Bridgetown, Issue #1: Arrival (19 page)

His edict to create this place had been
either a stroke of masterful foresight, or just the beginnings of
the kind of paranoia rich men who lived on hills occasionally
succumbed to. Wayne couldn't be sure yet which one it was. He
supposed, with a wry smile, he'd be able to tell if he ever started
collecting his piss in jars.

He'd decided there was a need for such a
place three years earlier. At the time, the ranch house was still
under construction, and the factory was just a twinkle in Wayne's
eye. But Wayne was amassing his fortune on wristwatches and radios.
It was the radio tower that had first attracted Black's
attention.

Wayne opened a drawer beneath his workbench
and pulled out a black lockbox. He opened it with a separate key,
and pulled out the yellowing paper inside. Telegrams, and letters,
addressed to him.

September 23, 1894

Mr. Wayne Cole:

No doubt by now you have found the site
where your palace is being erected marked with the symbol of an
hourglass. I have instructed that these marks be left at your home.
This is to be taken as evidence that I speak the truth when I say
that the Lotus Boys are all around you.

It was easy enough to do. By your actions
and your collusion with the forces of "law" in Bridgetown, you are
turning its people against you. You have taken from them, and yet
you threaten to cause much, much greater harm than they can even
conceive of.

As I have made very clear in past
correspondence, your intention to bring foreign technology to the
people of this time is setting the world down a path towards war. I
know of what I speak, for I know of the world you come from. I know
you that all your life prior to your arrival here, you lived under
the specter of nuclear war with Russia. You cannot think I am mad,
or an apocalyptic fanatic. I have proven I am aware of time beyond
this one.

Your actions pose great risk for all living
and all yet born in this world. A crisis of human tragedy on a
scale unimaginable. You must reconsider your actions. You must heed
my words.

Or I will be forced to wipe you from
history, for the greater good of Man.

The letter did not include an attribution,
but it didn't need to. It was obvious who had sent it.

Wayne allowed a momentary lapse in his
resolve.

Was Black right?

Using deductive reasoning and logic, Wayne
could assemble a rough biography of Black. No man could see the
future, but Wayne could not deny this place did allow for the
possibility of travel into the past. Black, by way of his referring
to events in Wayne's time, surely had been a fellow twentieth
century castaway. Black likely had the same uneasy feeling about
changing the past that Susanna had once had, and it was this that
had driven him to strike up a vendetta against Wayne. A primitive
fear of the unknown, mixed with and heightened by jealousy over
Wayne's wealth.

Wayne knew he wasn't changing the past for
personal glory. He was accelerating enlightenment. He was bringing
a clarity to the world that might even mean the Cold War, and its
related struggles, would never occur. If anything, Wayne was
improving the future.

His stomach growled.

Moral confidence now reasserted, Wayne folded
the telegram and put it back in its box with the others. He put the
lockbox away under the workbench, and walked back to towards the
ladder. With one last look at the bunker, he switched off the
lights and began the climb back up.

He covered the secret entrance and walked
back to the house. The sky was dimming, now a deep purple with
stars beginning to poke through the veil of light.

He went in the side entrance, landing in the
kitchen.

"Martha, I'm going to go ahead and get dinner
started myself. I feel like working with my hands tonight," he
announced. She must not have heard him—probably bathing W.J. No
matter. Wayne got to work. He went into the linen closet and pulled
out a checkered white-and-red tablecloth.

Wayne understood that in the history of
American domesticity, few objects had been as central, or as
overlooked, as the humble tablecloth. Its role was both aesthetic
and functional. It protected a heirloom table's porous oak surface
from red wine spills. It spruced up what might otherwise be a drab
setting with a splash of color and pattern, easily updated to
reflect the season. And it was a symbol. The act of spreading the
tablecloth was a ritual sacrament, and the one who performed this
task, the one who smoothed out the wrinkles and checked all sides
for an even overhang, was the cantor of a holy communion between
Man and Bread. Hence, he chose to set the table himself that
evening, his intention to demonstrate sincere regret to
Susanna.

He could not have her resenting him. Wayne
missed her. He'd missed the unburdened love between them for some
time now. It was an intimacy that had been borne out of a shared
secret knowledge of a world only they knew about.

Things hadn't been the same since Jesse
returned. Susanna now compared every action Wayne made against the
unrealistic ideal that her seventeen-year-old self had held about
Jesse. And he feared this would not only push her away from him,
but draw her closer to his brother.

He did not want to be accusatory. He would
not cause a scene. He wanted to show her, to demonstrate to her,
that he was more than an out of touch, coldly calculating
businessman. That he was, instead, a Husband Who Cared. So he made
dinner, set the table, lit the candles, and awaited her
arrival.

She always came home at seven o'clock.

6:55.
He heard the familiar sound of her car pulling into the
driveway, a few minutes early, perfectly in keeping with her
character. She was so...efficient. That was sexy. He listened for
her footsteps as she walked to the side entrance and, with the
jangle of her keys, let herself in.

She was warm, tired, and hungry. The aroma of
a full-bodied spaghetti sauce hit her nose. Real cuisine was
something they had brought with them to Bridgetown. Any meal that
wasn't just some combination of steak, potatoes, and corn was a
godsend.

He heard her hurry her pace as she walked to
the kitchen.

Wayne was there when she arrived, an
expectant glow in his eyes. "I made your favorite," he said,
beaming.

"Oh, come on, where's Martha?"

"No, no, Martha didn't make this. I mean, the
recipe for the sauce is hers, but I wanted to make a meal for
us."

"What about W.J.?"

"She's washing him up."

All she allowed out was, "Hmm."

Wayne plucked a dark bottle off the
countertop and presented it to her with a bit of flourish. "The
house red, m'dam?"

"I'll just have water, thanks."

Wayne wouldn't be so easily abated. "So how
did things go today?"

"Oh, you know, just another
day in the salt mines," Susanna said with a disarming sigh.
"Deciding what color the drapes should be. It's just all
so
mentally
taxing."

Wayne made himself chuckle. He had to work
his way out of this. He couldn't survive the whole dinner dodging
her knives. "Well, I was giving more thought to our discussion
about taking a trip soon, once things settle down some," he said.
"If you're really serious about it I can have a departure date set
up."

"I don't know, Wayne. I might be too busy
rearranging furniture or passing out on the fainting couch."

Wayne sighed, and rested his palms on the
table. "Come on, Susanna, I'm trying."

"Not hard enough," she shot back.

"Is it because he's back?"

There was silence in the kitchen for a long
moment.

"You took away what I've been working towards
ever since we arrived, Wayne. Not Jesse."

Wayne shook his head. "You've been acting
differently. Like you want some reason to be angry with me, some
justification for closing yourself off to me."

Susanna threw her hands up in the air. "That
is such bullshit! And what are you driving at, anyway? Either
accuse me of something or admit it's ridiculous."

"It's not ridiculous at all. History is
history, Susanna."

"Yeah, well, history changes. You of all
people should know that." Sudden realization washed over her face.
"You told Jesse to leave, didn't you?"

Wayne curled up his face. "What? That's
outrageous. He's my brother."

"Yeah, well, he got the message without you
having to say anything. If his body turns up in a ditch, it'll be
your fault."

Susanna got up to leave.

"Where are you going?" Wayne demanded.

"I'm not hungry after all," she said, neither
stopping nor turning.

"I'm sorry."

That got her to stop, at least. Still, she
didn't turn to face him. "Look, am I getting my job back or
not?"

Wayne looked at the floor. He said
nothing.

Susanna made it beyond the threshold of the
kitchen and to the staircase before Wayne blurted out, "He's not in
a ditch."

"Then where is he?"

"I think he's with them."

Susanna came down the stairs, and stopped in
the doorway. "He's with who?"

"Black. The Lotus Boys."

"Why the hell would he do that?"

"You're going to get caught in the middle of
this thing, Susanna. I want you to be ready. There's a war coming.
A war for Bridgetown."

Susanna took this in with a small nod. Then
she walked away, and went back up the stairs to their room.
"Whatever," she said.

Wayne put his hand to his chin, and rubbed
his sprouting five o'clock shadow. He walked back to the table, and
began to eat his spaghetti in silence.

* * *

"Next stop, Chicago!"

The conductor' yell only momentarily broke
Jesse's nigh-religious awe at the vista that lay beyond the train
car's window: The skyline of late nineteenth-century Chicago.

Jesse wasn't sure what a big city in 1897
should look like. As best as he could tell, Cole Co.'s innovations,
like the telephone and the radio, had yet to fully penetrate the
nation's way of life. He had seen no other radio towers during his
three-day train ride through the West, and this particular train
was certainly not afforded any amenities of modern living.

So it was with no small amount of marvel that
Jesse drank in the immense scale and splendor of the city before
him. Structures of steel and concrete shot high into the sky,
buildings that put most of the architecture of even Jesse's modern
Los Angeles to shame.

The train crossed a utility bridge and
approached Grand Central Station. It came to a halt, its massive
brake pads screeching. Passengers began to disembark with the
alacrity of chickens cooped up for too long and suddenly let loose.
Jesse was more measured. He could only take it all in one step at a
time. He didn't have to struggle with any big suitcases; all of his
essentials for this business trip were in a single nap sack.

When he stepped off the train onto the
platform, he was immediately hit with a peculiar odor. It was a
combination of urine, brine, machine oil, and rotting meat. The
scent of the city.

Perhaps hoping to distract from this
olfactory assault, Chicago had commissioned one hell of a spectacle
for its train station. The rail platforms were housed inside a
tremendous, arched train shed, a greenhouse of glass and steel.
Jesse exited the platform into the cool graces of the station
terminal. Its architects had erected a chamber of marble and flora,
with Roman columns that shot up to the thirty-foot ceiling. There
was something aspirational about the architecture, a kind of civic
yearning for a greatness just out of reach, isolated here in
granite. The mood was only exacerbated by how few people Jesse saw
walking the halls of the terminal. It seemed to him the station's
makers had overbuilt, expecting crowds that never came.

He sat on one of the benches and allowed
himself to feel small in the presence of the massive chamber. He
was tired. He found it next to impossible to sleep on that train,
and the trip had taken three days and two nights.

At times over the course of his
odyssey—mostly when it got too hot, or the bench seat too
unforgiving against his sore backside—the wisdom of his plan had
eluded him. Why seek out a movie camera in this time of minute-long
carnival novelties? His plan to make a propaganda film and drive
the people of Bridgetown against Wayne was a long shot, to be sure.
Why not do something more direct?

He told himself, each time the question had
arisen in his mind, that it was because Wayne was his brother, and
Jesse had to do what he could to find a peaceful solution to this
situation. Like one nation leveraging economic sanctions against
another, it was a way to stave off a more violent confrontation
between the Lotus Boys and Wayne's company.

Deep down, though, something else lingered. A
strangely self-satisfied sense that, if Wayne was going to play to
his own strengths to get fame and fortune in this land, well, Jesse
could do the same.

A little boy ran through the station hall
chasing a shaggy-looking dog, leash dangling behind him. Jesse
smiled, and realized his desire to get to work had overcome his
weariness. He got up on his feet and walked to the the ticket
seller's booth.

"Excuse me, could you tell me how to get to
this address?" Jesse handed a torn-off piece of paper to the young
man behind the counter. On it was an address that Black had turned
up for him.

The worker thought about this for a moment,
and pulled out him a map to the city. "Best give a look at this
map, then," the boy said. "Yours for a penny."

Jesse dug out a copper coin and wordlessly
dropped it in the boy's palm. He took the map, walked over to the
nearest bench, and sat down. He parsed the map for his point of
interest, and began charting a route.