A Dream of Daring (39 page)
Authors: Gen LaGreca
The horse that Tom had
been riding ran away. The deputy’s steed took off after it. As Jeff tried to
stop it, the frightened animal knocked the manacles out of his hand and
sprinted away. The distracted deputy chased after his horse.
The sheriff’s horse
bucked and threw him. Before it too fled, the animal stomped the ground a few
times in high agitation, while Duran twisted and turned, struggling to avoid
being trampled by panicked hooves.
Tom was the only calm
figure in the scramble. At the start of the commotion, he grabbed the reins of
Ladybug’s horse next to him, held its nose down firmly, and turned the animal
around to spare it the scene that jolted its brethren.
Then he looked up the
hill at the cause of the bedlam. He saw—coming over the top and rolling down
the clover field and heading directly at the men and their animals—his tractor.
Sitting in the driver’s seat, her expression tinged with fear but wild with
exhilaration, was Ladybug.
Tom’s face held the
immense relief of a father reunited with a lost child. As the tractor jaunted
down the hill, its cheerful bounce and loud clangs made it look to him like a
toddler taking its first steps. The new age flashed before him in a
split-second rush of excitement.
But his thrill instantly
turned to fear. The prototype tractor carrying its stunning driver was going
too fast . . . and it
had no brake
.
He watched in mounting
horror as the tractor careened down, swerving from side to side because Ladybug
was unaccustomed to the steering wheel and prey to a device that wasn’t built
to handle steep hills or sudden turns. By driving directly downhill toward the
lawmen, Ladybug caught them off guard and saved Tom and herself from capture.
Now Tom would have to guide her in driving the device, for if she couldn’t keep
the tractor stable and make the turn onto the road on the ridge, she could
tumble down to the creek and be—
The sheriff’s steed had
run away, following the other two horses and the deputy chasing after them.
Duran was left wheezing and pale, his body weakened, his legs unsteady. He
looked as if he had taken a hoof to the abdomen and gotten the wind knocked out
of him. He rose, faltered a few steps, lost his balance, and fell again.
With the lawmen foiled,
Ladybug instinctively tried changing direction to traverse the hill instead of
plunging straight down. She was moving away from Tom, who quickly mounted the
horse he had held onto firmly during the commotion. He moved along the road
they had been taking to town, to meet her as she descended. He shouted
directions to her, trying to guide her through the perils of a terrain that he
himself had never experienced with the tractor.
He worked feverishly to
get Ladybug onto the flat road along the ridge. Once on level ground, they
could safely bring the tractor to a stop, get her onto his horse, and escape
before the lawmen could resume their pursuit. That was his plan. But the
tractor was not obliging.
She obeyed the
instructions he fired at her, steering this way and that, avoiding a boulder, a
hollow, and a sharp step down off the hill. In a spot with a gentler slope, she
maneuvered onto the flat road. He sighed in relief. She had managed to avoid
the drop to the creek.
But because the tractor
was built high off the ground for working unplowed fields, it tended to be
unstable. The bounce down from the hill to the road jerked it off balance. It
teetered to one side on two wheels. The jolt threw Ladybug out of her seat. Her
hair blew wildly and her legs slipped out the side. She was about to be thrown
under the vehicle and run over by the rear wheels.
“Grab the column under
the steering wheel!” Tom yelled.
She managed to swing an
arm around the sturdy column. Then she struggled to pull herself back onto the
seat.
Tom watched in horror as
his benign invention was fast becoming a death trap. He tried to get alongside
Ladybug so he could pull her onto the safety of his horse, but when he came
close to the device, the animal rebelled. It neighed and reared, insisting on
keeping its distance from the blaring motor that was spewing exhaust fumes and
intermittently backfiring. Tom had to fight with the animal simply to remain
behind her.
Just as Ladybug was
trying to hoist herself back on and regain control of the steering wheel, the
tractor came to the fork in the road.
“Steer to the right.
Don’t go down the switchback!” Tom shouted.
The vehicle was drifting
to the left.
“Stay right, on the flat
road. Stay right! Right!”
It was too late. Before
she could change direction, the tractor had swayed onto the jagged switchback
with its steep descent and hairpin turns toward the factory and creek.
He needed to slow her
down. But what happened next did just the opposite. He heard the gears slip
into neutral. Without them engaged and limiting the speed, the tractor began
accelerating dangerously.
He agonized. She needed
to get the engine back into gear to slow it down. But shifting gears on the
downhill acceleration was risky because any abrupt decrease in speed could
catapult her off. Which of the three forward gears would he pick to slow her
down without jolting the device? As these thoughts tumbled on their own wild,
split-second ride through his mind, he decided.
“You need to shift into
intermediate gear to slow down.” He had to yell to overcome the engine sounds
and their distance apart, yet he tried to quell his panic at the situation by
filling his voice with confidence. “Take the turn first. About a full turn of
the wheel.”
He stared with a
scientist’s intensity and a lover’s worry as she maneuvered her first turn. The
wheels squealed with the strain, but she made it—barely—on two of them. She
would have to slow down before the next turn, or the increasing acceleration
would make the maneuver impossible.
“Grab the lever under the
steering wheel on the right. Push it away from you
halfway. . . . With your right foot, depress the clutch
pedal all the way to the floor. . . .” He rapidly fired instructions, taking a
second between each one to let her execute the moves. “Grab the gear shift, the
big stick on your left. Pull it all the way out to the left, then move it
backward. . . .”
Her face was intent as
she listened, watched the road, and glanced down to find the controls.
“Now ease your foot off
the clutch. Easy now!”
He heard the gear engage
and saw the vehicle slow down without jarring.
“Good!”
The next turn went more
smoothly, with Ladybug taking it on all four wheels. “Very good!” he said
encouragingly.
She waved a hand to him in
victory when a bump in the road took all four wheels off the ground. No sooner
did she steady the tractor after that bump than it became airborne again over
another one. The wheels of the wobbling vehicle found the ground as her next
turn approached.
He continued to direct
her. She was handling every obstacle the road put before her. If she could make
it to the bottom of the switchback, then they could slow the device to a halt,
get her on his horse, and race to town. That was his hope. But quickly it was
doused.
Tom glanced behind him to
see a new terror. The sheriff and deputy were back on their horses and racing
down the switchback.
When Ladybug finished her
next turn, she glanced back and saw them too. “Tom!” she screamed. She held the
wheel with a white-knuckled grip.
“I see them. Just keep
driving.” He tried to sound calm as he rapidly searched his mind for a new
plan.
He couldn’t wait for
Ladybug to get to the bottom of the switchback. By then, their pursuers would
overtake them. He would have to snare her
now
. Once again, he tried the
horse. He snapped his whip and dug his heels into the animal to get it to
overtake the invention. But the reluctant beast reared its refusal, and Tom
struggled to avoid being thrown.
If he could get out in
front of the invention, so the horse wouldn’t see the tractor or hear the full
power of its blasts, then, he thought, he could slow down and maneuver next to
her.
He jerked the horse off
the switchback and onto the hillside. He glanced back to see the sheriff and deputy
gaining on them. “I’ll meet you further down,” he told Ladybug.
His new route alongside
the switchback was a shortcut down the hill through the brush. He whizzed
through the uneven ground with the horse’s hooves slipping on the dusty
terrain. He saw Ladybug swerve to avoid an outcrop at the next turn. He heard
the ominous sound of metal scraping against rock and saw a large bolt fly into
the air. It was one of the bolts that fastened the gasoline tank to the
tractor. The tank had rubbed against the rock and was now dangling and about to
fall off. Its cap had loosened. He saw a spark—
Without a moment to
spare, he drove his horse over a dead tree, circled around shrubs and rocks,
then jumped back onto the switchback with the horse now ahead of the device
and, as he had hoped, less disturbed by it. Tom slowed down and eased alongside
of Ladybug, his arm outstretched to give her a hand.
“Jump!” he ordered.
She had apparently not
seen the spark from her seat. Strong-willed and protective of the device that she
had gone to great lengths to rescue, she hesitated. “Can we save it, Tom? Can
we?”
The sheriff and his
deputy appeared behind them, close enough for Tom to see the implacable look on
Duran’s face. The lawman yelled: “Halt now! Stop that thing!”
Duran fired a warning
shot into the sky.
Tom grabbed Ladybug
roughly by the arm and yanked her out of the seat. “Hurry! It’s gonna explode—”
Just then another spark
flashed, this one larger and more menacing. It caught her eyes, and she gasped
in terror.
The sheriff bellowed
behind them, his voice reaching its lowest possible range. “Stop, Tom, or we’ll
shoot!”
Ladybug, now galvanized,
leaped onto the horse, straddled the animal behind Tom, and hung on for her
life.
The lawmen’s guns were
cocked and aimed. Duran yelled to his deputy: “Shoot!”
With one violent kick,
Tom hit the gasoline tank. It spun into the air as his horse streaked away.
The cap flew off the tank
and the gasoline fumes instantly met the engine’s hot air in a torrid dance.
Behind the fugitives, the tractor exploded with the force of a cannon, shaking
the earth and thundering through the air. The blast sent the lawmen hurling off
the road, with their gunshots flying astray. Tom glanced back to see the
tractor in a fireball of flames and behind it a gruesome mass of hooves, tails,
and animal torsos amid twisted arms and legs on human bodies—all tumbling
toward the creek. He heard the men cry out in pain. They were alive, but they
looked too injured to continue their pursuit. He figured they’d be stuck there
for a while before a passing flatboat came along and aided them.
Tom raced the horse
toward town, with Ladybug behind him. On their first ride together, she had
rigorously avoided touching him. On this one, she moved her body and legs flush
against him, wrapped her arms tightly around his waist, and pressed the side of
her face affectionately against his back as one would clutch a rare treasure.
She glanced back at the
explosion with profound sadness. “Tom, your invention! It’s
gone! . . . It’s because of
me
that it’s destroyed.”
“
You
didn’t
destroy it.” He thought of the instability in the design, the lack of brakes,
the slippage of the gears, the loss of control down the hill, the placement of
the gasoline tank. He sighed. There was a lot more work to be done. In a final
farewell, he painfully looked back at the heap of metal charring in the blaze
on the road. His voice heavy with disappointment, he said, “It’s not ready for
the new age yet.” Then he turned to her, and couldn’t help but smile with newfound
hope. “But
we
are!”
She cocked her head to
gaze into his eyes. “Yes,
we are
!”
A change had come over
her, he noticed. The explosive shocks rocking their lives that day had
shattered the wall that hid her from the world and from him. Her eyes squinted
in the sunlight, like someone coming out of a long confinement to experience a
cloudless summer day. She smiled at him with the fearless joy that only freedom
can bring.
A change had come over
him too. After his painful disillusionments with his fellow planters, his
mentor, and the woman he once loved—people blind to the new age who had tried
to destroy him and his work—he had finally found his beautiful defender and
like spirit. He squeezed the arms wrapped tightly around his waist and looked
eagerly to the road ahead.
As the two fugitives
headed toward their future, they laughed—in relief, in triumph, in celebration
of the great promise of their lives. They laughed until the sun-soaked air
around them echoed with the sound of their joy.
Tom and Ladybug escaped
from the South and began their lives anew. They married. They concealed their
identities, stayed abroad for a spell, and when they thought it was safe,
finally settled in Philadelphia, choosing a community known for its tolerance
and strong abolitionist sentiments.
Through furtive letters
and newspaper clippings from the only person in Greenbriar who knew Tom’s
whereabouts—his overseer, Nick—the inventor kept tabs on events there that
affected his and Ladybug’s lives.
He learned that after the
explosion a flatboat had come along to rescue the sheriff and deputy. The
lawmen survived, although they sustained lacerations and broken bones. Fresh
from having his broken leg set, the sheriff hobbled to his office on crutches,
wasting no time in resuming his work on the Barnwell murder case. But he soon
encountered obstacles. When he sought to exhume Leanna Barnwell’s casket to
investigate Tom’s claim about Ladybug’s true identity and free-person status,
the judge, a friend of the Barnwells, denied his request. When the sheriff
tried to have Mrs. Barnwell examined to determine if there was a connection
between a birthmark she allegedly possessed and the one seen on his suspect, he
found that Charlotte had abruptly left town with her daughter on a long journey
abroad and was therefore unavailable for any inspection.
Then two pseudonymous
articles appeared in the local newspapers. One charged that Sheriff Robert
Duran had acted suspiciously in a recent burglary case in which the stolen
goods were never recovered. The other article, through nefarious assertions and
unnamed sources, claimed that Duran had actually recovered the stolen goods and
kept them for himself. There were rumors that the charges against Duran stemmed
from the pen of Rachel’s new fiancé, Nash Nottingham, whom she had placed in
charge of the Crossroads Plantation during her voyage. When she later returned
home, Nash received the prize of her hand, along with the Crossroads as a
wedding present from her mother, a reward he seemed happy to claim with the
currency of his self-respect.
Then came the new local
statute proposed by an official who was another friend of the Barnwells. It
required that a free person of color accused of a crime receive the same legal
treatment as a slave, with no exceptions. The reason such a statute would be
introduced, the arguments against it, and a review of whether it was even
compatible with the state’s criminal code were matters that no one raised,
debated, or cared to know.
Then came the day when
Sheriff Robert Duran vanished without a trace. He left a simple note on his
desk announcing his resignation, and next to it, his badge with Lady Justice.
He had not polished the silver badge of late, so the figure on it had become
tarnished. That day the file on the Barnwell murder case, including all notes
on the current suspect the sheriff was pursuing and the man aiding her,
vanished with him. Amid the disarray caused by the sheriff’s vacancy and the
missing records, as well as by the rapidly escalating tensions on the eve of
the war with the North, the case was pushed to the sidelines—to Rachel
Barnwell’s disappointment.
When the Barnwell women
returned from their trip, a meek and melancholy Charlotte accepted, and perhaps
even welcomed, the loss of urgency about the case. But she was overshadowed by
her daughter, who prodded the officials, insisting that her father’s killer be
caught. However, Rachel too hesitated after receiving an anonymous letter that
threatened to make public her mother’s extramarital affair and secret daughter
if she continued pursuing the case. Rachel knew, but couldn’t prove, that the
letter came from the man who had disappeared from the town and from her life
but who still eerily watched her moves, like a phantom that could strike
unexpectedly, then vaporize again. With the success of his escape, which
thwarted her plan for her sister, she knew she was taking a chance in trying to
outwit him. In the end, her fear of scandal overrode the desire to see her
sister captured and hanged, no matter how satisfying the latter would have
been. She dropped the matter, and the case went cold.
With the aid of an
attorney, Tom sold his bank and plantation, dissolving all of his ties to Greenbriar
and Bayou Redbird. Nick and his brothers purchased Indigo Springs. They were
able to afford the plantation because Tom, refusing to trade in human beings,
placed no price on the slaves but only on the land, which lowered the cost
substantially. In return, Nick agreed to implement the new work system that Tom
had outlined with the bondsmen before his departure, giving them greater
freedom and personal reward for their labor.
Nick also kept the
plantation’s school running. As a replacement for its dedicated founder and
first teacher, he hired a fine instructor with the courage to accept a noble
assignment in disregard of a cruel and unjust law: Kate Markham.
From a story in a
Greenbriar newspaper that Nick sent him, Tom learned the fate of her brother,
Bret. Once free from the moral admonitions of his employer, Polly Barnwell, and
of his sister, Kate, and further emboldened by his success at arson, Bret
Markham crossed the line into a life of crime. His new occupation provided an
outlet for his escalating resentment for anyone who had achieved more than he
had and who was therefore, in his eyes, responsible for his misfortunes. From
the news story, Tom learned that Markham had fled to Mississippi, where he
staged a series of burglaries, always targeting the homes of the rich. During
one of them, he was fatally shot. The man who lived by violence died by it too.
Years later, Tom heard
from someone else. Through Nick, the inventor received a letter sent to him at
Indigo Springs. It came from a man who had promised to write but who had
apparently postponed doing so until he had overcome the struggles and hardships
brought on by his escape and by the great war that soon followed. He waited
until his misfortune was past and success was his new condition. The writer
included a photograph of himself standing in front of a store in Cincinnati
that looked remarkably similar to a shop in Paris, the one from the book in
Tom’s plantation library that the writer’s teacher had shown him. Tom and
Ladybug cheered wildly at the picture of a smiling man in a tall chef’s hat
standing under a sign that read “Jerome’s Pastries.” Tom wasn’t surprised that
Jerome’s sharp wits and indomitable will had prevailed in his battle with the
two-headed snake he’d once feared.
Imbued with the spirit of
the new age, Tom and Ladybug created their own new existence. After the war,
they returned to the endeavors they yearned to pursue. Their lives, their work,
and their love for each other ignited their days with the bright spark of
happiness.
They opened a school
where Ladybug taught children of all races and honed the real motor of the new
age: the free, inquiring minds of the young. She taught her students the mental
skills needed to become masters of themselves, preparing them to be independent,
self-reliant, and ready to flourish in the industry, progress, and freedom of a
new age.
Tom continued his work as
an inventor and opened a manufacturing plant that designed and fabricated
machines of every kind for the growing industrial age. He kept a laboratory
where he developed innovations for machines and devices that played an
important role in the burgeoning industrial sector, and he accumulated many
patents. His passion was always the small motor vehicle for farming and
transportation with the revolutionary engine that would power the modern age.
He continued his work on the new device and made many contributions toward its
development. However, he came to realized that the tractor was still in its
infancy. Its incredible complexities would require a few more decades of work
and the efforts of other inventors as well. Eventually, it did indeed change
the world and amass fortunes for those involved with its launch and wide-scale
use, as Tom had foreseen.
As the Civil War ended
the scourge of slavery and the modern age began, Tom and Ladybug stood at the
crossroads of history. They witnessed the spectacular era of man’s intellect
unleashed, of his ability to grasp science, to realize the immense practical
applications of its principles, and to create breathtaking industries. They saw
a new age of power, not of man harnessing other men but of man harnessing the
great potential of nature through science to vastly improve human life. They
saw a peaceful, prosperous world of commerce emerge, with abundant food and a
growing array of innovative products readily available on a grand scale. They
saw man at his finest: passionate, creative, brilliant, and free. And they saw
his great mental gifts and productive capacity bestow on the world an
unimaginable progress.
But Tom and Ladybug also
began to see ominous signs of the old age creeping in. Although the immense
evil of slavery had been eradicated, the forces driving the old era stubbornly
persisted. Those forces, they realized, hadn’t originated in the Old South, nor
would they die with it. Since humans had first appeared, those forces had
ruled. Now they were eager to gain a footing in a new world that had for a time
risen above them. And there were troubling signs that they would succeed.
Man had made himself
wings to fly across the heavens, but like Icarus of the old legend, he came too
close to the sun, daring to roam in the province of the gods. Icarus had soared
exultantly up and up, paying no heed to any limits on his flight, and then the
gods had melted his wings and dropped him into the sea.
Like Icarus, the people
of the new age soon found the grand sphere of their flight shrinking. More and
more, new masters and overseers emerged to pull them down. The rulers and
subjects took on different forms, but the struggle remained the same as it had
always been. The men of the new age saw the fierce independence of their will,
the sweeping range of their actions, and the abundant fruits of their efforts
slip into the hands of new overlords.
The new players, Tom
realized, were remarkably similar to the characters he thought he had left
behind in the dying age.
He saw the new Nash
Nottinghams, who wanted to expend no effort but merely to tap into the efforts
of others to support their life of comfort. Indolence, incompetence, and
privilege were not just the province of the old aristocracy, Tom observed, but
the goal of a fresh crop of Nashes of various social and economic groups. These
modern Nashes were all those who were trying to get someone else to pay for their
particular needs, and this time finding a virtually unlimited new revenue
stream in the public till.
Tom saw the new Ted
Coopers, whose pragmatic goals superseded any concern for moral standards in
their dealings with others. The new Coopers didn’t have plantations that used
forced labor, but they had other businesses, causes, and interests for which
they sought special privileges that they couldn’t obtain through free commerce
and voluntary interactions. As the original Cooper did before them, they tried
to elect politicians like Wiley Barnwell in order to enact laws and regulations
that favored them, to the detriment of others. Political pull replaced free
trade and competition as their enterprise.
Tom saw the new Wiley
Barnwells emerge, the leaders who tried to put the friendly face of goodness on
the baseness of ruling others. These new Barnwells didn’t seek to control
slaves in order to obtain their labor but instead sought to control citizens in
order to obtain their political allegiance. They lured people away from the
glory of being masters of themselves with the great opiate of security. They
painted a sparkling new age of unprecedented opportunity as a house of horrors,
fraught with peril, where men were helpless if guided by their own intelligence
and efforts. Tom heard the new Barnwells sounding just like the old senator
from Greenbriar when they declared that their power over their subjects sprang
from noble intentions, that it was for the citizens’ own good, that their
charges were the little people who couldn’t care for themselves and needed
leaders to look after them. Tom saw these modern masters revel in their
newfound positions of power and nurture at all costs the dependence of others
that they were creating.
Tom saw the new Bret
Markhams arise in the modern world, men who had no interest in cultivating
their minds but who wanted to make their mark on the world through fists,
whips, and guns. Instead of beating slaves in a field, he saw these new
Markhams become leaders of nations, introducing violence on a grand scale, with
the worst of mankind ruling the best, with the men who burn libraries ruling
those who read and write the books that fill them.
Tom saw too the more
sophisticated versions of Markham, who would never view themselves as related
to such an unsavory creature as the old overseer, yet they were filled with the
same resentment and envy toward those who had achieved more than they had.
These new Markhams spent their time not on plantations scorning their employers
but in intellectual circles scorning the producers. Tom heard them using
high-sounding words, but what he saw was Markham’s old sneer when they attacked
and denigrated the productive and successful. These new Markhams didn’t find it
necessary to burn the houses of those they envied; instead, they only had to
take the possessions out of them to give away to those who didn’t earn them.
While Markham the overseer made no higher claims for his urges to cut the rich
down to size, the refined Markhams hailed their similar desires as a new form
of justice.
Tom saw the new Charlotte
and Rachel Barnwells also emerge in the modern age. They gathered in the press,
at political parties, in literary circles, and at the universities. They were
the new elite who didn’t question the people in power but accepted and backed
them in order to enjoy the benefits and prestige of being part of the favored
class.
