A Spark of Death

by Bernadette Pajer

  At last, he punched through to the waterfront at the foot of Marion Street. Before him, wedged between towering warehouses, was the dock. The ferry, City of Seattle, a single-decked steamer, was blasting her whistle as she prepared to depart. Bradshaw kept running. He leapt over the chain meant to restrict his entry, and as the thick rope was thrown from the deck to the dock and the boat began to pull away, he jumped aboard. His shoes, slick from puddles and oil and no-doubt horse droppings, slipped on the deck, and he landed hard on his behind at the feet of an amused crowd. An official-looking chap in a uniform and cap looked down at him with a scowl.

  Chest heaving, Bradshaw dug into his jacket pocket and palmed the only coin there. Not a dollar, just two bits. He extended his hand to the scowling official, who obliged by pulling him to his feet and accepting the coin in the bargain. He looked at the measly quarter with disdain, showed it to the crowd, and bit it as if to prove it were real. The men guffawed and the women and children laughed. The official shrugged, pocketed the coin, and turned his back on the professor to a smattering of applause. The excursion crowd was in high spirits.

  Bradshaw ducked through them into the dim interior that was filled with a shiny new buggy, a lumber-laden wagon, another of produce, and several dozen bicycles. He tried to touch his hat with a polite nod when passing a clutch of women in pale spring linen, only to find he hadn’t the strength to lift his arm—and he’d lost his hat. He sprinted out into the sunshine at the opposite end of the ferry, fearing he was too late.

  But he found them, Oscar and Artimus, perched side-by-side on the wide polished ledge of the white bulwark, a wicker picnic basket between them. They each wore crusher-style hats mashed tight on their heads to keep the wind from whipping them off. There was no railing behind them. Nothing but balance and cocky youth kept them from dropping backwards off the ferry into the deep cold.

  The world began to spin.

  Bradshaw propped himself against the bulkhead beside the boys, unable to talk, strangled as much by exhaustion as by the sudden and unexpected return of vertigo. He’d apparently pushed his luck too far.

  They stared at him as he gasped and heaved. Sweat poured off his face, stung his eyes, but he didn’t have the strength to lift his hand to his pocket for his handkerchief. He was glad for the buffeting, cooling breeze. His clothes were soaked through and clung to his skin, and his tie was choking him. After a full minute, he managed to lift a trembling hand to tug it loose.

  All the while, they simply looked at him, Artimus Lowe with an amused eyebrow lifted. Oscar Daulton, with guarded wariness. Bradshaw kept his gaze on the picnic basket, willing the nausea to subside.

  Artimus lifted his voice above the wind and the rhythmic thrum of the ferry. “To what do we owe the pleasure of your company, Professor?”

  Bradshaw couldn’t yet answer.

  “Nearly miss the boat? Why the melodramatics and perspiration?”

  Bradshaw lifted a finger.

  “Yes, alright, we’ll give you a minute to compose yourself. No fun getting old, I’ll wager. And are you feeling guilty about abandoning me in jail? You should. It was a foul thing to do. Everyone seems to have abandoned me in my greatest hour of need, except for Oscar here. My father did wire the funds to spring me, but he also sent word I’d been disowned. So there you are. I hope it weighs heavy on your conscience. If it wasn’t for Oscar, I might have resorted to flinging myself off the roof of the Lincoln. The management wouldn’t have liked that. But Oscar came, clever chap, slipped past the damned reporters up to my room with a picnic basket and a plan to get me away for the day. You know,” he said, turning to Oscar. “I didn’t think you much liked me, after that ripping I gave you in Debate. I judged you wrong, Oscar. I’m sorry.”

  Oscar made a movement that was more like a twitch than a shrug. He glanced around at the other passengers huddled in clusters on the deck and propped on the opposite bulwark. No one was paying the professor and students any attention. The wind isolated the three of them.

  Bradshaw still felt his heart thudding, but he had breath now to say to Oscar, in controlled gasps, “I believe—you’ve misunderstood—Whitman.”

  Oscar’s eyes widened. They were a pale blue, young and anxious. Bradshaw realized he’d expected to see something more in his eyes, something dark and evil. But there was just this frightened boy. Just Oscar. And he understood. He understood Bradshaw had been in his room, looking through his things, looking for evidence. He licked his lips; his Adam’s apple bobbed. “Walt Whitman died when I was a child, sir. I never met him, I know only the words he set down on the page. No one can know what those words meant to him. I know only what they mean to me.”

  “Tell me—about the Philippines.”

  “What do you want to know?”

  “Why did you volunteer?”

  Artimus Lowe sat forward, watching the interchange. Amusement had left his features.

  Oscar squared his shoulders and pressed his palms on his thighs. “I believed in the uniform.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Men wear military uniforms. Men who are strong and brave and respected.”

  “That’s true.”

  “It’s not true. It’s a lie. It’s all a lie.” Oscar turned his face away, toward the choppy water of Elliott Bay and the wooded hillsides of West Seattle. “Do you have any idea what war is like, Professor?”

  “No, not personally.” He kept his gaze on Oscar’s profile, keenly aware the boy’s hand inched toward the picnic basket.

  “You’re lucky. It’s awful. If you’d seen what I’ve seen, you’d know the truth. You’d know the uniform is just an excuse to murder innocent people.”

  “Sometimes war is necessary to preserve freedom.”

  Oscar huffed. “America claims to be a country that believes in freedom. Freedom and equality. But we send soldiers off to foreign parts with orders to subdue the natives for their own good. Do you know how to subdue a native, Professor? You give him a shovel and tell him to dig a hole. When it’s deep enough, you shoot him, and he falls dead into the hole. Then you give the shovel to another native.” Oscar’s laugh was bitter.

  Bradshaw didn’t laugh. Artimus was going pale.

  Oscar looked again at Bradshaw. His face held all the misery and anguish of the world. “I couldn’t do it.”

  “Do what?”

  “Shoot them.” He ran his thumb along the fancy carvings of the wicker handle.

  “Not everyone’s meant to be a soldier.”

  “Once you put on the uniform, you don’t have a choice. Unless you’re clever.”

  “I don’t know any student cleverer than you, Oscar.”

  “I’ve had to be. My whole life people have thought I wasn’t good for anything. I figured things out on my own. I can get people to do what I want.”

  “The army sent you home sick.”

  “That was easy. Everyone had dysentery. It would have been harder not to get sick.”

  “How did you learn about anarchy?”

  Artimus gasped. “Anar—” Bradshaw silenced him with a lifted hand, never taking his eyes from Oscar.

  “You say it like it’s something bad, Professor. They’ve got you fooled, too.”

  “Who has me fooled?”

  “The people with power. The newspapers, the people with money, the military, the government. That’s how they keep control. They get everyone believing what they’re doing is right or noble, for the greater good. Manifest Destiny. A load of lies, Professor. What do we need with the Philippines? Or Cuba? Isn’t America big enough? If those people want to run their own country, why don’t we let them? We attack them and they’re too weak and poor to fight back. Just like me. Just like a million other poor fools. They put a gun in my hand and told me to shoot because they wanted some godforsaken bug-infested hill
on some bloody island. My commander said I was weak. A coward. Well, who’s the coward now, Professor? I would have killed McKinley when he came. Me! I would have done it because I’m not a coward. McKinley’s a coward. They’re all cowards, taking from the weak and poor. Not me. I’m on the right side of history, you’ll see.”

  Bradshaw let the chugging and swooshing of the ferry, and hiss of foaming seawater fill the silence. Oscar stared once again out toward the bay. Artimus, mouth agape, begged with his eyes for Bradshaw to explain. Bradshaw indicated silently, with the slightest shake of his head, that now was not the time.

  Oscar spoke suddenly, his voice full of anger. “He tried to steal my invention.”

  “Who?”

  “Professor Oglethorpe. He took it out of Denny Hall, the day before the exhibition. He took it down to the lab and broke it open.”

  “Oh, Oscar.”

  “I caught him at it when I went down to dismantle my trap. I’d read about McKinley’s visit being canceled. Oglethorpe was in the lab when I got there, with my invention. He wanted to know how it worked and I refused to tell him. He said he was my teacher and that anything I made was school property and he had the right to know.”

  “That’s not true.”

  “I told him I’d explain it to him after I performed a demonstration. It was really very easy. You should have seen his eyes. Fame and glory. That’s what he thought he was going to steal from me. I sat safely on a lab stool, my feet off the floor, while he sat in McKinley’s chair and held up that bulb like he was a king.”

  Artimus was, thankfully, too stunned to comment.

  “Why did you kill the others, the Pinkerton man at the hotel and your manager at the factory?”

  “They’re my enemies, Professor, in my war against injustice. They kill workers every day, but it’s a slow death of degradation and so no one notices. No one cares.”

  “Why did you try to kill me?”

  “I didn’t want to hurt you, Professor.” Oscar’s blue eyes shone bright and sincere. Bradshaw was struck again at the lack of dark insanity to match the murderous actions. “You were always so good to me. But my cause was greater than your life. You see? The police suspected you, and I thought that if you were gone, they’d close the investigation and I wouldn’t be found out.”

  My God, Bradshaw thought. What had he seen in the Philippines that would push him this far? What sort of inner hell drove him to believe he should try to kill a man he considered a friend?

  “Was it you who lodged the velocipede wheel at the top of the falls?”

  “I couldn’t be sure you’d be curious enough to go look. But you did.”

  “I did. Your wheel saved me.”

  “Did it? Well, it was a gamble. I needed it to look accidental. I tried to make them all look accidental so no one would know.”

  “Can I have the basket, Oscar?”

  Artimus jolted, scooting away from the picnic basket as if from a snake.

  Oscar shook his head and curled his fingers around the handle. His eyes were now distant. “You taught me about resistance, Professor. You taught me that unimpeded current has no limits. But resistance draws heat and light. Resistance draws attention. It eventually destroys the circuit path and the current ceases to flow. My fellow anarchists are foolish and vain to boast of their accomplishments. They leave their symbols blatantly as a signature of their work, but bragging only draws resistance. Feeds resistance. Silence is an anarchist’s friend.” Daulton’s eyes glazed as his vision turned more deeply inward. He said reverently, “Silence is his unending line of power,” then closed his eyes, and threw himself backwards.

  Bradshaw sprang forward, but his abused muscles had cooled and tightened. They not only screamed with pain, they impeded his movement. He managed to grab a fistful of Oscar’s jacket in one hand and halted the boy from tumbling overboard. He gave a mighty yank to pull him off the bulwark toward the ferry deck, and he succeeded, but Oscar had a firm grip on the heavy picnic basket and a plan of his own. He spun on his heel, the basket outthrust, and hurled it up and over. The lid flapped open, dumping a red-checked cloth, pale flashes of bread, and a large brown cigar box wired to three black cylinders strapped tightly together. They disappeared with a splash. Still gripping Oscar, Bradshaw looked over the bulwark at the receding water. The checked cloth, the bread, even the basket, floated on the churning wake. But the cigar box and cylinders—three dry cell telegraph batteries—had sunk out of sight.

  A crowd had gathered, and the ferry was slowing. Oscar lay unhurt on the deck but unable to move because Bradshaw stood over him, pinning him down.

  Artimus looked sick. “He was going to push me overboard, wasn’t he? And make it look like suicide so I’d get the blame for Oglethorpe.” He shook his head, unwilling to believe he’d been so close to death. “He would never have succeeded, you know. He’d never overpower me.” He kept shaking his head, as if to say he could understand how a decrepit old man like Bradshaw had been easily pushed, but he was far too young and strong to become a victim of Oscar Daulton.

  “He would have overpowered you easily once he’d shocked you with the device in that picnic basket.”

  Artimus’ mouth dropped open. “Is that—my God, Professor. My—you saved my life.”

  Bradshaw felt his muscles weaken. He knelt down over his prisoner. “No plan is perfect, Mr. Lowe.”

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Three hours later, Bradshaw gave a thoughtful lecture to the bright young faces in his electro-magnetism class. He said nothing of Oscar’s arrest. How he could possibly explain to those inexperienced bright-eyed young men the tragedy forged from Oscar Daulton’s beliefs?

  On the way home, he pedaled his battered bicycle slowly, his muscles aching. He really did need to start using the university gymnasium. The front wheel gave him trouble because it was bent. It had been run over by a coal wagon when he abandoned it near the waterfront.

  On Gallagher Street, he dismounted, and pushed the wounded bicycle along the tree-lined sidewalk. As he passed the Oglethorpe mansion, he glimpsed through the newly planted laurel hedge Dr. Swenson playing with Olive and Wesley. He heard Marion Oglethorpe’s voice blended with those of the children. Perhaps, with time….

  When Bradshaw reached 1204 Gallagher, he stood outside the white picket fence. Clumps of damp grass lay in long stripes across the small lawn, filling the air with a sweet earthiness. The rhythmic thrumming whir-whir of the push mower told him Justin was now cutting the back lawn. Colorful blossoms nodded a welcome from the beds beneath the parlor window. An image of Missouri—cheeks flushed, tucking a curl behind her ear—flashed in his mind. He forced the image away. But his fingertips tingled. How much longer would she be with them?

  The whir of the mower silenced momentarily, and laughter, his son’s and Missouri’s, floated to him. She was there in the back garden, keeping his son company, delighting him.

  Bradshaw’s heart tightened, his eyes stung with tears. How fragile it all was, the haven of his home, the happiness of those he cared most about. Just a week ago, he’d taken it for granted, living like a half-dead man, plotting his life carefully by his calendar, trying his best to avoid living at all.

  He didn’t want to return to being that dour, plodding man. Yet what a relief it was to be home. His heart ached for Oscar, Oscar’s family, his victims. Their tragedy made the sight of his home all the more precious. He didn’t know whether he wanted to laugh or cry, but he did know he didn’t want his household to witness either.

  It was a warm afternoon. Mrs. Prouty had the windows open, letting in the smell of cut grass and spring blossoms. The curtains billowed inward, paused, then relaxed with a flutter, almost as if the house were breathing.

  The screen door opened with a squeak and a smack, and Mrs. Prouty stepped onto the porch with her broom.

  “St
anding out there again are you, Professor?”

  “I like the view.”

  “Well, when you’re through gawking, there’s a telegram in here from Henry you’ll want to see. He wants to know what all the fuss is about.”

  “Did you wire him to explain?”

  “Me? I hadn’t a clue what he was talking about.”

  He beamed at Mrs. Prouty, nearly compelled to approach her stout figure with a hug.

  Instead, he pulled his bicycle from the fence and in doing so glanced up the street. Loping toward him down the sidewalk was his least-favorite young man, well-dressed, hat at a jaunty angle. Quickly, Bradshaw opened the gate and pushed his bicycle into the yard.

  “Is that your new broom?”

  Mrs. Prouty’s eyes were on the approaching figure. “Bristles sharp enough to sting.”

  Artimus Lowe put a hand on the gate and turned a lovesick face toward the house.

  Bradshaw headed toward the backyard. “Use it at your discretion.”

  Mrs. Prouty beamed. “Yes, sir, Professor. I’d be most happy to.”

  Author’s Note

  While this story and characters are fictional, they are nestled and entwined with true historical events and detail. Researching is my favorite part of writing. I can easily spend three hours, or three days, rooting out a single detail. Seattleites might wonder about Professor Bradshaw living on Broadway Hill, but that was the hill’s name until the fall of 1901, when it was renamed Capitol. Gallagher Street is not real, but the house at 1204 exists. It’s where my grandmother lived when I was a child.

  President William McKinley did plan to visit Seattle in May of 1901 and tour the Snoqualmie Falls Power Plant, but his trip was cancelled due to Mrs. McKinley’s illness. The power company’s president, Charles H. Baker, travelled to the east coast to present McKinley with the souvenir he was to have received on his visit. I can find no description or image of this souvenir, but it must have been impressive. According to an article in the Seattle Daily Times, McKinley said, “And does this represent that wonderful water power of which I have heard so much?” He then added, “And was this beautiful piece of work really done in Seattle?” Yes, it was. I wonder if it is now somewhere with presidential memorabilia. McKinley promised to visit Washington State the following July, but of course he was unable to keep that promise because on September 6 of 1901, while visiting the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, he unwittingly reached out to shake the hand of anarchist, who shot him twice.