Brookland (39 page)

“We've plenty at home. Don't take from the samples.”

Tem swallowed her second draught and said, “It tastes better, the more of it I drink.”

Prue raised a cloud of dust off the next batch's test cask and turned in the spigot. Their father had designed the mechanism to work like a drill, and had given a similar one to Joe Loosely, who still used it in his tavern. Prue wondered where they would get another if ever it broke.

“I've been thinking,” Tem said, “it might be time to quit experimenting on the receipt.”

“But the experimentation is my delight,” Prue said.

“Yes, and what makes you indispensable to the operation of this distillery.” She went over to the water skin on the wall and doused the beaker, splashing her dirty boots as well. “If I'm to manage things without you, it would be better to have a formula I can follow blindly.”

“Well, or we need to train up a second rectifier.”

Tem looked at Prue expectantly and handed back the beaker.

“Simon Dufresne is sending us a grandnephew Perhaps he'll show talent for it.”

“There's no way to predict that. Furthermore, if we make only a single variety, we'll turn a better profit. We won't always be in search of interesting herbs, or cursing if the deer get them from our garden.”

Prue thought the next batch had a faint stink. “Does this smell off to you?” she asked.

Tem bent her head to it, and her short tail slipped forward over her shoulder. “Cherries?” she asked. She flipped through the notes on its distillation.

“No, Tem, it's turned.”

“Then let's tell Isaiah to lower its price and have done with it.” She reached again for the spigot, then stopped herself.

“I'm not certain I see why we need to turn a better profit,” Prue said. “I think we're doing very well as it is.”

Tem patted the top of the cask. She wasn't superstitious, but the gesture
had a placating air. “We are; but if you intend to build a bridge, we'll need a fair bit of money squirreled away to keep the works off Joe's auction block.” She wasn't smiling.

“Joe would never—”

“He'd not have a choice.” She tucked the tasting vessel into her belt. Prue plucked it out again and left it on the nearest cask. “Are we done here?” Tem asked. “I am not saying I think the worst will come. Merely that I think it wise to prepare.”

“I'm certain you're right,” Prue said. “Though I think the project, being for the public good, would be entitled to a certain amount of public money.”

“We don't yet know. I think you should consider simplifying what happens in the rectifying house. It's up to you, of course.” She blew out the torch on the wall and ducked under the low storeroom door as their father would have done, though she was in no actual danger of banging her head. “Lovely evening.”

“Indeed,” Prue said. Owen was finishing up, sweeping detritus from the brewhouse into the yard. “And I will think it through.”

A swift black boat, manned by a burly oarsman, was skimming across the water toward Butcher's Wharf. Prue said, “I wonder if that's the new ferry.”

Tem took a few paces toward the retaining wall and said, “It shan't be my business if it is.”

Prue wondered why her sister had to think so ill of Mr. Fischer; but she soon marshaled her mind back around to Tem's suggestion. This would be much of what she needed to consider as she and Pearl began building their representation of the bridge on the assembly hall floor. To change the manner in which she rectified Winship Daughters gin would be to change something fundamental about the business. Her father had taught her to value equally a fine product and her satisfaction in creating it. This was why he had always allowed the ingredients to vary: because he considered creating a balanced, harmonious flavor the crowning joy of making gin, and if he had once settled on a recipe, he would have forfeited that happiness ever after. It was Prue's great pleasure in the work, as well; and her chief pride, as it required her to have both an innate facility for the work and the dedication to cultivate it. Yet Tem was correct about the benefits of simplifying
the process. It would save a good deal of worry, but at the expense of such joy, Prue was not certain she thought it advisable.

Though news of yellow fever once again came from Manhattan, and despite her own immediate dilemma of rectifying, Prue became engrossed in building the model. To distill gin and keep the works in good order required her full advertence to detail, yet she could not lose herself in it as she could in chiseling out one side of a piece of wood so it would hold securely to the span's central rails. Such a task required exactness of both mind and hand, and she often found herself surprised, when the noon bell rang, that hours had gone by in what might have been either minutes or weeks. She and Pearl worked well together, in a companionable silence broken by occasional discussions, fits of laughter, or sudden sprints to stretch their legs and shake out their aching hands. Together they built the model's platform base; they mixed pints of mortar to secure shards of stone into the general shape of the abutments, then affixed to these the iron rails to support the roadway. They used a small bow saw, wood file, and plane to shape the six-inch-long “timbers” in the necessary stepped fashion to face the sides of the bridge. They proofed the planks of the roadway against the weather in pine pitch, whose acrid odor sent them both to the door every few minutes. The wood itself smelled wonderful, as if they were working in a heaven of balsam sachets; and though it required care to measure all the angles, lengths, and distances time and again, and precision to drive in the square nails without marring the surrounding wood, both Pearl and Prue took to the work. The days were punctuated only by occasional visits from Tem, Isaiah, and Ben, and sporadic distillery business to which Prue had to see. Only when she left the assembly room did she notice how callused her fingers were.

The bridge's levers began to protrude from their abutments as she had imagined they would. The two main rails stuck almost straight out from the stone to begin with. Upon them Prue and Pearl constructed the well-trussed roadway, and from it hung the facing for the sides of the bridge, which they completed a few inches at a time. Prue's theory had been that the bridge would support itself during construction, as building would begin at the thick, weight-bearing ends of the levers and continue, foot by foot, out toward their graceful tips until they met
midstream. As Pearl worked on what represented Brooklyn and Prue on New York, the hypothesis began to seem correct; though had the span been broader, she knew it would have been a delicate business to get the arms to meet exactly as planned. The model's miniature timbers lay back, one atop the other, toward their base, as a fish's scales lie flat toward its tail. She could not yet say, of course, that the principle would hold for something a few hundred times the scale; but that it should suffice for something seventeen feet in length seemed a start. After all, the whole thing might have collapsed immediately, if bridges could not be built upon such a plan. That the model appeared sound was a place to begin. Next she would see how it bore up under weights and stresses, and if necessary, she would emend the thrust of the levers or their thickness at the zenith or base ends. She might well revise the theory of construction before commencing a larger facsimile, which would represent at least a bit more truly the strengths and weaknesses of an actual bridge.

By the time Mr. Fischer opened his ferry that July, the model was complete. Prue was delighted that it appeared to function, but perhaps more thrilled at its beauty. Its shape was simple and pleasing to the eye; the pitch gave a dark cast to the wood, but its natural reddish gold color shone through. Though there was nothing beneath the bridge but the simple base to which it was anchored, she could imagine how lovely it would be soaring above the water.

After pacing around it a moment, Ben said, “It does seem sound.” Then he walked to its middle, stepped up onto the most delicate part of the arch, and began to jump up and down.

Pearl sucked her breath in over her teeth, while Prue cried out, “What are you doing?”

“You can't mean to tell me the finished structure won't support the weight of two hundred fifty men?” Ben asked.

“Yes, but it will have proper foundations. And not be held together with pins the size of sewing needles. You can't judge the strength of a bridge by the strength of its model.”

Ben continued to jump at the bridge's zenith, a foot and a half off the ground. Prue kept expecting the arc to flatten under the force of his falling weight, but the structure held. “I don't know, love. I'd say it's doing well thus far. Our next task, of course,
must
be to break it.”

Pearl took out her pencil and wrote a plaintive
WHY?

“Because there's no better way to determine how to make it cohere.”

Pearl shot her sister a glance of annoyance, indicating, Prue thought, that she understood Ben was correct, and deplored the notion anyway.

“Yes,” he said. “We'll stack it with weights; we'll invite the little Luquers to have at it; we'll leave it out for the wind, rain, and birds, and we'll pitch salt water at it, to see how it fares.” As they both remained unconvinced, he said, “It'll be a holiday, I promise.”

“Perhaps,” Prue said, “we might show it to our neighbors before we destroy it. If they have no interest in pursuing the idea, there'll be no need to go on and ruin it.”

Ben hopped off to the floor. Pearl wrote,
I agree
. Ben said, “Ah, you only want to save the thing from being jumped upon.” He continued to walk around it. “Have I told you, Miss Prue, I think it magnificent? I've seen bridges in my travels, but none so fine as this.”

Prue was relieved he hadn't shattered it. “I think we should call a meeting of every landowner in Brooklyn, show them this representation and the drawing, and see if they'd stand behind it if it went any further.”

& what of New-Yrk?
Pearl wrote.

“No need to address them, if our neighbors say nay. If they approve it, New York will have all the more reason to do so.”

“A fine plan,” Ben said. “And it'll let your model live another week or two.”

Prue could not deny her sentimental attachment to the thing. It was the literal representation of her dream, and she and her sister had built it with their own hands. It was no less natural to wish it to survive than it had been for Patience to hope her baby would outgrow its colic. Prue determined to call the meeting as soon as she could, for it would be agony to wait to hear what her neighbors thought.

T
here were two practical matters to attend to, however, before Prue could make a public presentation of the bridge. The first was the unwieldiness of Pearl's elevation, which Prue could not imagine placing on view in its current state. When she and Pearl had attempted to hold it up for Tem, it had been almost impossible to keep upright; and if they were to lay it flat, it would likely be besmirched by a passing boot. Prue therefore asked Jean and Scipio to mount two thick dowels on sturdy wooden bases, crown them with simple finials, and paint them black. Prue and Pearl then glued each short end of the elevation along the shaft of a dowel. The whole drawing could still be rolled in upon itself, like a scroll, but when unfurled, could stand in a great shallow arc on its two feet. They were pleased with this solution for both its practicality and its aesthetics. The black bases and finials anchored the ends of the drawing as surely as the abutments anchored the ends of the bridge; and both sisters thought the drawing appeared more monumental in this fashion than when it had lain on the floor.

The second matter was of greater delicacy: how best to present the plan, particularly in New York and Albany, with regard to its authorship. In Brooklyn, people counted it ordinary enough that Tem and Prue ran their distillery. If, when their father had begun to train Prue, some of the neighbors had sniggered, the quality of the gin Winship Daughters produced had long since put to rest any lingering doubts. When Prue dealt with her customers, suppliers, and Mr. Timothy Stover at the Bank of New-York, she did not feel she could have been treated with greater respect
had she been a man. And had she been required to visit Albany with some grievance regarding the distillery, she expected the gentlemen of that august body would receive her petition fairly.

A bridge architect, however, was another thing. Though it had been years since any of the neighbors had twitted her about her britches, she believed some of them might cavil at the prospect. She could only imagine how New York's aldermen, or the state assembly itself, might respond. “Brookland is a backwater; they have their own ways,” she could picture them remarking as they puffed on their cigars. She did not think it would stand so singular and expensive a proposition in good stead to be the brainchild of a woman.