Lincoln's Wizard (17 page)

Chapter Thirteen
Visitors

Braxton tried to get a glimpse of Hattie as he and the other men were led away to the mess area, but without success. He didn’t know what to make of her. She seemed sincere, nice even, but then so had Pinkerton.

Pinkerton.

Braxton ground his teeth as his jaw muscles tightened. That man was really starting to get to him. Now Braxton’s ill-supported mission to blow up the railroad bridge made perfect sense. Braxton had known there was no good escape route for himself and his team; he’d seen that when Pinkerton explained the plan to him. He’d known that he would probably end up in Andersonville, but he’d done his duty anyway. He had sat there with the President of the United States watching and agreed to it.

He’d done it for his country, because he believed it was vital to ending the war.

Now he understood. Pinkerton had used him. He was never meant to escape. If it hadn’t been for Air Marshal Sherman, his men would have been captured, too. They would have ended up in Andersonville for sure. None of them had their likeness printed in Confederate newspapers.

Like me.

Braxton suppressed a swear word. Of course he would be sent to Castle Thunder, he was a famous Federal officer. He’d lay money that all those stories about his being the Hero of Parkersburg were spread by Pinkerton to ensure just this result. Pinkerton sent him here to meet Hattie—but why?

She’d said something about a mission.

That can’t be good.

More machinations from Pinkerton no doubt. Hattie had seemed genuinely pleased about it.

That can’t be good either.

Hattie was Pinkerton’s agent, Braxton reminded himself. She was likely to be as slippery and manipulative as her boss. He’d have to be careful around her, and always suspect anything she said.

“How am I supposed to work like that?” he said.

“Sorry?”

Braxton turned to find Owen Dodd standing right behind him in line. The men had been moved to the mess area for lunch.

“Nothing,” Braxton said, looking around quickly to see who might have overheard him other than Dodd. “Just thinking out loud.”

“Oh,” Dodd said, apparently accepting that story. His face suddenly became conspiratorial and he leaned in. “How’d you manage to get that girl to walk with you?” he asked. “She’s got to be the prettiest one, and some of the men says she never gives them the time of day.”

Braxton shrugged.

“I thought I knew her,” he said, being as vague as possible. “Turns out I didn’t, but she felt like a walk so it seemed like a shame to waste the opportunity.”

Dodd looked disappointed. Braxton was beginning to feel uneasy with the young man’s constant questioning.

“Well, at least she walked with you,” Dodd said. “Maybe that means you have a chance with her.”

Sarah’s face came, unbidden to Braxton’s mind. She’d loved to walk with her arm in his and talk for hours. There was an especially pretty spot by the Susquehanna River where …

Braxton stopped himself as the pain flowed over him. It had been more than four years since Sarah’s death and the memories still tore at him. His hand reached for his flask in his hip pocket only to remember there wasn’t one. He’d given it up when Sarah’s death nearly finished him as well.

“Damn,” he muttered.

“Here,” Dodd said, producing a flask from his coat pocket. “I’ve still got a bit.”

Braxton hesitated. He didn’t altogether trust Dodd, but he did need a drink. He took a long pull and shivered as the fiery liquid raced down his throat.

“Much obliged,” he said, passing the flask back to Dodd.

“Anytime,” Dodd said. “There’s a guy in my cell who buys whisky from the Negroes who work here. If you want, I could get you one.”

“I’d like that,” Braxton said. There wouldn’t be anything wrong with that, he told himself. He had a little money, maybe he could get two. He’d just resolved to ask for three when he reached the front of the line and had a bowl of porridge shoved in his hand.

He assumed Dodd would follow him to on open table, but there weren’t any. Braxton squeezed in at one bench and Dodd was forced to take a spot on the far end of the mess.

Just as well
, Braxton thought. He still didn’t trust Dodd, and he’d almost lost his head. The lingering taste of whiskey on his tongue reminded him of the dark days after Sarah’s passing, so he obliterated it with the bland, thin porridge.

He didn’t see Dodd again, and it was almost a relief to be led back to his cell. Between Pinkerton’s machinations and Dodd’s unsettling hero worship, it had been a bad morning. He’d forgotten all about Stan in the shuffle of events. Now he felt a spring in his step at the thought of finishing Stan’s repairs. When the guard opened the door, however, Braxton’s gut tightened and he felt the breath being squeezed from his lungs.

His cell was entirely empty except for his pallet and bucket.

“Stand aside,” a gruff voice said as two Negro porters came around the corner carrying a second pallet.

Braxton moved out of the doorway and they entered his cell, depositing the pallet on the floor where Stan had been.

“You’re getting a cellmate,” the guard said by way of unnecessary explanation.

Braxton bit his lip to keep from yelling. Stan was gone. Probably moved to some other store room or junk pile, maybe buried and helpless like before. Sweat beaded on his forehead and his breathing quickened. He had to do something. Stan was the most important machine on Earth. He couldn’t be left to rot in some Reb scrap yard.

He opened his mouth to speak but shut it again. What could he say? Certainly nothing the guard would believe.

“Inside,” the guard said once the porters had gone.

Braxton entered and slumped down on his pallet. Almost as an afterthought he remembered the ring Pinkerton had given him. Braxton had taken it off when he was working on Stan, an old engineer’s habit—never wear jewelry around machines. He reached down and ran his hand under the edge of the pallet.

No ring.

Quickly he ran his down hand along the edge and gasped with relief as he felt the little band of twisted wire. He extracted it and slipped it on his right hand. He remembered Hattie’s angry look when he told her he’d taken it off. At least now he wouldn’t have to find out how angry she’d be if he lost it.

With the Toks gone he had nothing to do as the sunbeam coming through his little window crawled along the far wall. Braxton tried to relax but his thoughts kept alternating between Hattie and their new mission and the whereabouts of Stan. He wasn’t worried that the Rebs would discover what the Tok really was. They saw him as just another broken Federal machine.

As the time passed, Braxton found himself worrying that Stan would be lonely without him. He had to remind himself that Stan was a Tok, a very sophisticated Tok, but a Tok nonetheless. He wasn’t capable of boredom or loneliness.

Sarah’s smiling face drifted back into his mind. He smiled at the thought of her, standing by the Susquehanna, the sunlight on her hair.

She screamed and grabbed his hand, her grip was tight, but it had been tighter before. She was losing her strength. She was losing …

Stop!

Braxton shoved his fist into his mouth and bit down on his forefinger hard enough to draw blood. He stayed that way until the vision passed.

Dinner arrived but Braxton had no appetite. He set his bowl aside and absently thanked the jailor. For some reason the man was standing by the open door, making no move to lock Braxton in.

“In here,” he said, then stepped back as a man with a knapsack entered.

“Hey, neighbor,” he said, setting down the bag on the new pallet.

“Laurie,” Braxton gasped.

Laurie smiled and dropped down on the pallet after his knapsack.

“I got tired of sleeping in the surgery and thought you might like some company,” he said. “Being the prison doctor has a few privileges.”

Braxton sat there with his mouth open, not knowing what to say. In that moment he both hated and loved his friend.

“I expected more of a welcome,” he said as the guard locked them in.

“Sorry,” Braxton said, forcing a smile. “It’s good to see you.”

“But?”

Braxton shrugged.

“I was having fun with my previous cellmates,” he said.

“They said you were in here alone,” Laurie said, looking around the small room. “Must have been a tight fit.”

Braxton shook his head.

“It was a storeroom,” he explained. “They kept broken Toks in here.”

Laurie threw back his head and laughed.

“What fool locked you in with anything mechanical?” he asked. “I’m surprised you haven’t already built your own army and taken over.”

Despite his melancholy, Braxton chuckled.

“Nothing so grand,” he said. “Toks aren’t much use even when they work. No, I was just seeing what made them tick—if you’ll pardon the expression.”

He considered telling Laurie about Stan but decided against it. Laurie didn’t have much of a head for machinery. He wouldn’t understand what made Stan so wonderful, and Braxton wanted to keep that wonder for himself—at least for now. He’d suffered too many probing questions already, first from Hattie and then from Dodd. He decided to change the subject.

“Are you sure about what you overheard?” Braxton asked. “I mean about an interrogator?”

The smile fled Laurie’s face and he put up his hand, motioning for Braxton to be quiet. He listened for a long moment, then, deciding that the guard had moved on, put his hand down.

“I can’t be sure, I guess,” he said. “But it sure sounded that way, why do you ask?”

“Someone new approached me in the yard today,” Braxton said. “He asked some strange questions and just seemed a little too eager to be my friend. I wondered if he could be a spy.”

Laurie’s face turned dark and he leaned forward, speaking even lower than he had before.

“You didn’t say anything to anyone about this, did you?”

Braxton shook his head.

“Just you.”

“Good,” he said. “Things can get ugly if the prisoners suspect someone of being a spy. The last one managed to
accidentally
fall down some stairs.” Laurie shuddered. “He lingered a week before he died. It wasn’t pretty.”

“I won’t say anything,” Braxton said. “After all, I can’t be sure. He just feels a bit off.”

Laurie sighed and sat back against the wall.

“It’s the war,” he said. “It makes men thugs and villains. I used to think I was fighting for something important, I just can’t seem to remember what it was. Now I’m soaked in blood. Union blood, Rebel blood, it’s all the same.”

“You sound tired, brother,” Braxton said.

Laurie nodded.

“More than you know. Sometimes I just wish it was all over and we could all go home.”

Braxton nodded. The war had gone on almost ten years. It seemed like forever. He missed his father’s little home in Harper’s Ferry and the little town cemetery where his mother and sister and Sarah rested. He hadn’t visited Sarah’s grave for at least two years. It had been too long. He’d promised himself he’d go there, if he ever got back.

“Do you have anything to drink?” he asked Laurie.

Laurie looked startled, but passed over a flask.

“Privileges of my position,” he said. “You sure you want that?”

Braxton unscrewed the cap and held it to his lips before hesitating. Sarah’s death had driven him into a bottle and it had taken months before he crawled back out. Even now, the pain was the same as before, the pain of her loss burned inside him like a brand, but he’d learned that it was a fire no amount of whisky could drown.

He screwed the cap back on and passed it back to Laurie.

“How would you end the war?” he asked as Laurie accepted the flask.

Laurie hesitated, taking a pull from the flask himself before continuing.

“I don’t know,” he said. “I guess it all comes down to the slaves.”

Braxton wasn’t sure what Laurie meant, so he kept his peace. Finally Laurie continued.

“I mean, it’s definitely wrong for one man to hold another in bondage, whether you believe they’re different or not.”

“Are they different?” Braxton asked.

Laurie shook his head and took another drink. “No,” he said. “I’ve operated on Negroes before. Inside they’re just the same as you and me. Same muscles, same guts, same blood.”

“But the South won’t give them up.”

“Their economy depends on cotton and tobacco,” Laurie said. “Those are labor-intensive crops.”

“So the war is necessary, I guess,” Braxton concluded.

“I don’t think so,” Laurie said, suddenly leaning forward. “I mean think about it. You just had a room full of mechanical men in here. If the North and the South would just talk to each other, we could stop this whole thing.”

“You mean replace slaves with Toks?”

“Just so,” Laurie said. “Then the South would have no reason to hold on to the institution of slavery.”

“What about the whole secession thing?” Braxton said. “Isn’t it a bit late to solve these problems? Some of the men in this prison have brothers and kin out there wearing gray.”

“So let the Union break in half,” Laurie said with a shrug. “Once we get the states talking and trading again, some of those hatreds will wither away. We could have peace again.”

It was an attractive thought, but somewhere in the back of Braxton’s mind he heard the words of President Lincoln.
I believe this Union is the best hope for freedom in the world. Maybe the only hope. We have to preserve her, whatever the cost.

Whatever game Pinkerton had been playing, Braxton was sure that Lincoln had been straight with him. Laurie had a good point about being able to solve the South’s agricultural problems, but Lincoln had been right, too. The Union had to be preserved.

“What are you thinking about so hard?” Laurie asked. It had been several minutes since anyone had spoken.

“Just thinking about how to build an agricultural Tok,” he lied. He didn’t want to start an argument right now. Plus, with the technology Stan possessed, creating Toks that could perform complex tasks would be simple. Of course he didn’t really understand how Stan worked, but that was just a matter of time and study.