The Lightning Keeper Read Free Page A

effort to please.
    â€œWell, I don’t remember exactly whose idea that was, but yes, certainly, I’ve known Stephenson for thirty years, and I should think he knows me. Let me read this now.”
    Her father warmed to the idea of those wheels, then appropriated it as his own, and soon it grew to the proportions of a mania. He would not willingly entertain other topics of discussion, nor could Harriet qualify his enthusiasm for the project by any normal business consideration such as costs, scheduling, specifications, and possible modifications to the plant. The Bigelow Iron Company would manufacture the wheels as subcontractor to the John Stephenson Company; he and his old friend would see to that. There was no arguing with this proposition that bloomed so suddenly in his mind with no encouragement, correspondence, or information from Stephenson, who could not have known how things were progressing in Beecher’s Bridge. The contract, and its successful conclusion, became a fixed star in Amos Bigelow’s firmament, and to express reservation or even to ask too many questions would have been as offensive to him as standing on the broad porch of the Congregational Church after the service and entertaining doubts about the existence of God or the certainty of eternal salvation. Her father was fifty-nine years old, but sometimes he seemed much older than that, and she wondered whether he had always been so…mercurial, and whether his judgement now was perfectly sound.
    Amos Bigelow became obsessed with catalogues, and where he might once have spent the better part of his day prowling the furnace building or engaging Horatio Washington in discussion about repair or modification of the breast wheel—the waterwheel was a source of endless concern—he now spent his time perusing and annotating Hitchcock’s Machine Tool List, or the Patterson, Gottfried & Hunter catalogue of power transmission devices.
    Harriet, who attended to the ledgers at the works, noted the changed composition of the mail pouch and formed in her mind grim auguries of the future. Her office, no more than a cubbyhole, adjoined that of the ironmaster, and sometimes he would call out to her to come look at this splendid object, a double-arm split pulley on the Reeves patent model, or this Walcott & Wood turret lathe. Harriet looked, and was as enthusiastic as she could be, but what always caught her eye on the page was the price of these devices. She asked, as if she did not know, what use the Bigelow Iron Company would make of such things. But her father’s enthusiasm for the Stephenson project knew nobounds or measure, and even today, when they had been so anxious about the time, he had made MacEwan stop the car at Park Avenue and 142nd Street so that they might admire the Patterson, Gottfried billboard and the model, looming out of the muddy expanse of pasture, of what was proclaimed the largest wood pulley on earth.
    Harriet had undertaken the actual correspondence with Stephenson, though her father seemed to believe that he had already broached the business and received a reply. She showed her father draft after draft to reflect the refinements and reservations suggested by Horatio Washington and Mr. Brown, the foreman of the furnace, both of whom expressed doubt that so many wheels—her estimate—could be produced on any tight schedule. It was Horatio who pointed out that there hadn’t been much snow this winter, and the holding ponds up the river on Great Mountain were already low. Come August, who knew what they’d be using for water.
    Stephenson’s response—to Amos Bigelow, of course, rather than Harriet—was cordial but not very encouraging. Yes, he would be subcontracting the wheel assemblies along with many other items in the undercarriage and couplings, air-brakes, upholstery, and of course the electrical systems. The John Stephenson Company’s long experience in the construction of