December 1887
Josephine noticed it first, which was only to be expected since she went to the riverbank almost every day to gather her thoughts or whatever she did, so when she showed up at Newton’s door in the dim light of a December morning, he knew not to ask questions. “You need to look at this,” she said, then turned and walked up the road.
Newton threw on his coat, chased after her, then slowed to a walk, not wanting to seem inappropriate. He was so rarely alone with his half-sister that he hardly knew how to act. He caught sight of Charley Pettibone, coming back from his habitual morning trip to the barn to check on the horses, and waved him over. He gestured toward Josephine, disappearing up the road toward the ford.
“She says she has something to show us,” Newton said. “Apparently it’s important.”
Charley wiped his hand across his face. “That gal makes me nervous,” he said. “Always has, even when she was just a little squeak.” He wiped his face again. “Oh, well.” They started up the road trying to match Josephine’s brisk pace.
At the riverbank her cause for concern was obvious. The river, normally eighty feet wide at the ford, had slowed to a shallow trickle, narrow enough to step across. In the exposed mud flats, fish wallowed and flopped. Newton could see them churning for space in the few deep holes where water still remained.
“River’s gone,” Josephine said simply. “It’s those bastards upriver. The company.”
Newton knew who she meant without her spelling it out. Sometime in the fall, they had stopped using “American Lumber and Minerals” or even “ALM” and simply started calling it “the company.” And he knew she was right.
“I thought it looked low when I crossed last night,” Charley said. “Didn’t think much about it.”
“I’m glad you’re here to see this, Charley,” she said. “Isn’t it some sort of crime to cut off people’s water?”
Charley scratched his head. “I can’t rightly say. I’ll need to look into it. This ain’t an everyday occurrence.”
“I should think not.” Josephine’s tone was matter of fact. “This place is going to stink to high heaven by tomorrow.” She turned to Newton and addressed him for the first time. “We should take your mother along. She knows how to talk to these louts.”
As Josephine turned toward the village, leaving him and Charley in her wake, Newton reflected how her look and tone reminded him of his mother, as if Josephine was turning into Charlotte Turner without intention or actual family connection. Except for the language, of course; he had never heard his mother say a vulgar word.
They hurried through breakfast and returned to the riverbank, this time accompanied by everyone else in the village. On the other side, where the road came down to the ford, an old couple emerged. It was Dathan, the former slave, and his Indian wife Cedeh, inhabitants of the valley before there was a colony, members of Daybreak who chose not to live in the village but up on the ridgetop where Cedeh’s people had once had their homes. They were pulling a handcart, and Newton watched in puzzlement as they clambered down the bank into the riverbed. They left the cart on the rocky bottom of the ford and ventured out into the mud, stopping at the first waterhole they reached.
“Of course,” Charlotte murmured. “We should have thought of that. Charley, your boys should help them. They’re going to harvest those fish.”
“Ain’t no way we can eat all those fish before they go bad,” Charley said. But he gestured at his sons to descend into the riverbed.
“I doubt if she’s planning to cook them right now,” Charlotte said. “She’ll probably dry them or smoke them.”
Sarah Wickman appeared at Newton’s elbow, a kitchen knife in her hand. She stepped out into the muddy bottom, and turned back to those gathered on dry ground. “There aren’t many who can say they walked all the way across the river.” Several villagers walked in to join her, or ran to the village to fetch their own kitchen tools and buckets.
Charlotte turned to Newton, Charley, and Josephine. “There’s the communal spirit for you. With everyone pitching in, they’ll have all those fish gutted and boned by noon.”
“Them fish guts will start stinking to high heaven by tomorrow,” Charley muttered. “Pray for cold weather.”
“Why, Charley! Aren’t you just the image of cheerfulness!” Charlotte laughed. “Do you think those fish weren’t going to smell with their guts still in them? I’m going to start calling you ‘Cheerful Charley’ from now on.”
Charley gave Newton a rueful look. “Your mama only abuses me because she likes me so much.”
Charlotte headed up the hill, setting a quick pace for the group’s journey toward the company. “Better get a move on, Cheerful Charley.”
They climbed the hill quickly, Charlotte and Josephine refusing to stop for breath along the way as if to demonstrate their capacities to the men, though by the time they reached the top they all stopped by unspoken consent and took a rest.
All around the ridgetop were the holes dug by Adam in his search for silver. Charlotte’s lips pursed as she took in the scene. Charley averted his eyes, and even Josephine for once had the discretion not to say anything. But Newton felt embarrassed on his brother’s behalf. At least the damn fool had the sense to fill in a hole once he’d given up on it, but the assortment of fill-ins and settled mounds made the ridge look as if it had been shelled at some time in the past. Adam’s new obsession was an open secret around Daybreak, although he appeared to think that no one noticed him heading to the mountain with a pick and his gadget tucked under his arm, returning muddy in the late morning with feigned nonchalance. Every man to his own foolishness.
They left Adam’s handiwork behind and kept walking. When they crossed into company property, they knew it immediately—the logged-off landscape, dotted with piles of waste wood and underbrush, stretched out in front of them as far as they could see. Some of the piles had been burned.
Charley shaded his eyes and peered into the distance. “Sure get the long view, with all the wood cut. I think that’s the Fredericktown road over there. Must be two miles off.”
They followed the wagon trails north until they crossed a more heavily used path, trenched with ruts that made walking difficult, and headed toward the river.
“This settles my vote as to selling them our timberland,” Charlotte said. “This is the damnedest mess I’ve ever seen.”
“It’ll grow back,” Newton said. “Trees grow back. Most of this was junk oaks anyway.” But his words sounded hollow even to himself, and he said no more.
The road ended at a cluster of encampments on the edge of the bluff overlooking the river, a jumble of tents and two raw-lumber buildings that looked like they could blow into the valley with the next high wind. Josephine walked to the larger of the two buildings and pushed open the door. Charlotte followed her in; Newton and Charley stopped in the doorway.
Inside, two men sat at a table in the center of the room, bent over a ledger book. At a smaller table by the cabin’s only window, a man sat with his back to them, facing the light from the window, with rows of rock samples spread out before him. A fourth man stood by the woodstove.
The two at the central table were J. M. Bridges and his associate, Mason. They stood as the women entered.
“What have you done with our river, Mr. Bridges?” Josephine demanded.
“Ladies!” Bridges cast a glance at Mason and exclaimed. “Our neighbors from the south. So good to see you.” He turned to Charlotte. “Madam, I don’t believe we’ve been introduced.”
“Charlotte Turner, Mr. Bridges. I met you and Mr. Mason when you came to speak to us, but didn’t linger for a conversation.” They shook hands. “I believe you know my son Newton, and this is another member of our community, Charley Pettibone. Charley is the deputy sheriff for these parts.” Charley and Newton tipped their hats.
“And what have you done with our river?” Josephine repeated.
“Miss Mercadier, I was getting to that,” Bridges said. “Your river—our river—is fine and dandy. We’re just putting it to work a little. Come and see.”
He reached for the coat rack, then stopped. “I forget myself. May I introduce Dr. Kessler, the eminent geologist. We brought him down from Chicago.” The man at the other table kept his head bent over his work, but waved a hand in the air. “And this is Mr. Yancey, of the local area.” The man at the woodstove, broad and imposing with folded arms, nodded to the group without speaking.
“Mr. Yancey,” Charlotte said, inclining her chin. Bridges snatched down his overcoat and led them outside. Yancey and Kessler stayed where they were.
Bridges turned back to them. “Gentlemen, will you join us?”
“What? Oh. Yes, of course,” Kessler said, looking up from his specimens. He had thin gray hair, bald on top but long in back, and wore a pair of magnifiers on his eyes that made him look like a fish. “I could use a little air.”
“Not me,” Yancey said. “I’ll be riding out before long, and I want to warm up my hind end some more.”
“Up to you,” said Bridges. He led the way down the slope to a level spot where they could look down into the river valley. “Here’s your river.”
Below they could see a rock dam, the same color as the red granite of the river rocks, four feet wide at the top and forty feet above the water’s surface. Behind the dam, a lake was building up. As they watched they could see the water inch upward.
“Once it fills up we’ll raise the gate,” Bridges said. “It’ll be back to normal by tomorrow morning.”
On their side of the river, the dam widened out to a large flat area about fifteen feet square, topped by another wooden hut. “Come on down,” Bridges said. “This is the most beautiful part of the whole thing.”
They picked their way down a narrow trail to the dam. Bridges opened the door to the hut and gestured inside.
Newton stepped in first, curious, then held back. “Careful, ladies,” he said. “There’s a big hole in the middle here.”
They edged inside one by one and peered down into the hole, ten feet square, which appeared to go all the way to the bottom of the dam. From the center of the hole emerged a large steel shaft, topped by an enormous beveled gear and shackled into an equally large steel collar. The gear at the top of the shaft sat eight feet above the cabin floor.
“Well, I’m damned,” Charley said. “Excuse me, ladies.”
“Ain’t it a beautiful thing?” Bridges said, his face joyful. “I drew up the sketches myself, and the engineers in New York worked out the details.”
“What’s the point of all this, Mr. Bridges?” Charlotte said. “It looks like the thigh bone of a dead factory here.”
Bridges turned to Newton, grinning. “Care to guess, Mr. Turner?”
Newton didn’t like being put on the spot, but felt sure enough of himself to answer without looking into the hole. “Turbine at the bottom, I’d guess.”
“Exactly!” said Bridges. “I pegged you for a man of knowledge.”
“Same principle as the water wheel my grandfather had us set out in the river years ago,” Newton said. “Except—”
“Except vastly more powerful,” Bridges cut in. “Instead of some little paddles dipped into the river while most of them are out of the water, you have the entire river itself, driven through this gate, running the turbine with the force of the entire stream. We had to send all the way to France for this mechanism, but it was worth it.”
He stepped out into the open, the rest of the group following, and gestured toward the hill they had just descended. “From this gear will run a driveshaft, and that driveshaft will turn a dozen machines.” Along the riverbank downstream from the dam, they could see a group of men lined up along a sluice, shoveling ore into the sluice while another group sifted through the watery mixture with screens. “Backbreaking work, and we will mechanize it all,” he said. “The separation, the conveyance.” He pointed toward an opening in the hillside, from which a muddy trail emerged. “As we dug out the mineshaft, we saved the rock to build the dam. Native rock, a constant supply of water, and all we had to do was bring in the cement.”
“We thought about building a rail spur to bring in the machinery and take out the ore, but it seemed too expensive,” Mason added. “We may yet. You should have seen the oxcarts and teams we used to bring in this turbine, piece by piece.”
“What do you think, Dr. Kessler?” Charlotte turned to the geologist. “You’re a man of science. Does this look like a working scheme to you?”
Kessler laughed nervously. “My knowledge is in crystalline structures and the identification of strata, madam,” he said. His voice was a thick whisper, nearly lost in the open air. “I leave the application to others.”
Charlotte sniffed. “And what of the scoured landscape we just came through? More testimony to the joys of progress?”
Bridges’ face lost its luster. “Mrs. Turner, you’ve been out here in the bosom of Mother Nature a long time, have you not?”
“Thirty years.”
“Then you know more than any that the earth has a power to heal itself, far beyond our imagining. Come springtime, that scoured landscape will start to green up, and in a couple of years we’ll see saplings as tall as you. A logged tract never looks pretty at first.”
“And how many years have you lived here?”
Bridges blushed. “I take your point, ma’am.”
She led them up the hillside in silence.
“I haven’t shown you the best part yet,” Bridges said, hastening to keep up with her. “But I have to warn you, we cannot approach too near.” He took them toward the second shed, a three-sided lean-to sheltering a large black mass of iron and steel, rows of bars and coils in a circular arrangement that made it look like the weaving loom of a titan.
“I’ll not venture a guess on this,” Newton said.
“It’s a magneto!” Bridges exclaimed. “Came over on the same boat as the turbine.”
“What’s it for?” said Charley.
“To light the mine!” Bridges’ enthusiasm was practically uncontained. “No more carbide lights and pine-knot torches fouling the air. Just clean, bright, incandescent lamps. Once we figure out how to get it down the hill safely, we’ll slide it into place around that shaft and start generating electricity. Can’t use cables or metal tools. They stick to it.”
Newton knew that the other members of his party had come to complain, but he found himself fascinated by Bridges and his magneto. He’d seen pictures of them in American Farmer, but only small, hand-cranked ones for powering a single light.
Newton had no memory of his grandfather, but had heard the stories, how he was a civil engineer for the Army, a man who had come out to Daybreak after the death of his wife and thrown himself into the building of things—the great stone barn against the hillside; the Temple of Community, also stone and massive, yet somehow snug in the way it felt inside. And the water wheel. The water wheel had been destroyed in a flood years ago, but Newton carried the memory of how when he was a child of nine, crossing the river in a johnboat too big for him to handle alone, he had gotten drawn in under the water wheel and had to climb onto its piling, calling for help, until Dathan had paddled out to rescue him in his canoe. From that moment he had been aware of the deep power of flowing water, the power of earth itself, the need of water to find its level and to push down anything in its path. Now all of it was gone except the remains of the wheel, a skeleton of iron lying on its side in the river, the wood rotted away, visible only in low water when the children of Daybreak used it as a jumping platform.
Would his grandfather have put a turbine in the river if he’d had the opportunity and a narrow gorge to dam? Of course he would have. There was no good or ill to the machinery, only to the ends for which it was used. Dam the river, excavate the hillside, turn the great wheel. But for what? To make another million dollars for a man who already had a hundred million. To feed and clothe the children of the miners. Base ends, noble ends, twined and intermingling like bindweed in the corn. And like the bindweed and the corn, it was impossible to pull them apart without harming the crop.
“Ties,” he murmured.
“What?” said Bridges.
“Railroad ties,” Newton said. “You have them at hand. There’s nothing stouter than a six-by-six oak tie. Build a framework, mortise and tenon the joints so they won’t come apart, then you can slide your magneto down the hillside with block-and-tackles. You’ll need half a dozen at the least, and if you hadn’t cut down all the trees I’d tell you to anchor them to the trunks. But as it is, use wagonloads of stones to anchor the pulleys, and men with guide ropes on the hillside across the river. Because you won’t be able to guide it from above.”
Bridges’ eyes narrowed, and he whistled a low tune. “By jim,” he said after a moment. “I think you’re onto something.”
“You’ll need to have skids ready once you get it down to the dam. As it gets closer to that shaft, it’ll pull toward it and you will only be able to guide it, not stop it.”
“Yes, I’d thought of that. We’re building the platform it will sit on.” Bridges gave him an appreciative look. “You should come watch when we do this job.”
“Or supervise,” added Mason. “The world needs more sharp men.”
“I just might,” Newton said, aware of his companions’ impatience but pleased at the recognition. “Watch, I mean. I’d rather you boys supervise. The man who supervises is the man who has to answer if things go wrong.”
“That’s the truth,” Bridges said.
Josephine spoke up. “Well, I think we got what we came for. As long as we have your assurances that the river will be back to normal by tomorrow, we’ll head home.”
“Oh, stay for lunch!” Bridges cried. “It’s not fancy fare, but it’s filling. Stew and crackers, most likely.” As if on cue, a man emerged from one of the tents a few yards away and began to bang on an iron triangle suspended from a tripod.
“You’re kind to offer, but we packed food,” Charlotte said. “The days are short now, and we’d like to be safely home in good daylight.”
They turned to depart. Newton noticed Bridges make a furtive gesture to Josephine to stay a moment longer. Without quite knowing why, Newton knelt down with his back to them and pretended to tighten his bootlaces so he could eavesdrop.
“I hope you conveyed to your mother my regrets at missing the Sunday dinner she invited me to,” Bridges told her.
“I did,” said Josephine.
“The silver find has—well, as you can see, it’s made my life a bit mad lately.” “You don’t need to justify yourself to me, Mr. Bridges. Mother said her invitation is a standing one.”
“I am relieved. Please tell her that I will avail myself of it this coming Sunday, if that’s all right with you.”
“Why should it need to be all right with me?” Newton recognized the bristly tone in Josephine’s voice. “It’s my mother’s invitation.”
“I might hope—” Newton realized his pretense had gone on as long as it could. He stood up and brushed off his pants. “I might hope that my presence might not be unwelcome to you as well.”
There was a pause. “You are welcome in our home, Mr. Bridges,” Josephine said. “Both my mother and I will be happy to see you.” There was a rustle of skirts as Josephine passed by Newton, with her determined stride, toward the south, toward Daybreak.
Bridges came up behind Newton and clapped him on the shoulder. “Well done, old man,” he said. “I think you solved our problem with the magneto.”
“Glad you think so,” Newton said. They shook hands.
Charlotte, ahead of the group, turned around with a quizzical look. “By the way, Mr. Bridges,” she said. “What happens when the spring rains come? Won’t they overflow your dam? That floodgate of yours is only large enough for the normal flow of water.”
“Spillway,” Bridges said triumphantly, pointing to the far side of the dam. On closer scrutiny, Newton realized that end of the dam was three or four feet lower than the side with the turbine. “We’ve been dumping boulders on the downstream side to prevent any back-cutting when the water flows over the top. When your spring rains come, the excess water will run over the top and down the boulders to rejoin the streambed down there a hundred feet. It should make quite a pretty cascade, like the rapids of the Niagara. I’ll invite you all up, and we’ll have a picnic by the rapids.”
“You do that,” said Charlotte, turning away.
As Newton walked to join the group, all of them walking in silence with their own thoughts, the unpleasant taste of jealousy filled his mouth. Josephine was his half-sister, he knew that, but despite that knowledge he felt the same way toward her that every man felt. It was to his everlasting shame, but by God! as he watched her form ahead of him, swaying and dipping among the underbrush, he craved her. He would not dignify it with the name of love, for he was not sure that he had ever felt love, but he wanted her. He wanted her, to make her his in all ways holy and unholy, wanted no other man to have her, and the painful power of that desire was matched only by his agony at its obvious impossibility.