The Left Behinds and the iPhone That Saved George Washington (7 page)

Then this:
Turn off! Urgent you conserve power!

I turn off my phone. Meanwhile, Daniel and Elizabeth stand up. They want to get moving, but I have a new idea. One that might be able to help us all out, General Washington included.

It’s totally crazy. Yet I’m sure it’s right.

“Is there any way,” I ask, “that you could get me to Philadelphia?”

“Philadelphia?” Elizabeth asks. “Whatever in the world for?”

“I need to see someone,” I say. “He might be our only hope.”

“And who would that be?” Daniel asks.

“Dr. Benjamin Franklin,” I say. “Who else?”

 

I
MIGHT AS WELL HAVE
asked if they wouldn’t mind giving me a lift to the moon.

“Philadelphia?” says Elizabeth. “It is miles away. I don’t see how … I don’t think it would be possible …”

“It’s only, what, thirty miles from here?” I say. “Thirty-five, max. How long would it take us—an hour or two?”

“Are you proposing that you walk?” Daniel says. “In this weather?”

“No. I’m proposing we get there the fastest way possible. So I can see Dr. Franklin. And he can do something for me. Which if it works will solve everyone’s problems.”

“What is it you want him to do?”

I hold out my iPhone. “Fix this,” I say.

“What’s wrong with it?” says Elizabeth.

“It broke,” I say. “And it needs to be fixed. I believe Benjamin Franklin is the only man alive who can fix it.”

I’m not getting the sense that they’re mildly reluctant to help. I’m getting the sense that they will absolutely refuse to help me under any circumstances whatsoever.

Which won’t be good.

Because there’s no way I’ll be able to get from here to there without their help.

“Look,” I say. “It’s cold. It’s hard to think. Is there someplace warm we can go to talk this over?”

Neither makes a move.

“It won’t go away,” I say. “The
problem
. Not by itself, it won’t.”

“The problem?” says Elizabeth.

“The problem. That would be General George Washington. Who just happens to be lying dead as a post in your father’s horse stable. Have you guys thought this through?”

They obviously haven’t, so I spell it out for them. “Okay, here’s what’s going to happen. At some point—probably soon—Washington’s men are going to wonder where he is. They’ll start to look for him, if they haven’t already. They’ll find him in your barn. No matter what excuse your father tries to come up with, it’s
his
farm and
his
barn. How do you think this is going to go over? With Washington’s men, for starters?”

“Perhaps not so well,” Daniel says.

“Yeah. Perhaps not. Perhaps real badly. Put it this way:
I wouldn’t want to be in your father’s shoes. Not when a few thousand soldiers find out their leader has been killed on his property.”

“But he didn’t do anything!” Elizabeth says without conviction. “He wouldn’t … he is not …”

“He’s right, sister,” says Daniel. “I fear Father knows not what he has done. Perhaps it would be better if we could find someplace warm to talk.”

Then he starts walking. Elizabeth follows him, and I follow her.

We go along a pathway that connects to a sort of road. It’s a little hard to tell what’s what with all the snow, but Daniel and Elizabeth know the way. Up the road a bit we come to a small stone house, this one right by the road, not set back from it. It’s where they’re staying, Elizabeth tells me. Daniel, Elizabeth, their mother and father, and their six other brothers and sisters. The house belongs to an uncle, who has his own brood of older kids, but no wife. She died the year before. Of exhaustion, Elizabeth tells me. And unhappiness.

“ ’Twas not the cause,” says Daniel. “ ’Twas a disease. Doctor said. I’ve forgotten which one, though.”

“All right,” Elizabeth says. “Have it your way. She was so exhausted and so unhappy she caught herself a disease. The same result in the end, isn’t it?”

“My sister is not pleased,” Daniel tells me, “on account of all of us having to live with … live here.”

“With
him
,” Elizabeth says. “Our dear uncle James. A
loathsome man if ever there was one. He thinks me his maid.” Her eyes flare.

“Did the Hessians force you out?” I ask.

“Oh no,” says Elizabeth. “They paid Father for the privilege. Most handsomely, I might add. Our dear uncle has staked a claim to half, on account of his putting us up for the fortnight.

“And now we know what they were up to. The pretense was that they were farmers, simple folk, German, of course, but simple. Not entwined in the revolution, not soldiers. Father allowed himself to be convinced. Mother was not, nor were we. But Father saw the gold and took it. We heard him tell Mother it was more than he could make in a year and a half.”

We walk past the stone house, come to a barn, set back maybe thirty yards from the road. “Uncle is not a farmer,” Daniel says. “He’s a tradesman.”

“What’s his trade?” I ask.

“Furs,” Daniel says. “Mostly.”

“Whiskey,” Elizabeth says. “And muskets. In return for furs. He takes trips, Uncle James does. To Western country. Once a month. Stays two weeks. Always comes back in a foul mood. And in a foul odor.”

“Elizabeth,” says Daniel.

“ ’Tis true, brother,” she says. “And well you know it.”

Daniel opens the door to the barn, and there before us, as if sitting in a place of honor, is a carriage. Uncle’s carriage, no doubt.

I know nothing about carriages, or buggies, or whatever you call them, but this thing? It’s old, decrepit, beat up, and smelly.

It’s got two wheels, a torn-to-bits black cover made of some kind of fabric, a bench to sit on, and, projecting frontward, two long wooden shafts, which I suppose latch on to a horse somehow. The shafts aren’t hooked up to anything at the moment, though. They’re resting on the ground, so the whole contraption leans forward, like it’s just about ready to fall apart.

“Hey,” I say, and I try to force up some enthusiasm, like it’s a brand-new Ford F-150 pickup. “Maybe we could take this?”

“Uncle’s shay?” Daniel says.

“Shay? Is that what this is called?”

“Yes. But no one else is allowed to use it. Although he won’t need it until next week.”

“Daniel,” says Elizabeth. “Have you thought of Uncle’s reaction?”

“I have, sister. He’ll be quite furious about it, but if we leave first thing in the morning, he won’t be able to catch us.”

I
WIND UP SPENDING THE
night in the barn. And we leave pretty much at first light.

Sounds simple, doesn’t it? Spend the night, then leave.

I’m not mentioning the fact that I had to spend about an hour and a half explaining myself to Daniel and Elizabeth. They wanted to know
everything
.

I said: You mean, like you want to know the
truth
?

Of course, they said: What else?

So I told them.

It wasn’t my story that they believed. It was my clothes—I’m still wearing jeans, a jacket, white Nikes—and my iPhone.

I let them hold it. I turned it on for a few seconds so they could tap some icons. Daniel couldn’t get over the
calculator, and kept putting in numbers. “If only we could use this at market,” he said. “The buyers always seem to miscalculate in their own favor, and Father never comes home with what he thinks he should have been paid.”

And I won’t mention that later, they came back in with some food—a hunk of ham and a chunk of bread. Or that I had to sleep in a bed of hay and froze my butt off. Or that I couldn’t help asking myself questions.

Terrible questions that had no answers.

Like: how did all this happen, anyway? Why are we
here
?

Are Bev and Brandon going to be all right?

What about our
parents
? Brandon’s mom, Bev’s mom, my mom and dad—wouldn’t they be a little bit
concerned
by now?

Do they even know we aren’t at school?

And let’s not forget: What is the
deal
with General Washington? Is he really, you know,
dead
dead? And if so, what the heck does it all
mean
?

Finally, when Daniel and Elizabeth left for the night, I thought they believed me, and I thought I could trust them. That the plan we had come up with—we’d take Uncle James’s one-horse shay all the way to Philadelphia, find Dr. Franklin, somehow get everything
fixed
—was a good one.

It won’t surprise you that I got, like, no sleep. Even if I’d had nothing on my mind, it still would have been freezing. And what if Daniel and Elizabeth changed sides
and decided to tell their father and their uncle there was this super-weird kid who claimed he was from the future sleeping in the barn? What if in the morning they’d find a sheriff or a constable or whatever they called the local law-enforcement dude and turn me in?

Which, even if they did, wouldn’t
solve
anything. A constable wouldn’t make General Washington
undead
. Wouldn’t do a thing for Bev or Brandon.

At dawn, Daniel and Elizabeth quietly come into the barn. Elizabeth brings me breakfast—a biscuit, another piece of ham—while Daniel gets their uncle James’s shay prepared. “We’ve told Father and Mother,” Elizabeth says, “that we will be visiting our grandmother. Who lives in Doylestown. And they have prevailed upon Uncle James to lend us his shay. But instead of west to Doylestown, we will go south to Philadelphia.”

“Juniper will take us,” Daniel says. “Juniper knows the way.”

“Juniper?” I ask.

“Juniper,” says Elizabeth. “Uncle James’s favorite mare.”

And then we’re off.

But Juniper is in no hurry. Turns out she came with only two gears—slow and slower. After the first hour, Philadelphia seems far, far away.

B
ELIEVE IT OR NOT
, there are roads.

Sort of.

Nothing like I’m used to. No signs, no traffic lights, no pavement, no lines in the middle, no shoulders, no fast lanes, no rest stops, no eighteen-wheelers, no highway patrol, no talk radio to help while away the time.

But a road nonetheless. With ruts through the snow, made by hearty fellow travelers who’ve gone before us. This is 1776, keep in mind; the folks around these parts know how to
deal
.

So, once we get to the road, it’s not so hard to stay on the road. You just keep going, in the direction you’re pointing to. And then it’s nothing but
cloppity-cloppity-cloppity-clop
.

It’s about thirty miles to Philadelphia. In good weather, a one-horse shay like Uncle James’s goes about four or five miles an hour. In bad weather, or in snow, we’re talking about two or three miles an hour. Meaning, it’s going to take ten to fifteen hours to get to Philadelphia.

That’s a long time to be sitting on a plank of wood in the cold, without anything to plug in, watch, or read.

We talk. They want to know everything they possibly can about my world, and I want to know everything about theirs. They both were taught to read by their mother. For a time, they both attended a sort of school—a tutor gave separate lessons to boys and girls—but the tutor moved on as the war took hold, apparently to go west where there was less fighting. Elizabeth didn’t take to school as well as Daniel, who still has hopes that one day the tutor might return. Otherwise, it’ll be farming for him, and marriage for Elizabeth.

We take turns driving. I’ve never driven a one-horse shay before, but it doesn’t take long to get the hang of it. You basically just sit there, hold the reins, and let the horse do the work. Juniper knows the route.

By four o’clock in the afternoon, we’ve all had enough. Especially Juniper, who’s been doing all the work. The problem is, we’re only a little more than halfway there.

We stop at an inn. There’s a stable for Juniper to spend the night in, food for us to eat, and rooms for us to sleep in.

“Father knows the owner,” Elizabeth says. “And his
credit is good. We’ll have to explain when the bill comes due, as this is not on the way to Doylestown.”

“I’ll pay you back,” I say. But I don’t say how, because the truth is I don’t think there’s any way I ever could.

The innkeeper is a gruff man of few words, but he does know Daniel and Elizabeth’s father, and he lets us stay. The inn has everything we need: food for us, a warm stable for Juniper, and a single room with two beds—one for me, one for Daniel and Elizabeth. The only problem is the “necessary.”

The bathroom, in other words. It’s behind the inn. Ye olde outhouse.

Put it this way: the fact that it’s freezing cold is not the worst thing about this particular “necessary.” Not by a long shot.

At least Bev isn’t around. She’d go into major snit mode and nobody would get any sleep.

I
T
’
S AROUND TWO IN
the afternoon when we enter Philadelphia. I can tell right away we’re in a city, because the place is, like, super stinky.

Horses. They got to do what they got to do, which unfortunately is all over the street. Which happens to be sort of covered with snow. So what the horses do is all too clear to see, let alone smell.