A Dream of Daring (4 page)

Tom rose. With his arms
outstretched and his fingers almost touching the dilapidated old coach on one
side of him and the new tractor on the other, he looked like a bridge between
two worlds.

“Gentlemen, the new age
is coming. That’s why I aim to develop this thing.”

“Does this mean you’ll be
moving up North?” Nash asked hopefully.

“I want to develop it
here, where I can test it on cotton.”

“You sure have some big
plans there, Tom,” said Cooper with a mocking grin. “I mean, a
new age
?”

“What’s wrong with the
age we have?” asked Nash.

“How can you be so sure
of what you’re saying?” added Cooper.

“Because my tractor
works.
It works.
The rest is details—thousands of tedious details and
years of laboring through them. But there’s a new principle at work in this
engine, and there’s no denying that. There’s no going back.” He smiled, his
eyes bright with confidence. “With the tractor, an entire field can be worked
by one man in one day. All it takes is a small, maneuverable engine able to
move wheels and haul farm equipment.”

His thoughts were a world
away as he gestured, his face pensive.

“Today we have mechanized
textile mills that substantially increase production over manual methods. Just
imagine that kind of machine power in a small, personal vehicle. Picture that
out in the fields. I tell you, there’ll be a day when one machine will perform
the work of a hundred hands. It will empty the fields of men!”

“Empty the fields of
men?” repeated Cooper, his curiosity now tinged with displeasure.

“We don’t need to empty
the fields,” added Nash. “We have plenty of hands that we need to occupy.
Whatever would we do with them?”

“Why, a man’s lot will
change with changing times,” Tom replied excitedly. “Machines will work the
fields, and men will no longer have to break their backs and waste their lives
digging dirt and picking crops. There’ll be plenty of other jobs to do. The new
age will need workers to operate the machines. It’ll need mechanics, inventors,
engineers, architects, mathematicians, and builders to design the machines, to
erect the factories, and to produce greater and greater advances to move
mankind forward.”

“What about the slaves?”
Cooper asked accusingly. “Where do they stand in your wild scheme?”

Tom seemed to look
through the men to the vision that filled his mind, making him powerless to
speak to anything else. “The new age is
science
. It has no place for
slaves.”

A biting silence greeted
his pronouncement. If Tom hadn’t been consumed with his own thoughts, he might
have felt as if he had been slapped.

Nash broke the awkward
pause, his voice growing bolder as he spoke, as if he had suddenly found a
playing field on which he could score a point. “Let me explain something to
you, my friend. Slavery is completely intertwined with life here, and you’re
not going to change that.”

“Slavery is inextricably
linked with the economy worldwide,” added Cooper. “Thanks to slavery, we have
cotton. And thanks to cotton, men are better clothed, their comfort better
promoted, their industry more highly stimulated, and civilization more rapidly
advanced.”

“You mean you need
slavery to advance civilization?” asked Tom.

“Look here,” said Cooper,
“we don’t rhapsodize about any new age here. We don’t even
think
that
humbug.”

Barnwell, who had
remained quiet, now squeezed Tom’s shoulder affectionately. “You’ve been away
so long, Tom, you forgot how things work here. What I mean is, they’re
children. We look after them. They need our help and would be completely lost
without it. Why, it’s right honorable of us to take care of them,” he declared.
“They can’t do the work you’re talking about. Mathematicians! Engineers!
Imagine!” He roared with laughter. “It’s like expectin’ a baby to build a
steamboat. They’re like children, I tell you.”

“Isn’t that because you
treat them that way?” asked Tom.

“Our slaves are treated
better than any workers up North,” said Cooper. “You want to make wage laborers
out of them? We give them
much
more than that here. We don’t fire them.
We feed them. We house them. We care for them when they’re sick. We look after
their young. And we keep them comfortable in their advancin’ years. I tell you,
havin’ our protection and security is the superior system to wage labor.”

“You mean having no
choice about your life is superior to having a choice?” asked Tom quietly.

“You listen, boy, and
listen good,” said Cooper. “You got something new, we’re open-minded; we’ll
give it a look. But if any tractor gets developed here, it’ll be by us, for us,
and serving us and our ways.”

“No men can make the
tractor kowtow to their notions of how the world should run. The tractor will
come with its own notions.”

“There’s a word for your
talk,” Cooper said sharply, his voice low, his finger pointing in Tom’s face.

“Now, now, Ted,” said
Barnwell soothingly. “Tom needs time to adjust to life here. This new age isn’t
coming tonight, is it?” He laughed. “I reckon we’ll have lots of time to
discuss it.”

He put his arm around
Cooper’s shoulder and steered him toward the door. “Let’s get back to the
guests, Ted. Tomorrow I’ll take you around and show you the plantation
journals. Bret Markham, the overseer, kept the books in right good order,
everything recorded, every penny accounted for. He may look unscrubbed, but
he’s a fine man. Intelligent, I tell you.”

Tom and Nash followed,
with Tom swinging the door closed behind them.

* * * * *

The fire had dwindled to
embers, its flames no longer reflecting on the shiny armoire. From the
triangular slit in the drapes, a gray tinge of moonlight beamed into the room.
Tom sat at a table before the fireplace, writing intently, his sleeves rolled up,
his vest open, his jacket flung on the bed behind him. His lamp cast a shadow
of his wiry figure against the carpet of his bedroom at the Crossroads.

Before supper, Rachel
Barnwell and her mother had left for home, with Charlotte commenting that the
air at the Crossroads made her ill. Nash Nottingham and the other guests had
left as well. Tom had remained for the night to get an early start to the docks
with his invention the next morning. His host and the new owner of the
Crossroads, Wiley Barnwell, had also remained, along with the prospective
buyer, Ted Cooper, so that they could discuss business the next day. Tom, eager
to excuse himself but fearful of appearing rude, had sat through a seemingly
interminable supper followed by a smoke in the gentlemen’s parlor, discussing
planting schedules, tillage methods, and cotton gins with the two older men. At
eleven o’clock, when Barnwell and Cooper had finally decided to retire, a
servant escorted Tom to his bedroom on the upper floor. Finally, he was free.

Once relieved of social
obligations, Tom jotted down a few thoughts. The discussion earlier that day
about cotton seed had provoked new ideas that he wanted to pursue. The new seed
was said to yield cotton that could be picked more readily. Cotton that was easy
to pull off the boll. For the rest of the day, the matter of harvesting the
cotton had sown its own seeds in his fertile mind.

What if one day the new
engine could be made so powerful that it would be able to do more than just
drive itself and haul
passive
farm tools like a plow? What if this
engine could also possess enough power to run
active—
motorized—farm
equipment in the field the way a steam-powered or water-powered engine runs
machinery in a factory? This was an idea that had never occurred to him before.
He paused to ponder the matter. What if there were a machine to pull the cotton
off the boll? And what if it could be powered by a tractor’s engine to do the
cotton picking mechanically?

He took a fresh piece of
paper from a box of stationery, dipped his pen in its inkwell, and sketched the
tool he imagined on that machine. He drew an illustration of a metal object
shaped like a hand, with prongs that resembled human fingers, only they were
thinner and pointier. Then he sketched a cotton plant and showed how the prongs
of the spindle might mechanically grasp the cotton and twist it off the boll.

Sitting there in the
night, with only the fuel of his imagination, he had no way of knowing that a
century later there would exist such a machine, twenty feet tall and just as
long, yet delicate enough to weave between the rows of fragile, growing plants
without trampling them. This factory-in-the-field would mechanically pick
cotton by a method similar to the one he outlined that evening—performing work
that had previously required one hundred men. Tom had no way of knowing that
other harvesters, as they would come to be called, would pick a countless
variety of crops throughout the world in quantities and at speeds that were
unfathomable. He had no way of knowing that such mechanization would produce,
with only a miniscule fraction of the labor used in his day, an unimaginable
abundance of food.

His hands stiffened as he
sketched, and he realized they were cold. He looked up to find that the fire
had gone out. A glance at the mantel clock showed that it was a few minutes
past one. Suddenly aware that he was tired, he rubbed his eyes and yawned. He
decided that he had written enough to capture his thoughts. He had to rise
early for his travels, so he needed a good night’s sleep.

He began unbuttoning his
shirt when he remembered something. He had not put the engine cover back on his
tractor after removing it earlier to show the motor to the senator and his
companions. He would do that now to save time in the morning.

He put on his jacket and
curled his finger through the handle of his lamp; the candle flickered in its
glass cylinder as he went down the stairs. In the parlor he found someone to
help him with the bulky engine cover, a sole servant awake at that hour. It was
Tucker, the young man who had earlier escorted him to his room and who was now
placing wood in the fireplaces for the morning.

A cacophony of songs from
nocturnal animals and insects that were invisible to the eyes but whose
presence was indisputable to the ears greeted the two men as they left the
house. Tucker took the candle and led the way to the old carriage house. Tom
looked up to see a sky aglow in the moonlight. Like so many planters, he had
learned to search the heavens for signs of fair weather for planting, rain for
crop growth, then fair weather again for picking the cotton before the winter
storms came. In the distance he detected clouds forming and wondered if it
would rain the next morning when he had to go to Bayou Redbird.

As the men approached the
old carriage house, they could see that the door had been swung open, to Tom’s
surprise. A ribbon of lantern light streamed out the door. A horse in a harness
stood outside the structure. The men moved closer. Tucker was the first one to reach
the entrance and look inside. He gasped. The lamp rattled precariously in his
hand. Tom grabbed the light to steady it. Then he looked inside. He too gasped,
and the lamp rattled again.

The tractor was missing.
Near the spot where the device had stood, a man’s body lay in a nightshirt and
robe on the floor, his face as gray-white as his hair, his chest covered with
blood, his unblinking eyes frozen in a final moment of horror. It was Senator
Wiley Barnwell. Standing over the senator, his hands spotted with blood, was
Ted Cooper.

Chapter
2

The old carriage house
was colder, darker, and emptier than it had been mere hours before when a young
inventor, a new discovery, and an ardent dream had filled it with life. Now a jaundiced
light flickered on Tom as he stood near the door, his features as frozen in
horror as Barnwell’s. Fresh blood colored the side of his mouth where Cooper
had punched him.

Ted Cooper sat up against
a wall in the shadows, his long legs stretched in front of him and his hands
folded in his lap. A swollen bruise around one eye and blood under his nose
told of a more heated moment, when he had tried to leave and had exchanged
blows with Tom, who had finally knocked him down and forced him to remain.

Both men waited, glaring
at each other, while the corpse stared up vacantly in the eerie silence. After
discovering Barnwell, Tom had rushed to check his pulse, found none, then sent
a shaken Tucker into town to summon the sheriff. Too tense to sit, too shocked
to pace, Tom now stood like a sentry guarding a prisoner.

Finally, he heard the
clatter of horses’ hooves. He stepped outside to find Tucker returning with
four others. Tom recognized the men as local citizens whom he knew casually.

A somber, light-haired
man with a badge walked toward him. “Mr. Edmunton?”

“Yes, Sheriff.”

“Your man, Tucker, says
there’s been a death here, that you two found a body on the premises.”

“That’s right.”

Sheriff Robert Duran
spoke with the calm voice of a judge. His pale blond eyebrows seemed nearly
invisible on his face, making his dark, inquiring eyes more prominent. He was
not tall, but he did not seem to need height. His stocky build and solemn
manner gave the impression of a firmness that was both physical and mental,
imparting an air of authority to him beyond his thirty-two years.

“You may know our doctor
and coroner, Dr. Don Clark,” the sheriff said, pointing to the gray-haired man
walking toward them with a saddlebag flung over his shoulder.

“Hello, Doctor.” Tom
inclined his head in greeting.

“Good evening,” the
doctor replied.

The gravity of the
occasion was softened by the doctor’s half-smile, as if, even in adversity, he
retained the kindness of a healer. But adversity seemed to have the opposite
effect on the sheriff, who was more stoical than Tom had ever seen him.

“And these are my
deputies, Jeff and Bart.”

Tom nodded to the two men
approaching him.

All four showed signs of
hasty dress—a shirt only partially tucked into pants, a pair of suspenders
twisted, pant legs caught haphazardly in boots, disheveled hair—attesting to
their quick response in the emergency.

“Come this way,” said Tom
grimly.

The lawmen and the doctor
entered the old carriage house, their steps sounding in the silence at a steady
pace until they saw the shocking sight, and then they rushed toward the body,
stirring dust as they ran.

“My God!” cried Dr.
Clark. “It’s Wiley Barnwell!”

The sheriff whirled to
Tom. “Who did this?” he demanded.

Tom’s face turned to the
figure now standing in the darkness by the wall.

Duran followed Tom’s
glance. He gasped incredulously. Seconds passed before he found a whisper of
his former voice.

“Uncle Ted!”

“Hello, Robbie,” said
Cooper.

Tom’s voice was hard.
“When Tucker and I walked in here earlier, we found the senator lying there as
you see him. And we found Ted Cooper standing over the body with blood on his
hands. Mr. Cooper tried to leave the scene. He’s here now only because I
blocked his departure.”

“I’ve nothing to hide,”
Cooper protested.

Sheriff Duran gaped at
his uncle in dismay.

“It’s
not
what
he’s implying!” Cooper told his nephew.

“It’s not?” The inventor
looked as if a pressure valve inside him was blowing open. “You standing over
the body? You murderer!”

“That’s a lie. A lie, you
scoundrel!” Cooper leaped at his accuser.

Tom lunged at him in
return.

The sheriff, having
recovered his presence of mind and his voice, wedged himself between the men
and shouted, “Get back! Both of you!” He pushed them apart. More quietly, he
added, “I’ll hear you out presently, one at a time.”

The deputies moved closer
to ensure that the two men heeded the order.

The sheriff left his
deputies with Tom and Cooper for a moment while he kneeled by the coroner. Dr.
Clark was crouched over the body, already at work examining it and measuring
the wound, with instruments from his saddlebag spread before him.

“Where’s the murder
weapon, Doctor?” asked the sheriff.

“It’s not here.”

“What happened?”

“The senator was stabbed
on the left side of his chest. The weapon penetrated just above the heart.” Dr.
Clark pointed as he spoke, looking back and forth from the glassy eyes of the
deceased to the intelligent eyes of the sheriff. “It appears a knife was thrust
downward in one sharp blow, then was removed.” He picked up the bottom of Barnwell’s
robe, where dark red streaks ran across the light brown fabric. “The weapon was
apparently wiped here, and then it was taken away. I’ll conduct a search to see
if we can recover it.”

The sheriff rose and
walked toward Tom and Cooper.

“Did either of you see a
weapon?”

“No,” they each replied.

“I want to hear exactly
what happened. First, Mr. Edmunton. What were you doing here, and what did you
see?”

His voice heavy with
despair, Tom began. “Sheriff, I first have to tell you about something that was
in here earlier and that’s gone now, because it appears to be the reason the
senator was . . . attacked.”

Tom related the story of
his invention—what it was; where he was going with it; how it happened to be
placed in the old carriage house during Polly Barnwell’s funeral service; how
he had shown the device to the senator, Cooper, and Nash Nottingham that
afternoon; how he had come out with Tucker that night to put the cover back on
the engine; and how they had found the invention missing, Barnwell murdered,
and Cooper standing over the body. Tom led the sheriff outside to a horse in
harness standing where he and Tucker had found it at one-fifteen that morning,
when they had arrived at the carriage house.

“So you see, Sheriff,”
Tom said, walking back inside with Duran, “my invention was stolen, apparently
hauled away by the horse, and a man who treated me like a son, a man who
appears to have . . . defended . . . my
device, was . . . killed.”

“Now, why would anyone
want to take your invention?”

“There’s a fortune
waiting for the man who develops a way to mechanize farming. An ambitious man
could recognize the implications of my tractor, which I had described to
Cooper, the senator, and Nash Nottingham earlier when I showed it to them. A
clever mind would surely realize that the new device had the potential to
transform the South. During our conversation, Cooper asked me if I had a patent
on my invention. I told him I hadn’t applied yet. So he knew there was as yet
no legal protection for it.”

Cooper listened, his arms
folded in indignation, shaking his head.

“It seems Cooper saw an
unusual opportunity. He knew my invention would be gone in the morning, so he
had to act tonight while everyone was asleep.”

“You were staying here
overnight?” The sheriff asked his uncle.

“I was thinking of buying
the Crossroads, and Wiley Barnwell was fixing to show me around the place in
the morning. So after Polly Barnwell’s funeral, I supped with Wiley and our
overzealous inventor”—he pointed to Tom—“and then I settled in to stay the
night.”

“That gave you the
opportunity to steal my device, hide it in the woods, then return to your room.
In the morning, you could’ve acted as surprised as anyone that my tractor was
missing—”

“That’s
not
what
happened. It’s pure speculation, Robbie.”

“I’ll hear it out
regardless,” Duran told his uncle, then nodded to Tom to continue.

“I told Cooper that many
modifications needed to be made to refine the design. So why not steal such a
device in its infancy, then quietly enlist engineers to make the adjustments?
After a series of improvements that would alter the device, and with my having
no patent claim, how could I prove any ownership?”

“I had none of those
thoughts! None at all!” shouted Cooper.

“After everyone had
retired for the night, Cooper could have quietly left the house, harnessed his
horse, and come here to haul my invention away. The senator could’ve heard him,
because his room was on the first floor, facing the carriage house.”

“Show me,” said the
sheriff.

Tom went to the door and
pointed toward the big house.

“The senator had the room
on the first floor with the open window there in the corner. It’s near the
parlor where we were conversing. I saw him go into it at the end of the
evening.”

Looking past Tucker, who
was standing near the horses, the sheriff peered at the back of the big house.
The open casement window in the corner of the house was visible in the
moonlight, its drapery swaying in the night breeze.

“And where were you?”
Duran asked Tom.

“I was on the opposite
side of the house and up a flight, so I heard nothing,” Tom continued. “But
Senator Barnwell could well have heard noises through his open window when the
thief put the cover on the motor and hitched the device to the horse. The
senator might then have lit a lantern, put on his robe, and come out to
investigate. He could have caught Cooper in the act of stealing the engine.”

As his agitation grew,
Tom’s voice rose.

“If he caught Cooper, the
senator would have been outraged. Because he was like a father to me and
because he’s an honest man, he would’ve tried to protect my invention. For
Cooper, it would’ve been too late to retreat from his vile deed. The senator
might have threatened to use his power and influence to smear Cooper’s
reputation and even harm him financially for his attempted thievery. The
senator might have told Cooper as much when he caught him in the act of
stealing.”

“Utter poppycock!” Cooper
injected.

“Being unable to retreat
and faced with disgrace, Cooper could have panicked and attacked the senator,”
Tom continued. “Then he could’ve quickly hauled the engine away and hid it in
the woods. The knife he used in the attack might have been traceable to
him—perhaps it bore his initials or was in some other way distinctive—so he
could have taken it with him and hidden it along with my tractor. Then, of
course, he had to come back here, where he was spending the night. So he would
have returned to put the horse in the stable and slip into bed. But on his way
to the stable, he stopped where he had committed his crime. Maybe he was
tempted to ensure that the senator—the tragic victim and sole eyewitness to
identify him—was indeed dead. So he stepped in here, perhaps intending to stay
only an instant. That was when Tucker and I walked in on him.”

“That’s all humbug!
Preposterous!” Cooper shouted.

“Sheriff, there’s a
princely sum to be made in the development of that tractor. People have killed
for far less. Why, the senator even joked earlier in the day that Cooper would
sell his own mother for gold. His passion for wealth is well known.”

“But my passion for crime
is merely a fantasy of your perverted mind.”

The sheriff’s face was a
stone slab. “How much time passed after the three of you retired for the night
and you came out here?” Duran asked Tom.

“Let’s see,” Tom said,
figuring. “I found Cooper here at one-fifteen, so two hours and fifteen minutes
had passed since he, Senator Barnwell, and I had retired to our rooms at eleven
o’clock. That could be time enough to execute the scheme I described.
Furthermore, when I saw Cooper . . . leaning over
the . . . senator . . .”—Tom’s eyes closed
painfully at the memory—“. . . he tried to leave. He’s here only
because I forced him to stay.”

“I was
leaving
,
not
fleeing
. There was no point in staying here to subject myself to this
boy’s wild accusations. Robbie, you know where to find me, anytime, in the
house where you grew up!”

The sheriff’s eyes sank
to a spot on the ground where he seemed to be staring at a torment of his own.
Then he slowly raised his glance to meet the eyes of the man pleading with him.

“Mr. Cooper, how did you
get the bruises on your face?”

“Robbie, it’s me. You
don’t have to act so stuffy with your uncle.”

“You will please answer
the question,” the sheriff said quietly.

“I scuffled with him,
like he said.”

“And the bruises on your
face, Mr. Edmunton?”

“Cooper hit me.”

The accused nodded in
assent.

“Let’s hear your side,
sir.” The sheriff turned to his uncle.

“Everything this crazy
Yankee mechanic said is hogwash! I didn’t covet that invention. I disapproved
of it and all his wild, seditious talk of transforming the South. You should’ve
heard him. It was treasonous, I tell you!”

Tom shook his head. “You
had some misgivings, but you seemed quite interested. You asked questions—”

“Did you express your
disapproval earlier, when Mr. Edmunton showed you his invention?” asked the
sheriff.

“I did! But he was too
raving mad to notice my displeasure. Besides, Robbie, I wanted a loan from his
bank. I tried to temper my disgust when he rhapsodized on how his tractor would
turn the earth topsy-turvy. I tell you, he’s crazy!” Cooper sneered, waving his
hands and pacing agitatedly.

“Then, sir, what were you
doing in here?”

“Barnwell was my friend.
I would
never
harm him. You know me, boy. I could never do this horrible
deed.”