Into the Whirlwind (41 page)

It was exactly what Zack had thought of Mollie’s watches when he had first come to work at Hartman’s, but he was surprised Colonel Lowe shared his opinion so openly in front of Mollie. She must be used to hearing such criticisms of her watches, as she remained sitting proudly in her chair, awaiting his assessment.

Colonel Lowe was wrong. These watches might not appeal to the average man on the street, but that didn’t mean they were a frivolous waste. Zack pulled a design closer, holding it up to study the delicate tracery of lines indicating movement as the celestial planets circled the sun.

“There is something magical about these designs,” he said. He raised his gaze and looked directly into Mollie’s bottomless blue eyes. “I don’t understand how the solar system works, but I can accept on faith that Copernicus knew what he was talking about. I don’t understand how God could have made the universe and everything in creation, and then set it all into motion, but I believe He did. Sometimes I don’t need to understand something, but I just
know
. These watches capture the glory of God’s universe, and they make me want to rejoice in it. They are a hymn to God’s creation. A celebration in gold and rubies.” He slid the design back at her.

“Build them,” he said confidently. “Don’t worry about how they’ll sell. I will find a way. If I have to carry them to Europe and hawk them on the street corners myself, I will find a way to sell these watches.”

Mollie’s eyes kept widening as he spoke. He’d never been so passionate about her watches in the past. Before, she would present her designs, he’d sign the necessary paper work, and they’d set an appointment for the following quarter. Maybe Colonel Lowe couldn’t understand what made these watches so spectacular, but Zack did, and he was holding the most original design he’d ever seen from the 57th’s workshop. He smiled at Mollie, who had caught his enthusiasm and beamed back at him.

Colonel Lowe’s voice was a dash of cold water. “While Mollie is occupied with producing the watches, I will handle all future business transactions for the Copernicus watches. Miss Knox need not distract herself with these tedious business meetings.”

Zack hid his smile. Another tactical error on Colonel Lowe’s part. Mollie
loved
business. Put an accounting book and a production schedule in front of her, and she was like a Viking on the warpath.

His gaze flicked to Mollie. A flash of annoyance crossed her face, but she hid it quickly and gave him a tight nod. “Very well,” Zack said. “I will make arrangements to discuss a vendor with you at a later date.”

It was going to be interesting to monitor how this played out. Colonel Lowe might have the glory of the nation riding on his shoulders, but he didn’t understand Mollie Knox.

29

J
ULY
1, 1872

Z
ack battled waves of exhaustion as he stepped off the streetcar and headed toward home. Eight months and three weeks after the fire that had wiped out four miles of his city and burned Hartman’s to the ground, the palatial store had reopened.

In Josephine’s classic style, she’d greeted customers wearing a ball gown, with footmen distributing roses to the ladies as they streamed through the doors. Servers handed out glasses of chilled champagne, violin music wafted through the air, and people weary of reconstruction flooded the store for a few hours to forget the grime and soot of the past nine months. The governor of the state cut the ribbon. Aldermen and millionaires mingled with opera singers and artisans. A photographer was on hand to memorialize the day, and the cash registers began ringing as money once again started flowing into the store’s parched coffers.

Louis Hartman was flushed with pleasure, bankers clapped Zack on the back, and reporters wanted to interview him. It should have been one of the happiest days of his life, but
when Zack wandered to the counter selling watches, his energy dimmed.

Displayed on a bed of royal blue velvet, the elegant gold watches looked excessively ordinary in comparison to the watches produced by the 57th. Mollie shouldn’t be his concern anymore. He probably should not even have intervened to get Magruder’s cooperation or those Copernicus watches underway, but he couldn’t help it. Mollie had such passion, such a hard-nosed logical approach to getting her exuberant company back in action, he found it impossible not to cheer her on.

It had been after eight o’clock before he could escape from the store. As he turned the corner onto his block, all Zack wanted to do was sink into his bed and sleep for the next month. Instead, he knew his mother had prepared a celebration for him, inviting half of the Polish population of Chicago to his home. Her son, the Pole who had climbed off the docks and into a plush office wearing a starched collar, was back working for the most prestigious store in Chicago. It was biologically impossible for her to restrain herself from throwing a party.

A tight group of people were clustered on his front porch. One separated herself and came flitting toward him, her blond hair streaming behind her. Anka bounced as she sprang up to kiss him on the cheek. “Congratulations,” she said, mangling the tricky word in her awkward English, but her eyes were brimming with genuine happiness. Inside, the house smelled of pierogis and roasted duck.

“How did it go?” his mother asked. “I heard traffic on Columbus Street was backed up for a mile. Did they sell the Monet?”

Zack nodded, remembering the bidding war that had broken out in front of his painting of the girl in the garden. It was hard to watch, but it would have been odd for him to excuse himself from the grand event.

“It sold within the first hour,” he confirmed. “Thirty percent more than I paid for it in Paris.”

Anka’s father clapped him on the back. “You are rich!” he said.

Not quite. Like half of the people supplying goods to Hartman’s, Zack could not expect payment on the Monet for months. Hartman’s was hanging on by the skin of its teeth, and they would need today’s revenue simply to pay the store clerks. It would be a while before Zack would see a return on that painting, but he could hardly begrudge Louis that. He would be hauling crates off the docks were it not for Louis Hartman, and Zack would mortgage the shirt off his back if it meant getting the store back in business.

He was so tired, he just wanted to close his eyes and forget about the fire and Mollie and the mounds of bills that would greet him on his desk tomorrow morning. Escaping into the corner of the kitchen, he saw Dr. Buchanan sitting alone on the hearth of the fireplace, a plate of beef stew balanced on his knees.

Zack sat on the empty space beside the dentist. “I think you and I are the only people here who don’t speak Polish.”

The dentist nodded. “I like listening to everyone talk, even if I can’t understand them. It feels good to be part of a family like this.” He used a piece of rye bread to soak up a little of the beef juice.

Zack eyed the people clustered around the dining table as they laughed and talked. In the months since the fire, Zack had found a new appreciation for his heritage, watching in pride as the Polish community bonded together to rebuild their burned-out neighborhoods. All across the city, it had been the same. They would not have survived the fire without the bonds of family and community to pull them all through this nightmare. The
people who sought shelter in that church had been a family, as were the people who worked at the 57th.

Dr. Buchanan set his plate aside. “Say, you didn’t really sell that Monet, did you?” he asked.

“I really did,” he said. After all, it wasn’t actually a painting of Mollie. The girl in that garden was the embodiment of serene grace, and that wasn’t Mollie. Mollie was ferocity and strength and indefatigable logic that would plow through any obstacle. She was far more impressive than the bland girl in the painting.

Dr. Buchanan slowly nodded. “Probably just as well,” he said. “Colonel Lowe seems to be a permanent fixture in Chicago now.”

He stiffened. It was inevitable that one day soon he’d hear Mollie was finally engaged to be married, and then she would be as lost to him as that Monet painting.

Dr. Buchanan nodded to the coat tree in the corner of the hallway. “As long as you got rid of the painting, don’t you think it’s time to get rid of that green scarf?”

Zack’s gaze trailed to the coat tree in the corner. Amidst the family’s coats and jackets, the tattered green scarf looked a little odd, but that scarf meant far more to him than any painting. After all, he had been right there beside Mollie as every cinder burned its tracery pattern on the fabric. That scarf was precious to him, representing the fierce beauty of a woman who would never surrender. “It doesn’t mean anything,” he said.

Doctor Buchanan didn’t buy the nonchalant tone. “It’s unhealthy. Wrong. Toss it in the lake and move on. Mollie certainly has.”

Zack glared at the scarf. It triggered fresh waves of pain as he saw it every morning, and again when he walked through the front door at the end of every day. But throw it away? He’d as soon carve out a piece of his soul.

Anka drifted over to them, carrying a platter of gingerbread. “Eat. Work hard,” she said.

Dr. Buchanan reached up and helped himself to a slice of gingerbread. “I can see that you did!” he said. “Everything you made is excellent. Very good,” he said.

Anka shook her head. “No! Work hard. Work hard eat.”

Dr. Buchanan scratched his head. “I think we have a translation problem.” Setting down the gingerbread, he took a little Polish-English dictionary from his coat pocket and offered it to Anka. She flipped through it. After a few tries, she managed to land on the correct words, which amounted to telling them both that they worked far too hard and should have some dessert.

Dr. Buchanan nodded enthusiastically. “So long as you bake it, I’ll eat anything!”

Anka joined them at the hearth, and it felt good to have her there. She was such an easy person to be with. Kind, hard-working, and relentlessly cheerful.

He looked at the green scarf again. Then at Anka.

Maybe Dr. Buchanan was right and it was time to put the scarf behind him.

“This sounds like the most bizarre Fourth of July celebration in the history of mankind,” Ulysses said, not looking up from the piece of metal he was engraving.

Mollie agreed, but there wasn’t much she could do about it. Colonel Lowe’s sister took great pride in her annual celebration to raise money for the orphaned children of the war. Each year, Matilda Horner asked her closest friends to pick a state representing one of the original thirteen colonies. They were to bring an item that represented the cultural contributions of
the state, while other guests would place monetary donations beneath the most original or clever cultural artifact. This year, given Richard’s courtship, Mrs. Horner had included Mollie among the women selected to represent an original colony. It was considered a great honor, but Mollie merely thought it one more obligation to squeeze in between building three dozen Copernicus watches and completing the bank clock.

“I picked Georgia,” Mollie said. “Apparently, the rebellious states are always last to be chosen, so I thought I might buy Mrs. Horner’s goodwill by taking it off her hands. I’m not sure what I’ll bring. Maybe peaches?”

“Bring a bucket of shrapnel,” Gunner said from across the room. “Georgia spewed plenty of it during the war.” He shook the stump of his left arm in the air.

Mollie swiped a tendril of hair away from her face. “I’ll be lucky to make it to the celebration at all. It comes two days after we install the bank clock, and five days before I need to have the mechanisms on the Copernicus watches completed.” To her amazement, Zack had succeeded in getting the Copernicus watches placed with a jeweler in Florence, Italy. Richard had grudgingly shared the news, announcing that Zack’s contacts with the jewelers of the Ponte Vecchio had paid off, and Mollie’s watches would begin selling throughout the major cities of Europe.

The Fourth of July celebration came at an inconvenient time. Exhaustion pulled on Mollie as she struggled to complete the watches by the contract’s deadline at the same time she was trying to complete the oversized clock for the bank. Mollie twisted her spine and rubbed the weary muscles of her back. “I’ll be lucky if I’ll be able to get even a can of peaches, let alone a bounty of fresh ones.”

“Not to worry,” Ulysses said. “You can extol the miracle of
the modern canning process. During the war we would have perished from scurvy without canned fruit.” At Mollie’s skeptical look, he amended his statement. “Oh, hang it, Mollie, we’d have perished from culinary boredom without canned fruit. There is only so much rice and beans a man can eat before turning into a legume.”

She smothered her laughter in her sleeve as she got back to work, still completely at a loss for what to take to represent the state of Georgia.