A Dream of Daring (25 page)

Chapter
21

As Kate excused herself
and left the meeting, Bret Markham sank into his chair, relieved by the
sheriff’s loss of interest in him. Duran and the coroner also took their seats;
with the tension of the moment past, they observed the others, wondering where
the trail would now lead.

“I’m rather proud of the
senator.” Nash looked at Tom with an air of insolent satisfaction at beating a
rival.

“It seems old Wiley
didn’t let us down after all,” gloated Cooper. “I should’ve known he’d have a
plan to deal with an outsider who comes here hell-bent on revamping
everything.” He smirked at Tom. “The senator might have wanted you in his
family, but it was definitely going to be on
his
terms.”

Markham seemed to be
enjoying a rare moment of camaraderie with the class that paid his salary but
otherwise ignored him. Proving that self-control was not among his talents, he
joined the chorus against the man who was his acting manager. “Right proud I
was when the senator trusted
me
with smashin’ that thing. I reckon we
woulda got along jus’ fine, me and the senator.”

“Tom,” said Rachel, “Papa
was only doing what he thought was right.”

“It was for your own
good, Tom,” Charlotte announced.

The inventor, the only
one who had remained standing, now faced the group as if
he
were the
culprit and they were the firing squad.

“No offense, old boy,”
said Nash, proceeding to offend, “but it would be best for everybody if you
never found that machine of yours. You can see all the trouble it’s brought
us.” He looked at Rachel, who rewarded him with a nod.

“Nash is right,” she
said.

Tom looked at her
blankly, as if she were a stranger.

“I hope it’s at the
bottom of the swamp,” added Cooper, “that confounded device of Yankee gall.”

“It’s
cursed
,”
said Charlotte.

Tom looked curiously at
the woman whose eyes held a hint of derangement.

“It’s brought innuendoes
and suspicions—lies, all lies!—on our family,” Charlotte continued. “I declare,
that machine could do the farmin’ for Satan!”

Markham smiled
maliciously at the dressing-down of his superior. Encouraged, he added to the
chorus: “Slaves make crops. Always have, always will.”

The verbal bullets kept
flying for a few minutes. But they seemed to miss their mark. Rather than
fatally wounding the young inventor, they emboldened him. He stood tall, his
head high with pride in himself and his eyes heavy with contempt for them.

When they were finished,
he spoke. “So none of you are surprised by the senator’s behavior?”

Waiting for an answer, he
pensively looked out the window like a scientist forming a conclusion, then
turned back to the group. “None of you are dismayed to learn that your town’s
distinguished statesman, a man of great standing among you, was engaged in
deception, bribery, thievery, and destruction?”

No one denied the
charges.

“Face it, Tom, your
invention was just a delusion, anyway,” said Cooper. “There was no proof it
would work the way you claimed. Why, our dear Wiley was doing you a
favor
before you made more of a fool of yourself. He was helping you come down to
earth by getting rid of the senseless thing.”

“People don’t commit
crimes for things they think are senseless.” Tom shook his head. “New devices
that don’t work die by themselves. Nobody would have a motive to steal and
destroy something he believes is useless.”

Tom paced before the
others like a bobcat they couldn’t shoot down.

“Tell me, Cooper, were
you also doing me a favor by attempting to steal my tractor that night? Was
Nash doing me a favor when he tried too? Were you both going to risk getting
caught and going to jail for the theft of something you thought was useless—in
order to do me a favor?”

There was no reply.

“I’d say you all took the
device very seriously.” His eyes traveled from Cooper to Nash to Markham, while
his mind also saw a fourth face on a portrait hanging in his parlor. “Yes,
indeed, you took it seriously! But not for the reason I thought.” His voice
dropped grimly. “I didn’t understand you at first. I thought you wanted to
develop
the invention and realize the dream of the new age. But now I see what really
drives all of you.” His eyes reached Rachel, including her in his statement.

The sheriff listened
patiently, allowing Tom to continue. The lawman watched everyone. He looked
interested in letting the interplay proceed among those closest to the
invention and the deceased, as if hoping it might lead to a new clue and
direction.

“I had mentioned my
invention to the senator on previous occasions, but he didn’t know how far
along I was until the day before Miss Polly’s burial when I told him I was
going to Philadelphia to unveil it and couldn’t make the funeral. Now I realize
why he insisted on delaying my trip. He wanted to get at the invention before I
could take it away. That’s why he offered to bring it to the Crossroads. He
wanted it in the place where he was going to be that night. And that’s why he
pressed me to show the device to Cooper and Nash that afternoon. The more men
who knew about it, the harder it would be to pin the theft on him. Sheriff, I
think the senator concocted an excuse to bring my device to the Crossroads
early that day. He told me he wanted to review the plantation records, but it
seems he really wanted to see the overseer and make his deal, as Markham
claims.”

The youthful
disillusionment had vanished from Tom’s face. The scientist in him was now in
charge, dispassionately firing off conclusions. The puzzle pieces were now
fitting together to form a clear picture.

“None of you are
surprised at the senator’s behavior—because you’re just like him.
All
of
you wanted my tractor smashed.”

No one denied it.

“It appears none of you
actually stole the invention or killed the senator, but you’re guilty of crimes
just the same.” His targets now fidgeted in their seats. The men looked vexed,
and the women looked puzzled. But the sheriff and coroner looked merely curious.
“You’re guilty of crimes against
yourselves
.”

“Robbie, stop this drivel
now!” Cooper looked about to jump out of his chair.

“You all had your chance
to speak. Now I’d like my chance,” said Tom.

The sheriff motioned to
his uncle to sit back. Cooper seemed surprised to see how little sway he now
had over the young lawman who once treated him like an oracle. “Mr. Edmunton
and his invention are critical to the case. I’ll hear him out.”

Sparks flew from Tom’s
eyes. “You, Cooper, you pride yourself on being a businessman, but you
committed a crime against business. You want to make as much money as possible,
yet you tried to sabotage an invention that promised to make you more money in
less time and at a lower cost than ever before.”

“You traitor! You know
how we farm here,” argued Cooper. “Why do you taunt us? Our system was fixed on
us; we didn’t make it.”

“But you like it the way
it is, and you would destroy anything that upset it.”

Tom recalled the day he
tried to improve the seed drill, when his attention was pulled away to deal
with the most mundane details of other people’s lives. He recalled too many of
his days spent like that.

“Instead of engaging
yourself with the latest discoveries and innovations to reduce your costs and
labor and improve your business—instead of that—you throw away your mental
energy on arranging how many blankets others have, the frocks they wear, the
kind of shoes they get, the food they eat, the beds they sleep in. When you
control every detail of others’ lives, you not only shrink
their
horizons but you also shrink
your own
. You gloat over the destruction of
a farm invention that could enlarge your profits, while you glory in a world
where you dispense molasses rations and keep others helpless. You betrayed
business for the sake of power. That’s your crime against yourself.”

The faces around the
parlor reddened. In the Louisiana of 1859, no one ever said the kind of things
the group was now hearing.

“Watch it, Yankee,”
warned Cooper. “We have laws here—”

“Yes, yes, you have laws,”
Tom said contemptuously. “Like the ones you and Barnwell used to shut down the
factory? Like the ones you use to block your fellow citizens from freeing their
bondsmen or even schooling them—because the self-reliance of others threatens
your power? That’s the other crime you committed, the crime against the law.
You took off the blindfold of justice to make the law give you benefits at
others’ expense, and those others aren’t just the slaves. They’re also your
fellow citizens, like me. When I can’t speak my mind or educate my servants or
free them without getting thrown in jail, then aren’t you using
me
against my will to serve
you
? Isn’t that also slavery?”

The man whose badge
displayed a blindfolded lady looked disturbed by the notion.

“Shut your insolent
mouth, or I’ll have you prosecuted!” Cooper looked to the sheriff for support,
but his nephew offered none.

The inventor turned to
another man, one whose face was drawn tight and who stared at him resentfully.

“You, Nash, you spread
your feathers like a peacock who’s all fluff and no mass. Where’s your
passion
to do anything? Where’s your
skill
at doing anything? The only thing you
excel at is idleness.”

Nash shot up in his
chair. “What gall!”

Tom continued pacing as
he gestured to Nash. “You live off not only the backs of the slaves but also
off anybody else you can cajole. You lived off your father’s efforts. And after
his passing, you lived off loans, like the ones you got from me. Then you
wanted the senator to gift you with the Crossroads, so you could live off the
product of Miss Polly’s work.”

Nash turned to Duran.
“Sheriff, really now!”

The sheriff didn’t reply.
He looked engrossed in Tom’s words.

“You want someone else to
do the work. Yet when you learned of a new invention that had the potential to
make you lots of money in farming with much less effort, you wanted to sabotage
it. What you really want, Nash, is to be an aristocrat in a dying age. That’s
your crime against yourself. In your quest for a life free of effort, you made
for yourself a life free of purpose, a life of laziness, incompetence, and
debt.”

“You’re not fit for
Rachel!” roared Nash. “Go back to the North where you belong!”

“And . . . the
senator—”

“Stop, before you
disrespect the dead! Have you no shame?” cried Charlotte.

“Senator Barnwell was
your salesman for the dying age.” Tom stood still, his restless pacing subdued,
his voice heavy with sadness and bitterness. “Barnwell put the mask of goodness
on something bad. He told himself and all of you that the dying age is kindness;
it’s caring; it’s looking after those who can’t help themselves.” Tom thought
of the intelligent face of a young teacher and the eagerness of a chef with a
tall white hat. He thought of how proud and capable they stood. “That’s
Barnwell’s crime. He tried to bend and twist morality to justify power.”

Tom’s eyes grew more
intense as a further thought occurred to him.

“And he tried to control
me
the same way he controlled the slaves. He tried to push me to lend Cooper money
to take the Crossroads off his hands, against my own lending practices. He
wanted me to marry his daughter and give up inventing, against my own wishes.
An appetite for power doesn’t stop at one prey but hungers for more. Barnwell
was closed to the great challenge of nature that the new age presents. He was
too busy trying to expand his control of people in the dying age.”

“Well, I declare! In all
of God’s kingdom,
you
are the most arrogant beast of all!” said Rachel,
aghast.

She seemed to have lost
her self-consciousness at having her personal affairs discussed in the group. A
perverted intimacy seemed to have developed among those involved in the
sheriff’s meetings, like a bickering family unable to break away from conflict.

“When Senator Barnwell,
your great moral leader, learned of an invention that could have created the
most moral society ever—one in which nature’s awesome power was tamed and men
were set free—what did he do? He tried to destroy it.”

“Good gracious God!”
cried Charlotte.

“And others here,” Tom
looked directly at Rachel, “gave up their dreams for the comforts and
conveniences of the dying world. They didn’t mind going along with the
corruption, didn’t give it a thought, as long as they got their own
inducements. They committed crimes against their own spirit. When someone has
to rein in her will and inclinations to conform to what the town wants her to
be . . . who’s the real slave?”

Rachel crossed her arms
and whispered venomously, “You monster!”

“And you, Markham, you
want your own niche of power. It’s not brainpower you want but the power of the
whip. You never cared for schooling because you think intelligence doesn’t
matter. You say you were happy to smash an invention that could free up the
field hands to compete with you for work. Why? Because you’ve held yourself
back; you’ve made yourself unfit to compete. The new age requires brains, not
muscle. Your crime is that you never tried to beat your mind into shape—only
your field hands.”

“I’s right itchin’ to
beat
you
into shape, Yankee!” Markham’s lips curled into a snarl.

Tom pressed on. “In fact,
you’re
all
Markhams. That’s what you’ve become. You’re
all
bullies. Only Markham makes no pretense at being anything more, while you fancy
yourselves as upper class.”