After the Rain

by Jane Lorenzini

  Always younger, never the best

  A weaker heart beats in my chest

  Some brothers would end up in a ball of flying fists and sand after working and living side by side for weeks at a time. Not them. Scorching sun, torrential rains, run-ins with rustlers on the fenceless prairies—he and Daniel shared everything, peacefully. They did battle over the mosquito nets in the makeshift cow camps, but everyone did. Any sniping was far outweighed by ribbing and laughter.

  “My brother here has a way with the ladies,” Daniel would joke. “He starts talking and they go away.”

  Boone would laugh right along with his brother. Daniel knew attracting women wasn’t a problem for either of them.

  Dear God. How was it possible that Daniel was gone?

  When the train lunged to a slow start, he opened his eyes. The man next to him was eating a greasy drumstick, a napkin wrapped around its bony handle.

  “Did you have yourself a proper nap?”

  The man was looking at him, chewing. He was well mannered—mouth closed as he worked the meat, conscious of where grease might smear or splash. The smell of the food did nothing to spark Boone’s hunger. The jerking of the train gathering speed made him a bit queasy.

  “Just resting.”

  The man nodded and gestured with his head toward a newspaper on the bench next to him.

  “I picked up a Leesburg paper. Have a look if you’d like.”

  “Thanks.”

  Within minutes, the steadier pace of the train allowed him to consider light reading. His stomach was more settled, and he was tired of remembering Daniel. Before he could reach for the paper, the man offered a suggestion.

  “Interesting project under way down south . . . for Mr. Edison. The article’s on page two.” He smiled and wiped his hands with more napkins. “I’m an attorney, not a heavy lifter, so I don’t mind pointing out the job to you.”

  In his torn dungarees, faded boots, and sweat-stained straw hat, Boone knew he was easily pinned as a “heavy lifter.” And one in need of work. It couldn’t hurt to read about the project.

  The several paragraphs read more like a job listing than an article. Laborers were needed to clear land and build structures on Gulf Coast property purchased by Thomas Edison. Boone was familiar with the famous inventor’s name, but not the town where Edison planned to create Seminole Lodge and a laboratory. Pay was listed as between $1.50 and $2.75 per day. He looked out the window at the swampy landscape void of hills, a mound now and then. The view was endlessly bleak.

  The more he read about the job—“Hard workers will be rewarded with a subtropical clime”—the less he wanted to relive his old life. Trabue would be crawling with cows and memories. He laid the paper on his lap.

  “Where is Fort Myers?” he asked the pencil lifter.

  “Up the Caloosahatchee River from Punta Rassa. I do work for several northern land developers interested in the citrus industry there.” He winked. “It’s good enough for Mr. Edison and he’s pretty smart, right?”

  Boone offered a weak grin but slumped in the seat. He didn’t deserve anything good. He turned away from the man and looked out into the sameness. His leg throbbed. He’d been fooling himself to think he could ever work cows again, in Trabue or anywhere.

  As the attorney began to lightly snore beside him, the journey ahead got longer. He’d take a chance and a steamer to the town called Fort Myers.

  •••

  Decker sat with Boone as he had for years now, both tasked with keeping Edison’s winter estate up and running while their boss was away generating power and headlines around the world. The men were inside the caretaker’s cottage, sitting across from one another at a small kitchen table, its wooden top riddled with water rings. Decker was droning on, reading from a long letter and stroking a spray of hair atop his head, the skin around it barren.

  “I will send you about one thousand yards of common print cloth, which you can place around the more tender shoots when a freeze approaches,” Decker read. “This cloth will prevent radiation almost entirely if you run it through boiled linseed oil and hang it out until dry. I will also ship a barrel of boiled oil.”

  Boone had his chair tipped back against the wall, arms crossed. Smoke rose from a fat cigar resting in an ashtray on the table. Decker continued reading the latest correspondence from Edison.

  “We propose to have our grounds the best manured in Florida. Therefore, you may order for the river grounds six tons of oil cake, two tons of guano, and for the garden four tons of oil cake, two tons of phosphates, four tons of guano. Providing the guano should not cost more than fifty dollars per ton.”

  “The best manured, eh?” Boone said. “Keep talking, Decker, and we’ll be there before we know it.”

  “Stop your yapping, boy.” Decker said and continued. “We want a strawberry patch across the road about twenty by one hundred of the best early bearing strawberries. Also about twenty-five currant bushes and a bed of red and black raspberries, mixed; a bed about twenty by one hundred will do for both. Please plant the following.” Decker drew in a deep breath. “Four castor beans, five olives, five jicama apples, five eggfruits, ten mangoes, ten alligator pears, two Spanish gooseberries.” He took another breath. “Four pawpaw trees, six pomegranates, two mulberry natives, two custard apples, two grapefruit trees, four Japanese plums, two apricot trees, two persimmons, two tamarinds, and two mulberry trees.”

  Boone groaned. “This should be fun.” He pushed his laced fingers forward, cracking several knuckles.

  Edison had ordered a massive refresh of the landscaping and the creation of a large garden, as if new plants would propagate hope for a return trip to Fort Myers. Much was keeping him trapped in the Northeast. His rival, electrical innovator Edward Weston, recently opened a new private laboratory in New Jersey touted as “the most complete in the world.” Competitive and fiercely protective of his status as the world’s foremost inventor, Edison ordered the immediate construction of a sprawling new laboratory complex. There he could simultaneously work on as many as twenty projects with the assistance of eighty men, dwarfing Weston’s staff. The Edison Phonograph Company was also newly formed and required his expertise in garnering international marketing rights. Also, Mina was pregnant with their first child together. The vacation house in southwest Florida sat empty for many and momentous reasons.

  “Looks like some bad news for you, son.” Decker tapped the letter and continued reading. “We’ll need a banana bed about twenty feet square. You can purchase the plants, but I noticed many banana bushes on an island in the narrows of the river.” He looked at Boone over the top of his spectacles. “We’re not buying anything you can go dig up.”

  Boone rerolled a sleeve. “I’m well aware that the budget is more important than my back.”

  When Edison first purchased the property, he’d sent instructions to search for and haul in black freshwater muck from ponds around town. Boone recalled that Edison suggested using a wheelbarrow and boards to wheel the muck onto a flat-bottomed barge for transport to the property. Edison wrote that he hoped the muck would keep all the manure in place and “prevent it going clear through to China.” His final line read, “Procure plenty of it. I want to carry everything to excess down there.”

  Excess, indeed. Boone had walked hunched over for a week.

  “Nuts?!” Decker slapped his palm on his forehead. “He wants us to propagate slips from soft-shell almonds, Brazil nuts, filberts, and English walnuts. Does he think we’re ten men?”

  “Relax. Take a drag on your stogie.” Boone pushed the ashtray toward him.

  Decker’s lanky fingers retrieved the cigar. He sucked in tobacco and released a large cloud of smoke, as if it might make the letter disappear—poof.

  “What else does he write?”

  Decker smoked again, then continued. “Clear four acres across the road for a
truck garden and put a board fence around it thusly.”

  Decker turned the letter so Boone could see a sketch of a post fence with three slats. Boone made the “got it” sign with his fingers.

  “Use some of the space here to experiment with different fertilizers.” Decker grunted and shook the paper in the air. “As if I’m a studied experimenter!”

  Boone reached for the letter and sighed. “Give me that before you pass out.”

  He snatched it and began to read aloud. “I understand the man who has charge of the place next to the old house will allow the truck garden for thirty-five dollars per acre. The propagating beds can be placed over there.”

  As Decker laid his forehead on the table, Boone asked in a singsong tone, “Don’t you want to hear about the beehives?”

  Decker spoke into the tabletop. “Let’s talk about the visitor instead.”

  Seminole Lodge hadn’t housed guests since Edison’s father, Samuel, and son, Dash, visited several months after he and Mina honeymooned in Fort Myers several years ago. Dash was the nickname for Edison’s youngest son with his first wife. Because he called his daughter Dot—a reference to his work with Morse code—Thomas Jr. was lovingly known as Dash. The ten-year-old had traveled with his grandfather, who came to check on the property.

  When Dash first arrived, he walked the yard each day, hands folded behind his back, in full dress—polished wing tips, black knee socks and knickers, pressed white shirt, and a boater hat with a wide black ribbon circling its crown. He nodded at Boone but didn’t speak. His eyes looked sad, angled downward at the edges, but Boone couldn’t imagine a reason why. What could he want for? His grandfather had no air of privilege. Samuel worked a hoe easily, wore dungarees and a cotton shirt, and looked directly at everyone with gleaming blue eyes. His full white beard connected easily to a snowy shock of thick hair that dominated his head. Oddly, his eyebrows and mustache remained brown, trapped in younger years.

  “I am a master of smoking, drinking, and gambling,” he told Boone one afternoon, ending the admission with a deep chuckle.

  He shared other personal details—that he was eighty-two and had, over the course of his life, split shingles for roofs, tailored, and managed a tavern.

  “I’ve used my hands more than my brain,” he said, smiling. “The complete opposite of my son.”

  He was clearly a proud father, describing his buttons busting at the ingenuity of “Al,” whose inventions were transforming daily life. He explained that he’d supervised the building of the Menlo Park laboratory but “understood nothing inside of it.”

  Samuel and Dash appeared close, joking with each other and sharing long conversations on the porch. Boone wondered if Dash saw Samuel more than he did his busy father, who no doubt spent countless hours and days away from the family. Halfway through the stay, Dash shed his shoes and socks and unbuttoned his collar. He passed many of their final days at the Lodge kneeling in the yard, digging shallow holes and filling them with river water.

  “So, Mr. Wood is visiting to make good on his promise?” Boone asked.

  “Yes.” Decker scribbled on a piece of paper. “Should the boss come, he’ll be set to reel in a tarpon with gear selected exclusively by the famous W. H. Wood.”

  “How long is he in for?”

  “Just a day. He’s boating here and back from Schultz’s hotel in Punta Rassa. Only family stays at the Lodge.”

  Boone traced a water ring with his fingertip. “Wood really gave boss the bug last year, didn’t he?”

  “Well, he caught a tarpon and boss didn’t.” Decker rolled his cigar on the edge of the ashtray. “If anything brings Edison back this year, it will be those giant silverfish.”

  Chapter 8

  They were seeing each other up close for the first time. Boone had certainly noticed Belle riding around town on her unique trike, but now he was only a few feet away from her.

  “This window is stubborn,” he said, setting an ineffective chisel on the sill.

  He turned from the problem window to size up Belle more fully. She was sitting in a rocker with a wide board set across the chair’s arms, a makeshift desk for her sketchbook and a stack of worn gardening magazines. Her petite frame was unexpected. Atop her fast-moving trike she appeared tall and powerful.

  “I hope you’re having better luck with your work than I am with mine,” he said.

  “Slow going,” she said softly.

  “Do you mind if I see what you’ve got so far?” He waited to move toward her.

  She pulled an issue of The Gardener’s Monthly and Horticulturist toward her sketchbook to cover it.

  “I’d rather you didn’t.” She rolled the pencil back and forth in her fingers. “I mean, at least not yet. My garden designs are quite rough right now.”

  Boone nodded and returned to working on the window. He’d have a chance to engage with her more in the days and weeks ahead.

  They worked in silence for several minutes. Belle talked first.

  “Have you spoken often to Mrs. Edison?”

  Boone jiggled the window, which loosened a bit. “Just a few times. The Edisons have only visited twice since I’ve worked there.” He turned toward her. “Once Mina asked me to repair a rathole. Another time she complimented me on my brushwork.” He nodded toward the estates. “The yellow and white paint on the houses? Her idea. Apparently, it’s a popular combination on homes in Orange.”

  “Orange?” Belle repeated.

  “West Orange, New Jersey . . . where they live.”

  “Oh, of course,” Belle said.

  “Decker was clear from the start that I keep my distance from the family.” Boone removed his straw hat. He pulled up several strands of his curly blond hair to create the quail-like tuft atop Decker’s head. He shook a bent finger at Belle. “‘Remember, boy, Mr. Edison can’t hear and Mrs. Edison doesn’t want to hear anything you have to say.’”

  Belle raised her eyebrows. “I’ll try to stay out of his way.”

  With a slam, the jammed window suddenly released. They both jumped and then laughed.

  Boone replaced his hat and faced the window. “Success!” He made sure it operated smoothly and gathered his tools. When he noticed several teeth of a broken hair comb on the sill, he shook his head and tucked them in his pocket. Elena, he thought. The woman who last stayed in the cottage had lured him inside with constant requests for repairs. Nothing about her was subtle, from her heavy makeup to the black nightdress left out on the bed. She was beautiful and most likely used to getting what she wanted, but he wasn’t interested and told her as much. Still, Elena persisted until the day she left. He nearly gave in but reminded himself that he didn’t deserve to indulge in women, liquor, or anything else. Not after what he did in Kissimmee.

  He turned around to face Belle.

  “I suppose I’m done unless anything else needs tweaking.”

  “That should do,” Belle said. “If you have a moment, though, I’d love to know what it was like to build for the Edisons. Abigail mentioned that you worked with the original crew.”

  Boone set his tools back down on the windowsill. All the work on the other side of the fence could wait.

  “Exciting, I suppose. The amount of quality materials shipped in was impressive.”

  Belle gestured toward the stool. “If you have time, would you mind telling me what sort of things you did and saw?”

  He dragged the stool to him, sat, and began to describe his experience during the month of November 1885.

  Under the supervision of Mr. Edison’s “agent” sent down from New York, he worked alongside three carpenters and four other laborers. He cleared palmettos and other wild scrub from the expansive property and helped build temporary quarters for himself and the other workers. Minor repairs were made to an existing one-room cottage.

  “That’s where Decker lives n
ow,” Boone explained.

  In December, he worked with master carpenter Mr. Mendez—one of the town’s original settlers—driving wooden pilings into the floor of the Caloosahatchee, a foundation for a wharf long enough to reach deep into the river so the coming schooner, heavy with cargo, could arrive with no risk of getting stuck.

  “The two houses you see on the Edison property were actually shipped aboard the schooner,” Boone said, “but in a lot of pieces.”

  A Boston architect designed the two homes and a lumber company in Maine precut the materials and built the doors and windows. The entire kit—along with lime and cement, bricks, and coal—was shipped to Punta Rassa and then upriver to Fort Myers.

  By January, two more men arrived from Boston and New York to help manage the assembly of the homes—one for the Edisons, the other for his friend Ezra Gilliland. Crews built large fireplaces for each house and a fence around most of the property. Both residences were wired for electricity. The family’s extensive personal effects were transported aboard a lighter.

  “If it’s not too ill-mannered of me to ask,” Belle said, “what items did you see coming off the lighter?”

  Boone crossed one boot over the other and described the array of fine goods: decorative light fixtures and hundreds of lamps, a pair of sturdy bathtubs and iceboxes, feather pillows and shams, a walnut washstand and cherry bedroom suite, reed couches, imported lace curtains, dinner sets, and paintings.

  “They also included musical things for Mina,” Boone explained. “They shipped a piano and several nifty mechanical organs that play music that’s punched onto rolls of paper.”

  He continued, describing heavy wooden worktables for the laboratory along with shelving to house the various glass beakers, vials, and countless unidentifiables that played important roles in Edison’s experiments. Chemicals were shipped in as well as pulleys, wire, lathes, and other hardware and tools.