When he returned he said, “Miz O’Neill didn’t exactly brighten up, but she took a sip, then called the boy in, and the boy gulped his down and said it was the bulliest thing he’d ever tasted. Then Miz O’Neill sipped some more, and they both agreed it was real cooling.”
“That’s all?”
“Well, then she washed everything. Then she sat down brisk-like and wrote this.” He reached inside his patchwork coat—Johnny’s unchanging costume made no concession to heat or cold—and handed me a slip of paper.
Written in a rounded, flowing hand, it said:
Mr. Fowler,
Andy tells me that you give in a spirit of honest friendship. We take your offering in that spirit and we are grateful.
Caitlin O’Neill
I read it a dozen times, my eyes lingering on “we are grateful.” “I think she fancies you,” Johnny said. I was flabbergasted. “You do?” “But she don’t know it yet.”
Thursday, July 22, was one of those mornings when information pours in and for days afterward sifts and settles into place. I woke up sweating—for the eighth straight day the heat showed no sign of breaking—and stiff from Harry’s sadistic workout the previous evening. At least we were now practicing after the hottest part of the day.
I tugged the bell rope to have coffee and the morning papers sent up. On the third page of the Enquirer I was astonished by a small item.
A TRIAL OF THE “AERIAL STEAMER”
Several citizens to-day witnessed a private trial in the open air of the aerial steam-carriage Avitor. The steamer rose in the air about seventy-five feet, the machinery operating successfully, buoying up and driving the vessel forward at a considerable rate of speed. A public trial of the Avitor will be had on Sunday next.
It was reprinted from the San Francisco Chronicle—what a strange rush I felt seeing that—and datelined a few days earlier.
I searched the other papers for corroborating items and found one in the Gazette, reprinted this time from the San Francisco Times, whatever that was, which added that the Avitor was a 40-foot working model; its inventor, Mr. Frederick Marriott, fully expected to complete a 150-foot passenger version soon. He now stood “where Fulton did when he made his first steamboat.”
Sure, I thought.
And yet part of me wanted it to be true. With my grandparents I had watched the astronauts set foot on the moon. Grandpa hadn’t seemed impressed; Grandma wanted to watch “Lassie” on another channel. I understood better now. Given what they’d seen—autos, airplanes, radio, TV, the Bomb—the space program must have seemed tame. Space-suited NASA employees were distant. Thundering over a field in a crate of wood and wire and fabric—that could be you! I suddenly wanted to see Marriott’s flyer. Maybe he would scoop the Wright brothers this time around.
Downstairs a letter from Twain awaited me. It was postmarked Hartford and addressed only to Sam’l Fowler, c/o World-Beating Red Leggers. It had duly been routed to Cincinnati, delivered to Champion, and forwarded to me.
Dear Sam,
Abundant & fulsome considerations have prevented my writing sooner. To put it plainer, I’ve been in a humor to lie low. Even plainer, I’ve been scared eight points out of my wits. I jump like a cat at every sudden noise. You’ll reckon me a sap head for such carrying on. Livy’s family is at the heart of it—no, rather, her sweet unquestioning trust in me. If the slightest shadow fell now, with our engagement booming forward like it is, I’d blow my head off. Ten thousand times I’ve cursed myself for telling you that story. But then I think of our money & feel all secret & smug like a boy after stealing the pie from the window. But then I start brooding on the consequences all over again & I dive into a perfect swamp of gloom & imagine the Langdons finding out and falling on me like a thunderbolt. Oh, I am a raw specimen of desperado!
You can’t imagine the upheaval you stirred here. For days nothing could hold up one-tenth to events at the cemetery. Rumors had the Rebs coming back for vengeance, Quantrill’s Raiders or their ilk starting in with graves & next would come the banks & then homes . . . well, it went on & on. The local rag printed “clues”: dug-up earth around the grave & the splintered coffin top & horses racing down outlying roads & banshee screams & corpses lit up like lamps—oh it was a booming tide, a torrent. Then this ad appears:
Sizable cash award offered for information concerning whereabouts of missing war revenue rightfully ours.
Elmira’s Fenian Circle was given as the place to contact. Well, as you can imagine, that started everything up again at full paddle, & THEN it reached a PERFECT HOWL two days later when Costigan was found in his office with his throat slashed.
I put the letter down, stunned, picturing Costigan in the sweltering office; he’d played me cleverly, taking the money, knowing all along he would set me up. When I escaped they must have figured he’d crossed them too. Or maybe they’d just wanted to silence him. His throat cut. I shuddered. Jesus, for somebody trying not to meddle with history I was doing one hell of a job. I read on numbly.
You can’t imagine the fuss that kicked up. Folks talking the downfall of civilization, pent-up Christians looking to the imminent appearance of Satan in Elmira Township. Nor can you picture the sweat I was in, fearing every minute that Robert was witnessed bringing back the nags & that he’d be forced to spill everything. I paid Solomon’s treasure to button his mouth, but the Fenians could surely unbutton it.
Naturally you were the object of considerable speculation. (I mightily appreciated you passing yourself as a duke, by
