by Alex Myers
Jack inspected and sniffed, prodded with a fork, and sniffed again. He stared at the steaming plate of meat, sauce, and vegetables for a long time. After more than a minute he finally said, “It looks and smells divine. I’m just not sure what it is.”
Frances looked a little disappointed, but also as if she thought Jack was pulling her leg. “At Hudson’s on the Bend in Williamsburg, arguably the nicest restaurant in Virginia, this is the specialty of the house, more expensive and popular than a porterhouse, and you’re trying to tell me you don’t know what it is?”
Jack went back to poking and prodding and even took a small piece of the meat and tasted it. “Oh yeah! That’s unbelievable. The meat is red in color, and tastes something like veal, only more delicate and sweeter. Plus, there’s an underlying odd flavor that I’ve never tasted before. I’m sorry, I have no idea what this is.”
“It’s green turtle steak,” Frances said looking disappointed.
Jack was astonished. “And what are these things? They look like flippers.”
“They are. You boil them in sherry and spices like dill and capers; a Maryland sauce is what they call it. And that is a bed of fried parsley.”
“Turtle?”
“Giant green turtles from the Caribbean. They weigh a couple of hundred pounds. Moore and Company here in Norfolk imports them to the US. You’re joking with me. Are you trying to say you’ve never had turtle?”
“Most sea turtles are on the endangered species list. It’s against the law to hunt them or kill them.”
“Endangered? That’s crazy talk. I’ve been down to the Bahamas and there are millions of these things—why, there are as many sea turtles in the ocean as there are buffalo on the plains.”
“Ooh, bad example.” Jack winced. “The buffalo population gets down to only like one or two herds, maybe one hundred animals.”
“They were used for food?”
“Ah, no. There was a bounty placed on their hides. I think the real reason for their near-eradication was to change the way of life for the Native Americans and to get them to buckle. White men wanted the lands and since our army was stronger, we took what we wanted.” His attention came back to the food in front of him. “I didn’t mean to go off on a tangent. I can’t wait to eat more of this. What is this other stuff—are these vegetables?”
“It’s a kind of a succotash, with corn, canned tomatoes, mild sweet peppers, onions finely cut, and large chunks of pickled peaches.”
“Is this commonplace fare?”
“Succotash, yes, but done this way is Clarissa’s special recipe.”
“It sounds like you’ve been spending quite a bit of time with the Goodyears.”
“Yes, I have. My mother has always been so…. I guess you could say society-conscious. I’m sure that’s why she pushed Daddy to move to New York. Mrs. Goodyear, Clarissa, is just so…accessible.”
They let the conversation hang and they plated the food and started to eat. Jack was pleased to see that Frances sat in the seat next to him as opposed to the seat directly across the large rectangular table. He about swallowed a turtle fin when she reached over and placed her hand on top of his and left it there. Jack awkwardly ate with his left hand because he didn’t want to pull his hand away.
They ate in silence as Frances seemed engrossed in her meal, never moving her left hand away. Now and then, nearly imperceptibly, she would caress his hand underneath. Jack found it incredibly innocent, yet incredibly erotic.
“I’ve been dying to ask you,” Jack said. “Why did you decide to make your cooking debut here and not at your house? Not that I mind.”
“Because that’s my parents’ house and not mine.” She removed her hand and looked him in the eyes. “This was my house and I picked out that stove before you put that electric burner in it. I just feel really comfortable here now. Plus, you have that refrid-, refrig-, that electric ice-box thing.”
“Refrigerator,” he said.
“Yes, that thing. I’ve eaten here so often in the last six months, I’ve been in this kitchen more than my own. Besides, it gave us some time to be alone.”
Jack’s toes curled in his shoes at the sound of that. He wasn’t acting like himself; he definitely wasn’t in control, but he liked it.
“Are you done?” she asked.
“Yes, I’m about turtled-out.”
“I have one course left.” She gathered up the plates, and as he started to help clear the table, she sternly told him not to move.
He heard her bustling about in the kitchen and so he got up quickly. Instead of turning on the electric lights, he lit the dozens of candles that were set up in the dining and living rooms. He had just sat back down as she came in with a pie and whipped cream. She glanced around approvingly at the ambiance and then went back into the kitchen and came out with a pot of coffee.
“If we drink that, we’ll be up all night,” Jack said.
“Do you have someplace you have to be tomorrow?”
“No.”
“Then what’s the problem?” she asked.
“Me? No problem over here.”
She smiled seductively as she gave him a piece of pie with a ladle of whipped cream on top. She then poured a cup of coffee.
“Wow, what kind of pie is this?”
“Gooseberry.”
“Can’t say that I’ve ever had that either,” he said.
“Well, isn’t this turning out to be a night of firsts for you?”
“I hope so,” he said, and really meant it.
He took the utensil and put another spoonful of whipped cream on his pie.
“Don’t you like the pie? You’re smothering it in whipped cream.”
“I just really like whipped cream. I could eat it on anything.”
“On anything?” she asked.
“Anything.”
She dipped her finger into the bowl of whipped cream and placed it on her lips.
It was everything Jack could do to keep from pouncing on her. He held himself back and moved to her slowly. He was six inches away when she closed her eyes and opened her arms to him. He stared at her face as he got closer and closer and lightly, gingerly removed the cream, barely touching her lips with his. She drew in a deep breath and held it.
He watched her face intently. She lightly touched his shoulders with her hands, ready to lock him in an embrace. She moved her face closer to where his had been, but now he was a foot away and watching her.
When she finally realized that he had moved away, she opened her eyes and stared into his.
“I really, I mean really, like whipped cream,” he said.
“Me, too,” she said and put another dollop on her lips. This time she kept her eyes open and as he moved in slowly to remove the cream, she grabbed him and pulled him to her.
Her sudden movement surprised him and he fell into her. He caught himself and ended up straddling her. She moved her arms from hanging onto his shoulders to holding him around the small of his back. She pulled him in tighter. He stopped teasing and kissed her full on, tenderly, but passionately.
He finally pulled away and placed his cheek on hers. They were both breathing rapidly, heavily.
“It’s getting late,” he said.
“I’m not going anywhere,” Frances replied.
CHAPTER 48
Sunday February 1857
It Was Inevitable
Rain pounded on the tin roof in a hypnotic rhythm as Frances slept, locked in Jack’s arms in the warm bed. It was the middle of February and a particularly rainy, blustery morning just before dawn, when the electricity to the compound went off with a snap.
Almost thirty minutes later loud pounding jarred them awake.
“The turbines on the generator have seized up,” said a man at the door to Jack’s house at the complex.
“Let’s go see if we can free them up, then,” Jack said, grabbing his shoes and a coat. "I'll take the water-bike over and meet you there."
"Can't. Broad C
reek is frozen over."
With the high saline content in the creek, Jack didn't think it was possible.
“I’m coming with you,” Frances said. She was in the doorway to Jack’s room already dressed.
Jack looked at her and desire was ready to jump out of his skin. They hadn’t made love the night before, but had came heart-stoppingly close. And besides, he didn’t have time to argue.
"I have a horse and wagon. Come with me," the worker announced.
From Frances's old house on the west side of the inlet, the turbines on the retention ponds were only seven hundred feet directly across Broad Creek, next to Murphy's house. But because Jack couldn't use the water, he had to travel around the northern top of the inlet.
The mouth of the retention pond was twenty yards across and the structure that held the turbine and generator extended like a raised bridge across it. A metal walkway on top reached ten yards to the middle where the generator was a mass of ice. “Morning, Jack. I told them to wake you. This seemed important,” Kaz said, and then noticed the extra passenger. “Good morning, Miss Frances.”
“When did we lose power?” Jack asked.
“I think about hour ago.”
They had a larger more efficient generator winched up near the shore, ready to be put on the rail and moved into place. “I suppose this is as good a time as any to replace the generator,“ Jack said to Kaz. A spike of lightning shot across the early morning winter sky followed by a loud report of thunder. “We couldn’t have picked a worse time, could we?”
“I did not think river would freeze so bad,“ Kaz said. Blue-white lightning flashed across the sky, raising white shimmers on the icy river.
“Neither did I,” Jack said. “Something doesn’t seem right about this.” He hitched the collar of his coat, trying to keep the rain from falling down his back. The small river received a heavy and sustained tidal flow, enhanced by concrete canals and a large reservoir. The movement of the turbine itself, together with the water’s temperature and its salinity were supposed to keep it ice-free, but now it was completely caked.
"Where's Murphy?"
"He and some men are starting the boilers on the coal plant."
The coal plant, not quite ready to go fully on-line, was located between the two upper retaining ponds. Jack had diverted part of the river’s flow into large holding tanks, water waiting to be warmed and turned into electric-generating steam by the ever-growing pile of coal. Although he would lose some efficiency, in the winter he planned to discharge about a fourth of the heated water into the river just ahead of the turbine. This would certainly keep the turbines ice-free. Plus the newer, bigger turbine blades of the larger generator would be less apt to seize.
Two men were on the metal walkway that reached the generator. “Sir, we have something,” one of them called.
They pulled a large iron rod the size of a small flagpole from the guts of the turbine. “This was wedged in there. And the wire from the generator to the transformer has been cut.”
Jack looked at the piece as it was brought over to him. It was a rail from the railway they were putting in on the other side of the complex.
“We’ve been sabotaged,” Jack said.
”How can I help?” Frances asked.
“See that big building up there with the smokestacks? Have Murphy send down two boilers’ worth of water so we can try to free this up.” Frances took off with the wagon, heading toward the coal plant.
The implications of the treachery left Jack in a cold shaking fury. “I’m going to need to get some men out there and see if we can free this up while we get the other one in place. Is that one ready?” Jack asked, pointing to the new generator and turbine.
“I talked to men. It will be ready by time water in tanks is boiling. I hope we do not get hit by this lightning. I can smell it in air,” Kaz said.
“Smell what?” a man asked.
“Electricity!” To accentuate his point, another loud blast like cannon fire came from the sky.
The compound pulled together and everyone worked furiously.
Jack was overseeing ten men attempting to winch into place the larger turbine-generator unit, but the turbines on the smaller unit still had a three-inch coat of ice and refused to turn.
Upriver at the coal plant, huge clouds of black smoke from the boiler fires rose like obsidian fingers into the cold morning sky. Murphy and his men were waiting for the water to reach a boil before releasing it into the pond.
Jack and his men stood on the metal walk that reached to the middle of the river. While some were working the winch, raising the immense turbine into the new generator housing, Jack worked with a heavy, metal pole knocking loose the ice covering the older, smaller one.
Then suddenly the gate on the first boiler was opened and a rush of steaming liquid hit the frigid water and a huge billowing cloud of steam rose into the sky. The sight unnerved the men on the catwalk, but Jack assuaged their fears and told them that things were going as planned. The steaming cloud made its way to the frozen turbine and soon the men were enveloped in a thick, dense fog. The ice was beginning to give way on the machinery and Jack was ready to signal the opening of the second tank. “Get ready, boys. It’s going to get even hotter and steamier around here.”
Then all at once, it looked like photoflash lightning. Jack and the men felt the concussion of the explosions before they heard them. Three loud eruptions, accentuated by three separate cracks of lightning, issued from the direction of the boilers. Then came the sound of men screaming. Boiling water and flying chunks of metal showered the entire area. Men scattered. A wall of water ten feet high hit the retention pond, taking huge pieces of the shoreline with it. The supports started to give way on the catwalk and the men climbed over themselves scrambling to get off.
The superheated water had a disastrous effect on the supports; two of the men fell over the sides and into the river. The heavy generator was breaking free of the catwalk and two men were trapped on top of it. Jack handed across the long pole he was using to break the ice free and managed to pull one man over. As he was handing the pole to the second man, a large tree rammed the turbine, knocking it free from the supporting steelwork. The man was propelled backward, pulling Jack from the catwalk. He found a handhold on the metal frame of the generator, which plummeted straight down. Jack never heard the men yelling from the shore as he rode the generator as it scraped along the river bottom. The crashing of the water and the screams of metal along with the thick cloud of steam separated Jack from the world around him.
Jack was nearly decapitated as one of the metal guardrails from the catwalk clanged against the generator and shot past him into the fog. The generator was spinning and he was constantly moving to keep his balance, like a lumberjack riding a log. The heavy generator finally dug into the shallow river bottom and catapulted Jack into the air. He waited for the impact into the frigid water and, when it finally came, his chest slammed into a giant rock. The icy water revived him enough that he was able to give a few kicks and a stroke toward what he hoped was the shore. His feet hit bottom and he pushed his body forward and felt gravel under his face.
Because the thick steam was still flowing and obscuring visibility, it took twenty minutes to find Jack on the bank between the two retention ponds. He was on his back on the gravel shoreline, dazed.
“Jack!” Frances ran to him and helped him sit up.
“You’re alright? I thought the explosion came from the coal plant.”
“It did. Murphy figured out what was going on and got everyone out before it exploded.
Jack felt better by the second, “Help me up. I’ve got to check on my men.”
He was hurt but not badly enough to keep him from helping load other men into the back of a wagon; he rode along as the driver took them to the on-site infirmary. He had been warned and he wanted to kick his own ass for not putting better security in place. He also realized this might not have been the only sabotage.
CHAPTER 49
February 1857
Medicine and Security
Jack had some of the best doctors and medical researchers on the planet working at his medical facility. The building was two stories tall; the top floor was dedicated to research and the bottom level divided into four dormitory-style hospital rooms with a total of forty-eight beds.
His reputation and plenty of research money had made the facility the world’s medical hotspot. Louis Pasteur, Dr. Joseph Lister, and Dr. John Snow from Europe had sought him out and were there. He’d hired the first female doctor in the U.S., Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell, as well as her sister Emily and their brother Dr. Samuel Dickson. As well, he’d hired the first African-American female physician, Dr. Rebecca Lee Crumpler. He guided them into more medical discoveries than the world had seen up till then. He gave them the basic chemistry or theory behind as much twenty-first century medical knowledge as he could remember as well as all of the transcribed notes from his iPhone. The brilliant men and women took off in one direction or another. They had already discovered penicillin and were currently testing vaccines for polio, whooping cough, smallpox, and diphtheria. Under his guidance, they already had performed a successful blood transfusion.
The facility had developed a clumsy, but safe X-Ray machine with a bigger, better version ready to be installed. Jack was particularly proud of the staff doctors’ ability to diagnosis patients with the help of the information from his iPhone.
Of the nearly fifty doctors, nurses and researchers on staff, a third were from New York hospitals as well as NYU and Columbia University; another third came from the Norfolk Hospital and the Portsmouth Naval Hospital; the final third had been brought in as experts in their fields. Since so many of the doctors had strong ties with nearby communities, they could gather patients and treat them for free at the facility.
The explosion at the coal plant had completely destroyed two of the boilers and flying debris had punched holes in two of the other four. The new turbine generator was destroyed and the original one was barely working. The good news was that the one unharmed boiler had been brought online ahead of schedule and was supplying more than enough electricity for the complex.