by Alex Myers
“I can tell you this bit of insight. The Industrialists who were at your inauguration: J.P. Morgan, Rockefeller, and the like will whole heartedly support you and your policies if you would hold off on antitrust legislation. They have agreed to abide by the Equal Employment Opportunity Act, which prohibits discrimination against race, religion, color, gender, or national origin. And this is not only to be followed in the workplace, but in schools, housing, everywhere.”
“I like it a lot,” President Douglass said.
“Here.” Jack grabbed a piece of paper off a desk and wrote on it with a pencil. “Here, you can have it in writing.”
“I’ll take this,” he said, absorbing the meaning of the words, “and with the help of those businessmen, who together, employ nearly half the American workforce, I will make it the law of the land.”
“President Douglass, it’s been my experience that as long as people are working and the economy is doing well, they don’t really care what’s going on in Washington.”
“Have you made a choice for vice president?”
“Yes, a civil rights advocate, the Senate Minority Leader from Indiana, Benjamin Harrison. His grandfather was president. I talked to him with President Arthur and he was our choice for secretary of state. I think I will call upon Robbie Todd Lincoln to fill that position, if he will do it.”
“I know of both men and their reputations are impeccable,” Jack said.
“There’s a place for you in my administration if you’ll take it.”
Jack looked up at the president, and then seemed to look past him for a time without answering.
President Douglass continued, “Jack, you have done as much as anyone for the plight of the Negro and even the Native American people. I have in mind a new cabinet post I would like to create: ‘Human Interests and Health’.”
“That is such an honor, sir. I’m just not sure I’m going to stick around.”
Pinkerton, Douglas, even Roosevelt raised a confused eyebrow. “Stick around? Are you not from Virginia—Norfolk as I seem to remember?” Douglas asked. “The train ride is two hours, by car three and a half.”
“That is where I’m from, but I’m not sure I will be staying here in the United States. Christmas is only a day away. I’ll know more in a couple of days and give you an answer, sir.”
“Fair enough,” President Douglass said. “Gentlemen, we must be on our way.”
“Mr. President, I’m going to stay behind. I’d like to speak to Mr. Riggs alone,” Allan Pinkerton said.
The president, Roosevelt, and the Secret Service agent left and Pinkerton studied Jack. “What do you mean you might be leaving?”
“I have one chance to go back and that’s tomorrow night. At midnight on Christmas Eve, I need to be standing in an empty field in Norfolk, Virginia. I only have one opportunity to go back to my own time.”
“You would leave your wife and friends? You even have a daughter here. Just think of all the good you could do, the lives that could be saved, the suffering that could be avoided, the destinies that would be brightened. I’m just astounded you would leave Frances, don’t you love her?”
“Yes, I do, maybe more than ever. I might have screwed things up. I might have ruined my best shot at a second chance.”
“While it may be too late in reality, it’s never too late to try.”
“I don’t know when she’ll come out of this coma, if she will come out and if she does, if she’ll have me. I don’t think I could stay in this world if she wasn’t in it. It would be too painful.”
“I don’t think things are that dire. I talked to her after I talked to you the other day right before the inauguration, she was hurt, probably more confused though, but there was no question how much she loved you.”
“I hope you’re right, Pink. My whole life hinges on whether or not I’m in that field tomorrow night.”
CHAPTER 32
“You’re out of breath, are you okay?” Robbie asked. Sam was bent over, his hands on his knees. He was breathing heavily.
“I just came back from Penn Station. Jack is on a train headed for Norfolk.”
“Penn Station? You mean Grand Central Depot?”
“No, Penn Station, it’s now open. They could never run trains through the tunnel because of all the smoke. Now they run electric trains through the tunnel under the Hudson River.”
“When you said goodbye to me this morning, you said you were driving to Hartford?”
“I was going to drive but the concierge here at the hotel said that the roads were packed. It’s only an hour and a half train ride so I thought I would leave my car here. While I was waiting for my train, I saw Jack leaving on the Norfolk Express.”
“I thought he was going to spend the holidays with you and your family?” Robbie asked.
“And he gave me the impression he was going to spend it with you and your fiancé at the Sanger’s,” Sam said.
“You don’t think he’s going back to the future do you?” Robbie asked.
“Who’s going back?” A woman’s voice asked.
Sam and Robbie stood with their mouths agape. They slowly turned around and said nearly in unison, “Frances?”
“You two are acting like you just saw a ghost,” Frances said smiling.
“It’s not that we thought you were a ghost. I think we’re both surprised to see you up and about,” Sam said.
“I feel fantastic. I feel better than I’ve felt in years.”
“Look at her Sam, she looks ten years younger.”
Sam realized he still had his hat on and quickly tucked it under his arm. “Make that twenty years younger and I’ll concur. She looks younger than you.”
Frances stretched the way a person does when they have a good night’s sleep. “What day is it?”
“It’s Christmas Eve,” Robbie said.
Frances looked around forlornly and asked, “Where’s Jack?”
“We are pretty sure he absconded himself on the noon train to Norfolk,” Sam said.
“And why would he be going there?” She asked.
“According to Jack, when he traveled back in time this time it wasn’t like last time,” Robbie said sheepishly. He looked to Sam for help.
“This time he called it a…” Sam hesitated.
“A one-way trip,” Robbie filled in.
“A one-way trip. Something about not enough energy, I don’t know—something technical and twenty-first century. The bottom line is that he only has one chance to go back and that’s tonight in Norfolk.”
“Go back? Go back to get stuff and come back here?” Frances asked.
“I don’t think so—I think go back and stay back,” Robbie didn’t look happy having to explain Jack’s actions again. “He told Allan Pinkerton that he thought he had ruined his chances with you.”
“He said it would be too painful here without you,” Sam said.
“Why, that’s ridiculous,” Her young, blemish free skin turned scarlet.
“Yeah, right, that’s why it caught us by such surprise.” Robbie stopped talking and just looked at Frances, “Wow, you really do look a lot younger.”
Frances glanced around the walls for a mirror. She walked to a window and looked at her reflection. She felt around her mouth, her eyes, her forehead. She pinched the small waddle around her chin and her fingers kept coming together without grabbing skin. “I can’t see a thing, someone find me a mirror.”
Robbie and Sam started searching around the empty second-floor corridor.
“Oh, you two are too slow,” she said, taking the stairs at the end of the corridor two steps at a time.
“Wait,” they said as they chased after her.
They caught up to her on the first floor. “You probably shouldn’t be out of bed,” Sam said
Dr. Lister came out of the room. “What is the commotion?”
“Frances just ran down the stairs,” Robbie said as he passed the doctor.
“Frances?” Dr. Lister sai
d to an empty hallway and followed everyone to the first floor.
Frances was standing by the desk when a man came out of the room holding a small mirror. “I’m sorry, it’s not much. We don’t have any women working here.”
“I’ll forgive you,” Frances said, reaching for the mirror. “For not having women working here and also assuming that only a woman would care to see her own reflection. Holy smokes, what has happened to me?” She asked as she saw the flawless, youthful, reflection in the small mirror. She looked at one side, then the other, high, low, and then placed the mirror down. “Excuse me gentlemen,” she said and felt her breasts with both hands. “Wow, it’s like I’m a girl again.” Seeing Dr. Lister for the first time she asked, “What has happened to me?”
“A miracle as far as I can tell,” Dr. Lister said with his hand over his mouth and walking around her in clear astonishment.
“Do you mean the way she looks or the fact that she’s up and around?” Robbie asked.
“Both.” Dr. Lister said. “Both.”
“It was something Jack gave you in his blood to fix your gunshot wound,” Robbie said.
“Let me see your wound?” Dr. Lister asked.
She raised her blouse, pulled her bandages away from her stomach, and then pulled more.
“Look here—this is what is left of her stitches,” Dr. Lister said, dropping small thread fragments to the ground. He turned her around and looked at the larger exit wound on her back. He rubbed his finger over it. “Amazing,” he said and pulled her bandage off. “It’s completely healed and look at her, she looks like a woman twenty-five years old.”
“Hooray!” Frances said and jumped in the air. “Oh my, I haven’t done that in years.”
“Should she be doing that?” Sam asked the doctor.
“With a miraculous recovery externally, I’m assuming the inside has healed as well.” Dr. Lister put a thermometer in Frances’ mouth.
“Wee ga ta ge sop Ja.” Frances said.
“What did she say?” Sam asked.
Dr. Lister removed the thermometer from her mouth. “I said, we’ve got to go stop Jack.”
“She’s running a little hot, 99.9 degrees, but she has been at that temperature for two days, that might be the new normal,” Dr. Lister said.
Sam pulled out his pocket watch. “It’s two o’clock. Even if we were on the train right now, it still takes ten hours to get from New York to Norfolk. It takes fifteen hours to drive by car.”
“About the only thing that could get us there in time is taking a plane, and flying is totally out of the question,” Robbie said.
“Why is it out of the question?” Sam asked.
“Well, first and foremost, we don’t have a plane.”
“Edison does,” Sam said. “It holds four people too.”
It’ll be dark in three hours, there’s no way we can fly at night,” Robbie said.
Sam thought for a moment, wiggling his giant mustache. “Could you sail a boat there in the dark?”
“Sure, just keep a good compass reading and head from one lighthouse to the next. I’ve made this trip so often I know all the lighthouses by heart.”
“Then we can fly from lighthouse to lighthouse. There’s a full moon and we’ve got a compass and an altimeter.”
“Why don’t we call my dad?” Robbie asked.
“Well, we certainly can do that too,” Sam said.
“I don’t want him to go,” Frances said. “The only way we can stop him is for us to be there.”
“Come on, Robbie, I need you to spot those lighthouses,” Sam said
“Okay, but I want to call my dad first.”
“And I’ll call Edison.”
“And I’ll go get my coat…” Then looking down and seeing that she was only wearing pajamas Frances said, “and some clothes too.”
CHAPTER 33
They were on a private airfield south of Staten Island near Perth Amboy, New Jersey. This was the closest airstrip to Edison’s Menlo Park. The airfield was extremely well maintained but practically deserted, being shutdown already for Christmas. Thomas Alva Edison was protectively standing in front of his airplane. It had twin red engines, wooden propellers, and stretched gray fabric over a metal frame. The body was wide and boxy. There were very few four-seater airplanes and even fewer that had this kind of payload. It was a prototype of a model he soon planned to mass-produce. Emblazoned across the side in blue block letters were the words ‘Edison Air’.
“It’s nearly four o’clock, this is going to be cutting it close,” Sam said.
“How long will it take to get there?” Frances asked.
“This plane flies about one hundred miles per hour, doesn’t it Tom?” Sam Clemens asked.
“Just don’t let anything happen to it,” Edison said, ignoring the question, and then he muttered under his breath, “I probably need to have my head examined for this.”
“Ah Tom, don’t be so damn serious. Sure, we broke your cathode tube, but I wasn’t driving it at the time. I’ll be a little more careful when my own hide is on the line.” Sam said, checking the ailerons.
Edison ran his hand over the gray-coated fabric, almost caressing it. “You’ve got nearly seven hours flying time in fuel, and it’s a four hour trip in ideal conditions—the weather looks perfect.” Even though America had been using the metric system for over a decade, for reasons unknown, aviation still used English as their only language, and US customary units as its measuring system.
“I just got off the phone with the US Weather Bureau and they say there’s a nor’easter brewing and it’s going to hit the Virginia coast in the next eight hours,” Robbie said.
“Then let’s get on our way and get there. You’re not backing out on me are you?” Sam asked Robbie.
“I just wanted to let you know what you’re getting yourself into,” Robbie said.
“Bah humbug,” Sam said, clucking. “That seems like the perfect epithet from Charles Dickens, it being Christmas Eve and all.”
The temperature was almost fifty degrees and the afternoon sun was starting to take on a golden glow. There wasn’t a cloud and the blue of the sky was starting to darken, become richer, saturate. It held possibilities.
Edison stood to the side of the plane and watched the loading process like a father would watch a daughter going on a prom date. “Just be careful—I don’t want a scratch on it.”
Sam had a satchel full of good folding maps and Robbie had several ocean navigation maps. Sam also had a handheld telescope and a mysterious large bowie knife. They were wearing their heaviest winter apparel. Frances had a buffalo skin blanket wrapped around her that Robbie had insisted she bring even though it was warm, especially for Christmas Eve. Later that night, flying up a couple a thousand feet or more the temperature might be forty or fifty degrees colder, plus they had no idea what was going to happen with the weather. The temperature in the plane could be in the twenties, but more than likely, the teens.
They finished their preflight, bid farewell, and took off for Virginia at five o’ clock, and they had seven hours before midnight and the time travel event—a whole eight hours before the bad weather was supposed to hit.
“I have a five mile per hour headwind,” Sam said once he leveled off.
“Is that a bad thing?” Frances asked from the backseat.
“No, it will just increase our airspeed to one hundred five miles per hour and that means our groundspeed will be one hundred.”
They were heading due east into the Atlantic Ocean south of Long Island. The first lighthouse they saw was the Great Beds Light in Raritan Bay. Robbie consulted his map. “It’s a red light that’s on for six seconds and off for six seconds.”
Flying in the late afternoon near dusk, the flashing red strobe on the white conical tower could easily be seen. The air was silky smooth and there was hardly a ripple on the water. Boat traffic, except for the few sailors trying to put in before Christmas Eve, was almost absent. Down below, brig
ht clusters of houses crowded the shoreline, immaculate and brimming with manicured lawns, each elbowing in for the best view of the sea. The turquoise sky brimmed with gold radiance.
“That’s Romer Shoal on the left and Sandy Hook on the right,” Robbie said. “You’ll want to go south of Sandy Hook. The Navasink Light should be coming up and once you get to it, you’ll turn hard south and we’ll follow the coastline. This is pilotage navigation.”
Sam hadn’t said a word since they were airborne. He gripped the wheel with both hands, sat forward in his seat, strained against his shoulder straps, and stared unblinking out the front windscreen.
“What a perfect night for flying,” Frances said. Her rear seat on the right side of the plane gave her an unobstructed view of the coast. They still had sun to fly, but the ground was becoming enveloped in darkness and lights started to pop on everywhere.
“So we just fly from light to light?” Frances asked.
“That’s the theory in the best case scenario,” Sam said.
“How high are we?” Frances asked.
“About 2300 feet—we get much higher and it will really get cold.”
“Look, there’s the Navasink Light,” Robbie said pointing. “The next one will be thirty-eight miles away. Once we get to Assateague Island, we’ll be seventy-four miles from the next light. There’s practically no ground lights in that stretch either. There are very few people living on the eastern shore of Virginia.”
“How will we navigate?”
“By taking a compass bearing and following the shoreline,” Sam said.
“There’s not a cloud in the sky,” Frances said, leaning forward between the two men and looking out the windshield.
“Let’s hope it stays that way. The weather bureau says the wind will pick up around Ocean City,” Robbie said.
The truth was that the weather changed way before then. By the time they reached Little Egg Harbor near Atlantic City, the wind had increased to thirty miles per hour and the whitecaps were visible way out beyond the breakers.