The Lightning Keeper (3 page)

Harriet knew where Horatio lived, down in the shabby ruins of the silk mill below the Great Falls, and knew that he was not married to Olivia Toussaint. She had even spoken to Olivia, across the great chasm of her color, her religion, her situation as Horatio Washington's kept woman, and found her charming and well-spoken, in spite of everything. And very beautiful too, she had to admit. A soul worth saving.

 

A
RAP ON THE WINDOW
brought Harriet back to the present, and as the isinglass was completely fogged with her breath, she opened her door in response. She had no idea who it might be other than her father or MacEwan, who had disappeared ages ago down an alleyway with a muttered excuse. There was the man, the man who had winked at her, and he was alone now. In the instant before she pulled the door
closed she noted that the dangerous color of his face was very much as it had been before. He rapped again on the window, more insistently now, and her first thought was to ignore the summons, ignore the fellow altogether, as he was undoubtedly drunk. She would have let MacEwan deal with this situation if only he had been there, in which case this never would have happened in the first place. The thought formed in her mind that MacEwan, wherever he might be, was very likely drunk as well. She thought she had smelled liquor on him before, even in the petroleum reek of the carriage house, which had been given over to the Packard.

The third rap was accompanied by the sound of laughter, which, however genuine its mirth, had the effect of infuriating Harriet. Here she was, told to wait in the car like a good girl, and now this lout had come to make free with her, as if she were…what? She lowered the window and glared at the man, who stood at his ease, one arm resting possessively on the roof of the Packard, and an incongruous little crown of snow upon his hat.

“What do you take me for?” she hissed at him, surprised by her own tone of voice.

“Take you for, miss? Why, I ain't taken you at all. Just I was wondering how you was getting along out here in the cold, since I seen that other fellow going off a while back. Would you be wanting something hot at all?”

“Thank you, no,” Harriet replied, trying to be civil. Her real annoyance was with her father and MacEwan for putting her in such a situation. “I'm sure my father is just finishing his business now. He said it wouldn't be very long.”

“Well, you can suit yourself,” he said, with his face perceptibly closer to hers than before, “but it's been going on two hours now, and them still jawing away in there. An excitable chap, the old boy, I mean your father, and I think the boss broke out the bottle to calm him down.” These words struck her like a slap. She thought she had an understanding with her father, who had very nearly ruined himself with drink in the months after her mother's death.

“And I suppose you were drinking with them, saw this with your own eyes?”

“Oh, I know what goes on in there, even if I ain't invited to drink with them. No, when I need a nip myself, I know where to turn.” He tapped the sagging pocket of his coat, which returned a hollow clinking. “Would you take a drop yourself? It would fight off the cold, you see, just as I've done.”

The expression on her face cut short his laughter, and for a moment they simply stared at each other. When he spoke again it was in a harder tone of voice, and what kindliness she had seen in his eyes was gone.

“Well, then, if my liquor's not good enough for you…” and he pulled the corkless bottle from his pocket, took a swallow, then rested it on the window frame. “Sure? No offense, but this is a very bad part of town you're in here, miss, a bad place for a young woman like you, so high and mighty, to be sitting by herself. Do you see over there?”

He gestured with his bottle, and a woman, bundled in shawls, who had been pacing in front of a low building on the far side of the street, stopped, then lifted her hand to him. Harriet could not make out her face.

“You see what I mean? There's Flora Hanratty waiting for the boys to come off the shift, and her thinking I'm waving at her, as if I'd…” Here he drank again, and wiped his mouth on his sleeve. Alcohol fumes overcame the smell of the axle grease that had coated the sample wheel. She would have to air these clothes for a week, at least. “Not on your life, Flora, d'ye hear me?” he called out violently, giving Harriet a start. “Not if you was the last woman left on the Bowery, and not if it was free!” And in a softer tone, almost to himself: “Who the Hell does she think I am?”

Harriet could find no words at all, but suddenly the outrage she felt at everything that had happened today boiled up within her, burning her throat like bile, and when the ginger-haired lout turned to her again, closer than ever, the cat advancing on its prey, and began to speak, she astonished herself by spitting full in his face.

“That's a nice thank-you for my trouble,” he said, wiping his face carelessly with the back of his hand. And holding her gaze effortlessly in his, he licked the back of his hand, then kissed it.

“There now,” he mocked her, “I've had my kiss after all without even asking for it, and I know how you taste. What if I was to offer you the real thing?”

Out of the corner of her eye she saw a figure trudging diagonally across the road in front of the car, heading for the entrance to the Stephenson works. The light was failing now, and the snow falling in veils of finer particles, and she could not trust her eyes. But the young man was lightly dressed, seemed oblivious to the snow and the cold, and there was something about him that triggered a memory and a rush of feeling. When she spoke the word No to the ginger-haired man, it was in a distracted, wondering tone, quite lacking the emphasis she had intended.

“There's No that means No, lass, and there's No that means Yes. So I'm thinking…” and here he put his hand on her shoulder.

“No!” she bellowed, with a vehemence that drove him back a pace.

The young man, at the edge of her vision, stopped and let fall from his shoulder the coiled length of cable so that it lay like a black snake in the snow. He turned and walked toward them around the car, resting his hand for a moment on the fender and then smoothing the snow away. And at that instant Harriet had a vision of a dusty road, and of this man clinging to the fender, the scented wind making a sail of his shirt.

“I know you,” she said.

He looked at her for a long moment, not in confusion, but in awe. He said nothing, and after he had reassured himself, comparing the physical presence to the image held so long in his mind, he dropped his eyes to the task of recoiling the cable, which he did very deliberately.

“Well now, lad, I'm sure Mr. Stephenson ain't paying you to stand out here talking to strangers. Better be off with you.”

“It is Mr. Stephenson who pays me, Mr. Boylan, and not yourself, and I must answer to him. Miss Bigelow, Miss Harriet Bigelow, is not a stranger, she is my friend. Please to move away from the automobile. I think she does not like you.”

“And what's it to you, puppy, what she likes and dislikes? Run off now, or I'll give you something to remember me by. You foreign lads got to be taught your place, and not just the once, because you're so fuckin' thick, but again, and—”

The young man had about six feet of the cable free in his right hand when he was finished with the coil. He gave it a little shake and made an explosion in the powdery snow between him and Boylan. When he raised and twisted his hand suddenly, the cable whined once
around his head and darted forward, shattering Boylan's hat but not touching him otherwise.

“Fuckin' Jesus but I'll have your hide,” Boylan growled, planting himself like a boxer, but making no advance on his antagonist. “Fight me fair and I'll kill you.”

The cable sang in reply and attached itself to the boxer's ankle, was jerked violently back again, and Boylan sprawled in the snow, making a caterwaul that masked the sound of breaking glass. As he struggled to his knees he drew the broken neck of the bottle from his pocket and tried to conceal it down by his hip.

“Our fight is finished, Mr. Boylan. Or, if you want, I can kill you with this thing.” The cable flailed the snow a few inches from the kneeling man and lay still. Boylan let the bottle neck drop from his hand and rose unsteadily to his feet.

“All right, Peacock, my lad, I'll leave this little spitfire to you, since you're such friends, and I'll settle up with you another day. You'll be watching your back, I'm thinking.”

 

T
HEN THEY WERE ALONE,
and the young man fell to coiling his cable again with a concentration that was almost comic.

“Toma,” said Harriet. “You have found me after all. Will you not look at me?”

He did as she asked, but with an unsmiling intensity, as if he were still locked in some combat. “You are safe now. I am happy to see you.”

“Well, you certainly don't look happy. How can I thank you?”

He shrugged his shoulders and gave her what was at least half a smile. She removed her glove and held out her hand to him. He made a little sound of protest and showed her how filthy his own was, the grime diagonally shadowed with darker markings of the cable. He wiped his hand on his trousers and gave a rueful laugh at the result.

“I do not mind at all, I'm sure,” she said. “But where is your coat? Surely you are cold?”

“The coat was stolen when I was working down below, but I was a fool to take it off. Anything can happen down there.”

“Yes, the subway,” said Harriet, feeling the warmth in the hand that enclosed her own. “You must tell me about it.” But just as he began
to answer, for it seemed that her touch dissolved his reticence, she broke in, as her own mind veered in many directions at once: “And why did that man call you ‘Peacock'?”

“My name…” began Toma, and now a burst of conversation from the far side of the car distracted her. She gave his hand a reassuring squeeze.

“It's Father, coming out at last, and he will be so pleased to see you again.”

Toma opened the door for Harriet and glanced over the roof of the Packard at the familiar, portly figure of his employer and the gaunter, stooped version of the man he remembered from Naples, Amos Bigelow. The snow on the steps of the building made for treacherous footing, and Toma saw that the energetic Stephenson had his guest firmly by the elbow, supporting him.

“Take care, my friend, these steps are cruel unless you know 'em as I do, and there's your daughter waiting for you, I believe. Has she been in that car all this while, for the love of God?”

“What? Oh, Harriet, yes, yes, she must have been. But is there nothing more you need from me? I'd be more than glad to—”

“No, no, Mr. Bigelow, thank you. We have your wheel, and we've had a good long discussion about…oh, I'd say we've covered everything. And I'm sure I never heard a more entertaining tale than your father standing up to the minister on the matter of that railroad right-of-way.”

“Well, you see, without that railroad, the Bigelow works were done for, and—”

“And here's Miss Harriet, all grown up into…into, well, I'm sure I never saw a lovelier young woman. I'm very sorry you've been here all this time. I had no idea.”

“Thank you, Mr. Stephenson, I think Father forgot about me, as he was so excited to show you his wheel. And, Father, do you remember the young man in Naples who helped us when Mama was taken ill? This is he, Toma, the very same boy. Can you believe it?”

Amos Bigelow had been smiling absently at his daughter, but his mind still pursued that train of thought that had been his preoccupation for weeks: the making of iron wheels in such quantity as to assure the continued operation and good fortune of the Bigelow Iron Company. He was making a mental calculation of the existing and potential
stores of hardwood charcoal, the fuel without which he could not make even a hat pin, and he did not study the young man's face, did not see the proffered hand.

“Oh, I'm sure you're right, my dear. How d'ye do, young man?” And turning back to his host, he picked up the thread of the conversation that Mr. Stephenson had made every effort to conclude. “On the matter of that sample casting I was suggesting, would not the commissioners, or board of the IRT—”

“Mr. Bigelow, let me introduce you properly to this young fellow, my assistant, who spends most of his time down in the subway and knows the track and the electrical system down there better than the IRT itself does. Thomas Peacock, Mr. Bigelow.”

Amos Bigelow now shook Toma's hand and gazed with some interest at his features, giving an occasional sidelong glance to the beaming countenance of his daughter. “Yes, perhaps we have met before. Naples, you say? I'm sure it will all come back to me. That's not an Italian name, now, is it?”

“No, sir, indeed not. It is the name given to me on Ellis Island when I came here, as a joke, I think. My true name is Pekočevié, and I come from Montenegro. It is very pleasing to me that we meet again.”

“Montenegro? Montenegro?” Bigelow repeated the word, which was evidently neither familiar nor quite respectable. “Well, I suppose everyone must come from some place or other, but I never heard that one before. Hi, where's MacEwan gone off to?”

“He hasn't been here for two hours and more, Father, and I'm afraid he may have been drinking all this while,” said Harriet, with a certain artificial cheerfulness in her voice. And as if on cue, to break the embarrassed silence following this remark, a figure emerged from the alley and made its way slowly and unsoberly across the snowy cobbles of the street. It was MacEwan, and he was humming “Danny Boy” to himself, oblivious to the judgement awaiting him.

“MacEwan! Are you drunk, man?” roared Amos Bigelow.

“No sir! No sir! Not drunk at all, sir.”

“And have you not been drinking, then, Mr. MacEwan?” asked Harriet.