by S. T. Joshi
Willie’s eyes ache, and his head pounds. Too much whiskey. Too little whiskey.
Hattie clenches his elbow and says, “Don’t worry. I’ll get what you need.”
Willie needs whiskey and she knows it, and he should be man enough to feed his own family, shouldn’t he? He’s such a failure.Born into the Protectors, no escape from it, a son does what his father does in these parts. Paid nothing, but allowed to livein the Machine’s building, this is the way of the Protector.Willie had no right to marry Hattie, who deserves better.
She struggles to her knees and wobbles to her feet. Willie remains beneath her.
“It’ll be fine, Willie. Go wait by the Machine. If it’s safe, go in, and if not, wait for me in the alley. I won’t be long.” A pause. “And you might go see Baron Fitzhugh.”
She doesn’t trust Willie to fix the Machine. She wants him to seek the advice of Baron Fitzhugh, who spends his time toiling over Master Jenkins’s blueprints from three hundred years ago. Even Jenkins, who designed the Machine, didn’t know how it worked. He died a week after drawing images of the Machine based on etchings he saw on the bones of a cadaver.
So ashamed, Willie can’t even look at Hattie until her body is a reed squeezing between the dumpsters by the main road. He’ll fix what he’s done to Hattie if it’s the last thing he does. He’ll rise above his position, find a way to decipher the meaning of the eight bones. He’ll figure out how the Machine works. He’ll improve it. He’ll move Hattie and Ebediah to a palace on Noble Avenue, where grandees like Baron Fitzhugh live. She’ll wear silk and satin, and the baby will dine on puréed peaches and bananas. Ebediah will be a scholar. The chain of greasy mechanics will end with Willie Pyle VI, who broke the spell when he named his son Ebediah.
He scuffles to the main road, squints under a mahogany sky streaked with pine, the black clouds just straggling in from the east. He passes the derelicts strewn along the road, backs pressed against brownstone, shoulders drooping, chins resting on the lapels of torn jackets. Hands clutch at him, and he shakes them off. He holds his breath each time he nears a grate, where the steam belches and sewage burbles. He passes the meat grinder’s rental. If only Willie had been born a meat grinder, his family could live in a one-room rental. It’s not fair that a man has to be what his father was and nothing more, not ever. It’s not fair, is it?
Willie stoops by the overhead door, presses the numbers on the lock in precise patterns passed through the generations. He doesn’t understand the numbers, just knows what he has to do to get inside the building. And so, 300000 946 1012 197207 82 79 5 8, and the lock clicks, and Willie heaves open the door.
The Machine hums, gentle. The oil lamp still burns by his sleep area. His blanket is gone. Steel chains and cables dangle from the sides of the Machine, limp like the derelicts on the street. The pump slides up and down on gum sandarac and fat, the valves whisk open then ease shut, and how is Willie’sMachine running when it’s so broken?
He moves closer and sees that the joints are sealed and nothing leaks. He drags his bum foot by the snake pit, and steam burns through the pipes and liquid metal flickers. Twenty-eight rods connect the pistons to the crankshafts. The wheels turn, the gears mesh, the belts vibrate, the cylinders sweat.
But the rear of the Machine has sprouted new limbs: hoses, cables, pipes, axles, belts, wheels, cylinders connected in steel formations that Willie has never seen, and where did they come from? The hole where Hattie and Ebediah huddled has caved in, and where will they sleep?
Panic grips him. His father never told him what to do if the Machine grew. At first, he tries to mangle some of the hoses back into their original configurations, but it’s hopeless and he only manages to repair part of the mess. He swears there were only twenty rods on those pistons instead of twenty-eight. He removes eight rods, wonders if it’s smart, then slips most of them back into place. Frustrated, he gives up and limps to the hole where he hid the bone last night, and he grabs it, then makes his way to the hole containing the other seven bones, and grabs them as well. He stuffs four of the bones in his right coat pocket, the other four in his left. The Machine grumbles.
And that’s when Willie sees the gold. Chunks like gravel, but glimmering and lustrous, definitely gold.
His pockets bulging with bones and gold, he turns to leave.
Baron Fitzhugh stands near the door. What’s he doing here? He wears a top hat and tailcoat all perfectly stitched in silk thread, with his face all shaving-cream smooth, his hair aligned more precisely than the pistons and rods Willie greases day after day in this airless room.
“What is it?” says Willie. The Baron’s been harping on him for years, trying to get a piece of Willie’s action, but Willie’s been firm. Willie’s the Protector, not Baron Fitzhugh. Only Willie will fix the Machine, and if anyone learns how the Machine works, it will be Willie. Fitzhugh should have better things to do, such as eating and carousing with his friends and, in his off-hours, getting what he wants from women, only to throw them in the trash later. Isn’t this what the rich do?
The Baron stretches his neck as if his collar’s too tight, extracts a cigar from his top left pocket, and twists it into a silver holder. He tips a match to Willie’s lamp, lights the tobacco, sucks in the perfume, and exhales.
Willie straightens himself, too, wishing he had a fine cigar. “Can’t you leave me alone? I have to adjust the Machine. I’m busy.” He keeps both hands in his pockets so Baron Fitzhugh can’t see the bones and gold.
“You ever wonder how this great Machine runs the trolleys and the buggies?” asks the Baron between puffs.
“They run on steel wires powered by the Machine.”
“Willie, you know that’s not what I mean.”
Willie refuses to admit that he doesn’t know how the Machine works. He wanders away from the light and takes his hands out of his pockets. “I’m busy. I have work to do, Baron.” Willie rubs the Machine with salve, and he strokes the brass and steel pipes, cables, hinges, and bolts as the Baron might caress a mistress. Towering twists of metal buzz like nests of angry hornets.
“I found a bone, Willie. Just like the ones Master Jenkins said he found in that grave.” The Baron flicks ashes at the Machine.
“Don’t do that,” Willie barks.
A slight bow, and the Baron inches toward Willie with a half smile. “You heard about the buggy accident yesterday?”
Willie knows nothing about a buggy accident. Must have happened when the Machine went wild.
“Authorities found this bone near the corpses. Five dead, Willie, four Gentleman and a Lady. Their crime? Off to a late supper.”
Five rich are dead.Willie’s head spins. He can’t comprehend. The Machine malfunctioned and killed five people? As Protector, perhaps Willie’s to blame. “I didn’t do nothing!” Willie cries, hands back in his pockets, edging around Baron Fitzhugh and toward the door. He’ll escape, run to Hattie and the baby, and then they’ll all run away to some faraway land. But Willie’s injured, and Hattie’s weak from starvation, and the baby, premature and only newborn . . .
“No, no, my man, I’m not suggesting that this was your fault. The Machine requires study and adjustment by a learned scholar, a man of books and mathematics such as myself. The Machine is off, and even if the timing changes by a hair, people will die.” Baron Fitzhugh’s green eyes flicker over Willie face, and it’s as if the Baron’s wondering if Willie has any value in this world at all.
A nugget of gold falls from a hole in Willie’s left pocket. Wildly, Willie snatches it up, but not before the Baron sees what’s in his hand. “I also found gold by the five dead bodies,” the Baron says.
Perhaps Willie’s Machine is creating gold for the city. Perhaps it’s paying Willie for three hundred years of service to it. Perhaps it’s payback time, when the rich will no longer take everything from the poor. Is it, and could it be so?
“Come with me, Willie,�
�� and the Baron takes his arm and nudges him to the door. “Help me figure out what it means. I’ve been working on the math for years, and I do have some ideas.”
But Willie has gold. Willie’s rich now and doesn’t need to follow the Baron anywhere. Willie no longer has to be Protector. Free, and so are Hattie and Ebediah. “I don’t know,” Willie says as they leave the building.
“You’re crippled, Willie, limping. I could knock you down with one swipe of my cane, and I could take your coat with all the gold in the pockets. So you might as well come with me.”
The rich always get their way, and the poor always do as they’re told, so Willie follows Baron Fitzhugh toward the market stalls that lie between the Machine and Noble Avenue. He tells the Baron that his wife is there, seeking food with his baby son. And the Baron suggests that the entire Pyle family stay with him and eat his food, “until we fix the Machine or until you feel it’s necessary for you to leave.”
Willie can almost taste the brandy and rum and whiskey. He can almost taste the plums and steaks, the chocolate puddings and strudel. How will it feel to bathe in hot water with perfumed soap and to shave with something other than a blunt-edged knife? Willie nods, it’s a good deal, yes it is, and Hattiewill be so proud of him.
“Where was the buggy accident?” Willie asks, and the Baron says it was near Noble Avenue, nowhere close to the market stalls.
Willie doesn’t know what he’ll do if something happens to Hattie or their son. His mind flits back to the rods he removed from the Machine and to the mess he made of the new components. In such a gigantic Machine, a few missing rods and hoses shouldn’t matter.
They circle the corner to Market Street and slip under the trolley wires and buggy cables. Women paw through sardines and smelt, haggle over bread, the loaves round andhard like the bones in Willie’s pockets. Hot tar bubbles on the pavement and sticks to Willie’s shoes. His stomach growls, and he’s so hungry and spices lace the air here. Baron Fitzhugh tosses two coins on Mistress Gorm’s table, and she gives him two pastries. The Baron gives both to Willie and urges him to eat, and the Baron isn’t such a bad guy, after all, is he?
Sweet custard on his lips, nectar filling his mouth, washing all the sourness down his throat. Willie licks vanilla from his lips, then he gobbles the first pastry as fast as he can and follows with the second.
His head whirls. He hasn’t had sugar in over a year. It’s good, and he wants more.
But now he sees Hattie and Ebediah over by the whiskey. “Baron, it’s my wife and the baby. Come!” He tugs the Baron’s elbow, and this time, carrying four more pastries, the Baron follows him past the seamstress with her flashing needles, past the wagon builder and his polisher, past the smells of leather and peaches and perfumes. Last stall on the right by Second Street, that’s where the whiskey is—
She’s buying him whiskey, Hattie holding Ebediah in one arm and giving the man a coin. She must have found the coin on the street.
As the coin drops into the man’s palm, a trolley buzzes around the corner so fast that Willie barely sees the rails, the steps, or the faces. The overhead wires sizzle—
Five rich are dead
people screaming
fire cracking against the whiskey stall.
Willie stumbles forward, propped by the Baron, and they crouch by Hattie, Willie crying and the Baron consoling him. But there is no consolation, for Willie’s soul dies and his eyes burn, and the pain in his chest is so deep it fills his entire being. And all Willie sees is blood, blood everywhere, and soft flesh—
and the filthy swaddling cloth.
Hush, Ebediah, daddy won’t let anything happen to you.
His wife lies in a pool of whiskey, marinating in fire. The Baron removes his coat and slaps the fire, but he can’t put it out, and Hattie burns until Willie sees the last wisp of flesh curl into the smoke and she’s nothing but bones. Ebediah rests atop the whiskey stall, his blood splashing to the gravel in big, round drops that seem to move slower than time. Willie crawls near and looks up, and in each drop he sees himself. He should have named his son Willie. Perhaps the Machine is angry because he named his son Ebediah and broke the spell. Willie should have taken his wife and baby far from this place. He should have protected them.
Hands claw Willie off the tiny body. They shield his eyes so he can no longer see his wife and baby. He’s in a cart now. Horses trot in front of him. The spiderweb wires spark overhead.
Later in Baron Fitzhugh’s parlor, he learns that nine more people died in the trolley crash. The Baron offers him brandy and rum, but Willie chokes down whiskey instead, and the alcohol burns his throat just as it burned Hattie. If only it would burn Willie to death, too, then he could switch off the images behind his eyes.
He sleeps on a duck-feather mattress under a blanket softer than Ebediah’s cheeks. When he awakens, a maid washes him with hot water and pine-scented soap, then she shaves and dresses him in silk pants and a white shirt. She eases him back to the mattress and spoons eggs and bacon into his mouth. The meat smells good, it isn’t even rotten, and the eggs taste like butter.
His stomach twists, sour stomach filled with bile.
He wants whiskey.
He pushes the maid away, falls into a stupor.
From time to time, he hears the Baron’s voice, and he’s not sure if he dreams their conversations.
“What’s the combination to the lock, Willie?”
“300000 946 1012 197 207 82 79 5 8.”
“Was there any sign of—excuse me, my man—any sign of death near the bones you found?”
“No dead bodies,” Willie chokes out the words, “but always blood.”
“And always gold?”
“Only the last time,” and Willie no longer cares if the Baron takes his gold. Willie knows his place in life, and now he knows his place in the next life, too. Don’t need gold where Willie’s going . . .
“After it grew, you toyed with the Machine?”
Willie ignores the question and all that follow. He sinks intothe place where dreams die.
The maid props him up, spoons beef hash and potatoes into his mouth. He spits out the food and shoves her away.
And now the stench of whiskey and a sourness in his mouth, and Willie bolts up. The bottle is on a night stand to his left. The Baron hunches over him on the mattress, green eyes boring into him in the glow of a lit match. The Baron sucks on his cigar and offers it to Willie, but Willie knows his place and grabs the bottle instead and sucks down the last drops.
“We must return to the Machine,” the Baron tells him.
“All my fault.”
“You can fix it, Willie, make it all right again.”
But they’re dead, and there’s no fixing that, Baron.
“You’re the Protector. The city needs you.”
“I’m a failure, a nobody.”
And Willie’s done pretending to be a Protector of anyone or anything.
“I need you to come,” says the Baron. “Only you know how to dismantle the Machine.”
Dismantle it? Willie curses. “I’ll rip the Machine to shreds with my bare hands!” He’ll destroy the thing that killed his family. He’ll get even, and then he’ll leave and never return.
They wind their way from Noble Avenue to the gutters and sewage of Willie’s turf, the Baron tall and stiff and Willie hunched and limping.
Early morning, and the sun is yellow piss. The buzz of a trolley, and Willie clamps his hand on the Baron’s shoulder. “I can’t—”
“Only you can, Willie.”
“No, let me go . . .” Weak, Willie is so weak.
From a satchel, the Baron extracts a whiskey bottle and gives it to Willie. Then he pulls out Willie’s eight bones and sets them on the gravel with two additional bones, “the one I found with the five dead, and a new one found with the remains of . . .” and he leaves the sentence unfinished.
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Willie sucks down half the whiskey, fire in his belly and it feels good.
“Look at these symbols, man.” The Baron gestures at the carvings on the bones. Willie has no clue what the Baron means—ω and σ and Δ mean nothing to Willie—and he drinks and adds more fire to his blood.
“Mathematics, Willie, differential calculus and derivatives. Integration. And geometry that—I think but don’t know—may calculate distances in curved non-Euclidean space. You ever hear about Bernhard Riemann? Janos Bolyai or Nikolai Ivanovich Lobachevsky?”
The Baron scoops up the bones and keeps talking as he cranks the dials on the overhead door and enters the codes,
300000, “speed of light in kilometers per second,”
946 1012, “distance light travels in one year, 9.46 times ten to the twelve kilometers,”
197, “sum of protons and neutrons in gold,”
207, “sum of protons and neutrons in lead,”
82 79, “number of protons in lead and in gold, respectively,”
5 8, “and number of protons and neutrons in boron and oxygen, respectively.”
“Say, what?” asks Willie.
“Numbers of the universe. When you changed the natural order of the Machine, you let them loose, those who live beyond our time and space. They’ve been slipping out. The Machine’s old, and we don’t know how to patch the openings. And so they come, they eat, they leave our bones. Their teeth imprint us with numbers of the universe.” The lock clicks, and the Baron swings the door up.
“Who comes?” Willie doesn’t understand.
“It’s all in the math. Calculus, Willie. The others come. And I think in our world, they change lead into gold. They use boron or oxygen, or maybe both, and this is why we find the gold when they come and only when they come.”
Willie doesn’t understand math and calculus. He doesn’t understand what boron and oxygen are and what they have to do with lead and gold. He only knows how to grease and anoint the Machine. Not wanting to admit that he knows so little, he keeps his mouth shut, and they enter the building, leaving the door open. Willie doesn’t ask any more questions. He hates the Machine. He chugs the rest of the whiskey and hurls the bottle at the Machine. It fractures, glass in a thousand pieces like bones crushed beneath a trolley.