A Dream of Daring

by Gen LaGreca

  She glanced back at the explosion with profound sadness. “Tom, your invention! It’s gone! . . . It’s because of me that it’s destroyed.”

  “You didn’t destroy it.” He thought of the instability in the design, the lack of brakes, the slippage of the gears, the loss of control down the hill, the placement of the gasoline tank. He sighed. There was a lot more work to be done. In a final farewell, he painfully looked back at the heap of metal charring in the blaze on the road. His voice heavy with disappointment, he said, “It’s not ready for the new age yet.” Then he turned to her, and couldn’t help but smile with newfound hope. “But we are!”

  She cocked her head to gaze into his eyes. “Yes, we are!”

  A change had come over her, he noticed. The explosive shocks rocking their lives that day had shattered the wall that hid her from the world and from him. Her eyes squinted in the sunlight, like someone coming out of a long confinement to experience a cloudless summer day. She smiled at him with the fearless joy that only freedom can bring.

  A change had come over him too. After his painful disillusionments with his fellow planters, his mentor, and the woman he once loved—people blind to the new age who had tried to destroy him and his work—he had finally found his beautiful defender and like spirit. He squeezed the arms wrapped tightly around his waist and looked eagerly to the road ahead.

  As the two fugitives headed toward their future, they laughed—in relief, in triumph, in celebration of the great promise of their lives. They laughed until the sun-soaked air around them echoed with the sound of their joy.

  EPILOGUE

  Tom and Ladybug escaped from the South and began their lives anew. They married. They concealed their identities, stayed abroad for a spell, and when they thought it was safe, finally settled in Philadelphia, choosing a community known for its tolerance and strong abolitionist sentiments.

  Through furtive letters and newspaper clippings from the only person in Greenbriar who knew Tom’s whereabouts—his overseer, Nick—the inventor kept tabs on events there that affected his and Ladybug’s lives.

  He learned that after the explosion a flatboat had come along to rescue the sheriff and deputy. The lawmen survived, although they sustained lacerations and broken bones. Fresh from having his broken leg set, the sheriff hobbled to his office on crutches, wasting no time in resuming his work on the Barnwell murder case. But he soon encountered obstacles. When he sought to exhume Leanna Barnwell’s casket to investigate Tom’s claim about Ladybug’s true identity and free-person status, the judge, a friend of the Barnwells, denied his request. When the sheriff tried to have Mrs. Barnwell examined to determine if there was a connection between a birthmark she allegedly possessed and the one seen on his suspect, he found that Charlotte had abruptly left town with her daughter on a long journey abroad and was therefore unavailable for any inspection.

  Then two pseudonymous articles appeared in the local newspapers. One charged that Sheriff Robert Duran had acted suspiciously in a recent burglary case in which the stolen goods were never recovered. The other article, through nefarious assertions and unnamed sources, claimed that Duran had actually recovered the stolen goods and kept them for himself. There were rumors that the charges against Duran stemmed from the pen of Rachel’s new fiancé, Nash Nottingham, whom she had placed in charge of the Crossroads Plantation during her voyage. When she later returned home, Nash received the prize of her hand, along with the Crossroads as a wedding present from her mother, a reward he seemed happy to claim with the currency of his self-respect.

  Then came the new local statute proposed by an official who was another friend of the Barnwells. It required that a free person of color accused of a crime receive the same legal treatment as a slave, with no exceptions. The reason such a statute would be introduced, the arguments against it, and a review of whether it was even compatible with the state’s criminal code were matters that no one raised, debated, or cared to know.

  Then came the day when Sheriff Robert Duran vanished without a trace. He left a simple note on his desk announcing his resignation, and next to it, his badge with Lady Justice. He had not polished the silver badge of late, so the figure on it had become tarnished. That day the file on the Barnwell murder case, including all notes on the current suspect the sheriff was pursuing and the man aiding her, vanished with him. Amid the disarray caused by the sheriff’s vacancy and the missing records, as well as by the rapidly escalating tensions on the eve of the war with the North, the case was pushed to the sidelines—to Rachel Barnwell’s disappointment.

  When the Barnwell women returned from their trip, a meek and melancholy Charlotte accepted, and perhaps even welcomed, the loss of urgency about the case. But she was overshadowed by her daughter, who prodded the officials, insisting that her father’s killer be caught. However, Rachel too hesitated after receiving an anonymous letter that threatened to make public her mother’s extramarital affair and secret daughter if she continued pursuing the case. Rachel knew, but couldn’t prove, that the letter came from the man who had disappeared from the town and from her life but who still eerily watched her moves, like a phantom that could strike unexpectedly, then vaporize again. With the success of his escape, which thwarted her plan for her sister, she knew she was taking a chance in trying to outwit him. In the end, her fear of scandal overrode the desire to see her sister captured and hanged, no matter how satisfying the latter would have been. She dropped the matter, and the case went cold.

  With the aid of an attorney, Tom sold his bank and plantation, dissolving all of his ties to Greenbriar and Bayou Redbird. Nick and his brothers purchased Indigo Springs. They were able to afford the plantation because Tom, refusing to trade in human beings, placed no price on the slaves but only on the land, which lowered the cost substantially. In return, Nick agreed to implement the new work system that Tom had outlined with the bondsmen before his departure, giving them greater freedom and personal reward for their labor.

  Nick also kept the plantation’s school running. As a replacement for its dedicated founder and first teacher, he hired a fine instructor with the courage to accept a noble assignment in disregard of a cruel and unjust law: Kate Markham.

  From a story in a Greenbriar newspaper that Nick sent him, Tom learned the fate of her brother, Bret. Once free from the moral admonitions of his employer, Polly Barnwell, and of his sister, Kate, and further emboldened by his success at arson, Bret Markham crossed the line into a life of crime. His new occupation provided an outlet for his escalating resentment for anyone who had achieved more than he had and who was therefore, in his eyes, responsible for his misfortunes. From the news story, Tom learned that Markham had fled to Mississippi, where he staged a series of burglaries, always targeting the homes of the rich. During one of them, he was fatally shot. The man who lived by violence died by it too.

  Years later, Tom heard from someone else. Through Nick, the inventor received a letter sent to him at Indigo Springs. It came from a man who had promised to write but who had apparently postponed doing so until he had overcome the struggles and hardships brought on by his escape and by the great war that soon followed. He waited until his misfortune was past and success was his new condition. The writer included a photograph of himself standing in front of a store in Cincinnati that looked remarkably similar to a shop in Paris, the one from the book in Tom’s plantation library that the writer’s teacher had shown him. Tom and Ladybug cheered wildly at the picture of a smiling man in a tall chef’s hat standing under a sign that read “Jerome’s Pastries.” Tom wasn’t surprised that Jerome’s sharp wits and indomitable will had prevailed in his battle with the two-headed snake he’d once feared.

  Imbued with the spirit of the new age, Tom and Ladybug created their own new existence. After the war, they returned to the endeavors they yearned to pursue. Their lives, their work, and their love for each other ignited their days with the bright spark of happiness.

  They opened a school where Ladybug taught child
ren of all races and honed the real motor of the new age: the free, inquiring minds of the young. She taught her students the mental skills needed to become masters of themselves, preparing them to be independent, self-reliant, and ready to flourish in the industry, progress, and freedom of a new age.

  Tom continued his work as an inventor and opened a manufacturing plant that designed and fabricated machines of every kind for the growing industrial age. He kept a laboratory where he developed innovations for machines and devices that played an important role in the burgeoning industrial sector, and he accumulated many patents. His passion was always the small motor vehicle for farming and transportation with the revolutionary engine that would power the modern age. He continued his work on the new device and made many contributions toward its development. However, he came to realized that the tractor was still in its infancy. Its incredible complexities would require a few more decades of work and the efforts of other inventors as well. Eventually, it did indeed change the world and amass fortunes for those involved with its launch and wide-scale use, as Tom had foreseen.

  As the Civil War ended the scourge of slavery and the modern age began, Tom and Ladybug stood at the crossroads of history. They witnessed the spectacular era of man’s intellect unleashed, of his ability to grasp science, to realize the immense practical applications of its principles, and to create breathtaking industries. They saw a new age of power, not of man harnessing other men but of man harnessing the great potential of nature through science to vastly improve human life. They saw a peaceful, prosperous world of commerce emerge, with abundant food and a growing array of innovative products readily available on a grand scale. They saw man at his finest: passionate, creative, brilliant, and free. And they saw his great mental gifts and productive capacity bestow on the world an unimaginable progress.

  But Tom and Ladybug also began to see ominous signs of the old age creeping in. Although the immense evil of slavery had been eradicated, the forces driving the old era stubbornly persisted. Those forces, they realized, hadn’t originated in the Old South, nor would they die with it. Since humans had first appeared, those forces had ruled. Now they were eager to gain a footing in a new world that had for a time risen above them. And there were troubling signs that they would succeed.

  Man had made himself wings to fly across the heavens, but like Icarus of the old legend, he came too close to the sun, daring to roam in the province of the gods. Icarus had soared exultantly up and up, paying no heed to any limits on his flight, and then the gods had melted his wings and dropped him into the sea.

  Like Icarus, the people of the new age soon found the grand sphere of their flight shrinking. More and more, new masters and overseers emerged to pull them down. The rulers and subjects took on different forms, but the struggle remained the same as it had always been. The men of the new age saw the fierce independence of their will, the sweeping range of their actions, and the abundant fruits of their efforts slip into the hands of new overlords.

  The new players, Tom realized, were remarkably similar to the characters he thought he had left behind in the dying age.

  He saw the new Nash Nottinghams, who wanted to expend no effort but merely to tap into the efforts of others to support their life of comfort. Indolence, incompetence, and privilege were not just the province of the old aristocracy, Tom observed, but the goal of a fresh crop of Nashes of various social and economic groups. These modern Nashes were all those who were trying to get someone else to pay for their particular needs, and this time finding a virtually unlimited new revenue stream in the public till.

  Tom saw the new Ted Coopers, whose pragmatic goals superseded any concern for moral standards in their dealings with others. The new Coopers didn’t have plantations that used forced labor, but they had other businesses, causes, and interests for which they sought special privileges that they couldn’t obtain through free commerce and voluntary interactions. As the original Cooper did before them, they tried to elect politicians like Wiley Barnwell in order to enact laws and regulations that favored them, to the detriment of others. Political pull replaced free trade and competition as their enterprise.

  Tom saw the new Wiley Barnwells emerge, the leaders who tried to put the friendly face of goodness on the baseness of ruling others. These new Barnwells didn’t seek to control slaves in order to obtain their labor but instead sought to control citizens in order to obtain their political allegiance. They lured people away from the glory of being masters of themselves with the great opiate of security. They painted a sparkling new age of unprecedented opportunity as a house of horrors, fraught with peril, where men were helpless if guided by their own intelligence and efforts. Tom heard the new Barnwells sounding just like the old senator from Greenbriar when they declared that their power over their subjects sprang from noble intentions, that it was for the citizens’ own good, that their charges were the little people who couldn’t care for themselves and needed leaders to look after them. Tom saw these modern masters revel in their newfound positions of power and nurture at all costs the dependence of others that they were creating.

  Tom saw the new Bret Markhams arise in the modern world, men who had no interest in cultivating their minds but who wanted to make their mark on the world through fists, whips, and guns. Instead of beating slaves in a field, he saw these new Markhams become leaders of nations, introducing violence on a grand scale, with the worst of mankind ruling the best, with the men who burn libraries ruling those who read and write the books that fill them.

  Tom saw too the more sophisticated versions of Markham, who would never view themselves as related to such an unsavory creature as the old overseer, yet they were filled with the same resentment and envy toward those who had achieved more than they had. These new Markhams spent their time not on plantations scorning their employers but in intellectual circles scorning the producers. Tom heard them using high-sounding words, but what he saw was Markham’s old sneer when they attacked and denigrated the productive and successful. These new Markhams didn’t find it necessary to burn the houses of those they envied; instead, they only had to take the possessions out of them to give away to those who didn’t earn them. While Markham the overseer made no higher claims for his urges to cut the rich down to size, the refined Markhams hailed their similar desires as a new form of justice.

  Tom saw the new Charlotte and Rachel Barnwells also emerge in the modern age. They gathered in the press, at political parties, in literary circles, and at the universities. They were the new elite who didn’t question the people in power but accepted and backed them in order to enjoy the benefits and prestige of being part of the favored class.

  Tom saw that the representatives of the dying age knew how to use a powerful weapon to give them a stronghold. While the men who conquered nature created the machinery of industry, the men who conquered other men grabbed the machinery of the state. Their weapon was the law. Tom saw a whole slew of new acts, edicts, and rulings crop up. These laws were aimed not at curbing criminality but at curbing productivity. The new statutes clipped the wings of man so that he could no longer surge into the sky to pursue his dream of daring but instead had to seek the permission of new masters before every flight. Tom saw the rule of law seized from the hands of Lady Justice and pulled into the folds of the power brokers.

  As Tom saw all the old types that had plagued man in the past now vying for control of the modern world, he knew that the dying age would not go down easily. He, as well as Ladybug, who thought as he did, came to realize: Not only was the tractor in its infancy but man too was in his infancy.

  They saw that the forces of the dying age had survived all epochs of man. But the current age, they knew, was unprecedented. Man the infant was fast becoming a toddler, taking his first steps and discovering the early morning country road of freedom. Tom and Ladybug knew that mankind would not reach maturity until the day when people fully grasped the notion that had impelled the two of them in their own struggles, the notion that ev
eryone must be a master of himself.

  When men understand that their greatest gift is their intelligence, that their glory is to use it, that their own will is their trusted guide to chart their course, that their labors are theirs to choose, that the fruits of them are theirs to keep, and that surrendering this immense power to the rule of others is beneath the dignity of man—that is when the new age will soar to heights unimaginable.

  That is when Icarus will fly into the vast, cloudless sky, and he will once again dare to reach the sun. But this time his wings will hold strong.

  IF YOU ENJOYED THIS BOOK

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  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Genevieve (Gen) LaGreca is a Chicago writer whose first novel, Noble Vision, won a ForeWord magazine Book of the Year Award and was a finalist in the Writer’s Digest International Book Awards—two of the most prestigious national literary honors in independent publishing.

  Aside from fiction, Gen also writes social commentary. Her articles have appeared in Forbes, The Orange County Register, Daily Caller, Real Clear Markets, Gainesville Sun, Mises Daily, and other publications.

  Why does she like writing novels? Gen explains, “I want to tell stories of unusual people doing unusual things, stories with something important to say, and stories that inspire us to reach for our dreams.”