it ever since.”

R smiled and asked Evelyn why, above all other reasons, had Adams hated Ben so? Evelyn was known for abhoring small talk. She wanted only conversation about worthy subjects—which to her meant mostly only matters concerning Ben and the American Revolution.

“Jealousy, pure and simple. Ben was a man of the world, of the mind, and of science, as well as of politics and diplomacy. Adams was a man of Quincy, Massachusetts, who loved the law, the Revolution, and the sound of his own voice. Most everybody loved Ben, but few people other than his wife, Abigail, loved John.”

Back to Clara. But before R could say anything, she said, “I won't be around tomorrow, in the unlikely event you need me.”

“Why's that?”

“I'm going over to Eastville for a job interview. They've got an opening for director. I just found out about it yesterday, so I'm late to the chase. Of course, I wasn't sure I was even going to need a new job until—”

And at that moment Billy Heyward, aka Ben Franklin, motioned for the procession to stop. They had arrived at Christ Church Burial Ground.

• • •

Clara and Evelyn moved forward with Elbridge Clymer to a small two-foot-high wooden platform. It had been erected at the back side of the red brick wall around the burial ground so everyone in the expected crowd of thousands could see the ceremony.

Clymer grabbed the hand microphone from a portable public address system. Waving his arms, he asked the crowd to fan out in front of the platform. R looked around. He doubted there were even a thousand people there in the street, which the police had blocked off from traffic.

“As you know, ladies and gentlemen,” Clymer said, once everyone had gathered. “We are here at the northwest corner of Christ Church Burial Ground, a remarkable two acres of history that is the last resting place for more than four thousand people from our revolutionary and colonial past.”

Clymer faced to his right toward a black wrought-iron fence that spanned a ten-foot-wide break in the brick wall. “I know I don't have to tell you that one of the four signers of the Declaration of Independence buried here is the one, the only, Benjamin Franklin.”

There was applause. Somebody yelled, “Let's hear it for Ben!”

A cheer rose. “Ben! Ben! Ben!” And another and another.

Oh, my God, how Wally would have loved this, thought R.

Clymer, looking about as happy as R had ever seen a college president except during football team victories, waited until it was quiet again before continuing.

“Ben's grave is just inside. People have come here for years and, as many of you know, a custom has grown up of tossing a penny on his gravestone for good luck.”

Again, the crowd chanted, “Ben! Ben! Ben!” and R thanked God for creating college students.

“Our cherished Wally Rush wanted something special done with his ashes. Doctors Hopkins and Ross-Floyd will now carry out Wally's wish—”

Clara Hopkins had a Ph.D.? It didn't matter but R simply hadn't known.

“—but they will do so in accordance with the request of the overseers of the burial ground that the penny tradition be followed and no new precedents be set.”

Bill Paine had negotiated what happened next. Clymer moved away, and Clara and Evelyn took his place in front of the microphone.

Clara lifted up the glass bowl. “Wally's ashes are in here.”

Evelyn held a penny between the thumb and forefinger of her right hand. “This is a penny.”

Clara lowered the bowl; Evelyn removed the lid and dropped the penny inside.

There was absolute silence.

Clara shook the bowl, moving the contents around.

After only a few seconds, Evelyn reached down into the bowl and took out the penny, now covered with the ashes of Wally Rush. She held it briefly high over her head, turned back toward the burial ground, stepped down, and walked toward the iron bars.

Somebody hollered, “Go! Go! Go!”

The crowd picked up the chant: “Go! Go! Go!”

Evelyn reached her right hand through two of the vertical bars and, with an underhand throw, tossed the ash-laden penny onto the flat surface of the five-inch-high white stone slab that covered Ben's grave. There was an identical one next to it for his wife, Deborah.

The only words were on top of Ben's:

BENJAMIN

And
FRANKLIN

DEBORAH

1790

Wally was correct in his letter to R about a much more extensive epitaph Ben had written for himself that he chose not to use. Etched later in a wall behind the graves, it said:

The Body of
B. Franklin,
Printer,
Like the Cover of an old Book,
Its contents torn out,
And stript of its Lettering and Gilding,
Lies here, Food for Worms.
But the Work shall not be wholly lost,
For it will, as he believ'd, appear once more,
In a new & more perfect Edition,
Corrected and Amended
By the Author.
He was born on January 6, 1706
Died 17__

Evelyn was a good shot. The penny landed flat and near the center of Ben's stone.

Clymer cued the band. It played and the crowd sang:

“For he's a Wally good fellow,
For he's a Wally good fellow,
For he a Wally good fe-ello . . .
That nobody can deny.”

“Let's hear it for Wally!” someone yelled. It was a kid standing right behind R, probably Wally's student.

“Wally! Wally! Wally!”

Then, “Ben! Ben! Ben!”

“Ben and Wally! Wally and Ben! Ben and Wally!”

Clymer let the cheering go on a little while and then signaled for quiet, pointed once again for music, and led everyone in the first verse of “America.”

“My country 'tis of thee,
Sweet land of liberty,
Of thee I sing.
Land where my fathers died,
Land of the Pilgrim's Pride,
From every mountainside
Let freedom ring.”

Clymer signaled for quiet again and said, “Listen.”

From all directions came the sound of bells ringing. How he got all the downtown Philadelphia churches to do this on some kind of cue, who knows?

R, not a man of emotion and tears, lost control and lowered his head in embarrassment. Not since childhood had he cried in public.

• • •

R was in a loose, informal cluster of people headed south toward the BFU campus and, by invitation, to have food and drink at the president's house. He was talking to no one, paying attention to no one. His thoughts were elsewhere—on Wally, on how wonderful this Wally day had been, on Clara, on the potential awfulness in the papers from the cloak, and, again, on how these streets once rocked with the noises and smells of revolution and freedom. Ben, regardless of personal sins, was here when the chips were down, and so were Washington, Jefferson, Madison, and, yes, Adams. Even Hancock. America, America! From every mountainside let freedom ring indeed . . .

“Hey, R.” He felt a warm mass against the right side of his body and turned to see the large presence of Rebecca Lee striding alongside him.

“I don't want to talk now,” he said.

“I just want to give you something.” She pushed a sealed white business-size envelope toward him.

“Please, Rebecca, I can't accept anything about your case. It's all got to come officially through Gwinnett. Leave me the hell alone.”

“What's in this isn't about me, dear R, it's about you.”

Me?
He took the envelope and Rebecca moved off.

He stuck the thing in an inside coat pocket and kept walking.

Me? . . .

“I'm going to stop here for a moment,” R said a few minutes later, to no one in particular, and stepped away from the others toward the front door of a hotel: the Independence. He figured anyone who heard or noticed him peeling off would assume he couldn't wait a few more blocks before going to the bathroom.

He already had the envelope in his hand and opened by the time he sat down in an overstuffed chair in a far corner of the lobby.

GOTCHA! was written on a small piece of white memo-pad paper clipped to two larger pieces of paper, both Xerox copies of print articles.

The first was of R's piece that had just run on the
Washington Post
's op-ed page. Someone had used a bright red Marks-a-Lot to highlight three or four sentences.

The second was Timothy Morton's twenty-six-year-old essay about Ben in
Yesterday
magazine. It too had red highlighting through some of the sentences and phrases.

R held one in each hand and read what was under the red markings.

He had written: “After years of being the least honored of the Founding Fathers, Benjamin Franklin is finally getting the attention he deserves.”

Morton had written: “For years Benjamin Franklin has been the least appreciated Founding Father.”

There were three other pairings.

R: “Once he was known mostly as a woman-obssessed man who flew kites, loved the French, discovered electricity, and made up cute sayings while Washington, Jefferson, and the others did the monumental work of rebelling against the British.”

Morton: “He's known mostly as the kite-flying, French-leaning dirty old man who created electricity, firemen, libraries, stoves, and aphorisms but left the heavy intellectual and political lifting of the American Revolution to Jefferson, Washington, Adams, Madison, Hamilton, and others.”

R: “Benjamin Franklin was as accomplished a writer as Thomas Jefferson. He was also a scientist, an inventor, a diplomat, a printer.”

Morton: “Franklin was a superb writer, inventor, scientist, philosopher, politician, diplomat, and printer. Much is said, for instance, about the magnificent prose of Thomas Jefferson. That's true. But . . .”

R: “The failure to erect a monument to Benjamin Franklin on the National Mall in Washington remains a shame.”

Morton: “Second, they can proclaim that it is a national disgrace for there to be no monument in Washington, D.C., honoring Benjamin Franklin.”

Me?

At the end of her citations, Rebecca had scribbled, “Here come the stones! Knock me down and you go too!”

• • •

R went directly to Rebecca in the large white tent set up behind the president's house for the reception. She agreed to go into the house with him so they could talk.

“No way is this
Gotcha,
” he said, once they were in the deserted library where the planning for Wally Day began three days ago.

He thrust the envelope with the papers at her. She did not take them.

“There's no case against me here—certainly not plagiarism,” he said. “Yes, I had reread Morton's piece shortly before I wrote my own. Some of the ideas must have lingered with me. But there was no copying, no stealing. The phraseology is remotely similar but that's on accident of osmosis. There was nothing deliberate or intentional. And I gave full credit to Morton for his points and ideas about Ben.”

“Tell it to the judge, Dr. Taylor.” Rebecca was smiling.

“What judge? What are you talking about?”

“I may prefer official charges against you through the ARHA.”

“That's ridiculous!” R wanted to kill her. Destroy her. Extinguish her. He wanted to beat the life out of her. There, right next to where they were standing, was a foot-high heavy pewter full-body likeness of Ben. He was holding his famous kite. The perfect weapon!
Benjamin Franklin Historian Beats Fellow Historian to Death with Franklin Statue.

R took several long breaths. Let's not lose it here now, he lectured himself. Let's not lose everything you are and you've worked for because of this woman. Let's be cool and wise, like Ben and Wally. Let's talk this thing out.

“When you say
may,
what exactly do you mean?” he asked. “I am sure you must know any charges based on these similarities will not go anywhere except into the newspapers.”

“Exactly, R. Exactly. You probably would never be officially sanctioned, but there's enough there to trigger publicity that will damage you just as badly as a finding of guilt against me would—probably even more so, because your exhalted position among historians gives you farther to fall.”

Well, at least she's honest about that, he thought. At least she admits she's threatening me with a sham publicity assassination. I really should grab Ben and crack open her skull.

“Do you watch cop shows on television, or are they beneath you?” Rebecca asked.

R said nothing. His appreciation of
Law & Order
was none of her business.

“Well, to borrow one of their favorite lines, Let me put something on the table,” Rebecca said.

She really is going to try to blackmail me!

“I say nothing to anybody at the ARHA or anywhere else about the Morton similarities. I agree that they're not much and it's most unlikely anyone else will pick up on them. I found them because I was looking for something. There is special software for catching this kind of stuff now, did you know that? At any rate, in exchange for my silence, you see to it that the Gwinnett committee treats me fairly—and softly.”

R reached over and grabbed the Ben statuette. He turned it around and over a few times.

He counted to ten, eleven, twelve—and said, “In the words of Ben, in the guise of Poor Richard, ‘The most exquisite Folly is made of Wisdom spun too fine.' ”

“Yes or no to my offer? Going once, going twice. . . .”

“ ‘Man's tongue is soft,
And bone doth lack;
Yet a stroke therewith
May break a man's back.'

“Next thing we know you'll be walking around in a Ben suit too,” Rebecca said, her face brimming with confusion—and, it appeared, a sudden drop in self-confidence.

“ ‘It is better to take many injuries than to give one.' ”