Tesla's Time Travelers

by Tim Black

  Sitting around a long oak table was a Who’s Who of the American Revolution. Rotund John Adams, looking cranky, sat next to his equally surly cousin Samuel Adams, the failed brewer who had organized the Boston Tea Party, and who, Victor thought, might be amused to learn a successful beer now bore his name. Perhaps John Adams, who seemed to have suffered from a need to be loved, would have smiled at the awards his HBO mini-series had garnered—finally vindicated after all those years of being sandwiched between the presidencies of Washington and Jefferson, like a crusty piece of lettuce. The frizzy-haired Ben Franklin, though clearly the oldest of the group, could cross words, if not swords, with men half his age.

  “A word of advice, my fly catcher friend,” Thomas Jefferson whispered to Victor as the two took seats at the far end of the table. “Do not mention Dr. Franklin’s son, William, the governor of New Jersey.”

  “Why is that, Mr. Jefferson?”

  “William is a bastard in more ways than one,” Jefferson quipped.

  Victor searched his memory for what it knew on William Franklin. He had been the boy in the famous painting of Franklin with his kite, but in reality he was a grown man when Franklin did his electricity experiment. Victor knew Benjamin Franklin had an illegitimate son, and that the son wound up as a royal governor of New Jersey, and he and his father didn’t speak to each other for ten years. Certainly, Victor realized, Dr. Franklin would be sensitive to any mention of his Tory son, especially among the Patriots.

  “Jefferson,” Dr. Franklin called. “Come. Sit here beside me. I have a few things to say to you.”

  Jefferson said to Victor. “Follow me, fly catcher.”

  Thomas Paine and John Hancock vacated their chairs for Jefferson and Victor to sit down next to Dr. Franklin.

  “Who is this lad, Jefferson?”

  “Why, he is my fly catcher friend I spoke to you about, Dr. Franklin.”

  As if in on cue, an enormous housefly lit on Dr. Franklin’s nose. He shooed it off and it flew away toward Thomas Jefferson, but Victor snapped it out of the air with a quick hand.

  “Bravo!” Dr. Franklin said. “Does the lad have a wit as quick as his hand, Mr. Jefferson?”

  “He is a bit shy,” Jefferson said in Victor’s defense.

  What do I say to Benjamin Franklin? Victor wondered. Hi, Ben, do you know your face will be on the currency that is used by drug dealers all over the world? The one-hundred-dollar bill? Of course not, Victor told himself. Remember a Franklin axiom. “A penny saved is a penny earned.” Funny, but drug dealers will shout, “Show me the Benjamin’s” for hundred-dollar bills.

  Benjamin Franklin looked at Victor and Victor felt he was being evaluated.

  “What is your name, lad?” Franklin asked.

  “Victor, Dr. Franklin. Victor Bridges.”

  “Are you kin to Cornelia Bridges, the flag maker?”

  “No sir. I am Mr. Greene’s student.”

  “I met Mr. Greene and his students this morning, Dr. Franklin. Mr. Greene is General Greene’s cousin.”

  “Is he now?” Franklin said. Victor sensed a note of skepticism in Franklin’s voice. “What have you to say for yourself, lad?”

  Victor remembered a Franklin saw. He smiled as he delivered it. “A man wrapped up in himself makes a small bundle, Dr. Franklin.”

  “Ha,” Franklin said, and slapped his hand on the table. “Caught with my own epigram. Indeed, the lad’s wit is as quick as his hand. Barmaid, give this lad a tankard of ale.”

  Victor cringed. He couldn’t drink. He’d be suspended from school. Suddenly two figures appeared in his mind—a little white cherub and a little red devil, complete with pitchfork. The cherub cautioned Victor, but the devil stuck his pitchfork in the cherub’s rear end and Victor made no protest. Having an ale with Benjamin Franklin was worth risking a suspension from school. But Franklin wasn’t paying attention to Victor any longer. He was trying to encourage Jefferson, who was saying, “I am not insensible to these mutilations to my writing, Dr. Franklin. They have eviscerated my words, excising my criticism of the king for the slave trade. And they cut half of the last five paragraphs.”

  “You are too verbose, Jefferson,” an eavesdropping John Adams critiqued.

  Benjamin Franklin frowned at Adams, and John Adams said no more. Victor knew that look—it was the look Mr. Greene used in class when he restored order. Victor called the look Mr. Greene’s Darth Vader glare. Benjamin Franklin, like the teacher he was, simply frowned at John Adams as if he were a recalcitrant student.

  “Mr. Jefferson,” Franklin said. “Let me tell you a story…”

  Suddenly the room quieted as Franklin spoke. It was an odd scene, Victor thought. It was as if Franklin was the father and the other Founding Fathers were little boys waiting for a bedtime story from daddy; they were rapt in their attention.

  “When I was a young printer, a friend starting out in the hat-making business wanted a sign for his business. He composed it in these words: ‘John Thompson, hatter makes and sells hats for ready money,’ with a figure of a hat subjoined (added). But he thought he would submit it to his friends for their amendments. The first he showed it to thought the word ‘hatter’ tautologous (redundant), because it was followed by the words ‘makes hats,’ which showed he was a hatter. It was struck out. The next observed that the word ‘makes’ might as well be omitted, because his customers would not care who made the hats… He struck it out. A third said he thought the words ‘for ready money’ were useless, as it was not the custom of the place to sell on credit. Everyone who purchased expected to pay. They were parted with, and the inscription now stood, ‘John Thompson sells hats.’ ‘Sells hats!’ says his next friend. ‘Why, nobody will expect you to give them away. What then is the use of the word?’ It was stricken out, and ‘hats’ followed, as there was one painted on the board. So his inscription was reduced ultimately to ‘John Thompson’ with the figure of a hat subjoined” (p.313, Benjamin Franklin by Walter Isaacson, Simon & Schuster 2003).

  Jefferson led the laughter at Franklin’s anecdote on editing, and Victor laughed along, although he hadn’t caught all the subtlety of Franklin’s advice on editing a document. But he recalled that the Continental Congress did edit the Declaration of Independence thoroughly, and Franklin was the source of “self-evident,” changing Jefferson’s phrase from “we hold these truths to be sacred and undeniable” to the shorter and clearer “we hold these truths to be self-evident,” which echoed down through the ages like the ring tone of the Liberty Bell.

  A young man in a blue militia uniform excused himself and handed Dr. Franklin a note. Franklin scanned it and said to the courier, “No reply is needed. Gentlemen,” he addressed the group. “This lad is a courier. Mr. Rodney is in Chester. He is changing horses. He should be here within two hours. Rodney has ridden all night through a storm from Dover.”

  “Huzzah for Rodney!” shouted Thomas Paine. “Huzzah for Rodney and independence!”

  “Huzzah!” the others shouted.

  “Why is Rodney so important, Mr. Jefferson?” Victor whispered to his host.

  “Well, Victor. We must have unanimous consent of all the colonies for independence, and the Delaware delegation is deadlocked one vote for and one against. Rodney is what they call ‘the swing’ vote—whichever way he votes, Delaware goes, and so do we.”

  How appropriate, Victor thought, remembering a Delaware license plate he once saw, and its motto: “The First State.” But wasn’t that because they were the first state to ratify the U.S. Constitution? Or was it because of Rodney? He’d have to look that up when he got back.

  “And he’s for independence?” Victor asked, already knowing the answer but not wanting to miss a chance to talk with Thomas Jefferson.

  “Yes. Right now he is the key, if the cancer doesn’t kill him.”

  “Cancer?” Victor asked, continuing to play dumb.

  “On the face. Rodney is very sensitive about his appearance. He deigns not to sit for a portra
it because of it.”

  A waitress brought Victor’s dinner on a pewter plate and Benjamin Franklin took time out from a discussion with John Adams to flirt with the young woman, who played along with the septuagenarian as if he were a young man.

  Franklin was, Victor thought, something of a dirty old man.

  “What a waste of effort and time,” Jefferson mused. “The poor maid must climb the steps to bring us our meals; what if the meals could be sent up to our floor without a maid, lifted up so to speak, by pulley perhaps?”

  Victor realized Jefferson was ruminating on a future invention: the dumb waiter he invented for Monticello to send food from the first floor to the second floor, and dirty dishes from the second to the first. Victor was not about to say a word and cause a butterfly to flutter into the future. Instead, he listened to Samuel Adams, a man who seemed to have everyone’s attention when he said, “Men who content themselves with the semblance of truth and words talk much of our obligations to Great Britain for protection. Had she a single eye to our advantage. A nation of shopkeepers are very seldom so disinterested.”

  The others slapped the table with their palms in a form of applause for the Boston Patriot. His cousin John Adams stood up and took the floor. There was something obnoxious about John Adams, Victor thought—he had sort of a chip on his shoulder, and Victor noticed a number of sour faces around the table. But John Adams was undaunted and his lawyer’s voice filled the room more naturally than his cousin’s.

  “The second day of July,” he proclaimed, “will be the most memorable day in the history of America. I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated by succeeding generations as the great anniversary festival. It ought to be commemorated as the day of deliverance, by solemn acts of devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with pomp and parade, with shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires and illumination, from one end of this continent to the other, from this time forward for evermore.”

  Victor watched the sour faces turn to smiles. “Huzzah!” someone shouted, and the others joined in. “Huzzah! Huzzah for Mr. Adams!” It was too bad, in some ways, that we celebrated Independence on the Fourth of July, Victor thought, for John Adams was so impassioned about the second. Adams beamed like he had just been elected class president, Victor thought. He looked like a happy little boy. Even a Founding Father wanted to be loved, Victor realized. What was so different about them, really?

  “To liberty!” Paine shouted.

  “Liberty!” the men shouted as they raised their tankards.

  Victor pretended to sip his ale, but after a taste it was a bit strong and bitter for him. Still, he did not want to alienate Thomas Jefferson, so he faked it as best he could.

  “Jefferson,” Paine shouted from the other end of the table. “I do like so much the way you ended your ‘declaration.’”

  “You are not a delegate, Mr. Paine,” Benjamin Harrison snipped.

  Victor wondered if there were some hard feelings between Harrison and Paine. Perhaps Harrison was envious of Thomas Paine’s celebrity, but from what Victor had read, the Second Continental Congress might not even be considering independence were it not for Thomas Paine’s Common Sense.

  “I am indeed, Mr. Harrison, not a delegate, but like you sir, and everyone at the table, I choose no longer to be a subject, as I have so often said.”

  Harrison smiled at Paine’s remark. “Mr. Paine, you are so right, but every subject needs a verb.”

  “We need an action ‘verb,’ Mr. Harrison,” Paine said. “We must do something. Mr. Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence is, in reality, an ‘explanation of independence,’ a listing of the reasons that we find ourselves at war with Great Britain.”

  “War, sir?” Harrison asked. “Would you call our rebellion ‘war,’ Mr. Paine?”

  “Mr. Harrison. If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it is a duck, sir,” Paine replied.

  I wondered how far that saying went back, Victor mused.

  “The lobster backs spilled our blood at Lexington first,” John Hancock said. “Blood was spilled at Concord and Bunker Hill, Mr. Harrison. Were you from Massachusetts you would not question the use of the word ‘war’ with these red coats. Your fellow Virginian, General Washington, has no illusions about what is happening.”

  Harrison, Victor thought. Two of his descendants would go on to become president, and neither one of them amounted to much. It must have been in their genes.

  Franklin commented next. “I have said it for twenty years, gentlemen. They that give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety. Congress tried with the Olive Branch Petition to come to reconciliation with Great Britain, but Britain rejected our entreaties. Gentlemen, there never was a good war or a bad peace, but we must all hang together or assuredly we shall all hang separately.”

  “Gallows humor, Mr. Franklin?” Thomas Paine quipped.

  “King George would hang us from a Liberty Tree,” Samuel Adams said.

  “Jefferson said it well in his closing remarks, gentlemen,” said Paine. “We pledge to each other our lives, our fortune and our sacred honor. Simply put, gentlemen, if we lose, we are dead men.”

  There was a solemn silence around the table until John Adams spoke:

  “The Revolution was affected before the war commenced,” he said. “The Revolution was in the minds and hearts of the people.”

  “Very good, Mr. Adams,” Benjamin Franklin agreed. “But a revolution is a successful rebellion, and a rebellion is an unsuccessful revolution. Which we will truly have will play out from today onward.”

  Chapter 8

  Minerva was peeved. Victor had traipsed off with Thomas Jefferson and left her with the Anderson twins. Why hadn’t Victor asked her to come along with him? This was so unfair. It was as if she was back at the lunchroom losers’ table at Cassadaga Area High School, although she admitted the food at City Tavern was far beyond any cafeteria cuisine. The fish was fresh and tasty. She had never tasted anything like it in her life. Truly organic food, Minerva thought. No artificial preservatives to clog up one’s arteries.

  “What’s the matter dearie?” the ghost of Mrs. Beard asked Minerva as the Anderson twins excused themselves to visit the outhouse behind the tavern. She floated down into an unoccupied seat.

  “It’s not fair, Mrs. Beard. Mr. Jefferson asked Victor to join him but he didn’t ask me.”

  Mrs. Beard smiled. “Had it been Dr. Franklin, the opposite would have occurred, my dear.”

  “Jefferson is a…” Minerva wanted to say sexist but didn’t because she respected Thomas Jefferson. Mrs. Beard finished her thought:

  “My dear girl, the Founding Fathers were all sexists; a woman had no rights in the 18th century. The Enlightenment was only for men. Men honestly thought women’s brains could not comprehend politics. In my own time it was hardly better, although I could own property, and in my later years I was able to vote. I was forty-four when I first cast a vote in 1920, for when I was born in 1876, our nation’s centennial, women did not have that right. In March of 1776 Abigail Adams wrote her husband John, asking him: ‘Do not put such unlimited power into the hands of the Husbands. Remember all Men would be tyrants if they could.’ But of course John didn’t add ‘all men and women are created equal’—the women at Seneca Falls would do that in 1848. Had they been honest about it in 1776 they would have written, ‘All white male property owners are created equal.’ For black men had no rights and white males without property could not vote.”

  “Mrs. Beard, you are such a cynic.”

  “Who’s the lass speaking to?” said a man at the next table to his companion.

  “Nobody I can see,” the other man said.

  “Think she’s possessed?”

  “A witch maybe?”

  Oops, Minerva thought, I’m drawing attention. She forgot: Only she could see Mrs. Beard.

  “People are watching us,” Minerva whispered to Mrs. Beard.


  “They are watching you, dear, they can’t see me,” Mrs. Beard corrected Minerva.

  But the men turned away with the first acappella notes of a ballad, sung by a young brunette barmaid. The tavern hushed as the girl sang and Mrs. Beard whispered to Minerva that the song was The Banks of the Dee:

  “Twas summer, and softly the breezes were blowing, and sweetly the nightingale sang from the tree.”

  Nightingales were in bushes, not trees, Minerva thought critically, but listened to the rest of the ballad.

  “At the foot of a hill, where the river was flowing,

  I sat myself down on the banks of the Dee.

  “Flow on, lovely Dee, flow on thou sweet river,

  Thy banks, purest stream, shall be dear to me ever,

  For there I gained the affection and favor

  Of Jamie, the glory and pride of the Dee.

  “But now he’s gone from me, and left me thus mourning,

  To quell the proud rebels, for valiant is he;

  But ah! There’s no hope of his speedy returning,

  To wander again on the banks of the Dee.”

  When the waitress finished, a militiaman stood up and began to sing a different song. Hearing the tune, Mrs. Beard identified the piece as The Pennsylvania Song. Other men joined in.

  “We’ll not give up our birthright; our foes shall find us men;

  As good as they, in any shape,

  The British troops shall ken. (recognize)

  Huzza! Brave boys; we’ll beat them

  On any hostile plain;

  For freedom, wives and children dear,

  The battle we’ll maintain…

  “And all the world shall know,

  Americans are free,

  Nor slaves nor cowards we will prove,

  Great Britain soon shall see.”

  “Huzza!” the men in the tavern shouted, and another man began yet another tune that Mrs. Beard quickly identified as On Independence.

  “Come all you brave soldiers, both valiant and free,