Out Through the Attic (3 page)

Billy couldn’t argue. Abigail was a widow with no children. In her absence, the farmhands would enslaved by her neighbors. He’d seen it happen before. The surrounding landowners would swoop in like vultures and pick the place clean.

“Anderson might kill you,” he said quietly.

She stepped up and put her hand on his arm. “Not even Anderson would murder an innocent woman. If the escapees and the
Freedom
aren’t here when he arrives, he has no reason to do anything.”

Billy was trapped, and time was running out. He shook his head, doubt filling him to overflowing.

“Then I’m staying,” he said desperately, his eyes meeting hers.

“You know you can’t,” she said gently. “You’re the only one who can get the
Freedom
up to Evansville. Would you sacrifice all of them,” she asked, nodding towards the pantry, “just to stay here?”

Billy’s heart broke. “No,” he whispered. His shoulders slumped and he stared at the floor.

“Keenan,” Abigail said, turning to the boy. “I need you to do something for me.”

“Anything, Miss Abigail.”

“Take my horse. It’s in the barn. Ride out to every family on the farm and tell them what’s happening. Tell them to be ready to pack up and go if all of this turns to Hell.” She put her hands on the side of his face and started into his eyes. “Can you do that for me?”

“Yes, ma’am!”

“Now get going!” she said. She turned him around and pushed him out the door. She closed it quietly and then turned back to Billy. “I’ll go make sure they have everything down into the tunnel. You go get your things. You might not be able to come back for a while, at least not until this is whole thing settles down.”

“Abigail, I—”

“We haven’t got all night,” she said as she walked towards the pantry.

He closed his mouth and watched her disappear down the stairs.

Billy had to force his legs to move. He headed upstairs to his room and looked around. He didn’t have anything that he really needed. All his memories were tied to the farm, not things that could be put on a shelf. He fought back tears as he threw together some of his clothes and stuffed them into a sack.

He opened the top drawer of his dresser and pulled out a thick stack of bills tied together with a leather shoelace. It was over eight-hundred-dollars. He shoved it into a pocket and headed back down to the kitchen where Abigail was quickly filling a sack with the squeezed lemon halves.

Without looking she said, “They’re all headed down the tunnel.” She cinched the sack up and threw it through the pantry down the stairs. “No evidence,” she added, turning to him.

He nodded his head. “Good thinking.” His voice was almost a whisper.

Abigail stepped up to him and reached into her apron. She pulled out leather billfold thick with money. “Don’t say a word,” she said as she slipped it into his pocket and led him into the pantry. “Just get them out of here, Billy.
No matter what happens
. And promise me you won’t come back unless you hear from me.”

They could hear Anderson’s machines rolling up the road, not more than a quarter mile away.

Billy gulped. They both knew the horrible risk she was taking. Anderson might not care whether she was innocent or not. He might still want to punish a woman who had freed her own slaves.

“I promise,” he said as tears rolled down his cheeks.

“I’ll send a telegram to the Evansville office when it’s safe, and I want you to sink the
Freedom
once you get there. If men like Anderson got their hands on it, they could use it to terrible purpose. You can always build another.” She smiled weakly and then paused, looking up and searching his eyes. “I never could have done all this without you.” She kissed him once on the cheek and pushed him gently through the door.

Her eyes never left his as she closed the door.

Billy turned and walked slowly down the stairs, half of him fighting to rush back and stay with her. But he knew what he had to do.

Tyrell had left him a single lantern the bottom of the stairs, so he picked it up. Stepping into the tunnel, he looked around, remembering those who had passed through. He could almost hear their voices. He broke into a jog, ducking his head under the low support beams and made his way through the tunnel.

He came to an open door, the light of a single lantern flickering beyond. He found them all there, huddled in silence as the river lapped up against the hull of the
Freedom.
There was only a four-foot gap between the outer walls of the boat house and the river, but it was more than they would need.

Stairs rose to his left, topped by a single door, and he could see torchlight flickering faintly through it. The rumble and screech of Anderson’s machines sounded like they were right on top of him.

“Kill the lantern,” Billy said. He turned his own down and threw it into the river. Tyrell shut off the other, and it followed the first with a splash.

“Everything’s onboard, Billy,” Tyler said. “Where’s Miss Abigail?”

“She’s not coming,” he replied, his words hollow and faint.

There were whispers from the dark faces around him.

Billy looked around at the frightened eyes that dotted the darkness. It was time for
The Speech
. He paused and gave them a stern look. “Most of you have heard this, but there are a few who haven’t, so I’m going to say it again. You can’t tell anyone about this. Not about Abigail. Not me. Not that boat over there. None of it. You hear me?” His eyes narrowed, and he glared at them.

They all nodded, their frightened eyes rising and falling in the darkness.

“One peep,” he continued, “one little whisper, and some of the people that have helped us all could end up at the end of a rope or burned to death in their beds. You take this to your graves!” He locked eyes with each of them, forcing a nod. “Now get on board.”

In a silent, single file they shuffled across worn boards and onto the rear deck of the
Freedom
. Her wooden hull rocked slightly, but the long, copper ballast tanks on each side kept her from tipping.

Billy went to the hatch and helped everyone down a short ladder. Once inside, he closed the hatch. Complete darkness folded in on them. He reached out and grabbed a small coal-miner’s hat from a shelf, fumbled with the latch, and lit it with a match from his pocket. Pale, orange light filled the wooden interior.

The cabin twenty-five feet long with support beams criss-crossing every four feet. Wooden benches lined the walls, and his passengers moved to them, sitting down nervously. A thick pedestal bolted to the floor stuck up at the front of the cabin, with shipman’s wheel attached. A spotter scope dropped down from above, and Billy could change the direction it pointed with a small wheel on top of the pedestal. On each side of the wheel were large hand cranks that controlled ballast pumps. Billy could control everything from there.

In the middle of the cabin were two sets of pedals that ran air pumps. Hoses ran up through the middle of the ceiling, with one pulling air in and the other pushing it out. The spotter scope and the hoses would be the only things above the water, and at night they were nearly invisible.

The rear section held the drive mechanism. Billy had scavenged two railway pump cars. A man on each side moved the levers up and down like teeter-totters, which turned the propellers.

Billy had already shown everyone how to operate machinery, and each person would rotate through thirty-minute shifts while he navigated.

“You four,” he said, pointing to the men closest to him. “Get on the levers and start pumping. Tyrell, Jacob. You get on those pedals.”

Everyone took their positions, and with a gentle lurch and a swirl of water along they hull, they set off into the dark Mississippi. Billy quickly turned the ballast valves a few times, and the ship sank several feet beneath the surface with a hiss of air and bubbling water … leaving Abigail’s farm behind.

They travelled at night, hid during the day, and slowly made their way up stream. There were closeable buckets for when they had to relieve themselves, and these were emptied whenever they surfaced, which was as often as possible.

Although there was plenty of conversation amongst his passengers, Billy didn’t say a word during the entire voyage. He just kept thinking about Abigail.

After three days they reached their landing spot. He’d picked it on his first voyage up river. It was a large oak tree atop a low hill that rose from the bank of the Ohio River. It was easy to pick out, even in moonlight. He pulled the
Freedom
up as close to shore as he could and then surfaced, overfilling the tanks so the submersible rode high on the dark water.

“Everyone out,” he said. “Make your way to Evansville and find Doc Horton. He’ll help you get situated.”

Everyone came to Billy, hugging and thanking him. He took the money Abigail had given him and split it up amongst them all. And when they were all ashore, he let the
Freedom
drift to the middle of the river. Then he opened the valves a single turn. He was through the hatch and swimming towards the shore when water closed in around the open hatch. The
Freedom
disappeared beneath the water with a swish and gurgle of bubbling air.

Billy’s tears disappeared in the water that ran down his face as he climbed out of the river, and then he too set off for Evansville.

July 7
th
, 1916

Grandpa leaned his head back against the tree and took a deep breath.

“I read about what happened to her a week later,” he said and put his hand on mine. “Bloody Bill Anderson didn’t take prisoners. I knew it. Abigail knew it. But in those last minutes together we convinced ourselves otherwise.” Grandpa squeezed my hand as tears streamed down his cheeks. “Anderson burned the house down around her.”

All I could do was listen, and I felt my own eyes watering. I wanted to hug him, make him feel better, but he wasn’t finished.

“She was my best friend, you see. And I left her behind … because she told me to. And I’ve never forgiven myself for it.”

I didn’t know what to say, but there was something that didn’t make sense.

“Grandpa,” I started quietly, “if she died in the fire, why is her grave here?”

“When the war was over, Tyrell, Jacob and I took a trip.” Grandpa’s voice changed, and I could hear the hate in him welling up. “We went back and found her grave. Her headstone read, ‘Abigail Watson–Traitor to Missouri.’” Grandpa clenched his fists. “We broke the God damn thing apart, dug her out, and moved her here.”

He was quiet for a while, just staring at the river. Then he sighed, as if the weight of the world had lifted off his shoulders. He opened the picnic basket and pulled out two sandwiches wrapped neatly in butcher paper. Then he pulled out a tall milk bottle filled with pale liquid.

“Lemonade,” he said simply, opening it.

I unwrapped my sandwich and discovered thick slices of bread with layers of peppered bacon in between. I smiled at him and took a bite.

We sat like that for a long time, just eating and drinking as the Ohio slipped by, and after a while his smile reappeared.

“You know, it was your mamma who gave you your name.” He looked at me, searching my eyes again. “The day you were born, when I looked into your bright, green eyes that first time, and they told me your name, I decided to tell you this story. And when I’m gone, I want you to tell the world. It’s
your
story now. Maybe it always was.”

I nodded. “I promise, Grandpa.”

He smiled again, the last bits of sadness gone like leaves on the wind.

“C’mon, Abigail. Let’s go home.”

BR
AINSTO
RM

Covered in sweat and on the verge of screaming, Mathew woke to absolute darkness. A dream, yet another moment of rapture in a lifetime of them, had been given unto him. Most people dream of coworkers … or sleeping with their neighbors … or flying … or being attacked by dogs. Mathew dreamt of three-dimensional deoxyribonucleic acid chains. Visions of DNA came to his dreams in new and miraculous sequences. Aside from his assistant Emily, he’d never told anyone of their source.

At the age of seven, the first dream God gave him had filled him with terror, but this dream was the first to make him question his faith.

The dreams, expressed in chromosomal chains, had come since age seven, even before he knew what DNA was. Mathew had been chosen and told it was his job … his
purpose
to create them. Like so many other nights, Mathew’s most recent dream … his
miracle
 … would touch every human on Earth and the four colonies beyond—and it scared the hell out of him.

In the ninth grade, Mathew’s dreams revealed how to re-grow eyes and limbs from stem cells. Later he was given the five corrections for allergies in humans. He’d received a blueprint for correcting Leukemia and shown the sequence for eradicating Hodgkin lymphoma. Diabetes, Down syndrome, cystic fibrosis: all of them and more had fallen before the dreams of Dr. Mathew Stiggs. The whole world knew his name. He was a genius, a miracle worker; considered by billions to be a savior of the ill, aged and infirm. For ninety-three years Mathew had been shown blueprints to cure humanity and extend life.

In an era of magnificent human technological advances, the notion of religion was one relegated to antiquity and, all-too-frequently, polite ridicule behind hands and backs. For the Mathew, however, God was as tangible as the genetic blueprints given him and as manifest as their impact had been upon all of humanity.

And it was the Yudius Corporation that took Mathew’s miracles and delivered them unto the people of Earth and the colonies on Luna, Mars, Europa and Titan.

“Are you alright, Mathew?” Emily asked, her perfectly synthetic voice filling the room.

“I’m fine, Emily. Thank you.” He rubbed his eyes.

“Another dream?” Caring and concern drifted down upon Mathew from his assistant’s fleshless voice.

Throwing the thermafilm back, Mathew sat up, reflexively steadied himself in the repulsor beams of his bed, and placed his bare feet on the pre-heated, pressure sensitive floor. Lights came on automatically as his feet made contact. Soft light emanating from the seamless white of floor, ceiling, and three walls filled his sleeping chamber. The fourth wall was a glossy black surface that reflected the small room in upon itself, and the white wall opposite was broken only by the thin outline of a door. There were no corners, and the curves where floor, ceiling and wall met combined with the uniform lighting to make the room seem as if it extended into eternity.