Brookland (64 page)

The sun was nearly set, and Prue did not want any of her neighbors—particularly Will Severn—to see her sitting alone in the cemetery, waiting for dark; but she tried not to distract herself worrying about this,
and to formulate the question she had come to ask. “Would you think it rash of me . . .” she said, looking down at her father's grave and feeling foolish. “Would you consider it a colossal mistake,” she said, “to risk everything you worked for, in service of this bridge?” She cleared her throat as if she might go on; but there was nothing more to say. Her whole head immediately flooded with tears, as she imagined her father raining down blame upon her, though he had not been a reproachful man, or at least not to his eldest daughter. Had he been there to advise her, he would have counseled caution; but he would likely have been tickled at the idea of finding his Prue a bridge architect.

Damn the eyes of every man who said I couldn't train ye
, she could almost hear him saying, with a slight chuckle. It would have been like him to forget his own ambivalence.

She sat and watched as the shadows obscured their names, then the very forms of the stones. When it was dark, she picked her way back to the fence and set out along the road toward home. She felt as though she had received an answer, although she knew she had not.

Abiah hadn't held supper for her. Tem was in the midst of gesticulating toward Ben with her fork, but stopped midsentence when Prue shut the door behind her. “Where were you?” Tem asked, without accusation. The small windows were open, and the twitter of insects came in from outdoors.

“I went to the graveyard,” Prue said. She couldn't tell from anyone's expression if Ben had told her sisters of their earlier discussion. “I wanted to see Mother and Father.” Pearl drew her lips tight together, as if she had already tried this experiment and seen it fail. “I have business to discuss with you.”

Ben said, “Why don't you first have some supper. Abiah made pork and salsify.”

Abiah immediately stood, fixed her a savory-smelling plate, and brought her a cup of cider. Prue was hungry, and relieved Tem hadn't mocked her for having gone to the graveyard, but she didn't think she could wait until she'd finished eating to speak with them. She took a few bites, then set her fork down and said, “Tem, Pearl. Has Ben spoken to you of the bridge's finances?”

Pearl shook her head, and Tem said, “Only in the most general terms.”

His expression was pleading; he must have thought she should wait until they were sure how bad their situation was. But Tem and Pearl were not his sisters. “We have spent all the state's money, and everything we raised; and although I can pay for it from my own funds a brief while, I think we must all consider the possibility of taking out a mortgage on the house, lands, and distillery.”

She half expected Tem to swear at her or pick up her flatware and throw it, and half recognized the thought as proof of the way she undervalued this sister, too. Tem brushed absently at the table with her fingers while she appeared to give the matter sincere consideration; Pearl kept her pencil in its hasp and looked off toward the fire. Tem said, “You'll write to Albany before you do any such thing?”

“Of course,” Ben said. “Though we can't be certain what he'll say—Jay left office, you know, and we've Mr. Clinton again now.”

“I know my politics. Did you vote for him?” Tem asked, her face somber.

“Indeed; I think he did a fine job previously. I shall write him this evening, full of compliments, and post the letter from New York tomorrow”

“We have the money from Ben's house, and we can use our own funds until some word from the state arrives. The mortgage is still only a possibility,” Prue said to her, “but I couldn't sleep tonight if I hadn't spoken to you of it.”

Tem continued wiping at the table. “I suppose I have no intrinsic disagreement with the notion. My only fear is that, as of today, if your bridge should fail, we would still have our distillery. What if we should lose both?”

Prue said, “Neither Ben nor I believe the bridge is in danger of failing, only of costing more than we'd reckoned and taking longer to build. We would buy shares in it with the money from the mortgage; thus the business would be safe.” Prue wished she felt so assured in her own heart.

Tem reached her hand out for Pearl, who was still gazing into the fire. “What do you think?” she asked.

Pearl took out her pencil, and wrote,
It worgs me, but I am sure I do'n't understand such Things as well as the rest of you
.

Tem arched her eyebrows at her, but did not respond. After a long
pause, she said, “Well, Pearl will support your decision, and it doesn't really matter what I think. You can mortgage the works without my permission.”

Prue would have found the conversation easier had Tem been explicitly angry; her restraint made Prue's heart ache. “But you see we would prefer not to,” she said.

Tem nodded. “Perhaps Governor Clinton will choose to spare you the dilemma.”

Ben said, “I sincerely hope.”

Prue felt a flicker of anger toward him for not helping her to build a stronger case. He watched her warily, as if he knew he'd done something amiss, but wasn't certain what.

Pearl held a note up to Prue that read,
But what if it did fail? What then?

“It's nearly impossible,” Prue said, “but I don't know”

Pearl widened her eyes in surprise.

“How can I say, Pearl? We should have to go elsewhere, I imagine; we could not remain here. But Ben's skills would support us until Tem and I could found another distillery.”

Pearl shook her head no and wrote,
It is too horrible to think on. All Father
^s
Dreams lie here;—he work'd his whole Life for it
.

“I know,” Prue said. She thought her two sisters appeared as like each other as ever they had. Their narrow faces and close-set eyes might have been a mirror and its twin, both showing Prue a mixture of faith and fear. Their father had left Prue the management of all his estate to look after them. If, due to the accidents of their nature, they could or would not go out into other families, he had assured her the means to keep them properly in the family of their birth. “I assure you I will not dishonor his memory,” she said.

Abiah took hold of the conversation and turned it to household affairs. Prue was relieved to let the more difficult topic go, and saddened she had not been able to make peace with it. Though they all retired at the usual hour, Prue lay awake much of the night; and as Ben burrowed beneath his pillow, she listened to Tem thrashing about in her bed across the hall. Prue arose with the sun's first rays, dressed, brushed her hair, and sat down at the desk to read the letter Ben had written Governor Clinton the evening before.

It was long and artful. He gave his warm approval for the governor's
performance in his previous terms, and said he had been most impressed by Clinton's actions since once again taking up the mantle of office. He told him the people of Brooklyn were considering naming a street in their new district in his honor—which was, thus far, only the talk of the barroom, though by no means a lie; and he expressed his desire to make the august gentleman's acquaintance. Only after paying such compliments—bald, Prue thought, but serviceable—did he detail the cost of timber, and of having the men work slowly and with care. He stressed that the bridge had not, in a season and a half of building, cost a single life, and that he hoped to continue in the same fashion until New York State had a bridge on its hands; but that he would require more funds before the end of the year, were the bridge to continue. He had promised to post the letter before work even commenced on the New York lever that morning, so it could reach its destination as quickly as possible. There was nothing more she could ask of him.

While the house was still quiet, Prue went downstairs. From the kitchen, she could hear both Pearl and Abiah beginning to stir in their beds. She went out into the yard and heard the chickens gabbling in their coop. It was a fresh, clear morning, and there was as yet little traffic on the river as she walked down Joralemon's Lane to the mill yard and northward to the bridge. Three fishing boats were headed out toward the bay. She slipped the rope from atop the paling fence and drew open the gate.

The ramp leading up to the bridge was not the stately thing it would become, but a utilitarian construction of stone and timber solely for the use of the men, materials, and the crane. It had no guardrails, and neither did the advancing lever. Prue kept well back from the edge as she climbed upward toward the bright blue sky laced with tufted clouds.

The bridge carried the sweet scent of young wood and the sharp odor of pitch; and all the tools were neatly stowed in their crates beside two huge spools of Schermerhorn rope. A red-billed tern sat preening atop the crane, and called “kik-kik-kik” to her, perhaps to see if she might offer food. The bridge seemed broader than the Jamaica Turnpike, especially as the sides of the roadway simply trailed off toward the blue-gray water.

Already the Brooklyn lever extended more than a quarter its proposed distance. It did not yet sweep majestically over the bustling center of the
straits, and there were no tall ships to soar over at this hour, but Prue felt happy to be able to walk upon it. When she was up on the bridge during the workday, all her thoughts were for order, accuracy, and the safety of the men. At that moment, she could marvel like a visitor on a grand tour at seeing the land and the water from such a prospect. Modesty prevented her ever outwardly using words such as
magnificent
to describe the work they were accomplishing; but only such a word could convey the sense of awe and grandeur she felt as she stood out in the fresh breeze, watching the tern take flight. The protruding stub of the New York arm beckoned from across the water, anchored in its pyramid. Prue thought it impossible something so beautiful, and so well under way, should ever fail for want of money.

Ben posted his letter that morning, and in the afternoon Prue crossed the river to go to the bank with him, formally to purchase a share in the bridge. With the money, they'd be able to pay the workers for much of the summer and stave off their worries till later. She stopped to visit the New York construction before boarding the ferry home, and as Ben returned to his work, she once more found herself in an attitude of awe as she viewed the pyramid from its base. Its proportions were harmonious with those of the bridge as a whole, but up close it seemed large enough to hold a nation's seat of government. It rose purposefully from the ground and, as it pointed skyward, seemed almost to glow, so well burnished was its surface. The ramp led through the splendid arch in its center, and that afternoon the arch framed some woolly clouds in a bright patch of clear blue sky. From the ground she watched Ben shout to the crane's operators to prepare to turn the hulk ninety degrees, toward the middle of the straits. Rather than disturb him, she continued on to Mr. Fischer's boat.

The weeks waiting for Albany's reply resembled any others, outwardly. The distillery kept on about its business, and on every day free from rain, the bridge's two arms continued to stretch toward each other. The men had been at the work long enough by then to have an easy rhythm with it, and as they moved farther toward the middle of the straits, the work grew less grueling day by day—the bridge was much thinner at its apex than at its two bases, so the timbers the men worked with grew progressively smaller, lighter, and easier to manage. After a time, the cranes nearly began to seem superfluous, given the size of the members they hoisted. Prue could see the bridge's growth from one day
to the next. At home, however, she felt ill at ease. Pearl appeared anxious about the family's security; and Tem, Prue thought, was not so much worried about the prospect of a mortgage as angry that the decision was not her own to make. She therefore had little to say, and she began to spend more time at the Liberty Tavern. Ben, who had little tolerance for such disharmony, also began spending more of his evenings out, at the Twin Tankards; and Abiah did not want to insert herself into family difficulties. Prue believed even her relations with Isaiah had gone brittle, as he had spoken to Patience of his intention to help with the bridgeworks and she had opposed him fiercely. She would not exchange a word with Pearl at market or meet Prue's eye at church. As a result, if Prue asked Isaiah about anything but casks, firewood, or barges, he would scratch his wrist or glance down at the floor before he responded. She knew he did not do this on purpose to discomfit her, but each time it happened, a small flare of jealousy and unease shot up in her chest, and only with the fiercest concentration could she squelch it.

At last, in mid-August, Governor Clinton's letter arrived. The postman had brought it to Isaiah in the countinghouse, and Isaiah had shouted to Prue through the stillhouse window as he ran up to the New Ferry to carry it across to Ben. Prue left the stillhouse in Jens Luquer's care and followed Isaiah out to Fischer's landing. “Did you open it?” she asked.

“Of course not,” he said. “That's why you keep me on.” He smiled at her for what seemed the first time in months.

“We shouldn't both leave the works,” she said, though her heart yearned for the letter in the same way it yearned for the bridge.

“Jens will do fine,” Isaiah said. He squinted out at the fleet little boat coming toward them. “Tem can manage for an hour.” He paid both their fares, and as they sat side by side on the damp wooden seat, he put his arm around her shoulders. “Don't worry so,” he said. “I'm certain it's good news.”

Prue had seen it only briefly before he'd stowed it in his pocket, but could deduce nothing from its appearance. “I hope you're correct,” she said, and rested her head on his shoulder, where she kept it until they landed at Catherine Street.