Franklin Affair (3 page)

“Wally has made you his literary executor, R,” Paine whispered.

That was not a surprise. Wally had talked to R about it, and R had even discussed the probability with Samantha, his historian fiancée—of sorts—who was away at the moment on her own writing project about John Hancock.

“I'm honored,” R whispered back.

“Another thing Wally did does more than just honor you,” Paine added. “He upped your share of the royalties on
Ben Two
from the current fifty percent to a full hundred percent. As you know, there are already more than three million copies in print, in twenty-three languages, and more to come.”

“That was very generous of Wally,” R said, trying his best to hide his surprise at the news. This was something he had definitely
not
discussed with Wally.

Then Paine reached inside a breast pocket of his suit coat, extracted a white envelope, and handed it to R. “Wally asked that I give this to you upon his death.”

R took the letter and put it in his own coat pocket without looking at it, except to notice the seal. There was a dab of red wax, the size of a quarter, over the pointed part of the envelope flap. Wally was either playing historian games or wanted to make damn sure nobody else read what was inside.

“Brace yourself for seeing Wally tonight, R.” Bill Paine gave a wave and departed before R could comment. Why should he brace himself? He'd seen dead people before.

• • •

Moments later, R was behind a closed door with Elbow Clymer.

Still radiating heat and excitement, Clymer said,”I hereby officially offer you a tenured position at your alma mater, Benjamin Franklin University. This involves a newly created chair and an institute dedicated solely to research on Franklin and named for Wally. The recent new public interest in Ben—
Time
and
Newsweek
magazine covers and all the rest—that will climax with a crescendo in 2006 with the three-hundredth anniversary of his birth, make it a perfect time to establish this institute. Everything you want goes with it. I will personally raise the money to fund whatever research and whatever staff and resources you desire. Write your own ticket, and I will take it at the door and punch it, like a dutiful train conductor.”

A little earlier today on the Metroliner from Washington—now an analogical coincidence of the first order—it had occurred to R that Clymer might make such a pitch. R's long relationship with Wally, the university, the American Revolution, and Franklin scholarship made it a natural. But he had put such thoughts aside for the ninety-minute train ride to concentrate on what he was going to do about Samantha. She was away working on her John Hancock book, but when she returned he was going to have to come to grips with his pre-separation belief that God may not have intended them to be man and wife after all.

“You not only have the university's permission but also its encouragement to appear as a commentator on television,” said Clymer. “If it will make it easier, we will construct a television studio and satellite uplink for you and your colleagues right in your offices. CNN, Fox, MSNBC, and the world will be at your fingertips.”

“I don't do much TV,” R said.

“You will now,” Clymer responded.

R was ready to quote John Gwinnett on historians speaking on television much too often about things they knew much too little about. But this wasn't what really mattered.

“The main thing is, I don't do tenured professorships,” said R. “I don't like the structure, the politics, the malice, the games, the chains, the meetings—”

“But don't forget the unforgettable: the need for a healthy steady income,” said Clymer. “I can assure you that the compensation package we organize will make you very happy.”

R smiled. It was the polite—and expected—thing to do. He could not say to Elbow that the news he had just received from Bill Paine about the
Ben Two
royalties might make it unnecessary for him ever again to do something just for the money.

Elbow Clymer raised his right hand. “Just agree to think about it, R. That's all I ask for now.” He lowered his hand as if signaling a subject change. “That young woman in there who worked for Wally—what's her name?”

“Clara Hopkins.”

“That's a pretty name: old-fashioned, steady. My ex-wife's name is Myrtle. We divorced last year.”

Clymer disappeared and R rejoined the others in the library—to work out the details of what would happen at the striking, monumental, and unforgettable funeral for Wallace Stephen Rush and to admire the legs of the young woman with the pretty name.

• • •

R waited until he was back in his room at the nearby Chestnut Hotel before breaking the wax seal and removing Wally's letter from its envelope.

His was immediately overcome with a feeling of profound sadness. There were three folded pages of lined schoolboy notebook paper, and Wally had clearly tried with much difficulty to keep his writing between the lines. R could feel the hurt, the extreme agony it must have put the old man through for him to do this. Wally's handwriting, once precise, firm, and almost as clear as his typing, was on these pages faint in places, loopy, erratic, and shaky, similar to that found in a sloppy first-grader's penmanship workbook.

There was no date at the top of the first page. Because the writing got progressively worse with each few paragraphs, it was obviously not written in one sitting. R couldn't even imagine how many hours and days of painful writing it must have taken Wally to do it.

R read:

My dear friend:

Forgive the way this looks. I'm embarrassed that I can barely hold a pen in my hand and make it move the way I want. But I had no choice but to do it this way because it could not go through a computer, a tape recorder, or, even more important, a secretary or any other person. Only your eyes, mind, and sensibilities can be exposed to what I have to say.

But before I get to the hard part, I'll bet anything you and my other friends are not doing what I wanted about sending me off to the heavens—or wherever. I'm right, aren't I? People always think they know what is best for the corpse better than the deceased himself. Tell everyone I will come back as Aaron Burr and fire a big fat hole into anyone who screws with my wishes. The big issue for me is the cremation and private service. I want no report in the
Inquirer
that Wally Rush had a huge public funeral and nobody came. Forget Burr. Use Adams instead. Tell them I'll return as John Adams and lecture them to death.

But that is not the purpose of this letter.

As you know, I have left instructions that you be appointed my literary executor. Decline and I'll not only do Adams and Burr, I'll add the deadly weapon of Jefferson in coming after you. Your epitaph would read: “Here lies R. Raymond Taylor, smitten dead by a ghost armed with the self-righteous imperiousness of Thomas Jefferson!”

Yes, it is important for me that you be my executor because I'm not keen on others messing around in my papers for reasons that are certainly well-known and understood by you. But there is much more to it than that.

R, I need you, Ben needs you, and history needs you to do the most important work any historian of the American Revolution could be asked to do, now or at almost any other time. I am not exaggerating.

Something was dropped in my lap several months ago. It was very hot, too hot to tell another soul about. Certainly not anyone on my current staff or in our larger scholarly world. I decided against telling even you until now. As Ben said in one of his Poor Richard maxims: “Three may keep a secret if two of 'em are dead.” In this case, there will be two keeping this secret—and one of 'em, me, is dead.

My secret, now yours and yours alone, concerns twelve handwritten pages that turned up last year. They were found sewn in the lining of an exquisite man's cloak that had been contributed to the Eastern Pennsylvania Museum of Colonial History, a very small institution in Eastville. The cloak was among the perfectly preserved personal effects of a Pennsylvania gentleman of the Revolution and had been recently contributed to the museum by the man's descendants. There is no question that the cloak is an authentic garment of revolutionary American vintage.

In the process of examining the coat for exact dating, the museum people felt, found, and extracted twelve pieces of paper from within the cloak's lining. The paper and the writing appeared to be eighteenth-century, but the words, while in English, made no obvious sense. The sentences were fragmentary; the phrases were disjointed. The only thing they could determine for certain was that Ben was the principal subject of the writings because his name—or obvious references to him—dominated the script. There were also mentions of Washington and Adams, among other founding stalwarts, but because Ben was the main subject the Eastville people asked me for help. Would I try to make heads or tails of this? they asked. I, of course, agreed and spent several hours in Eastville going over the writings. When I finished, I declared the scribblings to contain nothing of importance. I said they seemed to be the diary of someone who was unidentifiable and thus of no historical value. The museum people thanked me, made plans to put the cloak on display, and locked up the papers in a safe, where, as far as I know, they remain out of sight and unstudied further.

What I said to the Eastville museum people was a lie.

Those papers, if I deciphered them correctly in my hurried and difficult state, point to the possibility of treachery and savagery by Ben of a magnitude quite beyond what anyone, even the strongest Franklin haters among the Adams and Jefferson crowds, could have imagined. They appear to be the account of a meeting to consider serious charges against Ben. The accusation, bluntly put, is that he had a woman murdered: the mother of William, the subject of one of your previous professional obsessions. The best I could tell from the notes is that Ben disposed of the woman because she was threatening to go public with her claim of motherhood in a way that would damage Ben's hard-won reputation as a hero of the Revolution, Knowledge, and Mankind.

My lie was motivated by a knee-jerk instinct to protect this reputation. As you know, it has taken years for historians, both serious and popular, to give Ben his due. He is finally coming into his own as an equal to Washington and Jefferson; he is no longer that fat lecher in granny glasses who made up cute little sayings, played with kites in thunderstorms, and lusted after everything in a skirt. All of us Ben folks have been excited about the additional attention to his real accomplishments that should come in 2006, as his 300th birthday is celebrated. Now here was this awful development. Charges about his having been accused of murdering the mother of his illegitimate son would not only rain on his tricentennial parade, they would damage his place in history irreparably. I didn't want that to happen. So I lied.

Then, several weeks ago, the prospect of dying focused my mind—and my professional conscience. I could not go without telling somebody what I had done and ask him to study those papers and the story they tell. History demands it, whatever the truth might do to Ben's place in history.

That, R, must be your only real labor as my literary executor. I have made an adjustment in my will that should help make it possible for you to clear your calendar and make it work for you financally.

I would caution you on the obvious. I might very well have misread those papers. My mind, once among the brightest stars, is now the dimmest of nightlights. Also, the whole thing might be a setup or a hoax perpetrated by the anti-Ben crowd. They tried to turn him into a British spy, don't forget. And there was also the Prophecy. If it had not been for our efforts, there is a good chance that the false and idiotic charge that Ben made an anti-Semitic speech at the Constitutional Convention might have taken on new, maybe permanent, life.

I beg your forgiveness for putting you in such a position. But, as I said, I grew to know I had no choice. The papers must be studied, and you are the only one on the face of this earth who can do it the right way, in a fair, discreet, and credible manner.

I urge you to go about your work in complete secrecy. You don't have to tell Wes Braxton, for instance, why you want to see those papers in his safe. He's the kid in charge of the museum at present. Just tell him I mentioned them to you and there was an outside chance they might relate to your research—something like that. It would be a shame if information about your investigation became public and it then turned out to be baseless. Ben and his tricentennial would be hurt for nothing.

Thank you for doing this, R. I fervently hope that my initial readings and impressions of what is written in the papers are wrong and that Ben continues to soar.

Good luck. And God's speed.

Yours for Ben,

Wally

Wally.
The name was written in the manner of Ben's signature, complete with his ornamental lines below.