Flashback Four #4

by Dan Gutman

  NO! LET US BRING YOU BACK HOME!

  TOO LATE, Isabel texted back, WE ALREADY LEFT.

  She smiled, shut the TTT case, and slipped it back in her pocket.

  In Boston, Ms. Gunner slammed her fist against a table. She wasn’t used to people ignoring her instructions. But there was nothing she could do about it. The kids were two hundred miles and over two centuries away. Ms. Gunner was already starting to question the wisdom of sending kids to do this mission.

  Luke and David had settled into a nice rhythm, and the little boat pushed its way across the Hudson River. The water was smooth, almost like glass, because no other boats were out on the river so early in the morning. The floor of the boat was dry.

  At least they didn’t have to worry about getting hit by a Jet Ski, a ferry, a giant cruise ship, or an airplane landing in the middle of the river. (In fact, two hundred years later, Captain “Sully” Sullenberger would land a US Airways jet at almost this exact spot after a flock of Canadian geese flew into the engines. But that’s a story for another day.)

  As the boys pulled the oars through the water silently, the sun was starting to peek over the horizon. It was getting warmer. Luke and David were working up a sweat.

  “Are those boats?” Isabel asked as she shielded her eyes to peer into the distant fog. “Why would anybody be out on the water this early in the morning?”

  “Maybe they’re fishermen,” guessed Julia.

  “Maybe they’re Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr,” said David.

  “Come on, let’s pick up the pace,” Luke said. “We need to get to Weehawken before they do.”

  Both boys pulled harder. It doesn’t look like it’s very far across the river, but the Hudson is over a mile wide at that point. It takes almost two hours to travel that distance by rowboat, no matter how fast you’re rowing. The boys were starting to get tired when the TTT buzzed in Isabel’s pocket.

  WHERE ARE YOU? asked Ms. Gunner.

  ABOUT HALFWAY ACROSS THE RIVER, replied Isabel.

  The boys kept rowing, grunting now with each stroke.

  “Stroke . . . stroke . . . stroke,” Julia called, trying to be helpful but really just annoying Luke and David. This was harder than they had thought it would be. Rowboats are slow. All four of them began to wonder whether it might have been smarter to scrap the mission as soon as they found themselves in the wrong place.

  “Whose idea was it to row across the river?” David asked, not really expecting an answer.

  “Not mine,” said Isabel. “My idea was to go home.”

  It was too late to turn back now. They had to continue on. The boys were exhausted and thirsty. A little headwind picked up. In a few minutes, they were three-quarters of the way across the river.

  “This is farther than I thought,” Luke said, grunting loudly with each stroke.

  “Do you want us to take over?” asked Isabel.

  “Sure.”

  Crouching down to avoid tipping the boat, the Flashback Four switched positions. Isabel and Julia took over the oars. David moved to the front and Luke went to the back.

  Almost as soon as she started rowing, the TTT buzzed in Isabel’s pocket. She handed it to David to answer.

  WHERE ARE YOU NOW? Ms. Gunner asked.

  ALMOST TO THE OTHER SIDE, David replied.

  Soon they were approaching Weehawken. Looking up, the kids could see the cliffs rising in front of them. It was no wonder people came to this spot to duel. It was isolated, but also close to the hustle and bustle of New York City.

  “Man, I’m hungry,” said Luke, a big boy who was pretty much always hungry.

  “Me too,” Julia replied.

  “We should have packed some Clif Bars,” said David. “Get it? Clif Bars?”

  “Very funny,” said Julia, struggling to pull her oar through the water. “I’d eat anything at this point.”

  Finally, exhausted, Isabel and Julia steered the rowboat over to a small, sandy patch of land. They had made it to the New Jersey side of the Hudson. There were no other boats on the shore, so the Flashback Four knew they had arrived before Hamilton and Burr. All four hopped out and slid the heavy boat behind some bushes, where it could not be easily seen.

  “We made it!” Julia said triumphantly.

  “What time is it?” Luke asked. “How much time do we have to get ready before the duel is supposed to start?”

  He peered across the water to look at the sun, trying to estimate how high it was in the sky.

  “We should have brought a watch,” Isabel said.

  It was ten minutes to seven.

  CHAPTER 13

  MEANWHILE, AT BURR’S HOUSE . . .

  AARON BURR AND ALEXANDER HAMILTON HAD SO much in common, it was almost as if they were twins.

  The night before the duel, Aaron Burr was also up late at his desk writing letters and other documents in case it would be his last evening on Earth.

  Burr spent that night just a mile and a half from Hamilton in New York City. He lived in a two-story “country home” called Richmond Hill, in what is now called Greenwich Village.

  Physically, the two men were very similar. Burr was also short, about five foot six, and thin. He looked almost frail. But he was quite handsome, with dark hair and dark eyes. It has been said that he was very popular with the ladies.

  Just like Alexander Hamilton, Aaron Burr had a miserable childhood. He was born in Newark, New Jersey, in 1756 (just one year after Hamilton). His father—also named Aaron—died when Aaron was a baby. A year later, Aaron’s mother died. He and his sister Sally were taken in by their grandparents, but within a year both of them died too. Burr lost almost all his family in less than two years. Like Hamilton, he was raised by a family friend.

  And like Hamilton, Aaron Burr was very smart and ambitious. He applied for admission to the College of New Jersey (now called Princeton University) when he was eleven years old. Yes, eleven! He didn’t get in, but he was accepted a year later and graduated when he was just sixteen. Hamilton, by the way, was also rejected by the College of New Jersey.

  When war broke out with England, Burr enlisted in the Continental Army. He was a Revolutionary War hero—like Hamilton. Both men fought at the Battle of Monmouth. Burr rose to the level of lieutenant colonel. And like Hamilton, he worked for George Washington. But not for long. Washington, like a lot of people, didn’t like Burr.

  After the war, Burr became a lawyer in New York City—like Hamilton, of course. In fact, the two men worked together on some of the same cases. Both men had higher aspirations. Burr went on to become a New York senator, and in 1801 he became the vice president of the United States under Thomas Jefferson.

  Burr and Hamilton had one other thing in common, of course. They both hated the other one’s guts. But more on that later.

  It was the night before the duel. Burr had spent the last few days by himself. He didn’t have a big family like Hamilton did. Burr’s wife had died from cancer ten years earlier, and he hadn’t remarried. His adult daughter, Theodosia, lived in South Carolina. And just as Hamilton didn’t tell his family about the upcoming duel, Burr didn’t tell Theodosia.

  What he did do was gather up various letters he had written or received and tie them together with a red string. Then he wrapped them in a white handkerchief and wrote a note to Theodosia instructing her to burn them. Apparently, a bunch of love letters to various girlfriends were in that stack of papers, and Burr didn’t want the whole world to know about them. Aaron Burr was a man of many secrets.

  After putting his affairs in order (so to speak), Burr wrote this note to his daughter. . . .

  I am indebted to you, my dearest Theodosia, for a very great portion of the happiness which I have enjoyed in this life. You have completely satisfied all that my heart and affections had hoped or even wished.

  Burr fell asleep on the couch in his library. Shortly after three o’clock in the morning, there was a knock on the door downstairs. It was his good friend William Van Ness, wh
o was a federal judge in New York City. Van Ness didn’t try to talk Burr out of the duel. He simply said it was time to go.

  Burr hurried to put on his clothes. Even though it was the middle of the summer, he wore a black silk coat. Later, it was said that he was wearing such a heavy coat because it might help stop a bullet.

  It was just six blocks from Burr’s house to the Hudson River. We don’t know if William Van Ness and Aaron Burr walked that distance or took a horse and carriage. We do know that a few other close friends greeted Burr when he got to the dock near Canal Street and wished him good luck. There was no telegraph, telephone, TV, or internet, of course, but word had already gotten around that there was going to be a duel that morning on the Jersey side.

  A boat was waiting at the dock. It was bigger and slower than the boat the Flashback Four had purchased. Four oarsmen were sitting in it. We don’t know their names. Dueling was technically illegal in both New York and New Jersey, so keeping the oarsmen anonymous would prevent them from having to testify in court about what they had seen or heard that morning.

  It was about five o’clock now. Still dark out. Aaron Burr and William Van Ness stepped into the boat and took their seats. The oarsmen pushed off from the dock. They started rowing across the river and north to Weehawken.

  CHAPTER 14

  WEEHAWKEN

  AFTER THE FLASHBACK FOUR FINISHED HIDING their boat in the bushes, they looked up. Two hundred feet above the water, the Heights of Weehawken, a part of the Hudson River Palisades, towered over them. It was a giant wall of rock. These days, people outside of New Jersey think it’s a state full of decaying cities and toxic waste dumps. But Julia, Isabel, Luke, and David felt like they were standing in the wilderness, at the bottom of the Grand Canyon.

  During the Revolutionary War, these high cliffs of Weehawken were used as a lookout point so the patriots could keep an eye on the British, who had occupied New York City and controlled the Hudson River.

  Weehawken was originally a word in the Lenape Indian language. There’s some disagreement about what it means. Some say it’s translated to be “maize land.” Others say it means “place of gulls” or “rocks that look like trees” or “at the end.”

  In any case, the small town of Weehawken is almost directly across the river from what is now one of the most famous streets in the world—Forty-Second Street. Hamilton and Burr both left from downtown Manhattan, so they not only had to cross the river to New Jersey, but they also had to travel two and a half miles upriver to get to Weehawken. That’s a lot of hard rowing.

  “They’re not here yet,” David said, breathing a sigh of relief. He scanned the river to see if any other boats were approaching, but he couldn’t tell because the early morning fog hadn’t lifted yet.

  “How do we know for sure that this is the right place?” Isabel asked.

  “We don’t,” Luke replied.

  There was a narrow dirt footpath leading away from the beach and up into the cliffs. Luke led the way, scrambling to climb it. There were some wispy trees and tangled brush on both sides of the path.

  “Hey, check it out,” David said, stopping suddenly.

  He leaned over to pick some wild berries from a bush. David looked at them, smelled them, and then put one in his mouth.

  “This is good,” he said, prompting Julia and Luke to pick a few for themselves.

  “Ummm,” Julia said, munching a berry. “I bet everything tasted better back in the old days.”

  “How do you know those berries aren’t poisonous?” asked Isabel.

  “They’re probably better for us than the stuff we buy in stores back home,” said Luke, grabbing a handful. “No pesticides or preservatives.”

  “I’m so hungry,” David said, stuffing more berries in his mouth.

  “We don’t have time for this, you know,” Isabel told them. “Hamilton and Burr could get here any second.”

  “You’re right,” Julia said.

  The Flashback Four continued climbing the narrow path until they reached a rocky ledge with a flat, grassy area behind it. It was screened by trees on all four sides. A few small boulders dotted the area, and a bunch of fallen tree branches were scattered around. The kids were about twenty feet above the Hudson. Through the trees they could see Manhattan across the river.

  “This must be it,” David said. “This is the dueling ground.”

  David was right. In fact, eighteen duels were known to have taken place on this spot between 1798 and 1845. And there were certainly a lot more that never got mentioned in books, newspapers, or letters. The land was actually on private property, and the owner probably didn’t appreciate the gunfire that was occasionally heard in his backyard. But there wasn’t anything he could do about it.

  The kids walked around, scoping out the area to get a sense of where the duelists were likely to position themselves. It would be important to get the right angle to shoot the video. The area was roughly rectangular, a little more than twenty paces long and ten paces wide. Off to one side, a thick tree trunk had fallen. It was lying on its side.

  “This is our spot!” David shouted to the others. “We can hide behind this.”

  The others went over and crouched down behind the fallen tree trunk.

  “It’s perfect,” said Julia.

  Luke took the Hot Head out of his pocket and strapped it around his head. He wanted to make sure the video camera was working correctly. They all remembered what had happened at Gettysburg, when Abraham Lincoln started giving his speech and their camera suddenly went dead.

  “You look like a coal miner with that thing on, dude,” David told Luke, “or maybe a brain surgeon.”

  Luke tightened the strap so the Hot Head would be snug against his forehead, and then peeked over the tree trunk so only his eyes and the top of his head could be seen.

  “Whatever I see, the camera sees,” he said.

  “It just turned on,” noted Julia.

  “How do you know?” asked Luke.

  “There’s a little red light on the side,” Julia replied.

  Luke panned his head slowly to the left and to the right. He wanted to make sure he would be filming the entire dueling ground. If just one of the duelists was in the video, it might be hard to tell who shot first. Both Hamilton and Burr would need to be in the frame at the same time.

  “Okay,” Luke said. “I think I’m set.”

  “Better take it off for now,” suggested Isabel. “We could have a long wait, and that Jones guy told us the Hot Head can only store five minutes of video.”

  Luke slipped the Hot Head off. The red light went out as soon as Luke’s body heat was no longer providing power.

  “Now we wait,” David said.

  “Shhhh!”

  For five minutes, nobody said a word. The kids were crouched behind the fallen tree trunk, trying to stay as quiet as possible so Burr and Hamilton wouldn’t notice them when they showed up. But it wasn’t long before the silence became unbearable.

  “I have a bad feeling about this,” Isabel whispered.

  “Stop worrying,” David told her. “Everything’s going to go according to plan. Hamilton and Burr will show up. They’ll do the duel. We’ll shoot the video. We’ll get out of here. Simple.”

  “That’s not it,” Isabel said. “I just have a bad feeling about this whole thing. Dueling is so stupid. And these guys were supposedly really smart. They were the Founding Fathers of our country. You’ve got to be smart to start a country.”

  “They’re not stupid. It was a different time,” Luke whispered. “A hundred years after we’re gone, people will be talking about all the stupid things we did.”

  That didn’t make Isabel feel any better.

  “Alexander Hamilton is going to die,” she said. “Right in front of us. It feels so wrong to be part of it. I feel like I’m responsible. I wish I wasn’t here.”

  “You’re just a witness,” Julia told her. “It’s not your fault that Hamilton’s going to die. It’s
not anybody’s fault. Stuff just happens.”

  “Maybe we should get out of here,” Isabel said suddenly, standing up. The others grabbed her and forced her back down behind the tree trunk.

  “No!” David said sternly. “Do you want to get shot too when they see you?”

  “I never should have agreed to this,” Isabel fretted. “We were kidnapped, you know. That’s what happened. It was against our will. Ms. Gunner is not a nice person. We shouldn’t be working for her. It’s just wrong.”

  “Well, you’re right about that,” David said. “I don’t trust her. Not like I trusted Miss Z.”

  “Miss Z was nice,” Julia said. “I miss her.”

  “We could mess it up, you know,” Isabel said. “We could mess up the video on purpose.”

  “That would be wrong,” Luke said. “Two wrongs don’t make a right.”

  “Look, we made a deal to do this,” David told the others. “Maybe it was a bad deal, but it was a deal. When you make a deal, you stick with it.”

  Isabel continued to fret as the Flashback Four waited another five minutes. Their knees were starting to hurt from kneeling on the ground.

  “What’s taking them so long?” complained Julia.

  “Man, I hate waiting for stuff,” whispered Luke. “Waiting is boring.”

  “Hey, life isn’t all instantaneous gratification,” David said. “Sometimes you have to wait for stuff.”

  “Oooh, listen to you, with the big words,” said Luke. “You gonna go to Harvard after we finish this?”

  “Maybe Burr and Hamilton went somewhere else,” Isabel whispered. “Maybe there’s another dueling ground. How do we even know for sure this is Weehawken? I didn’t see any sign.”

  “This is Weehawken,” Luke said. “Just be patient.”

  “Hey, which one of those guys do you think is going to show up first?” asked Julia, trying to change the subject.

  “I say Burr,” said David.

  “I say Hamilton,” said Luke.

  “You wanna bet?” David asked. “I’ll bet you a dollar Burr shows up first.”

  “You’re on, pal,” Luke replied. “A dollar. That’s the easiest money I’ll ever make. And if Hamil—”